WETRIED TRANSLATIONS

The Legendary Newbie of the Ghost Story Labyrinth

[Translator – Aren]

Chapter 83 - State-of-the-Art Military Base (4)

"What? What is it?”

Nicola took the time I handed him, then tilted his head in confusion.

"Huh…? What is this? Isn’t that me?”

"Yeah. That’s your photo.”

Nicola stared blankly at the ID card, almost as if he were hypnotized. Printed on it was information he had absolutely no memory of.

His name, place of residence, occupation, and a small box in one corner.

"Drago......."

Nicola read the name listed under Guardian. It was the very same name that had surfaced during our night watch. Now it was staring back at him from an official document.

His hands began to tremble, then he winced.

"My head hurts. Ugh……Why all of a sudden?”

"Are you okay?”

He was in too much pain to answer properly. Instead, he seemed to focus on something deep inside himself. Then, with an anxious look, he glanced around frantically.

"That’s right, I’m sure I have something for situations like this……!”

Suddenly, Nicola began digging through his belongings. It was the phase-compression backpack with the name tag reading Nicola.

He rummaged through it in a panic.

"Found it…!”

He pulled out a small device no bigger than the palm of his hand. Its surface was covered with a dial and several buttons. It looked like some kind of measuring instrument.

"What’s that?”

Instead of answering, Nicola hurriedly activated the device and pressed it against his temple.

-Whiiiir.

The machine hummed. At the same time, numbers on the thing's digital display began climbing steadily. Keeping his eyes narrowed in concentration, Nicola adjusted the dial, then pressed it against his temple again.

'Looks like he’s doing something important. Is he calibrating it?’

I decided to simply watch. Little by little, Nicola’s expression began to change. The clueless look typical of a newly enlisted private faded away, replaced by the bright, sharp gaze of a genius or something.

Then his brow furrowed.

"I knew it…It really was an anomalous interference. And a strong one at that.”

"What?"

"Please wait a moment, Private Park. I know this must look insane, but there’s a reason for it.”

"No, don't worry about me. Just do whatever you need to.”

A moment later, Nicola reached into the phase-compression backpack again. This time he pulled out a syringe that looked remarkably similar to a military nerve-agent antidote injector.

Without the slightest hesitation, he gripped it firmly and jammed it into the side of his neck.

"Whoa..."

Nicola had a lot more nerve than I’d given him credit for. Even if someone ordered me to do that, I wasn’t sure I could do it.

A moment later, Nicola closed his eyes. His breathing grew ragged. He struggled desperately for air.

"Haah! Huff! Haah!”

Several minutes passed. Finally, he let out a long sigh, as though something lodged inside him had finally broken free.

"......Phew."

Nicola tossed the syringe aside. Then he opened his eyes. The look in them had changed. That alone made him seem like an entirely different person.

"Brother Minho."

That single phrase made something stir deep inside my chest. I’d never heard him call me that before, and yet it felt strangely familiar.

"Thankfully all my memories came back.”

"Really? So you’ve come back to your senses?”

"Yeah, I remember everything. Who we are and why we’re here.”

Once his memories returned, the stiff military speech disappeared as well. His way of talking naturally reverted to normal.

"How did you do it?”

In response, Nicola held up the device in his hand.

"This. It’s a type of anomaly detector. More specifically, it’s designed to measure the human body rather than the surrounding environment.”

"So you used that to analyze yourself and figured out you’d been affected by the anomaly?”

"Exactly."

"Can you do the same for me?”

Honestly, I felt incredibly frustrated. I knew something was wrong, but too many of my memories were still missing.

I asked with a glimmer of hope, but Nicola shook his head.

"Not possible.”

"Why?"

"To use this device, you need a chip implanted in your brain. It works through an invasive brain interface. You don’t have one, Brother Minho.”

"You actually went that far?”

“If I wanted to survive in the Backrooms, I had to do whatever it took.”

"I see. Then I guess it can’t be helped.”

Seeing the disappointment on my face, Nicola smiled.

"It’s okay. I’ll tell you everything. Where we are and who we really are.”

After that, Nicola explained a great many things. What I’d heard from the Inspector had only been a broad overview. Nicola’s explanation was on an entirely different level.

"So we came to Floor 15 looking for something called the Error Junkyard. And we got here using something called an Entity Rift?”

"Yes, but instead of finding the Error Junkyard, we ended up trapped inside Floor 15.”

There was no way anyone could have made up an explanation this detailed on the spot. I had no choice but to believe him.

"Yeah."

"This is your stuff. So it’s true. Floor 15’s entities really don’t touch explorers’ belongings. That's quite fascinating.”

I looked through my phase-compression backpack and everything that had spilled out of it. It was obvious the times had simply been tossed there without a second thought.

"Found it. Here’s the phone you were using.”

"Ah, thanks.”

The screen unlocked immediately with facial recognition. That was proof enough that it really was mine.

The first thing I opened was the photo gallery. Then my eyes went wide.

"...!”

Wait, we were living together? There was no way I could believe that.

"You’re kidding."

"I’m not."

Looking closer, there was a selfie of me and a woman named Seol Suyeon, lying side by side on a bed.

Seol Suyeon’s expression was bright and adorable. She was happily holding up a V-sign with her fingers. The me beside her was smiling just as happily.

Honestly, they were lying so close together that it would have felt perfectly natural if the next photo had been the two of us kissing.

"Wow......."

What the hell was the past me doing? I was living with a woman like that? I can’t believe it.

"Did this Seol Suyeon come to Floor 15 as well?”

"No."

"Then how did she send me that letter?”

"What are you talking about?”

I explained everything about the letter. When I finished, Nicola nodded as though it all made sense.

"I think she noticed that something was wrong and decided to intervene. It’s even possible that we’ve been trapped on Floor 15 for quite a long time already, Brother.”

"So because we never came back, our teammate Seol Suyeon, who was still outside, decided to take action?”

"Exactly. Using a morale letter was a smart move. It fit perfectly into the military setting. If she’d panicked and come to visit us in person, she probably would’ve been caught by Floor 15 as well.”

Fortunately, with Nicola’s memories restored, he was going to be a tremendous help from here on.

* * *

Little by little, my own memories also began to return, but compared to Nicola, who had practically awakened all at once, my progress was painfully slow.

Fragments of lost memories resurfaced one scene at a time. According to Nicola, that was because I’d become firmly convinced that this world was fake.

Oddly enough, though, while my memories recovered only slowly, one area showed noticeable progress.

My unique ability. Reality Manipulation.

Nicola told me that in my current condition, using the reality-manipulating powers of the King’s Noose was impossible.

Apparently, even back when I was at my strongest, using it had been a matter of life and death.

If I tried now, it would practically be suicide. On the other hand, my own, weaker form of Reality Manipulation should still be usable.

"Brother, practice whenever you have free time.”

"How do I do that?”

"You have to genuinely wish for reality to change.”

"That’s incredibly vague, don’t you think?”

“I can’t explain it any better. Only you know how your own ability works. I’m just repeating what you told me before.”

"Got it. I’ll give it a shot.”

After that, while Nicola and I discussed how to carry out our desertion, I devoted every spare moment to practicing Reality Manipulation.

Naturally, it wasn’t easy.

For the first entire week, absolutely nothing happened. I started wondering whether I’d simply gone insane.

I couldn’t get a grasp on what Nicola meant by genuinely wishing for it.

If there was one thing I truly wanted, it was for Relentless Demon to finally get what was coming to him after tormenting the squad day after day.

'Wait. Maybe he could actually help.’

Whether I liked it or not, he was one of the people who stirred the strongest emotion in me. If that was the case, perhaps I should try using Reality Manipulation on something involving him.

As luck would have it, Relentless Demon was eating one of the cream buns from the mess hall.

"Chomp, smack. Munch.”

He ate so obnoxiously loudly. According to him, people back home always praised him for having such a hearty appetite. What a load of crap.

I focused with all my might on a single image.

'A cockroach…A cockroach…’

Nicola had told me that my own Reality Manipulation could only produce small-scale effects.

So I wasn’t aiming for anything dramatic.

I simply wished that a cockroach would appear inside the cream bun Relentless Demon was eating.

"Uugh......."

Cold sweat ran down as I concentrated. At that exact moment, Relentless Demon stopped chewing and stared down at the bun in his hand with a puzzled look.

-Crunch.

"What’s that I just bit into? Did they start putting weird stuff in these cream buns or something?”

Relentless Demon looked down at the bun in his hand. Then he froze. Nestled inside the white cream was the half-chewed remains of a cockroach.

"Uwaaaaah!”

Chunks of bread and cream exploded from Relentless Demon’s mouth.

"Fuck! Fuuuuck! What the hell is this?! Aaaagh!”

The senior soldiers nearby nearly died laughing.

"Hahahahaha! He ate a cockroach!"

"Ahaha! What, Relentless Demon? Run out of food, so you started eating bugs?!”

Meanwhile, my own heart was pounding.

'It actually worked.'

It wasn't a coincidence. I could feel the backlash immediately as though my brain itself had been violently shaken. A moment later, warm, sticky blood trickled from my nose.

It was the price of forcing my ability to activate while my memories were still incomplete.

'Never thought the day would come when Relentless Demon actually helped me.’

The effect was tiny, but thanks to the intense anger I felt toward the abuse and hazing that poisoned life in the barracks, I’d managed to reclaim a fragment of my Reality Manipulation.

It was little more than a toy-like power for now. Still, I had a feeling it would become useful when the time came.

* * *

The next target was the administrative supply sergeant Gu Bonjae.

"Sergeant Gu, do you happen to know someone named Gu Taeson?”

I happened to have business in the administrative office, so I asked while I was there. Gu Bonjae merely titled his head.

"Gu Tecson? Which company is he with?”

Apparently, he assumed I was asking about someone from another company. He was a stubborn NCO who cared about nothing except work. Jokes simply didn’t work on him.

So I skipped all the half-measures. The only thing the Inspector had said Gu Bonjae truly cared about was Gu Taeson. Yet he didn’t react in the slightest.

It was as though his mind had become so thoroughly molded by military life that everything else had been erased.

"Never mind.”

I practically fled the administrative office. A little later, I met up with Nicola.

"No luck at all. What do we do now?”

"Hmm. If even mentioning his son doesn’t work, I’m honestly out of ideas. What if we bring some of his belongings from the recycling station?”

"No, that could just create more problems. He might decide it’s suspicious and have all of our abandoned equipment cleared away.”

"Hmm…What do we do, then?”

Nicola’s question was met with silence. I didn’t have an answer.

We were completely stuck. Then someone else answered for me.

"You need to approach him differently.”

It was a voice I hadn’t heard in a while.

"Sergeant Ma!”

Standing there was Sergeant Ma Ilho from the neighboring company. Somehow, the mysterious interruptions that had always prevented us from talking were nowhere to be seen.

"How did you get here? Something always interrupted us before.”

"I was never affected by this floor’s anomaly, so the environment itself was trying to stop us. Fortunately, I found a way around it, but I don't know how long it’ll keep working. Floor 15 keeps adapting. It keeps sealing off those workarounds.”

"Sergeant Ma, how were you able to avoid the anomaly in the first place?”

Ma Ilho looked at me with a meaningful smile.

"It’s simple. I’m an entity too.”

"What?”

"I’m serious. You used to call me Unit 1.”

According to him, Ma Ilho was simply a shortened form of Mannequin Faceling Unit 1.

_________________________________________________________________________

마네킹 페이스링 1호 = Mannequin Faceling (마네킹 페이스링) Unit 1 (1(일) 호)
마일호 = Ma Ilho

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