WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Little Prince in the Ossuary

Chapter 120

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April Vengeance (8)

They had to go down two more levels to reach the bridge.

The stairwell was blocked by a thick barricade. All kinds of materials had been piled up there, and none of it was sloppy. The investigator motioned for the boy officer to look. It had been tied with wire, nailed down, and fixed in place. It filled the stairwell wall to wall, thick enough that taking it apart would take a long time.

They found bullet marks on the wall. Gyeoul ran a finger over them, checking depth and caliber. They were clear signs of automatic weapon fire.

Dozens of corpses were scattered around, all in horrific condition. They had been badly torn apart and eaten. Fisssh. Rotten gas leaked from an anus, and maggots swarmed over the skin.

The investigator flipped one body over. The skin around the eyes had blackened. Black fluid had seeped from the mouth. Telegraphy marks and rot covered the skin from head to toe. Frowning and covering her nose with the back of her hand, Agent Gibson stabbed the corpse with her bayonet. Thunk, thunk. She cut and scraped, searching for something.

Swarms of black flies buzzed in every direction. They kept landing everywhere, enough to annoy the FBI agent badly. Gyeoul waved them off for her, then asked quietly.

“What are you looking for?”

“Just a second... this.”

Caught on the tip of her knife was a small, wet, sticky metal fragment. A shattered bullet. She quickly found the rest of the pieces too. Then she wiped the knife on the carpet, took off her glove, and touched the fragments with her bare hand. She seemed to be checking their temperature.

Now the female investigator gave her professional assessment.

“The mutants showed no skin rot. No exceptions. That tells us the infection spread so fast there was basically no time gap between individuals. But this corpse, judging by body temperature and lividity, has been dead at least eight hours. This barricade is strange too. If the infection spread that quickly, they would not have had time to build something this solid. This is only a possibility, but.”

The implication was obvious. A human versus human conflict had broken out on this ship. The infection explosion was probably a disaster that happened in the middle of it. She spoke again in a calm, low voice.

“People armed at a military level shot civilians. If things got bad enough to need a barricade, the scale of the fighting must have been significant. Which means it was not a one-sided massacre.”

Gyeoul nodded.

“Then we need to be ready to fight people.”

“Yes. We should. This is getting messier by the minute.”

The investigator let out a heavy sigh and glanced at the boy officer. This rescue operation had effectively begun because of one person’s stubborn insistence. The boy forced an awkward smile.

But she did not complain. That was the restraint a field agent should have. Complaints were pointless. Only assessments mattered. She was still not considering withdrawal.

“We should find another route. We do not know what is waiting on the other side of that barricade.”

“What about the elevator?”

He was not suggesting they simply ride down. To find another stairwell, they would have to go all the way to the center of the ship. There had been an escalator before that point, but the layout showed it led to the Grand Buffet at the ship’s core. It was exposed on all sides and extremely dangerous.

‘A perfect place for a mutant group to hide.’

It had been the same at Atascadero State Hospital. The mutants chose locations and set ambushes. In the end, attacking humans was about increasing hosts. Overwhelming the enemy with numbers was an effective way to reduce losses. For that, wide open space was essential.

“That should work. Let’s move.”

The investigator agreed. Gyeoul took point, and she followed. Only one set of footsteps could be heard. He had only just crossed from the realm of genius into something superhuman, and this was effectively Gyeoul’s current limit. Any farther would consume too many resources.

‘In this world, even mastering a single skill was never enough...’

Gyeoul was the unusual one, repeating the same world twenty-seven times. In a world where people could break past their limits, few had the patience to endure repeated failure.

That was what the controller personality had told him.

Every so often, Gyeoul raised his fist. While the investigator kept watch, he searched cabins for clues. But after six rooms, all he found were hanging corpses. The mutants had eaten from the easiest height first. From waist to thigh, only bone remained.

The corridor widened. Cabins lined both sides, and six elevators stood in the center. Every car was stopped on deck 5.

“They are all in emergency stop. What was on deck 5?”

At the investigator’s question, Gyeoul recalled the layout. The intelligence correction helped a lot.

“A grand theater, an atrium, a casino, two dance clubs, a cafe, a restaurant, and five bars...”

All of them were tied to pleasure. That was true of luxury cruises in general, but deck 5 was the most extreme case.

‘Starting with the decision to build an atrium at the center of a ship...’

An atrium was an open-sky space. In an enclosed vessel, how much empty volume did you have to sacrifice to create that same feeling of openness? On a cruise ship, it could only be the most extravagant kind of wasted space.

Agent Gibson tilted her head.

“I do not know. It feels meaningful, but we do not have enough clues.”

Then she muttered that one thing was clear: survivors were likely there.

“I will open the door first.”

Gyeoul shoved his fingers into the gap and pulled. With his enhanced combat ability, opening it was easy. The FBI agent pushed the opened door with a puzzled look. Then she looked back at the boy officer, even more puzzled. It was only a brief delay.

“Please wait a moment. Rappelling down is easy, but in that position, even Lieutenant Han would have trouble opening the door.”

She went into one of the cabins Gyeoul had already searched and came back with an emergency descent line. Gyeoul drew his pistol and fired three shots past her shoulder. Thud, thump, thud. A locked cabin door opened, and the things that came out in silence had their heads blown apart one after another.

The agent flinched, but did not turn around. As if nothing had happened, she focused on her work. She made a small adjustment to the descent device so the drop could be controlled.

“All right, done. Go down. I will hold here.”

Gyeoul descended on the rope. The vertical shaft had almost no work lights. Far below, only the elevator car sat in darkness.

Keeeeeng. The door, forced open by brute strength, shrieked in metal. Beyond it was pitch black. Even with night vision goggles, he could barely see anything. As a final check, he snapped a disposable infrared light stick and tossed it in. A green glow that felt flimsy against such dense darkness. Not enough to illuminate the long corridor.

‘Really nothing at all?’

If mutants were nearby, they should have reacted to the noise. He radioed the investigator that she could come down, then finally stepped onto the floor. He unclipped the descent line and scanned the area.

The air was rotten. The investigator came down right after him and nearly retched. Gyeoul advised her.

“Put on your gas mask.”

“No, no. I am fine. I will adjust soon.”

“You do not need to push yourself... one person is enough.”

By enough, he meant scent-based detection. Against infected mutants, smell was an important clue. Their skin might not rot, but mutant body odor was clearly different from corpse rot. Their metabolism was far more active than a human’s, to the point sweaty, unwashed people seemed almost harmless by comparison.

‘If this were Korea, it would be a little different.’

Mutants basically inherited traits from the infected host. Functional mutations came after that. So in a Korea-based setting, smell became less important. Not useless, just less decisive.

Then another thought came to him.

In this world, I probably will not need to go that far.

Gyeoul and the investigator walked through a corridor steeped in death. This was not disease. This was the aftermath of human malice. He held the infrared light to the wall, and something invisible before now came into view. Nine black letters.

Vengeance.

Night vision stripped out color, but Gyeoul guessed the word had been written in blood. Heads lay rolling across the floor.

The investigator sighed.

“I hope the madmen who did this are already dead. What kind of grudge makes people torture others like this...”

She was right. The headless bodies were stripped naked. Severe abuse marks remained. In the worst cases, people had been flayed to death. Strips of peeled flesh were scattered everywhere.

“Who knows. There is no limit to how much one person can hate another.”

Gyeoul spoke from experience. People had limits in every other way, but from what he had lived through, hatred was the one emotion with none.

‘People always say love has no end too, but I have never seen anyone love like that.’

Did that kind of feeling really exist?

Rose might be the one exception. Even as he thought it, Gyeoul was not sure. It might just be an illusion born from wanting to believe. Expectations produced disappointment. In his life before death, he had grown used to giving up what he wanted, what he had, and what he could have had.

‘Still, I did not want to give up what I had to have.’

Gyeoul cut off the thought. He kept sinking into the past, peeling the scabs off wounds that had never healed. A bad habit.

They kept moving. The hundred-meter corridor remained a gallery of cruelty from end to end. Sites of beheadings and executions. Marks of fierce battle.

At the approach to the bridge, a marble dining table had been set up as cover. It was riddled with bullet scars. Beyond it lay a soldier’s rotting corpse, empty-handed. So where had his weapon gone?

They finally reached the bridge. Cold sea wind came through broken windows. It was dark here too, but each terminal was still lit. The investigator, who had expected the worst, exhaled in relief.

“The system is unfamiliar, but I think I can handle it. First, we need to reduce speed.”

“You can steer a ship too?”

“Yes. During narcotics enforcement, all kinds of things happen. You end up fighting in all kinds of places, on land, at sea, even in the air... so we learn basic aircraft and vessel control. It is not a mandatory qualification for every agent, though.”

So the old world had been dramatic in its own way. The dangerous career she had built, and the past records that supported it, left a stronger impression on Gyeoul than he expected. In previous world loops, he had never been this deeply involved with the FBI or the CIA.

He felt a light shift of inertia. Proof the ship had started to decelerate.

“I will turn us to heading 0-1-0. We at least need to avoid the typhoon.”

Agent Gibson turned the helm left. It was unavoidable, but now everyone on board would realize someone had taken the bridge.

As expected, the bridge could connect to internal lines across all cabins. The issue was that it required more than a thousand repeated operations. Before attempting that, Gyeoul and the investigator sealed the bridge door and checked CCTV first. It might reduce the amount of internal-line work needed.

The first place they checked was, of course, deck 5.

‘This place is not normal either.’

Unlike this area on deck 8, power had not been cut there. So the blood soaking the atrium showed through raw and clear. The corpses in the casino were half-naked. In one bar, mutants sat crouched, doing nothing and letting time pass.

“Wait, was that shot just now from the grand theater?”

The investigator worked the console. The feed that had swept past the theater returned to it. Countless mutants were roaming there as well. But Gyeoul’s gaze fixed on the stage. For some reason, it was full of severed ropes, and one mutant was tied up.

‘A leash?’

That was not all. It was a female mutant, and it looked completely different from everything they had seen so far. The immune rejection looked severe enough to be grotesque. Flesh had been stripped away where the rope was wound tight. The other end of the rope was fixed to a stake.

The investigator must have sensed the same wrongness. She rewound the theater footage.

And Gyeoul finally understood what Vengeance meant.

============================ Author’s Afterword ============================

#Viewer Chat - Unread Messages

It is coming out soon. I kept delaying it because so many people dislike it... haha. I think it will come with The Season When Rose Withers after April Vengeance ends. Though that might change.

#Illegal Sharing

I usually do not say things like this, but...

To everyone reposting this novel everywhere, please stop. The author sees all of it.

I am not saying I will report you. Even if I try, I know the chance of catching anyone is not even one in ten. Those sites are very slippery. Overseas servers, no IP collection, no personal info required, no access logs, secret comments, one to one anonymous private exchanges, and so on...

At this point, if I had time to file lawsuits, I would rather spend that time writing.

The reason I am saying this today is simple... lately you have been reposting it very often. Some of you are updating almost in real time...

And what gets said there puts the author in an awkward position.

It is fun, please upload more, I hope it keeps updating.

Hahaha. For it to keep updating, the author has to be able to keep writing.

I am trying to see whether being an author can work as a profession, but like this, I can only conclude it will be difficult.

If this is a novel you would not care whether it exists or not, then I guess there is nothing I can do.

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