Chapter 1

Companion Ⅰ

Infinite Regression. A certain genre goes by that name.

It's called 'Infinite Regression' when the protagonist dies, then returns to a state before death to endlessly challenge the hurdles in their path. Naturally, the protagonist somehow overcomes them, no matter how perilous the obstacle. After all, they simply keep trying until they succeed.

What once was doomed to be a bad ending is transformed into a happy ending, or the protagonist miraculously saves a side heroine destined to die from an incurable disease, or―

Infinite Regression is essentially a cheat key to end all tragedies.

However, speaking from experience, the infinite regression depicted in various novels is nothing but despicable propaganda. It's like one of those cram schools that only displays the names of students who got into prestigious universities.

"Shit. This isn't going to work."

I set down my cane-sword.

The 1183rd regression. The world had ended again.

Those who were destined to succeed will succeed; those who weren't, won't. I belonged to the latter. I had to accept the fact that, no matter how desperately I tried, I couldn't prevent the world's destruction.

This is not a story of success, but one of failure—the mere afterword of someone who, despite possessing the ability of infinite regression, ultimately couldn't prevent the end of everything.

First thing to note is that the human mental state, or rather, mental strength always has an expiration date. No matter how normal someone appears on the outside, repeated regressions will undoubtedly forge an invisible crack in that surface.

A prime example of this is the story I'm about to tell concerning grandfather Schopenhauer.

"My direct ancestor was a very famous philosopher."[1]

Old Man 'Scho' often boasted about his lineage. I myself had heard the name Schopenhauer tossed around, but honestly, unlike his esteemed ancestor, Scho was far from a philosopher.

"Are those muscles of yours for Scho? Do some exercise, man."

Despite his clocking in at 60 years old, his body was all muscle. More familiar with an iron body than philosophical ideals, Old Man Scho always emphasized the importance of exercise.

"Come on, all that muscle disappears with each regression anyway..."

"Weight training is a habit. Habits don't disappear," Old Man Scho said sagely.

These days, I possess a skill known as [Resume], which allows me to retain my muscles and internal power even when I go back to the past, but back then, I was just a novice who hadn't even experienced regression ten times. It was pretty hard to sympathize with Old Man Scho's philosophy.

In terms of nationality, generation, taste, beliefs, and political leanings, Old Man Scho and I were complete opposites. There wasn't a single centimeter of common ground between us. And yet, there was one reason we always stuck together.

"Tsk. This run is messed up again."

"So it is."

Infinite regression.

That's right, Old Man Scho and I were regressors with the same ability. Somehow, in the world where I lived, there weren't just one, but two regressors. Considering that infinite regression was granted to only one person in most creative works, this was quite unusual.

"Damn, we're screwed. That monster can't be killed."

"What should we do, then?"

"I'll go ahead, you come later. While I hold it off, you try to escape and struggle 'til the end. Then maybe in the next run, you might see a way?"

"Fuck. Always leaving the hard parts to me..."

"Hey! Watch your language! Mind your manners, you brat!"

The one saying the Korean sentiment of "mind your manners" so fluently was Old Man Scho, who was actually German, funnily enough.

I first met Old Man Scho on my 6th regression. Back then, he could barely say "hello" in Korean. However, as soon as he realized there was another infinite regressor like himself, he immersed himself in studying the language.

By the 7th and 8th regressions, his Korean improved dramatically. Eventually, by the 10th regression, he was better at Korean than me.

The man could even read the Analects in Korean instead of German.

"Old man, your passion is really something else."

"It's not passion, you fool! It's habit! You don't learn German, so I had to. A person who has mastered memory skills, bah! What in the world are you doing, not studying? It was said, 'He who learns but does not think is lost.' How can you be so lazy about learning when you're much younger than me? Tsk, really..."

"......"

He might have learned a bit too well.

Anyway, thanks to Old Man Scho equipping his brain with K-conservativeness along with Korean, our communication drastically improved.

There were not one, but two infinite regressors, each a cheat key in their own right. Isn't that something?

Sometimes I sacrificed, sometimes Old Man Scho did, and together, we kept making our mark on this world.

"We did it! We actually did it!"

When we defeated the monster 'Ten Legs', which no one had overcome in ten runs, both of us cheered.

After blasting away that hateful, mop-like, tentacled head, Old Man Scho tossed his sword aside and rushed at me in a burst.

"Oh my! Thank you! It's all thanks to you! I couldn't have made it this far alone!" Old Man Scho laughed like a child.

Truth be told, from the 6th to the 10th regression, we worked together as allies, but somewhere in our hearts, we had always been wary of each other. It was difficult to trust someone else in a world on the brink of destruction.

Both I and Old Man Scho. We had seen too much to easily trust anyone.

But the moment this white-haired German old-timer embraced me with a bright smile, I felt the last vestiges of that mutual suspicion between us completely melt away.

I looked into Old Man Scho's gray eyes. It was clear he felt the same.

Yes, we were pilots who had crash-landed at the end of the century, but while we couldn't say we were born from the same land, we were comrades who had jumped with our delicate parachutes towards the same landing spot.

From that day forward, many things became unimportant between us. Nationality, generation, tastes, beliefs, political inclinations—all lost their natural pull on us.

In an atmosphere where gravity had faded, we felt significantly lighter.

"Actually, this regression thing is really hard to get used to."

Old Man Scho opened up to me about his human side, the part called 'weakness' in a world that had met its end.

We would fill a thermos with coffee in the morning or grab a bottle of soju and head to an empty café (many of which had been abandoned as the baristas had fled the ruined world) to chat over trivial matters.

"Why?"

"We wake up on June 17th when we regress, right? But a minute after we regress, my wife dies."

"Excuse me?"

Old Man Scho explained: June 17th, 13:59. That marks the point when our regression begins. But just around 14:00 on June 17th, a gate opens in Seoul, South Korea, and everything south of the Han River vanishes.

That day, unlike the two of us who were in Busan and escaped the catastrophe, Old Man Scho's wife was attending a conference in Seoul.

"Just one minute. Only a minute."

Old Man Scho downed his soju.

"My wife was in the auditorium, conducting an event with several famous scientists."

"Even if you warn her the gate is opening... she wouldn't be able to escape."

"That's right."

It was a disaster that turned Seoul into a wasteland. Even if Old Man Scho called immediately after regressing to tell her to evacuate, it was physically impossible to avoid the tragedy.

"Calling her is no use, she won't pick up immediately. She sets her phone to silent during important events... I have to call three times in a row for her to answer."

"......"

"Then there's no time. I just manage to say 'I love you', then there's a thump from the sky and the call cuts off. Just 10 seconds. That's all the time I get to hear my wife's voice..."

"Any other family?"

"None. I only have my wife," Old Man Scho muttered.

His real name, Emit Schopenhauer. His alias, Swordmaster.

I began to understand why he was so obsessed with gaining immense power.

With each regression, Old Man Scho's drinking increased. By the 9th regression, he'd say the soju wasn't real alcohol before drinking, but by the 19th, he'd down three bottles on the spot.

"Even if I drink myself to death, as long as I regress, my liver resets. It's a win, isn't it? Hehehe..."

He said that, but Old Man Scho's complexion was not bright.

By then, we—he—had endured approximately 120 years if we combined all the regressed time. However, the time he had spent talking with his wife amounted to just about 120 seconds.

The journey of an old man crossing a desert just to sip water was becoming ever more grueling.

"There has to be someone with teleportation abilities out there."

At some point, Old Man Scho's goal began to change.

"What?"

"A teleporter. If I can just find them, then as soon as we regress, I could rush to my wife."

"But... Old man. Even if a teleporter exists somewhere in the world, can you really meet up with that person within a minute? It takes us 30 minutes just to meet up after regressing."

"......"

Old Man Scho fell silent.

I could tell that it was not a silence of affirmation.

Over a century, my companion who had tried to prevent destruction with me was slowly consumed by increasingly bizarre thoughts. He muttered incessantly.

"Maybe if I find resurrection magic, I could bring dead people back to life?"

"If I could copy someone else's abilities, get teleportation and telepathy, I could surely solve any problem within a minute."

"It can be done. Surely it can be done."

It was like a sandcastle collapsing.

The pinnacle of the collapse was the 23rd regression.

I started the regression as usual, following the same route. After dealing with the dungeonized area in under 30 minutes, I moved to a pre-arranged meeting place. It was a hideout we had set up in an earlier cycle.

"Huh? Old man? Old man, are you there?"

No one was in the underground training center. I couldn't find any signs of someone entering or leaving.

"......"

A sense of ominous foreboding seized me, prompting me to move immediately.

My starting point was Busan Station. Old Man Scho's was the old Baekje Hospital building.

I passed by an elementary school that had been torn down to half its size due to a monster's rampage, then entered the old hospital building. Everyone had already evacuated, so it was deserted.

Old Man Scho was dead on the rooftop.

"......"

It was not murder.

From the beginning of the starting point, there was no one capable of killing Old Man Scho—be it monster or human. Even I couldn't have.

The only one who could have killed him was himself.

Old Man Scho's body was headless, but the rest of his torso was intact. He was tightly clutching a smartphone in his left hand.

"Madness."

Footnotes:

[1] Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher. He is known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation, which characterizes the phenomenal world as the manifestation of a blind and irrational noumenal will.