WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ The Little Prince in the Ossuary

Chapter 126

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April Vengeance (14)

Hunger was the force that made parents eat their own children. Flesh from things no longer human must have been easier to tear apart than your own child. So there was nothing strange about that filthy man not being alone. A taboo broken together was no longer a taboo.

Thud! Thwack! Thud-thud-thwack!

Marble was a soft stone. Under a rain of bullets, it broke apart in dull chunks. At the entrance of what had once been a luxurious hall, sharp milky-white hail poured toward Gyeoul as he hid behind a statue. A heavy warning from 「Survival Instinct」. Gyeoul crouched low. Boom! A huge head dropped exactly where his leg had been a moment earlier. A face twisted in pain. Eyes with no pupils looked as if they were asking the boy a question.

What now.

Loud gunfire echoed. Dozens of angry men and women were armed with automatic rifles, all furious at Gyeoul. He even saw rockets lying around. Still, only small-caliber rounds were flying. They probably did not know how to use anything besides rifles. No one braced the stock, so their aim was a mess. They had been ordinary civilians, after all. It was surprising enough that they could handle rifles with brains already rotting. Still, their numbers made them dangerous.

No choice but to kill them?

His finger slid into the trigger guard as he thought. Even if they had been normal people, trying to talk in this situation would have been hard. With lesions in their brains, it was hopeless.

If luck stayed with him, he might subdue a few alive. Otherwise, he could not pass. Beyond a hall full of broken barricades and empty ammo cans lay the final destination, the Grand Galley. A survivor group should be inside. Mad cannibals too, and food of unknown origin they had been saving. The part about survivors was only hope for now...

Gyeoul could not find any drive in himself. Alone, he chewed on a thought. Maybe he should have listened to the FBI agent.

Whatever the situation was, he did not have much time. The statue he leaned on was already too damaged to recognize. Even the pedestal looked close to collapse. Lasting five more minutes would be lucky. Had he dragged this out too long? From the stairs ahead, blind mutants were coming down. Stumbling, groping, forcing their way forward. They flowed like thick liquid. In the end, the roulette spun with shell casings had failed to do its job.

Gyeoul aimed his rifle at the approaching mutants. The sights lined up quickly. But he did not pull the trigger. After a moment's thought, he lowered the muzzle.

The noise was behind them.

The blind ones were worked up. Their heads snapped side to side. Ratatatat. Filthy saliva sprayed through clacking teeth. To creatures that had learned human weapons, gunfire was a signal that hosts were nearby. Gyeoul waited for the melted-face pack to pass him by.

Kiiiaaaak!

The ones hit by gunfire became guides. Hearing the screams, the rest of the group found direction all at once. Behind the statue was a safe zone. The mutant mass split right in front of Gyeoul. Some moments were close calls. Creatures shoved out of line, or odd ones that came straight at him. Before he knew it, they had formed a wall. No gap to slip through.

Gyeoul jumped back. He kicked the marble figures and flipped over. He cleared the wall of living corpses, dodged the hands clawing empty air behind it, and landed rough. Still fine. Thud. The sound of his feet hitting and his knees dropping was swallowed by the chaotic roar of gunfire.

Now Gyeoul pushed into the blind mutant group. It was his second maze of screaming hunger today. Conditions were worse this time, with bullets pouring in, but it was still possible. He started fighting, using moving corpses as cover.

Tatatang!

A three-round burst blew a woman's head apart. Gyeoul moved at once. Mutants swarmed around him. That swarm became a thick protective wall. It did not last long, but for Gyeoul it lasted long enough to fire several more times. Tatatang! Tatang! Tatatang! He used two or three rounds per target because of their tumors. The swollen masses were thick enough to catch bullets.

Some people still did not die right away even after taking those hits.

Yes, people. A man looked at his dead companion and wailed in grief. Different from the survivors likely inside the Grand Galley, different from the monsters Gyeoul was using as shields.

"Honeyyy! Nooo!"

The man threw himself over his dead wife and sobbed. Bang! Gyeoul put a round through his head, and a deep discomfort rose in him. Every pull of the trigger felt worse.

Stopping the fight was impossible. There were so many line-of-fire warnings that they became confusing. He started regretting the ambush where he had tried to knock out that rotting man earlier. Even so, that had been the best call in that moment, and even if he went back, he would make the same choice.

When resignation was unavoidable, better to hurry.

Meanwhile, the mutants desperately searched for Gyeoul, who was invisible to them. Every time he fired from among them, he had to move fast. He kept shifting, taking cover behind each freshly clustered group, then laid down aimed fire. Mutants were blown apart right in front of him. It was the firepower from the other side, meant to kill Gyeoul.

Their aim was almost nonexistent, but against tightly packed mutant groups, even that mattered.

Blood and flesh splashed like a midsummer downpour. The boy could not stay clean. Better this way. He was among creatures that were blind and sorted by smell. Stinking of plague from Telegraphy was not a disadvantage. The investigator would have been horrified if she saw him.

He only had to keep it out of his mouth. He had already seen that rotting man.

I need to control the pace.

Now Gyeoul adjusted the rhythm of the gunfight. He held back from killing too fast on the other side. He was factoring in how quickly mutants dropped after dying. Best case, the enemy would be disabled right as his cover disappeared.

Then a desperate scream rang out.

"Whyyy! Why! Wh-why won't it hi-hit, ah, ah, hiiim!"

It was that same man. Unlike when he had run from Gyeoul earlier, now he was enraged enough for his eyes to roll back. Bloodshot eyes were clear even from far away. Wild with fury, he limped as he rushed in. His leg had already healed enough for him to move. Truly an inhuman body.

Mutants latched onto the man. He shoved them away and kept coming. Honestly, he was better than Gyeoul at using mutants as shields.

Bang! Gyeoul shot his knee. Crunch. The leg bent at a grotesque angle.

"Aaaah! It hurts! Haaaan Gyeoooul! Uaaagh! I'll kill you! I'll kill you, you bastard!"

His companions ran out to save him. A few clumsily tried to shield him, and the rest kept firing in blind rage even while mutants grabbed them. Their hit rate dropped even more. Click, click. Some acted like they had forgotten how to swap magazines.

In the end, all of them turned that way. A comedy and tragedy born of low intelligence and extreme agitation. Their blame and curses toward the boy were painfully repetitive. Idiot, moron! Crude, simple words that fit nothing around them. Not even one tenth of the violent emotion on their faces came through.

Then the mutants started biting them.

What?

Gyeoul froze in confusion. He had assumed those monster-like people would not be attacked. On deck 5, that man had run through mutant groups like open ground. Was it because they used guns? Because of the smell of gunpowder? Because they screamed like humans? Or... had these things learned in the meantime?

That rotting man and his companions were torn apart before Gyeoul could do anything. It was a savage fight over a food bowl. Hungry beasts yanked at them to make eating easier, and blood burst out in heavy waves while their bodies stretched tight in midair. Bones shifted. Flesh ripped.

Not hosts, prey. To mutants that infected living humans and ate dead humans, that man and his companions were effectively corpses already.

What did this dumbfounding scene even mean? Gyeoul frowned. Since boarding this ship, nothing had gone right. Even the path that brought him here had been nothing to smile about.

"Y-you... because... of... you...!"

As Gyeoul passed, the man being eaten spat out rage. Blood foam gurgled in his throat. He would not last long. Gyeoul passed in silence and picked one of the weapons the rotting man and his group had failed to use: a rusted machine gun stained with blood.

Click. The charging handle was hard to pull, but the weapon still worked.

Inside the broken, collapsed barricade, empty ammo cans were scattered everywhere. Had this been the Governor's last defense line before they were pushed into the Grand Galley? Gyeoul kicked through the pile. Crash. Loud metal clatter rang out as it toppled. Mutants turned their attention back.

He did not care. His foot caught on something. A full ammo can, heavy in weight. Five total. Enough. He set the machine gun with a can attached on top of the barricade. Then he pulled the trigger.

Kakakakang! Kakak! Kakakak!

The shots were sharper than usual. Gyeoul sprayed indiscriminate fire at what had chased him from the casino to here. Eek, every time a round jammed, clearing it by yanking the handle was a nuisance. Exactly the kind of weapon that starts failing after just a day in bad conditions.

Blind monsters still charged. But with almost no flat path, they only became corpses snagged on obstacles. Their numbers had already dropped a lot too. One that somehow ran straight in got shredded apart while still in full sprint posture.

He did not even need the fifth ammo can. Still, he loaded it just in case, in case negotiations with the Governor went badly.

Crossing the quiet hall, Gyeoul approached the rotting man once more.

He was dead.

No surprise. He had not expected otherwise.

Gyeoul tilted his head. He felt sickened. World after world had repeated in ways that fed delusion, and both positive and negative stimuli had grown familiar to him long ago. Had his attachment-free life made his heart impossible to shake? He had thought so.

People who became like monsters yet did not eat humans. People who ate humans and survived like monsters. The side that still had a human heart... that was not even hard to tell.

Still, could this dead man be called human?

He thought again. Himself, with only a mind and no body. People in the outer world, with bodies but no mind. And virtual personalities with no essence at all. In Gyeoul's eyes, none of those could be called fully human.

Body, mind, essence. None of them was optional for being human. Gyeoul believed that. Whether here or outside, it was a world with no real humans either way.

I should not hate like this.

Gyeoul let out a long breath.

I need to vent. It would be good if I could kill something that looked like a person but was not one. He wanted that feeling, like the weight of a grudge-heavy stone finally turning into relief. It was getting harder to feel that with each passing day.

Would the Governor be able to save his life? At the very least, he should have picked one unnecessary bone in advance. Carrying the machine gun, Gyeoul moved toward the passage leading to the Grand Galley.

============================ Author's Afterword ============================

#Q&A

Q. Caligos: @Childlike innocence is charging! I have a question for you, Author. Until now, only up to Gamma had been mentioned for enhanced mutant tiers, so I thought Gamma was the end. But this time a different tier showed up. Do enhanced mutant stages go up to Omega? Or is there more after that? Also, if you gain Morgellons antibodies through Plague Immunity, does infection-related Game Over disappear completely during Game Over runs? And has Gyeoul ever cleared even one run so far? Also, I really hope this story full of childlike innocence gets published as either print or ebook!

A. Yes. The final grade for enhanced mutants is Omega. To prevent misunderstanding, a grade can rise by criteria other than direct combat power increase as well.

Plague Immunity is a condition for vaccine development, and if there is no faction with enough foundation to research a vaccine, it is basically a benefit that does not matter except for the player himself. After vaccination, death by infection disappears.

Lastly, Gyeoul has never cleared this world setting even once.

Q. SpinMeat: @I thought my brain had rotted, but after reading your work I realized it had been fermenting because it overflowed with childlike innocence. Who should I give this overflowing childlike innocence to? DemonSultan does not answer contacts, and CrawlingChaos curses at me whenever he sees me. Please recommend just one person.

A. Obviously you should give it to me. I feel like I am going to die from childlike-innocence deficiency and sleep deprivation. :)

Q. JangSEE: @If it is not a spoiler, can you answer? Are the original creators still alive? Or were they already wiped out instead of frying chicken?

A. Some are alive, and some are dead.

Q. NovelJason: @If you write wuxia, would it be in the classic Jin Yong style? If you do write it, would you build your own world setting? (Personally I like Jin Yong's wuxia novels, so I would be happy if you wrote one. haha)

A. Classic wuxia is not popular, so... I checked buyer stats for one work, and readers over 50 were 74%. It has become a much more niche genre now, even compared to something like Ossuary. I do not think I will ever write classic wuxia.

Q. RGZ95: @I enjoyed today's battle scene too! Battle scenes always flow naturally in my head, so I can read them without resistance. Thanks for filling my childlike innocence again today!

A. This part ended up longer than I expected because I wrote it while looking at an actual cruise interior layout. Hmm...

Now that I am about to write a chat section again after a long time, I feel both excited and worried.

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