Chapter 19
Chapter 19
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 19
Chapter Title: MacGuffin
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Let me think through the duty rules once more, step by step.
They wouldn't have made an unsolvable game.
There has to be some way.
The person outside declared himself to be Yoo Ki-tae.
Yoo Ki-tae’s name was engraved on the duty rules as the worker on shift.
That means Yoo Ki-tae is the security guard.
The sticking points for now are rules 6 and 4.
[6. If another security guard besides yourself appears, it’s shift change time, so you may open the door.]
[4. If 6 exists, it is false. There is no rule 6 in the duty rules.]
According to rule 6, since another guard has come, I just need to open the door and switch shifts.
In that case, it makes sense that he’s out there right now.
But according to rule 4, 6 is false.
Meaning the Yoo Ki-tae outside is a trap.
The problem is that this rule 4 isn’t all that trustworthy either.
There was a warning that the rules kept changing.
That implies the possibility that 4 itself is the trap.
To begin with, it was suspicious that 4 came right after 8.
‘Damn it. What the hell am I supposed to do? This is just a coin flip gamble.’
There wasn’t enough basis to be sure whether 4 was real or not.
In times like this, the only thing I can trust is Lauraemon.
I asked in a crawling voice.
“Lady Laura… by any chance, which one is the real threat…?”
[…….]
“Yes…?”
[I don’t know. Nothing is visible to me, and I sense nothing. This is bizarre.]
Laura sounded a bit embarrassed.
I let out a small sigh.
Even the Dragon Lord couldn’t help.
Cold sweat dripped down my entire body.
I was cornered.
The situation I was in right now was probably rules 5 and 6.
Everything hinged on whether rule 4 was true or not.
If 4 was true, I just needed to stay put. If 4 was false, I needed to get out right now to survive.
‘They made this game a total mess!’
What’s the point of making the solution a 50:50 gamble?
‘Should I fight back?’
Among the rule creepypastas floating around online, there were endings like [This ridiculously strong guy just smashed through all the rules.]
At that moment, a damp hand reached up to my chest area.
The impure energy I sensed through my ki sense.
Any thought of fighting back vanished instantly.
This was a kind of law.
It wasn’t an opponent I could face.
At this point, even if I died, I wanted to know what it was. I just had to see it.
I was dying of curiosity.
A ghost?
If it’s a ghost, a drowned water ghost?
If it’s a water ghost, is it a woman or a man?
The security guard’s voice came from outside.
“■ Yeah. So frustrating■ ■■. Look at ■ me. Here’s my employee ID ■■. J Manpower ■ year ■■ security. ■■ Trust me■■.”
‘Employee ID?’
Still sprawled on the desk, I rolled my eyes up as far as I could.
I strained to look out the window, but it was a bit high, so the window frame was the limit.
To see any further, I’d have to lift my body.
A thought pierced through my mind.
‘To see it, I’d have to lift my body.’
Something was just out of grasp.
[When it rains, lock the security room door and lie face down on the desk. At this time, do not look under the desk.]
For now, let’s assume there is an answer that can be deduced from the given clues.
Otherwise, all this worrying is pointless.
Think about it: the situation where whether rule 4 is true or false determines my life shouldn’t exist.
There’s no basis to be certain if rule 4 is true or false, and they wouldn’t call a 50% chance of death the solution.
Therefore, rule 4 must be meaningless.
For rule 4 to be meaningless, rule 6 must also be meaningless.
This suggests that the current situation might not be multiple events happening at once.
[If another security guard besides yourself appears, it’s shift change time, so you may open the door.]
The wording is a bit vague, but the core of rule 6 is to open the door and switch shifts if another guard appears.
But that guard outside hasn’t said a word about switching shifts or opening the door.
This situation might not even relate to rule 6 to begin with.
They just threw in this guard character to confuse me.
The appearance of the guard doesn’t necessarily mean the start of a rule 6 scenario.
The core of rule 6 is ‘opening the security room door and switching shifts.’
In that case, there’s no need to worry about rule 4 either.
Because it’s not a rule 6 situation.
Now things were starting to fit together.
Assuming there’s an answer, the events happen one at a time.
I was still in the middle of rule 5’s situation: when it rains, lock the door and lie face down on the desk.
The guard tempting me to disobey the instruction to lie on the desk.
The water ghost tempting me to do both forbidden things.
The guard was just a device for the rule 5 situation.
‘This is it!’
If not, it’s a 50:50 gamble.
If I were the creator, I wouldn’t design it that way.
I decided to just stay put.
The guard kept yelling outside, and the damp hand had now reached my neck.
To avoid looking even by mistake, I closed my eyes.
The damp hand grabbed my neck.
A tightening grip.
“Guh, guk.”
I couldn’t breathe.
The temptations didn’t stop.
Could I run?
No, it’s already too late.
To begin with, if my thinking is right, there’s no need to run.
Isn’t it still not too late? Should I shake off the hand and run?
What if I’m wrong?
About a minute passed like that.
The rain pouring like a hole in the sky suddenly stopped.
Before I knew it, the yelling man outside and the hand choking my neck had vanished.
“Phew.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
I was right.
‘Damn.’
I cautiously opened my eyes and got up from my seat.
I finally checked under the desk, which I’d been so curious about.
Just a puddle of water.
It was over.
Rule 5 situation ended.
“Fuck. That was close…….”
The comedown hit hard.
I’d nearly died trying to show off for Park Ha-yeon.
Knock knock knock.
Someone’s knocking.
I checked outside through the window in the door.
White hair, red eyes.
That girl with snow-white skin.
‘She’s finally here.’
I opened the door.
“Hello. I’m Jang Seo-yoon. I came because I have a favor to ask.”
[Grant students’ individual requests as much as possible, but ignore any girl with white hair and red eyes who speaks to you. No such student exists at this school.]
According to the rules, I should obviously ignore this girl, Jang Seo-yoon’s request.
However, this rule is false.
I don’t know why.
I learned it from the攻略 guide.
It seems related to the completely erased rule 2, but figuring that out would take too much hassle, so I just scrolled down the guide.
I just needed the conclusion.
“Actually, I’m being bullied. Could you help me?”
I nodded.
It was time to go rescue Park Ha-yeon and Ji So-yeon, who were probably flailing around somewhere.
***
Ji So-yeon opened her eyes in the staff room.
------------[Surprise?]----------------
[You are an academy teacher.
Teachers have a duty to protect and supervise students.]
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She was first surprised to realize she’d entered a dungeon.
Then, second surprise when an awkwardly shaped human spoke to her.
“Teacher Ji So-yeon. Isn’t it time for class 4-4? The bell rang.”
“Oh, yes? But I’m not a teacher…….”
In an instant, everyone working in the staff room turned their heads to stare at Ji So-yeon.
Ji So-yeon panicked and floundered about.
They stood up, eyes fixed on her.
And slowly started approaching.
Only then did Ji So-yeon catch on and head toward ‘class 4-4’.
“Ah, aah. Right. I’m the teacher! I’ll go do the class then!”
She was worried about not knowing where class 4-4 was, but as soon as she left the staff room, she saw it right away.
Strangely, it was right next to the staff room.
<4-4>
No grade marker, just ‘4-4’.
Ji So-yeon got goosebumps all over her body.
Everything was too eerie.
Ji So-yeon entered the classroom, hunched up tightly.
The room was filled with awkwardly shaped students.
‘I… have to do the class.’
Ji So-yeon roughly grasped her situation.
It was like content from movies made in the hunter era by first-generation Awakeners.
Not a dungeon for simply hunting monsters, but one where you had to solve mysteries like puzzles.
The characters had to follow the dungeon’s rules to solve the puzzles.
She opened the textbook on the podium.
She tried to open it from the first page, but for some reason, it opened to page 66.
She placed her finger on the edge of the paper to turn the page, but the paper wouldn’t grip.
“Huh?”
Pages 66 and 67.
The paper wouldn’t grip, so she couldn’t turn to any other page.
One student spoke up.
“Teacher, no class?”
“Oh, aah! Of course.”
She read pages 66-67.
It was some story.
[Jang Seo-yoon and Kim Cheolsu had been friends for a long time. One day, Kim Cheolsu confessed to Jang Seo-yoon, asking her to date him. It was sudden for Jang Seo-yoon, so she said she’d think about it and asked him to wait a bit. Hwang Ha-rin, who liked Kim Cheolsu, found out and flew into a rage. She dragged Jang Seo-yoon to the gym storage room and had her gang lynch her. “I told you not to flirt with Kim Cheolsu.” “That’s not it, Kim Cheolsu came to me….” “Shut up. No one would hang out with a D-rank bug like you anyway? You should’ve dumped him smartly. Dating out of your league just tires everyone out. Got it?]
Jang Seo-yoon was too wronged.
The injustice soon turned to anger, and she defiantly declared to Hwang Ha-rin.
“No. I’m going to date Kim Cheolsu.”
Hwang Ha-rin was furious.
As a B-rank Awakener, she’d never had her stubbornness challenged before.
In the end, she crossed the line.
“Arm, my arm!”
Jang Seo-yoon’s arm turned to gray stone.
Because of Hwang Ha-rin’s skill ‘Petrification’.
She only meant to scare her.
But Jang Seo-yoon acted unexpectedly.
“Give me back my arm! My arm!”
Jang Seo-yoon suddenly charged at Hwang Ha-rin.
Startled, Hwang Ha-rin shoved her away, and she lost her balance and fell.
The problem was her arm.
The impact of the fall shattered the stone that her arm had become.
“Ah, aaah.”
Jang Seo-yoon went into shock.
Hwang Ha-rin did too.
Because once something petrified by her ability was broken, it couldn’t be reversed.
Hwang Ha-rin’s vision went dark.
Her dream of graduating the academy as a B-rank Awakener and proudly debuting as a Hero was slipping away in real time.
The fear that her life could be ruined like this.
It made Hwang Ha-rin harden her heart.
She looked coldly down at the sobbing Jang Seo-yoon and opened her mouth.
“If this gets out, our careers are over. Let’s just get rid of her.”
Birds of a feather: Hwang Ha-rin’s gang, having poor character, agreed with her.
Hwang Ha-rin fully petrified Jang Seo-yoon, who was tearfully begging to be spared.
Silence fell over the gym storage room.
The noisiest one had become an inanimate object.
Conveniently, one of the gang had the ‘Superhuman Strength’ skill, so they smashed the stone that was Jang Seo-yoon into pieces with a hammer.
They gathered the stone dust, dumped it into the fourth stall toilet in the girls’ bathroom on the second floor of the annex building, and flushed.
They planned to send it to the sewage treatment plant far away, it seems.
Unfortunately, it didn’t go smoothly.
The stone dust clogged the toilet pipe instead of flushing properly.
They had no choice but to settle for that and leave.
But here’s the twist.
Jang Seo-yoon hadn’t fully died.
Her ability was ‘Phasing’.
Originally, it was a skill that transformed the body into a spectral form to pass through matter and increase movement speed.
The petrified Jang Seo-yoon was conscious, and right before Hwang Ha-rin’s gang smashed her, she used this skill.
But from the skill’s perspective, it had trouble identifying the ‘body’ object, causing a bug.
It recognized the finely crushed stone dust as her body.
Thus, her soul became bound to the stone dust.
Jang Seo-yoon is still suffering inside the toilet pipes to this day.
“Please save me… It hurts… Can’t breathe… Please… save me.”>
Ji So-yeon was startled.
Why was a story like this in the textbook?