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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: JayM
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“Oh, for… fuck’s…”
I opened my eyes to a room covered in yellow wallpaper.
It was an unpleasant place with a damp, musty-smelling carpet and the irritating hum of fluorescent lights.
“Kashnax! Indikron!”
There was no answer. I tried my best to sense their presence or gazes, but I couldn’t feel even a trace of them.
It felt like the connection had been completely severed.
“I’m fucked…”
I checked my wristwatch.
“Ah… It’s broken…”
My wristwatch had stopped, as if damaged during the transition. My phone was also turned off.
“Summon Abyssal Roach! Summon Abyssal Weaver! Salamander!”
Nothing responded. Even my summoning magic was blocked.
“Cheshire. Cheshire. Cheshire. Please…!”
Overwhelmed by anxiety, I repeatedly pressed the button to summon Cheshire, but there was no response.
It felt like it had been five minutes since I pressed the button…
“Hey. Hey! Wake up. This isn’t the time to be sleeping.”
I shook Merhere, who was lying next to me while snoring peacefully.
“Ugh… Wh-where…?”
“I don’t know. I woke up here near you. Do you recognize this place?”
“I-I don’t know. What is this… gloomy and unsettling place?… Could it be… that we’re… dead?”
“I don’t think so. Probably.”
Merhere trembled slightly, anxious that we might be in this strange place because we were dead.
“You… You said you didn’t care if you died earlier.”
“…”
Merhere blushed and lowered her head, embarrassed.
As expected, she didn’t actually want to die.
I ignored her silence for now and looked around.
‘Is this… the Upper Floor? It looks completely different from what I imagined.’
It was a place with endless hallways and rooms, or rather, spaces that I couldn’t even tell were rooms.
There was no visible exit, just yellow wallpapered walls and damp carpets stretching endlessly. Black mold was growing everywhere, and the buzzing of the fluorescent lights was unnerving. It was a gloomy and unpleasant place.
It felt like I had somehow stumbled into a game’s test room or a developer’s space.
“Stop worrying and get up. We have to find a way out.”
“Understood.”
“Wait. Take this before we go.”
I rummaged through my bag and handed her the Account Creation Card.
I had to Awaken her quickly since I didn’t know what might happen.
“This is…”
“It will make you a Player.”
She nodded, tore open the silver packaging, and a bright light flashed.
“What did you get?”
“Uh… This…”
The class she had drawn was Fallen Angel.
A fitting class for her situation. A Fallen Angel. Honestly, it was the class I had expected her to get.
Once a former angel lost her wings and halo, all that remained was corruption.
“What? It suits you. Why the long face?”
“To be called… a Fallen Angel so directly… is quite…”
She seemed quite shocked by her class.
It seemed like a natural outcome to me, so I didn’t understand why she was so upset.
“Well, it was an inevitable outcome… since you had already fallen…”
I took Merhere’s hand and started walking as she muttered to herself, denying reality.
I didn’t know how much time had passed since we arrived here. We had to find a way out quickly.
‘Judging by the atmosphere, it doesn’t seem like the security forces will follow us here.’
But I felt like an even more terrifying monster might be lurking in this place. I prayed to my two evil gods that we would be able to safely escape this strange place.
“But… Do you know where we’re going?”
“No. But we can’t just stand here.”
“That’s… true. Look. I see something over there.”
“Where?”
“Can’t you see? A black figure… Huh?”
I turned my head, following her gaze.
“Argh!!!”
There was something standing there, half-hidden around the corner, staring at us.
“Wh-what the hell… is that?…”
“I’ve never seen anything like that. It’s not a demon… Perhaps it’s a creature even more ominous than a demon…”
The black figure just stood there, motionless, in the distant corner, silently watching us and smiling.
“L-let’s… keep our eyes on it… and move away slowly…”
“Understood. That… looks very ominous.”
We kept our eyes on the figure, held hands tightly, and slowly backed away.
It just continued to smile without approaching us.
“Is it… not dangerous? It’s not chasing us.”
“No. Look at how it looks.”
“Just by looking at it… It definitely seems dangerous.”
Merhere agreed with me.
As we cautiously backed away, our backs hit the wall, and we slowly turned and ran, escaping its line of sight.
“Gasp… Gasp…”
“W-wait…”
As we paused to catch our breath, Merhere grabbed my shoulder tightly.
“Why?”
“Th-there…”
It was closer to us now.
“Oh no…!”
“It seems we can’t avoid it. What should we do? Fight?”
As we were contemplating what to do, the figure staring at us started approaching us slowly.
Whirr!!!
With a loud mechanical whirring sound.
“Oh no!! R’lyeh!!! Huh…?”
My skills wouldn’t activate.
No matter how much I shouted “R’lyeh,” the purple light that gathered in my hands would merely dissipate.
“Damn it!! Wait for me!!!”
Merhere was already running. I followed her while also running frantically.
Then…
[Run this way.]
It was a voice I had never heard of before.
A girl’s voice that felt familiar yet unfamiliar. I couldn’t remember it, but it felt like I had known her for a long time.
“Hey!! Mer!! Here!! Follow me!!!!”
The voice pointed in one direction.
My intuition told me to follow this voice.
And the creature chasing us was something we couldn’t defeat.
Especially now that I couldn’t use my skills.
Merhere quickly changed direction and followed closely behind me.
“Kyaaa!!!!”
The creature screamed and ran towards us on all fours, and Merhere and I ran frantically, barely able to breathe.
Even though my skills were sealed, my stats were still active, so I didn’t tire easily.
“Damn it!! Do you even know where we’re going?!”
“I don’t know either…! Just…! This way!”
“Who told you to come this way? Are you sure it’s okay to follow that voice in your head?”
“Fuck!! I don’t know!!”
“There!! A door! There’s a door!!!!”
“Kyaaaaa!!!!!”
As we ran while dodging the creature and turning corners, Merhere pointed in one direction.
There was a door that looked like an emergency exit.
“That way!! Over there!!”
Merhere, who was ahead of me, opened the door, and she closed it the moment I jumped through.
Bang!! Bang!!!
The unidentified monster, unable to follow us, slammed against the closed door and screamed. After a while, the sounds stopped, and Merhere and I finally caught our breath.
“Gasp… Gasp… We… We’re out!!”
We were on the rooftop of an unknown building.
“But where are we…? This isn’t the supermarket’s rooftop…”
“This seems like a human city, but it’s deserted. Quiet.”
It was a city with no streetlights. Not a single bird flew in this ghost town shrouded in darkness. There were no zombies or anything. Only silence.
We had emerged into a strange space devoid of people.
“Damn it…”
“I can’t make heads or tails of this… What’s going on?…”
This was driving me crazy. I had thought we had escaped upon seeing the cityscape, but…
We were still trapped on the ‘Upper Floor.’
“Hey…!”
Just then, someone approached us from behind.
Merhere naturally raised both her hands and assumed a fighting stance, and I drew my ritual dagger.
I still couldn’t use my skills here.
“Are you trapped here too? Hey! Don’t be alarmed! I’m a drifter too! I want to cooperate with you guys!”
A red-haired foreigner approached us with a smile.
Even though he was speaking in a foreign language, it was automatically translated in my head.
It was strange that I could understand him, even though he wasn’t an NPC and was just a foreigner.
‘How can I understand him?’
Was it the effect of being able to communicate smoothly with myriad demons?
Or perhaps it was simply a characteristic of this place.
It didn’t matter. It didn’t change the fact that I found him suspicious.
“Hey. Don’t come any closer.”
I couldn’t let my guard down now that the Slave Brand skill was sealed. And there was no way I could trust a stranger I had met in this strange place.
“W-wait…! I’m saying I want to cooperate with you!!”
“Cooperate? How can I trust you? I can’t. Never.”
“W-wait. Let me explain…!”
He subtly reached for the axe at his waist.
The moment his hand touched the axe, he was out.
I immediately swung my dagger at him, and he barely dodged it and started running.
“You crazy! Damn it! These Orientals!!! So damn perceptive!!!”
As expected, he had approached us with malicious intent.
Then I couldn’t let him get away.
He might call his companions or alert a larger group to our presence.
I wouldn’t have cared if we hadn’t met, but now that we had, I had no choice but to kill him.
“Catch him!!”
“Understood!!”
Merhere, like a good slave, immediately ran after him at my command. She quickly caught up to him and delivered a dropkick.
“Argh!!”
Merhere’s dropkick, with her 190cm tall voluptuous physique, landed squarely on his lower back.
His back arched like a flip phone being bent backward, and he collapsed forward while screaming.
“Gah…! Gaaa!!! Fuck!!! You bitch!!!!”
I approached Merhere, who was holding the fallen man down.
“Hey, Mer. Kill him.”
“What?”
“Kill him quickly. You need to level up. Even if you can’t use skills right now, you still need to increase your stats.”
“You’re right. Understood.”
Merhere took the dagger from me and held it to the fallen man’s body.
“W-wait!! Please…! Just once…”
Stab…!
“I’m sorry. May you go to heaven.”
Merhere, as if she didn’t want to hear him anymore, stabbed him in the neck and twisted the dagger.
He screamed in agony, with his neck not just cut but pierced, and then went limp, dead.
“My level has increased. My stats have also improved.”
“I see. Phew. Let’s see…”
Merhere’s skills, like Kang Ha-young’s, the Carnage Vampire, only had one option.
And despite being level 1, her base stats were on par with a level 15 Player.
The difference in racial base stats was significant. Of course, my stats were higher because of the increase in my Magic stat.
Even without stats, she had been faster than me, so considering that, her actual physical abilities might be higher than what her stats indicated.
“Unholy Blessing… A physical enhancement skill.”
“Didn’t you say we can’t use skills here?”
“That’s true. I was just checking.”
We rummaged through the dead man’s bag.
It was filled with various tools.
Ropes, fire-starting tools, and other survival gear.
“I’ll put these to good use.”
I also searched his pockets and found a worn photograph and a notebook.
The photograph showed the man we had just killed and an unknown woman. I threw it away.
“Let’s see…”
The writing in the notebook wasn’t Korean.
It was in English. Of course, I couldn’t read it. I could decipher a few words thanks to my years of living, but since it was written in cursive, and my English wasn’t very good, I couldn’t understand the contents at all.
“I can’t read this.”
“Give it to me.”
“Can you read it?”
“I was an angel, you know. Human languages are nothing to me.”
“I see, it’s useful here. You’re helpful, Mer.”
“Ahem.”
I stroked her hair, and Mer started reading the contents of the notebook.
It was his diary, a record of his survival after arriving in this place.
“Damn it… then this place is…”
“I see. A collection of errors. This place seems to be where they confine errors that disrupt the world lines.”
Surprisingly, this abnormally shaped city was a place where beings called ‘Errors’ were trapped in.
In other words, those possessed, reincarnated, with past lives, returnees, and regressors.
“Huh… Fuck… Keep reading.”
“Understood. Ahem. Skill usage is restricted in this city, and the maximum level seems to be limited to 20. And all Errors who arrive here have their levels reset.”
“Wait. My level is still the same as when I entered, so that means I’m not an Error?”
“It seems so. Perhaps it’s because the way we entered here is different from theirs.”
These guys had apparently just woken up here, but we had entered through a door, so different rules seemed to apply to us. Perhaps we were treated as visitors since we had entered through a proper door.
“Keep reading.”
“Understood. All the food found here is either rotten or spoiled, and the only edible things in this place are the occasionally found lemon-flavored water and… the other Errors trapped here. It says you can’t survive here without resorting to cannibalism… Ugh…”
I would have to resort to cannibalism if there was nothing else to eat, but I was still hesitant.
She frowned and continued reading.
“It also says to be especially careful of Zhang Qian, a Chinese Regressor. He’s particularly buggy, duplicating himself every day, and he levels up by consuming his copies. It says he has surpassed level 15, which was considered the practical level limit here.”
“Sigh… One problem after another. Is there no way to escape this place?”
“Wait. I’m still reading. Hmm… It seems like he also struggled to find a way out. He failed, but he seems to have found a suspicious location.”
“Where?”
“The center of the city. It says there’s a sinkhole there. But there’s… a snake there… A snake.”
“A snake?”
“A snake. It periodically emerges from the sinkhole, devours the Errors, and then disappears. And it says that the area around the sinkhole is… Zhang Qian’s territory. There’s a map he drew here.”
“So we either have to kill that Chinese bastard or avoid him.”
“According to the notebook, Zhang Qian has created an army of himself here. Can the two of us get through them?”
“We’ll have to try… But staying here longer will only lead to… cannibalism, so we have no choice but to go.”
I checked the items in my bag.
“Sigh…”
I only had the drugs I had bought earlier and the firecrackers I had brought just in case.
If I was lucky… I would be able to draw the Dragon’s Breath from these five Random Firecracker Bundles in one shot.
I hoped I would get lucky.
“We have to try.”
As I picked up one of the five bundles of firecrackers, I heard the voice I had heard while running away earlier.
[You know… The one on the right…]
“Did you hear something?”
“What sound?”
“It definitely wasn’t a hallucination, but… Never mind.”
Merhere hadn’t heard it again.
Then it was a voice only I could hear.
Something was helping me. I quickly put the firecrackers I had just picked up back in the bag and grabbed the one on the right.
‘It felt similar to when I first encountered Kashnax or Indikron.’
Was a new evil god appearing here?
“Let’s go down now.”
“Alright.”
We observed the surroundings from the rooftop and roughly figured out where we were.
Then we went down to the lower floors. Fortunately, the rooftop access door led to the inside of the building, and not another strange place.
We reached the first floor and walked towards the center of the city, as instructed by the notebook.
We didn’t encounter anyone on the way.
Then, as we approached the sinkhole…
Click…!
Lights suddenly turned on all around us, all aimed at us.
“Hahaha!!! New Errors!!! Welcome!!! To my kingdom!!!”
Hundreds of people were staring at us. All with the same face. The one with the bone staff and ornaments must be the leader of the Zhang Qians.
“So that’s the leader, Zhang Qian…”
The damn Chinese Regressor had been waiting for us.
“Take the woman alive! Kill the man!!! It’s meat party time!!”
He gave orders to himself.
Then, all the identical-looking men roared and charged at us while wielding their weapons.
“Damn it… This is the end, I guess. Can I borrow your dagger? I’d rather die than be gang-raped by those guys.”
“Wait!”
I quickly lit the firecrackers with a lighter.
The Zhang Qian horde was already closing in.
The fuses burned down…
And I held out the firecrackers towards them.
Something burst from the end of the long firecrackers, and then…
Boom!!!!!
A deafening explosion erupted, and a wave of fire swept through them.
My vision momentarily went white from the intense light, and I was pushed back by the shockwave.
The surviving Zhang Qians were also pushed back.
“Run!!”
I ran frantically towards the sinkhole with Merhere.
“Catch them!!!!”
The leader, Zhang Qian, and the remaining soldiers who were somehow still alive chased after us.
“Damn it!! What was that?!”
“Dragon’s Breath!!”
“S-such a thing…!”
We soon reached the sinkhole.
[Welcome…]
I heard the voice again.
The Zhang Qian horde was right behind us. There was nowhere left to run. And there was no reason to be afraid of jumping now.
“Hold my hand. One! Two! Three!!”
I grabbed Merhere’s hand.
“Damn it. I’m falling again.”
With her self-deprecating chuckle, we jumped into the bottomless sinkhole.
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T/N – The MC fell into the backrooms, fr. Also, I’m kinda liking Merhere’s sense of humor. This Zhang Qian guy is pretty OP with his infinite clones, and of course, he’s Chinese. I hope we see him again later.
If you find any mistakes, feel free to point them out in the comments.
