WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Alyo
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Surviving Among the Anomalies ◈
Chapter 66: The World Beyond the Right Eye - What Would You Have Done Without Us, Human Extinction
──────
Former Sarang Trading Company chairman Han Sarang (63) teared up as the long-awaited moment arrived.
‘At last, I get to dig up the time capsule.’
Han Sarang was the only son Han Bo-ram, founder of Wootteum Trading Company, Sarang Trading Company’s predecessor, had in his fifties. He had grown up listening to his father talk about the time capsule.
[The day you were born, I changed the company name to match your name.]
[When I first founded Wootteum Trading Company, I buried a time capsule in front of the marker stone to be dug up a hundred years later. Make sure you dig it up someday.]
[I put all sorts of things in the time capsule. Not just company-related things, but items my grandfather and father picked up during the war too. By then, even worthless scrap metal will have become artifacts, won’t it?]
What could be inside?
Looking at the unearthed time capsule, Han Sarang barely managed to shake off his overwhelming emotions.
“Goodness, it isn’t even my company anymore. I should open it quickly.”
It was fortunate enough that the ‘someone’ who had bought the company had not claimed ownership of the time capsule.
Just as he was about to open the lid, Doldoli, the dog he kept at the company, kept pestering him to play.
“You little rascal, I’m busy right now.”
“Woof!”
“Oh, honestly.”
Han Sarang liked dogs. Dogs always watched only their owners and followed them blindly. They were happy whenever their owners showed them even the slightest kindness, making them feel more like family than the wife who had stabbed him in the back and divorced him twenty years ago, or the children who waited like hyenas for him to die and leave them an inheritance.
“You’re chasing your tail again? Ha ha!”
“Woof woof!”
Besides, wasn’t their stupidity adorable?
“How did you ever survive in the wild without people? Nature is survival of the fittest, but you survived because you’re cute.”
After finally pushing Doldoli away, he opened the time capsule. It was filled with all sorts of odds and ends.
“Oh...”
A newspaper from the day Wootteum Trading Company had been founded.
Wootteum Trading Company’s first stock certificate.
The first foreign coffee Wootteum Trading Company had imported, and even the first factory-made nut it had produced.
There were many other things as well. Perhaps there had not been enough items to fill the capsule, because most of them were antiques owned by Han Sarang’s ancestors.
“This is a bullet, and a broken carbine rifle? Someone’s dog tags, and this is an arrowhead? Father, honestly.”
Then he noticed an object at the very back.
‘A grenade?’
It was a round sphere. The silver object, smaller than his palm, was perfectly spherical and had a button in the middle.
“I don’t think it’s a grenade...”
What could it be?
Without realizing it, Han Sarang reflexively pressed the button.
Beep-!
“Argh! It’s going to explode!”
Startled, Han Sarang threw the silver sphere far away. It did not explode, but it trembled before shooting into the sky.
“W-What is that? This is unbelievable!”
A moment later.
“Huh?”
The color of the sky changed.
“What is this?”
Iridescent clusters of light began descending from beyond the blue sky.
“What the hell are those!?”
From that day on, Han Sarang’s retirement plans changed.
“Light? Light clusters? Light clouds?”
His plan to travel happily around the world became a plan to run for his life.
＊＊＊
“Pant, pant.”
Han Sarang ran desperately until his mouth filled with a sickly sweet taste, forcing his aged body onward.
‘Run. I have to run!’
Three months had already passed. The world had ended, and humanity was no longer its master.
‘I have to escape and hide!’
The moment the light clusters descended from the sky that day, the round masses of light had begun hunting humans.
[This is an emergency announcement! Light clusters are currently descending from the sky! They are firing light at humans, and anyone struck by it is said to vanish into dust! Please remain inside your homes and refrain from going out as much as possi...]
The government intervened, but it was no match for them.
[Weapons have absolutely no effect on the light clusters! The United States dropped a nuclear bomb, but the light clusters were reportedly unaffected!]
[The light clusters pass through all physical objects! Physical attacks are completely ineffective, so choose escape over resistance!]
Humanity’s long history of violence did not work at all.
Guns, bombs, missiles, even nuclear weapons.
In this situation, all humanity could do was run.
‘Here. I’ll hide here!’
Han Sarang had survived this long because of the light clusters’ characteristics. They targeted young humans and children first, while avoiding old people like him whenever possible.
‘Please, just pass by...’
At times, the light clusters even fought each other. A few times, he had nearly been caught and killed, only for another light cluster to appear and crush the one chasing him, allowing him to escape.
‘Please.’
But his luck had run out. Today, Han Sarang had finally been spotted by a light cluster. He ran desperately, but it pursued him to the end, and no other light cluster came to help.
‘Please, please!’
He hid beneath the eaves of a collapsed building and prayed, but a brilliant light entered his field of vision.
“Ah...”
A light cluster had appeared and fired light at him.
‘This is it. I’m dead.’
Everything was over. Han Sarang closed his eyes and accepted death.
“?”
When he opened them again, he was not dead.
“Where is this...?”
He woke naked in a world above the clouds, filled with iridescent light. He tried to move, but the clouds bound him in place. Turning his head from side to side was his only freedom.
“Argh!”
Right in front of him, a naked young man bound in the same clouds screamed. A light cluster approached the young man’s forehead. Within the iridescent light was a sharp golden jewel.
“S-Save me!”
Despite his desperate cry, the golden jewel pierced his forehead. It burrowed into his brain and disappeared. The wound closed on its own, but the young man did not move.
“This is insane!”
Maybe he was dead. No, he had to be dead.
Trembling in fear, Han Sarang wet himself. Soon, an iridescent light cluster came for him and implanted a golden jewel in him just as it had done to the young man.
“Save...”
When Han Sarang came to again, he realized he had not died.
‘Where am I?’
Rather than dying, he was trapped inside some kind of glass case.
‘Everything is huge.’
The world beyond the case looked like an ordinary human world. There was a television, a radio, chairs, and computers, but all of them were dozens of times larger than a human, as though giants used them.
‘Is this the light clusters’ prison?’
Were those things giants? Then why had they taken the form of light clusters until now? Were they aliens after all, and was the light-cluster form some kind of transformation?
‘There are a lot of people trapped here besides me.’
Strangely, most of them were young men and women. There was no one around Han Sarang’s age.
[&^%&%^*?]
[Yes, that’s right.]
Then the noise coming from the television sounded different. Until moments ago, it had seemed like meaningless noise paired with a meaningless screen, but now the noise sounded like voices. The screen showed a news broadcast, with two people made of light conversing.
[This is the recently developed ‘Transdimensional Translator.’ Humans cannot properly perceive beings from our dimension, instead seeing them as light clusters, masses of light, or clouds. If this is implanted into their brains, it makes beings from our dimension appear in forms within the limits of their knowledge and perception.]
[So humans with that implanted will see us as humans and hear us speaking like humans!]
[Yes, that’s correct.]
The object held by the person made of light was the very jewel that had been driven into Han Sarang’s head before he lost consciousness.
[You need this to form a deeper bond with your Pet Human. Some people prefer things natural and choose not to implant a Transdimensional Translator, but that causes stress for Pet Humans.]
[Ah, stress is fatal to humans.]
[Stressed humans can display symptoms such as self-harm, depression, bipolar disorder, binge eating, and weight loss. Their happiness plummets, and they may attempt to take their own lives, so anyone who has not installed one must be sure to do so.]
[Yes, that was our interview with Pet Human expert ■■■■■■.]
The television’s contents left Han Sarang’s mind reeling.
‘Pet Humans? What does that mean?’
How dare they take humanity, the lords of all creation, and make us pets?
[Our next story is about ◆◆◆◆◆◆, the first person to discover humans.]
[Ha ha, discovering humans was an accident. I am a researcher, so I once bought a Dimensional Explorer to observe lifeforms from other dimensions.]
An image appeared on the screen. It showed the silver sphere Han Sarang had pulled from the time capsule.
[It was a broadly compatible device that even lower-dimensional beings could recognize, but no matter how many times I pressed the button, it would not work. When I asked about it, they said it occasionally had a bad connection and only worked once every hundred presses, so they gave me a new one. They told me to throw out the defective one, so I tossed it into a random dimension. Miraculously, it landed in humanity’s dimension, on their planet.]
[So humans picked it up and pressed it?]
[Yes. Normally, it would not work on the first try, so they would have destroyed it or thrown it away. I do not know whether it happened to work at once or whether they kept pressing it until it did.]
[What was the situation like when it activated?]
[Humans suddenly appeared on the screen, and the moment I saw them, I thought, Wow! There are living creatures this cute! There are creatures so cute, stupid, clueless, slow, foolish, and lovable! That feeling burst out like flames.]
The iridescent person beyond the screen spoke.
[Ha ha! Humans are certainly cuter and more lovable because they are stupid. What other species fights among itself and creates weapons capable of driving it extinct?]
[According to our observations, humans score ten out of ten for self-destructive violence. If we had not intervened, they likely would have destroyed themselves fighting each other within a hundred years.]
[Their primitive technology cannot harm us, but it is more than enough to send humans racing toward extinction.]
The two iridescent people laughed as they spoke.
[Humans escaped extinction because they are cute. If we had left them alone, they would have gone extinct, but they were so cute and lovable that we took them in as Pet Humans.]
[They were incompetent animals that could not survive in the wild.]
[It is amazing they survived this long. Perhaps it was because of those things.]
[What are those things?]
[The ones humans call the “Foundation.” They were human, but they had transcended humanity. More than fifteen thousand three hundred researchers who first went to capture humans were defeated by them.]
[Were they killed?]
[No? They were only injured. No matter how much they transcended humanity, they were still human. How could they kill us?]
[Phew, you startled me.]
[Anyway, as I said, humans were still humans in the end, so we swept them all up in three days.]
[Did you kill them?]
[We captured all humans and made them Pet Humans. We drove all the strange things that were not human into other dimensions.]
Then the screen changed.
“Doctor §§§, I’m going to watch something else.”
“Nurse ¤¤¤¤, watch whatever you want.”
They were iridescent people who appeared to be the owners of this place.
[Purchase the Pet Human made for you!]
[A white human with a particularly mischievous nature!]
[A black human with lots of energy!]
[A yellow human with little body odor!]
[If you wish, you can purchase unneutered humans and build your own Pet Human village!]
[Warning: Humans of different colors may be hostile toward one another, so careful attention is required.]
An advertisement selling humans appeared.
[Does your human not listen?]
[Are they cute and lovable, but far too troublesome?]
[Then purchase the latest creation by the renowned transdimensional doctor, Dr. Janus! 「Humans Are Dogs’ Friends」!]
[According to Dr. Janus, if a human takes this pill, the genes within their body mutate, causing something called Williams-Beuren syndrome!]
[Humans who develop it will show excessive affection, trust, and kindness toward us! Then their troublesome behavior will stop completely! All that remains will be lovable, affectionate humans!]
[An essential product you must purchase for your Pet Human! Order now!]
“Ha, ha ha...”
Han Sarang laughed hollowly.
“Ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
Soon, he laughed like a madman.
“Keuk, khup! Khahahahaha!”
He could not stop laughing.
“Teacher, the old human keeps laughing.”
“Is that so? It may be from excessive stress. It is probably mating season. Humans are in mating season their entire lives.”
An iridescent person’s hand enveloped Han Sarang.
“Let’s neuter him quickly. Humans do not get stressed after being neutered, and they live longer.”
All humans became Pet Humans.
Humanity had ended.
＊＊＊
‘The hint had been there from the beginning.’
Baal had pinpointed the location, but he did not know where the destruction began.
He had only looked at people. He did not know about the Dimensional Explorer buried underground, still inactive.
‘Beings that keep humans as Pet Humans.’
We had caught the attention of higher-dimensional beings, and to their eyes, our human forms appeared unbearably adorable.
‘Like cats.’
Cats were fickle and thought of humans not as masters but as companions, yet were loved alongside dogs because of their cuteness.
Perhaps those beings saw us as something greater, a mix of dogs and cats.
‘In short, humanity was wiped out through sheer bad luck.’
Things had seemed quiet lately, but who would have expected this?
It was an Anomaly that had appeared around the time I quit the game, so I had never anticipated it.
‘Or maybe it was not an Anomaly that appeared around the time I quit the game. Maybe it had existed from the beginning.’
At that moment, Mr. Han Sarang opened the time capsule.
“Doldoli, come here.”
“Woof!”
“Did you find anything good?”
“Ha ha, they’re only old things. That’s why it’s a time capsule.”
“Hmm, ah! Doldoli is trying to catch their tail again.”
“What a foolish little thing.”
Mr. Han Sarang’s attention turned toward Doldoli. I reached into the time capsule with all my strength and snatched the Dimensional Explorer hidden among the junk.
‘The moment the button is pressed, it’s over.’
I hid it beneath my palm as carefully as possible, said goodbye, and left.
“Then savor your memories.”
“Thank you for giving me the chance!”
Back in the chairman’s office, I examined the Dimensional Explorer. It was a perfect sphere, identical to the one I had seen beyond my right eye.
“Now then...”
How should I deal with something that had a one-in-a-hundred chance of turning every human into a Pet Human with a single press?
Footnotes:
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
