NOVEL NEXT Chapter 140
The Lucky One II
[Mr. Undertaker, there's a big problem.]
One night, the Saintess sent a message through Constellation Talk.
I jumped out of bed. It was 3 AM. For her to wake me at such an ungodly hour, it must have been an urgent event.
“What’s going on?”
[You mentioned before that in the 7th year, a ‘Meteor Shower’ anomaly would appear in the night sky and devastate Gyeongsangnam-do.]
“Yes, that’s correct.”
[Well, right now, an anomaly suspected to be the Meteor Shower has been observed over the East Sea. The observation point is Ulleungdo.]
What?
I quickly changed out of my pajamas and rushed out.
The Sword Marquess, who had been sleeping curled up like a cat by my doorstep, followed suit.
“What’s happening at this hour, Sword Duke?”
I won’t explain how the Sword Marquess started calling me 'Sword Duke' instead of Undertaker. There were too many things in the world I didn’t want to explain, and most of those things were related to lunatics.
“There’s an anomaly appearing over the East Sea right now.”
“Hah! Such a vile thing daring to launch a night attack! Despicable!”
Tap, tap, tap—
The two of us sprinted across Haeundae Beach and naturally leapt into the sea.
It was like stepping on thin ice.
For me, it was aura; for the Sword Marquess, it was internal energy, harnessed to step and leap across the water.
“An anomaly in the middle of the sea, huh. I wonder if it’s an omen of good or bad fortune. I suppose it’s better than appearing on land, but it seems the Sword Duke thinks otherwise.”
Of course, it was an omen of bad fortune.
My ‘Regressor’s Schedule’ was as meticulously planned as if written by an obsessive-compulsive person with a severe anxiety disorder about time management.
While I allowed for about a week’s error margin for most events, the timing of ‘anomaly appearances’ was planned down to the minute.
‘The Meteor Shower isn’t supposed to appear for several more years. Could killing the Butterfly Effect in Beijing have caused this?’
This would severely disrupt my project to foster camaraderie among the awakeners under the guise of the Meteor Shower subjugation.
My heart pounded with anxiety.
When we reached the vicinity of Ulleungdo and looked up, the night sky was filled with brilliant, multicolored streaks.
I muttered in astonishment.
“It really is the Meteor Shower...”
In truth, subduing the Meteor Shower itself wasn’t a problem.
A 590-cycle regressor couldn’t possibly fail to take down an early-stage boss of the Korean Peninsula.
But as I mentioned, this would completely throw off my plans.
How would I strengthen the unity of the Korean Awakeners’ Alliance? How would I solidify Dang Seo-rin’s position as the leader?
Surrounded by the night sky and the sea, my thoughts churned like waves.
“Huh?”
Suddenly, a different light flickered beyond the Meteor Shower.
It flashed quickly.
A ‘disc-shaped’ object rapidly crossed the sky and collided head-on with the Meteor Shower.
-Splatter! Splatter! Little stars?
The Meteor Shower seemed puzzled. It tilted its head, metaphorically speaking.
For reference, an artificial sea-like space had spread around the Meteor Shower.
Naturally, the ‘disc-shaped flying object’ that hit the surface of the night sky was thrown off course.
Thunk, thunk, thunk—
The disc bounced off the Meteor Shower’s surface, like a stone skipping across water.
“......”
My jaw dropped.
‘No way, that’s a UFO?’
Indeed.
A mysterious flying object in the shape of a disc.
An alien species with the ultimate combat power but, unfortunately, with a Pokémon fire attribute vulnerable to water. As soon as it landed in the East Sea, it dissolved like sugar in water.
“Oh, oh, oh—oh oh oh?”
Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk.
The UFO kept skipping.
-Ah? Ah? Little stars.
The Meteor Shower, bombarded repeatedly, died on the spot.
No, really, it died.
Meteor Shower subjugation complete.
Without the Korean awakeners lifting a finger, the early-stage boss exited the scene.
Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk.
Meanwhile, the UFO skipped 89 more times along the Meteor Shower’s waves.
As a result, the UFO, which should have crashed in the middle of the East Sea, veered off in a completely unexpected direction.
Northward.
Not into the sea, but towards the land—North Korea.
“No, no!”
I screamed. My cry was genuine.
“Huh? What do you mean, no, Sword Duke?”
“If that crashes on land, it’s the end! There are 120 aliens in that saucer, and each one is stronger than you! It’ll be a catastrophe!”
“What?”
The Sword Marquess’s expression changed.
“Then we must pursue it at once! I need to learn from them!”
“Yeah. Damn it.”
Despite the Sword Marquess’s madness, he was right about needing to pursue it.
I pushed my aura to its maximum and chased after the UFO, determined not to lose sight of it.
The Sword Marquess shouted behind me, “Wait, Sword Duke! Wait for me, Sword Duke!” but I ignored him.
I had no time to humor the ramblings of an old young man.
“Huff, huff. Huff, huff...!”
For the first time in a while, I ran until I was out of breath. I had run so far that I lost contact with the Saintess.
To summarize, the UFO crash-landed even further north than North Korea.
Specifically, between Shenyang and Sinuiju. In the region known as Manchuria, the aliens were crawling out.
-Screech?
-Screech. Screech.
They looked like disgusting cockroaches spilling out of their lair.
But these cockroaches were strong. Very strong.
I hid in the bushes and observed the aliens from afar.
Despite being a sci-fi species, the aliens moved naturally, using footwork to explore the surroundings.
Well, if the genre were space opera instead of sci-fi, it wouldn’t be too different from traditional martial arts.
-Screech?
One alien tilted its head and dipped its foot into a stream.
Splash, splash.
A commendable spirit of challenge, but footbaths benefiting health was a privilege reserved for humans and Japanese macaques.
The alien dissolved from toe to head.
-Screech!
-Screech! Screech! Screech!
The aliens panicked.
They were probably saying things like, ‘Oh my God! How can such a terrible substance exist?’ ‘You witness your kind’s body melting like candle wax just from touching it, you roll a SAN check.’
The aliens became even more frantic.
-Screech!
-Screech! Screech!
They pulled out laser guns and started gathering rocks, soil, and minerals.
Bzzz—
Using incomprehensible technology, the Earth’s minerals were appropriated by the aliens.
-Screech, screech!
-Screech. Screech.
The aliens used their lasers to collect materials and began building something.
The minerals hit by the laser beams floated in the air and were shaped in real-time. Into walls, pillars, and mysterious interior decorations.
In less than thirty minutes, a bizarre structure rose in the middle of Manchuria.
To compare its appearance to something on Earth... a termite mound?
But it was black. The surface of the termite mound was covered in a dark, lava-like liquid that constantly flowed down. It was an abominable structure at first glance.
-Screech.
-Screech, screech.
The aliens seemed to be admiring their craftsmanship, embracing each other and dancing joyfully.
They enjoyed their dance party for a while before entering their termite mound—no, their black ant fortress.
“......”
What was this?
Was that sinister fortress a foothold for invading Earth? Or an antenna tower signaling their refugee ships still wandering in space?
“Huff! Huff! Huff! Sword Duke. Finally... Huff, I caught up. As expected of a master of lightness skills, I’m late...”
“Shh. Be quiet. They’ll hear us.”
“Huff... Huff? That grotesque tower, what is it?”
“I don’t know. Other than that the aliens built it.”
I dug a proper trench for camouflage and went into hiding. Even if I had to abandon this cycle, I intended to uncover the aliens’ purpose.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I didn’t have to stay hidden for long.
The reason the aliens built that bizarre structure soon became clear.
Thud, thud, thud—
It started to rain.
From the aliens’ perspective, ‘the substance of death’ bombarded from the sky.
The Earth’s specialty, H₂O, poured endlessly on their black ant fortress.
The dark liquid flowing down the surface of the black ant fortress constantly drained away.
Peek—
Long after the rain stopped, the aliens peeked out from the fortress.
-Screech?
-Screech, screech.
-Screech.
Surprisingly, the aliens were intact.
For starters, their armor had changed slightly.
Should I call it a raincoat? Anyway, they wore something akin to a black raincoat.
It seemed they had been tirelessly sewing inside the black ant fortress.
-Screech!
But anyone who has worn a raincoat knows it’s not entirely waterproof.
The newly modified armor wasn’t perfect either. Walking around the Earth’s humid surface for too long caused
them to gradually melt.
What were they, Ultraman with a three-minute limit?
In any case, the fact that they could hope to survive on this hellish, doomsday planet seemed precious to them.
-Screech! Screech!
The aliens gradually expanded the black ant fortress.
Not by building upwards, but by extending the real estate sideways.
Have you heard of ‘The Line,’ a project ambitiously pursued by Saudi Arabia but greatly downsized? Think of the Great Wall of China.
In short, the aliens’ black ant fortress started to resemble a ‘wall.’ As they kept expanding sideways, it naturally took that shape.
“Huh?”
And that wall... stretched west towards the Yellow Sea and east towards the East Sea.
‘No, no. Wait a minute.’
Eventually, the aliens’ ‘Black Wall’ spanned across Manchuria horizontally.
In other words.
‘If a Monster Wave occurs... it would be blocked by the Black Wall!’
Indeed, that’s what happened.
A few years later, when the ocean-class anomaly ‘Monster Wave’ swept across the world and finally reached the Korean Peninsula.
But just before it could land on the Korean Peninsula, the Monster Wave faced an unexpected obstacle.
-Grr?
-Grrr?
A crappy-looking wall blocked their path.
At first, the Monster Wave wasn’t fazed. It advanced boldly. A mere wall wasn’t going to stop giants like Wall Maria.
-Screech!
-Screech! Screech!
The problem was that each of the 116 remaining aliens (some had died) boasted combat skills on par with Captain Levi.
Faced with these 116 Levi-level aliens, the Monster Wave was annihilated.
In the process of defeating an army of 200,000 monsters, not a single alien died.
Of course, the Monster Wave had an endless supply of reinforcements, so it repeated its attack the next month and the month after that. Each time, it was crushed.
Naturally, the Korean Peninsula south of the Black Wall remained safe.
Without needing Mo Gwang-seo’s Eastern Holy State performance or Sim Ah-ryeon’s Zero Requiem plan.
Without suffering any damage, the Korean Peninsula was completely free from the threat of the ‘Monster Wave,’ which had been deemed virtually impossible to subjugate.
“Is this... for real?”
My jaw dropped.
To be honest, my jaw remained dropped for several years.
So the real strategy against the ‘Monster Wave’ was to somehow use the Meteor Shower to skip a UFO across the sea, crash it into Manchuria, and let the aliens build their wall to block the Monster Wave?
And I’m supposed to believe this, anomaly?
“Lucky...”
Noh Do-hwa commented, sipping her coffee after hearing my story.
I couldn’t help but notice that her dark circles seemed lighter than in other cycles. Probably because everything she attempted was going well.
“But isn’t this due to your wish to the ‘Monkey’s Paw’ or something? Heh. I don’t care, but aren’t you going to be screwed in a few years...?”
“......”
“I’m really looking forward to what kind of crazy blues will hit you. I’ll be sure to get a VIP ticket and wait.”
This is driving me crazy.
Footnotes:
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