WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 110: Mi-mang (██)

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Artifacts.

In the broadest sense, they are "all objects that exist within a Labyrinth."

For example, in the voting booth-shaped Prisoner's Dilemma Labyrinth from before, there were things like voting booth tents, objects no different from anything outside the Labyrinth that caused no unusual phenomena.

Artifacts in the broad sense include even such ordinary objects.

In the narrower sense, the meaning commonly understood by the public is "objects from a Labyrinth that cause anomalous phenomena."

The easiest example is the Jaelae Diary in my inner pocket.

Simply put, they're "strange things you can't find on Earth."

Naturally, some of those strange things are harmful to humans.

Of course, artifacts like that would never be put on the market. They would be carefully hidden away in the vaults of the Labyrinth Management Bureau or the guilds, without even information about them being released...

"To explain a little further, the Artifact Management Room doesn't normally look like this. It's actually a very ordinary office."

The problem was that the Artifact Management Room before my eyes had turned into exactly that sort of vault.

"The Artifact Management Room doesn't handle physical artifacts, after all."

Hyeon Je-won, a researcher from the Artifact Research Lab at Uiwi Guild's R&D Center, kept talking.

They did not seem to care whether anyone was listening.

"At most, there'd be one or two here? And only very safe ones, occasionally. This place mostly handles things like tracking which artifact was collected from which Labyrinth by which Red Thread, and whether it goes to a research institute, a company, a private buyer, and so on. You could call it the backbone of Uiwi's revenue structure? Of course, the Red Threads' entertainment business brings in a lot too. Anyway, that means you can't get in here without an extremely high security clearance."

None of that was information I cared about.

That wasn't what I wanted to know.

"Hyeon Je-won, is there a clue here that could help us leave this floor?"

"Ah! Kim Hee-sook, Jeon Yeong-gwang...!"

At Hyeon Je-won's call, the middle-aged man and woman peering into the closest display case flinched and turned around.

At least the artifacts seemed to have let them set aside their memories of The Executioner's Stage for a while.

"You two shouldn't look at just anything carelessly. I checked earlier, and there are a lot of artifacts here that I don't recognize. Oh, and just so you don't get the wrong idea, real artifacts aren't kept in flimsy display cases like these! Especially unidentified-grade artifacts. I think the Labyrinth wanted to create a certain atmosphere."

They talk too much...

When I first met Hyeon Je-won, they had seemed quiet and timid.

But they kept wandering off on tangents.

"Hyeon Je-won."

"Ah! Yes! A clue!"

The researcher trotted back toward the entrance with the other two and pointed at the desk standing in the middle of the Artifact Management Room.

It was a white information desk, the sort you'd see in an exhibition hall.

The plain desk standing at the exact center like some kind of watchtower felt strange.

"Here, if you follow me... First, don't stare at the artifacts. Just come straight to the desk."

When I reached the desk after Hyeon Je-won, I found two yellow binders that were becoming familiar by now.

[Artifact Management Ledger]

[Artifact Request Form]

"I found what look like management sheets and request forms here. As far as I know, the Artifact Management Room's usual document forms don't look like this. So the documents themselves are artifacts too! They don't cause any special phenomena, though."

I let the researcher's voice go in one ear and out the other as I scanned the documents.

First, the Artifact Management Ledger.

―――――――――――――――

Artifact Name｜Nectar (Common Name：Nectar)

Management Grade｜Light Mieum

Recipient Entity Name｜Kim Saseum

―――――――――――――――

Only "Kim Saseum" under "Recipient Entity Name" had been handwritten.

"Ah, I wrote that recipient entity name. It seemed like you were supposed to fill them in by comparing them with the Artifact Request Form. Like a puzzle! I filled in the ones I knew."

Hyeon Je-won opened the Artifact Request Form binder and showed it to us.

―――――――――――――――

Requesting Entity Name｜Kim Saseum

Request Details｜"I am hungry. A hunger that cannot be filled no matter how much dragon-phoenix soup I devour. Send me something that can sate my hunger. That which can never be tasted again."

―――――――――――――――

"I think you have to find an artifact with an effect that matches the request details. Nectar, as you know, lets the person who drinks it taste a memory they miss, right?"

Ah. I understood how it worked.

Like Hyeon Je-won said, it was a puzzle game.

Find the artifact that fits the request on the Artifact Request Form, then write the name of that requesting entity in the "Recipient Entity Name" field of the Artifact Management Ledger.

"Um, but..."

Jeon Yeong-gwang, who had been blankly staring at the many empty fields in the ledger, spoke for the first time in a while.

"Didn't you say there were many artifacts here that even you don't know, Hyeon Je-won...?"

"That's right! That was the problem. I can infer some things from their forms or names, and I think it might be possible to take them out of the display cases and use them directly, but... If only I had spare lives."

...Spare lives. I happened to have those.

I looked at the glass display cases gleaming under the lights.

More precisely, I counted them.

This might actually be doable.

First, I could match up as many as possible through deduction. Then I only had to take out and test the artifacts that were impossible to figure out.

If I thought of it that way, I could probably solve it in fewer than ten loops.

Besides, seeing Nectar on the list meant they were not all artifacts that killed people.

"Then how about we first figure out as much as we can through deduction... and if we really can't, try taking the artifacts out directly? I'll test them on myself first."

"Seon Yu-han? Why? Do you have no sense of danger? Are you having suicidal impulses because of trauma from The Executioner's Stage? Or are you only thinking of artifacts like Nectar and Somdori? Oh, right. Looking at this request form, Somdori probably needs to be reclassified and recalled in full. What do I do? If this gets out... no, it needs to get out, but I'm trapped in here right now, so how am I supposed to..."

Hyeon Je-won abruptly wandered down another tangent and began muttering.

Somdori, Somdori...

I ran my eyes down the ledger and the request forms.

The doll at the objective point of the Dollhouse Labyrinth was called Somdori.

The name combined somang, "wish," and gomdori, "teddy bear." It was a teddy bear that selectively granted wishes according to standards humans could not understand.

The part about granting wishes was in the realm of superstition and salesmanship.

But the fact that such salesmanship existed only proved that the artifact Somdori itself was an utterly ordinary object.

Ah, Somdori. Here it was.

―――――――――――――――

Artifact Name｜『That』 Doll (Common Name：Somdori)

Management Grade｜Twin Hieuh

Recipient Entity Name｜Gonghaegwi

―――――――――――――――

"Isn't the name strange from the start? 『That』 Doll. That must be how this Labyrinth refers to Somdori, but it's obviously a name that couldn't pass a safety evaluation, no, it couldn't even be evaluated. It's far more serious than artifacts that would get me called in for meetings with everyone from my manager to the principal researcher just for suggesting we consider evaluating them."

Suspiciously specific.

"Anyway...! I found the matching request details and wrote in the recipient entity name. Take a look at that too."

―――――――――――――――

Requesting Entity Name｜Gonghaegwi

Request Details｜"Give her back. Mother, Mother, Mother, you who are in a place we cannot swim to, a place we cannot climb to, a place we cannot reach. I will never make that wish to Mother again. Give her back."

―――――――――――――――

"What on earth is 'that wish'? The request itself implies that you shouldn't make that wish, and the fact that there is something you shouldn't wish for means Somdori fails its safety grade from the start. We conducted so many experiments, and there was still a wish we hadn't made. Labyrinth entities really are temperamental. We recruited people with all kinds of stories and tested it..."

My head hurt...

"Oh! And those management grades written there seem completely unrelated to our artifact classification grades. They seem to be a classification system this Labyrinth optimized in its own way for our language, and if we investigate just a little more, it could surely be a major breakthrough for our artifact research-"

"Kim Hee-sook, wait...!"

Thankfully, Jeon Yeong-gwang cut off the mad researcher's rambling.

"Uh? Uh, Kim Hee-sook! You can't touch that carelessly...!"

The unfortunate part was that Kim Hee-sook rushed over, found Somdori's display case, opened it, and whispered something to Somdori.

The even more unfortunate part was that the wish had been accepted.

"What on earth-"

Creeeak.

『The』『one』『born』『of』『the』『sea』『awakens』『on』『land』『and』『rises』『into』『the』『sky』

It opened its mouth.

『The』『one』『heeds』『the』『dreams』『blooming』『on』『the』『plateau』

"Ah, ah ah ah ah ah ah ah..."

It mercifully granted that wish, looked kindly upon even those who had wished for nothing, let Its precious voice ring out, and the world went red, then white, then black, and I could not help but wish, so I beseech You

『The』『one』『shall』『return』『again』『to』『where』『fertile』『dreams』『bloom』-

Crack!

I slammed my head into the corner of the display case with all my strength.

Crunch, crack! Crrrack! Smack, crunch!

Until I couldn't hear anything anymore.

Until I heard a familiar voice.

* * *

"If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Seon Yu-han?"

"Fu."

ck, what the hell was that.

『That』 voice.

『That』 revelation.

『That』 apocalypse.

"Urk, ngh..."

"Uh, uh? Seon Yu-han!"

Don't think. Don't think about it. I mustn't think about it.

* * *

[Red Thread Liaison Department｜Agent Team 1｜Agent Team 2]

I barely fought off the urge to kill myself again the moment I came back alive, then returned to the sixth floor.

"Um... Which should we go to first?"

I asked as I looked at my three companions.

Kim Hee-sook, Yun Geon-min, and Jeon Yeong-gwang.

Aside from being a little confused after asking one another strange questions during their health checkups at the hospital again, all three seemed to be in reasonably good mental condition this time.

"Um... The right?"

"Sounds good. Let's go."

Yun Geon-min, whose eyes still had life in them, said it casually, and I didn't miss that.

"Do either of you have any objections?"

"Mm, no, I don't particularly care. We have to go to both anyway, don't we? The order doesn't really matter..."

"Same here. We're moving together either way, so I don't think it matters much."

"Oh, ah, uh... Right. That's right."

Leaving Yun Geon-min, the only one who seemed somewhat taken aback, behind, I led the way to Team 2.

Swish.

Without dragging it out, I opened the Team 2 office door.

Whatever came out would be better than The Executioner's Stage.

"Oh my goodness. What is this?"

"A hotel... perhaps."

"Uh? Wait a second... This can't be..."

...It was only a little better.

Like the others, I stared blankly at the hotel corridor spread out before us.

Carpet with geometric patterns in red, orange, and brown.

A hallway decorated in a classic, cozy style.

[𝟘𝟘𝟙]

[𝟘𝟘𝟚]

[𝟘𝟘𝟛]

[𝟘𝟘𝟜]

And four guest room doors lining the hallway.

Ha...

"It's the Corridor of Unforgettable Memories."

Mi-mang, meaning something that cannot be forgotten.

Rooms appeared for every person trapped inside, and the corridor grew longer.

Inside those rooms were memories someone could not forget.

Unforgettable, nightmarish memories.

Footnotes:

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