Chapter 19
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Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 18
Chapter Title: Miraculous Survival
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“Uwaaaah! Sniiiim! Come on, run with us!”
“Oracle! No! How can someone as young as you be so slow! Run! We can’t let them catch us!”
“Uwaaah! This is... the limit of a high school girl!”
“We call that a lack of exercise!”
Gu Hye-ryeong and Nam Yu-ha were fleeing frantically from anomalies disguised as Fixers.
It had already been two weeks since they entered the Cursed Mountain Lodge, and the two were growing increasingly exhausted.
“Huh!? Wait! Monk, hold on a second!”
“What is it?”
“Over there, those guys... They’re disappearing right now.”
“Pardon?”
Nam Yu-ha, who had been running away from the anomalies, suddenly pointed at the ones pursuing them as they began crumbling away without chasing anymore.
After crossing about four thresholds, the time gap would widen, breaking the pursuit.
They had been doing just that, hopping through doors to put distance between them as usual, but today, even before crossing two thresholds, the anomalies disguised as Fixers vanished.
Like cotton candy melting in water.
“What’s going on here?”
“No idea. Why are they doing that?”
They couldn’t make sense of the situation at all.
Just when they thought they’d figured out the rules, new ones would appear and throw everything into chaos.
Now completely lost, Gu Hye-ryeong and Nam Yu-ha wandered the mansion’s interior in search of the Fixer who never appeared no matter how much they looked.
“Where on earth are you, Mr. Fixer...”
“He’s not... dead, is he?”
“What...? How can you say something so horrifying, Oracle?”
“No, but in the past few days, no anomaly mimicking that Fixer guy has shown up at all. That means...”
“The original it was mimicking is gone?”
“What else could it be?”
“Good grief. There’s some logic to that, but if it’s true, then we’re in the worst possible situation...”
Gu Hye-ryeong’s expression turned grave at the Oracle Nam Yu-ha’s suggestion that the original the anomalies were mimicking had died.
They hadn’t even been able to find traces of Yeon-jeong Monk or Woo-hyeon Monk.
If even the Fixer was dead, that meant just the two of them were trapped inside.
And that meant escape had failed. They needed at least three people gathered to get out of the mansion.
“It can’t be. The Fixer isn’t someone who’d meet such an easy end.”
“Right...?”
“Yes. I trust in his strength.”
“Just how strong is that Fixer guy for even you to trust him like that, Monk?”
“Among the people I’ve encountered, he had the strongest aura.”
“That strong?”
“Yes. He might have even escaped on his own.”
“Ah...”
Four more days passed with anxiety growing after the anomalies mimicking the Fixer disappeared.
The quiet atmosphere of the mansion left Gu Hye-ryeong and Nam Yu-ha parched and drained.
If anomalies popped out, at least they could react. But with even anomalies not appearing, their condition worsened day by day.
It was only thanks to their skill levels that they hadn’t gone mad yet. But as the deadline dragged on, hope faded, and they spoke less and less, eventually just walking in silence.
Their morale plummeted, and they grew tired of the repetitive mansion scenery.
Just as Gu Hye-ryeong and Nam Yu-ha were quietly breaking down, an anomaly mimicking the Fixer appeared before them again.
“Mr. Fixer, give the passphrase... Fan dance, begin!”
“Uh...”
“It can’t respond! It’s an anomaly!”
“I knew it was too quiet! It’s crawling out again!”
Gu Hye-ryeong the monk grinned at the finally emerged anomaly, while Oracle Nam Yu-ha excitedly hurled talismans.
Mid-beatdown, fueled by the thought that the real Fixer might still be alive, they noticed something off about the anomaly.
“But Monk, why is the Fixer shirtless?”
“Beats me. Huh? Look! There’s something written on its back!”
“Pardon?”
Nam Yu-ha quickly subdued the anomaly, and Gu Hye-ryeong climbed onto the now-still Echo of Ghostly Wails to check the writing on its back.
“It’s writing mixing Hanja and Hangul... This is!”
“What? What does it say?”
“The Fixer left a message for us.”
After reading the full message left by Fixer Lee Do-hyun, Gu Hye-ryeong severed the anomaly’s neck to eliminate its hearing.
To prevent it from overhearing their conversation and gaining clues, she dispatched the anomaly right after reading the back and immediately relayed the contents to Nam Yu-ha.
“What did it say?”
“First, the Fixer is alive. And Woo-hyeon Monk is alive too.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And a few more details...”
The contents left by the Fixer were as follows.
“We need to head to the center of the mansion. Woo-hyeon Monk is waiting for us there.”
“How do we get there?”
“We go where anomalies don’t appear. Avoiding them will lead us there inevitably. And the Fixer probably...”
Gu Hye-ryeong trailed off.
No anomalies would spawn upon reaching the central hall.
The Echo of Ghostly Wails operated that way, so the lack of Fixer anomalies in recent days meant he had reached the central hall.
But the reappearance of Echoes mimicking the Fixer meant the Fixer who reached it had deliberately left the hall again—to save the two of them.
He stripped off his shirt and wrote clues in blood on his back to inform them.
If he planned to escape alone, he could have just smashed the mansion. Instead, the Fixer chose everyone’s survival.
He ventured back out into the time-warped maze.
A method possible only because he precisely grasped the anomaly’s nature.
‘Truly a respectable man.’
Worried Nam Yu-ha might fret, Gu Hye-ryeong led her toward the central hall without pause.
To minimize time gaps and reach Woo-hyeon Monk quickly, there was no room for chatter.
“Hey, I sense movement over there.”
“Then we go the opposite way. We need to head where there are no anomalies.”
After two more days of travel, they finally found the entrance connected to the central hall.
Avoiding anomalies as much as possible, weaving through corridors, opening doors, climbing over broken walls—they finally reached the central hall.
Clunk!
“We really made it...”
In the central hall waited a skeletal Yeon-jeong and Woo-hyeon Monk with a fuller beard.
“No way, Woo-hyeon Monk!? How did you end up like this...”
Gu Hye-ryeong approached Woo-hyeon Monk.
The Woo-hyeon he remembered from just after shaving his head and entering the Buddhist path was worlds apart from this one.
Woo-hyeon Monk smiled at the face of Gu Hye-ryeong, whom he hadn’t seen in so long. Utterly aged and barely able to move, he couldn’t even stand and simply waved from his spot.
“Come on in... As you can see, I’ve grown too old.”
“How did this happen...”
“I’ve spent over twenty years in here... Wandered too long. How long have you two been roaming...?”
“Almost a month now. About that long.”
“I see. You’ve both suffered. Now let’s get out. That’ll help the Fixer. We can catch up outside...”
“W-wait. Monk. Can we just leave without him? Shouldn’t we wait for the Fixer guy...?”
Woo-hyeon shook his head with a smile at Nam Yu-ha’s question.
“Never seen a warrior like that in my lifetime. Us getting out quick will help him more. From the moment you entered the central hall, no more echoes will spawn. He’s probably started smashing the mansion by now.”
As the monk finished speaking, the mansion shook.
Dust rained from the ceiling as if bombed, and the Cursed Mountain Lodge began crumbling bit by bit.
“See? Hurry and get out.”
“Crazy... He’s really smashing it...!?”
“I’m telling you he is! Everyone, hold hands. Grab on and head for that door.”
“Please wait a moment! I need to gather Yeon-jeong Monk’s remains!”
“Oh dear! Almost left my old friend behind!”
Gu Hye-ryeong hurriedly scooped Yeon-jeong’s bones into the bag Woo-hyeon carried in his stead due to his frailty.
At that moment, part of the central hall tore open, revealing an unfathomable pitch-black abyss.
It was a depth beyond cognition.
“Om kirinara monara hum batak-! Turn away quickly! Don’t look at that darkness!”
“Kyaaah! Th-that’s...!”
“Got all of Yeon-jeong Monk’s remains! Let’s go!”
Woo-hyeon Monk chanted the incantation, soon creating an exit from the Cursed Mountain Lodge. Led by Nam Yu-ha borrowing the Five Flower Bell Spirit’s power to block the darkness’s advance, they hurled themselves toward the light.
The three were ejected from the lodge, wrapped in light just like when they were first dragged in.
“They should all be out by now, right?”
-Seems safe to start, my lord.
Nearly three months had passed since I began wandering the lodge with the White-Faced Bride Sowol.
We handled food and water with what the mansion generated, constantly roaming until we reached a point far from the central hall.
By then, I figured Gu Hye-ryeong and Nam Yu-ha couldn’t have missed my echoes, and sure enough, theirs vanished.
That meant they’d reached the central hall. Monks like Gu Hye-ryeong and the Oracle Nam Yu-ha were strong even by this world’s standards—they couldn’t have died.
Believing that, I began smashing the mansion.
Considering Woo-hyeon Monk had wandered here for 20 years, three months was nothing.
The major time discrepancies meant Gu Hye-ryeong and Nam Yu-ha had raced to the central hall at incredible speed.
Woo-hyeon Monk was surely still alive too.
‘Thanks to him, everyone’s escaping.’
If Woo-hyeon hadn’t fully uncovered the lodge’s nature, we couldn’t have escaped today.
His 20 years weren’t wasted. Thanks to him, all of us who entered survived and could exit.
-My lord, there...! Jump into that light...!
The mansion fully collapsed soon after, revealing a door swept in light.
That’s the exit. Time to breathe outside air after half a year.
I ran toward it without looking back.
We cleared the demonic realm Cursed Mountain Lodge, with near-zero survival rate.