WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Surviving as an Office Worker at the Anomaly Management Bureau ◈

Chapter 5: Empty Vessels Make the Most Noise

──────

What was fear?

When I was young, I was afraid of the unknown. People often said that fear was what allowed humanity to survive. By fearing the unknown, we could keep ourselves one step further from death.

Then, as we became socialized and gained knowledge, we forgot fear. At least, I had. If I had to choose between watching ten horror movies in a row or suddenly losing all the documents I had written while working, I would have picked the former without hesitation.

But after seeing that thing just now, I felt as if I had become a child again.

"Wake up!"

I snapped my eyes open at the hand shaking my shoulder.

Yoo Da-on was looking down at me with a worried expression.

"Your face is pale. Are you okay?"

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

Honestly, I wasn't fine.

I remembered the thing that had looked down at me. It was something I could never call human, but it was far too unpleasant to be a god.

If something like that was a god, I could confidently say that every religion in history had been nothing but a massive scam.

Just thinking about it made goosebumps rise all over my body again.

"You suddenly collapsed. You scared me."

"...You didn't see it, did you?"

"See what?"

"If you didn't, that's a relief."

It seemed Yoo Da-on hadn't seen it. That was fortunate, if nothing else. Seeing something like that wouldn't do anyone's mental health any good.

"Is the containment complete?"

"I think so, for now."

Yoo Da-on pulled out her manual.

"It says outside intervention is impossible from now on, but anything is allowed inside."

"Anything?"

"It only says that anything is allowed."

At Yoo Da-on's words, I took out my own manual and opened it.

[Manual for Office Workers]

[AA - After Containment]

1. After containment, no outside interference can occur. Therefore, all actions carried out within the Management Bureau branch gain legitimacy and plausibility.

2. The most important thing is stabilizing the situation. Employees, please protect the Management Bureau with a sense of ownership.

※If you commit excessively unethical acts, the Human Resources Team in upper management may convene a disciplinary committee.

What nonsense. What era did they think this was, telling us to have a sense of ownership?

I scoffed and turned the page.

3. You may use the entities and items in the Containment Chambers. The locations of the Containment Chambers are listed below.

※The Management Bureau accepts no responsibility for consequences resulting from improper use, including death, disability, soul annihilation, or permanent binding.

What exactly was I supposed to do with that last line?

Still, since they were kindly telling us where the Containment Chambers were, they clearly wanted us to use them.

Containment Chambers.

I had never checked whether my eyes worked on contained entities. In the first place, as far as I remembered, I had never seen anything other than humans in my life...

My brow furrowed on its own at the hazy memory.

I didn't think I had. Right. That had to be it.

That was probably why I had been in Human Resources.

"Then we should head to the Containment Chambers."

"Don't you think the source of this problem might be there?"

"Probably. Unless this is an outside intrusion, of course."

Was this an external attack, or an internal problem?

"But after hearing about what you did earlier, Employee Jae-heon, we might resolve this surprisingly quickly."

What was this woman talking about?

When I stared at Yoo Da-on, she looked back at me with an expression full of expectation.

"Can't you do something with those magic eyes of yours again?"

"Ah."

I remembered the message I had seen earlier.

[Critical: 1 -> 0]

"I don't think... I can."

"What?"

"It needs time."

"How long?"

"Who knows."

"...It can't be helped."

With a regretful sigh, Yoo Da-on adjusted the jacket I had given her.

"We'll have to force our way through."

"You mean fight?"

"There's no way to win without fighting."

She wanted us to take that monster on physically?

I had no confidence at all. I wasn't a physical fighter to begin with. If I were good with my body, I would have joined the Security Team or something.

"I'll handle it."

Yoo Da-on spoke with complete confidence.

Are you trying to get cut to pieces again? The words rose to my throat before I swallowed them.

"What if you die?"

"Me?"

"No. If you go down, I'll die."

"We can solve that through effort!"

Was she always this foolish?

As I stared at Yoo Da-on in disbelief, she looked straight at me.

"Do you have another idea?"

"..."

We couldn't run away. We had blocked off our own escape route in the first place.

But was this really the right call?

"...Let's go and see."

We didn't even know the full story behind this yet. We couldn't get any more clues by sitting here. In the end, we had no choice but to go.

Yoo Da-on nodded in satisfaction and stood up.

"I'll lead the way."

"Go ahead."

* * *

The Containment Chambers were unexpectedly close. Another fortunate thing was that we didn't encounter a single enemy on the way.

"We're lucky."

"..."

It felt strange.

The Management Bureau was not a workplace that slept. Other than the office workers, staff rotated through three shifts to manage contained entities and guard against unknown outside intrusions. Could it really be this quiet?

"Something's wrong."

"What is it?"

"There are too few people. There aren't any enemies, and there aren't even any bodies. At the very least, there should be corpses."

If there were no corpses, there should at least have been bloodstains.

There was nothing at all. It was as if someone had laid out a path just for Yoo Da-on and me.

Only then did Yoo Da-on look around with a serious expression.

"...You're right."

Yoo Da-on made as if to draw her handgun and began carefully watching our surroundings as she walked, but we encountered nothing until we reached the door to the Containment Chambers.

"..."

"..."

It was damn huge.

That was my first thought when I saw the door.

Have you ever seen a bank vault? The kind with a wheel-shaped lever in the center that you turn around and around to open it?

The door in front of us was three times the size of one of those vault doors.

I didn't even need to wonder how we would get inside.

The door was already open.

That meant someone had either left the Containment Chambers through this door or entered them through it.

A sense of dread surged through me.

Yoo Da-on must have felt the same way. She only swallowed dryly as she stared at the door.

"...We have to go in, right?"

"We do."

Ah, I didn't want to.

I punched my trembling knee once with my fist and stepped through the door.

There was nothing particularly unusual about the Containment Chambers themselves.

Other than the rows of sturdy-looking steel doors, they weren't much different from an ordinary office.

The difference was the fierce signs of battle visible as soon as we entered.

The acrid smell of gunpowder, and the metallic scent of blood.

A migraine flared up.

I rubbed my temples and looked around.

Dead people were piled up like mountains. If one were to physically portray a mountain of corpses, it would probably look like this.

They were all wearing suits. Some had expressions of agony, while others looked as though they had no idea what had happened.

Why hadn't it taken their bodies?

I looked around in case anyone was still alive, but no windows appeared.

That meant they were all dead.

My migraine worsened.

Yoo Da-on, who had entered behind me, drew in a breath.

"This is..."

"They're all dead."

"We won?"

What was she talking about?

Yoo Da-on let out a sigh of relief.

"That's why there were no traces outside. We managed to stop it somehow!"

Stopped it?

I looked above Yoo Da-on's head as she smiled brightly.

[Name: Yoo Da-on]

[Age: 23]

[Trait: Immortality]

[Talent: -]

[Background: Unable to die, she becomes embroiled in a major incident on her first day at work.]

[Weakness: Her body has completely overcome death. No physical force can imprison her forever. However, her mind has yet to overcome death.]

"Why do you look so serious? Don't worry too-"

Yoo Da-on smiled at me, then froze.

Crack...

Something split apart, and Yoo Da-on collapsed with a thud, her back facing me.

The jacket I had given her was cut in half and fluttered through the air.

"Ah, uh, ngh..."

Yoo Da-on made strange noises as her body trembled.

A red line ran from the crown of her head down her spine. Yoo Da-on shook violently as if having a seizure, crying out in strange sounds.

I remembered the man Yoo Da-on had shot in the hallway.

The wound that ran from the crown of his head down his spine.

"No way..."

I quickly looked Yoo Da-on over.

[Name: Yoo ?-on]

[Age: 2?]

[Trait: Mimicry? Immortality?]

[Talent: -]

[Background: Something horrible has entered the body of the immortal human woman.]

[Weakness: Wait.]

In that brief interval?

I was only shocked by what was happening for a moment.

Sliiide...

Something made a slithering sound.

My head hurt so badly it felt as if it would split open.

I forced my blurred vision into focus through the headache and looked ahead.

It was a person.

No, it was a caterpillar.

The image of a person and a caterpillar alternated again and again.

Yoo Da-on's words replayed in my throbbing head.

"We managed to stop it somehow!"

Why had Yoo Da-on been seeing something different from me?

Why?

Slowly, it approached.

The closer it came, the more I understood.

This wasn't human. Why had I thought that thing was human earlier?

I opened my eyes wide and stared at it.

It was a caterpillar as large as I was.

Its body wriggled unpleasantly as it approached me. Then it looked toward Yoo Da-on and changed direction.

Soon, a translucent window appeared above what I assumed was its head.

[Name: ???]

[Age: ???]

[Trait: Parasitism]

[Talent: Perception Distortion]

[Background: Oppressed by human hands for a long time, this creature was released from the Containment Chambers for some reason.]

[Weakness: Empty vessels make the most noise.]

Now even my eyes were playing tricks on me.

Still, I thought I understood what it meant.

Ignoring my pounding head, I forced myself up, grabbed Yoo Da-on's twitching arm, and began dragging her away in the opposite direction.

If my guess was right, this was the answer.

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried