Editor’s Survival Guide - Chapter 12

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Editor’s Survival Rules Episode 12

Episode 12. ep3. Hunting Humans (3)

It was Chubby whose foot got blown off.

There were holes in the floor he had been standing on and the ceiling above his head.

Clean, tennis ball-sized holes as if drawn with a brush.

“Aaaaah!”

The fallen man screamed at the top of his lungs again.

The woman had somehow gotten down from the wheelchair and was holding the man.

More precisely, she was tightening what looked like a belt around his ankle.

“Here, help me move him to the wheelchair!”

The woman shouted while applying pressure to stop the bleeding.

At her cry, the others snapped back to their senses and lifted the bleeding man.

Unexpected. I thought they would naturally abandon the injured and leave.

I was inwardly impressed as I turned around.

I was thinking of escaping in this chaos.

But someone grabbed my arm from behind.

“Where are you going?”

I turned to see the tall man standing behind me.

Hey, is this really the time to be paying attention to me?

In my impatience, I considered shaking this man off.

But looking at the man and over his shoulder, I suppressed the impulse.

The woman and the other men’s attention was already focused on me.

Damn, this really isn’t easy.

I opened my mouth, thinking of a suitable excuse.

Thud-!

Then the vibration came again.

This time it seemed like something heavy had fallen from the upper floor.

At that sound, the men by the wheelchair exchanged glances with the man holding me.

Then they started moving first, pushing the wheelchair.

“Please help me up!”

When the woman who had given up the wheelchair cried out from the floor, the man holding me looked at me.

He had no intention of giving me any opportunity to escape.

I had no choice but to grab the arm the woman extended.

But, what’s this?

The woman was heavier than I expected.

I had been using moderate strength, but panicked and lowered my body.

When I supported her with both arms using all my strength, the woman was finally pulled up.

The woman put her arm around my shoulder.

The man also finally supported the woman from the opposite side.

We followed the wheelchair ahead in this sticky formation.

Thud- Thoom-!

The vibrations continued.

I also temporarily abandoned thoughts of escape.

Well, violent criminals would be better than monsters.

At least for now.

Eventually, the place we arrived at was the surgery room.

The men who had gone ahead skillfully opened the surgery room door.

And I was overwhelmed by an unexpected sight.

Beyond the door wasn’t a cramped surgical space but a vast meadow.

Vivid blue flowers rippled like foam on waves.

Above them stood countless thin wooden poles.

And at their tips were wooden birds.

They weren’t ordinary poles but sotdae connecting heaven and earth.

As I marveled at the countless sotdae and profuse flowers.

A white cloth descended over my shoulders.

Looking to the side, the woman and man who had come with me were covering me with something like a bed sheet.

“Be careful not to let bare skin touch the ground and lie down.”

The woman said this as she bent down.

Then she entered among the wildflowers that had grown to calf height.

The men who had come first were also hiding between the sotdae like that.

I didn’t know what was happening, but I also wrapped the sheet around me and entered the grass.

The feeling against my knees was somehow squishy.

As I crouched down like this, the vibrations stopped.

Instead, there was a sound that had been faintly continuing from before.

Swish- Swish-

The sound of something being dragged.

A faint sound I couldn’t tell if I was really hearing or if it was an auditory hallucination.

But this doubt of mine was immediately shattered by a loud noise.

Bang-!

The surgery room door exploded with a blast.

Fortunately.

I was biting my lower lip.

The taste of blood spread in my mouth, but I could swallow my scream.

Swish- Swish-

The dragging sound became much clearer.

I wanted to turn toward where the sound was coming from.

When I forcibly suppressed the impulse and endured, it entered my field of vision on its own.

What I came to see was…

Monster

Corpse

Trash

Test subject

Blasphemy

Perhaps the Creator’s self-deprecating joke.

It looked human at first glance.

The way it straightened its spine and walked on two legs was like that at least.

But it was definitely not human.

Its withered body was like an embalmed corpse or rotten vines.

Above its neck was a single smooth metal sphere.

I couldn’t tell if it had no head or was wearing some kind of helmet.

While the head and body were so pitiful, as if to compensate, only the right upper arm was grandiose.

Below the grotesquely swollen shoulder muscle, things that could be blood vessels or wires dangled down.

The massive arm below was entangled with multiple gun barrels.

It looked like a person stuffed into a bundle of old rifles.

True to its name, it was a “Moving Gun.”

Swish, scrape-

The “Moving Gun” dragged its heavy arm and came toward me.

I closed my eyes.

And covered my ears.

“…I think it’s gone.”

After a while, the woman’s voice could be heard.

When I slowly poked my head out from under the sheet, Moving Gun had already disappeared.

Seeing the others standing up, I also got to my feet.

The ground kept feeling squishy, so I sneaked a peek under the sheet.

And I regretted it.

Under the flower bed wasn’t soil, but something like flesh scattered around.

“Be careful, it sticks to bare skin.”

So that’s why they gave us sheets to cover ourselves.

I was about to thank the woman.

Just as I was about to, screams came from over there again.

“Aaaahhh!”

“Be quiet…!”

The injured man was struggling while others held him down.

Seeing the commotion, the woman extended her arm to me.

I also naturally supported the woman.

Getting closer, I saw the men treating the injured person.

But the injured man seemed to be making a fuss from the pain.

The woman took out an ampoule and syringe from her pocket and said.

“It’s a painkiller. You’ll feel better soon.”

After the woman gave the injection, the men stepped back.

Chubby Man also stopped struggling and began to sob.

“Ah, shit… why always me… that monster bastard saw my face, he definitely saw my face then…!”

“That’s why I told you not to take off your mask. To endure it even if it’s hot…”

“Shut up! Fuck! Don’t, don’t lecture me! If I die, you all die too, don’t you know!?”

When Muscular Man tried to calm him down, the chubby one got violently angry.

I naturally expected a fight to break out.

But surprisingly, the muscular guy stepped back.

“…Yeah, I got it, so rest.”

What?

That muscular guy wasn’t exactly mild-mannered either.

But now he’s being strangely compliant for some reason.

“Hey there, help us look. We were on a mission here.”

While I was failing to read the atmosphere, another man spoke to me.

It was the man wearing glasses over his mask, who had pushed the wheelchair with the muscular guy earlier.

Then the woman quietly whispered to me.

“It’s in the mission statement I gave you earlier.”

I know what she means.

I remember the content, but I unfolded the mission statement again to show them.

-‘I’ type Mission 3.

-Harvest non-decayed organs from the 999 Totem Poles displayed in the 2nd Floor Surgery Ward of the Main Building.

-However, if harvested organ tissue fuses with the prisoner’s body, it will be considered mission failure.

The whole situation became roughly clear.

What’s in front of me is exactly the 999 Totem Poles.

They were here looking for intact organs for their mission.

But I stepped on a trap, and they all came rushing out at that sound.

They must have been bewildered when I appeared in pajamas instead of Moving Gun.

So they were interrogating me when Moving Gun actually appeared.

Looking at how they handled the aftermath, they seem to know quite a bit about that monster’s habits.

But that’s just based on experience; they still don’t know the pattern Cha Si-eon mentioned.

Moreover, at this rate, I’m going to get caught up in this too.

“What if that monster from earlier comes back while we’re stuck here?”

At my question, Muscular Build and Seo Do-un glanced at me.

Their attitude suggested why such vague assumptions were necessary right now.

So I dropped a few more hints.

“Didn’t you hear that you shouldn’t stay in one place too long?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“If you stay in one place for more than 10 minutes, that monster knows your location and comes. A man with tied-up hair said that, doesn’t anyone know?”

As if hearing this for the first time, the men’s reactions were slow.

Muscular Build actually glared at me.

“What bullshit…”

“Wait. When we were selling sand, we lured it elsewhere but it came back quickly. Three times.”

Seo Do-un stopped Muscular Build who was about to get angry first.

Then, as if something clicked, he asked me back.

“Did you hear anything else besides that?”

“If your face is seen, you become a target, it occasionally fires wall-penetrating shots but the conditions are still unknown, it’s active for 40 minutes and rests for 40 minutes.”

I stopped after saying this much.

-To enter the rest period, at least one person must be hunted.

This is the most important information, but I deliberately omitted it.

The moment I say it, they’ll start picking a sacrifice, and I’d be crazy to mention it.

I played dumb and waited for the men’s reactions.

Eventually, Seo Do-un sighed while holding his forehead.

“Ah, these bastards…”

“Can we trust that?”

“Nothing particularly wrong with what he said. Some things make sense, and it’s true that Rescuer 12 got shot.”

Fortunately, they seem to believe what I said.

But who is Rescuer 12?

When I looked around, the woman pointed to the injured man.

“This person is Rescuer 12. We’re distinguishing by armband colors.”

At the mention of armbands, I looked at the man’s arm.

There was an orange band on the sleeve part of his work clothes.

The others also had different colors in that same spot.

Are they calling each other by band colors instead of names?

Well, revealing real names here would be awkward for everyone.

I took this opportunity to check everyone’s band colors.

The woman’s band is white.

The tall man who grabbed me earlier is blue.

Muscular Build is red.

The guy with the severed foot is orange.

And the man wearing glasses over his mask is black.

Muscular Build and Seo Do-un whispered to each other.

“What do we do now?”

“There’s no answer except here. The other floors are destroyed.”

“But how do we find this in 10 minutes?”

“We can take turns every 10 minutes.”

I thought that muscular Muscular Build was the leader, but now I see Seo Do-un seems to be taking charge.

Seo Do-un spoke as if he’d already decided.

“Since it chases the person whose face it saw first, we’ll use Rescuer 12 to lure the monster while the rest of us take turns working here.”

At those words, Rescuer 12, who had been lying down groaning, shouted angrily.

“What kind of bullshit is that!”

“You just need to sit in the wheelchair. That monster isn’t particularly fast either, so dodging around would be safer. Or would you rather stay here and get shot again?”

This Seo Do-un, he’s good at handling people.

Seo Do-un’s tone was gentle but left no room for argument.

So Rescuer 12 couldn’t throw a tantrum like before and could only grumble.

With Seo Do-un holding the initiative, he asked the group.

“Then let’s work in shifts. How should we divide the teams?”

“White, Tall, Otter, and I will take Rescuer 12 and go around first. Seo Do-un and Muscular Build can finish organizing the section you were examining here.”

The woman, White, answered Seo Do-un.

But among what she mentioned, there was something mixed in besides colors.

I looked at White, wondering who ‘Otter’ was.

White was looking at me.

I followed her gaze and looked down at my clothes.

Ah, that’s me.

My t-shirt had a picture of an otter reading a book.

A moment later, Tall brought another wheelchair.

White and Rescuer 12 sat in the wheelchairs, and I watched this scene with considerable unease.

Somehow I’d ended up grouped together with these serious criminals.

Was it really okay to be doing this?

Of course it wasn’t okay. Obviously not okay. Absolutely not okay!

I screamed internally while putting strength into my eyes.

Seo Do-un approached me and extended his hand.

“It’s been so hectic I couldn’t even introduce myself. Anyway, since it’s come to this, please take care of me.”

Suddenly, the ‘Special Advice!’ from the instruction manual came to mind.

-Prisoners are distinguished by armband color; the darker the armband color, the more dangerous the individual.

Thinking this seemed quite plausible, I halfheartedly shook Seo Do-un’s hand.

It was quite cold.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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