Chapter 75
Chapter 75
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 75
Chapter Title: Hanseol Human Meat Factory #4
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Right arm severed.
Screams erupted from the horrific pain.
Blood drained out in an instant, my consciousness fading.
The monsters grabbed me and hoisted me up.
I thought I'd die from excessive bleeding right then and there, but they scooped something from a bucket and slapped it onto the stump of my severed arm.
And then.
—Splash!
The monsters swung their cleavers.
Severing my remaining arm and both legs.
"Mmph...!"
Reality wouldn't register properly.
The pain shattered the boundary between reality and unreality. Memories stretched out endlessly. I couldn't tell if my eyes were open or closed. Amid the darkness, where hallucinations blended inseparably with images in my mind.
I lost consciousness.
In a bizarre floating sensation, I opened my eyes.
"Ah..."
My mouth tasted foul.
It felt like all my saliva had dried up. My throat ached like it was torn. My head spun, and the orange light stabbing into my eyes was pure torment.
"Ugh."
I forced my eyes open to take in the situation.
"Huh! Huh!"
A figure's back—someone right in front of me!
I reflexively tried to call out, but in the very next moment.
I realized it was "human meat."
Arms.
And legs severed.
Head hanging low.
Iron hooks pierced through both trapezius muscles.
Countless such corpses lined up in front of me.
On both sides too.
—Rattle.
The corpses moved at a steady pace.
My body was moving automatically too.
I had no limbs either.
Just like every corpse here... hooked through the trapezius muscles, riding the rail.
"Ha, haha..."
Laughter spilled out.
It was like a refrigerated facility where slaughtered pigs were hung, only with humans swapped in for the pigs.
Human meat.
Corpses.
So many of them.
So many people... captured here and turned into food for the monsters?
Processed in a filthy factory-like facility like this?
Was this the starting point of the human meat rail line?
Corpses crowded everywhere.
If I kept riding this rail... I'd eventually be disassembled.
A horrific terror washed over me.
Was I destined to clearly recognize myself turning into meat and die anyway?
—Clunk.
My body jolted, but it was pointless.
I had no limbs to begin with.
Even if I fell... it would be meaningless.
—Whirr.
The rail kept moving.
I used my last shreds of focus to burn the surrounding scenery into my eyes.
A black tunnel lay ahead.
Meats entered it one by one.
—Whiiing!
An eerie sound echoed everywhere.
Instinct told me rotating saw blades lurked on all sides.
And I.
.
.
.
.
[You have become meat and died.]
[Death Count: 17(-1) → 18(-1)]
.
.
.
[Restarting.]
I woke up in the bathroom.
I immediately flipped open the notebook.
The part where I'd impersonated Section Chief Lee Do-hyung's name had vanished. It looked like I'd regressed to the moment of my first arrival here.
"..."
My memories were intact.
Caught by them, limbs severed, I was hung like meat at the entrance to the human processing line and fed into the slaughter machine, where I died.
That line was lined.
With a ton of corpses like me, limbs hacked off. Which meant there had to be another line before it that did the chopping.
Even as terror gripped me at that chilling space where people hung as meat, I felt towering rage toward the Butcher Monsters who'd reduced me to that state.
My resolve didn't break.
I just thought furiously for survival amid the anger.
"You bastards... how many people have you killed."
Still, unlike the hospital, these fuckers hadn't hit me with that overwhelming unfairness. Back then, I couldn't even regress, but this time wasn't that bad.
That realization made this place feel a little less terrifying than the hospital.
I swallowed my burning rage and endlessly pondered rules and routes for surviving this space.
The hint had said to find the escape method.
So there had to be one.
Think.
They found me during exploration.
Pistol didn't work.
Meant I couldn't fight.
So I had to hide properly or flee—but there was nowhere to flee to in the first place.
If they detected my presence, every monster in the place would come hunting, and I'd get caught eventually.
Hiding was the only option... but how?
They sniffed me out by smell?
"Smell?"
Smell.
That sniffing sound had definitely been them smelling me. I'd wandered around emitting a human scent, and they'd zeroed in on it to track me down.
That realization brought home the time limit.
Too much exploration was dangerous.
I'd get sniffed out.
But properly searching this place required time... so what to do about the smell?
Ah.
Right!
That room piled high with debris where I'd found the wallet.
If I dove in there and rolled around, I could mask my scent, right? Disgusting and horrific, but a hundred times better than turning into meat. For survival, there was nothing I wouldn't do.
Alright, then.
What now.
Last time, a Butcher Monster had come in here to wash its cleaver. The fact that it entered hadn't changed.
Time to use my ability.
I repeated my previous actions exactly.
Checked outside, wrote in the notebook, waited quietly in the bathroom until the Butcher Monster came in to wash its knife. I watched it until it shook off the water, then slipped out. After peeking at the open factory line side, I confirmed the grinder and entered the debris room to pick up the wallet.
Okay.
End ability here.
"..."
I glared at the debris pile.
—Swish.
I lay down right there and thrashed around, completely covering the human scent coming off my body. It was like rolling in a snowbank and flailing my limbs—self-hypnosis made it work somehow.
The hellish stench soaked into every inch of me.
Sewer workers dealt with shit like this every day. As an agent, I couldn't let something this minor break me. I smeared it on more aggressively.
Good.
Let's restart from here.
Last time, I'd gotten caught and killed because of the smell. With it perfectly masked now, they wouldn't detect me. I needed to add this scent-wiping step to my regular routine going forward.
I stepped out of the room.
Should I head straight to the factory line's entrance? With all those human corpses hanging there, the odds of something important were high.
Hmm... no.
The path there was still unclear. For now, let's find the end of the line first—the packaging area for finished products and the exit. To figure out exactly what this world was, I needed to start there.
I moved cautiously.
"..."
Honestly, after getting nabbed, chopped up, and turned into meat in the slaughter machine just now, I was scared shitless.
Terrified.
But I knew wallowing in fear wouldn't help, so I just gritted my teeth, reined in my emotions, and kept going.
No doors flew open with a Butcher Monster bursting out as I moved.
As expected—without my scent, they had no clue I was wandering. When corpse stench filled the air everywhere, you had to mask your own with it too.
My choice and judgment had been spot-on.
Some of the people whose notes I'd seen had probably figured out the same trick.
Closed doors came into view.
I didn't rashly open any closed doors. Just walking the corridors and counting them was enough to keep my mental map updating properly.
For now, stick to what I could see. Once the primary map was done, then tackle the closed doors.
I walked the corridors with every preparation made to off myself at a moment's notice.
Please.
Please don't pop out suddenly...!
No cargo or machines here—if they showed up, I'd be detected instantly. It was their work hours now, so they probably wouldn't, but if they suddenly went on break, I was done for.
Under that razor-edge tension, I spotted an open door.
Pistol at the ready, I sidled up beside it.
Slowly peeked inside.
—Splat.
Butcher Monsters overflowed in here too.
Given the factory's scale, there had to be at least a hundred... Pistol rounds didn't work. What about large-caliber bullets? Or since this was their world, would even those fail? Were they immune to guns entirely? What if the Management Bureau's top sniper, Kurosna, had been here?
Thoughts like that ran through my head as I observed the monsters.
They wielded shovel-like tools, scooping up human meat.
Into small cans.
...Canned goods.
Canned food.
The cans were wrapped in plastic labels showing grotesque meat photos and unreadable text.
These bastards.
They were processing people into canned goods for shipment.
The cans went onto trays and got stacked.
Carts loaded with multiple boxes of around thirty cans each.
—Rattle.
A Butcher Monster pushed the cart along. The direction was left from my current position... taking it that way?
Getting inside and poking around this room would be tough. Too many workers—no place to hide. I'd need almost all of them to leave or just a handful remaining to even have a shot.
With that in mind, I pulled my head back.
The corridor stretched a bit farther.
If I went to the end and turned the corner, an exit might be there.
Thinking that, I headed to the corridor's end.
Rounding the corner, sure enough.
"...!"
One door!
A small one that didn't lead to a room but seemed to open outdoors!
I immediately hugged the wall beside it and checked outside.
The outdoor scene.
Was so twisted it was hard to even describe.
The sky was red.
But not Earth's wide-open sky.
A writhing sky.
The entire sky was draped in intestines...!
Overwhelmingly massive, long, squirming intestines blanketing the whole sky! Like staring up from inside a sphere made of guts—a horrific sight!
For a split second, madness overwhelmed me, nearly driving me to slash open my belly and spill my innards. I fought it down and stepped out.
Red backdrop.
The ground was ordinary dirt.
But instead of weeds, something fur-like sprouted everywhere. An utterly grotesque world.
It wasn't like Cheongak Mary Hospital.
That had been an abnormal space overwriting a chunk of reality.
This... if I had to classify it, it was an "otherworld." A straight-up horrific secondary dimension totally divorced from reality!
I couldn't accept an otherworld like this!
Grotesque and terrifying, but I still needed to scout it. I checked the surroundings. No monsters wandering. I broke into a quick jog to put distance between me and the factory building.
From afar, I looked back at the factory.
[#%#$^%$#^^$%&^]
Factory signboard.
Unreadable, but I recognized it as [Hanseol Human Meat Factory]. Had to be info from the Status Window.
The factory...
It looked severely rundown, but still like a somewhat intact man-made structure.
What the hell kind of secondary dimension was this?
"..."
It suddenly hit me about the mailbox.
Undelivered gifts waited inside.
Singing Flower and Vampire Angel's Heart.
In a world like this, maybe I could test those items? The thought crossed my mind, but I held off opening the mailbox out of unease that using them might screw up my regression point.
Regression scared me more than this bizarre otherworld.
Maybe that's why I'd grown so fearless.
Anyway.
"Otherworld adventure."
Might as well give it a shot.