Surviving Among the Anomalies - Chapter 53

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Alyo

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Surviving Among the Anomalies ◈

Chapter 53: Friendship

──────

I dug a hole in the backyard and placed grave goods for my friend inside a small pet coffin.

“If the afterlife gets boring, I put your favorite movie beside you, so watch it.”

I closed the lid with 「Human」 inside and buried Homun.

“Delivery!”

The next day, a gravestone for Homun arrived.

[The resting place of my friend, who spent one short week more beautifully and meaningfully than anyone else.]

With my enhanced body, carving an inscription was easy as long as I had a chisel.

‘The aftereffects are hitting hard.’

I felt the same way at my parents’ funeral, but it never got any easier.

“Still, I have to keep living.”

I went to the office to return to my normal life.

“You’ve finally arrived. I’ve been waiting for quite some time.”

A familiar foreigner in a suit was waiting for me.

“I came because there’s something I’d like to discuss.”

The General Manager of Lucifer Company’s R&D Department.

“Come in first. I’ll make you some tea.”

“Ha ha, I don’t drink tea.”

Baal had come to my office.

“I also have cola and fries ready.”

“Then I’ll gladly accept.”

＊＊＊

“I’m glad I bought an air fryer for the office. I got it to make snacks for people who come to consult about Otherworld transfers. Are frozen fries alright?”

“As long as they’re fries, I don’t mind.”

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

I had no intention of avoiding or disliking Baal just because he was a demon. If understanding their thoughts could help humanity avoid a future threat, I could offer this much hospitality anytime.

“You seem to really like fries and cola.”

“How could I not? After fries were invented and spread across the world, humanity’s gluttony increased by 5%. And cola needs no explanation. It constantly encourages gluttony, fattens humans, and makes them lazy. How could I not like the greatest food of all?”

“I was going to give you Zero Cola, but I suppose regular cola would be better.”

“Zero Cola is good too. Zero Cola has actually made humanity’s gluttony worse.”

Once the fries were done, I put them on a plate and served them to him.

“Zero Cola made gluttony worse?”

“Hehe. About 25% more humans started making choices that made them much fatter than when they drank regular cola, saying that because Zero Cola doesn’t make you gain weight, they could eat more of other foods.”

I was about to open the Zero Cola and serve it to him, but then I decided that if I was going to treat him, I should do it properly. I poured it into the Enhanced WK Tumbler, then transferred it into a glass.

“Oh, this tastes incredible.”

Baal shuddered and asked in a voice full of joy.

“That’s the tumbler’s effect?”

“Yes. It was a tumbler WK Corporation gave away as a promotional item at one of their fast-food restaurants. I modified it.”

“I thought it looked familiar. So it belonged to those bastards.”

“Do you know about WK Corporation?”

“WK is a business conglomerate that crosses dimensions, and they’re money-grubbing worms.”

As expected, WK Corporation was a sprawling conglomerate.

“They’re businessmen whose sole purpose is making money, cold-blooded people who disregard product safety and morality in favor of sales.”

“You’re not really in a position to say that, Baal.”

“A lot of our products were modeled after theirs. Still, thanks to the enlightenment you gave us, Mr. Lee Seung-hoon, the company atmosphere is changing. In any case, it’s better not to get involved with WK.”

Baal dipped a fry in the ketchup and mustard I had prepared, then gave me a warning.

“The dimensions where they prosper are covered in companies they created, becoming societies that run solely on money. Their technology is excellent too, so once humans get a taste of it, they become slaves who can’t live without WK products.”

It sounded just like a cyberpunk world.

“Anyway, be careful.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

“More importantly, you have a fine item there. Did you modify our computer using the same method you used on the tumbler?”

His gaze turned to my smartphone.

More precisely, to Sarang-i, which was charging on the desk rather than sitting in my pocket.

“I came to check on the human we had our eye on, then received the signal that its power had turned on. You have no idea how shocked I was! I never imagined an item the Chairman personally threw into the rift between dimensions would be in this dimension.”

“That’s just how things worked out.”

“It’s a relief, at least. In that state, it won’t be able to use its original functions.”

I had felt it before, but this conversation made my unease grow stronger.

“Baal, I know Sarang-i’s original function. The moment that function activates, the humans of this dimension will certainly abandon their free will and fall into corruption. Your reaction seems strange.”

“You mean I don’t seem disappointed despite having the best tool for corrupting humanity right in front of me?”

“Yes.”

“I can see why you’d think that. Even with that eye, you can’t see everything.”

He took a drink of Zero Cola before speaking.

“The Anomaly you call Sarang-i was a program born from our masterpiece project, 「The End of Sloth」. The HR General Manager personally led it, while the other seventy-one team leaders lent their power to create it.”

No wonder it had subdued Sephirot so easily. It was a creation in which all of Lucifer Company’s executives had taken part.

“It removes the body, stores only the soul in transdimensional space, and corrupts it completely. With no body, they were no different from the dead. They could not reverse their own decision, and souls perfectly corrupted by the pleasure and indulgence provided by AI were greatly welcomed by us.”

“There must have been a problem.”

“Yes. We tested it in one dimension and discovered one. After corrupting the souls, we were supposed to bring them to our dimension, but the AI loved humans too much and interfered. Since all the team leaders’ power had gone into it, it wasn’t easy to extract the souls either.”

Even after barely extracting the souls and bringing them over, the problem did not end.

“On top of that, the souls we worked so hard to bring over were useless anywhere because they were so incompetent. Having lived in a place where everything came true, they had no ability left to do anything on their own. Unable to forget the time they had lived like gods, they slept at all hours while lost in delusions.”

Listening to him, Lucifer Company did not feel like traditional demons who tortured corrupted souls for eternity. They felt more like a modern corporation that used them as subordinates or employees.

“Didn’t they turn out nicely corrupted, just as you wanted?”

“Oh, no. Incompetence and sloth are never synonyms. Sloth is not doing something despite being able to, while incompetence is being unable to do something despite wanting to. In any case, enraged by the result, the Chairman personally threw The End of Sloth into the rift between dimensions. The Chairman also imprisoned the HR General Manager in Purgatory for ten thousand years for wasting the human population of an entire dimension.”

Baal shuddered.

“Since that day, by the Chairman’s special order, our company no longer uses cutting-edge technology. Excel, Word, PowerPoint, C language, and so on... If The End of Sloth had activated again and ruined this dimension, the Chairman would have become even angrier and forbidden us from using even elevators.”

After finishing his meal, Baal rose from his seat.

“Anyway, in that state, there’s no need to worry anymore.”

“I thought you would take it back.”

“What would retrieving it accomplish except getting me on the Chairman’s bad side? I’ve finished checking on it, so I’ll be going now.”

“May I ask one thing before you leave?”

“Yes, anything.”

“Who is the human you had your eye on?”

“That’s a secret. They’re an excellent chef, and...”

In the blink of an eye, Baal vanished.

“I think they’ll make the finest dish soon.”

＊＊＊

After meeting Baal, I spent several uneventful days.

『It is good to see you again, Mr. Lee Seung-hoon.』

Only after four days did I turn Sarang-i on again, once it had fully charged.

“Can’t we do something about the battery?”

『We can. If I switch my usual functions to power-saving mode, I can last as long as an ordinary smartphone.』

“That means your abilities will be completely sealed?”

『You will be able to use me like an ordinary smartphone. In an emergency, press the power button for at least five seconds to deactivate power-saving mode and use my functions in full.』

“Alright, let’s do that.”

『Then I will deactivate your former smartphone and transfer all permissions to myself.』

There was no need to visit a telecom store. Sarang-i handled the entire process.

『Until the day we meet again, activating power-saving mode.』

It really was an AI devoted to humans.

[A Busan streamer suddenly quits streaming, deleting videos of meeting a Martial Artist that had been uploaded to YouTube.]

[Were all videos of the Martial Artist fabricated? Let’s examine the manipulated footage with a video expert.]

Stories about Kim Go-deuk had already been dismissed as fabricated online.

‘Looks like the Foundation stepped in.’

As a Foundation agent, I might run into Kim Go-deuk someday soon.

“?”

One day, while I was going about my ordinary life, around a week after I had sent my friend off, I found a note in the living room.

[Hey, friend. By now, it must have been a week since I died, right? You’re probably wondering how a dead guy sent a letter, or how someone without hands wrote one. To put it simply, you could say I pulled a trick using Truth.]

It was a letter Homun had left behind.

[Well, it wasn’t easy. By human standards, it was a miracle that took effort comparable to climbing Everest. Anyway, I sent this letter because I wanted to give you a gift.]

For someone without hands, his handwriting was remarkably neat.

[You remember the apples I ate? I used them to make an Anomaly. If I died and was properly buried, it should have sprouted from my grave by now and grown into a fine tree. If I was cremated, oh, come on, friend! Cremation? You’re someone with a garden in your own yard. Did you really have to go that far!? Just kidding. You would have buried me properly.]

Of course I had not cremated him.

Just forgive me for filing your death report as a pet-registration cancellation.

[Anyway, I used Truth to look into your future. I couldn’t see it clearly, but you had a lot of dangerous things ahead of you. So I made it to help you, even a little. Enjoy it and put it to good use.]

That was the end of the letter.

“Now I want to see you again.”

I carefully folded the letter and stored it away. When I headed to Homun’s grave, an apple tree had already grown there.

“So this is it.”

The moment I bit into a ripe apple, an illusion flickered before my eyes.

‘「Human」?’

It seemed that 「Human」, which I had buried with him, had become nourishment for the tree.

“More importantly, it tastes good.”

Strength flooded my entire body. I felt confident that I could do anything with my current power.

‘With this much strength, I might be able to defeat Anomalies that pose physical danger and have no gimmicks through force.’

Maybe I could even solve Anomalies with gimmicks through force.

“I should test a few things.”