IPERIML 3

Chapter 3

This was no walk in the park.

The notes dropped like a literal waterfall, executing a non-stop sequence of high-difficulty beat patterns that were just as notorious among beginners as the actual game tutorial.

And that wasn’t even the worst part.

If you messed up, you couldn’t undo it. Even off by a tiny fraction of a point, you’d feel the needle dragging through raw flesh—anesthesia or no anesthesia. It was so intense that I accidentally bit my tongue at one point, leaving my mouth dripping with blood.

Still, the thought of being trapped in an endless regression loop against my will was far more horrifying, so I gritted my teeth and pushed through.

Finally…

[Stitching Complete: ‘Eye’!] [Stitching Complete: ‘Index Fingernail’!] [Stitching Complete: ‘Artificial Joint’!]

I successfully finished three whole stitching procedures.

It was all thanks to spending a week digging through the waste disposal facility in my downtime, which netted me two more high-grade materials. Those two were ‘Arachne’s Index Fingernail,’ which held five types of extreme toxins, and the ‘Artificial Joint of a Machine Demon.’

As a result, my appearance changed quite a bit.

My old brown eyes were gone, replaced by vivid, glowing pink irises. The fingernail on my right index finger turned stark white. After stitching in the artificial joint, my flexibility shot through the roof, and the surrounding muscles loosened up with it, making my movements unnaturally smooth.

Because of all these changes, I was secretly worried people might find me weird, but…

“Ew, look at her!”

“Why is her hair hanging over her face like that?”

“How many layers of clothes is she wearing? If she stinks that bad, she should actually take a shower instead of trying to cover it up, jeez.”

Anticlimactically, nobody noticed a thing.

Everyone thought I looked so utterly filthy that they wouldn’t even come near me. In fact, they made sure to dodge me with scowls on their faces from three meters away.

Well, except for one person.

“Hey! Celes… ghak!“

It was Tasha.

She was standing right outside my room, clearly waiting for me. At first, she watched me limp over with a smug smirk on her face, but as I got closer, her expression turned to sheer horror.

“Wait! What on earth is that smell?!”

She even threw her hands out as if trying to ward off some kind of biohazard.

I just kept walking straight toward her.

“Ack! Stay back!”

“You’re the one standing right in front of my room.”

“Gah, gross!”

She was making a massive scene over nothing. I was literally just walking into my own room, but Tasha was gagging behind her hands like she was about to throw up.

Then, acting like the guilty party shifting the blame, she snapped.

“Y-You ruined my appetite! If I smell like this, I’m gonna throw up right in front of Lord Morckald tomorrow!”

“So?”

“So swap shifts with me again!”

Honestly, she was impressive in a twisted way. To still push for a shift swap even in a situation like this…

It was ridiculous, but…

“Fine.”

“Huh?”

It was actually exactly what I wanted.

“Like you said, the waste disposal room is way harder, so I’m doing you a favor by swapping. Why, do you have a problem with that?”

Anyone with a normal brain would have asked, “Wait, if it’s that hard, shouldn’t you go back to your original job doing laundry instead?”

But this was Tasha.

“Who said I had a problem?! And listen! Make sure you wash yourself properly so your stink doesn’t piss off Lord Morckald!”

She was even worse than I expected.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to hear such a shameless response. To think things would go this smoothly right after wrapping up those brutal preparations…

I had a pretty good feeling about this.

Morckald was in an even worse state than before.

The sewing room was still a total disaster area, and Morckald was throwing intermittent temper tantrums right in the middle of it.

“AAAAHHH!”

Just standing anywhere near him, you could feel a terrifying, razor-sharp murder intent radiating off his body. It was a gruesome sight.

“No, not like this!”

I casually pushed my mop around, wandering in circles near Morckald.

In the original game, the protagonist was the sole focus of Morckald’s intense attention, making it nearly impossible to sneak around out of his line of sight—let alone distract him.

But those rules didn’t apply to me.

As you can see, to Morckald, I was just a low-life servant who didn’t warrant even a crumb of suspicion.

‘The damage zone switches every five seconds?’

Because of that, I could comfortably observe Morckald while keeping a safe distance.

If you play games, you know what a damage zone is, right? It’s the highlighted red area on the floor that shows up right before a boss monster lands an attack.

Morckald’s murderous aura worked the same way. It was infused with mana, forming a sort of damage zone that surrounded him. Normally, you’d have to memorize the attack patterns like any boss fight, but…

‘Got it!’

It wasn’t an issue for me at all.

I could clearly see faint, ash-gray clouds scattering through the air, moving in a predictable, repeating loop.

It was mana.

The only reason a low-tier demon like me could see this was entirely thanks to the Eyes of the Mind-Sight Dragon.

Honestly, I got ridiculously lucky. Infinite Regression War didn’t show damage zones by default because of the lore rule that mana was invisible. But if you fulfilled specific conditions or snagged unique items, you could see them.

One of those items was the Eyes of the Mind-Sight Dragon. It offered a wide field of view and pinpoint accuracy, making it an item I always forced my way through low drop rates to get in Chapter 1.

“If this keeps up, the tournament will be another…!”

“……”

“Everyone’s gonna laugh at me and say I don’t deserve the title of Suturer!”

While Morckald rambled on like a maniac, I dodged the mana zones—stepping left, moving right, pausing, then taking another step forward.

And then…

“Damn it! I need to cool my head or something… Huh?”

Without a second’s hesitation, I extended my index finger, extending the venomous nail, and drove it straight into Morckald’s carotid artery.

One hit. Clean and decisive.

“…What… did you…”

Morckald grabbed his neck and spun around with impressive speed. But I had already used the spring-like elasticity of my new artificial joint to kick off the ground like a wild beast, leaping backward.

“A-Aaargh!”

Morckald’s body dissolved at a terrifying speed. He tried to shoot mana-infused needles at me, but his arms limply gave out. Among the lethal toxins injected into his system was a deadly poison designed to shatter mana circuits.

Without even giving him a chance to fight back, Morckald let out a bitter, rage-filled roar as his final breath before collapsing dead.

One minute.

That’s all it took for Morckald to die.

[Celesia Raspendriel]

• Race: Demonic (Chihuahua)

• Physical Condition:

  • Durability: Partially Enhanced, Full-Body Imbalance

  • Muscle Density: Low (Adjusted by Artificial Joint)

  • Senses: Good sense of smell, (NEW!) Mana Vision

  • (NEW!) Modifications: Eyes of the Mind-Sight Dragon, Arachne’s Index Fingernail, Machine Demon Artificial Joint

• Traits:

  • Snappy: Will bite first, even against opponents much bigger than herself.

  • Belly-Up Submission: Rolling onto her back and curling up increases her chances of survival.

  • (NEW!) Hierarchy Ignorer: Picks a fight whenever necessary, regardless of the opponent’s rank or power.

[CHAPTER 1: CLEARED]

Along with my updated profile, the long-awaited status window finally popped up.

What on earth was ‘Hierarchy Ignorer’? I’d never had a trait change before, but I guessed it was a reward for killing Morckald.

Either way, if it was this easy to one-shot him, why did I suffer through 21 regressions waiting for the protagonist to beat it? My nose started to tingle with a rush of emotional relief.

Wait… What is this?

[CHAPTER 1: C-CLEARED…?]

An abnormal glitch ripped through the status window.

The screen cracked like shattered glass, the text slowly crumbling into pieces as a new status window forcibly overlaid itself on top.

[UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED]

• Chapter cleared by an unauthorized outsider!

• Tutorial incomplete!

It didn’t stop there. The status windows kept piling up and tangling together, as if fighting for control.

[CHAPTER 1: C-CLEARED…?] [UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED]

• Chapter cleared by an unauthorized outsider!

• Tutorial incomplete! [CHAPTER 1: CLEARED…?]

Monochrome flashes of mana burst from the status windows, strobing right in front of my eyes.

“…No way.”

No, it wasn’t just mana flashing.

“Why is he…?”

“…Ah?”

Right at the center of the flashing lights was a young boy, bound hand and foot in iron chains, wearing what looked like a muzzle and a dog collar.

Even amidst the chaotic, flashing mess, his brilliant silver hair never lost its shine, framing a pair of hollow, pale blue eyes.

It was the protagonist of Infinite Regression War—Hakar.

He was flickering in and out of existence right in front of me alongside the glitched status windows, endlessly vanishing and reappearing.

“Crazy…”