WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 113: Karma
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"World-Honored One......? Who is th-that......?"
Creak.
The instant I opened the door leading from the Corridor of Unforgettable Memories into the Jaelae Building hallway, I heard it.
Squelch, splash. The sound of blood and chunks of flesh being trampled beneath every step.
Whirr, click-click. The sound of finely crafted gears meshing and turning in unison.
Clatter, creak. The sound of the solemn, compassionate principal deity's bones and outer shell moving together in harmony.
―――――――――――――――
｜Name｜Prajna[प्रज्ञा, prajñā]
｜Assigned Facilities｜All of Basement Level 5
｜Notes｜Only if a sentient being[सत्त्व, sattva] attains correct enlightenment ███████
―――――――――――――――
The sound of Prajna approaching, transcending the rules.
"Aaah, this is insane......! What is that?!"
"Q-quick, go up......!"
Clunk.
Yun Geon-min and Kim Hee-sook fled up the emergency staircase in blind panic.
At least I would not have to let them see this.
"Th-that...... What......"
"You can't run."
I caught Jeon Yeong-gwang by the arm.
"L-let go......! What is that thing......?! I, I can't die like this......!"
What a strange person.
He had seemed somewhat resigned when he thought I had come for revenge.
"Stay still. Don't waste your strength. Your leg is injured too."
"Let go! If someone's going to die, let it be you!"
"They can't hear my heartbeat."
There was silence beneath my ribs.
Nothing in that moment could stir my mind.
Thump, thump......
I could feel the veins beneath the fingertips gripping Jeon Yeong-gwang's wrist pounding as though they were boiling.
Clank, whirr.
A Dharma robe densely embroidered with Chinese characters I could not possibly read.
A rib cage half exposed beneath rotting scraps clinging to it.
A body and soul where human flesh and mechanical bone coexisted like a single natural order.
A body caked here and there with dark red blood and flesh, as though rusted over.
Lips wearing a compassionate smile and auspicious ears, despite half its head having been destroyed.
Still horrible, still beautiful.
"Let go! Let go, please......! I was wrong......!"
"Open your eyes."
Click.
"Look."
The one who comes in accordance with the Dharma, goes in accordance with reality, and perfectly realizes nirvana spoke.
"This is the face of Suchness you turned away from, and the shadow born of your delusion."
The Tathagata spoke.
"Open your ears."
The World-Honored One spoke.
"Listen."
"Ah. Ah......"
Jeon Yeong-gwang dropped to his knees.
He would not run anymore.
Not from anguish, sin, punishment, memory, truth, liberation, or Bae Seo-woo.
"Suchness will unbind you."
At last, mercy reached him.
Crunch.
"Ghk, huaaaaaaagh!"
Crack.
Hot blood splashed across my face.
Thud, splat.
Torn clothes, a split chest, shattered ribs.
The hand of unbinding passed through every layer and drew out the heart buried deepest within.
Crushed flesh pattered onto the floor, then slid away in the blood.
The pulse that had traveled through my fingertips stopped, leaving nothing but cold stillness through the skin.
Only then did I let go of Jeon Yeong-gwang's wrist.
Clunk.
Splash......
I looked at the empty space Prajna had left behind.
"......"
Then at the empty space in the body of the one who had left the Saha world.
Liberation was, truly, realizing that we were empty.
* * *
―――――――――――――――
｜Name｜Prajna[प्रज्ञा, prajñā]
｜Assigned Facilities｜All of Basement Level 5
｜Notes｜Only if a sentient being[सत्त्व, sattva] attains correct enlightenment, the ‘Compassionate Hand’ may leave its assigned facilities through that sentient being and transcend the rules. The company does not consider this a violation of internal regulations.
―――――――――――――――
* * *
26-2. Go to Team 2. Whatever you go through, it will be better than Team 1.
* * *
Clunk.
"Oh, you're back......!"
When I came up to the eighth floor alone, Kim Hee-sook and Yun Geon-min were waiting for me, unexpectedly.
"No, but all that blood......"
"Th-the doctor......"
Between them, a tall, lanky man with black hair tied half up silently nodded.
It was Hyeon Je-won, the artifact researcher from the Uiwi Guild Affiliated Research Institute whom I had met before.
It looked like he had come out into the hall to wait for me as well.
"Excuse me, but who are you? I'm Seon Yu-han."
"Ah...... I'm Hyeon Je-won. The ‘Je’ is written with eo and i, not a and i."
Hyeon Je-won introduced himself in a voice that was neither too loud nor too quiet.
He still did not make much eye contact.
"But, Mr. Seon, what happened......?"
Kim Hee-sook glanced at my bloodstained jacket.
I had roughly wiped the blood off my cheek, but there was nothing I could do about my clothes.
"Wh-what happened to the doctor......?"
Yun Geon-min added a few words of his own.
"And that thing about the doctor burying a corpse...... What was that about?"
He seemed to have sorted out, in his own way, the fact that he had seen his mother in the Corridor of Unforgettable Memories.
"It was just that kind of story. Twenty years ago......"
Some medical student had taken an underage girl on a trip to Youngun Mountain.
Then he must have forced her into something that made her flee in the middle of the night, something so terrible that he impulsively decided it would be better to run her over with his car and kill her to keep her quiet.
"......Holy shit. Isn't that guy completely insane?"
"My god. What kind of bastard deserves to be torn apart and killed......"
......His chest had been torn open, and he had died.
I decided not to say any more than that.
For instance.
‘Alongside the bodies of those trapped in the Labyrinth, fragments of unidentified skeletal remains were found. They had been buried on that mountain for a very long time.’
Bae Seo-woo's bones had not been found intact.
Even twenty years later, her body had still not been made whole.
That meant Jeon Yeong-gwang had mutilated Bae Seo-woo's corpse.
He had cut it apart, buried the pieces in different places, and hidden them.
"Th-then how do you know all that......? Could it be...... Ah. Never mind, you don't have to tell me."
To his credit, Yun Geon-min swallowed his curiosity.
Just as I had not asked him anything about his mother.
"Um."
Hyeon Je-won spoke as though he had been waiting for our conversation to end.
"So no one else is coming, right?"
I could roughly tell what kind of person he was.
He was not a bad person.
"......No one."
"Then let's go over there! It's the Artifact Management Room, and there's something I want to show you!"
Some people were generally indifferent to others and had a slightly dulled sense of social rules.
Because of that, their own rules were especially firm.
To borrow someone else's expression, they were neurologically distinctive.
"Come in!"
Regardless of who had died, Hyeon Je-won cheerfully invited us into the Artifact Management Room.
* * *
"My god, all of this......"
Fortunately, Kim Hee-sook did not suddenly make a wish to an entity no one should even think about.
Last time, she apparently did it because she had watched her dead husband being tortured to death on The Executioner’s Stage.
This time, the person I needed to watch was Yun Geon-min, who had met his dead mother in the Corridor of Unforgettable Memories......
"Wow......"
But he seemed completely absorbed by the countless artifacts.
"Don't touch anything! With unidentified artifacts like these, you should handle them on the assumption that touching one could lead to an outcome where dying would have been better."
Hyeon Je-won's cheerful warning probably helped.
"It looks like we need to find the artifact that matches each request, then write the Requesting Entity Name in the Recipient Entity Name field. Like a puzzle!"
―――――――――――――――
Artifact Name｜Nectar (Common Name: Nectar)
Management Grade｜Light Mieum
Recipient Entity Name｜Kim Saseum
―――――――――――――――
With some of them, it was hard to guess what request they matched based on the artifact's name and appearance alone.
"The artifacts with blank Common Name fields are artifacts I'm seeing for the first time too. Of course, there are artifacts with common names that I'm unfamiliar with as well, but those are probably artifacts I can't access even with my security clearance, or cases where Labyrinths producing such artifacts occur overseas and those countries are keeping it secret. I understand. Our country doesn't disclose everything either. As you know, there are Labyrinths that only occur in certain regions. The leading hypothesis is that longitude is a meaningful variable on Earth―"
"―Mr. Hyeon Je-won, you were talking about common names."
"Ah! The ones without common names have never been named by humans. Which means, to put it another way, there are still Labyrinths we don't know about......!"
Even Hyeon Je-won, who knew a lot and talked a lot about what he knew, did not know every artifact in this bizarre artifact museum.
So for some of them, I had no choice but to open the display cases and use the artifacts myself.
"You're going to try them, Mr. Seon? Why? You could really die―"
"―I know. Then will you do it, Mr. Hyeon Je-won? Or Ms. Kim Hee-sook? Mr. Yun Geon-min?"
"......"
The first artifact I decided to test was......
―――――――――――――――
Artifact Name｜압권 (Common Name: )
Management Grade｜Siot-Jieut
Recipient Entity Name｜
―――――――――――――――
This artifact called 압권.
압권 was a palm-sized book, bound along its right side with string like an old Korean book.
The cover bore strange writing that resembled Chinese characters but was not Chinese characters at all.
When I opened it, a strange message appeared over pages densely filled with unreadable characters and illustrations.
【You opened ‘압권’ and saw the ‘spell’! You must be someone with hands, eyes, and a brain!】
A spell?
【Would you like to summon 〈䷂〉 in exchange for your hands, eyes, and brain?】
"......No. Absolutely not."
【You refused with ‘No. Absolutely not.’! You must be a shy person who knows the virtue of humility!】
"That's not humility. I just said no."
【〈䷂〉 knows everything in your heart!】
"What do you know, you shi..."
Something strange was summoned like that, and I never even got to see what it was.
Because I had paid with my hands, eyes, and brain.
* * *
"If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Seon Yu-han?"
I would fill in the Recipient Entity Name field for 압권.
―――――――――――――――
Requesting Entity Name｜Im Jao
Request Details｜“I love youcustomerI need to place an order urgently right nowso please place an order quicklyif you can'tmay I come there?”
―――――――――――――――
With the Requesting Entity Name above.
* * *
[TooYou Wellness Center]
I arrived on the fourth floor with Kim Hee-sook and Yun Geon-min.
"Let's go this way."
I pointed toward the medical center hallway rather than the fitness center.
Where Jeon Yeong-gwang would be.
Thinking about what I should do with him, I opened the door to the internal medicine clinic.
Footnotes:
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