Editor’s Survival Guide - Chapter 178

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Editor’s Survival Manual Chapter 178

ep25. Unlocking Secrets (4)
「I can compose space.」
A single sentence surfaced through the scattered fragments of text.
“……Jae-gyeom, come here for a second.”
“What is it?”
At my call, Kwak Jae-gyeom stepped into the living room, letting go of the entrance door.
Then he looked back and forth between me and the laptop monitor I was staring at.
“What is it?”
“You can’t see these letters?”
“Letters?”
Jae-gyeom peered at the laptop with a puzzled look.
Damn it. Is this something only I can read again?
“I only see broken characters. And…….”
Jae-gyeom frowned and pulled his gaze from the laptop.
“If I keep looking at it, my eyes start to hurt.”
“…….”
If that’s the case, does that mean this place is a Special Zone?
“You can read that?”
“Yeah. It says ‘I can compose space.'”
At my answer, Jae-gyeom’s expression grew more serious.
“It doesn’t seem like this is reality, at least.”
I looked around with a bewildered feeling.
It looks like I was dragged into a Special Zone, but why does it still look like our house?
Jae-gyeom spoke to me as I stood there in disbelief.
“There are a few Special Zones that trigger Cognitive Distortion the moment you enter them.”
“So we could be dragged into some Special Zone and seeing hallucinations right now?”
“That’s possible, but I’m not sure. I wasn’t bound to you, yet we were dragged in together.”
“So that means you could be my hallucination.”
“Or it could be the other way around.”
Jae-gyeom answered with a laugh, and I laughed dryly in return.
We spoke calmly enough, but an odd tension hung in the air.
“Jae-gyeom, do you have any candy on you?”
“No…….”
True to form for someone on vacation, Kwak Jae-gyeom hadn’t brought anything.
I pulled a piece of candy from my vest and offered it to him.
Jae-gyeom stared at the white crystalline substance wrapped in paper for a moment, then shook his head.
“I won’t eat it.”
Right. Kwak Jae-gyeom has no way of being certain I’m really me.
So it would be difficult for him to accept something I’m offering.
I nodded and put the candy in my own mouth.
The candy—which tasted more salty than sweet—dissolved on my tongue.
But the landscape before my eyes didn’t change at all, and Jae-gyeom was still standing right in front of me.
“Nothing changed at all…….”
At my words, Kwak Jae-gyeom stirred slightly.
“Jae-gyeom, just to be clear, don’t try anything rash. I’m not the fake.”
“But all the fakes say they’re the real ones.”
Kwak Jae-gyeom spoke with a mix of jest and earnestness.
I waved him away and contacted the Management Bureau via my smartwatch.
-Yes, Agent. What’s the matter?
Fortunately, my smartwatch was working fine.
But the calmness of the Situation Room’s response made me feel another wave of unease.
When I fall into a Special Zone, the people there notice before I do.
So what was with this flat response?
“I think I’ve been dragged into a Special Zone and wanted to report it.”
-What?
The Control Team employee sounded surprised by my words.
-Agent, your current location is being tracked at your residence.
“…….”
-Can you describe what kind of Special Zone you’ve fallen into?
At the Situation Room’s request, I found myself at a loss for words.
What do you mean, what kind?
One thing was certain—it wasn’t in any Management Bureau manual.
But since Jae-gyeom felt eye pain from reading the text, this is definitely a Special Zone.
I ate salt candy, and yet I see no Distortion Points—so no Cognitive Distortion has occurred.
And my GPS signal says I’m at my house.
Putting it all together, there was only one possible conclusion.
This was a new Special Zone of unknown form.
「Our House.」
* * *
-Baek Sa-ra and Han Ji-su have departed. They should arrive within forty minutes.
Cha Si-eon’s voice.
I was wrapping a bandage around Jae-gyeom’s forearm as I responded.
“Understood. I’ll be waiting.”
-Jae-gyeom, have you found the Distortion Point yet?
“No. I even ran blood tests, but there was nothing unusual.”
Jae-gyeom kept his injured arm offered to me while scanning the living room again.
Long streaks of his blood traced across the living room wall.
To determine whether Cognitive Distortion was occurring, Jae-gyeom had deliberately cut his own arm.
And yet no Distortion Point was found.
So we set aside our suspicions of each other and accepted this situation at face value.
-Understood. Wait for backup to arrive. And Seo Do-un.
“Yes.”
-The Director asked if you couldn’t have just taken a normal vacation for once.”
“Believe me, I want the same thing…….”
I answered in exasperation and let out a long sigh.
Last vacation was like this. This vacation is like this too.
Something always goes wrong the moment I take time off—it’s enough to make anyone afraid to rest at all.
I looked around my apartment with a gloomy mood.
Despite the blood streaks running across the walls, the interior of my home remained utterly familiar to me.
Which only made it more confusing.
My safe space had suddenly become strange.
I couldn’t lower my guard, not knowing when or what kind of threat might emerge—yet the space was still where I ate and slept.
Cognitive dissonance flooded through me in real time.
What made it worse was that this dissonance wasn’t a foreign sensation at all.
How long had I been enduring this divide?
-We’ve arrived at the building of Agent Seo Do-un’s residence. We’re heading up to the twelfth floor now.
A welcome voice came through the smartwatch.
It was Baek Sa-ra.
-We’ve reached unit 1203. Did you order pizza?
“Yes. It’s not cold yet, is it?”
In the middle of all this, Kwak Jae-gyeom was fixated on the pizza’s condition.
-It’s lukewarm. Agent Seo, what’s the passcode for the entrance?
“It’s 1227.”
At my answer, Baek Sa-ra paused.
Then she let out a long sigh and scolded me.
-What kind of person sets their house password to their birthday, Otter…….
“Haha…….”
Caught in my security carelessness, I laughed awkwardly, and meanwhile Baek Sa-ra pressed the number pad on my apartment door.
After the familiar electronic beep, came Baek Sa-ra’s voice.
-The door is open.
Kwak Jae-gyeom and I looked toward the entrance.
But the entrance door we were seeing remained firmly shut, not moving at all.
-The house is empty.
At Baek Sa-ra’s words, Kwak Jae-gyeom and I could only sigh.
It wasn’t particularly surprising.
When Baek Sa-ra pressed the number pad, there wasn’t a single sound from our entrance.
-Agent Seo Do-un’s and Agent Baek Sa-ra’s GPS signals are being registered at the same location.
Cha Si-eon spoke.
It meant we were in the same space but couldn’t meet due to some kind of distortion.
And it was Jae-gyeom and I who had been expelled from reality.
-It appears a new Special Zone has manifested in Agent Seo Do-un’s residence, as you suspected.
As Cha Si-eon made his confirmation, I was about to groan again when—
“So what do we call this new Special Zone?”
At Jae-gyeom’s question, answers came rolling in.
-「Seo Do-un’s Home.」
-「Otter’s Habitat.」
-「Otters’ Home」……?
“Please don’t joke around right now…….”
Especially Han Ji-su.
Coming from that husky voice, “Otters’ Home” was the last thing I needed.
“But isn’t this kind of a huge deal? This is the first time a completely new Special Zone has been discovered since I was hired.”
Jae-gyeom asked in a bewildered tone, sharing my sentiment.
To which Baek Sa-ra answered in a slightly contrite voice.
-It’s not really a time for jokes, I suppose…….
-There were no dangerous elements detected, correct?
“Yes, Team Leader.”
-Can we attempt initial reconnaissance?
At Cha Si-eon’s words, Kwak Jae-gyeom looked at me.
What am I looking at for? We have no other choice anyway.
This is a new Special Zone with no information.
Backup can’t be brought in under these circumstances.
So our only option was to explore ourselves and find a way out.
—
■ Special Management Zone Initial Reconnaissance Guide
1. Establish a Safe Zone
: Agents must first secure an area where they can stay safely.
2. Identify Special Phenomena and Special Entities
: Everything that differs from reality constitutes a special phenomenon or special entity. Identify the types of special phenomena and entities within the zone, and measure their threat levels.
Threat levels are measured in order of: trigger factors, lethality, and type of damage.
3. Explore Methods of Interaction with Special Phenomena and Entities
: Once you’ve identified a relatively safe special phenomenon or entity, attempt to interact with it. Exit from a Special Management Zone is only possible through interaction with special phenomena or entities within that zone.
—
We went through the living room while reciting the initial reconnaissance guide Baek Sa-ra had outlined.
First, the living room was certainly safe, and the rest of the space showed no particular anomalies.
This was completely our house.
“It looks like the only strange phenomenon is in your laptop, Do-un.”
After thoroughly checking the apartment, we returned to where we started, staring intently at my suspicious laptop.
「I can compose space.」
What on earth was this?
It seemed clear that this laptop was either the cause or the medium that pulled us here.
Could that ransomware installed on it be responsible?
But that ransomware was planted on the company system right after I was hired by the Management Bureau.
That was half a year ago.
If so, does that mean this space was already laid out like a trap, waiting for me all this time?
“We should probably investigate this laptop. Is that sentence still showing?”
“Yeah, it’s the same.”
“Then don’t we need to input some kind of command?”
Like Jae-gyeom said, when a machine displays guidance text like that, people instinctively press agree or disagree.
But I didn’t see any buttons here.
I tried pressing Enter on the keyboard just in case.
Then a chat window appeared below the message.
“Jae-gyeom, can you see this?”
“Yes. I can see the window opened.”
I tested by tapping the keyboard again, and the text input properly.
“It seems like we can talk to it like an AI? Oh, hyung. Let me type this. Better to be safe.”
Jae-gyeom stood up and took my place at the laptop.
Then he tapped the keyboard and entered a question.
「Introduce yourself as thoroughly as possible. However, exclude any information that would harm our bodies or minds.」
As Jae-gyeom entered the question, the text on the screen vanished.
“What do you see?”
“No, the text just disappeared?”
At my answer, Jae-gyeom tapped the keyboard again.
Tap-tap-tap—
「Didn’t you understand my question?」
「Understood. Not responding.」
“…….”
“What does it say?”
“It understood but won’t answer.”
Jae-gyeom paused briefly at my explanation, then tapped the keyboard again.
「What can we safely ask about?」
「Regarding Space Composition.」
「Explain what Space Composition is.」
As Jae-gyeom entered the question, text poured out in torrents.
「Reconstitution of the world expanding dimensions concretization of potentiality temporal distortion information reversal manifestation of souls invasion of sacred and fallen things tatters of the gods’ unlawful acts…… 」
The text overflowed the screen too quickly for me to read it all.
So I missed most of that response as it scrolled past my eyes.
But the final word remained on the screen clearly enough for me to read it.
「Creation of Heaven and Earth」

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