WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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

Chapter 64: The Beach

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I swam downward as hard as I could with my fins and looked below.

A silhouette appeared in the dark depths.

Perhaps because of the sharp pain, the song no longer seemed to have any effect. It merely lingered around my ears.

Though why I had been affected by this song in the first place was also something I needed to consider.

-Woooo...

The sound of something enormous resonating.

Soon, I could see the enormous thing properly.

How should I describe it? It looked familiar, as though various things had been mixed together.

Its eyes, nose, and mouth were arranged like a human's, but it had only those features. Nothing else about it resembled a human.

Naturally, it had no arms or legs, and behind its face was the body of a fish.

But where its tail should have been, a bizarre thing resembling a sea cucumber was attached.

Information appeared before my eyes.

[Name: Primordial Being]

[Age: Created approximately 3,000 years ago]

[Trait: -]

[Talent: -]

[Background: Having prospered alongside humanity's prosperity, this being is currently at the height of its power.]

[Weakness: Fish cannot live after leaving the sea. Make the most of the advantage of fighting on land.]

Was this what a difference in rank felt like? Or was this how a child felt when facing a tiger?

I could not even think of winning. I had no will to fight it in the first place.

Our eyes met.

It flicked its tail once, and an unbearably powerful current pushed me toward the surface.

Unable to resist even once, I was swept onto land. Soon, with a floating sensation, I woke up on the bed in my room.

“...”

The first thing I did after waking was inspect my arm and fingers.

“...What a mess.”

The bedsheets were soaked in blood, and my pinky was still bent at a grotesque angle.

But this confirmed one thing.

“It wasn't a hallucination.”

If it had been a hallucination, there should not have been anything wrong with my body when I woke up.

“Ghk...”

I looked at my throbbing left arm and my bent pinky.

I needed treatment as soon as possible.

I got up and opened my door.

I felt slightly dizzy, but I was still fine.

After checking the pistol and Butane Gas in my clothes, I slowly began walking.

Since Jang Chae-yeon had not come, had she been affected too?

I remembered her face when she broke my finger.

If it had not been for her, I might have been here screaming like the people I saw yesterday.

Just in case, I headed to her room.

“Ms. Jang.”

I knocked and called her name, but there was no sound.

She should have woken up in her room. Why was there no answer or reaction?

I shot the doorknob with my pistol and broke it before going inside, but there was no trace of her.

Had she already come to her senses?

I knew it was self-important, but if that were the case, she should have come looking for me. If she had not, then perhaps she had lost her senses too.

There was nothing I could do. I needed to organize my thoughts.

As I walked down the hallway, I began sorting through the situation.

First, there were several suspicious points.

As always, I separated my thoughts and organized them.

1. Why the song affected me.

I had never properly fallen victim to a mental attack before. Considering the impulse and temptation I felt when I heard the song this time, something was strange.

In other words, it was either not a mental attack, or it was so powerful that I had no choice but to fall victim to it.

But if that were the case, I should at least have suffered from a headache. Yet I had not felt even the slightest headache.

2. The seawater that came out even after we tore the Mouth apart.

At the very least, something should have changed when we destroyed the Mouth we found in the engine room, following Song A-rin's words.

The fact that seawater still came out after we tore the Mouth apart meant that it was not the main body, and destroying it did not seem to resolve the situation.

In other words, destroying the Mouth alone could not solve this.

Did we really need to feed it something?

3. Its connection to the Troupe.

At first, I suspected the Troupe, but the way this incident was unfolding was clearly different from theirs.

Still, the theater and timing were far too uncanny. Yet it also seemed strange to think that even the Management Bureau had failed to notice this.

“...I don't know.”

With a groan, I entered the lobby.

It was the same as yesterday.

Many people stood in the lobby, staggering around like zombies.

The difference was that yesterday, they had been walking toward a specific place. Now, none of them were doing that. They were simply wandering around the lobby.

I walked around and looked nearby, wondering if there was anyone I knew.

Yoo Da-on and Song A-rin were standing together.

Yoo Da-on had a blank expression, while Song A-rin had her brow deeply furrowed as she kept muttering, “No. No,” as though resisting something.

“You two.”

“...”

“Hello?”

Neither of them answered.

Only after shaking their shoulders and poking their cheeks without getting a reaction did I give up.

Where was Jang Chae-yeon?

I looked around carefully, but I could not see her anywhere.

I looked out the window.

The sun had already risen long ago. It was past noon.

It was not a certain hypothesis, but the seawater had always rushed in before sunset.

In other words, there was no way to know when it would come rushing in again.

The first place I needed to go was...

My gaze turned toward the back office.

Of course, it was the engine room.

As I headed toward the back office, I opened the Manual.

I should at least look through the records. Either for this cruise, or for that thing beneath the sea.

But when I opened the Manual, nothing appeared.

Clicking my tongue, I muttered.

“Start a containment object record. Object name, Primordial Being.”

The Manual opened.

-Flip!

“This object was discovered on the cruise, but comparing it with past records has not revealed a way to deal with it.”

[Manual for Office Workers]

[PRV - Object Name: Primordial Being - Revised Edition by Kim Jae-heon of the Human Resources Team]

[This object was originally in the deep sea, but it is gradually approaching the surface along with humanity's prosperity. Its location and the phenomena it manifests differ depending on the time. Since this has adverse effects on personnel viewing this object, information on it is currently controlled and viewing is prohibited.]

Was this a joke? Was that why I could not view it?

Just as irritation began to rise, my eyes fell on words below that looked as though they had been scribbled there.

The Manual usually did not contain things like this.

[No common traits can be seen in this object, but every person who returned alive from this phenomenon shared one word in their descriptions: “beach.”]

[If you are Management Bureau personnel reading this entry, you will surely be viewing it after encountering the object. At present, heading for the “beach” is considered the best course of action. Good luck.]

At the same time, a translucent window appeared before me.

[Critical: 0 -> 1]

“...”

At least Critical had recharged, so that was fortunate in its own way.

I stared at the translucent window for a moment, then looked back at the Manual.

Was this the Management Bureau's way of controlling information? Why had they been unable to let ordinary Bureau personnel view this?

The question passed through my mind, but I set it aside for now.

That was not important.

The beach was the place we saw when Jang Chae-yeon tore the Mouth apart yesterday.

That was where the seawater had come rushing in from.

There was no use thinking about it. I should go.

* * *

Only after arriving at the engine room did I realize that Jang Chae-yeon had left the stairs bent and blocked. It took considerable effort to squeeze through them.

“...Did I tell her to bend them for nothing?”

Seeing how completely filthy my clothes had become made me sigh.

I looked toward where the Mouth had been.

It was still split in two, just as Jang Chae-yeon had torn it apart.

A brute-force fight that did not care about weaknesses. Amazed by the feat that only she among us could perform, I looked beyond the Mouth.

It was a beach.

Fine sand stretched out before me, while the sky was thick with dark clouds. There was nothing else to see on the beach.

“...”

This was where I had to go.

Fine. Let's go.

Rather than waste time worrying, it was better to act as quickly as possible.

After taking a deep breath, I stepped through the Mouth.

With the strange sensation of crossing through something, I found myself standing on fine sand.

“...Huh.”

I looked around.

-Shhhhhh...

Waves rolled in and sent up sprays of water.

The fishy smell was gone as though it had never existed. Only the scent unique to the sea lingered in my nose.

I looked up at the sky.

There was no sun in sight. The thick dark clouds were enough to make anyone looking at them feel uneasy.

As I stared at the sky, a transparent window began to appear before my eyes.

[Name: Little Sea]

[Age: Created 1,500 years ago]

[Trait: Sea]

[Talent: Sea]

[Background: This is one of the Primordial Being's countless homes and outposts.]

[Weakness: If the sea loses the meaning of its name, or if you defeat the master inhabiting this place, the outpost will naturally disappear.]

Defeat and outpost.

Did that mean I had to fight?

I had a bad feeling about this.

-Shhhhhh...

I heard the sound of a whale blowing water from its blowhole, and my gaze naturally turned toward the sound.

The sea split apart, and something revealed its face.

It had bizarre eyes, nose, and mouth. Its body was a fish, and something resembling a sea cucumber was attached to its tail.

But unlike before, I did not feel the difference in rank that I had felt then.

It looked different too, and more importantly, it was smaller than the thing I saw earlier.

The one I saw underwater had seemed at least three times larger.

But that absolutely did not mean I could win.

I had to fight that thing?

I looked at the single Critical I had.

A way to use Critical to kill an opponent who was fully prepared.

That did not seem easy.

Footsteps sounded behind me.

“...Are you okay?”

It was a voice with far less emotional variation than other people's.

The concern in that voice was so like her.

“I thought you were completely taken over.”

“I broke one more finger.”

Jang Chae-yeon raised her left pinky and ring finger with an expressionless face.

Both fingers were twisted.

“How did you know to come here?”

“A feeling.”

She answered confidently and stood beside me.

“Do we have to take that down?”

“I don't know, but based on the information I've obtained so far, I think so.”

“Okay. Then let's do it.”

She said it lightly and raised her right hand.

I also took out my pistol and Butane Gas.

“I'll keep thinking of another way.”

“Okay. I trust you.”

She answered without the slightest hesitation.

Four days remained.

Please, I hope I can spend at least half of that time living on this cruise.

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