Determinist Ⅰ
"When you think of the trio of protagonists in web novels—namely, regressors, possessors, and reincarnators—who do you think is their greatest nemesis?
A powerful monster? The protagonist will win anyway.
Stress? Trauma? Obsessive-compulsive disorder? These are not wrong answers. However, it's hard to say these are unique to regressors. After all, stress is a common weakness of Homo sapiens, from your average 35-year-old unemployed person to the 60-year-old President of the United States.
Baldness? How could you say something so harsh.
The correct answer that is both somewhat surprising yet entirely unsurprising... the 'Butterfly Effect' itself.
-Can a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing cause a tornado on the other side of the Earth?
The Butterfly Effect. A theory that states that small difference in initial conditions lead to increasingly drastic changes over time.
I can confidently say that this very Butterfly Effect is indeed the villain among villains for regressors—an unavoidable archenemy on a single-log bridge, and the sworn enemy of the universe.
Oh, the sheer audacity!
How many regressors have perished due to this Butterfly Effect in their creations?
-I am a reader well-versed in all kinds of web novels, and in the current world I've entered, no one can match my expertise. By working first to save a maid who was absurdly killed early on, I then, according to my interpretion, prevent the first button of tragedy from being set off... Huh? Why does saving the maid lead to a demon king invading?
-Beneath the palace walls, I was kind to a starving child, and 10 years later, the prince proposes to me? I just wanted to live a peaceful life, but what should I do now?
-Why, after I've completed all the quests the original protagonist was supposed to solve and even recruited allies meant for the protagonist's party, taking all the items and opportunities meant for the protagonist, has the protagonist become so weak? Oh dear, do I have to step in?
In the latter case, it's more a matter of conscience and intelligence than the Butterfly Effect.
For the trio of regression, possession, and reincarnation, no situation is as terrifying as the Butterfly Effect, regardless of whether the backdrop is fantasy, modern fantasy, romance fantasy, or alternate history.
So today, as a highly skilled regressor, I, the Undertaker, will tell the story of slaying the Butterfly Effect.
The first time I sensed something was off was around the 30th run.
"Hmm?"
It was just a slight sense of discomfort at first.
'Was this cafe... ever open?'
After the tutorial ended, I went to the building that was once Baekje Hospital, where the body of Old Man Scho had been turned into an interior decoration. I often reminisce about this place and spend time here.
But why was a man running a business in a cafe that should have had a sign up declaring the shop closed?
I couldn't hide my confusion at this first-in-a-regressor's-lifetime experience.
"Excuse me..."
"Yes, sir. Welcome." The man smiled. He was the type to invest 80 percent of his fashion and styling efforts into his beard.
"Is it really okay for you to be operating like this? The world just went to hell."
"Ah... Right. I was planning to flee to Japan, but just the other day a huge typhoon blew through the South Sea, and all the evacuation ships sank." The man sighed.
For me, who had just come down from Seoul to Busan, this was completely new. "A typhoon blew through?"
"Yes. I don't know if you've heard yourself, but thousands must have died. It's mayhem down at Busan Port right now. I was considering paying a handsome sum to board a ship, but the shipowner told me he's setting sail in a week, and if I don't like it, I should leave. Well, what can I do? I have nothing else to do, so I might as well operate for this week. It's meaningless now, though, haha."
The manager laughed. I couldn't.
'I don't remember a typhoon at this time?'
I had [Complete Memory], which was the ability to retain all past memories.
In fact, it was thanks to acquiring this skill during my 5th run that I could spin these tales for you all. I can recall every event and thought I had at the time.
Therefore, I could assert this with 100 percent certainty.
'...This is an anamoly.'
Again, it was at the 'point six months after the tutorial ended' that I arrived at the cafe during the 30th run.
This was what you would call the very early stages of the very beginning.
My actions in the very early stages were always similar. I had barely change a thing about them compared to the 29th or even 28th run.
It couldn't be my actions.
Yet despite this, in the world of that run, a 'typhoon' had blown through the South Sea.
'What's going on? What's causing this?'
Everything has a cause.
For someone like me, who strictly rejected esoteric concepts like the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and adhered solely to causal determinism, this was an utterly baffling situation.
"Excuse me, sir."
"Yes?"
"I'm really sorry to say this, but if you're not going to order anything..."
"Oh. Sorry. I got lost in thought for a moment. Um, could I have a café au lait, please?"
"Of course. That'll be 59,500 won*."
*About $43.
"......"
The café au lait, hit hard by apocalypse-induced inflation, was terribly tasteless.
But the event that drove me even crazier occurred in the next run, the 31st.
[We are temporarily closed due to personal reasons.]
When I went to the cafe again around the same time, the closed sign was just hanging there as usual.
"Good grief."
What now?
It was too early to panic, as apart from whether the café was operating or not, numerous variables occurred independently in various runs.
"Huh? Saintess, did you move?"
"Huh?"
"In previous runs, you always lived in your home in Yongsan."
"Ah... It's been a bit hard to gather food for the fish. There's someone in the nearby guild who also has a hobby aquarium. So I moved closer."
"......"
The address where the Saintess lived had subtly changed by the 47th run.
"Ladies and gentlemen! I hereby declare the new capital of the Republic of Korea is now Busan Metropolitan City!"
"Wow!"
"Normal nation! Normal nation!"
During the 71st run, the mayor of Busan had taken control of the peninsula's political scene. I was stunned. That mayor, originally, was supposed to flee to Fukuoka, Japan, to form a second temporary government. (He even took meticulous care of his second family during the escape.)
Other instances included a mid-boss-level monster that should have crossed into North Korea suddenly falling in love with democracy and defecting again, or a meteor shower that should have fallen in Gyeongsangnam-do landing in Jeollanam-do instead, among a parade of other bizarre events.
'No.'
I was feeling rather perplexed.
'This makes predicting the future problematic, doesn't it?'
Although in the majority of runs, the causality proceeded 'normally' without any anomalies, occasionally—and quite abruptly—chaos would erupt.
Well, occasionally experiencing pineapple on pizza might not be a big deal.
However, as a classical determinist, it was imperative that I uncover the cause of these anomalous phenomena.
[Mr. Undertaker.]
And so, on the 82nd run, a clue finally presented itself.
[A typhoon has been observed off the coast of Incheon. It's a massive tornado.]
"What? A tornado in the Yellow Sea? But that area is too shallow for that to be feasible."
[But it's really happening. I am sharing the view of an Awakener at Incheon Port at this very moment. Please be careful, as we don't know where the tornado will head.]
"Goodness, there are a lot of refugees in Incheon already..."
[Don't worry. I've already sent a message in the name of the Constellations to the other Awakeners. Evacuation is underway.]
I quickly logged onto SG Net. Sure enough, the board was in an uproar.
-Anonymous: Breaking news: tornado sighting in the West Sea lol
-[WitchJudge]: I'd like to help, but it's too far away.
-OldManGoryeo: Come on, let's take the old folks to the coffin~
-dolLHoUse: Dangerous.
-Anonymous: Not joking, it looks serious from the photos. If it's that big on the horizon, it's at least 3km across. Not sure about the strength of it, but definitely don't go near it. Any bad luck, and you might get struck by lightning and die.
In the midst of the chaos, someone uploaded photos and videos of a huge tornado. I had never seen anything like it before.
"......"
Then, a lightning strike of insight struck me.
"Yes! It was the typhoon!"
[What?]
"The typhoon! No, I mean the tornado!"
Now that I think about it, didn't the café owner also mention it?
'Just the other day, a huge typhoon blew through the South Sea, and all the evacuation ships sank.'
I stated with conviction. "Every run where a tornado wreaked havoc, the course of events turned out strangely warped. It's definitely the typhoon... It's the one causing these anomalies."
[I'm sorry, Mr. Undertaker. I'm not quite sure what you mean...]
"I'll explain later. Saintess, could you possibly track the path of the typhoon off the coast of Incheon and trace its origin as closely as possible?"
[It might be a bit difficult, but I'll give it a try. I'll check the areas that have been affected by the typhoon.]
Just a moment, whispered the Saintess, likely pulling up a map. Soon after, she had scanned the cities adjacent to the Yellow Sea and reported back.
[Um... The range is too broad to be certain, Mr. Undertaker. Please bear in mind that this is merely a conjecture.]
"That's fine. Where is it?"
[China. Beijing.]
China. Beijing. Tornado.
"Ah."
At that moment, I somehow felt I knew the identity of this tornado.
-Can a butterfly in Beijing flap its wings and cause a tornado on the other side of the Earth?
A phrase succinctly describing the Butterfly Effect.
The original phrase did not mention 'Beijing' but instead 'Brazil'. Interestingly, the original itself was merely a slogan that was invented after the fact.
When a meteorologist first presented the Butterfly Effect at a conference, it wasn't a butterfly but a seagull that was mentioned. Naturally, there was no mention of Brazil or typhoons either.
This alone should clearly illustrate how much these anomalies, these grotesqueries, disregard human history. They possess a humanities-esque sensibility that doesn't concern itself with factual precision.
Of course, someone like me who viewed the world from a strict scientific-causal deterministic perspective might in turn ask this:
-Why did the Butterfly Effect originate in Beijing instead of Brazil?
-The Butterfly Effect theory initially posits that small initial changes lead to vastly different outcomes over time, so why does it immediately send wind blasts in all directions?
I don't know.
Really, I don't.
Anomalies fundamentally have zero interest in our human curiosity and counterarguments. To the sensibility of anomalies, such questions are simply 'not sexy'.
Having lived as a regressor for a long time, let me share an insight of mine...
These bastards are essentially no different from 'AI-generated images'.
To anomalies, our long human history and common pool of knowledge are nothing more than 'prompt inputs'. Just as AI might consider any number of human legs, whether two or three, to be normal for Homo sapiens, these anomalies make no racial distinction between Chinese and Brazilians.
The concept of the Butterfly Effect, which belonged to past human scholarship, has been aggressively reinterpreted by the end of the century.
'An entity that indiscriminately creates storms without being fixed to the flow of causality!'
If I had to describe it, it would be akin to a tornado launcher.
As a result, the 'Butterfly Effect' took on an identity similar to North Korea's missiles. We could be certain that it would launch missiles whenever it got bored, but where the missiles would land was always a matter of whim.
In the 30th cycle, it turned southwards towards Japan, sinking ships meant for evacuation. In the 82nd cycle, it likewise baptized the refugees with a deluge off the coast of Incheon.
Was that all? From the 83rd to the 85th cycles, it drifted elsewhere, toward Mongolia, India, and Siberia. If Major League scouts had seen it, they would have been head over heels, ready to chuck it a contract for its diverse change-ups.
Ultimately, it's rare for tornadoes to strike the mainland Korean peninsula, which made it hard for me, a born and 100 percent bred Korean, to notice the thing in the first place.
"...This is indeed a dangerous existence."
Crunch. The Saintess crushed a potato chip.
Surprisingly, the Saintess was eating chips not from a bag but from a Lock & Lock plastic lunch box. Even her snacks were stored in a vault, confirming that she was not in her right mind.
Furthermore, she picked up the chips with chopsticks, not fingers. Was she truly human at all?
The shut-in, germophobic Saintess said, "It's called the Butterfly Effect, but in reality, it's an unpredictable variable, a random number. Doesn't that overshadow what should be its greatest advantage?"
"You are correct. A bigger problem is that it's difficult to pinpoint the location of this anomaly."
"What?"
"Think about it, Saintess. If the direction of the tornado varies with each cycle, it means its point of origin could also change. Anyway, we're certain it's Beijing, but is Beijing not vast in and of itself?"
"Ah..." The Saintess finally nodded in understanding. "I can see why it's difficult."
"Yeah. Unless the anomaly is as large as Cthulhu, it's not surprising that it hasn't been caught in my information network. We have to find this anomaly within Beijing each cycle, which is as hard as finding a scale in the sea."
"You're right. That makes sense."
"It does. It's nearly impossible for me to handle alone unless there's someone who can share the vision of all the Awakeners."
"......"
"......"
"......?"
"......"
"...I'll accompany you. To Beijing."
"Oh my. There's no need for you to go to such lengths. Whew, but if the Saintess helps, it would indeed be like gaining an army."
"......"
Shut-in Saintess's heart-pounding overseas mission, confirmed!
Footnotes:
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