WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ The Police Do a Better Job Than Heroes

Chapter 43

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Life Is Like a Railroad Track (10)

Trace and the rookie heroes had just linked up with the main force, right after Kang Jin-ho announced over the radio that he'd found him.

"Officer Kang Jin-ho found Silver Knife-nim?"

The A-rank hero who controlled acid, and the main force's acting leader, Acid Bomb, set down her radio.

"..."

Frankly, she couldn't believe it. She'd have found it more plausible if someone told her Officer Kang Jin-ho had gotten hit by an enemy's ability and hallucinated the whole thing.

Even A-rank heroes were losing their minds in that maze, and the officer they'd tucked safely in the back on search duty had found the hostage at the very heart of the place?

"I saw it myself. Jin-ho-ssi can do that."

"Officer Kang isn't the type to lie."

But Trace backed it up, and so did the testimony of the rookie heroes who'd been with him. Their abilities were clearly too solid to just wave off.

I don't know how he did it, but... looks like he actually found the guy.

Skill or luck, what mattered was the simple fact that he'd found him.

"All right, let's move."

Acid Bomb and the main force headed for the rendezvous point. After running for a while, they came up against a massive steel door.

"How much farther to the rendezvous point?"

Acid Bomb asked, glancing at the information-type heroes behind her.

"Just a bit more once we get through this door."

"Right. Get ready."

At Acid Bomb's signal, the Eastern Association's seasoned information-type heroes stepped forward as one.

"Here, this line in the riddle, 'the blind cannot see the voice.' I think it means..."

"Hm, that reading's plausible, but if you think about the metaphor in the picture we passed earlier..."

"Right, that would..."

They drew up ether from their bodies to sharpen their cognition, applying their abilities in full to gather every clue they could.

Reading the surroundings. Breaking down the riddle's sentence structure. Working out the intent behind the question.

It was practically cartography, systematic and terrifyingly fast problem-solving.

And yet.

"...Um, sunbaenim."

One of the rookie heroes who'd been part of Kang Jin-ho's splinter squad raised a hand cautiously.

"Why aren't you opening the door?"

"...What are you talking about? Don't bother me right now."

One of the information-type heroes, deep in thought, scowled hard, but the rookie just scratched the back of their head, genuinely confused.

"No, I mean. Shouldn't you be opening the door?"

"It's already open."

"...Sorry?"

"Sorry?"

"..."

"..."

An awkward silence stretched on.

"That, uh, the steel door. Doesn't it open once you use your ability?"

"Well, maybe the sunbaenims' abilities just don't suit this kind of situation."

"Right. Everyone's got their own strong suits."

The rookies nodded among themselves, apparently satisfied with that explanation.

"What kind of nonsense is this in the middle of a mission..."

Just as an irritated Acid Bomb, forgetting the situation entirely, opened her mouth to snap at them.

Clack.

The thick steel door swung open from the other side, and Kang Jin-ho poked his head through.

"Oh, you're all still here? You took so long I came looking for you."

"..."

"Let's hurry. We don't have much time."

"Y-yes..."

Acid Bomb and the information-type heroes trailed after Kang Jin-ho with blank expressions.

Acid Bomb thought to herself.

Are the information-type heroes I brought along here maybe... a little incompetent?

She felt like her entire sense of common sense was warping out of shape.

**

Following behind Kang Jin-ho, the heroes soon arrived at the innermost room, the same one Kang Jin-ho had peeked into earlier and shut the door on.

Every steel door along the way had already been standing open, and for some strange reason there were dead rats and cockroaches scattered here and there, but...

"Well, that can happen."

"There are abilities like that, sure."

They'd simply decided to accept it by now. If a power like that existed, what could bystanders even say about it?

Either way, the group of heroes reached the secret room, easing the door open with care for traps or ambushes.

"...No one's here."

The room they entered was empty. All that remained was a cluttered table and the chair where Silver Knife had been bound.

"There's something over here."

Just then, Trace, searching the room, moved aside a box that had been sitting unnaturally out of place. Beneath it was a floor covered with thick steel plating. It had a lock too, but the moment an information-type hero stepped up, the lock released in an instant.

What it revealed was a ladder descending into the ground, stretching down so far the bottom wasn't visible.

"A secret passage."

Acid Bomb clicked her tongue. Given that Kang Jin-ho had already checked this room and moved on, of course whoever had been here had fled.

"Ahem! I just used my ability to scan it. No traps."

"Ah, right."

"My ability might not be much for riddles, but it's quite handy for scoping out spaces like this. Hahaha!!!"

Nobody had said anything, but one information-type hero, feeling oddly defensive for no reason, verified the passage's safety anyway.

"I'll go down first. Everyone stay alert and follow."

Acid Bomb, leader of the main force, took the lead on the ladder. Kang Jin-ho, Trace, and the rest of the heroes followed cautiously behind.

Clank, clank, clank...

They descended for a while through a narrow passage carved with strange symbols. The ladder ended, and a rough concrete space, thick with the smell of mold, opened up before them. On the ceiling, an old ventilation fan draped in spiderwebs kept turning.

"A converted... bunker, is it."

Trace muttered, scanning the surroundings, when...

"Don't move! Take one more step and I'll slit this old man's throat!"

A shout rang out from the center of the bunker, and the group's footsteps stopped dead.

Across the way, an unconscious Silver Knife lay slumped, and a man with a knife pressed to his throat had murder flashing in his eyes.

"...Labyrinth!"

An information-type hero who recognized the man's face bit down on their lip.

"He's an executive of 1-rank villain 'Ghost,' the one who turns space into a maze! Everyone, be careful!"

A maze-making ability had no direct killing power, so against a group of heroes this strong, resistance should have been impossible.

"There's no way you've got a power that kills only me in one clean shot, right? So this old man dies with me. Don't you dare move."

But with a hostage in play, things changed. The Hero Association's goal was, in the end, to rescue Silver Knife. With the hostage held that close, picking off Labyrinth alone with pinpoint precision wasn't easy.

Of course, being A-rank heroes, it wasn't like there was absolutely no way.

"The space is warped. Let's not provoke him first."

Just as Trace, who'd briefly viewed the past, had said, the inside of the bunker had been twisted into a kind of "maze."

"Can bare, empty ground even turn into a maze?"

"In the end, the essence of a maze is just twisting space. If someone fires a gun in here, the bullet could curve off in any direction, no telling where it'll end up."

"Tch..."

Acid Bomb quietly dissolved the acid she'd covertly generated. From somewhere above the bunker, the sound of Magic Muscle's ongoing fight still echoed in dull thuds, and amid it all, Labyrinth spoke.

"All of you are sharp, aren't you. So I'll ask. 'It devours time yet is never full, leaves everything behind yet has no shape of its own.' What is it?"

A sudden riddle. But the heroes tensed and began racking their brains.

They'd been hit with this over and over on the way here. The bastard's power: once he made an opponent aware of a riddle, the maze's defenses strengthened until it was solved.

"Heh heh heh..."

Labyrinth cheered inwardly.

Running away like this would be fine too, but ideally, it'd be best to tie these guys' feet down until Ghost-nim came back.

With the base already raided, he'd need to score some kind of achievement if he wanted anything to show for it. If the heroes wasted time agonizing over the riddle's answer, and Ghost-nim, the 1-rank villain who owned this hideout, returned in the meantime...

Despair. Pain. Death.

"Hahahahaha!"

Drunk on the crude thrill of having seized complete control over this space, he burst into a wicked laugh, and at that exact moment.

"Memory."

"...?"

"It's memory, isn't it?"

"That... is correct."

The instant Kang Jin-ho said the answer, the mysterious energy wrapped around the bunker faded by half. The twisted space had partially righted itself.

"Wait, wait! I'll ask again. As you came down the ladder just now, do you remember the symbols carved into the walls? Among those symbols, the crossing point marked by the crow with closed eyes and the snake with its mouth open, and..."

"An hourglass."

"How!!!"

Labyrinth screamed, the veins on his neck bulging.

"Are you telling me you memorized every single symbol you saw coming down that ladder? You're the one who solved the other riddles carved into this hideout too, aren't you? Those are riddles straight out of an old book I got from the black market, damn it...!"

"Ah, well..."

Kang Jin-ho scratched his cheek, looking sheepish.

Truth was, he'd once seen a "Collection of Labyrinth's Quizzes for Newbies" on the HiCiSi community forums, and thanks to his abnormally improved memory, he remembered every single one of them.

"Solved it on instinct."

There was no reason to explain the long, drawn-out truth to this villain. Especially not with Eun-yeong nowhere around.

"Gck, gaahck...!"

Labyrinth's blood pressure shot straight to his skull at that indifferent, half-hearted attitude, and he staggered, barely managing to keep his grip on Silver Knife.

"This, what is this even..."

He'd seen strong ability users in his life. He'd seen strange ones too.

But had there ever, in this world, been a bastard like this one?

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