Episode 479
Before I tell you why I was plotting such a heinous plan.
While touring the concert hall with Jung Eun-woo, Lee Jae-heon, like other survivors, also received a call from Hong Kyung-joon.
-Mr. Lee Jae-heon, who is next to you now?
-My name is Jeong Eun-woo.
– It’s the first time I’ve heard that name, but it sounds ominous. Who is it?
– I know him as the lost uncle of our Lee family’s eldest daughter’s secretary and deputy manager, Jeong In-ho.
-You call this talking?
Hong Kyung-joon, who learned of Jeong Eun-woo’s existence, became furious, but Lee Jae-heon achieved remarkable mental growth through his union with the prototype.
Jae-heon Lee, who had skillfully avoided Hong Kyung-joon’s genuine concerns, briefly described his own situation to divert his attention and then extracted information about other survivors.
As a result, Lee Jae-heon found out that there were other survivors in the aquarium besides him. Two kindergarten students, two high school students, and a murderer. It was an unbelievable combination.
“I want to see the results before I meet them….”
And Lee Jae-heon was a regressor.
‘The faster you get the information before you encounter the returning candidates who might remember this round, the faster you can clear the stage. Now that your top priority is figuring out how to kill the final boss, if you encounter overly anxious survivors, everything from the investigation to the clearing to the return will just become a hassle.’
When I heard from Hong Kyung-jun, the so-called student team was at the ‘World’s Amazon’ corner. If you pass by there, the only things left until you reach this performance hall are the ‘Sea Treasure Hall’ and the ‘Undersea Tunnel’. Both are safe corners where nothing happens if you pass by them without touching anything.
Of course, ‘nothing happens’ is practically invisible, and countless ‘exhibition’ conditions are quietly being fulfilled… but the important point is that once you pass the ‘Amazon of the World’, you’ll be right at the concert hall.
“… … .”
Well, it won’t be ‘quickly’ as they say.
‘You have to protect two kindergarteners, and your teamwork won’t be great either… If you don’t waste time sleeping or eating, we won’t run into each other so quickly.’
Then I thought:
‘The guy who’s going to be on display will definitely come from that team, so we just need to investigate and prepare as much as we can. I didn’t think we’d be able to successfully attack them from the start anyway.’
Lee Jae-heon was preparing for his return.
It was like that from the beginning. This aquarium, which had the three elements of water, darkness, and even restraint, was not compatible with Lee Jae-heon. It wouldn’t take long for it to lose its usefulness in one turn.
However, if you regress, at least the mental power that was worn out will be restored. It is inevitable that your mental power will be gradually consumed when you remember before you regress, but it was still much more efficient to regress when Lee Jae-heon was incapacitated.
You have to be careful about dying, because you never know who might become a sub-regressor.
“… Mr. Jeong Eun-woo.”
“Yes, did you call?”
Jung Eun-woo, who had been looking around the concert hall, heard Lee Jae-heon’s call and came over. Honestly, I was a little surprised at such a sensitive reaction, even though he hadn’t called out loud in this large concert hall.
‘I guess your hearing is fine.’
Or maybe the influence of the other world made his five senses more enhanced.
Certainly, Jung Eun-woo was a convenient opponent for Lee Jae-heon to use. He had no unnecessary questions, his abilities were solid, and his feedback was immediate. However, Lee Jae-heon dismissed this as a useless thought and continued talking to Jung Eun-woo.
“How many open doors are there?”
Coming down the stairs connecting the auditorium and the floor, I could see 12 doors that were not visible from above the auditorium. Some were open, some were not.
In the novel, the protagonist barely manages to enter one of those rooms, avoid the monsters, and then gives up on conquering the place after discovering the identity of the final boss.
‘You said it was a room with documents and a monitor, where you could see a monster as soon as you entered. You could look up information about the structure of the aquarium and the final boss… .’
If that room was open, Lee Jae-heon would also be able to find out how the aquarium was structured, how exactly to kill the final boss inside the tank, and what it was. Even if he returned, it would be convenient to pretend to know in the next round and lead the final boss to an end.
“There are six doors open. I haven’t gone inside, I just checked to see if they open. Three of them are believed to contain monsters.”
“Thank you for the neat report.”
Although it was an unexpected companion, Lee Jae-heon liked Jeong Eun-woo. Although his physical ability seemed to be inferior to Song In-myeong’s, his strength seemed strong, and above all, his way of acting was efficient. Jeong Eun-woo knew well how he could be used usefully.
‘Just leave all the decisions to your superiors.’
People sometimes misunderstand, but having more power is not necessarily a good thing. It is natural that the more power you have, the greater the responsibility you have. If you don’t have the viper-like greed or ambition of a previous life, becoming a cog in society that only takes orders is one way to live an easy life.
This soft world seems to consider such an attitude as ‘a very insulting way of treating people as tools’, but Jaeheon Lee knew that it was a huge fuss.
Originally, humans were born as tools for themselves, others, and the community. Since they have an ego, their essence should not be denied.
Jung Eun-woo seemed to be well aware of that fact. That was what Lee Jae-heon liked the most. The fact that he didn’t deny the fact that he was a tool.
“Just in case, let’s go together.”
“I would appreciate it if you could do that.”
“First, could you please guide me to a place where there are no monsters?”
“Then come this way… .”
Lee Jae-heon and Jeong Eun-woo began searching three rooms without monsters. In that order, they were the rooms in the 1 o’clock direction, 2 o’clock direction, and 3 o’clock direction.
“Is this a playroom?”
“I was thinking it would be something similar to that.”
“The place itself seems like a place suitable for children.”
The first room is a playroom.
The room was filled with pictures of fish drawn here and there by the child’s clumsy hand, and the floor was a kind of pool filled with colorful balls. It was a cute space, but the dark atmosphere, the vaguely low-saturation balls, and the pictures drawn all the way to the ceiling gave off an eerie feeling.
How could a child draw on the ceiling?
“Let’s hold off.”
It seemed a far cry from the room full of documents and monitors mentioned in the novel.
“This is… the kitchen?”
“If I had to be specific, it looks more like the kitchen of a sushi restaurant than a home.”
“It certainly seems that way, judging by the fishy smell and the scales that are all over the place.”
“The same goes for wet cutting boards and floors.”
The second room was probably the kitchen of a sushi restaurant. Unlike the first playroom, it was brightly lit, but it wasn’t a pleasant light. The pure white light, like something you’d see in a mad scientist’s lab, created a strange sense of discomfort. It looked strangely clean, yet dirty.
The kitchen wouldn’t have been particularly strange if it weren’t located inside an aquarium. However, it was a space where you would be reluctant to even set foot because of the red, stagnant water on the floor.
“Here too, on hold.”
As expected, this was not the room that Lee Jae-heon wanted.
“It smells really moldy.”
“It was a similar stench when I checked earlier.”
“With this level of humidity, fish can survive long lives even if they jump out of the tank.”
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“That’s an interesting story.”
“It’s not a particularly interesting story in this world.”
And the last third room.
“… Still, it’s fortunate that I don’t see any fish flying in the sky.”
“Is there such a monster?”
“maybe.”
It was a document warehouse.
‘… To be exact, it’s a place where files are organized, so I guess you could call it a file warehouse.’
Lee Jae-heon, who answered Jeong Eun-woo’s seemingly soulless question out of courtesy, looked around the warehouse.
In a place where the air easily becomes humid, the wooden bookshelves were lined up tall and long, and the space for people to pass through was extremely narrow. The overall shape was like a maze. Files in red, orange, yellow… all in a rainbow color were lined up on the bookshelves.
There seems to be quite a lot of information… .
“I wish I had some information to share.”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the room in the novel that Lee Jae-heon was looking for.
‘You said that you saw the monitor as soon as you entered there.’
Lee Jae-heon stared at the endless ceiling and bookshelf.
‘…also….’
Dark and damp.
“… … .”
“Sir, is there a problem?”
“doesn’t exist.”
Not right now.
As Jeong Eun-woo had said, all three rooms appeared to be free of monsters.
In the novel, the main character, who is the narrator, was in such a state of mental exhaustion that nothing was explained in detail except for the ‘room’ where he was lucky enough to sneak into. The fact that there were a total of 12 rooms was also information that they had personally found out.
In the novel, what did they say? I think it was just described as ‘there were a lot of rooms’.
Lee Jae-heon said to Jeong Eun-woo, chewing over the original content.
“Just in case, please hold the door open. I think I’ll need someone to wait outside in case it closes while I’m inside.”
“Yes, please take care.”
Following orders without question was the ideal soldier’s attitude. If we had met as coworkers in a past life, we might have been pretty good friends.
But Lee Jae-heon’s attempt failed even before it began.
Kwajik!
“ah.”
It was because the file on the bookshelf exposed its teeth and bit him.
You said there were no monsters, Eunwoo.
“Are you okay?”
“… Yeah, well.”
It really is so varied.
‘… It would have been difficult to judge that files that looked normal were monsters if you just sat still. It was even harder for Jeong Eun-woo, who was still unfamiliar with the other world.’
Lee Jae-heon’s hand, which had been extended to one of the files, was bitten hard and half-tattered.
It was almost like someone was caught between two saws, no exaggeration, and the bite marks were almost completely cut off. Lee Jae-heon, who was bitten from between his middle and ring fingers to his thumb, pressed the wound with his other hand.
Still, the blood kept pouring out. Even considering that the wound was too big to stop with one’s hand, it seemed like an excessive amount of blood was coming out.
“Should I consider this a kind of curse?”
This aquarium is also a world of the other side. There are monsters, and among them, the ones that are crazy about blood are everywhere.
In that dark world, an injury that wouldn’t stop bleeding was no different from declaring that one’s body would become bait.
‘Perhaps the friends by the stream… I think the injury in that corner had a similar curse. Then maybe this kind of curse is a characteristic of this aquarium. Well, there’s nothing more obvious than the smell of blood in the water.’
After several experiments with his already injured hand, Jaeheon Lee came to a conclusion.
“It seems like some conditions are necessary.”
As he left the room, Jeong Eun-woo asked in her characteristically feminine tone.
“What are the conditions?”
“All the documents bared their teeth and rejected me. The files were divided into rainbow colors, but no matter which color I chose, it was the same, so it seemed like there were some conditions that were required to view the documents. For example, only those who had seen all the theme zones from the entrance of the aquarium could see them… .”
Lee Jae-heon and Jung Eun-woo’s eyes blinked at the same time.
“…like having to solve a puzzle.”
“…The balls in the playroom were also rainbow colored.”
“It’s hard to make a living.”
“Life is like that.”
(Continued in the next episode)
