WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 153: backrooms
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After leaving the coastal road on the outskirts of Busan and driving for quite a while, you would see a sprawling complex of buildings beyond the hillside.
A clifftop location overlooking the sea.
A spacious balcony attached to every room.
A full resort facility with an outdoor swimming pool, an infinity pool, and even a small water park.
Construction had begun with grand ambitions during the property development boom that swept through the Busan area.
Its name was Starlight Resort.
But soaring construction costs and a lack of funds at its parent company had brought work to a halt, leaving it in ruins.
Contrary to expectations that it would become one of Busan's landmarks, complicated debt issues had turned the property into an eyesore.
That was the Starlight Resort complex.
"Yurim Hotel doesn't even compare to this."
"Yurim Hotel?"
"Oh, there's an abandoned hotel I bought."
Thanks to the demon lurking inside, it had been crawling with cockroaches and rats, but the hotel had only been closed for a few years.
Starlight Resort, on the other hand, had been abandoned halfway through construction.
For twenty years, at that.
"So what kind of urban legend is here? Something about a resort, since this is one?"
"Hmm... It's a little different. Have you heard of liminal spaces?"
A liminal space referred to a third type of space.
Put simply, the moment you crossed a "liminal" boundary, like a room by an entrance or a threshold, you entered a separate "space."
The term was usually used in architecture or art, but it had a different meaning in the occult world.
A space missing things that should have been there in an everyday setting, creating an unexplained sense of disconnection and unease.
"Like the Backrooms?"
"Yes. It's famous these days, isn't it? There's even a movie."
The Backrooms was an urban legend that had become popular on an American mystery forum.
A realm filled with all kinds of anomalies behind the scenes of the real world.
All sorts of strange and dangerous things lurked there, from spaces you could never escape to anomalies that chased you endlessly.
"Internet meme urban legends like these can spread beyond anyone's control. And the longer they last, the more likely they are to manifest as actual urban legends."
True. Eight-Foot Sister herself was an urban legend brought into existence when that kind of meme phenomenon merged with an existing urban legend.
It would have been strange in its own way if famous urban legends that had swept the world never manifested.
"But how do you resolve an urban legend like that?"
"Well..."
Team Leader Shin Sanghyeon hesitated, unable to offer much of an answer.
"The truth is, there isn't a clear solution to these meme urban legends."
"Huh? Don't urban legends usually have a way to resolve them?"
"Usually, yes. But meme urban legends like Foundation stories or the Backrooms have no fixed solution. Their central theme is the fear of helpless humans."
Stories like these were usually built from original lore contributed by members of online communities.
The point was that there was no boss to defeat or central device to destroy.
You did not know why you were trapped in that space, or even whether escape was possible. That feeling of helplessness was the core of the story.
People even competed to see who could create the most insanely overpowered urban legend, so some stories came with a bad ending already set in stone.
"That's why Foundation stories were a disaster for a while. Every idiot out there was turning some ridiculously overpowered Mary Sue monster into an urban legend..."
Of course, stories with no internal logic or balance rarely gained enough support and recommendations to manifest in reality.
But when one did, it was a real headache.
"Then how do people deal with the Backrooms urban legends found around the world?"
"The first method is to physically seal them off. Just fill the place with concrete and keep people away."
It was a simple, reliable method.
With the Backrooms, you usually only had to avoid approaching the space connected to them.
"But doesn't that make the land completely unusable?"
"Well... In areas with expensive land, it would be a painful loss. Which brings us to the second method."
Apparently, there was a more "certain" way to demolish the Backrooms.
"A sorcerer with overwhelming power smashes everything so thoroughly that the urban legend can no longer maintain its form. They tear it down by any means necessary."
"Ohhh."
So that was why Mrs. Park had sent me here.
"But how much overwhelming power are we talking about?"
"...We don't know. You're using sheer force to crush a space that would normally be impossible to escape."
This might turn into a pretty long fight.
I was confident in my strength, but, hmm...
* * *
The liminal-space urban legend known as "the Backrooms" was based on community-created lore for an internet meme urban legend.
As with many English-language internet urban legends known as creepypastas, its basic setup went like this.
There were people commonly called wanderers.
They had lived in the real world before drifting into the Backrooms for one reason or another, and they formed organizations to survive there.
Apart from the human wanderers, the Backrooms also contained independent beings called entities. It was easiest to think of them as the anomalies that made up the Backrooms.
Most were hostile to humans, and some fought among themselves.
There were even godlike beings among them. Since anyone could write transcendent powers into their lore, there were plenty of those too.
Of course, even urban legends had limits.
Manifesting a transcendent being through memes alone was nearly impossible. When the Backrooms manifested as an urban legend, it generally only produced beings that could be "handled."
If meme urban legends could bring transcendent beings into existence, Earth would have been destroyed long ago.
Entity 8, the Hound, was another anomaly commonly manifested by Backrooms urban legends.
An emaciated monster with a human head and a dog's body.
It was extremely aggressive and would pursue any wanderer that entered its sight to the bitter end.
Escaping from one was practically impossible.
But that did not mean there was no way to deal with it.
First, if you refused to turn your back and stared straight into its eyes, it would actually become intimidated.
In short, you needed the courage to face a horrifying monster head-on...
【......】
【......】
The Hound felt eyes staring straight at it.
Those bright black eyes seemed less innocent than outright mad.
And there were not just "two" of them.
【......】 【......】 【......】
A total of "six" eyes stared straight at the Hound.
Those dull-looking black eyes, a few beats slow to react, gazed steadily at it.
Hounds were aggressive and persistent even among entities.
But even a Hound's mind could only go blank when faced with a "three-headed water deer."
It looked at the Hound as if shouting, "Let's goooo!"
【Screeeeeeeeech!】
【Screeeeeeeeech!】
【Screeeeeeeeech!】
It charged at the Hound, letting out cries that threatened to tear its eardrums apart.
【Kraaagh?!】
Overwhelmed by its sheer intensity, the Hound immediately turned and ran.
The three-headed water deer's twelve legs scraped across the floor as it pursued, sounding like a machine gun hammering the ground.
Dadadadadadadadadadadadadadada!!
As the Hound fled, it heard something crash into a wall nearby.
An entity that looked like countless tangled body parts. A Clump.
It was an extremely powerful entity in this area, so what on earth could it be fleeing from...
【Keeek?!】
It was a mass of flesh.
A "created monster" that seemed to have been assembled by selecting only the most efficient parts from countless bodies.
The evil creation went beyond grotesque. It radiated malice as it bared its vicious teeth and pounced on the Clump.
【Roooooooar!!】
The Clump shrieked and struggled, but it was only a matter of time before the evil, all-devouring mass absorbed it.
The Hound looked away from that awful sight and fled from the three-headed water deer chasing it.
Then it collided with something with a Thud!
Was the passage blocked?
It took a while to understand what was there.
Pitch-black darkness was a common sight in this space, after all.
Until it "opened its mouth," the Hound had thought it was simply another unlit space.
Claaaaack!
At the end of the corridor, a mouth large enough to cover the ceiling, floor, and both walls was opening.
It had no lips.
Instead, hundreds of teeth and the gazes flashing from rotating brass rings inspired terrible fear.
Evil beings.
Gazes filled with an unfathomable abyss of malice.
And a being that had swallowed those gazes and embedded them in itself like a collection.
Creeeeak!
It opened its mouth even wider.
Countless entities were already struggling inside, being chewed up and swallowed.
But survival would be impossible.
Those crushed into scraps of meat stuck between its teeth would last the longest.
Even then, the difference would only be a few seconds.
【Screeeeeeeech!?】
A three-headed water deer behind it, an enormous maw ahead.
There was only one option left.
The Hound tried to open any door it could find and escape into another space.
Clack!
The moment it kicked a door open and burst inside...
【......】
A huge woman was trampling something.
A white dress.
Long, flowing black hair.
And an abnormally large body.
The woman, tall enough for her head to touch the ceiling, was crushing a Skin-Stealer.
A huge humanoid entity that enjoyed stripping skin from humans and wrapping it around its own body.
That powerful entity was being torn apart by the eight-foot-tall woman.
【Po──】
Her lips moved.
【Poo... Poo...】
The Hound ran.
It ran and ran.
Screams poured out from every direction.
Something had invaded our world.
These beings were so powerful and alien that they were on an entirely different level from the wanderers who usually lost their way and stumbled in.
The chaos continued.
Entities everywhere were fleeing from them.
Being swallowed, torn apart, and eaten was an unprecedented disaster.
As if they had agreed beforehand, the entities gathered in the same place and soon reached a large space.
Where are we?
This isn't where we lived, is it?
Wait, that doesn't matter right now. The monsters are gone!
We're saved!
Their relief was brief. They grew confused as they discussed things they could not understand.
What happened?
The pipes blasted out intense heat, but they didn't even flinch!
I saw one come back to life after a Buster exploded right in front of it!
That crawling one got eaten, head and all!
Every account was horrifying and bizarre.
Most frightening of all was that those things would not die.
Some were unharmed by devastating blows. Others had surely been killed, only to vanish without a trace and then reappear alive.
More importantly, where are we?
This place... Something's different. Something's different, but...
It happened then.
New entities appeared in the space that had held only them until moments ago.
They frantically looked around as if something had been chasing them.
We're saved!
We're alive!
As the newcomers sighed with relief, the entities that had arrived first grew puzzled.
Where did they come from?
Was there a place like this where we lived?
The entities were confused.
Some of them fought and hated one another over territory.
Their monstrous instincts drove them into endless conflict.
But they realized something.
They could not survive alone in this world.
They had to cooperate. They had to find a way together.
That was the moment they became wanderers (those who had drifted in).
Footnotes:
"Foundation stories" refers to the SCP Foundation, a collaborative horror-fiction project about an organization that contains anomalous beings, objects, and places.
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