Chapter 222
Cheonchilbaek spat out abusive language. Was Osai watching from the outside?
He probably was, because this was the crucial moment right before all the grueling hardship they had endured went up in smoke.
Aside from being overwhelmed by the thought of his death, right now, he felt incredibly resentful.
He finally understood why the inquisitor, no matter how artificially created a bio-Mechanical hybrid it was, could use a variety of Supernatural abilities all by itself.
There was a condition of sorts. The condition was that it could only replicate and use the Supernatural abilities it had directly chewed, swallowed, and absorbed into its stomach.
By eating the model prisoner who used an ice pick, it became able To Fire pitch-black ice picks, and by eating Osai, it became able to create a Clone.
And according to what Osai had told him, that Clone only had weak durability, but possessed physical ability nearly identical to the main body.
That was despair.
Osai’s Clone only amounted to adding one more person.
But the inquisitor’s Clone was a Monster, just like the main body. The efficiency of the ability was different from the start.
He just needed to enter the Core Room, but the inquisitor’s Clone was guarding that Core Room.
With two Monsters now tightly blocking the front and back, there wasn’t even a corner left to escape to.
There was no way.
It was the worst crisis since the Simulation began. To be left alone at a time like this, of all times. If Paradox had been here…
If the one here right now was Paradox instead of him, would something have changed? He couldn’t know.
He might have shaken off the inquisitor with extraordinary strategy and tactics and succeeded in the mission, or perhaps he, with his brilliant mind, would have realized early on that it was impossible, given up, and aimed for the next opportunity.
Either way, Cheonchilbaek did not possess judgment equal to Paradox’s.
He only knew that he himself was pathetic for stamping his feet while looking for someone who wasn’t even here.
Even if he were to give up, it wasn’t time yet. If he were going to die anyway, wouldn’t it be better to try something before dying?
It would look better in the eyes of his senior - or rather, his colleagues - who would be watching from the outside. At the very least, it would prove that he had done his best.
Above all, he himself felt it was too much of a waste and a shame. He had put in so much effort; he was almost there…
Perhaps that emotion was stronger than his fear, for he found himself moving forward even while trembling.
The inquisitor was approaching. It got closer by the amount he moved forward.
The two sides of rotting flesh and broken, sparking mechanical devices were approaching from the front and back.
The pressure thickened, physically and mentally as well.
Crisis detection seized up at a level he had never felt before. Images of himself dying and being chewed up in thousands of ways were formed in his mind. A nosebleed trickled down.
It felt as if his brain was blazing and boiling over. Cheonchilbaek thought amidst his illusion-like, stinging vision.
“This, fuck. What a bullshit ability.”
It seemed helpful, but at the truly important moments, it was useless. He was already prepared to die anyway.
What he needed wasn’t knowing how he would die, but finding a faint possibility of achieving his goal even if it meant dying.
It didn’t matter how low the odds of winning were. If only he could try something…!
“…”
Something brushed past.
He didn’t know if it was the effect of his Supernatural Ability, or if he was seeing things because he had shed so much blood. But Cheonchilbaek definitely saw something amidst his burning nerves.
Crisis detection was not wrong. If he tried, he would die. Without fail.
But even if he didn’t try, he would die.
Cheonchilbaek gritted his teeth and continued forward. His path forward, as he struggled along while stuck flat against the wall, was blocked by the inquisitor’s roughly torn leg frame.
The jagged cut surface, more than enough to easily skewer a person, shot out. The aiming might have been slow, but the speed at which it shot out in an instant was, as expected of a machine, so accurate that he couldn’t even react.
Cheonchilbaek did not dodge. He didn’t have the energy to do so, either. He merely tried to move forward until the very last moment, twisting his body as much as possible so he wouldn’t die instantly.
CRACK!
As the Monster and the human passed each other, a pain that seemed to make his mind go completely blank encroached upon his entire body.
“Ughhhhh…”
Lacking the strength to even raise his head, he crawled on the floor with his head drooping.
Every time he moved a little, his body was paralyzed by the pain. He couldn’t muster any strength.
An iron skewer was piercing through his abdomen.
A part of the broken leg, resulting from the inquisitor forcibly activating its heavily damaged body.
It was just a mere rebar piece, but that alone was enough to stab a person to death.
It was a fatal wound that would inevitably lead to death. But if only he could reach it before he died…
The entrance was right there. Cheonchilbaek squeezed out all the strength he had and reached his hand toward the Core Room.
The bright light inside the unexpectedly automatically opened door seemed like the Gates of Heaven beckoning to him.
The problem was that a devil was chasing right behind him.
The inquisitor was not satisfied with just driving a vicious lump of iron into Cheonchilbaek’s frail body.
That was not enough. The bastard would only be satisfied if it gorged itself to its heart’s content on living meat and the energy contained within it.
Grab!
The inquisitor snatched his ankle. The Iron Claw scraped his skin, and merciless pain stabbed at his nerves once again.
“Kuaaaaaaagh!”
How great would it be if his foot were just torn off as is and he could enter the Core Room.
His bones were surprisingly tough, so he suffered, unable to advance any further while being held.
He could feel the inquisitor applying force to pull him in. Cheonchilbaek felt his consciousness fading amidst the irresistible pain and the massive blood loss.
He wanted to squeeze out even his last remaining strength to move, but with his foot caught -
Thud.
Suddenly, the crushing pressure squeezing his foot disappeared. He didn’t know the reason, but he couldn’t miss the opportunity. Cheonchilbaek crawled into the Core Room in a half-fainted state.
After barely shoving his entire body inside, he looked back and saw the Monster unable to move from its spot, as if blocked by an invisible wall.
[Good work. See you outside.]
A familiar voice. As the door to the Core Room closed, his consciousness faded out.
A sense of accomplishment and relief that he had done it, and anxiety, filled him.
“Ah, no. For the escape judgment to pop up, I still need to…”
Unfortunately, that was all that was allowed for him.
Cheonchilbaek’s memory cut off at this point.
* * *
“”
GM
: Congratulations! You, who have survived until the end, are given one opportunity, due to the occurrence of an Escapee among your Colleagues. Please choose.”
“Don’t be so cold. Can’t we talk face-to-face? I have a lot I want to say.”
“Feels like I’m talking to a wall. Can’t be helped.”
The Fat Detective chose an option without hesitation.
* * *
And…
“And? And what happened next?”
“Yeah. Hey, how can you just cut the story off right there? Right when it was just getting fun.”
“I’m asking what happened in that damn Core Room?”
When the man, 'Cheonchilbaek', hesitated, the gang around him laid out all sorts of complaints.
It was certainly an exciting story. Its authenticity aside, it was entertaining.
The man named Cheonchilbaek was quite an excellent storyteller.
It sounded extremely absurd, but for something made up, it was also strangely specific…
If all of that was true, I had a premonition that far more secrets than I thought were hidden in the correctional facility called Glitch Hall.
Well, actually, whatever kind of place Glitch Hall was, it was a story that had nothing to do with me…
Even so, the reason I took an interest and listened to Cheonchilbaek’s tale to the end was partly because the story was fun, but also because of an acquaintance of mine who had recently been locked up in Glitch Hall.
'The 5 selected vicious criminals, including Crimson Rose, are scheduled tomorrow for transfer to Costco’s Dusk City Prison, commonly known as Glitch Hall, the highest-level prison that locks up the city’s troublemakers.'
Wasn’t that what they said on the Holonews?
A total of 5 people were being transferred to Glitch Hall. One vicious criminal among them was someone I knew.
Actually, it wasn’t just to the extent of knowing him. I was the one who sent him to Glitch Hall.
“I have just one more favor to ask…”
The final favor was using my connections to Kimberly Louise Lutes, the bloodline of Militia.
To destroy Felix, who used public power as a shield, I used that public power in reverse.
The favor was actually nothing much.
To talk about the crimes Felix had committed, and if they were all confirmed to be true through a lawful investigation, that he be given the heaviest heavy punishment possible.
Ms. Kim sincerely granted my request.
And rightly so, because a heavy punishment heavier than this did not exist other than the death penalty.
Felix came to pay for his crimes in a legitimate way.
Being imprisoned in Glitch Hall, where only the worst felons gathered,
was a punishment that could perhaps be more terrible than death, because once you set foot inside, there was no way out other than death anyway.
That was why I had listened carefully to Cheonchilbaek’s story.
Because if it was true that that guy had gone into Glitch Hall and come back out, I couldn’t help but think, what if Felix also…?
However, in the story so far, the answer to “how he escaped from Glitch Hall” had not come out.
I concentrated even more, ignoring the voices of the gang chattering noisily around me, and listened closely to the words of the man named Cheonchilbaek.
Surely he wouldn’t say something as absurd as “I escaped from Glitch Hall in the Simulation, and at some point I was back outside in reality too.” There had to be some other circumstances that made sense…