Chapter 32

Chapter 32, The Company (4)

I was swimming through a black world.

It was a different kind of darkness from the abyss-like darkness of a deep curtain, and different from the cold darkness of the night sky.

It was a world made of the kind of black that might have filled existence before anything else had ever existed.

I let myself drift with the flow of that world, moving like a wave, and swam without thought.

Then I felt something pulling at me.

My consciousness suddenly shot upward, as though someone had grabbed me by the collar and yanked me up.

With the strange floating sensation of my entire body rising, I opened my eyes.

Bang!

...

Bang!

Huh?

Silence, shouting, and monstrous screams mixed together.

A scenery made almost entirely of red and green greeted me.

It was familiar.

Of course it was.

I had seen this exact scene only a few hours ago.

This was before entering the Company.

The moment when we had been fighting through zombies.

The same moment when I had read the book and created a save point.

That was the point in time where I opened my eyes.

I blinked several times and calmly accepted the current situation.

The haze that had filled my mind while swimming through that dark world slowly cleared.

“Oppa! What are you doing?!”

“Yuhyeon, what are you doing right now?!”

“Get a hold of yourself!”

Only then did the voices that had sounded like nothing more than ringing in my ears become clear.

Still confused, I raised my gun and fired.

Then I kept firing.

Zombies fell.

As we continued moving forward, we reached the Company without any problems, just like before.

Everything until then was exactly the same as before the regression.

The differences began afterward.

My companions looked at me with worried eyes.

Last time, we had rested silently before entering the Company.

This time was different.

“Oppa, are you hurt somewhere?”

“Yuhyeon, how are you feeling right now?”

Instead of criticizing me for acting absent-minded just moments ago, they were worried about me.

The sight of them standing there alive and well overlapped with the memories of them dying before my regression.

Something inside my chest hurt.

I told them to wait for a moment, then controlled my breathing.

I had to explain.

I had to tell them that I had regressed.

I also had to explain what I had seen at the top of the Company and what the inside of the Company was like.

They calmly waited while I organized what I wanted to say.

It didn't take long.

I opened my mouth.

“First of all, I just regressed.”

Three out of my four companions immediately looked shocked.

The only one who wasn't surprised was Lee Jinsung.

The boy stared at me blankly, as though wondering what nonsense I was talking about.

From what I had seen before his death, he was trustworthy.

Other than me, he had resisted the light longer than anyone else.

The boy's beliefs were extremely strong.

At the very least, as long as he held onto those beliefs and his purpose, he probably wouldn't betray me.

I took out the book and showed it to Lee Jinsung.

Then I explained that I could regress infinitely.

The boy looked confused by my words.

But after a while, he seemed to accept them to some extent.

Once he understood what I was saying, the same question appeared.

It was probably the question everyone had been thinking from the moment I said I had regressed.

“Why did you regress?”

They had already prepared themselves to die a few times while dealing with the Company.

They had expected that they might die at least once.

So the regression itself wasn't the surprising part.

What they wanted to know was why.

Why had I regressed?

What had happened?

I slowly explained that we had entered the Company and gone to the 500th floor.

Then I explained everything that had happened there.

When I finished, everyone had strange expressions on their faces.

I had expected them to look troubled.

Instead, they looked confused.

Were they really not bothered by hearing that they had died?

“Honestly, it feels like you're talking about some other world. All I can think is, 'So something like that happened.'”

“I feel the same as Lee Yeonhee. My head understands it, but my heart doesn't really follow. That's what it feels like.”

“My thoughts are similar to Sword Freak and Lee Yeonhee's. So if you're feeling guilty, you don't need to. That death never happened to us.”

“I'm more shocked by the fact that you can regress, mister... so I guess the part about me dying got overshadowed. Still, hearing that I died crying is kind of memorable.”

None of them seemed especially bothered by the fact that they had died.

I couldn't really understand it, but I nodded.

If they had looked traumatized, I had been thinking about clearing the Company alone.

Fortunately, that wouldn't be necessary.

Afterward, we discussed the information I had brought back.

Then we entered the Company again.

The emotions I felt while stepping inside were very different from the first time.

There was no fear.

No expectation.

Only desire and hatred burned inside me.

To them, the deaths of my companions had been events from another world that they had never experienced.

To me, they were clear memories.

Memories that needed to be repaid.

I passed through the automatically opening doors and stared at the elevator.

Ding.

The elevator opened.

I had been waiting in front of it.

The moment the doors opened, I swung my right hand.

My hand, covered in the Shroud, grabbed Kim Hyunwoo.

While holding the choking, struggling Kim Hyunwoo, I pressed the button for the 500th floor.

The elevator shot upward and stopped almost instantly.

“There is a door ahead. Physical force doesn't work on it, so don't bother swinging your swords at it.”

“A robot will be waiting for us. Prepare for battle.”

“That corridor is beyond this door. Everyone wait here. I'll go alone.”

After repeating the process that already felt boring, the same corridor appeared.

Just like last time, the door opened immediately after we killed the robot.

Beyond it was the blue light.

Since we were still far away, the light was faint enough that none of my companions were affected.

I left them there and entered alone.

The blue light surrounded me.

Just as I expected, it could no longer affect me.

I walked slowly at first.

Then I started running.

The corridor that had taken us nearly an hour to cross before now ended in less than ten minutes.

The blue light.

The transparent barrier surrounding it.

I faced them once again.

“I'd like to take this with me.”

I had already discussed destroying the flame with the others.

It was obviously something important to the Company.

Our biggest goal was to destroy this branch of the Company.

And beneath that goal was our desire to screw the Company over as badly as possible.

Destroying this strange Imitation Mystery would probably accomplish that.

But now that I was looking at it again...

Instead of destroying it, I wanted to possess it.

I shook my head and suppressed my greed.

“Either way, whether I destroy it or take it, I need to get rid of this barrier first.”

The barrier was round and transparent like a soap bubble.

It isolated the flame like a protective shield.

I thought for a moment, then threw a jab.

Despite how fragile it looked, the barrier didn't move at all.

Instead, my hand became red and swollen, and burning pain spread through it.

So fists didn't work.

Would a gun?

I took out my handgun and fired repeatedly.

The barrier remained completely unharmed.

Right. Of course something made by the Company wouldn't be weak.

Then what?

Should I try an explosive?

This building was made by the Company, so it was probably sturdy.

Trusting in their construction quality, I rolled a grenade forward.

Boom!

The building shook from the explosion.

Fortunately, the building was fine.

Unfortunately, so was the barrier.

“No answer, huh.”

After thinking for a while, I tried pushing Lucy through it.

Lucy passed through without any resistance.

Lucy, who almost touched the blazing flame, panicked and flew upward.

That gave me my answer.

Could it be that Mysteries aren't affected?

To test the idea, I extended my right hand, the one covered in the Shroud, instead of my left hand that I had used for punching.

My right hand passed through the barrier without any problem and touched the flame.

Strangely enough, the flame had almost no temperature.

It wasn't completely cold.

It was slightly warm.

My hand became heated to a pleasantly warm temperature.

While I was wondering what I was supposed to do next...

The flame moved.

Whoosh!

It suddenly flared up like fire touching oil and jumped onto my hand.

Startled, I wildly shook my arm.

Fortunately, the flame quickly went out.

“...Crazy.”

No.

It hadn't gone out.

Looking carefully, a faint flame was still lingering around my right hand.

It wasn't hot, but it made me uneasy.

Ready to regress if necessary, I nervously stared at the flame.

Ten minutes passed.

The flame still flickered around my hand.

In fact, it now looked slightly more stable than when it had been burning inside the barrier.

Don't tell me it became bound to me.

Like Lucy, the book, and the Shroud?

This flame-shaped Imitation Mystery had already killed my entire group once.

I couldn't help feeling uncomfortable with it.

I poured water over it, hoping it would disappear immediately.

The flame continued burning.

In the end, I returned to the others like that.

I walked carefully, worried that the flame on my hand might bewitch them.

Fortunately, it didn't seem like the flame would harm them.

It was just an instinctive feeling.

And just as that instinct told me, the flame had no effect on my companions.

They simply stared curiously at my right hand.

“Dark Flame Master?”

I frowned at Lee Jinsung's comment.

I had no idea what it meant.

But somehow, it annoyed me.