Chapter 45
[If you want to save them, you have to buy a ton of Cybergers]
Author: GalleryingIsEasy
Emergency, emergency: trapped in ‘Yeondoo High School’ in Toy Box 37
The team leader and I have obtained student identities and are hiding in a second-floor classroom, avoiding the security guard.
And apparently this thing where I occasionally go haywire, lose my memory, and black out is mental contamination.
It can be temporarily alleviated, but is there no way to cure it?
Because of this, I entered the Toy Box and almost got killed after sexually harassing Red Mask.
As always, hit me with the victory chant, Gwanbung-kuns.
[Comments]
ShoveItIn: You’re an orphan.
ㄴEntityFreak: Why are you worked up again, you crazy bitch?
ㄴShoveItIn: You never give me pictures of the team leader.
ㄴ(OP) GalleryingIsEasy: I got permission to take a picture of the team leader in her school uniform if I escape.
ㄴShoveItIn: You’re a hero of the Management Bureau gallery!
ㄴEntityFreak: What an idiot lololololololol.
LastGentleman: Bro, even if women aren’t supposed to talk back to men, you can’t be that blatant about it.
TrappedAtHome: If it’s Yeondoo High School, doesn’t it seal abilities? How is he using the gallery?
ㄴMyDadIsAMurimMaster: He does it in the Backrooms too. Why wouldn’t he be able to do it here?
ㄴEarthboundSpiritNo1: It’s different there. Everyone becomes equal once they enter a Level ■ entity. If that weren’t the case, they would’ve torn down the school already.
ㄴMyDadIsAMurimMaster: Seriously…
WhiteHacker: No wonder the Gwanak Branch was in total chaos. So it was the work of that bastard who won’t give us his bank-account number.
[At this point, isn’t the newbie gay?]
Author: GalleryingForPay
I’ve never heard of a single case in which an ability or even an entity someone brought in continued to function among those who managed Yeondoo High School and returned.
It was the same in the Backrooms. No, from the start, how is this guy even getting into the gallery? This isn’t a place just anyone can enter.
Mod, sorry, but I don’t know. I understand that we’re supposed to cherish him and save him, but he’s suspicious, isn’t he?
[Comments]
ManagingManagement: Please check the secret post in my guestbook.
ㄴ(OP) GalleryingForPay: Holy shit.
-This post has been deleted by the author-
What was that? What did you people say to each other? When I refreshed the page to update the comments, the post disappeared in an instant.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s a routine. Doing it once whenever I have downtime helps me focus.”
“Oh, I guess this is what Yuna and Chaeyoung were talking about.”
Imina, who had been sitting at a desk some distance away, perched on the adjacent desk and looked at my terminal.
“You look like you’re typing a text message even though you can’t see anything at all.”
“You could call it a characteristic of the MZ generation these days.”
“I’m MZ too, you know?”
I didn’t know that. She was the only team member I’d met whose age I didn’t know.
The trembling at Imina’s fingertips still hadn’t stopped, and it caught my eye.
“Would there be any decent medicine in the nurse’s office?”
“No, the nurse’s office is on the first floor, and the nurse there isn’t especially kind, either.”
As she said that, she poked my cheek again and again.
“And you’ve been to the hospital, so you can guess what kind of medicine they hand out in a place like this, right?”
“Ah.”
Come to think of it, I’d ignored the prescription given to me by Eternal Life General Hospital, too.
+++
A large number of entities inhabit the school,
Most entities other than the guards remain in special rooms such as the music room, science room, and art room.
+++
The nurse’s office was a special room in a sense, too, and judging from Imina’s reference to the nurse, the nurse was obviously an entity.
It would be best to hurry to the third floor, take the exam, and get out.
“Can we escape immediately after taking the exam and leaving through the school gate?”
“As long as you score over 85, the school won’t interfere. Once you’re outside the school gate, you’ll escape the Toy Box, too.”
Reality and entities alike sure can’t stop a high-schooler who’s taken an exam.
There was only one piece of information left to learn before entering the third floor.
About the exam.
++++
.
.
.
According to what has been confirmed to date, the only official way to escape from ‘Yeondoo High School’ is to score 85 points or higher on the exam.
The exam can be taken in any classroom on the third floor, and the exam subject differs for each examinee.
When someone enters a classroom, an empty seat is created for each person who entered, and the moment they sit down, the ‘Homeroom Teacher’ distributes the exam paper.
No commonality could be found among the questions in testimonies from ordinary people who successfully escaped, but cases have been confirmed in which some Management Bureau employees were given questions related to the Management Bureau and entities.
When the exam is taken in a special room rather than an ordinary classroom, some questions have been confirmed to change to suit the purpose of that special room.
In addition, in special rooms, the entity of that room acts as the exam proctor instead of the ‘Homeroom Teacher.’
All proctors in special rooms confirmed to date have displayed a higher level of danger than the ‘Homeroom Teacher.’
Therefore, taking the exam in an ordinary classroom rather than a special room is recommended.
The exam lasts 90 minutes, and open-book testing is allowed.
The scope of the open-book rule includes not only textbooks but also most information media, such as electronic dictionaries and terminals.
However, all external communications are completely blocked inside ‘Yeondoo High School,’ and no cases have been confirmed in which the questions could be solved using only the textbooks found inside the school.
Therefore, the open-book rule is judged to be effectively meaningless.
Once all the questions have been solved, raising your hand results in immediate grading.
If the score is 85 or higher, the ‘Homeroom Teacher’ grants permission to leave school, allowing the examinee to exit normally.
Conversely, if the score is below 85, the ‘Homeroom Teacher’ immediately kills the examinee.
If you determine that your score will fall short of 85, the only survival method confirmed to date is to leave the classroom before grading is complete and escape by climbing over the school wall.
However, from the moment they leave the classroom, all entities inside the school become hostile toward the target, leave their usual areas of activity, and begin pursuing them.
To date, the only person among ordinary civilians and Management Bureau employees to survive using this method is the ■■■ team leader of the Gwan■ Branch.
The survival rate after failing the exam is close to zero.
Therefore, all examinees are advised to make passing the exam their top priority rather than escaping.
++++
To sum up, unless you’re at Team Leader Imina’s level, it was basically telling you to quietly score 85 points and go home.
“Have you ever been to this school?”
“I hate it~. I have a college degree, you know?”
Even in this situation, Imina wore a sly smile as if she still had the energy to joke around.
“I pride myself on having dealt with most Level 3 and higher entities.”
“Then the team leader who returned alive without taking the exam in the report was…?”
Instead of answering, Imina nodded.
“That was in my foolish youth.”
Was it really okay to brush off surviving while every entity in the school chased her like that?
“Using that method this time would be….”
“Impossible. The school ended up like this because I escaped back then.”
“What do you mean, like this?”
“Ability sealing? That didn’t originally exist. It was a rule created after I escaped.”
Imina tapped her terminal several times, then showed it to me.
[(Old) Yeondoo High School.txt]
“This is….”
“Read it. It’ll be faster than having me explain it.”
The old entity report I read after taking the terminal from her was shocking.
To summarize the differences, they were as follows.
‘Yeondoo High School’ was originally a Level 4 entity and belonged to the Toy Box lineup in the 70s.
Immediately after Imina’s forced escape, ‘Yeondoo High School’ lowered its rank and added the ‘Nullification of Abilities’ rule.
The Management Bureau replaced the entity report with a new one rather than editing it, in order to conceal the fact that entities could create variables by lowering their own rank.
Changes in level and rules were familiar to me after hearing the explanation from the setting-obsessed modder following my experience with ‘The Forest of the Faceless Ones.’
The problem was what came next: the part where they replaced the report instead of updating it.
Why had the Management Bureau deliberately concealed such important information from its employees?
Was this also part of the measures to prevent information theft caused by mental contamination that someone called Branch Chief Park had mentioned?
“Is this something the seniors know about?”
“It happened five years ago, so they don’t know. Even their combined employment histories add up to less than five years.”
Imina said, ‘This is grounds for disciplinary action if anyone finds out!’ and then laid her head back down on the desk.
“How far does the open-book rule go?”
“That? It’s suuuuper lax. So lax that they wouldn’t catch even you and me putting our heads together and discussing things.”
“Is that really okay for a high-school exam?”
“That’s how confident they are. It’s like, ‘If you can do it, go ahead and try,’ I guess?”
Apparently, only one person in ten scored over 85.
Five years ago, Imina said she couldn’t think of any way to pass the score threshold, so she went and did it.
“What kind of questions were they that you couldn’t solve them, Team Leader?”
“They were things like covering up a few words in the entity reports of entities we’d managed and asking you to fill them in.”
A memorization test that sounded like something you would see on a college exam.
Considering how the Field Response Team operated, it would have been impossible to solve.
“That’s why I carry the reports for every entity I’ve been involved with on my terminal.”
Was the entity report for ‘(Old) Yeondoo High School’ preparation for something like that?
“We’ve rested long enough. Shall we get going?”
Imina began preparing to leave the classroom.
Her complexion definitely looked much more relaxed than before.
“Wait.”
Before leaving the classroom, Imina left a post on the gallery and opened the door, and I followed her into the hallway.
[My IQ is 60, and your IQ is 60.]
Author: GalleryingIsEasy
With a combined IQ of 120, we have to solve the questions at Yeondoo High School.
Everyone, turn on the internet and take your seats.