The Second Coming of Gluttony - Chapter 15

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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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Episode 15. Perilous Treasure Hunt (3)

5th Floor.
At the far end of the corridor, lined with classrooms in neat rows, stood the Experimental Laboratory.
The door, sealed shut, leaked not a single beam of light—only the occasional rustle of movement pierced the darkness within.
A boy wandered through the pitch-black laboratory, his movements desperate. He swept instruments from the desks, yanked books wholesale from the shelves. Each motion betrayed a frantic search, yet as time pressed forward, urgency bled into his frame, his desperation deepening with each passing moment.
Crack.
A sound rang out.
But Lee Seong-jin hadn’t heard it—not with the table overturned, spilling its cargo of experimental apparatus across the floor. He raked through the fallen instruments with a desperate gaze, then moved on without pause. Coin, coin. He kept repeating it like a mantra.
He’d deliberately left the lights off. The thought was simple: a coin’s bright yellow would show better in darkness.
Tap… tap….
The sound came again. A faint noise, easy to miss if one weren’t listening carefully.
Lee Seong-jin’s mind couldn’t spare the attention. His thoughts were consumed entirely by one imperative: he had to save Lee Seol-ah. The Guide had been explicit. Gather enough coins, and it would be possible to resurrect the dead.
“Sister….”
The shock when he’d dragged Lee Seol-ah up from the water had been staggering. Below the waist, she was relatively intact, but her upper body was shredded beyond recognition. The memory of her grotesque mutilation spurred his sluggish limbs into frantic motion once more.
Then heaven aids those who aid themselves. A glint caught his eye in the sink. The boy’s vision sharpened, and his hand shot out reflexively. But in his urgency—
Clang!
Tap… tap….
“No.”
The coin slipped through his fingers. It rolled across the floor and vanished beneath the desk. He threw himself down, stretching his arm desperately until his fingers closed around it. Only then could he breathe.
Outside, the night had turned pitch black. Only a pale moonlight filtered dimly through the windows.
“Breathe….”
Just one coin, yet proof that his search hadn’t been fruitless.
Midnight had long passed, yet the road ahead remained infinite. He had no time to worry about the Undead. He needed more. More coins. The boy clenched the coin in his palm.
Tap… tap…!
Lee Seong-jin froze mid-rise. A dragging sound, faint and deliberate. His arm tensed. The hand touching the floor grew ice-cold, raising the hair on his skin.
In that instant, a thousand thoughts scattered across his mind. The sixteen-year-old boy slowly, cautiously tilted his head upward. As his ashen gaze crept higher, his breath caught.
Beneath the desk. Small feet and slender calves came into view. Trembling, wavering precariously as though about to collapse.
Lee Seong-jin’s eyes widened suddenly, his cry dying in his throat. Though he could see only from the knees down, something felt achingly familiar. When his gaze found the blue skirt stained with dried blood, recognition struck him like a blow.
“Sister?”
The stumbling feet halted. They turned, searching, as though groping for something unseen.
“Wh… where….”
The voice was ragged and fractured, but that detail hardly mattered now. Lee Seong-jin scrambled to his feet.
“Sister? Sister, is it you? I’m here! I’m…?”
He couldn’t finish the sentence.
What turned to face him resembled Lee Seol-ah. The long, dark hair was hers, and….
“Sister…?”
Something was wrong. Deeply wrong. He couldn’t articulate what, but though it bore her likeness, something primal in him recoiled with uncanny dread.
“Seong… jin… ah….”
The neck hung slack, disturbingly loose. That was when the boy finally grasped the source of his unease: the proportions of the body were grotesquely misaligned.
“Sis… sis….”
He wanted to ask. Why does your body look like that? Are you really my sister? But no sound would come.
“Urrr… ahhh….”
It made sounds as though desperate to speak, wet and rasping, an endless stream of that terrible noise. When it finally turned fully to face him, and he met those hollow, empty eye sockets, the breath he’d been holding burst out of him all at once.
“Ahhhhh!”
It was as though rotted rags had been crudely stitched together. Gaps in the split flesh wept blood and corruption. Pulped flesh had been gathered piece by piece and hardened; fractured skin was sewn together haphazardly and turned inside-out—a grotesque assemblage. Even dismembered parts carefully reassembled would have been less horrifying to behold.
“Ahhh, ahhhhhhh!”
Retreating, his foot tangled beneath him and he fell hard. Both legs kicked wildly through the air, scrambling to create distance. The figure’s upper half seemed poised to advance, then stopped. The jaw, misaligned on one side, clattered as though it might fall away entirely.
“Drgh… ahhhhhh… urrr….”
Lee Seong-jin’s mind reeled. He’d been certain he was about to die. Why had it stopped? Why wasn’t it coming closer? And what was it trying to say?
A thought flickered across his mind. The boy found his courage.
“…Sister?”
“…….”
“Sister? Really? Is it actually you?”
“…Please… get… up….”
“…Hurry… up…?”
Eyes still fixed on the figure, Lee Seong-jin carefully rose to his feet.
“Help… me… out….”
“Me? Find? A Coin? You mean a Coin? Don’t worry. I’m looking hard for it! I’ll definitely save you just like I saved your sister….”
The creature’s face trembled with effort, as if denying something.
“Guh… help… please….”
It lurched forward. The arm it had barely managed to raise stretched toward the door.
“Don’t… go… Lee….”
Though its words were difficult to understand, the boy suddenly grasped their meaning: get out of here before someone arrives.
“You’re her, aren’t you? You’re my sister, right?”
“…….”
“I swear I’ll save you! So please….”
“…I’m… sorry….”
At the tremor in Lee Seong-jin’s voice, its shoulders shook violently. Crimson liquid gleamed in its hollow eyes.
“Why… why… why did this happen…?”
That was when it happened.
Aaahhhhh!
A scream tore through the corridor from outside, the sound ricocheting off the walls.

“Mom!”
Shin Sang-ah jumped to her feet. Lee Seol-ah and Hyeon Sang-min exchanged uncertain glances.
“…Did you hear that?”
Lee Seol-ah nodded.
“Damn it, they should’ve searched properly and come back…!”
“Where did it come from?”
“Don’t know. Sounded like the 5th Floor, I think….”
Hyeon Sang-min removed his hat and scratched his head. Lee Seol-ah carefully opened the door.
The dark corridor was unsettling. Now that they’d emerged, the sudden nature of everything felt uncertain and overwhelming. She activated the Nine Eyes.
Everything in her vision flooded with green. Lee Seol-ah made a quick judgment that they were on the 5th Floor.
As the three of them climbed the stairs and reached the 5th Floor, they collided with a boy running down the corridor. Lee Seong-jin’s eyes widened the moment he saw Lee Seol-ah.
“Lee Seong-jin?”
“Hey! There you are!”
Lee Seong-jin grabbed Lee Seol-ah.
“I saw her! I saw my sister!”
“Your sister?”
That was impossible. Lee Seol-ah was dead. Hadn’t she been the first one killed in the Main Hall?
Lee Seol-ah studied the boy carefully. He didn’t appear to have lost his mind.
Noticing her scrutiny, Lee Seong-jin shook his head frantically.
“No, it really was her! Her hair, her skirt…!”
His words bordered on incoherence, but Lee Seol-ah paused to think. A terrible suspicion crossed her mind.
“Are you absolutely certain it was Lee Seol-ah?”
“Yes! She looked… strange somehow, but she told me to get out quick…!”
Damn it. Lee Seol-ah barely swallowed the curse.
‘The Dead—they refer to people who died before us.’
If what Lee Seong-jin said was true, there was no other way to interpret it.

[The lock on the 6th Floor door has been disengaged.]
[A Gate will manifest in 30 minutes.]
[The iron bars on the 2nd Floor have been disengaged.]

In that instant, her phone buzzed with a barrage of notifications.
“What the—?”
Hyeon Sang-min stared in shock at the sudden alerts.
“What the hell kind of sick joke is this?”
“What’s happening?”
Shin Sang-ah asked, but Lee Seol-ah had no answer. Something about it felt wrong though. She had a feeling this wouldn’t end so neatly.
‘It’s fine.’
Though the situation had suddenly become chaotic, Lee Seol-ah steadied her breathing. Panicking would only compound the confusion. Wasn’t this precisely what they’d prepared for?
She set aside the mounting questions for now. There was something that needed to be confirmed first, even though part of her hoped it wasn’t true.
“Was it Lee Seong-jin who screamed?”
“Huh? No. Now that you mention it, I came out after hearing it too….”
“It… it sounded like a woman’s voice.”
Shin Sang-ah spoke with mounting urgency.
“So it’s not them either. What do we do?”
Hyeon Sang-min ground his teeth.
“If we’re going to search, let’s split up. Otherwise, we head back as is.”
Even if they found one of the two people weighing on his mind, returning to the Base wasn’t looking like a bad option.
“What if we search in groups of two or three? It might be dangerous to go alone.”
Just as she was about to agree, Lee Seong-jin offered his opinion. When Lee Seol-ah stared at him directly, the boy’s expression grew awkward.
“Ah… I’ll help search too.”
“It might be dangerous after midnight. And the 6th Floor door has opened. It would be safer to return to the Base.”
“No. It sounded like… like you were asking me to find something.”
Even as he spoke, his voice wavered with uncertainty.
‘Find something?’
Lee Seol-ah’s eyes flashed. Her vision flooded with green—then one patch of color vanished. A space that took on no hue whatsoever. The Women’s Restroom.
The lights were off. Confirming the drops of blood before the door, she pushed it open gently. Her nose had grown accustomed enough to react to the faint metallic smell.
She stepped inside and switched on the light, and at last the scene revealed itself.
“Yoon Seora?”
The woman sprawled across the restroom floor was Yoon Seora. Her crouched body trembled violently.
As she drew closer to confirm, Lee Seol-ah’s brow furrowed. Hyeon Sang-min let out a sharp, pained breath.
“Christ… what happened to her arm?”
He was right. Yoon Seora’s right forearm was severely damaged. It looked as though it had been stabbed with a blade and then torn, the flesh hanging in ragged strips. Bone was visible beneath, and the bleeding was substantial.
“Yoon Seora! Yoon Seora!”
Lee Seol-ah called out, but Yoon Seora only shuddered, unable to open her mouth.
“Move!”
Shin Sang-ah hurried over and knelt, pulling off her Shirt. With a tearing sound, she wound the torn fabric tightly around Yoon Seora’s shoulder and armpit, binding it with force. Her movements were swift—practiced, even. She then pried open the woman’s eyes, saw the whites rolled back, and narrowed her brow.
“She’s in shock. If we leave her like this, she could die any moment.”
“D-die?”
“Yes! Anything—anything helps!”
Shin Sang-ah clenched and unclenched her fists as she spoke, her voice urgent. Hyeon Sang-min, by contrast, remained cold.
“If you’ve done a Treasure Hunt, you’d know—we didn’t find a medical room on the 4th or 5th floors.”
“The Gacha.”
Lee Seol-ah spoke. All three turned to look at her. Now that she mentioned it, Medical Supplies were on the Gacha list.
“What should we pull for?”
The moment the question left her lips, Lee Seol-ah realized it was the wrong thing to ask. There was no way to know what would come out anyway.
“I’ll bring whatever comes up.”
Lee Seol-ah shouldered her bag and turned to leave.
“You’re going alone?”
“Why?”
“No. Do this instead. You two—the student and the girl—get Yoon Seora to the Base. And you spin the Gacha, while I take whatever comes out and bring it there. If needed, I’ll go back and forth.”
Recognizing the logic despite the urgency, Lee Seol-ah nodded—and felt a flicker of surprise. The bars on the 2nd Floor had been released, so Malevolent Ghosts were surely climbing up. Yet he was keeping his word regardless.
“Let’s go. Hurry!”
Hyeon Sang-min pushed at Lee Seol-ah’s back.

Leaving Yoon Seora to the others, Lee Seol-ah and Hyeon Sang-min headed straight for the Library. Mercifully, neither the Dead nor any living soul appeared.
Medical Supplies were slow to come. Mostly Food and Necessities emerged, with the occasional Guide’s note. What she managed to gather was paltry—Gauze, Disinfectant, Ointment, and the like. Nothing particularly impressive.
“I’ll take this for now. What about you?”
“You go first.”
“Got it. Don’t overdo it. Oh, I’ll be right back after I deliver the Medicine. If I’m not back in two minutes, you’ll know something happened to me.”
“I’ll save you.”
“No! I mean, thanks, but I’m serious. This isn’t a joke.”
Hyeon Sang-min spoke with genuine gravity, then vanished from the Library like a gust of wind.
Lee Seol-ah continued pulling from the Gacha. Even if a Malevolent Ghost appeared, she was confident she could handle it—and besides, she wanted to secure as much useful Medicine as possible. If Yoon Seora died, that would be the end of it.
In that moment, her hands, which had not ceased moving, suddenly stilled.
‘Why am I…?’
She was a complete stranger, after all. What did it matter if she lived or died? Of course it was unfortunate, but did she have to go this far? Spending Coins like this?
She couldn’t find solid ground. It would be nice if Future Premonition would activate now. Even as she mocked herself, she pulled the Gacha again.
And by the time she had secured Pressure Bandages, Hemostatic Agents, and even Morphine in addition,
Lee Seol-ah felt a sudden unease. Far more time seemed to have passed, yet Hyeon Sang-min had not returned.
…….
She had thought he was joking, but anxiety crept in nonetheless. She’d already pulled what she needed anyway. She threw the items haphazardly into her bag and left the Library.
The moment she descended to the 4th Floor corridor, Lee Seol-ah found herself facing an unexpected sight.

(To be continued in the next chapter)

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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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