GSGW c212

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Chapter 212

A familiar name.

Something I knew.

It felt like something inside me was rising up again…

But I did not react.

“Mr. Employee?”

Because I knew it would not be wise to show it.

……

“Why?”

Suddenly, a strange sensation began inside my head.

It felt like forcibly hauling up an anchor that had been thrown into the deep sea.

With my previous senses gone, my crushed brain and mind struggled to think the way they once had.

'Jang Heoun…'

Dead.

The image of the corpse lying on the floor of the resort room.

But… right. As a resort employee, I had reconstructed him in a contaminated state and brought Jang Heoun out.

And I…

'I gave him the wish voucher.'

If the wish voucher I gave to Jang Heoun had truly been delivered successfully—if that meant he had come back to life…

If what I saw was him living again as a human being.

'......'

My broken mind reached a conclusion.

Very slowly, I realized that what I was feeling was relief.

The direct emotion—something I hadn’t felt in far too long—almost felt like a dull ache.

“Did hearing those names evoke anything? Lee Jeongin, Park Yonghae… and Jang Heoun.”

And my mind also slowly connected another thought: 

Telling any of this to the infamous researcher standing in front of me would not be a wise decision.

“So? What do you think?”

I stared at him silently.

Kwak Jaekwang, who had looked full of expectation, smacked his lips when the silence dragged on.

“Another ‘no response,’ huh. As expected, the memories of the sacrifice used as the medium seem to be… haha, my apologies. But as a man of science, I simply had to ask. Hahaha!”

Kwak Jaekwang chuckled awkwardly, then began muttering to himself as if entranced.

“Still, that was quite a spectacle today, Mr. Employee. For the past half year you’ve been completely unresponsive—like a machine….”

……

Half a year?

“They say if you’ve worked somewhere six months, you need an event like this once in a while to keep the urge to quit away. Don’t you think?”

I realized something.

Only half a year had passed since I’d been thrown into this Basement Level 13.

Or… had it already been half a year?

“Wow, it must’ve been fun for you. Anyone could tell those three-person teams were newbies… and you helped them explore the annex basement floors!”

Kwak Jaekwang asked gently but persistently.

“Didn’t you feel any sense of déjà vu? Seeing that situation—did it bring back any similar knowledge or experience about what that kind of work is?”

Silence.

“Didn’t you feel any sympathy?”

Silence.

“Wow, you’re quite the quiet one. But then… why did you help them?”

……

“Your assigned work area is Basement Level 13, after all. Well, I understand you used a loophole by never actually leaving the elevator, but…”

Kwak Jaekwang’s eyes gleamed with excitement.

“What could possibly be the reason you went that far to help them!”

……

“Perhaps you simply felt like it? Because of some sense of obligation to save people?”

……

“Haha, silence is a meaningful response too. Is it confusion? I wonder whether we’d get a similar result if we adjusted the variables just a tiny bit—hmm?”

I raised my hand and pointed to Room 666.

More precisely, to the old television in the corner of the ceiling.

The place where the employee training video had played.

“…Oh.”

Then I formed a sentence with the smoke.

Work Rule 17: Cooperate with fellow employees.

A line from the training video.

I even recreated the exact font, so Kwak Jaekwang recognized it immediately.

“Ahh, I see!”

The researcher hurriedly scribbled something on his tablet.

“So it was because of the training video. That’s quite… haha, how should I put it? Gentle? Generous? Or perhaps it shows that discipline and order are important keywords! I see. For a Special Department employee… haha, understood.”

His pen stopped, and he spoke in a subtle voice.

“But you really didn’t have to go to all that trouble. The participants you helped…”

He raised both hands and wiggled them like it was a surprise reveal.

“They weren’t fellow employees. Hahaha!”

……

I know.

“They weren’t new hires—just test subjects!”

From the beginning, this wasn’t even an orientation for the Field Exploration Team.

It was a research project inspired by that format.

Experiment Name: New Employee Orientation

They weren’t real new employees.

More precisely, they were people who had applied for the company but failed the hiring process for various reasons.

But they were tricked into thinking they had passed. They were sent emails as if they had been accepted into the departments they applied to.

The reason…

“Well, you could say they’re like part-time workers recruited for experimental sampling!”

To supplement civilian exploration records.

The project was designed to gather meaningful data in areas where examples of exploration by ordinary civilians—with no prior knowledge—were lacking.

Among the rejected applicants, those whose aptitudes matched were selected and placed into a simulation structured similarly to the orientation given to real new hires.

The company couldn’t casually release the “darknesses” it possessed to the public.

So exploration records were usually gathered by the professional Field Exploration Team.

There was also the orientation where relatively civilian-like new employees were sent into the darkness—but the darknesses used there were carefully selected so that their abilities could be verified.

So one researcher came up with a clever idea.

—Let’s recycle the applicants!

They wouldn’t even need to recruit experimental subjects separately while avoiding the eyes of public authorities. It was the perfect timing to secure participants.

Of course, it wasn’t purely a scam.

There was a kind of compensation.

Applicants who successfully completed the mission in this experiment would be specially recruited into the Field Exploration Team and allowed to officially join the company.

Thus, the company’s official justification was this:

'Let’s create additional successful candidates and give them the opportunity to join the company.'

Therefore…

“Well, you might meet them again later as fellow employees…”

Anyone who completed the “mission" in this experiment and survived would receive an employment opportunity. In that sense, it really did become something like an orientation.

And I know something.

Jang Heoun passed.

……

But was it really Jang Heoun?

“Hmm. Would you like to meet them again?”

I tried to recall the faces of the three recruits I saw earlier.

I couldn’t remember. Their faces had looked like melting mosaics.

“Do you have any preferences for colleagues? Age group? Gender?”

I couldn’t remember their voices either. They had sounded like a low-quality radio transmission.

“Do you have a preferred corpse?”

I turned toward Kwak Jaekwang.

“No preferences? Not even one? Really?”

……

I raised my hand.

When the smoke began to move, Kwak Jaekwang’s face lit up.

“That’s it! Communicating through language like that—”

Warning 1

Reason: Requesting work outside of working hours

Accumulated Warnings: 1 / 2 warnings until disciplinary action

“…Ah.”

In Room 666, an announcement began to echo inside my head.

The sound informing me that my shift had ended.

—Your working hours have ended. Return immediately. Your working hours have ended. Return immediately…

“Well, this interview is less of a task and more of a light—”

Warning 2

Reason: Requesting work outside of working hours

“….”

Accumulated Warnings: 2 / 1 warning until disciplinary action

Smoke began rising from beneath my feet.

Kwak Jaekwang closed his mouth. I could see the tense muscles in the shoulders of the Security Team members standing nearby.

I couldn’t see it directly, but I could feel the containment barrier set up between me and Kwak Jaekwang to ensure safety…

But I also knew something else. Here, on Basement Level 13, my assigned security zone—I could ignore that barrier and discipline that researcher if I wanted to.

“...Haha! Of course. You mean contractually guaranteed rest time must be respected! I agree completely. Absolutely.”

Through the dripping mosaic of his face, Kwak Jaekwang seemed to smile.

It was the instinct of an experienced Darkness researcher.

Knowing when to stop.

“Please enjoy your rest. …There’s plenty of time.”

But his voice didn’t sound particularly disappointed.

Standing among the Security Team, Kwak Jaekwang gave a cheerful wave and gathered up the handwritten interview notes.

“I’m your assigned researcher, after all.”

……

“I’ll do my best to assist you from now on. For a long, long time… I look forward to working with you. Haha… at your new post as well.”

Some time later,

I opened my eyes somewhere other than Annex Basement Level 13.

At a new workplace.

***

Kwak Jaekwang typed away on the keyboard, excitement rising all the way to the top of his head.

Recording experimental results was always enjoyable.

Especially when unusual results had emerged from interactions involving so many test subjects!

“Hahaha… Who on earth managed to sign a contract with something like that…?”

Kwak Jaekwang stared at the PC with smiling eyes.

Displayed on the screen was a neatly transcribed version of his handwritten notes—a simplified experiment record.

New Employee Orientation – Attempt 21

A list of cases describing interactions between the orientation participants and the security personnel of each basement floor in the annex, including the “Special Department employees.”

And by far the longest section:

2.2.1 Basement Level 13 Security Officer (hereafter referred to as 130666)

“To think I’d get to meet it like this.”

When Director Cheong first told him he’d be assigned a “special task,” he had secretly hoped something like this might happen.

But for it to actually occur!

Kwak Jaekwang recalled the employee who had interrogated him—the strange figure with horns, a gas lamp, and thick smoke.

That bizarre being summoned using the body of the fastest-promoted member of the Field Exploration Team as a vessel.

Of course, compared to then, the entity he met again this time seemed more mechanical… more restrained.

But wasn’t that in itself is fascinating!

'Was it some kind of side effect?'

It was incredibly interesting.

Even more so when analyzing the tendencies displayed in this experiment.

Grinning uncontrollably, he looked at the note he had attached.

Note: The entity strictly followed work regulations during its 179 days of service as the security officer of Basement Level 13. Unlike typical Special Department entities, it showed no uncooperative or aggressive special cases.

However, in this experiment it located a loophole in the rules and boarded an elevator stopping within its security zone. While accompanying the test subjects entering the zone, it showed a tendency to assist the survival of multiple test subjects.**

That was the interesting part.

**Additional Note: This tendency resembles the dream-collecting inclinations of the employee corpse used during the contract process for 130666.

자아의 간접적 영향력으로 의심하여 차후 추가 실험을 요청할 예정.

Suspected indirect influence of the original self. Additional experiments requested.

“Yeah… this’ll be censored for sure.”

Anything labeled as the researcher’s personal opinion would likely be removed. Or the entire passage would be deleted.

After all, it wasn’t surprising that an employee had been sacrificed entirely as an offering to form a contract with a Special Department Security employee. The real issue was who it was.

“They wouldn’t want to reveal that it was the fastest-promoted elite employee.”

No one would want to specify that.

Especially if some crazy researcher had guessed it without even being told.

Kwak Jaekwang shrugged as he remembered that employee he had found fascinating—Kim Soleum—and began typing faster.

Because the next part was even more interesting.

130666’s Anomalous Aggression

: If covered by the entity’s smoke (hereafter designated 130666-1), humanoid Darknesses transform into corpses.

No life signs detected. Blood and cell sample analysis confirms them as human corpses in the early stages of decay.

CCTV analysis of the elevator during ability usage occasionally shows the entire elevator covered by 130666, resembling a kind of spiritual phenomenon.

He hummed as he remembered the security officers of the annex basement who had turned into corpses.

They were slowly recovering back into Darknesses, but as if suffering aftereffects, they remained in confused and bizarre mutated states.

Security Team members who even approached them sometimes displayed strange contamination reactions.

Kwak Jaekwang grinned.

“They’re really interesting subjects.”

…Which naturally led to an interesting thought.

Other than that, no additional dangerous traits observed. 130666 regains a humanlike form before exiting the elevator.

Therefore—

The entity is officially recognized as suitable for full Special Department duty.

“Hahaha!”

However—

To prevent emergencies and fatal accidents, a dedicated supervisory team will be assigned.

Kwak Jaekwang felt thrilled.

This had already been approved by upper management.

And he had personally selected the members.

Safety Supervisor: Security Management Guard Team 3 Leader (J3, real name ■■■)

Control Assistant: Security Management Special Control Team Member (Codename: Badger, real name Park Minseong)

And so—

“…Ah.”

130666, at his newly reassigned workplace, would soon meet the two Security Team employees.

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