WETRIED TRANSLATIONS

The Legendary Newbie of the Ghost Story Labyrinth

[Translator – Aren]

Chapter 66 - Sallim-dong, Euljiro (3)

At the end of the 25-meter shooting lane, black humanoid targets writhed as they slowly approached.

They were nothing more than thin sheets of paper, yet their attempts to imitate human movement were grotesque beyond words. Just looking at them made a sense of revulsion and fear bubble up.

"What the hell is this…?!”

Park Minho immediately chambered a round and opened fire.

Ratatatatata! Bang—!

He had shot at those same targets countless times before. Every bullet struck true, but that was all.

The rounds punched cleanly through the paper, scattering fragments from the concrete wall behind them. They inflicted no meaningful damage on the entities.

“Oppa! Bullets won’t work!”

An idea had clearly struck Seol Suyeon.

"Just buy me a little time!”

"Got it!"

Keeping his eyes on the approaching target entities, Park Minho pulled out the energy core from his backpack, then immediately activated his electrical ability.

-Bzzzzzzzt!

Blue sparks, sharp as thorns, erupted across his entire body.

It was a desperate measure, he had neither armor nor any special close-combat abilities, but it worked. The charging targets suddenly shrieked and recoiled.

"Kieeeeeh!"

"Kieeek!”

At that moment, the sound of a shotgun being pumped came from behind him.

-Chk, chk!

Park Minho turned his head to see what was going on. There he saw Seol Suyeon immediately pulling a trigger.

-Boooom!

It wasn’t the normal buckshot blast. What erupted from the muzzle was fire.

She had loaded Dragon’s Breath rounds made with zirconium-based incendiary powder. For entities made entirely of paper, it was practically a death sentence.

"Kiiiiiiiigh!

The burning targets screamed as they rolled across the floor, but they didn’t even last 5 seconds. Within moments, they burned to ash.

"Wow…Seol Suyeon. Not bad.”

Park Minho couldn’t help but be impressed. The old Seol Suyeon would’ve screamed first and hidden behind him, but after everything they’d survived together, she had become someone who could pull her own weight.

"Hmph!"

Feeling his gaze on her, Seol Suyeon puffed out her cheeks proudly, her shoulders rising in triumph.

* * *

The two gathered everything they needed and returned upstairs to the office.

"Suyeon, we’re racing against the clock now.”

By now, the NCE had probably surrounded the area outside. If they were caught, it wasn’t hard to imagine what kind of horrific fate awaited them. For people with unusual anomalous traits like Park Minho and Seol Suyeon, it wouldn’t simply end with erasure. Human experimentation would be very much on the table.

The NCE was just that far removed from concepts like human rights.

Before leaving the office, Park Minho checked his laptop one last time. The people of the gallery were little more than ghosts haunting that place, but some still maintained contact with the real world. Maybe they could provide useful information.

"Oh..."

Looking through the messages, Park Minho found exactly what he’d hoped for. A DM from Kim Chilsung.

▶ KimChilsung: As you probably expected, the NCE has taken control of the Gray Square. They’re dismantling the Backrooms layer using Reality Anchors.

▶Cheezza: How much time do we have? That’s the important part.

▶Kim Chilsung: According to an insider, they’re estimating about 9 hours. After that, Zeta 9 is scheduled to move in.

Park Minho had some history with that group called Zeta 9. They’d crossed paths in the biological Backroom that mimicked Floor 0. Those bastards had actually put bullets into his back. If not for his phase compression backpack, he’d have died then and there.

▶ Cheezza: I need some advice. What should we do?

▶KimChilsung: Use the fact that you’re inside a Backrooms space. There should be an exit leading to another Backrooms area somewhere. No telling where it’ll take you, but it’s still better than meeting the NCE face-to-face.

Park Minho closed the laptop.

"Suyeon, we need to get out of here within 9 hours.”

"Got it, Oppa.”

When they stepped outside, the back alleys of Euljiro’s hardware district had transformed into an exaggerated liminal space. Rust-covered shutters stretched down the narrow alley at perfectly regular intervals. Black water mixed with greasy sludge pooled across the ground.

"Oppa, I’ll be taking off my glasses.”

"Okay. Let’s be careful.”

Seol Suyeon could see anomalous energy as colors. That allowed her to identify entities camouflaged into their surroundings. Blending into the environment before ambushing humans was one of an entity's favorite tricks.

-Splash, splash.

Stepping through the oily water, they carefully advanced through the maze-like alleys.

"Where do you think the exit is?"

“No idea. Do we have to open every single shutter?”

"9 hours might be a lot shorter than it sounded.”

“I agree. We should probably prepare for the possibility that we don’t find the exit before running into the NCE. More importantly, just how big is this place?”

"We’ve been walking forever, and everything still looks the same…”

It was a classic trait of the Backrooms. Near-identical scenery repeating endlessly.

"Wait, Oppa!"

Suddenly, Seol Suyeon grabbed Park Minho’s arm. She had spotted a red glow leaking from around a corner ahead.

"Hide. Now.”

The two slipped into a nearby side alley and crouched behind a pile of trash.

A metallic scraping sound gradually approached.

Park Minho and Seol Suyeon held their breath and remained perfectly still.

-Clank, clank.

Soon, the entity appeared. It resembled a human body fused with various tools. The most striking feature was its face.

An industrial angle grinder occupied the place where a head should have been.

Multicolored electrical wires tangled around its neck and spine like exposed veins.

Every time it turned its head, the grinder spun noisily.

-Whiiiiiirrrrr!

The smell of burning metal filled the air. The moment Park Minho saw it, he knew this thing was on a completely different level.

'This……It’s stronger than the Cleaning Supervisor.'

He immediately thought of the Cleaning Supervisor from the Goshiwon Backrooms. The monster that had nearly beaten him to death inside the elevator. The beating had been so brutal that he still occasionally had nightmares about it.

And now something even worse had appeared.

‘At least it hasn’t noticed us.”

The dull, vacant air unique to entities was clearly present. That alone convinced Park Minho that they wouldn’t be discovered if they stayed still.

Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he ought to get something out of this encounter. As he reached into his pocket and began rummaging around, Seol Suyeon shot him a questioning look, asking what he was doing.

Park Minho gestured for her to relax. What he pulled out was a gold coin.

The entity looked exceptionally powerful. He intended to use Shadow Theft to steal one of its anomalous abilities. It was the sort of reckless stunt he never would’ve dreamed of attempting in the past, but after everything he’d survived, he’d grown bold enough to take such risks.

Before the Grinder entity disappeared, Park Minho activated Shadow Theft. Immediately, information about the abilities he could steal flooded into his mind.

[Friction Heat/ Lower Rank/ 5 Coins]

[Temporarily raises surface temperature of an object touched by the user's hand as though it had been pressed against a grinder blade.]

[Excessive use may also harm the user.]

[Cutting/ Intermediate Rank/ 10 Coins]

[Creates a grinder blade capable of cutting through objects.]

[Effective only at close range.]

[Steel Skin/ Intermediate Rank/ 10 Coins]

[Temporarily hardens the user's skin to the durability of steel.]

[Can also be utilized offensively if necessary.]

There were several tempting choices, but the Grinder entity would soon be gone. There wasn’t time to sit and weigh the options.

Park Minho decided to trust his instincts.

'I’ll go with Cutting.'

He dropped 10 gold coins into his shadow. It then immediately seized the ability.

'Good. It worked.’

The Grinder entity appeared completely unaware that anything had happened. It simply continued its heavy footsteps and disappeared into the distance.

"Phew…”

A quiet sigh escaped him. Honestly, Steel Skin had been tempting. His defenses were still one of his biggest weaknesses. But for some reason, his gut had screamed to choose Cutting. So he’d chosen it without hesitation.

"Oppa..."

Seol Suyeon shook her head as if she couldn’t believe him.

"Sorry. I just couldn’t let that one go.”

"No, it’s fine. It worked, right? The more abilities you collect, the better. Let’s stay hidden a little longer before moving.”

"Yeah."

At that moment, a raspy voice spoke from behind them.

"You two alright? Come over here.”

Startled, both of them spun around. At the end of the alley stood a small, dented metal door. An old man was peeking out through it. At first glance, he looked like one of the veteran craftsmen who ran shops in the district.

"Mind lowering that gun a smidge? I’m a person, a person.”

The old man looked alarmed as he stared at the rifle Park Minho had instinctively pointed at him.

“Ah, sorry, sir.”

Even as he apologized, Park Minho glanced toward Seol Suyeon, urging her to confirm. She checked for anomalous energy and nodded. That old man was indeed human.

"Who might you be, sir?”

“I run a welding shop around here. You’re customers of Boss Jung, right? I saw you enter his place.”

“I see. But what exactly happened here?”

“More importantly, are you planning to stand out here all day? Get over here. Hurry!”

Park Minho and Seol Suyeon followed the old man into his shop.

"Haaah......"

The old man lowered himself into a chair and let out a long sigh. Strangely, he didn’t seem surprised by the current situation. If anything, there was a sense of resignation about him, as though he’d always known something like this would happen eventually.

"Sir, do you know anything about what’s happening right now?”

The old man nodded.

"I have a pretty good guess. But first, I want to confirm something. You two are involved in that side of things as well, right? Looking at the young lady’s eyes makes it quite obvious.”

"We are. We do business with Boss Jung.”

“I see……”

The old man sighed deeply enough to sink into the floor before speaking again.

“This is probably because of Boss Gu. This whole mess.”

Something immediately came to Park Minho’s mind.

"You mean Gu Bonjae?”

"How do you know that name?”

"I’ve only heard it. Boss Jung said he was going to check on something that happened at that man’s hardware store.”

"I see."

What the old man told them next was astonishing. Apparently, this man named Gu Bonjae had shut himself inside his hardware store and remained there for 13 years.

"13 years…?”

It sounded impossible. Even if he’d stockpiled food, how could someone stay inside a tiny shop for 13 years?

And the neighbors had simply left him alone?

"I can tell you don’t believe me. That’s understandable.”

"...Honestly, no, I don’t."

"But what if I tell you an anomaly was involved?”

“Ah…… What exactly happened 13 years ago, sir?”

“Boss Gu was originally a Backrooms explorer. Like Boss Jung, the man you trade with. But he was far more accomplished. No explorer on this street ever ventured deeper into the Backrooms than Boss Gu.”

Then one day, during an expedition, Gu Bonjae returned carrying a strange object. A large white egg of the size of an ostrich egg.

After that, he became obsessed with it, completely obsessed, as if it had possessed him. Eventually, he locked himself inside his workshop to work on something involving the egg.

"At first, everyone thought he’d come out after a few days. But weeks passed, and there wasn’t a peep from him. People naturally became worried and tried to check on him, but by then, the shutters wouldn’t budge. It was as though the entire building had been sealed shut by an anomaly.”

It wasn’t as though they could report it either. If they did, the NCE would’ve shown up, and instead of helping, they might’ve erased everyone involved.

"In the end, we had no other choice but to leave it alone. Everyone felt sorry for him. We all wondered what had happened.”

And then 13 years passed just like that. Then, suddenly, noises started coming from inside Gu Bonjae’s hardware store. It wasn’t hard to imagine why everyone on the street had panicked.

"Boss Jung and the others rushed over to investigate, but we never should have done that…”

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