WETRIED TRANSLATIONS

The Legendary Newbie of the Ghost Story Labyrinth

[Translator – Aren]

Chapter 67 - Sallim-dong, Euljiro (4)

The old man was so pale with terror that he couldn’t continue for a long while.

His eyes constantly darted around the room, as if recalling the memory itself was painful.

"Are you alright, sir?”

“……Yees, I’m fine. I’m fine.”

He looked anything but. Watching him, Seol Suyeon took the Manager’s Tumbler from her bag and poured him a cup of barley tea.

“Sir, please have some of this. It helps calm your mind.”

"This...?”

The old man accepted the tea, took a sip, and his eyes widened slightly before he began drinking it in large gulps.

"I know what this is. Sometimes the barley tea from the Backrooms has effects like this.”

Thanks to the tea, his voice became noticeably steadier. His complexion, however, was still as pale as someone on death’s doorstep.

“What exactly happened?”

Park Minho would have liked to give the old man more time, but there wasn’t any to spare, so he asked again.

"...It was a mistake to unlock even a single one of those padlocks.”

Apparently, several of the hardware shop owners had gathered outside Gu Bonjae’s store.

Then from beyond the shutter that had remained silent for 13 years, they heard a voice begging to be let out.

"It called each of us by name, one after another. I’ve never experienced anything so horrifying."

According to the old man, the crowd immediately split into 2 camps.

“One side insisted we had to free Boss Gu. The other said we absolutely mustn’t. Then…”

Jung Manchin, who’d stayed silent until then, ended up unlocking one of the padlocks.

"We all tried to stop him. We should’ve paid more attention. We should have remembered how close he and Boss Gu had been. Maybe we’d all forgotten over the years.”

Fortunately, the shutter had been secured with multiple locks, but the instant just one was opened, the entire shutter exploded outward. And then something impossible happened.

“The moment the shutter blew apart and flew through the air, a pitch-black tide poured out from inside the workshop. I don’t quite know how to describe it.... It felt like the breath of something rotten. I suspect it was some form of anomalous energy.”

The instant that black wave swept through the alley, the entire area twisted.

The sky turned a sickly yellow, like bile flowing backward. A choking smell filled the air, and Sallim-dong began transforming into the Backrooms.

"We could barely breathe, but we still looked inside the workshop where that disaster had come from…”

The old man’s teeth began chattering uncontrollably.

"It…it wasn't a workshop anymore. It looked like the insides of some living creature made from machinery and wires.”

The strangest thing, he said, was the depth of the space. The rear wall of the building, which should have been solid, was simply gone. Instead, a pitch-black corridor stretched endlessly into the distance. And at the far end, they saw a doorway filled with a swirling black vortex.

But that wasn’t even the most horrifying sight.

"Boss Gu had become a complete monster. His entire body had turned jet black…and he’d grown unnaturally tall. Beside him was a shattered egg, and near the shell there was the corpse of something hideous…”

Gu Bonjae hadn’t even acknowledged them. He simply stood there muttering to himself incessantly.

[I have to save him. I have to save him…my son…]

The sheer madness pouring from him had frozen everyone in place.

Then Jung Manchun finally found his voice.

"Hyungnim…… The instant he said that, Boss Gu’s head snapped toward us. Ugh. I thought my heart was going to stop the moment I saw his face. The face of a complete monster.”

He said it looked as though a machine and a human had been fused into one grotesque creature. Its jaw had become grotesquely oversized, and hanging from its gaping mouth instead of a tongue were dozens of electrical wires writhing like tentacles.

"Boss Gu looked at us…and smiled like a ghost. The corners of his mouth stretched all the way to his ears. He looked happy and said that ‘new materials had arrived.’ Materials to save his son. He called us lumps of meat…Aaah!"

The old man clutched his head and screamed. Simply remembering it seemed to inflict unbearable pain.

"Boss Gu! From behind that monster, dozens of chains and electrical cables came writhing toward us! They swept us over! Boss Choi, who was standing right in front, had his chest pierced and was dragged away! Boss Kim had a cable wrap around his neck and was snatched too! Th-the screaming! I can still hear them begging for their lives…!”

Amid all that chaos, the old man had been the only one who managed to crawl and stumble away. The screams echoed behind him the entire time, but he never once found the courage to look back.

"Everyone else was taken. I was the only one who escaped…"

Park Minho and Seol Suyeon were left speechless.

"......"

"......"

The old man let out a long sigh.

"Haah, looks like this is where my road ends.”

"Sir, what do you mean?”

Instead of answering, the old man lifted his shirt. More than half of his wrinkled abdomen had turned pitch black.

"What happened to you?”

"I think it’s something like a poison. I got stabbed by one of those wires while I was running. Ever since then, the blackness has kept spreading.”

"Isn’t there an antidote?”

"How could there be? And even if there were, it’s already too late. I know my own body. I don’t have much time left.”

His complexion truly looked as though he could collapse at any moment. As much as Park Minho pitied him, there was nothing he could do.

"Urgh......"

The old man leaned back in his chair, breathing with difficulty.

"Haah…Haah… Listen carefully.”

"Yes, sir.”

“When the NCE finally gets inside…they’ll erase everyone. The only way to survive is to escape to another level…”

By now, Park Minho already had a good idea where this was leading.

"I think…the only way out is that black vortex beyond the workshop. I can’t imagine any other exit leading to another level…"

A grim expression settled over Park Minho’s face. As if reading his thoughts, the old man continued.

“You’re wondering how you’re supposed to get past that monster, right? But there might be hope.”

"Hope?”

“When I was escaping, I heard the monster that used to be Boss Gu screaming that it didn’t have enough materials.”

"Ah......"

"If that’s true, then it won’t stay inside the workshop forever. It’ll have to wander around for living people.”

The old man was advising them to hide, and when Gu Bonjae left the workshop to take that chance to slip inside.

“If you time it right, you might actually have a chance… The reason I'm telling you all this is because I have one favor to ask.”

"Go ahead."

"I know you probably can’t save everyone who was captured, but if you can save even a few, take them with you when you escape. You’ll have to pass through there anyway…Can you do that?”

Park Minho nodded.

"I think that much is possible.”

"Good. That’s enough for me. Haah……I think it’s time for me to rest.”

After saying everything he needed to, the old man’s condition seemed to rapidly deteriorate. Not long after, he became unable to respond anymore when spoken to even though he was still breathing.

* * *

“Oppa, what are you going to do?”

After a moment of thought. Park Minho made his decision.

"The chances of finding another exit from this place in the time we have left are practically 0. Even if it’s dangerous, I think we have to go there.”

"I’ll follow whatever you decide.”

“Thanks. But let’s do everything we can to avoid crossing paths with Gu Bonjae or whatever entity he’s become.”

The two of them bowed respectfully to the old man, whose breathing had finally ceased, and quietly left the shop.

That was when….

-Vrrrmmmm—.

The entire Backrooms trembled as if struck by a mild earthquake. Park Minho immediately knew what it meant. The Reality Anchors were slowly dismantling the Backrooms.

It was only a slight tremor for now, but as time passed, the changes would become more obvious.

"We need to hurry. As soon as cracks start appearing in the Backrooms, the Special Operations teams might be able to push their way inside.”

“Most likely. They’re experts at fighting in the Backrooms, after all…”

The two of them headed to a nearby 4-story building and climbed to the rooftop. They needed to locate Gu Bonjae.

Standing on the roof, Seol Suyeon scanned the surroundings. If she spotted an exceptionally dense concentration of anomalous energy, there was a good chance Gu Bonjae would be there.

"Oppa, over there! It’s so dense it’s almost black instead of red.”

"Just hearing that tells me we’re in for a rough time…”

Still, they had no other choice. Park Minho and Seol Suyeon descended from the building and headed toward the source.

* * *

Now fully transformed into an entity, Gu Bonjae stood nearly 2.5 meters tall, his body thick with muscles, his skin as dark as soot. In places, the flesh had peeled away entirely, exposing raw muscle beneath. Hardware tools had fused directly into his body, becoming part of his living tissue.

"Excellent! Simply excellent!”

Gu Bonjae hacked apart the people he’d captured with various tools, then used the pieces like machine parts to build something.

The grotesque creation resembled a four-legged beast assembled from human remains. Between each severed body part, he threaded thick electrical cables. Batteries, voltage regulators, and countless mechanical components had been grafted into the flesh.

Gu Bonjae genuinely believed this horrific construct would become the new body his son would one day inhabit.

"What do you think, Manchun? Kehehehe.”

Although Gu Bonjae had butchered every other craftsmen in the alley, he had deliberately spared Jun Manchun. The two had once shared a bond deeper than friendship after all.

"Hyungnim…Sob, Hyungnim. This is my fault. Just kill me.”

“Manchun. We’re too close for you to say something like that.”

"If I hadn’t given you that bad information, none of this would’ve happened! I’m the one who deserves to die!”

For years, Jung Manchun had carried overwhelming guilt over what had happened in the past. After all, it was because of the false information he had provided that Gu Bonjae’s beloved son had met his tragic end.

"Manchun... It wasn’t your fault. Back then, the world beyond was overflowing with bad information. I know you did everything you could to verify it.”

“But even so, because of me…”

Jung Manchun hadn’t deliberately given Gu Bonjae false information. The intelligence he’d passed along had simply been wrong. Back then, inaccurate information about the Backrooms was commonplace. The tragedy was that, because of that mistake, Gu Bonjae’s only son, Gu Taeson, had been caught in an anomalous event and transformed into an entity.

Losing his only child to the Backrooms had shattered Gu Bonjae. He searched everywhere, desperate to find a way to turn his son back into a human.

But no such method existed. Eventually he fell into despair.

“Then one day, some people calling themselves the Molting Church came to me. They said they could give Taeson a new life.”

"Hyungnim……”

"They told me we’d first have to return Taeson to an egg, and then he’d hatch again as a new being. It sounded so convincing.”

Following the Molting Church’s secret ritual, Gu Bonjae regressed his son, who had become an entity, back into an egg. Back into the dormant state before an entity awakens.

"But for some reason, Taeson never woke up.”

His voice grew lower and colder. His face slowly twisted into something demonic.

"13 years. I held onto that egg for 13 whole years…Do you have any idea what it feels like to watch your dead child hatch from an egg? Hm? Manchun.”

Jung Manchun lowered his gaze toward the shattered shell. Lying beside it was the lifeless body of a newborn entity.

"...Hyungnim."

"But the people in this neighborhood are kind. They’ve all been so generous, helping me like this.”

Gu Bonjae turned toward the grotesque biomechanical construct he’d assembled from hacked-apart human bodies. He reached for the corpse of his dead son.

"There still aren’t enough materials. So it isn’t finished yet, but we can at least give it a little test run. If this works, my poor Taeson will have a new body. Right, Manchun?”

“Hyungnim…Please stop! That thing isn’t Taeson anymore!”

“That’s far enough.”

Gu Bonjae growled under his breath. Then he drove a thick cable into the limp corpse of the baby entity and mounted it onto the grotesque biomechanical body made from dismembered human remains.

“Well then, Manchun. It is time to witness a miracle. Kekehehehe!”

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