Grab the Regressor by the Collar and Debut - Chapter 554

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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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554. In the Chaos (7)
‘I have to survive.’
That singular objective consumed my entire mind.
Watching the four walls closing in with deliberate, crushing force, I snatched the building’s blueprint from Ha Tae-jin’s hands—a somewhat aggressive move, but given the circumstances, he didn’t protest my action.
[System Alert: What are you doing at a time like this!?]
[System Alert: Σ(・Д・)!?]
‘This blueprint isn’t here for nothing. I need to find something—anything.’
While I frantically searched the blueprints, the sharp-witted Nam Sa-ra quickly ushered Ha Tae-jin around, sweeping away all the clutter surrounding us as far as possible. Even as they lowered everything dangerous to the ground, the space continued to shrink relentlessly.
“Where, where, where…”
My hands trembled with urgency.
I finally located the Second Floor blueprint and rapidly scanned the office layout.
‘The moving walls are all temporary partitions being pushed inward, so I can ignore those.’
The ceiling? I’d used that effectively during the last preliminary meeting, but the cooldown didn’t seem to have reset yet.
The door? Given the circumstances, Void—the final villain—had locked it directly. There was no way it would open easily.
Windows or ventilation shafts? They seemed like the only possibility, but they were all sealed against the walls, so that was a dead end too.
“Ha-jin, is there anything!?”
“Hey, hey, this is getting faster…!”
Nam Sa-ra and Ha Tae-jin, who had been defending against the closing walls with their entire bodies, finally gave up and retreated to the center where I stood.
My mind began racing. In this six-sided office space, if five faces including the ceiling were all dead ends, then what remained was…
“Brother, look at the floor. Is that material peelable?”
“What? Yeah. I noticed this earlier too—it can be torn up.”
“Try peeling it. I have a feeling there’s a secret passage underneath.”
We were currently on the Second Floor of this office.
If there was even one passage leading down to the First Floor…
With that thought, I rifled through the blueprint again, and sure enough, I spotted an unmarked empty passage drawn near the ceiling of the First Floor Restaurant directly below our position.
After estimating the rough location and tearing up all the flooring with Ha Tae-jin, a poorly secured wooden plank appeared directly beneath where we stood.
“Yeah, seeing that only this part is wood, this has to be it!?”
“Oh, sister. We moved a toolbox from over there earlier… Ugh! Hey, hey!”
“Damn it!”
“Ugh! Hey, Ha-jin!”
Normally, the plan would have been to use the tools here to somehow pry up the secured plank, but I’m sorry—we didn’t have time for that luxury.
I grabbed the desk beside me and drove it downward with all my strength, and the wooden plank shattered pathetically. After sweeping the pieces aside, the secret passage revealed itself.
Without hesitation, I opened the entrance and jumped straight down.
“Sister, jump!”
“Hey, this is way too deep. Maybe I should go down first and catch you… Whoa, sister!?”
“There’s no time to worry about that! Just jump, now!”
Ha Tae-jin, attempting to display some chivalry, watched Nam Sa-ra land with impressive grace and his lips fell open.
‘So her hobby is boxing and her specialty is taekwondo.’
It was trivia I’d learned when we’d grown close in the previous timeline, but I played along with a shocked expression, covering my mouth with both hands and adding a small comment.
“Damn, that was seriously cool…”
“Tae-jin, if you’re scared, want your sister to hold you?”
“It’s actually embarrassing, but it feels so reassuring that my mood’s gotten weird.”
Ha Tae-jin seemed to be getting increasingly wrapped up in the back-and-forth between me, who was marveling at him like a delicate girl, and Nam Sa-ra, who was playfully winking at him.
Ha Tae-jin, who had delivered his witty response with practiced ease, descended smoothly into the passage below. We pressed forward without hesitation. According to the blueprints, if we descended this way, we should find a passage leading into the Restaurant.
After passing through the dark, lengthy passage, light finally began to appear.
“Shh, quiet.”
“…? Why?”
“Someone’s there.”
Ha Tae-jin made a gesture for silence and stilled his presence. As his unusually long, dark eyelashes lowered, a loud clattering sound echoed from the Restaurant below—the passage’s exit—and I felt someone slowly walking toward our position.
“Did you catch them?”
“Got one, but two got away. What about the Basement?”
“Son Je-u ran off with the key. I tried to follow, but it seemed too dangerous, so I came back for now.”
“Hmm… Should we head back to Headquarters then? We’ve been exposed too much already. We were supposed to meet up with Yong-guk there too.”
“Yeah, let’s do that. …Ah, we need to catch Zeus quickly though.”
It took a moment before I recognized whose voices were coming through the gap in the passage door.
But soon after, Nam Sa-ra, who had identified them, drew in a sharp breath and reflexively opened her mouth.
“Hey, aren’t those the ones who didn’t make it through earlier…?”
“Sister, shh.”
I hastily cut off Nam Sa-ra’s words and nodded urgently.
Just as Nam Sa-ra had said, the three people passing through the Restaurant were the dropouts who had failed the first test.
‘Kim Seok-ho, Lim Ria, and probably Kwon Yong-guk.’
A former athlete-turned-broadcaster who’d been strutting around since the start of filming, a rookie actress, and an MC who’d been on a winning streak for over a decade with his exceptional broadcast presence.
‘From the circumstances, it doesn’t seem like they’re on the same team as us.’
The two passing below right now were one thing, but if Kwon Yong-guk—whose seasoned competence was unmistakable—was on the opposing side, that would be quite troublesome.
Even during the pre-filming last time, I’d felt his situational judgment was precise and sharp, and his physical abilities were quite solid.
“…They seem to have gone?”
“Let’s head down slowly.”
We were only able to leave the passage long after the sounds from the Restaurant had disappeared.
Unlike before when the passage floor was sturdy even at greater depths, this time we had to descend quietly onto the narrow table in the Restaurant, so Ha Tae-jin and I went down first to safely catch Nam Sa-ra.
“Thanks. Wow, but you guys are really tall… How tall are you, Ha-jin?”
“Me? Not that tall, just a bit over 180 centimeters?”
“…That’s not tall?”
“Is it tall?”
When I asked dryly in return, Nam Sa-ra and Ha Tae-jin turned to look at me with bewildered expressions.
[System Alert: (」゜ロ゜)」 ?]
Why. What. What do you want from me.
Caught off guard by the awkwardly cold turn of events, I scratched my cheek sheepishly. Then I added my own excuse.
“I’m serious. There are a lot of people in our group who are taller than me.”
“In Kairos?”
“Yeah.”
I used to be fairly tall, but seeing how big Ju Eun-chan is this time… I can’t even be sure about that anymore.
‘Man, thinking about it again, it’s ridiculous.’
But the thing that made me even more frustrated was that Ju Eun-chan’s face actually matched that physique.
What annoyed me most was my own temperament, meekly accepting all of this!
‘I’m 182 centimeters tall, and I’m still 182 centimeters…!’
Surely those shrimps like Dan Ha-ru and Seo Tae-hyun haven’t grown taller too?
My anxious unease faded only when I recalled that in Seo Tae-hyun’s twenty-ninth timeline, he still hadn’t exceeded 180 centimeters.
“Anyway, that’s not what’s important right now.”
Leaving behind the bitter resentment of being forcibly reduced in stature, I regained my composure and returned to reality.
To get back to my tall days as quickly as possible, I first needed to finish this brutal Survival Program broadcast.
“If we organize what we know so far… Void is an experimental subject they were testing in this Research Facility, and the emergency escape system in the Hidden Room is most likely a method to extract Void, not us.”
“Then we need to find another escape method first. You grabbed those records earlier, right?”
“Oh, yeah. …What about those two just now? They said they caught someone.”
“This is just my theory, but… at the very beginning, that sea of water was the first test, right? But just now they said it was the third test?”
“Yeah, that bothered me too.”
“What if those stragglers went through the second test? And for some reason, they became our enemies in the process, with their goal being to eliminate all of us.”
Ha Tae-jin nodded at my reasoning, saying it was the most plausible explanation so far. Nam Sa-ra, who had been listening quietly, suddenly raised her hand and countered.
“So those people are on Void’s side? But you said Void seems to be the one who called us here in the first place. Why would Void send those people to kill us?”
“We already figured out that Void isn’t on our side.”
“So Void used us to take control of the server they saw, made us activate the escape system in the Hidden Room, and threw those people in as insurance just in case?”
“Well… I can’t think of any other explanation right now.”
“No, I still don’t understand. Why make it this complicated?”
At Nam Sa-ra’s sharp observation, Ha Tae-jin furrowed his brow. I too felt an uncomfortable unease and found it difficult to say anything.
The atmosphere sank in an instant.
‘We’ve been here for about four hours now… everyone must be getting tired.’
Nam Sa-ra pressed her head with a troubled expression, and Ha Tae-jin bit his lower lip and placed his hands on his waist.
For the two of them, I pulled something out of my pants pocket.
“Come on, have some of this first.”
“What is this?”
“There were snacks in the Office earlier, so I grabbed a few. I’m the type who can’t think straight without something sweet.”
What I piled on the table was an assortment of snacks I’d brought from the Office earlier.
As chocolates, candies, and crackers of all kinds endlessly emerged from my deep pants pocket, Nam Sa-ra blinked and made an astonished expression.
“For something you ‘lightly grabbed,’ you sure packed it efficiently…”
“Is that really important right now, sis?”
I popped a chocolate into Nam Sa-ra’s mouth, then pulled out a jelly bag I’d stashed separately in my jacket pocket and opened it. As I skillfully popped an orange-flavored gummy worm into my mouth, I caught Ha Tae-jin giving me a wry smile.
Regardless, I continued speaking with the gummy worm still in my mouth.
“I’ve been thinking about it, and what if it’s like this?”
“…?”
“What if those three people are on the System’s side?”
“The System?”
“Doesn’t that mean they’re on Void’s side?”
Confusion bloomed across both their faces. I shook my head at them and laid out the hypothesis I’d been turning over in my mind since earlier.
“No, it’s different. Do you remember what Void said at the very beginning?”
-For your information, the security system of this Research Facility currently regards you as ‘intruders.’
-Therefore, from this moment forward, you are a ‘threat’ to this Research Facility’s security system, and the system will activate all mechanisms to eliminate you. This is to inform you of this fact.
“Void and this Research Facility’s security system are separate entities. And that security system said it would do anything to eliminate us.”
“Then….”
“What if those people are the ‘method’ the system chose?”
As they began to grasp what I was driving at, their expressions shifted subtly.
The jelly packet in my hand crumpled limply. My throat had gone dry, my voice turning hoarse and hushed as it echoed through the Restaurant.
“What if we’re actually still on the same side as Void, and those people came in here chosen by the system specifically to stop us?”
So what are we supposed to do?
Until the chocolate I couldn’t finish melted and smeared across my palm, none of us could bring ourselves to speak.

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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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