Chapter 10
Let's rewind a bit, to the corridor leading to the isolation room.
I deleted the game I'd originally installed before reaching the isolation room.
To raise my survival odds against 'Why Are You Luckier Than Me?'
If the management condition for 'Why Are You Luckier Than Me?' was flexing, then I had to drag it into pure RNG territory where flexing wasn't possible.
I used a translator to search the internet for the game with the worst gacha rates.
There were two candidates.
Dog-meat Mobile and some Chinese game.
I had reached the isolation room after installing the second game and preparing to hit pity.
It was a shame that the result of all that preparation was the same guy's exposure.
After that, Jang Tae-sik launched into a heated rant at 'Why Are You Luckier Than Me?'
A 5% rate with a 300-pull pity ceiling is insane.
The chance of not pulling the top rarity all the way to pity is 0.000000207%.
Even a humanities major can tell that's nonsense.
And apparently it never gives you a 6-star before 100 pulls, and so on.
[…….]
'Why Are You Luckier Than Me?' silently listened to his desperate cries.
I didn't say anything in particular either.
Because I remembered the words Manager Kwak Chun-bong had emphasized over and over during new-hire training.
'Unless absolutely necessary, never provoke an entity.'
'The rules you think are absolute safeguards mean nothing to entities.'
"Rigging a competition's odds is trash behavior!"
Now Jang Tae-sik had even turned around completely and was shouting at me.
I just quietly watched 'Why Are You Luckier Than Me?'
[Trash?]
The black human-shaped thing created by 'Why Are You Luckier Than Me?' started trembling.
As if it were feeling rage it could no longer contain.
"Huh?"
Jang Tae-sik, who had no way of knowing why it was doing that, was flustered by the change.
But before long, as if he'd completely misunderstood something, he got even more worked up.
"You're angry at that agent, right? See? I told you rigging the odds is trash!"
I bet that guy wouldn't have lasted even three rounds if he'd been assigned to another entity.
What a guy made of pure bad luck.
You don't know it, but they were the ones who rigged the odds first.
[I'm not trash.]
"Pardon?"
The black shape's maw slowly opened.
[I'm not trash.]
The thing, which until a moment ago had at least vaguely resembled a human face, had turned into a beast baring dozens of sharp teeth.
"I-I was talking about that guy! I, I wasn't talking about you!"
[I'm not trashhhhh!]
Crunch!
Thud.
In the end, Jang Tae-sik met the same death as everyone else at the hands of 'Why Are You Luckier Than Me?'
Was it because it was so angry?
Unlike the others, whose necks had been torn off, 'Why Are You Luckier Than Me?' tore off and swallowed his entire upper body.
Only Jang Tae-sik's lower half was left in the isolation room, gushing blood.
[Congratulations! Today, the unluckiest person is you!]
"Thank you."
The black shape disappeared, and a voice came from the tablet.
Could I take that to mean the management was over?
[You can go out now!]
Looks like that was the right answer.
I dragged Jang Tae-sik's lower half, still spewing blood, to the wall by the isolation room entrance.
Clank!
The inner door opened after confirming the situation on my side.
The moment I tried to bolt, unwilling to stay here for even one more second.
[So don't ever come back.]
Instead of the lively voice from before, a dry, sticky voice came from behind me.
It felt like a thousand needles were pointed at my heart.
[If you come in here again, tell them I'm the one who'll get out of here.]
"...Understood."
I managed to squeeze out an answer.
[Goodbye!]
Thud! Thud! Thud!
I finally came out of the isolation room after passing through three iron doors.
My shaky legs could barely support my limp body.
The blood-stained body bags seemed to have been cleaned up somehow already.
"See? I told you he'd come out. Don't pit an N-rank against a staff member."
"...Fine, fine, so shut up."
The two employees guarding the isolation room welcomed me.
It looked like they had been betting on who would come out alive.
I was starting to feel humanity slipping, but with working conditions like this, it would be weird if they weren't like that.
"How much do you know about that entity?"
"How much?"
"For example, its management method, or its mood swings."
"Did something happen inside?"
I explained what had happened inside the isolation room to the two of them, whose expressions had turned grave.
However, I didn't tell them about the gacha system of the game I had installed.
I only explained that Jang Tae-sik had accused me of being a cheater.
"If you didn't know, that makes sense."
"Excuse me?"
"You didn't know? In the first place, only one person can come out."
What?
"It should've all been written in the report. How carelessly did you read it?"
Hearing that, I recalled the entity report I had just read.
++++
[Entity Report]
Why Are You Luckier Than Me?
Grade - Level 2
Classification - Entity Type
[Photo of a tablet running a mobile game]
'Why Are You Luckier Than Me?' is a tablet discovered in 2023 in an XX apartment in XX-dong, Daegu.
The scene we were sent to after receiving a report that a tablet was killing people already had three casualties.
Once it sensed the field response team, 'Why Are You Luckier Than Me?' pressured them into pulling gacha in whatever mobile game each person was playing.
Of the five dispatched, the two who refused were [REDACTED].
The three members afterward [REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED].
Even after entering the Bureau, it is still periodically demanding people to roll the gacha.
On average, about 20 N-rank personnel a day have to be sent in for the entity to produce the result it wants.
++++
Where in this report does it say that?
There wasn't some hidden info in the redacted parts, was there?
No, that must be it.
When something's truly fucked up, the bit you instinctively think 'no way' about is usually the right one.
Maybe this was what it meant that the Bureau didn't even treat me as staff.
"Well, you're alive, so that's enough. If there were no special notes on the entity, go rest up now."
"Good work."
"Ah, right. There was one thing."
Before leaving the isolation room, I passed along what 'Why Are You Luckier Than Me?' had said at the end.
"……."
"……."
The expressions of the two employees who heard that story began to turn pale.
"Yeah. Got it. We'll pass it on to the info team."
"Go on in and rest. Good work."
But soon they returned to their usual expressions and told me to go back.
"Understood. Thanks for your work."
Though it felt unsettling, I figured the more seasoned people would handle it properly and headed back to the office.
I wasn't keen on prying further and ending up in the interrogation room.
"You're later than expected?"
As I opened the office door, Team Leader Im Mina, who was drinking coffee, greeted me.
"Management took a bit longer. There was an accident in the middle too."
"And you still came back alive?"
"I got lucky."
"More like you got unlucky."
The team leader casually threw jokes at someone who had come back from the dead.
If someday I could laugh and take comments like that in stride, I'd have to pat myself on the back for becoming a proper Bureau employee.
"Do I need to report what happened during management?"
"Normally, yes, but not right now."
"Excuse me?"
"Info Team contacted me. They said hearing it would just be a pain."
Team Leader Im Mina set down the coffee she was drinking and came over to me.
And tapped my temple with her index finger.
"Apparently, if you find out, it's straight to the memory-erasure procedure."
"Memory erasure?"
"Right. Probably everyone except Seongbin and the info team will have to go through hell until the related memories are erased."
The faces of the two isolation-room staff flashed through my mind.
Their white faces.
Did those people know?
"I heard that entity declared you off-limits for management, Seongbin."
The team leader, who had been tapping my temple, withdrew her hand and crossed her arms.
"Interesting, isn't it? Managed entities only act like that toward people with abilities."
"People with abilities?"
"People who have the power or items to go toe-to-toe with an entity."
"Like you, Team Leader?"
"Oh my."
With a leisurely smile, the team leader looked at me for a moment, then told me to clock out.
"Come in the day after tomorrow. You usually get time off after management."
"Yes."
"Then see you the day after tomorrow?"
Leaving behind the team leader's fluttering wave, I slipped out of the office.
"Haa."
What if I'd been one of the three teams that died before me?
The image of me with nothing above the neck came to mind.
Even an ugly face is better than having none at all.
Whoosh...
As soon as I got to the dorm, I went straight to the bathroom and turned on the hot water.
The smell of blood on my body gradually faded away.
[Congratulations! Today, the unluckiest person is you!]
[So don't ever come back.]
The voice of 'Why Are You Luckier Than Me?' kept echoing in my head.
That bastard.
Next time we meet, I'll set a 24-hour gacha record on Dog-meat Mobile's mythic banner.
Of course, I'd probably never meet it again.
After showering, I threw myself onto the bed and turned on the terminal.
The gallery notification badge was at 99+.
I let out a dry laugh.
Even if the goal was dopamine, thanks to these guys I was alive, after all.
'People who have the power or items to go toe-to-toe with an entity.'
What Team Leader Im Mina had said while explaining abilities.
Maybe someone like me was already enough to count as an ability user.
"Phew..."
After exhaling a long sigh, I wrote a post on the gallery.
[Big bro's here, you bastards lol]
Author : Gallery Shitposting Is Easy
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