Got Dropped into a Ghost Story, Still Gotta Work (Novel) - Chapter 21
Chapter 21
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Translated by Jinmu
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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In the midst of a desperate situation where red-tear-shedding mascots stared at me with pupilless eyes, and I was demanded to ‘Hey, since things turned out like this, start by killing a person,’ lies flowed smoothly from my mouth.
“A trap?”
“Yes. Think about it.”
I struggled not to look at the crazy mascots at the windows, maintaining an expression of ‘I really had a brilliant idea.’
“It is this Dark that tied us together as a team. But would it really be alright to kill a teammate carelessly?”
Actually, it is fine.
“It is a Dark that strangles us just by team members falling apart. But what if we kill one?”
We could just carry the corpse around.
Only, in the process, the coward’s heart wouldn’t be able to endure, and I would vomit, ending up with the reputation of ‘This guy is a drag,’ and simply get reassigned to a place perfect to die….
“…No matter how much I think about it, there seems to be a huge penalty.”
“Hmm.”
The eyes under the butterfly mask narrowed.
“We could also receive a penalty for failing to kill, couldn’t we?”
“Conversely, we could also get wiped out by killing them.”
“…….”
“If both are possibilities, I thought it was more rational to choose the direction of preserving the number of people.”
The opponent was slightly shaken.
I swallowed my saliva and added words.
“Of course, the decision is for you to make, Assistant Manager, but….”
“Yeah! If you kill, kill me, huh? You will die too, huh, huh? You crazy bastard! You don’t want to die either. Stop….”
Thud.
I decisively struck the back of the researcher’s neck.
It meant I knocked him unconscious.
‘I set the whole stage up, so why are you making a fuss to die a natural death.’
Having so little tact is why you engage in company gambling!
Whether the constraint had been released in the meantime, the Group Y rookie was also letting go of the researcher’s limbs with a pale face.
The Group A superior, having watched all that, slowly opened her mouth.
I waited anxiously.
“You.”
“…….”
“You must ensure you do not regret this.”
I survived.
“Yes, of course.”
The Group A superior did not reply. It seemed my points had been considerably docked.
But that wasn’t important right now.
The important thing was that I got past this timing for now.
[Di…….]
The narration that had been repeating ‘die’ eventually died down as we stopped and did not attack each other.
Flicker.
And the moment the train lights flickered.
“Th-They vanished…!”
The mascots that had been surrounding the windows disappeared.
Only bloodstains remained.
“…….”
But they weren’t the only ones that vanished.
‘None.’
The conductor mascot too.
The exciting theme park music too.
The cheerful announcement voice for disembarking too.
“…….”
Creak.
We, who pushed and stepped out of the train ourselves, saw the interior which was eerily devoid of sound and light.
“…It feels like we stepped on a landmine.”
“…….”
That… was true.
I recalled one of the Records of the Dark Exploration again.
———————=
Pleasant Theme Park User Guide (Applied up to Exploration Record No. 64)
4. Each sector of the theme park is colored according to its theme! The place where you first open your eyes is precisely the sector your team belongs to!
Respect the sector. The sector is more important than anything else Look at the color Do not offend the mascot’s feelings The mascot is everything in the sector
———————=
This clause didn’t exist for nothing….
If one fell out of favor with the mascot in the colored sector of the theme park, they would no longer receive respect as a ‘visitor’ in that sector.
They might have to play a game of tag of death.
But we couldn’t press the nuke to avoid stepping on this landmine, could we?
‘The mascot’s demands escalate gradually.’
Normally, they ordered simple things at the very beginning.
To eat something, to hold something, or to have a warm hug with them.
‘But they make us commit murder from the first turn?’
Then by the time we rode the next next attraction, we would be treated in a way that made dying preferable.
For instance, I had already seen in the exploration records that they ordered crazy things like ‘Make balloons out of your own bladder’….
By that point, the mascot’s influence grew so strong that one couldn’t even refuse.
‘Rather die than that.’
This was a ghost story universe where it was common to end up in a state worse than death.
And even now, it wasn’t as if there was no escape route.
I swallowed my saliva.
‘We just have to run.’
If we slipped out of the sector of the Red Rabbit, Magic Bunny, and entered another mascot’s sector, this aggro would be released.
To do that… let’s see.
‘Found it!’
I finally found it on one side of the dark exit path.
“There is something over there.”
“Uh?”
In the first place, this was also the reason why I had tried to ride this attraction.
‘Theme park color map!’
[~Fantasyland Color Map~]
Because after riding this attraction completely, at the very last exit, there was a map showing the territory of each mascot.
I muttered while approaching quickly.
“It’s a map. This might be helpful to us.”
“Wh-Why is that?”
At a glance, it looked like just an interior decoration.
Since the attraction introduced Fantasyland, it seemed like nothing more than a visual implementation of it.
However, the information contained was massive.
“Do you remember the content of this attraction?”
“Ah, uh, so, these theme park mascots fighting over the land….”
“Precisely that.”
I nodded.
“On the map of this attraction, the sectors of other mascots will be marked.”
“…!”
We could see with our own eyes how to move to reach the sectors of other colors by the shortest route.
“Escape because we offended the monster? While carrying that?”
The Group A assistant manager gestured with her chin at the researcher I was carrying.
Thinking she might suggest killing him even now, I replied immediately.
“I will wake the Research Team 1 supervisor up and make him walk properly as soon as we check the map.”
“Hmm.”
Please just don’t perform a disassembly show in front of my eyes….
In any case, as some vision emerged, a bit of hope returned to the Group Y rookie’s face.
I probably wore a similar face.
‘Please be nearby.’
I took a deep breath, quickly approached the map, and checked……,
“…….”
“…….”
“There is… none, though.”
Uh?
I looked at the map again.
But the drawing did not change.
[~Fantasyland Color Map~]
The interior panoramic view of the displayed theme park was entirely.
Red.
[Magic Bunny Zone] [Magic Bunny Zone] [Magic Bunny Zone] [Magic Bunny Zone] [Magic Bunny Zone] [Magic Bunny Zone] [Magic Bunny Zone] [Magic Bunny Zone] [Magic Bunny Zone] [Magic Bunny Zone] [Magic Bunny Zone]
On every signboard, Magic Bunny’s face was engraved.
“Ah.”
[Magic Bunny’s Fantasyland]
There was no place to run.
None.
“…….”
“…….”
“I-Is this perhaps something wrong? Sol-eum, clearly, clearly there were other mascots earlier too….”
“They were all driven out.”
“…!”
The narration I heard during the attraction automatically came to mind.
-Falling into holes, falling into water, pushing off cliffs!
If so….
“He killed all the Yellow and Blue ones and that red mascot took over this place completely.”
“…….”
“Then… the employees who drew other colored game pieces,”
“Well.”
The Group A assistant manager shrugged.
“All missing?”
“…!”
“Is that important right now? The important thing is….”
The eyes under the butterfly mask grew sinister again.
“It seems you made the wrong choice.”
“…….”
“Do not worry. You are not to the point of having to die first.”
Those words meant only one thing.
There was someone else who had to die first.
“It’s late even now, you know?”
“…….”
…Reflexively, the moment I turned back to look at the researcher hanging like a piece of luggage on my shoulder while unconscious.
B o r e d
“…!!”
“Wh-What….”
B o r e d
A sound ringing in my head.
B o r e d
Haven’t I heard it somewhere?
Ah, the talk show, the Tuesday talk show. It was like the scream that the dead pig head of the Purgatory Choir let out in the reorganized talk show animal animal mascot! Magic Bunny is bored.
“Keup.”
I covered my ears.
B o r e d
I lowered my gaze.
The ticket hanging on my wrist vibrated.
[(Pleasant) Fantasyland Ticket ■□□]
[(Pleasant) Fantasyland Ticket ■□□]
The sound was coming from here.
N o t F u n
Ziiiiiip.
It began to tear due to the sound vibration.
The ticket was.
———————=
Pleasant Theme Park User Guide (Applied up to Exploration Record No. 64)
1. Use your ticket bracelet cleanly!
If lost or damaged, you are no longer a visitor. If you are not a visitor, you are an unwelcome guest. Thief! Criminal! A terrible punishment awaits you. Or
Do you want to become an employee?
———————=
No way.
I desperately tried to roll my brain.
But there was no way.
Really, there was not a single place to escape to. There was no place to run! To preserve human dignity, it seemed better to commit suicide before it was too late….
-Kim Sol-eum.
Now even auditory hallucinations,
-Kim Sol-eum. Can you hear me?
‘…….’
It wasn’t an auditory hallucination!
I raised my head.
Nothing was visible in the air, but I heard a voice so clear in my ears that it couldn’t possibly be mistaken for an auditory hallucination.
Its owner was….
“…Group Leader?”
-Yes.
It was the Lizard manager, Group Leader Lee Ja-heon.
It was a situation that felt like déjà vu. Though the layout was reversed!
“How did you contact me?!”
-I am using Supervisor Park Min-sung’s dedicated equipment.
B o r e d
As the voices overlapped, the sound of the red great Magic Bunny grew faint. I barely realized that I had gone right to the brink of hyperventilation.
No, that wasn’t what was important….
-Is Roe Deer okay? You are alive, right?
-We are fine! We just rode all three attractions!
Group D was all together. How did this happen?
“Werent you three from different colored teams?”
I remembered clearly.
‘Only Group Leader Lee Ja-heon was Blue Team, and the rest were Yellow Team!’
-Roe Deer, that isn’t what’s important right now….
“It is important! Did the three of you wake up in the same place in the theme park even though you were on different teams?”
After a short silence.
-No.
The calm voice of the Lizard manager answered.
-I moved after finding the two of them.
Several questions popped up in my head simultaneously, but the most urgent was this. So,
“…Where did you find them?”
-The outskirts of the Blue sector.
“…Then are you currently in the sector of the Blue mascot?”
N o t F u n
-Yes.
A shiver ran down my spine.
“It’s not marked on the map, but which point is the Blue sector, by any chance?”
-I do not know.
Damn it.
“You don’t need to know the specific coordinates. Please just tell me the surrounding attractions! Even a compass direction is fine.”
-I see.
After a short silence.
-It is the wes…….
Click.
The connection was cut off.
“Group Leader?”
No answer returned.
It was probably a timeout of the dedicated equipment’s usage.
And more important than such a guess was….
“W-West??”
In the meantime, the face of the Group Y rookie, who had been listening desperately next to me, turned blank.
The Group A assistant manager’s face was similar.
The reason was simple.
“The place where we are is the west, though?”
Indeed.
The ‘Fantasy Train’ was located almost at the western end of the Fantasyland map…….
Opposite the eastern side, which was ruggedly surrounded by forest, the smoothly finished western side was surrounded by castle walls.
And this attraction sat right next to that castle wall.
In Fantasyland, there was no place further west than this!
B o r e d
“It seems we fell into different theme parks, doesn’t it? Like the timeline where the Blue mascot won, or something like that. The Dark is all like that, you know.”
Fell into different places?
It was a setting that it was a completely different parallel dimension?
N o t F u n
“No.”
There was no way.
“This is a Dark derived from a board game. When playing the same game, there is no way we would use different boards.”
“Hey. Shut up.”
The Group A superior answered coldly.
“Muttering… even if you blabber plausibly, if it doesn’t match reality, we have to discard it.”
No, this wasn’t deduction but induction.
I wanted to vent that there were numerous precedents, but I knew she would absolutely not believe me. What was needed now… was just saying the correct answer.
Where on earth was the ‘west’?
‘Quickly, quickly.’
Let’s think. There was definitely an answer.
I looked at the Fantasyland color map again. All the sectors visible were still painted red.
Giant Ferris wheel, carousel, roller coaster, Viking, magic palace. Without exception, Magic Bunny’s face was turning red.
Every amusement ride was…… wait.
“…!”
B o r e d
Wait a minute.
I scanned the map again.
And I noticed.
“…Found it!”
“What?”
“The other colored sector.”
It is this way.
I moved my feet with conviction. Whether they fell in line with that momentum or felt hope, my teammates moved along.
N o t F u n
We had to go quickly before catching the mascot’s eyes. Because there was no time to delay, I stepped out of the attraction as quickly as possible—
Y o u A r e I g n o r i n g M e ?
Too late.