Interrogating the Escape process

It seemed there was someone else who had the same thought as me.

“Hey, so how did you escape Glitch Hall? You’ve been going on and on about some weird Simulation story, but what does that support your claim that you broke out of Glitch Hall? What I’m curious about is the escape process.”

Hearing someone else voice the exact frustration I had been agonizing over felt so refreshing!

Cheonchilbaek leisurely took a sip of his drink and grinned despite the suspicion and interrogation.

“Whoa, whoa. Calm down, everyone. No need to rush. It’s all connected. Once you hear it all, you’ll go, 'Ah!' Do you really think I’d come all this way just to fizzle out and give you an ending like, “Actually, it was all a dream~”? Just trust me.”

Despite Cheonchilbaek’s confident declaration, the people around him frowned, clearly finding him untrustworthy.

“Ah, I’ve never seen this bastard actually finish a story properly like this…”

“Right? Am I the only one getting anxious because he’s acting so confident? Whenever he’s full of certainty, he ruins things, but when he’s anxious and nervous, things strangely work out well for him.”

“Listening to this guy’s storytelling makes me glad that the screenwriting industry was replaced by writing artificial intelligence a long time ago. artificial intelligences perfectly match your needs and structure a story cleanly with an Introduction, Development, Turn, Conclusion, a beginning, climax, and ending.”

There’s no chance of the quality suddenly dropping and getting boring like when a person writes it, or getting a hollow ending that just abruptly shits the bed right when it gets close to the finale after a good run.”

Well, that was true.

Since I had been dropped into the unfamiliar Dusk City out of nowhere, there was a time when I spent my meager salary on cultural exploration to get used to this world. From what I felt back then, artificial intelligence scenario writers definitely had the advantage of guaranteeing stable entertainment from start to finish, whether it was a movie, drama, or variety show, because they didn’t have the ups and downs of human writers.

That did raise the question: wouldn’t works created by human hands have a stronger, more provocative flavor? But well, I wasn’t so sure.

The progressive sensibilities of the 22nd century were already too provocative for me by themselves, so I couldn’t really feel much of a difference anyway.

How amazing could the creative works of this city be, teeming with vending machine prostitutes offering to help you get off, and diverse genders whose lower halves under their skirts had to be considered in a state of “Quantum superposition” and 'Schrödinger’s Genitalia' until observed?

A bizarre cinema film I had recently watched was about a species war between a giant jellyfish from space, ancient reptilians, and humanity.

It was a story where the Guardian of the Jellyfish who tuned the flow of cosmic energy and entropy, the noble last successor of the Reptilian Empire, and the powerful commander of the Human Alliance Forces were entangled in a love triangle involving interspecies breeding and astral sex, making crucial decisions between the fate of their species and human emotions. Aside from the scandalous subject matter, it was actually fun.

I knew it was incredibly popular since several sequel series had come out as well.

“Hey, we get it, so stop stalling and tell us. What happened in the Core Room?”

Let’s put aside the distracting thoughts for a moment. Urged by the people around him, Cheonchilbaek finally opened his mouth.

“I thought I was alone in the Core Room, but when I came to my senses, there was someone else there.”

“Who was it?”

“Paradox? No, was it ace?”

“Could it be Samsao?”

“Samsao would’ve died a long time ago, you idiot!”

At the rampant deductions, Cheonchilbaek obnoxiously wagged his finger side to side.

“You guys are all thinking too predictably. I’ll give you a hint: it’s someone who hasn’t appeared directly until now. Use your brains a little, you guys.”

“Ah, this bastard is acting all high and mighty again.”

“Would it kill you to just tell us?”

Despite the loud complaints, Cheonchilbaek stubbornly maintained a smug expression and stuck to his stance of not saying another word until they guessed the right answer.

…Strange. The Cheonchilbaek in the story I had been hearing definitely seemed very different from the way he looked right now.

Was this his true nature, and had his frivolous true nature just been suppressed in Glitch Hall by powerful designated enforcers like Paradox and Osai?

'…Someone who hasn’t appeared directly until now, but was definitely mentioned…'

Having eavesdropped on Cheonchilbaek’s entire story while pretending not to at the bar, I naturally found myself pondering the answer out of curiosity.

Who could it be? The HR Officer who fell in love with Osai? The Transcendent Inspector, the man in black suit? No, both of them had appeared before.

After I thought for a moment, something flashed through my mind.

At first, I thought, “Does this even make sense?” but after I eliminated all other possibilities through the process of elimination, only one remained.

“GM…”

The Game Master, an entity that had appeared indirectly several times, but had never directly revealed itself.

“What?”

Oops, I meant to just think that to myself.

Cheonchilbaek’s group looked around in confusion, stirring at the word I blurted out like an exclamation.

“Who just said that?” 'Wasn’t it you? I thought it was you.' “No, the voice was different.” Voices bickered.

I quietly lowered my posture and crouched under the bar table, safely escaping their radar. The Deep.

I could feel Tony looking at me with a pathetic gaze from the side as if asking what I was doing, but let’s not mind that.

Was the answer I gave really the correct one?

Sure enough, Cheonchilbaek reacted to the word GM.

“Oh, how did you know? I thought with your intelligence, you wouldn’t be able to guess it even if you thought about it for a hundred days. Who guessed it?”

It was the right answer!

Feeling like I had just solved a quiz or riddle back in my school days, I clenched my fist in excitement under the bar and almost bumped my head on the table.

Over there, the straightforward guy who had earlier been saying exactly what everyone was thinking was once again shouting thickly at Cheonchilbaek.

“Ah, fuck. Hey, you bastard! I don’t know who guessed it, and it doesn’t matter. So, GM? The Game Master? What did you do when you met that guy? Tell us that first.”

That was exactly what I wanted to say. Cheonchilbaek nodded as if he understood and spoke.

“Ah, you guys are so impatient. I’ll tell you! When I opened my eyes, the GM was there. I never dreamed it was a real person, but it turned out to be real. And I talked with the GM…”

His voice, which had been confident at first, somehow gradually faded.

With an uncertain voice, he rolled his eyes as if groping for a dreamlike memory that had instantly grown faint.

“What did I talk about with the GM? Well… it was a very important conversation, but the details…”

Uh, don’t tell me.

Even though I didn’t have the crisis detection ability, an ominous premonition crept over me.

It seemed not only I but Cheonchilbaek’s entire gang had the same thought.

“Hey, don’t tell me this bastard is… right?”

“Seriously, don’t mess around. You’ve remembered and told us every single little thing up until now, so if you suddenly give us some cliché excuse about not remembering, I’m really going to kill you.”

Unfazed by the murderous threat, Cheonchilbaek scratched his head and said.

“…Uh, I can’t really remember? I definitely remembered it clearly, so why don’t I know all of a sudden? Strange. I definitely made some kind of deal with the GM, and in exchange, I got out of Glitch Hall. Come to think of it, what did the GM look like…”

It didn’t seem like a lie. His tone and expression showed genuine panic, as if he had truly forgotten out of nowhere.

However, there was no way the audience, who had been sitting quietly and listening to his long storytelling for hours, could just let such a flimsy excuse slide.

“I knew this son of a bitch would do this! It was a bit more specific than usual, so I thought maybe, but it was bullshit again!”

“There’s a limit to your bullshit! What, Glitch Hall! I should’ve known. No wonder the story kept going off the rails!”

“Hey, let’s just beat this bastard up! We need to fix his habit once and for all.”

Everyone erupted and rushed him as a group, force-feeding him alcohol and kicking him one by one to make him pay for his sins.

I could have stopped them if I wanted to, but I didn’t really feel the need to.

because I was just as pissed off about not getting to hear the rest of the story!

However, unlike the others, rather than thinking it was a completely made-up story from start to finish…

“A true story, but with the most important part edited out?”

Wasn’t that why it felt like taking a shit and stopping halfway because it cut off right at the final moment?

I was curious, but there was nothing I could do.

It somehow smelled fishy, and it didn’t seem like digging into it would lead to a good outcome.

And I was done playing detective and wandering around everywhere like during the Chainsaw Man Murder Case.

Based on what I heard, even if that Cheonchilbaek really was someone who escaped from Glitch Hall, it didn’t seem like others could just copy the process.

Let alone Felix?

If it were that easy to get out, Glitch Hall wouldn’t have earned its terrifying notoriety for nothing.

'Unless I commit a vicious crime and end up locked in Glitch Hall, it’s a story that has nothing to do with me in the end.'

The purpose of Glitch Hall, the true nature of the simulation, and the deal with the GM - there were more than a few suspicious points in the story, but it seemed right to just bury it like this without taking an interest.

“Hey, what are you thinking so hard about?”

My thoughts were broken by a familiar voice. It was Tony.

Coming to my senses, I found my legs were incredibly numb. It was because I had been crouching under the bar and thinking this whole time.

“Uh… it’s quite cozy in here. Hahaha.”

As I stood up with an awkward laugh, my whole body ached. How long had I been doing that down there, beggar?

Looking around, Cheonchilbaek and his friends were already clearing their seats and leaving.

The sight of Cheonchilbaek getting his back mercilessly smacked and being lynched by the others right up until the moment they left the bar was quite a spectacle.

…It was a relief that they looked somewhat happy.

Assuming the story was entirely true, hanging out, drinking, and giggling with friends like that was a hundred times better than Glitch Hall, of course.

'Hmm.'

Anyway, I thought I’d get some kind of scolding from Tony for spouting nonsense about the inside of the bar table being cozy, but surprisingly, there was nothing of the sort.

It seemed like the customers were slowly clearing out too. Was there something on his mind?

Puzzled, I turned toward Tony, and he was resting his chin on his hand as if deep in thought.

He was just asking me what I was thinking so hard about…

For a moment, I thought about playing a prank on him, but somehow it felt like I shouldn’t.

It might just be my imagination, but right now, unlike his usual cheerful self, Tony looked somewhat sad.