The Tales of an Infinite Regressor

Chapter 8 – Determinist I

[Proofreader – Gun]

Chapter 8 – Determinist I

1

When you think about the three most popular protagonists of webnovels, namely, regressors, possessors, and reincarnators, what do you think their biggest adversary is?

Powerful monsters? The protagonist always defeats them anyway.

Stress? Trauma? Obsessions?

That’s not entirely wrong. However, it’s hard to see them solely as adversaries unique to regressors. After all, stress is a common weakness of homo sapiens, ranging from a 35-year-old unemployed person to a 60-year-old US President.

Baldness? How could you say something so harsh?

Surprisingly or not surprisingly, the correct answer is… the ‘Butterfly Effect’.

– Can a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing cause a tornado on the other side of the Earth?

The Butterfly Effect.

The theory that if the initial conditions change, the magnitude of change grows exponentially over time to the point where it becomes unmanageable.

I can confidently say that this Butterfly Effect, which we are very familiar with, is undoubtedly the villain among villains for regressors, an archenemy that cannot be avoided and the nemesis of the unpredictable.

Indeed!

How many regressors have been destroyed by this Butterfly Effect (in works of fiction).

– I am a reader who is well-versed in all kinds of webnovels, and I am an authority in the industry that no one else can match when it comes to the world I have entered. According to my interpretation, in order to prevent the tragedy by rescuing the maid who is absurdly killed in the early stages and stopping the tragic events… Huh? Why does rescuing the maid lead to the Demon King invading?

– Under the palace wall, I kindly treated a starving child, and 10 years later, the Crown Prince proposed to me? I just wanted to live a peaceful life, what should I do now?

– Why is the protagonist so weak now (after solving all the quests that the original protagonist should have solved, recruiting the companions who should have joined the protagonist’s party, and consuming the items and plots that the protagonist should have consumed)? Yare yare, do I have to step up?

[PR/N: 💀TCF? TNE? And a lot more tbh.]

Of course, in the latter case, it’s more about conscience and intellect than the Butterfly Effect.

Regardless of whether it’s fantasy, modern fantasy, romance fantasy, or alternative history, there’s no situation as terrible as the Butterfly Effect for the trio of regressors, possessors, and reincarnators.

Therefore, today, let me, a highly skilled regressor, tell you a story of how I murdered the Butterfly Effect.

2

The time when I first felt that something was strange. In other words, the first time I felt the power of the Butterfly Effect was around the 30th run.

“Hmm?”

At first, it was just a slight sense of unease.

“Was this cafe… actually open?”

After completing the tutorial, I went to the old Baekje Hospital building about six months later. The building with the Old Scho’s corpse on the rooftop was the right one.

Sometimes, I find myself thinking about this place and spending time here.

But normally, there should be a closed sign hanging in front of the cafe. So, it was quite strange to see a man running the place.

Encountering such a situation for the first time across all my experiences, I couldn’t help but feel puzzled.

“Um, excuse me…”

“Yes, sir. Welcome.”

The man smiled. He belonged to the type who invests about 80% of his fashion and styling in his beard.

“Sorry to bother you, but is it okay for you to be open like this? The world is currently in chaos.”

“Oh… yeah. I was planning to evacuate to Japan myself, but just the other day, a huge typhoon and tornado hit the South Sea, sinking all the evacuation ships.”

The man sighed.

For someone like me who had just come down from Seoul to Busan, it was a shocking story.

“A typhoon hit?”

“Yeah. Even if you didn’t know, thousands must have died. The Busan port is in chaos right now. I even thought about boarding a ship, even though I spent a lot of money on the ticket… but the shipowner threatened me, saying he’d sail in a week, and if I didn’t like it, tough luck. Well, what can I do? Since I have nothing else to do, I thought I might as well open for business for a week. Money doesn’t mean much now, anyway. Haha.”

The owner laughed. I couldn’t bring myself to laugh.

‘A typhoon at this time? That’s unusual.’

I had [Total Memory Ability]. Literally, it’s an ability to store all memories from the past.

Thanks to this skill acquired in the 5th run, I could now share my experiences with you. I can recall every event and thought from the 30th run.

So, I could say with 100% certainty…

“…This is an abnormal situation.”

Again, in the 30th run, I arrived at the cafe after finishing the tutorial and six months had passed.

This could be considered as the very early stages, if not the earliest stage.

My behavior in the very early stages was always similar. Even if you compared it with the 29th or 28th run, there were hardly any differences.

My actions remained unchanged. Yet, despite that, a ‘typhoon’ hit the South Sea in the world of this run.

“What’s going on? What could possibly be the cause?”

There’s a cause for everything.

For someone like me, who strictly rejects complex theories like the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and only adheres to deterministic causality, this situation was extremely confusing.

[PR/N: Copenhagen theory is about the multiverse, every possibility of action splits the world into more worlds where the action was taken. Determinism is the idea that every experiment will yield the same results for a given experimental setup.]

“Excuse me, sir.”

“Yes?”

“I’m terribly sorry, but if you’re not going to order…”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I got lost in thought for a moment. Um, could I have a cafe au lait, please?”

“Sure thing. That will be 59,500 won.”

“…”

The cafe au lait, hit hard by the apocalypse of inflation, tasted disgustingly bad.

But what drove me even crazier happened in the next run, that is, in the 31st run.

“Closed for personal reasons.”

When I went to the cafe again around the same time, there was another closure sign hanging awkwardly just like before.

“Ugh.”

What the heck?

I was still caught off guard. Besides the cafe’s business status, numerous variables occurred separately in various runs.

“Oh? Miss Saintess, did you move?”

“Yes?”

“You used to live in Yongsan until the last few runs.”

“Oh… It was a bit difficult to gather fish feed. There’s someone in the nearby guild who shares my hobby of aquariums. So, I moved closer.”

“…”

Subsequently, Saintess’s address changed in the 47th run.

“Everyone! The new capital of South Korea is now Busan Metropolitan City!”

“Wow!”

“Long live the nation! Long live the nation!”

In the 71st run, the Mayor of Busan seized control of the Korean Peninsula. I could only be astonished.

The mayor, who originally was supposed to flee to Fukuoka, Japan, and establish a second provisional government. (By the way, he was a model husband, taking care of his second family and all.)

In addition, there were instances like the mid-boss monster that was supposed to defect to North Korea suddenly embracing democracy and defecting to South Korea, or shooting stars that were supposed to fall in Gyeongsangnam-do landing in Jeollanam-do instead. All sorts of absurdities unfolded.

[Proofreader – Gun]

“No.”

I felt somewhat perplexed.

“This will disrupt the future, won’t it?”

Of course, in most runs, causality progressed ‘normally’ without any significant anomalies. However, occasionally, chaos erupted out of nowhere.

Well, you could brush off these occasional anomalies as experiences akin to trying pineapple pizza as a delicacy.

However, as a devout believer in classical determinism, it was imperative for me to uncover the causes of these phenomena to put my mind at ease.

[Doctor Jang.]

And so, in the 82nd run.

Finally, a clue was presented to me.

“There’s currently a typhoon observed in the waters off Incheon. It seems to be a massive tornado.”

“Huh? A tornado in the Yellow Sea? It might be difficult since the water is shallow there.”

“But it’s actually happening. I’m currently sharing the perspective of an Awakened at Incheon Port. Please be cautious as we don’t know where the tornado will head.”

“Ugh, and there are already many refugees in Incheon…”

“Don’t worry. I’ve already sent a message to other Awakeneds in the name of the Constellation. Evacuation is underway.”

I hurriedly logged into SGNet. Sure enough, the forum was already in chaos.

– Anonymous: Breaking news: Tornado spotted in the West Sea LOLOLOL

– [Samcheon] WitchTrialMaster: I’d like to help, but it’s too far for me to assist.

– GoryeoMarket: Let’s go, old folks! Let’s go, old folks!

– DolLHoUse: Danger.

– Anonymous: It’s not a joke, it looks serious in the pictures. If it’s that big on the horizon, even if the diameter is small, it’s over 3km. I don’t know how powerful it is, but never get close. You might get struck by lightning and die if you’re unlucky.

Amidst the chaos, someone uploaded a staggering-sized tornado photo and video.

This kind of situation had never happened before.

“…!”

Then, enlightenment struck me like lightning.

“Of course! It’s a typhoon!”

“Yes?”

“A typhoon! No, a tornado!”

Thinking back, didn’t the cafe owner mention something about it in the 30th run?

“Just the other day, a huge typhoon and tornado hit the South Sea, causing all the evacuation ships to sink.”

I said with conviction.

“With each occurrence of the tornado, the progression of events strangely deviated. Clearly, the typhoon… no, the one who caused the typhoon is the culprit.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor Jang. I’m having trouble understanding what you mean…”

“I’ll explain later. Saintess, could you track the path of the typhoon in the waters off Incheon and try to trace its origin as much as possible?”

“It might be a bit difficult, but I’ll give it a try. If we look into the areas affected by the typhoon, we might find some clues.”

“Just a moment,” the Saintess whispered.

She probably brought a map. A moment later, the Saintess swept through the cities adjacent to the Yellow Sea and reported back.

“Hmm… The range is too wide to be certain, Doctor Jang. Please keep in mind that this is just a conjecture.”

“That’s okay. Where is it?”

“China. It’s Beijing.”

Beijing, China. The tornado.

“Ah.”

At that moment, somehow, I felt like I would know the identity of this tornado.

3

-Can a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing cause a tornado on the other side of the Earth?

A brief expression of the butterfly effect.

Originally, in the prologue, it was marked as ‘Brazil’ instead of ‘Beijing’. An interesting fact is that this prologue itself is nothing more than a slogan invented later.

When a meteorologist first presented the butterfly effect at a conference, it was not a ‘butterfly’ but a ‘seagull’ that was quoted. Naturally, there was no Brazil or tornado.

Just looking at this point alone, it’s clear how casually the anomalies appearing in this world disregard human history.

Anomalies all have a literary sensibility that doesn’t care about factual accuracy.

Of course, cultured individuals like me, with a strict scientific and deterministic perspective, might ask in response:

– Why did the butterfly effect occur in Beijing instead of Brazil?

– The Butterfly Effect theory is about how small initial conditions lead to entirely different results after a long period of time, so why does it shoot out gusts in all directions from the very beginning?

I don’t know.

No, seriously. I don’t.

Anomalies fundamentally have as much interest in our curiosity and objections as a flea.

From my experience living as a regressionist for a long time, let me share my insight… These creatures are essentially no different from ‘AI drawings.’

From the perspective of anomalies, the long history, common sense, and scholarship of humanity are nothing more than ‘prompt input values.’

Just as AI drawings judge a human with two or three legs as a normal Homo sapiens, egalitarian anomalies do not discriminate between Chinese and Brazilians based on inferior racial differences.

The concept of the butterfly effect, which belonged to the past scholarship of humanity, was actively reinterpreted towards the end of the century.

‘Entities that cause storms recklessly without being confined to the flow of causality!’

To put it bluntly, it’s like a tornado launcher.

Thanks to it, the ‘butterfly effect’ gained an identity similar to North Korea’s missiles. It was certain as a proposition that it would launch missiles whenever it got bored, but where the missiles would go varied depending on the mood at the time.

In the 30th run, it swept the evacuation ships curving towards Japan in the South Sea, sinking them. In the 82th run, it made landfall in the waters off Incheon, baptizing the refugees.

And that’s not all. From run 83 to 85, it drifted towards Mongolia, India, and Siberia respectively.

If a Major League scout saw it, they’d be smitten, with a variety of changes enough to shove contracts down their throats.

Ultimately, striking the Korean Peninsula mainland with a tornado was surprisingly rare. That’s why it’s understandable that even with the origin marked as 100% Korean, it’s hard for me to notice.

“…It’s truly a dangerous existence.”

Oops. The Saintess crushed potato chips.

Surprisingly, the Saintess took out the potato chips not from a bag, but from a Lock & Lock plastic lunch box. It meant that even snacks were divided and stored in the refrigerator, indicating that the Saintess wasn’t entirely sane.

Moreover, she ate the potato chips not with her fingers but with chopsticks. Does that mean she doesn’t have human emotions?

The *hikikomori Saintess spoke.

[*”Hikikomori” is a form of severe social withdrawal, frequently described in Japan and is characterized by adolescents and young adults who become recluses in their parents’ homes, unable to work or go to school for months or years.]

“It’s called the butterfly effect, but in reality, it’s an uncontrollable variable and random number. If such anomalies exist, wouldn’t it diminish the biggest advantage of a regressionist?”

“Exactly. The bigger problem is that it’s difficult to pinpoint the location of this anomaly.”

“Yes?”

“Think about it, Saintess. The fact that the direction of the tornado changes every run means that the location where the tornado is launched might also change. Anyway, Beijing is certain, but isn’t Beijing a bit vast?”

“Ah…”

Finally, the Saintess nodded in understanding.

“It’s a difficult task.”

“Yes. If the anomaly were as large as Cthulhu, it might be different, but judging by the fact that it hasn’t appeared in my information network so far, it’s probably small in size. We just have to find the anomaly within Beijing, which is like finding scales on a sandy beach.”

“That’s true. You’re right.”

“Exactly. Solving it alone is almost impossible. Unless there’s a genius who can share the sight of all Awakeneds.”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“I’ll go with you. To Beijing.”

“Oh my. You really don’t need to. Ah, but if the Saintess helps, it truly feels like hitting the jackpot.”

“…”

The hikikomori Saintess’s exciting overseas business trip, confirmed!

[Proofreader – Gun]