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Chapter 42.2
Chapter 42.2
Chapter 42.2
These exploration logs aimed to make readers feel suffocated and disoriented.
In some records, explorers even gave up on escaping, descending further into madness as they ventured endlessly downward.
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This is testimony from a visitor who viewed the exhibit on B105.
Employee 753 : The unspeakable, dreadful things I cannot see are truly beautiful. Structures made of ?? and humans’ ?? are ?ing. Die for this purpose.
No further records exist.
Thank you for your meaningful feedback. We shall strive to improve exhibition management for an even more profound experience.
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The deeper you go, the more grotesque and incomprehensible the collection becomes. At some point, language fails to capture what is seen, leaving censored fragments and overwhelming blanks filled with terror.
Thousands of unknowns lie down there…Slap—
I slapped my own face.
“……?!”
Get a grip.
‘There are multiple exits.’
Even though their locations change every time the exhibition begins, that fact doesn’t.
There were records of people escaping through different exits on different floors in the same iteration.
‘I can do this.’
It doesn’t matter how astronomically vast this place is or how incomprehensible the space becomes.
An exit might be closer than I think.
I have over 100 iterations’ worth of exploration data, including records from this very round.
Sitting here overwhelmed would make me an idiot.
‘Even if the exact floor isn’t specified, I already know the hints.’
I had to move quickly instead of being paralyzed by the scale of the ghost story.
Don’t be foolish… stay sharp!
‘…Alright.’
I took a deep breath and began walking.
To the staircase next to the elevator.
“Wait, so you’re not taking the elevator… how do you even know where you’re going?”
“We’re at the second floor.”
“……?”
“I’m heading to Basement 1 from here.”
“Basement? There’s a basement—wait, this is the second floor? How can you be sure?”
“Braun told me.”
“……”
“Grateful, aren’t you?”
“……”
– No problem at all, happy to help!
Surprisingly enough, Baek Saheon still didn’t run away.
Hmm. I’ll have to keep my interactions with him at this level moving forward.
* * *Even as we descended down the staircase, the grand mansion’s decor didn’t change at all.
The dim brass lighting and shadowy atmosphere continued endlessly, making it feel like we were looping through the same floor.
And then, at one level below, the stairs disappeared entirely.
‘…These stairs don’t lead to the basement.’
For now, since we’re at the ground floor, I decided to search for a new staircase or another way to move.
There was no more idle chatter with Baek Saheon, either.
The sound of machinery was growing more frequent around us.
‘The main exhibition hall must be nearby, with ushers stationed almost constantly.’
Moving silently, practically crawling on the ground, I looked up and spotted a large sign just beneath the ceiling.
‘Found it.’
The sign for the main exhibition hall.
Carved with ornate designs, it bore a flowing, elegant inscription… in an incomprehensible script.
– ‘The Power of Emotion.’ What a unique title for an exhibit!
“……!”
It was an exhibit I’d read about in the <Dark Exploration Records>.
Just seeing its name in print had sent chills down my spine…
‘What the hell.’
I suppressed the urge to turn back immediately.
‘If I’m going to map out the escape route, I’ll have to face it at least once.’
Avoiding a ‘safe’ exhibit while trying to secure a path would be idiotic.
So I gritted my teeth and moved forward, step by step.
The moment I peeked through the ornate, gilded doorway into the exhibit…
The exhibition space unfolded before me.
A wave of sound crashed over me.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH
Countless mouths shouting.
More precisely, rows of teeth and tongues.
An entire massive wall filled with ornate Baroque-style frames, each containing a human mouth, all arranged in horrifying beauty.
It seemed like artificial voice boxes had been attached to the mouths, each reciting poetry in different voices and languages.
The hundreds or even thousands of frames harmonized to create a bizarrely strange medley of sounds and notes.
And beneath them…
On the floor, human slugs were writhing.
Huuuuuurgh… huuurgh…
People who could no longer speak human words, with extinguished buttons fixed into their eye sockets, were writhing in agony.
They were those who had been repeatedly ‘charged’ to the point where they’d nearly lost all semblance of humanity.
The contrast between their grotesque forms and the neatly framed mouths displayed in a beautiful arrangement made the scene horrifying… more… and more…
‘Ah.’
I felt like vomiting.
The dizzying dread made me look at the floor.
Stay calm. I need to calm myself.
‘They’re not company employees.’
These were probably people who’d been trapped here for days.
Those poor… No, I couldn’t let myself focus on them now. I had to push it out of my mind as much as possible…
Screeeeeeech—
In the distance, the shadow of an usher machine began approaching.
Baek Saheon and I held our breath and crawled into a nearby vent.
The usher machine’s shadow moved among the human slugs, as if searching for unmoving bodies to pick up and carry away.
The sound of dragging bodies mingled with the mechanical noise.
“……”
“……”
After a suffocating few minutes…
“Hey.”
“……”
“They took the corpses. Do you think even the corpses have value? As payment for the fee?”
What the hell is wrong with this punk?
“If they had value as payment, they wouldn’t have just left them there alive until they died without collecting.”
“Ah, makes sense.”
Even in this situation, I had to listen to this kind of nonsense? My exhaustion was reaching its peak.
And I had to lie, too.
‘If I were honest… of course they have value. Obviously!’
Since they treat us as ‘visitors’, they only seem to charge for things that don’t affect our survival, like eyes, noses, or mouths.
But wouldn’t they also find brains and spinal cords valuable? I think there were floors displaying such items, too.
But I couldn’t tell this guy that. He’d probably suggest we carry around the corpses and offer them as payment if things got bad.