WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 58: 𝙴𝚈𝙴𝚂 𝙾𝙽 𝚈𝙾𝚄

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Something was watching me.

From so far away it felt unreachable.

From close enough to brush my fingertips.

A creeping sensation, like that gaze had pressed itself against me from head to toe and was burrowing under my clothes.

"Seon Yu-han-ssi, are you okay? What's wrong?"

"Could this be affecting your real body too?"

Without thinking, I lifted my hand off the button and covered my mouth.

Nausea surged up.

"......I'm fine."

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<𝚈𝙾𝚄> 𝙸 𝙰𝙼 𝙵𝙸𝙽𝙴

==========================

This has nothing to do with the game.

Click.

I shook off the stray thoughts and set out again.

Unless something directly threatened me, ignoring it was the only option.

Play dumb. Keep moving.

Crunch, crunch.

Only my own footsteps.

Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch. Thud-crunch. Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch. Crunch-thud. Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch. Crunch. Thud.

Someone else's footsteps.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.......

Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-THUD!

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＊ 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝙷𝙴𝙰𝚁𝙳 𝙸𝚃

==========================

A pounding sprint, coming from the darkness ahead.

I didn't turn around. I didn't stop.

I'd already learned the hard way that turning and running in this maze was not an option.

"Oh? Something appeared over there. What is it? Is that a demon?"

"Looks like a mob... The torch might count as a weapon too. It was still in hand even after the flame went out, never dropped..."

At last, a monster of the maze appeared on screen.

Its shape came into sharp focus right before my eye.

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＊ 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝙴𝙽𝙲𝙾𝚄𝙽𝚃𝙴𝚁𝙴𝙳 𝙸𝚃

==========================

Click.

CRACK!

The moment I hit the interact button, the character on screen swung the torch hard at the monster.

The torch shattered against both its arms as it charged, and then my body launched forward on its own.

Click.

CRUNCH!

I would have died without that strength buff.

Ugh.......!

I took the creature's blows as it thrashed and rampaged like a gored bull, studying its appearance.

The shape itself was close to a bipedal humanoid.

Still, even with my one remaining eye, calling it human would have been a stretch.

The grotesquely swollen muscles bulging from its limbs, the strange white horns jutting from near both temples, the pitch-black eyes with just a sliver of white left, like a total solar eclipse. Didn't those things itch?

Click.

SLASH!

The horned head swung threateningly right in front of my face.

SWOOSH!

The character on screen flickered as if health had been shaved off.

The jagged broken tip of a horn had raked across my chest.

White clothing slowly soaked dark red.

My mouth went dry.

Damn game.

Blindly mashing the interact button wasn't enough. I was going to have to move around and dodge too.

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＊ 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝚃𝚄𝚁𝙽𝙴𝙳 𝙵𝙾𝚁𝚆𝙰𝚁𝙳

==========================

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＊ 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝚃𝚄𝚁𝙽𝙴𝙳 𝚁𝙸𝙶𝙷𝚃

==========================

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＊ 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝚃𝚄𝚁𝙽𝙴𝙳 𝙱𝙰𝙲𝙺

==========================

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＊ 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝚃𝚄𝚁𝙽𝙴𝙳 𝙻𝙴𝙵𝚃

==========================

Stomach lurching, I endured it and kept switching directions, waiting for the right moment.

==========================

＊ 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝚃𝚄𝚁𝙽𝙴𝙳 𝙱𝙰𝙲𝙺

==========================

......Now.

Click.

CRACK!

With one hand I grabbed it by the throat, and with the other I snapped off the blood-slicked horn lodged in its skull.

A new weapon.

Click.

CRUNCH.

The broken horn, jagged as a skewer, drove into its right eye socket.

Click.

SQUELCH.

The scarlet thread pulled out with the horn and tangled into the thread already inside the left eye socket.

Ghhk.......

It collapsed to the floor, and its filthy nails raked across both my arms.

Click.

CRACK!

The red horn sank through skin, forced its way between ribs, and twisted through the heart.

==========================

＊ 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝙴𝙽𝙳𝙴𝙳 𝙸𝚃

==========================

Take it home.

Might be usable as fertilizer.

Crunch, scrape, crunch.......

Between every step on the way back, the monster's corpse dragged along the ground.

The whole way home, that nameless gaze clung to me, relentless.

Like a brush stroking over every inch of my body, a sickening cold crawl raised every hair on my neck.

Scrape.

Don't acknowledge it.

Scrape.

Don't look back.

Left eye wide open, one step at a time, until at last I came out of the maze.

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＊ 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝙰𝚁𝙴 𝙷𝙾𝙼𝙴

==========================

The gaze that had clung to me like a shadow vanished. As if it had all been in my head.

Click.

Thud.

I dropped the bull-like monster's corpse carelessly on the ground and stood there staring at it.

The jaw had shattered loose, leaving the lower jaw hanging unnaturally open.

Should I just bury it here and head back into the maze?

Nothing else to show for that run. No light, no seeds, no trace of water.......

"I wonder if we could go down into that well."

Lee Jin-su spoke up out of nowhere.

"How."

==========================

<𝚈𝙾𝚄> 𝙷𝙾𝚆

==========================

"Well, if that monster can be dismembered... I was thinking maybe we could dry the hide or the intestines and twist them into rope. That's how you craft items in survival games..."

Oh.

That actually makes sense.

Click.

I tried it right away.

CRUNCH.

The pixelated corpse came apart in chunks.

Bare hands tore off the limbs, peeled back the skin.

Bones pulled out one by one, and both hands came out full of warm, slippery innards.

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＊ 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝙳𝙸𝚂𝙼𝙴𝙼𝙱𝙴𝚁𝙴𝙳 𝙸𝚃

==========================

So that works.

Would have been cleaner with a tool.

I draped the dismembered hide and organs over the edge of the well.

No better place to spread them out.

Drying them inside the house didn't feel right either.

The real problem, though.......

"How long do you think this will take to dry?"

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<𝚈𝙾𝚄> 𝙷𝙾𝚆 𝙻𝙾𝙽𝙶 𝚆𝙸𝙻𝙻 𝙸𝚃 𝚃𝙰𝙺𝙴 𝚃𝙾 𝙳𝚁𝚈

==========================

How long this would take to dry, that was the question.

"Hard to say... If the game goes for full realism, it could take days. If it's just challenging without going that far, probably a few hours...?"

Even now it already felt like three or four hours had passed since the game started.

Inside the game, that is.

In reality, it had been about fifteen minutes.

The flow of time in the game didn't seem to move at a fixed ratio to real time. It appeared to vary depending on what was happening.

Walking the short distance from the house to the yard felt about the same speed in-game as in real life.

Walking a long stretch inside the maze was different.

While the in-game version of me covered hundreds of meters through the maze, only two or three minutes had passed in reality.

"It seems like the game automatically fast-forwards through actions that would take a long time realistically."

That was Lee Jin-su's answer when I asked about the sense of time I was experiencing.

"If everything ran in real time, players would get bored and quit pretty fast... And on top of that, this is a Labyrinth. If you had to dedicate that much time here, honestly the appeal drops, so that's probably why..."

Two conclusions to draw from this.

One: the Labyrinth wants people to keep playing. Obviously.

Two: if it ran in real time, something dull enough to make you want to quit would happen. Inside this game.

==========================

＊ 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝙰𝚁𝙴 𝙸𝙽

==========================

I scratched the corner of my eye and went back into the maze.

Boredom I can handle.

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＊ 𝙰 𝙿𝚁𝙴𝚂𝙴𝙽𝙲𝙴 𝙸𝚂 𝙵𝙸𝚇𝙴𝙳 𝚄𝙿𝙾𝙽 𝚈𝙾𝚄

==========================

The moment I stepped into the maze, that sticky gaze latched onto me again.

Click.

Scrape.

All I could do was push forward, ignoring the shadow that flickered briefly around every corner.

At the first fork in the road, the one with three paths, I took the middle.

At the second fork, the one with the bite mark, I turned left.

"Oh, this was a dead end too. I thought it was the right path because we ran into a monster here."

Past the spot where I had met the Minotaur-like creature, a wall appeared.

A complete dead end, no branches.

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＊ 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝚃𝚄𝚁𝙽𝙴𝙳 𝙵𝙾𝚁𝚆𝙰𝚁𝙳

==========================

I went back to the second fork in the road and took the opposite path.

Crunch, crunch.

Walking without any particular aim, another fork appeared.

Again, left first.

Scrape.

The moment I rounded the corner, without fail a shadow flashed behind me and was gone.......

WHOOSH!

Something shot at me from straight ahead without warning.

A trap.

Click.

SWOOSH!

I hit the button and dodged, but it wasn't enough.

POP!

"Oh, the screen...! What's happening?"

The screen, already dim, went completely dark.

The left side of my face burned, then went almost entirely numb.

The world went dark.

I had no eye left to look toward the light.

A blinding pain I still hadn't learned to bear swept through my entire body.

The world tilted, with no regard for my wishes.

Just before unconsciousness crashed over me.

A single thought drifted up, like something from a dream.

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＊ 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝚂𝙼𝙸𝚁𝙺𝙴𝙳

==========================

That itch inside is finally gone.

* * *

"Did the game just end? Are you okay? Nothing wrong with your body?"

"You don't look much different on the outside, but are you all right?"

"I'm...... fine."

Inside the game, it felt like I had briefly lost consciousness.

The fact that my words hadn't converted to script told me as much.

"Is the game completely over? The screen just went dark. It doesn't feel like it ended."

I shook my head slowly.

"The game isn't over yet."

The moment I said that.

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<𝚛𝚘𝚘𝚝> 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝙰𝚆𝙾𝙺𝙴

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Script appeared beneath the dark screen.

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<𝚛𝚘𝚘𝚝> 𝙸 𝙷𝙰𝚅𝙴 𝙰𝚆𝙰𝙸𝚃𝙴𝙳 𝚈𝙾𝚄

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Someone's breath touched every inch of my body.

Footnotes:

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