Editor’s Survival Guide - Chapter 183

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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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Editor’s Survival Manual Episode 183

ep26. Body Swapping (1)

The night sky and stars filled my vision.
Sensations both familiar and utterly foreign swept through my entire body.
Firm muscle tightening around my ribs.
Shoulders and back, once heavy with chronic fatigue, felt lighter than ever—yet my limbs had grown heavier instead.
Eyes sharper than before held the stars in perfect clarity, without blur.
And there, swaying before my face, short blonde hair.
I breathed slowly in this new body and placed a hand on my chest.
As breath filled the broad thorax, I felt blood pumping through me with vivid intensity.
Breathing was normal.
Physical sensation was normal.
My mood felt a little… weightless?
I was just checking the condition of this unfamiliar body.
“Did it work?”
A familiar voice came from beside me.
It was Agent Jeong Jin-u’s voice.
I lowered my gaze from the sky to look at him.
Jeong Jin-u, dressed in duty fatigues, watched me from beneath a streetlight.
I opened my mouth to answer.
Then words flowed out in a voice that was not my own.
“Yes, the swap succeeded. I am Seo Do-un.”
“Don’t need to explain. You’re that calm now, so it’s completely bizarre.”
Jeong Jin-u looked at me and let out a small laugh.
Then he turned to the side and asked again.
“Jae-gyeom, how are you doing?”
There was a man standing where Jeong Jin-u directed his words.
Dark hair, also in duty fatigues—the man I saw every day in the mirror.
That was me.
My actual body, no fake human, was standing a short distance away.
Just as Jeong Jin-u had called him, that man was now Jae-gyeom.
But Jae-gyeom, wearing my face, was oddly stiff.
His posture, his expression, his entire presence.
“Jae-gyeom.”
Sensing something off, Jeong Jin-u called him again.
At that, Jae-gyeom slowly raised his head.
And then I suddenly understood what Jeong Jin-u had meant by bizarre.
Jae-gyeom—or rather, I—was wearing an expression completely foreign to me.
But this expression looked strange even for Jae-gyeom’s sake.
A face gone deathly pale.
Eyes flickering with ceaseless turmoil.
Jae-gyeom’s agitation was unmistakable even in the darkness.
“Jae-gyeom, what’s wrong?”
Jeong Jin-u stepped closer to the silent Jae-gyeom.
In that instant, Jae-gyeom’s tears suddenly poured down.
“Huh…!”
Before we could even react, Jae-gyeom covered his face—my face—with his hands.
He seemed to be trying to wipe away the tears quickly, but he couldn’t take his hands from that face.
“Ugh…!”
Sobs erupted from his mouth.
Jeong Jin-u’s face grew more serious, and he approached Jae-gyeom.
“I’m… I’m fine, really, I’m okay…!”
Jae-gyeom cried out urgently, backing away from Jeong Jin-u.
“I just… suddenly feel strange…!”
“Strange?”
“I’m sorry, I’ll calm down right away…!”
Jae-gyeom broke into fresh sobs even while saying he’d compose himself.
Jeong Jin-u watched him for a moment, then looked at me and muttered.
“Could be aftereffects from the body swap?”
I nodded silently.
Judging by how he was talking, it did seem to be Jae-gyeom.
But he couldn’t seem to control his emotions at all.
Jae-gyeom himself was struggling hard to stifle his breathing, troubled by his own behavior.
I watched him for a moment, then spoke quietly.
“Jae-gyeom, don’t cry.”
“Hngh, huhh…!”
“Come on, don’t cry…!”
Anything else would be fine, but not crying with my face, damn it…!
Jae-gyeom, struggling to regain any composure.
Watching him, Jeong Jin-u suddenly tossed out another remark.
“Man, the Response Team’s junior must really be going through it.”
-The Response Team is irrelevant.
As soon as responsibility came into play, Team Leader Cha drew the line.
Jae-gyeom still hiccupping, crying in my body.
Jeong Jin-u grinning at me.
I found myself profoundly distressed by this total chaos.
This place, delivering me such unexpected trials, was a Type 1 Special Zone.
The Body Transformation Meditation Center.

* * *

The genesis of the incident reached back ten days.
“Apophysis shared information with us. Apparently they ran into the Big Cat at Blooming School.”
Division Chief Kwon Mu-seop sat me and Cha Si-eon down and spoke grimly.
Apophysis Director Moon Ho-san had recovered consciousness yesterday.
And he informed us of the fact that he had encountered the Big Cat.
The two pairs of holes pierced through his body were indeed its bite marks.
“It seems the Island and the Bridge both entered their incubation period, so the Big Cat shifted its base to the School. Otherwise, with its nature, it wouldn’t expose itself before armed personnel.”
Cha Si-eon nodded quietly at Division Chief Kwon’s words.
The Big Cat had made a nest at Blooming School.
Did this make meeting a Newly Born God even more impossibly out of reach?
“Director Moon wonders how you rescued him, but he wasn’t told anything about your house. Since we’ve kept that internal to the Management Bureau, you two need to keep your lips sealed too.”
“Understood.”
Cha Si-eon and I answered together.
Fortunately, Moon Ho-san seemed to have no memory of being dragged to our house.
That was good.
My acquiring a Special Zone wasn’t something to brush past like “someone bought a car” or “someone bought a house.”
If anything, it could cast doubt on whether I was even human, so the Management Bureau designated this as sensitive information.
“I’m saying this out of paranoia, but you know the atmosphere around the Bureau lately, don’t you? Everyone’s riding high on your operation’s success. I haven’t seen our people walking around smiling like this in eight years.”
Division Chief Kwon smiled wryly as he spoke.
True to his word, the Management Bureau was in festival mode these days.
Having finally brought Agent Lee Seob back and rescued Lee Sol, morale among the staff had soared sky-high.
On top of that, when the Director himself—who’d been acting like some visiting gentleman—came and praised the Management Bureau personally, the Field Team’s momentum became unstoppable, and staff from other departments were giving them genuine respect.
Even the Otter Rescue Association seemed to be running wild, especially the coordination team.
That much was the bright side of this Train Station suppression operation.
“Most people don’t know about the full annihilation before, so the mood is just uncritically cheerful, but at least you two shouldn’t get swept up in it.”
The concern was that everyone’s courage had become overflowing, and they’d developed the belief that they could handle anything from now on.
Courage, belief, hope.
These are all good things.
But if their opposites—fear, doubt, despair—didn’t exist, humanity would have perished long ago.
Nothing good ever came from tilting too far in any one direction.
And this was part of Division Chief Kwon’s reason for keeping the Special Zone at our house secret.
“The Small House we discovered this time has a lot left to investigate, so don’t think about using it recklessly.”
The Small House.
The new designation for the Special Zone at our place.
I wanted to say our house alone had plenty of room, but since it was far better than “Otters’ Home,” I just decided to accept it.
The laptop in the Small House was also given an entity name: the Guide.
A few staff members who knew about the Small House’s existence strongly pushed for “high Special Zone fees,” but thankfully that got rejected too.
With that, our house was smoothly registered as a Special Zone and classified as Type 5.
“It looks like a good patch right now, but nobody knows about the side effects. Plus, the prerequisite for bringing in casualties is dangerous too. So don’t go imagining usage methods and push yourself. Especially you, Do-un, understood?”
“Yes, understood.”
When Division Chief Kwon singled me out, I answered at once.
I know well why Division Chief Kwon says such things.
The broken feature the Small House demonstrated.

-Able to retrieve agents dying in Special Zones.
-Only from Special Zones you’ve previously visited.

I’m still uncertain about whether these conditions are true, having carelessly brought Moon Ho-san out of Blooming School.
But the conditions as stated by the Guide were indeed so, and if this function were used well, the mortality rate of field-deployed agents could drop dramatically.
In exchange, I’d first have to visit the Special Zones where agents are dying like flies.
It was an ambiguous condition.
If I can enter and exit safely, it’s already a zone with some exploration done.
Truly dangerous Special Zones—I visit them, escape unscathed, and then other agents conduct follow-up exploration?
I had no idea how practical that would really be.
In a situation where my life was treated as rarer than others’, there was no chance they’d deliberately push me into unexplored territory to save other agents.
But once I had the possibility of saving someone else, I couldn’t help but feel the weight of it.
Like that famous trolley problem.
A runaway train hurtles down the tracks, and ahead there are two paths.
On the track the train heads toward are five people; on the diverted track, one person.
And you hold the lever that can switch the train’s path.
If you do nothing and watch, five people die; if you pull the lever, one person dies.
What would you choose?
So goes that vicious dilemma—asking whether you’d passively witness five deaths or actively cause one.
If you’re just watching from a distance, maybe you’re fine. But once the lever is in your hand, you must choose one way or another.
Pull the lever or don’t pull it—you must pick one and bear that catastrophic result.
How different is my situation now from that?
If I take the risk first, more people get a chance to survive.
But my risk might sometimes be death.
And I won’t be reborn anymore.
I’ve been given a choice that’s infinitely good at best, final at worst.
Whatever I choose here will be my freedom.
No one else will dare to question or burden me with responsibility.
But I will question myself.
Was that truly the best choice? I would ask.

* * *

No, I was wrong.
I underestimated humanity.
And I overestimated the Management Bureau.
“Agent Seo Do-un, you’ll save all the agents deployed to the field from now on, right?”
I thought it was a battle only with myself, but here came outside interference, just like that.
“If you just try hard, we all live, yeah? Right?”
I marveled inwardly, watching the man who added this.
A fox-faced man who leaned in close beside me and whispered, aware that others shouldn’t hear what he was saying.
It was Yeon Ga-ram of Control Team 7.

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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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