Hanseol Human Meat Factory (6)

They’ve got a truck. A truck. Take that and go far away.

A truck?

I hadn’t seen it, but if they’re delivering processed canned goods, they would of course have something like a truck.

"So they load it up and go deliver the canned goods in it."

"Yeah! They’re making deliveries! Those bastards have to make a living too!"

Kim Seongjin nodded vigorously and snapped his fingers.

"They load up a ton of those cans and go deliver them. Then if we hide in that truck... maybe we can get back to reality! I’ve always thought about it! I just never managed to do it!"

"Was there a reason you couldn’t?"

"W-well... I guess because I still wasn’t sure."

When I asked, thinking there might be another reason, he scratched the back of his head and lowered it.

"A-and sneaking onto a truck is way too hard... But if it’s you! If we had an agent like you, that kind of infiltration might be possible, right? Agents can do anything! Let’s do it, let’s do it! I kind of know when my break is and when the trucks move! Let’s hold out together and go then!"

"..."

In Kim Seongjin’s mind, I was already an all-powerful Agency agent and his savior.

I... want to be a source of strength for this guy.

I know the pain Kim Seongjin has endured. I remember pushing a person into the black room while performing guard duty at Cheongak Mary Hospital. That memory has become a wedge, still stabbing at a corner of my heart.

It’s easy to brag, and just as easy to give false hope. I could use Kim Seongjin that way too.

I’m a regressor, after all, so to progress I could even sweet-talk this run’s Kim Seongjin into sacrificing himself and get clues from it.

But... is that really the right way? Going all out in this run so I can do better next time—could that be the wrong method?

Even when I give it everything in every run, I’m only just barely clearing it, and I keep mumbling like someone who failed the test, saying I’ll do better next time... In the end, people who only keep putting things off, saying they’ll do well next time, almost never actually do well.

"Kim Seongjin."

I just need to stop doing useless nonsense.

Just give it my all.

Not die, not suffer.

So I can get out in this run.

After all, death is a penalty for me too.

"In my opinion, riding that truck would be pointless."

"W-why? Why?"

"Even if you ride that truck, it’ll just be making a delivery to this grotesque world. It won’t go to our world."

"Uh...?"

"So we need to find something else. Not the truck that goes out from here delivering canned goods, but the regular route that supplies human meat to this place."

The place I was at right before I got ground up by the saw blade.

There were countless human bodies hanging there.

My guess is that all that meat wasn’t sourced from the bathroom.

People who fall into the bathroom can just be thought of as having undergone an unlucky dimensional transfer.

There must be a separate regular route for procuring large amounts of human meat.

"Targeting the vehicles that use that route would be more plausible. Whatever the case, those bastards are bringing us humans here from reality, aren’t they?"

"Ah, aah! Ah! Is that it?! No, but then that’s weird! We didn’t come here in a car—we woke up in a bathroom! That doesn’t make sense!"

"Listen. I explored this place too. There was a place where large amounts of human meat, still intact, were hanging there like pork. The people there didn’t come from the bathroom. They came through another regular route. If the bathroom were the regular route, there’d be no way they’d be handled like that. The bathroom is just a place where unlucky people fall."

At my words, Kim Seongjin’s eyes widened. He grabbed his head and muttered rapidly. From the sound of it, he was chewing over what I’d said.

"I-it makes sense! You really are an agent too!"

"I saw things, so the range of my guesses got wider."

Truthfully, I only know because I died.

Honestly, I feel like Kim Seongjin is more impressive than I am. I’m a regressor, but Seongjin made it this far on his first try.

"T-then we really do have to find the truck on that route... I haven’t seen one of those..."

In an instant, Kim Seongjin shrank back. Instead of the excited, exaggerated tone from before, he looked genuinely scared.

He must have been gripped by fear at the thought of having to explore somewhere new.

"No! Ah! That!"

"Hm?"

"What was it like before we came here?! I feel like I saw some human-meat stuff in a butcher shop or something!"

So that was it after all.

I was transferred after a similar experience too.

And there was someone who wrote something similar in the notebook.

There’s definitely something about a butcher shop among the conditions for ending up here.

"Same here."

"Yeah! See? In the end, it’s connected to reality somehow! That human-meat butcher shop we saw in reality! The truck might go there to make a delivery?!"

"Oh."

I couldn’t help but nod at that.

"Sharp."

That’s a really sharp insight.

"You really hit the heart of it."

"What are you, ChatGPT!"

"That’s right. You saw right through it. There aren’t many people who dig that deeply like you do."

"W-what is with you all of a sudden?!"

When I cracked a joke imitating ChatGPT, Kim Seongjin suddenly sprang to his feet and started tearing at his own hair.

"Why are you talking like ChatGPT! Are you actually an illusion created by my delusions?!"

What the hell, this bastard.

"Calm down. I was just joking to lighten the mood. Your guess was actually pretty good too."

"I-I startled me...! Don’t suddenly talk like ChatGPT! I, I th-thought you were my d-delusion!"

This isn’t just anger.

It’s a scream bursting out from inside you.

"Anyway, it’s a decent inference."

I stopped myself before saying it.

If I joked again, the mood would explode instead of loosening up.

Anyway.

Go to the human-meat depot that has seeped into reality through the canned-goods delivery route.

Or use the regular human-meat supply route to return to reality.

Maybe there are multiple escape routes, and we just don’t know them in detail. There might be various routes besides trucks too.

The problem is that finding a way to do that is probably incredibly difficult in itself.

If there are multiple methods... then I suppose we can try escaping multiple times.

* * *

I came up with a plan for escaping.

What I needed first was information about this factory. I learned every bit of information Kim Seongjin knew—things only someone who’d spent a long time here could know, like the factory’s working hours and vehicle movement times.

Of course, he said the timing was only generally right and could change flexibly, so I had to be extremely careful. Kim Seongjin also said he hardly ever left the burrow except when getting water and villi weeds.

At the same time, I decided to check the delivery vehicles too.

ㅡRumble-rumble.

When the strange sound reached us, Kim Seongjin said,

"It’s the sound of a truck coming. The monsters are going to load the canned goods onto it now."

I had set up a thin camouflage around the burrow to watch that truck. Following Kim Seongjin’s instructions, I cracked the burrow lid open slightly and saw the truck.

"..."

The truck itself... honestly, it’s not that different from an ordinary truck. It isn’t especially dirty or grotesque either.

It’s like how the exterior of Hanseol Human Meat Factory is only a little rusted, but otherwise not all that different from the ones in the human world.

The interior facilities and the monsters are grotesque enough, but at least the trucks and the buildings’ exteriors seem fairly normal.

Anyway.

The slaughterer monsters drag the carts over and load the canned goods onto the truck.

"At this rate, hiding in the truck bed will be difficult."

"Yeah... y-yeah, no matter how you look at it, it’s hard."

If it were a vehicle already out making deliveries and stopped in front of a store, then it would be possible to sneak into the cargo bed and hide in an empty space.

But when they’re loading goods like that, the cargo bed is empty to begin with and gets filled from the inside out, so hiding at all is impossible.

Still.

"They’re not sitting in the driver’s seat. I could dig a burrow nearby and hide, then crawl over to the passenger side when I see an opening, and climb onto the truck through the window before they move."

"T-that seems way too hard..."

"It is unrealistic, yes. But if we have to do it, it’s worth trying."

For now, I wasn’t going to carry it out immediately.

"Otherwise, I could even steal a car right now and try driving it. Methods are just a matter of how you think about them."

"Is that because you’re an agent...? You’re bold."

"There are plenty of environments where you can only survive by being that bold."

Very daring, sharp strikes are often effective.

"Whatever the case, if we want to live, we have to gamble, Kim Seongjin. Then let’s look for the truck on the other route too. It’d be useful to check where it comes from. If need be, we might even be able to steal a truck and go that way."

"Got it!"

And so I kept working with Kim Seongjin.

As for food... honestly, there’s almost none. Just a little emergency ration tucked inside my agent suit and what was in the portable canteen. Both have garlic added. No, I can just call it garlic. I brought them for anti-vampire use to begin with, so both the calories and the amount are lacking.

I don’t eat villi weeds or wastewater.

Because there’s a high chance it’ll have a bad effect on my mind.

There isn’t much time.

We waited for the right moment and headed to the back of the factory. Since there was a truck at the front gate going out to make deliveries, I figured there should be a truck bringing in human meat at the back.

There is neither day nor night in this world.

I walked carefully through the factory grounds, where grotesque sounds echoed everywhere. Toward the factory’s backyard. Kim Seongjin had said he’d explored it a little, but hardly ever went there.

After walking on with my nerves stretched to the limit.

I arrived at the back of the factory.

"There really is a road cars use... and a rear entrance too."

"Th-they’re probably moving the delivered human meat through there, right?"

"Probably."

I looked at the back door leading into the rear of the factory.

That road.

If I keep going that way, could I get out to reality?

I don’t know whether this otherworld is spherical like Earth. But I don’t think wandering off blindly will accomplish anything.

That was when I was examining the back of the factory.

ㅡDing-ding-ding!

Suddenly, the sound announcing break time rang out.

"Huff...!"

Kim Seongjin’s body shook hard.

He definitely said this was a safe time.

"Kim Seongjin. Did the time change?"

"Y-yeah...! I think so!"

I tugged at his trembling wrist.

"Hide first. What’s the safest place?"

"I-I don’t know...! Once they start coming out, this area...!"

ㅡCreak.

The door opened.

ㅡThud, thud, thud.

I can hear the monsters coming out.

There’s nowhere suitable to run or hide.

"Stay still."

I remained crouched for a moment.

From what I’d learned so far, when break time comes, these monsters first try to go outside. Hardly any of them remain inside the factory.

Then, if things go well,

I should be able to get inside the factory and hide.

There’s a window right in front of me.

I peered through the window.

I could see the monsters walking toward the passage.

"Are there still many left?"

"This should be the end of the line...!"

ㅡGrip.

Kim Seongjin gripped my wrist hard.

ㅡThud, thud, thud.

A lot of monsters are already out. The ones outside are walking on without even glancing toward the back where we are. If even one of them turns around, it’s over... this won’t do.

"Now."

I whispered very softly and opened the window carefully. No monsters were in sight. I jumped straight through the window and, as soon as I landed, looked left and right.

"There are no monsters in the hallway...!"

"They’re all out!"

At the same time, I reached out and pulled Kim Seongjin through the window.

"Come over here, hurry. We need to hide."

"W-where?! The bathroom?!"

"The bathroom is dangerous."

"Because there’ll be monsters using the bathroom during break time."

"Let’s take the risk here."

There’s an open door right in front of us.

This is the rear-entrance side of the factory.

By my estimate, one of the rooms around here is that processing facility where I was cut apart and hung on hooks.

The monsters haven’t come into it.

"Let’s hide there for now."

"Come this way."

"Y-yeah!"

I walked down the hallway with Kim Seongjin.

And then we went through the open door.

"Ah."

A cold chill.

Dozens, perhaps nearly a hundred corpses, still with their limbs intact, hang dangling from hooks.

I knew it the moment I came in.

This is the line right behind the place where I was hanging. They probably cut off the limbs here and send them to the next line...

"Ugh...!"

Seeing the corpses hanging there, Kim Seongjin looks like he’s about to faint.

I jabbed him in the side and said,

"Don’t pass out. Look. This must be the first processing facility where delivered human meat comes in. If you move along this line... your limbs get cut off in the next room."

"H-h-h-hah, h-huh, p-people... s-so many c-corpses...! Where are they kidnapping all these people from...! Just how many are these monster bastards kidnapping!"

"That’s my question too...!"

"Let’s hide for now!"

The moment I was pushing through the corpses and trying to move deeper inside.

I had no choice but to freeze.

Very.

Very.

Extremely.

Bizarre, horrifying, grotesque.

Goosebumps erupted all over my body, and an unbearable chill washed over me.

"W-why? Why did you stop...?"

Now.

Among the corpses I had just passed by.

"Wasn’t I there?"