Chapter 34
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Unit 101 - Please close the open front door. Under no circumstances should you check inside the home.
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A call came from Unit 101, so we closed the open front door.
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Unit 401 - The resident of Unit 401 is upset because the elevator is not working. Go straight to the apartment building's elevator and press the elevator button once.
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A call came from Unit 401, so we pressed the elevator button.
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Unit 501 - Take the cat's food bowl kept in the security office and place it in front of Unit 501's front door.
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A call came from Unit 501, so we placed the cat's food bowl in front of Unit 501's front door.
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Unit 801 - Knock on the front door of Unit 803 three times.
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A call came from Unit 801, so after knocking on Unit 803's front door three times, we returned to the security post.
“Only the people living in units ending in 1 keep calling us nonstop.”
We had received calls from residents of units ending in 1 five times in a row today..
“Who will they send next?”
“..Only 601 or 1001 are left.”
As I quietly held my breath in the security post, I predicted that the next call would also come from a unit ending in 1.
Beep-
“It's Unit 1001. ..Is there some pattern to this too?”
As expected, this time we saw that a call had come from Unit 1001, so I immediately turned around and checked the rulebook.
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Unit 1001 - After picking up the receiver, let the resident commit suicide. However, if the resident commits suicide by jumping and their body falls into the garden, put the body in the food-waste bin.
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Once again, we felt a little relieved that this didn't seem like something that would put us in much danger.
“It's a relief, at least. If it had been Unit 601, we'd have been in a real bind.”
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Unit 601 - From the moment the call comes in, the front door of Unit 601 will be open. Enter Unit 601 and open the closed door inside. Under no circumstances should you look at the ceiling of the home while doing so.
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“I thought seeing the layout inside the apartments might help us understand this place, so it's a little disappointing.”
“..Are you going to keep saying things that scare me?”
“I'll pick up the receiver.”
“Phew.. Let's go.”
When we picked up the receiver and answered Unit 1001's call.
- “..Hello.”
“?”
- “You’re not going to say anything today either.. right?”
“..!”
- “..It's been three days already. Someone's listening over there, you know. Please.. Please answer me.. If this keeps up, I'm really going to die..”
A voice speaking normal human language began coming through the receiver.
“...”
- “Why, why.. Why is nobody coming to save me..?”
“...”
- “No.. I don't want to.. I don't want to be eaten.. They said I'll be eaten if I fall asleep. What does that even mean.. How can I not sleep?.. They told me to wait until someone comes to save me.. Why is something like this a rule..?”
I discreetly turned my head to look at Anonymous 1.
Anonymous 1 had also been focused on the sound coming from the receiver.. so they were hearing the same voice I was.
- “I'm going to be eaten and die.. ..I can't die over something like that..”
As Anonymous 1 and I stood frozen like statues, unable to do or say anything in the face of this sudden, unidentified situation.
Thud..
The call suddenly cut off, and at the same time..
“Uh..”
“...”
We saw some black shape jump from a window on the tenth floor.
“...”
“...”
We stared blankly at the scene for a moment..
After coming to our senses at the sight of the black shape that had fallen into the garden, we slowly stood up and began leaving the security post.
Soon, we found ourselves face-to-face with the black shape that had jumped to its death from the tenth floor..
‘Is this.. an anomaly?’
It made us wonder whether the body lying there really was an anomaly.
“Blood..”
“..Red.. color..”
The metallic scent of blood rose from the red blood soaking the garden.
As that smell made every inch of our bodies tense, we first began dragging the fallen body toward the food-waste bin in order to follow the rulebook.
When we eventually came to a stop in front of the food-waste bin.
‘What is this..?’
When I realized that something was in the corpse's pants pocket, I immediately pulled out the item..
A wallet came out along with my hand.
‘..A wallet?’
I wanted nothing more than to open the wallet right away and find out the person's identity.
But I worried that the other guards might find us suspicious,
so after putting the body into the food-waste bin Anonymous 1 had opened, we quietly but quickly returned to the security post.
Click..
After the security-post door closed and we confirmed that nobody was inside.
I sat down in the guard's chair and opened the wallet we'd obtained a moment earlier.
“..I wondered why it was so heavy, and it turns out it had coins in it.”
I could see that the ordinary wallet had a compartment for coins.
“Yen?”
“Pardon?”
“That’s Japanese money..”
Because Anonymous 1 recognized them as Japanese money the moment they saw the coins.
“..He was human.”
“..Yeah.”
We realized that the man who had committed suicide moments earlier.. wasn't an anomaly that had perfectly learned human language, but an actual human being.
“...”
We examined the wallet further without saying a word.
There were paper bills, a business card written in Korean but with a Japanese feel, and even an ID card that could be read in Korean but was unlike anything I'd ever seen in Korea..
It was a little reassuring that the Status Window, which couldn't even be opened, was diligently providing its translation function.. No, wait a second..
“Huh? Why.. is it translating?”
“Because the Status Window is translating it.”
“No, that's not what I mean..”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“We can't use the Status Window right now. Then why is the Status Window providing a translation function?”
“..You're right.”
The Status Window definitely didn't work here.
We couldn't use Crafting or Return, but.. the translation function continued to be provided?
In other words, didn't that mean the Status Window was functioning normally even here?
“..Could someone be interfering with it?”
“To keep us from turning on the Status Window? Like.. an EMP? Like how it prevents us from using electronic devices..?”
“Exactly. If we take down that entity, we'll be able to turn the Status Window back on.”
“Oh.. That actually makes a lot of sense. But can we fight it safely..?”
I didn't know why a Japanese person had ended up in Unit 1001, but..
Thanks to that, we learned that the Status Window was functioning normally.
And if the Status Window was functioning normally..
“And if the Status Window is functioning normally.. that means my items should work normally too.”
It meant that the items I had that used my Mentality would work normally too.
“Do you have a good way to get us out of this situation?”
“Amazingly.. ..I do.”
“You do?”
“Yes. From now on, could you do exactly what I ask?”
“I can do that.”
And so..
…
Take a picture of me with the camera.
Use Enhancement on the picture of me.
No matter how much we used Mentality duplication, the maximum number of Enhancements we could use here was only six or seven a day, so..
I used Enhancement only about five times, to save Mentality for the other anomalies.
And as soon as I finished my Enhancements.
“You saw that, right?”
“Yeah.”
I equipped Anonymous 1 with the camera and the ring made from compressed flesh, then had them use Enhancement on me.
“I'm done.”
Like this.
With me using it five times and Anonymous 1 using it five times,
we could use it on me a total of ten times a day,
and since Enhancement raised total Mentality by 1 each time,
my last Mentality before coming here had been.. 218, so my current total Mentality should be 228.
If we repeated this process for about seventeen more days?
“We only have to hold out here for about two more weeks. Then.. we'll be able to use the Delete function.”
“Delete.. That's the ability, right? The one Daebung used to kill the roommate. The one that lets you kill something remotely?”
“Yes..!”
We were beginning to find a clue for escaping.
And it wasn't as if only we could do this, either.
Around three in the afternoon, we'd meet the survivors in the third security post.
If we asked another survivor who could use the Status Window to use Enhancement on us then?
“Then it could be even faster than two weeks.”
“Wow.. Seriously, this is just.. insane. Daebung, you're really.. Woooow.. The best.”
The more survivors there were,
the greater the odds that we could clear this place would become.
“From now on, it would be best to find as many survivors as possible.”
Therefore, gathering as many survivors as possible for the survivor meeting at the third security post, beginning around three in the afternoon, had become our most important task for now.
“Has the time come to use that Hitomi identification method?!”
“..Could we call it something else?”
“Has the time come to use that Hitomi tag identification method?!”
“..Anyway, we're not using that.”
“Do you have anything more reliable than that?”
If the camera was functioning properly in a place where the items worked normally,
then, since I could see the true forms hidden behind the black silhouettes through the camera, finding survivors might not be that difficult.
“?”
“Hello.”
“??”
“These are the survivors I found.”
“???”
“There were about seven more people staying here. I also went through a procedure to make absolutely sure they were human.”
"I conducted a sort of Hitomi test."
"????"
The 3:10 p.m. survivor meeting.
When I brought the seven survivors I'd found with the camera during the night shift to the survivor meeting, I could tell that the person who appeared to be the organizer who had invited me here was wearing an extremely flustered expression.
Of course, it wasn't as though I could actually see the expression.
“No, ..are you human?”
“It's okay, it's okay. I was like that when I first saw Daebung too.”
“..What even is Daebung?”
“He keeps making items. That's the nickname we gave him.”
“He makes items?? You mean th-the items sold at the blacksmith's shop..?”
“Yeah, those. They cost sixty to eighty thousand DOLL each, so they're damn expensive.”
“But he's human?”
“Yeah. He's human. A perfectly normal person from the Republic of Korea.”
“..I think I've seen something like this somewhere before, Haruto.”
“..What?”
“That Koreans don't enjoy games—they try to solve them..”
“No, this isn't a game..”
“He's still Korean, though.”
“..Judging by how everyone's coming outside at this hour, they really are human..”
“Oh, so anomalies can't walk around at this hour?”
“Look at that. He's trying to figure out how to beat this thing.”
“..You'd better stop talking, Asahi. At this rate, you'll claim that Daebung here beats anomalies to death too, seriously.”