Chapter 74
Right arm severed.
A scream burst out at the horrible pain.
In an instant, the blood drained out of me, and my mind went hazy.
The monsters grabbed me and lifted me up.
I thought I was going to die of blood loss like this, but the bastards took a handful of something from the bucket and slapped it onto the severed end of my arm.
And then.
—Sshhk!
The monsters used cleavers.
They cut off my remaining arm and both legs.
"Mmph...!"
I can’t properly grasp reality.
Pain collapses the boundary between reality and unreality. My memory stretches out endlessly. I can’t tell whether my eyes are open or closed. In a situation where I can’t even tell whether the apparitions I see in the dark are images in my head or something else.
I lost consciousness.
* * *
I opened my eyes in a strange sense of weightlessness.
"Ah..."
My mouth tastes stale.
It feels like all my saliva has dried up. My throat hurts like it’s being torn apart too. My head spins, and the orange light stabbing at my eyes is unbearable.
"Ugh."
I forced my eyes open and tried to take in the situation.
"Oh! O-oh!"
Someone is standing in front of me, seen from behind!
I reflexively tried to call out to him, but in the very next moment.
I realized he was 'human meat.'
Arms and.
Legs are severed.
His head was hanging low.
Iron hooks were embedded in both of his trapezius muscles.
There were countless corpses like that in front of me.
And on both sides too.
—Rattle, rattle.
The corpses were moving at a steady pace.
My body was moving automatically too.
I don’t have limbs either.
Like all the corpses here... I’m probably moving along the rail with iron hooks through my trapezius muscles.
"Ha, haha..."
A laugh escapes me.
It looks like a cold-storage facility for hanging slaughtered pigs, except the pigs have been replaced with people.
Human meat.
Corpses.
There are too many.
So this many people... were captured and brought here, and then became food for the monsters?
And they were processed in a filthy factory-like place like this?
Is this the starting point of this human-meat rail?
There are so many corpses lined up here.
If I keep moving along this rail... will I eventually be dismembered?
I feel horrific terror.
Am I going to have to die while fully aware that I’m becoming meat?
—Clank.
I shook my body, but it was no use.
I don’t have arms or legs to begin with.
Even if I fell off... it’d be meaningless.
—Vrrr.
The rail keeps moving.
I used my last bit of concentration to etch the surrounding scenery into my memory.
A black passage is visible ahead.
The meat goes in there one by one.
—Whiiir!
A grotesque sound is echoing everywhere.
Instinctively, I knew there were spinning saw blades in all directions.
I.
.
.
.
[You died after becoming meat.]
[Death count: 17(-1) -> 18(-1)]
.
.
.
[Restarting.]
* * *
I opened my eyes in the bathroom.
I immediately opened the notebook.
The part where I had impersonated section chief Lee Do-hyeong’s name has disappeared. It seems I’ve regressed to the moment I first arrived here.
"..."
My memories continue.
After being discovered by the bastards and having my limbs severed, I died after being hung like meat at the entrance of the human-meat processing line and sent into the slaughter machine.
On that line.
There were many corpses of people whose limbs had been cut off like mine. Which means there must be another line before that where they cut off the limbs.
I felt fear toward that grotesque space where people were hanging there as meat, while also feeling intense rage toward those slaughterer monster bastards who had turned me into this.
My spirit won’t break.
I just think for survival while burning with rage.
"You sons of bitches... how many people did you kill?"
Still, these bastards didn’t give me the overwhelming absurdity they did back at the hospital. Back then I was in a situation where I couldn’t even regress, but this time it isn’t that bad.
Thinking about it that way, this felt less terrifying than the hospital.
Swallowing my burning rage, I kept thinking nonstop to find the rules and route for surviving in this place.
The hint said to find a way to escape.
Then there is a way.
Think.
The bastards found me during my search.
The pistol doesn’t work.
Which means I can’t fight.
Then I have to hide properly or run, but there’s nowhere to run in the first place.
If they notice my presence, the monsters will all start looking for me, and then I’ll be caught in the end.
In the end, I have to hide... but how do I hide?
I’m getting found because of my scent?
"Scent?"
Scent.
That barking sound was definitely the sound of sniffing. I had been walking around reeking of human scent, and in the end the bastards who noticed it came out to find me.
Thinking about it this way, I can feel there’s a time limit.
Searching for too long is dangerous.
Because I’ll be exposed by my scent.
But I need time to properly search this place... what should I do about my scent?
Ah.
Right!
The room where the pile of debris was stacked—the one where I found the wallet.
If I go in there and roll around like crazy, wouldn’t that erase my scent? It’s disgusting and horrifying, but it’s a hundred times better than becoming meat. For survival, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do.
Now then.
What should I do?
A slaughterer monster came in here before and washed its butcher knife. In the end, the fact that it comes in here doesn’t change.
Let’s use the ability.
I repeated the exact same actions as before.
I checked outside, came back, wrote in the notebook, and waited quietly in the bathroom. Then a slaughterer monster came in and washed its knife; I watched it until it shook off the water and went outside. After that, I looked at the open factory line, checked the grinder, went into the room with the debris pile, and picked up the wallet.
Okay.
End ability here.
"..."
I glared at the pile of debris, and then.
—Swish.
I lay down right there and thrashed around, completely covering the human scent coming from my body. I roughly self-suggested that I was lying in a snowfield and flailing my limbs around, and somehow it worked.
A hellish stench seeped into my entire body.
Workers who labor in sewers deal with similar things every day. I’m an agent; I can’t be broken by something like this. Let’s rub it on a little more aggressively.
Good.
Let’s start again from here.
I died because I was discovered by my scent just now. I’ve completely erased the scent, so there’s no way the bastards will catch me. From now on, I need to include scent removal here as part of the regular routine.
I went out of the room.
Should I head to the beginning of the factory line like this? Seeing as there are tons of human corpses, there’s a high chance something is there.
Hmm... no.
The route there is still unclear. For now, let’s find the end of the line first—the place where the finished products are packaged, and the exit. If I want to know exactly what kind of place this world is, I need to dig there first.
I moved carefully.
"..."
Honestly, after just being caught and chopped to pieces, and then sent into a slaughter machine to become meat, I’m freaking the hell out.
I’m scared and afraid.
But I know these thoughts won’t help, so I just endure it and keep moving while restraining my emotions.
All the while I moved, no door suddenly opened with a slaughterer monster jumping out.
They probably don’t know I’m wandering around because I erased my scent. If the stench of corpses is everywhere, I need to cover myself in that smell too.
My choice and judgment were very effective.
Maybe among the people who left notes, there was someone who thought of this method too.
Closed doors come into view.
I didn’t recklessly open the closed doors. Just walking down the corridor and counting the doors was enough to properly update the map in my head.
For now, let’s only look at what I can see, and open the closed doors once the first map is complete.
I kept walking down the corridor, fully prepared so I could kill myself at any moment.
Please.
Please don’t suddenly jump out...!
There’s no cargo or machinery over here, so the moment they come out, I’ll be exposed right away. It’s their working hours now, so they probably won’t come out unless something happens, but if it suddenly becomes break time, I’m done for.
Walking with that extreme tension, I was able to spot an open door.
I approached the side of the door with the pistol in hand.
I slowly poked my head out to check inside.
—Splat.
This place is overflowing with slaughterer monsters too.
Judging by the size of the factory, there must be around a hundred of them, at least... Pistol bullets won’t work. Would large-caliber rounds work? Or does even that fail because this is their world? Are they immune to guns? Then what if the Bureau’s top sniper, Kurosna, had come?
With those thoughts in mind, I observed the monsters.
They were scooping up human meat with shovel-like tools.
Into small cans.
...Canned goods.
They’re canned.
The outside of the cans was labeled with plastic packaging printed with grotesque meat pictures and unreadable characters.
These bastards.
Looks like they’re turning people into canned goods and supplying them.
The cans are loaded onto trays and stacked up.
Thirty of those processed cans are loaded into several boxes on a handcart.
—Creak.
A slaughterer monster pushes the cart and moves off. The direction it’s going is to the left from my current position... is it taking them over there?
For now, going inside this room and doing anything seems difficult. There are too many workers to hide. I’d probably only be able to get in once they all leave or only a few remain.
With that thought, I pulled my head back again.
The corridor continues a bit farther.
If I go to the end there and turn the corner, there might be an exit.
That’s what I thought, and I moved toward the end of the corridor.
As expected, when I rounded the corner.
"...!"
There was a door!
And not one leading to a room, but a small door that seemed to lead outside!
I immediately pressed myself against the side of the door and checked outside.
The outside looked.
So warped it was honestly hard to describe.
The sky is red.
But it wasn’t an open sky like Earth’s sky.
A writhing sky.
Intestines are hanging across the entire sky...!
Massive, long, writhing intestines cover the entire sky! It’s a horrifying sight, like looking up from inside a sphere made of organs!
In that instant, I was overwhelmed by madness and almost slit my own belly open, pulled out my intestines, and laid them out. I held back and went outside.
A red backdrop.
The ground is ordinary dirt.
But instead of weeds, something like villi was growing there. What an extremely horrifying world.
This is different from Cheongak Mary Hospital.
That place was an anomalous space that replaced part of reality.
But this place... if I had to call it anything, it would be an 'other world.' Literally an awful extra dimension different from reality—a different world!
I can’t accept this lousy other world!
It’s bizarre and terrifying, but I still need to search it. I looked around. There are no monsters wandering about. I ran at a slightly faster pace and put distance between myself and the factory building.
From a farther distance, I look at the factory.
[#%#$^%$#^^$%&^]
The factory sign.
I couldn’t read it, but I knew that it was [Hanseol Human Meat Factory]. That must be thanks to the information given by the status window.
The factory...
It feels severely old, but it still looks like a reasonably intact man-made structure.
What kind of dimension is this, anyway?
"..."
Suddenly, I thought of the mailbox.
Inside it is a gift I haven’t received yet.
A singing flower and the heart of a vampire angel.
In a world like this, maybe I could try those items out? I thought that, but I didn’t hastily open the mailbox because I was afraid using them might throw off my regression point.
The matter of regression scares me more than this bizarre dimension.
Maybe this is why I’ve become fearless.
Anyway.
"Other world adventure."
Shall I give it a try?