I'm an Infinite Regressor, But I've Got Stories to Tell

Chapter 266

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◈ i’m an infinite regressor, but i’ve got stories to tell

──────

the murderer iii

our group was led into the city. though not as grand as busan, the city was relatively orderly with some semblance of law and order still intact.

after spending a night in a guest house provided by the city’s mayor, we were formally invited to the town hall the following day.

“ah, you’ve arrived. welcome, esteemed guests. i am manav, the mayor of new delhi.”

“you may call me undertaker.”

“a pleasure, mr. undertaker. welcome.”

the man wore traditional attire topped with a warm smile and a pair of glasses, behind the frame of which shone eyes that were both cautious and friendly. despite the scholarly air he exuded, his muscular shoulders and the scar on his cheek tempered that impression.

“of course, strictly speaking, this isn’t new delhi but new-new delhi,” he continued. “the cities here have been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times, you see.”

“you seem quite young.”

and he did. the man who introduced himself as manav looked to be perhaps in his early- to mid-forties at most. it was surprising, considering his position as the leader of one of the last surviving major cities on the indian subcontinent.

“ah...” manav drawled, looking momentarily flustered at my comment. “it’s not due to my own ability. my predecessors have... disappeared for various reasons.”

there was no need to activate mind-reading skills. for a fleeting moment, his gaze through the lenses of his glasses seemed to say, “you’re one to talk.”

as a rule, awakeners aged slower as their mastery of aura deepened. while it was rare for one to reverse aging like the sword marquess, pseudo-immortality wasn’t uncommon.

in other words, if someone appeared to be in their twenties despite their true age, it was a testament to their exceptional potential. to someone like manav, i must have seemed like an awakener of unparalleled talent.

“call it fate, perhaps.”

“fate, huh...?” manav’s smile grew faintly bitter. weariness lingered in the corners of his lips. “ah, while i’m thinking of it, we prepared various amenities to welcome you, but you were so adamant in declining them. was there something the matter?”

“there’s no need to worry. we have no intention of exploiting you for offerings under the guise of divine authority. rest assured.”

“haha. as you can see, our city isn’t exactly prosperous. i was merely concerned that our hospitality might have fallen short.”

although manav laughed good-naturedly, nothing in his demeanor suggested a sense of trust in us. unlike the villagers we first encountered, he didn’t seem to believe our claims of being descending goddesses. with the vantage point provided to him as the city’s leader, he must have seen and heard too much to take such stories at face value.

[for such a large city, this town hall office is kinda basic, honestly.]

“i-i know, right? the guest house we stayed in felt more luxurious...”

ha-yul and ah-ryeon, unfamiliar with either english or hindi, whispered idly to each other behind me.

[don’t you find it odd seeing oppa speaking foreign languages so fluently?]

“a-ah, you too? honestly, it feels strange to me too. but outside, everyone treats the guild leader as if he’s some kind of sage.”

[he’s a three kingdoms anomaly, isn’t he?]

“well, he only brings up three kingdoms stuff with close acquaintances. honestly, we’re probably the only ones who know that zero_sugar is also our guild leader...”

[creepy.]

i cleared my throat, cutting off their chatter.

“let me be direct, mayor manav. you seem fully aware that the trolley dilemma is an anomaly. why, then, do you tolerate its worship as a deity?”

manav stared at me for a long moment.

it wasn’t the gaze of someone deep in thought. rather, his exhaustion seemed to weigh down his focus.

i, too, prepared myself to judge him based on his response. was this a man fit to entrust with the beacon of sacred fire?

“an anomaly... it’s been years since someone referred to trolley in such terms. you’re correct, it is an anomaly.”

the mayor then rose to his feet.

“would you follow me?”

the place manav led us to wasn’t a secret lair or sacrificial altar. it was a simple shack—by apocalypse standards, an ordinary home.

“ah! pandit ji!”

a child brewing chai under a tin roof beamed when he saw manav. the city folk appeared to address manav as "pandit ji."

“yes, aakash beta. are your siblings well?”

“they’re by the river, breaking rocks!”

“these are my guests. we’ll just have a quick look around and leave.”

“our daily ritual. around now, my younger brother, whom you chastised yesterday, will be offering 113 slaves as sacrifices.”

“...”

“in exchange, the rest of the population, over 100,000 citizens, will enjoy a day of relative peace.”

somewhere in the distance, the faint crash of a steam engine wailed.

“another day of peace for our city.”

manav’s tone carried the weariness of a man who had only come this far by holding fast to his belief that he was doing right.

turning to me, he asked, “can you believe it? before the blessings of the trolley, every day here was hell.”

i hesitated to chastise the pragmatist before me.

just as every individual had their reasons, so did every city in this ruined world. manav was undeniably a murderer, slaughtering over 100 slaves daily to sustain his city. yet he was also a protector, sacrificing everything to keep his people alive for one more day. who could dismiss his desperate struggle to prolong his city’s survival?

if i were strong enough to bear the burdens of the entire world, perhaps i could pass judgment. but as someone who could barely manage my responsibilities in the korean peninsula, this was not my place.

however...

“believing you can control an anomaly is dangerous.”

as a specialist in anomalies, i offered him this advice.

“you may already know this, but anomalies are far from predictable. they’re fickle and unpredictable. today, 113 sacrifices might suffice, but tomorrow, it might demand 1,113.”

“there... haven’t been any issues so far.”

“then consider yourself lucky. but never assume you can fully control an anomaly.”

the ambition to harness anomalies for humanity’s benefit was a dangerous fantasy.

even for a regressor like me, with infinite retries, commanding anomalies was no easy feat. i had only managed to subjugate a few, like the tutorial fairy and inunaki tunnel.

“i’ll keep your advice in mind,” manav replied politely, but his stiff expression betrayed his thoughts.

come to think of it, i realized, since introducing himself, he hasn’t called me undertaker once.

perhaps he still saw me as an unwelcome intruder.

“thank you for visiting. i worry that our hospitality may have been insufficient. would you consider staying a few more days?”

his words were heavy with implication, but i shook my head.

“i didn’t come here to be pampered. our journey is long, and we must be going. i wish you success.”

there is an epilogue.

years later, after returning to busan, we set out on another world tour. i had been planning to explore the regions beyond the himalayas and decided to revisit new-new delhi. i was curious about the ambitious young man who sought to protect humanity by harnessing anomalies.

when we reached the vicinity of new delhi, though, ah-ryeon tilted her head in confusion.

“huh? wasn’t it around here?”

“it was.”

but there was no trace of life.

the city had fallen to ruin. bodies were scattered everywhere, and eerily, all the corpses lay on the railway tracks.

“it’s total annihilation...”

the cause wasn’t hard to guess.

one day, as usual, manav must have prepared 113 sacrifices. the citizens, standing on the tracks, would have offered prayers to trolley for another peaceful day.

but that day, the train ignored the tied slaves and struck the citizens instead.

why? perhaps the cumulative number of slaves sacrificed—100,000, 200,000, or even 300,000—had surpassed the city’s population. from the perspective of the trolley anomaly, eliminating the citizens instead of 113 slaves might have been the “utilitarian” choice.

whatever the reason, one thing was clear: the citizens who had stood on the tracks that day had all died. the prosperous city of new-new delhi was erased in an instant.

“they sought one more day of peace and brought upon themselves a single day of annihilation.”

“pardon?” ah-ryeon questioned at my sudden proclamation.

“it’s nothing. this place is a land of the dead now. let’s move on.”

adjusting the load on my back, i glanced at the city’s remains one last time and thought this:

compared to humans who divided themselves into citizens or slaves and justified it with religion, perhaps anomalies, which ignored such trivial distinctions, were the true utilitarians.

footnotes: