Chapter 21
Chapter 21
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 21
Chapter Title: Even If I Fall Into a Ghost Story, I Still Have to Go to Work
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Amid the mascots shedding bloody tears and staring at us with hollow, pupil-less eyes, I found myself cornered in a do-or-die situation. My superior had just casually mandated, 'Since it's come to this, why don't you try killing someone yourself to see what happens?'
Lies flowed from my mouth with terrifying ease.
"A trap, you say?"
"Yes. Think about the mechanics."
I fought the urge to look at the deranged mascots clawing at the windows, maintaining a carefully constructed expression that screamed, 'I just had a tactical epiphany.'
"What binds us together as a team is the foundational rule of this darkness. Given that, is it really strategically sound to casually murder a team member?"
In truth, the system probably wouldn't care.
"This specific darkness chokes the life out of us merely for putting physical distance between teammates. What do you think will happen if we actively kill one?"
We could honestly just drag his corpse around to bypass the proximity rule.
But executing a colleague in cold blood... My fragile, cowardly heart would give out before I finished the job. After vomiting my guts out, I'd undoubtedly be reassigned as the company's 'official torture and execution specialist,' which was the absolute perfect posting to guarantee an agonizing death...
"...No matter how I analyze it, there has to be an enormous hidden penalty for infighting."
"Hmm."
The eyes visible beneath the butterfly mask narrowed, calculating.
"Isn't there also a risk of a penalty if we fail to appease the narrative by not killing someone?"
"Conversely, actively triggering a murder penalty could lead to an immediate, total wipeout."
"......"
"If both catastrophic possibilities exist, choosing the path that preserves our tactical numbers seems like the more rational play."
The A Squad veteran wavered slightly, her sociopathic pragmatism warring with logic.
I swallowed hard and delivered the clincher,
"Of course, the final command decision rests entirely with you, Deputy..."
"Right! If you kill me, huh?! The system will probably execute you too! You don't wanna die either, you crazy bitch! Stop it—"
Thwack.
I stepped forward and delivered a brutal, precise strike to the back of the researcher's neck.
He folded instantly, out cold.
'I just meticulously de-escalated the situation—why is he actively lobbying for his own execution when the game is already rigged?!'
He had absolutely zero survival instinct—no wonder he was stuck gambling his life away in office betting pools!
With the unspoken restriction lifted, the Y Squad newbie, face the color of wet ash, shakily released the unconscious researcher's limbs.
The A Squad boss, who had watched the entire performance with clinical detachment, slowly opened her mouth.
I braced myself.
"You."
"......"
"This better not be a decision you come to regret."
I had survived.
"Yes, of course."
The A Squad boss offered no further reply. My internal performance score in her eyes had probably taken a massive dive.
But that was irrelevant right now.
What mattered was that we had safely navigated past the immediate death trigger.
[Die......]
The psychotic, looping narration chanting 'die' gradually bled out into static the moment we ceased our hostile actions against each other.
Blink.
In the instant the train's overhead lights flickered back to life...
"Th-they're gone...!"
The bloated, blood-weeping mascots that had plastered themselves against the glass had vanished into thin air.
All that remained were thick, smeared bloodstains streaking down the windows.
"......"
But they weren't the only elements missing from the scene.
'Gone.'
The rabbit conductor mascot.
The aggressively cheerful theme park soundtrack.
The automated, upbeat disembarkation announcement.
"......"
Screech.
We manually forced the train's safety restraints open and stared out into the attraction's interior. It was eerily, suffocatingly devoid of sound and light.
"...It feels like we just stepped squarely on a landmine."
"......"
That... was an incredibly accurate assessment.
I recalled a specific, highlighted entry from the Darkness Exploration Records wiki.
⚙ JOLLY THEME PARK USAGE GUIDELINES ⚙
(Exploration Record 64 Applied)
That clause existed for a very lethal reason...
If you anger the ruling mascot in a colored theme park zone, you forfeit all protections granted to a 'visitor.'
You essentially volunteer to become the prey in a deadly game of hide-and-seek.
But stepping on a landmine was still vastly preferable to smashing the nuclear launch button, wasn't it?
'The mascot's demands escalate on a brutal, sliding scale.'
Usually, they initiate contact with simple requests.
Like demanding you eat a specific food, carry an object, or give them a warm, suffocating hug.
'But demanding we commit murder on the very first turn?'
If we complied with that, by the time we reached the next attraction, we'd be begging for death.
I had already read exploration logs documenting insane, later-stage demands like, 'Make a balloon animal out of your own bladder.'...
By that point, the mascot's metaphysical influence over the zone is so absolute that you lack the physical autonomy to refuse.
'It's better to just die early.'
This was the ghost story world. Fates exponentially worse than death were handed out daily.
And right now, escaping this outcome wasn't an impossibility.
I swallowed a thick lump of dread.
'Run.'
If we could escape the red rabbit—Magic Bunny's—territory and cross the border into another mascot's zone, this localized aggro state would dissipate.
To pull that off... there it was.
'Found it!'
I finally spotted my objective, half-hidden in the shadows of the exit corridor.
"There's something over there."
"Huh?"
This single object was the entire reason I had manipulated us into boarding this specific attraction.
'The theme park color map!'
Positioned near the final exit of the ride was a sprawling, stylized map detailing the territorial borders of each mascot's zone.
I hurried over, intentionally muttering just loud enough to be heard,
"It's a map. This might be exactly what we need."
"Wh-why is that?"
To an untrained eye, it looked like cheap interior decor.
Just a visual representation of Fantasy Land to cap off the introductory ride.
But the tactical data it contained was invaluable.
"Do you remember the core narrative of the ride?"
"Uh, well... the theme park mascots violently fighting over territory..."
"Exactly."
I nodded sharply.
"This attraction's exit map should definitively mark the geographical zones belonging to the other mascots."
"...!"
With this, we could visually plot the shortest, safest route to border-cross into another color zone.
"Running away from a pissed-off monster? While dragging that dead weight along?"
The A Squad deputy jerked her chin toward the unconscious researcher slung over my shoulder.
I sensed she was a millisecond away from suggesting we execute him to save time, so I intercepted immediately.
"I'll wake the Research Team 1 assistant manager the exact second we verify our route on the map, and force him to walk under his own power."
"Hmm."
Please, God, do not perform a live vivisection right in front of me...
Regardless, the emergence of a concrete survival plan brought a fragile glimmer of hope back to the Y Squad newbie's pale face.
My own expression likely mirrored his.
'Please let the border be close.'
I took a deep breath, stepping directly in front of the map to trace our route...
"......"
"......"
"No... there's nothing."
What?
I stared intensely at the map.
But the image remained statically, horrifyingly unchanged.
The entire illustrated overview of the theme park.
Solid 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] Every single designated sector had Magic Bunny's grinning face engraved over it.
"Ah."
There was no safe harbor. No place to run.
"......"
"......"
"I-isn't there something fundamentally wrong here? Sol-eum, there were clearly other mascots mentioned during the ride..."
"It seems they were all exterminated."
"...!"
The psychotic narration we had endured during the attraction echoed in my skull.
– Drop 'em in pits, drown 'em, push 'em off cliffs!
So then...
"The yellow and blue entities were slaughtered, and this red mascot achieved total territorial supremacy."
"......"
"Then... what happened to the employees who drew the yellow and blue team pieces?"
"Who knows."
The A Squad deputy shrugged with chilling apathy.
"Likely all MIA and presumed dead?"
"...!"
"Does any of that actually matter right now? What matters is..."
The eyes visible beneath the butterfly mask hardened, turning sinister once more.
"You seem to have made a fatal miscalculation."
"......"
"Don't panic. This failure doesn't guarantee you'll die first."
Which meant exactly one thing.
Someone else was about to be volunteered for the chopping block.
"Is it already too late to run?"
"......"
The moment I reflexively turned my head to check on the unconscious researcher slung over my shoulder like a duffel bag...
"...!!"
"Wha-what the hell..."
A voice echoed, vibrating directly against the inside of my skull.
Haven't I heard this specific distortion somewhere before?
Ah, the talk show. The Tuesday Talk Show. That revamped segment with the Mountain Sacrifice Choir's dead pig-headed conductor—the entity that shrieked like a slaughtered animal! Magic Bunny is bored!
"Guh."
I violently clamped my hands over my ears.
I looked down.
The paper boarding pass strapped to my wrist was violently vibrating.
The psychic frequency was emitting directly from the band.
Ziiiiiiip.
The sheer intensity of the sonic vibration was beginning to tear the paper apart.
The boarding pass.
⚙ JOLLY THEME PARK USAGE GUIDELINES ⚙
(Exploration Record 64 Applied)
1. Ensure your boarding pass bracelet remains clean and intact! Loss or damage terminates your status as a guest. If you are not a guest, you are an intruder. A thief! A criminal! Horrific punishment awaits. Or would you...
...prefer to become an employee?
No.
I frantically racked my brain, desperately searching for a tactical countermeasure.
But there was nothing. The board was locked.
There was genuinely not a single inch of escape geometry left. Nowhere to run! To preserve whatever shredded dignity I had left as a human being, suicide before the penalty triggered might actually be...
Great, now I was experiencing full-blown auditory hallucinations...
'......'
That wasn't a hallucination!
I jerked my head up, scanning the dark corridor.
There was absolutely nothing visible in the empty air, but the voice speaking directly into my ear was far too crisp, too real to be mistaken for madness.
The owner of that voice was...
"Squad Leader?"
Lizard Section Chief, Squad Leader Lee Jaheon.
A bizarre sense of déjà vu washed over me. It was the exact inverse of our previous communication setup!
"How are you establishing a secure comms link?!"
The voices overlapped, and the oppressive psychic pressure of the great red Magic Bunny momentarily faded. I barely realized I was hyperventilating.
No, the mechanics of the comms weren't what mattered right now...
The rest of D Squad was together. How was that possible?
"The three of you didn't draw the same color faction, did you?"
I was absolutely certain of the deployment.
'Squad Leader Lee Jaheon was the sole Blue Team operative. The rest were Yellow!'
"It is critically important! You are on different faction teams, yet you materialized in the exact same physical space within the theme park?"
A short, heavy silence followed.
The Lizard Squad Leader's impossibly calm voice replied.
A flood of tactical questions assaulted my brain simultaneously, but the most urgent priority was clear. So,
"...Where exactly did you locate them?"
"...Then, are you currently operating within the blue mascot's territory?"
A violent shiver racked my spine.
"It's not marked on our localized map—do you know the specific geographical coordinates of the Blue Zone?"
Damn it.
"I don't need exact coordinates! Give me nearby attractions, landmarks! Even a cardinal direction!"
A brief pause.
Click.
The connection abruptly severed.
"Squad Leader?"
Silence.
The specialized equipment had likely hit its operational time limit.
But far more terrifying than the loss of comms was the intel he had just dropped...
"W-West?"
The Y Squad newbie, who had been clinging to my side and eavesdropping desperately, went completely slack-jawed.
The A Squad boss's posture stiffened similarly.
The realization was simple and devastating.
"We are currently in the west."
Exactly.
The 'Fantasy Train' was structurally positioned at the extreme western border of the Fantasy Land map...
The east was characterized by dense, rugged forests. The west was bordered by smooth, impenetrable castle walls.
And this specific attraction was built flush against those western walls.
There was absolutely zero traversable terrain further west in all of Fantasy Land!
"It seems highly probable that we have been segregated into entirely different instances of the theme park? A parallel timeline where the blue mascot achieved dominance, perhaps. Darkness phenomena frequently exhibit these kinds of dimensional variations."
Different instances?
A literal parallel dimension setup?
"No."
That was structurally impossible.
"This darkness is derived entirely from the ruleset of a board game. If we are playing the same session, there cannot be multiple, contradictory game boards."
"Shut your mouth."
The A Squad boss cut me off, her voice dropping to a glacial chill.
"You're blabbing nonsense... It sounds theoretically plausible, but if your hypothesis doesn't align with the physical reality we're standing in, discard it."
No, this was deductive logic based on established lore, not wild speculation.
I desperately wanted to cite the countless historical cases documented in the wiki, but I knew she wouldn't believe a word of it without proof. What was required right now... was the physical answer.
Where the hell was 'west'?
'Quick. Think quickly.'
Analyze the data. The answer is hidden here.
I violently whipped my head back to the Fantasy Land color map. Every single visible zone was still painted a uniform, bloody red.
Ferris wheel, carousel, roller coaster, Viking ride, magic palace. Not a single structure lacked Magic Bunny's leering red face.
Every attraction...
Wait.
"...!"
Hold on just a second.
I scanned the map again, my eyes tearing through the topography.
And then, it clicked.
"...Found it!"
"Found what?"
"The border to the other color zone."
It was this way.
I stepped forward, moving with absolute, aggressive conviction. Whether they were swept up by my sudden momentum or desperately grasping at the illusion of hope, the rest of the team followed without protest.
We had to move immediately, before the mascots fully locked onto our position. There was not a single second left to waste—we needed to break out of this attraction's perimeter right now.
Too late.