Free Web Novel"It was an unavoidable choice."
"I don’t think it was···."
"Shh! Now isn’t the time to argue over what was right or wrong. We can’t let Gahyeon’s sacrifice go to waste."
Ryu Ayeon practically clamped a hand over Im Yunkyung’s mouth and said only what she wanted to say.
This was the first time Ryujin had learned that excitement and Ryu Ayeon could exist in the same place.
Because of the ladder-splitting incident that was obviously staged by the content team, the Iam members had no choice but to leave Lee Gahyeon behind.
Right now, after crawling a little farther through the air vent passage, they were taking a short break in the second area they had reached.
This place had also been decorated like a laboratory, but if there was one difference, it was that maybe because it was meant to be a resting stage, drinks and snacks had been prepared in exactly enough quantity for all the members.
Thanks to that, they were finally able to catch their breath a little, eating and drinking what had been prepared for them as they rested.
"Let’s organize what we know. What we’ve figured out is that this lab is connected to zombies, right?"
"That’s right!"
Once they had rested a bit, Ryujin gathered everyone again and started a discussion so they could reassess the situation.
"What I think is, the goal is probably to figure out the clue like we did in the first place and escape the laboratory."
"And while we’re doing that, those zombies we saw earlier will jump out and get in our way."
Like Yunkyung said, this Iam Laboratory the content team had prepared had a lot in common with the escape room cafés that had been popular lately. ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom
You explored the area in a limited space, found clues, and escaped based on them.
Even if the scale was nothing like a normal escape room café, the structure itself was basically the same.
"Then does that mean we have to find something here too?"
"Probably."
Ryujin answered Yuri’s question without hesitation.
If they failed to find it in time, then just like before, it was obvious zombies would come crashing {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} into this room too.
At Ryujin’s words, the other members must have grasped the situation without needing any extra explanation, because they quickly scattered and started searching all over the room.
But unlike the first room, no matter how much they looked around, there didn’t seem to be any clue in the second room.
"Break it."
"Okay!"
Ryu Ayeon and Lee Sion, who for some reason had been working suspiciously well together ever since earlier, even tried smashing the props decorating the room to look for clues, but unfortunately all they managed to do was destroy things. No clue appeared.
"Wait! Doesn’t that clock look suspicious?"
"What?"
Just as the destruction being carried out under the name of searching was about to begin again, Yunkyung’s voice made everyone stop.
"What about the clock?"
"Look at that! The calendar here says 2014, but that clock says 2013. And all the other clocks are showing 1:50, but only that one is displaying a different time."
Yunkyung calmly explained the strange thing she had noticed.
And when they checked after hearing that, sure enough, one digital clock alone was displaying a different year and time.
"Nice job, Yunkyung!"
"Let’s match the time, quick."
Things had been starting to feel hopeless, but the moment Yunkyung found a clue, the Iam members moved in perfect sync and started adjusting the one clock that was showing a different time.
Finally, after clicking the buttons on the digital clock and matching it to the time shown on the other clocks,
Sliiide.
Amazingly, one side of the room split open left and right, revealing a new passage.
"Here it is!"
"But something’s weird."
"The entrance is too narrow!"
But the newly appeared entrance was such a narrow passage that it would be hard even for one person to get through, making escape difficult.
"There’s a button next to it! Let’s press it."
Thinking there had to be something more, Ryujin looked around and spotted a red button a short distance from the entrance, then shouted.
Thunk.
The moment someone ran over and pressed it, the passage widened with a noise until it was broad enough for a person to pass through.
Thunk.
And the moment that hand came off the button again, they saw the entrance shrink back down quickly.
"You can only get out if someone keeps holding this button down!"
Just when it looked like they had found the clue and might be able to escape, now it turned out that unless someone stayed behind and held the button, nobody could get out.
'So one person has to be sacrificed?'
It seemed the content team wanted to watch the members choose a sacrifice among themselves.
The members shuddered for a moment at that sheer malice, and then a chilly tension spread among them.
The others all seemed to realize too that someone would have to be sacrificed in this situation, because they were all quietly watching one another.
'I'll do it.'
As the leader, Ryujin decided it was right for the others to escape while she held the button down.
But—
"Get over here!"
"Aaah!! Why are you tying up Yuri?!"
"It pains me to do this, Yuri. But you’ll have to be the one to sacrifice yourself."
As if Sion couldn’t even stand that brief instant while Ryujin was making up her mind, she rushed Yuri in a flash, grabbed her, and started wrapping the rope they had found in the vent around Yuri over and over.
"Why Yuri?!"
"Because Yunkyung and Seo Ryujin are good at this kind of escape-room stuff."
"What?"
"And Shinyu’s loyal, so she’ll still be a huge help later."
"That’s slander! Yuri can do a good job too! And why are Sion-chan and Ayeon-chan conveniently leaving themselves out?!"
At Yuri’s desperate cry, Ryujin couldn’t help nodding unconsciously.
To be honest, if she were speaking from the heart, she wanted to tie up Lee Sion and Ryu Ayeon instead.
"I want to sacrifice myself for everyone too, but··· if it isn’t me, nobody’s going to break through this zombie world setting. And we can’t do without Lee Sion’s combat power either."
"What?"
"Hold the button down for everyone. We won’t forget your sacrifice."
But Ryujin couldn’t bring herself to say any of that out loud.
Looking at the madness in Ryu Ayeon and Lee Sion’s eyes, she instinctively realized that if she carelessly voiced a different opinion right now, Yuri—who had practically become one with the pillar by the button—could be replaced with her instead.
***
"Everyone, let’s never forget Yunkyung’s sacrifice."
"Second Lieutenant Im··· no, Captain Im now. If you die in the line of duty, it’s a one-rank posthumous promotion."
Through the mic-connected speaker came the resolute voices of Ryu Ayeon and Lee Sion.
Listening to that in real time, Hakyoon felt so dumbfounded he was about to collapse.
'Sacrifice?'
No matter how generously you looked at it, Im Yunkyung’s end could only be described as being offered up as a tribute.
And thanks to that sacrifice-that-wasn’t-really-a-sacrifice, the Iam members had somehow already escaped from the fourth room.
'Who would’ve thought Ayeon would do something like this?!'
Since this content, Iam Laboratory, relied more on logically reasoning through the clues in each room than on physical force, Hakyoon had thought Lee Sion wouldn’t have much room to shine.
But—
-Subdue Lee Sion!
-Okay!
Once Lee Sion, who handled the brute force, teamed up with a pointlessly ruthless Ryu Ayeon, the two of them became a second-rate duo that destroyed the content like an outright disaster.
'Of all things, zombies.'
Ayeon had always just taken things seriously and had never shown any particular interest in a specific kind of content, so Hakyoon’s mistake had been failing to predict that she would get obsessed with zombie content of all things.
Lee Gahyeon, who had been mercilessly dropped in the first room.
Kurosawa Yuri, who had been tied up to hold the button.
And even after that, Ryu Ayeon and Lee Sion kept using the members one by one to get through the rooms.
-Let’s go with the crocodile bait strategy.
-Crocodile bait?
-You throw out a lure and keep the main force alive.
-That’s the first thing you’ve said in a while that I actually like, Ryu Ayeon.
-You’re not bad yourself. If the two of us join forces, we can pull this off.
Hakyoon had no idea how they had come up with a strategy with such a hideous name in the first place, but—
"Now there are only three of us left···."
Seo Ryujin, staring at everything on the monitor with an expression like she had given up on it all, was perfectly voicing Hakyoon’s feelings for him. ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com
"Team leader···."
"Why··· why are they escaping like this?!"
In Lee Gahyeon’s case, since she had been too flustered to notice the rope, maybe that could be written off.
But starting from the second room, there had been a way for everyone to survive.
However,
-What’s this long rod?
Crack.
In the second room, Lee Sion smashed the device meant to keep the button pressed, and then in the third room—the one with the vaccine that was supposed to be the core of the content—the Sion-Ayeon duo solved it by using Geum Shinyu as a tribute.
-So among these four holes, one has the vaccine and one has the zombie virus hidden in it, right?
-According to the clue we found, yes. But I think we’ll only know if we put our hands in and feel around.
-There are four holes, so each of us takes one···.
-No.
-What?
At Seo Ryujin’s suggestion, which sounded perfectly reasonable to anyone, Lee Sion shook her head as if that absolutely wasn’t it, while Ryu Ayeon clapped as if she had instantly understood what Sion meant.
-One person sacrifices herself and tries twice with both hands. That solves it cleanly, right?
-Ryu Ayeon, you got it right away?
-Of course. This much is basic.
-···.
When Lee Sion finished speaking and stared steadily at her, Geum Shinyu finally squeezed her eyes shut and stuck both hands into the holes.
After that, the villains took the vaccine that Geum Shinyu, now infected with the zombie virus, had obtained, tied her up, and escaped to the next room.
-Shinyu!!! Did you come to save me?!
-No! I got sent here as crocodile bait too!
Every time another piece of crocodile bait got added to the prison one by one, Hakyoon couldn’t help putting a hand to his forehead.
'What am I supposed to replace that hideous phrase crocodile bait with?'
Then in the fourth room, to get the escape key placed inside the iron cage containing a zombie, they threw Im Yunkyung in as crocodile bait, snatched the key in a flash, and ran, arriving at the fifth and final room.
Much faster than the time the content team had checked during rehearsal.
Of course, that incredible speed was only possible because they had completely ignored every last bit of the Iam Laboratory setting Hakyoon and his team had worked so hard to prepare.
"The ten pages of setting and clues I stayed up all night writing are all going down the drain···."
Because of that, the writer who had suffered day and night putting the setting together was secretly wiping away tears.
And that wasn’t all.
"We rented this set, so we have to restore all that."
"I’m going insane! We told them to find the clues, so why are they smashing everything first?!"
"Looks like we’ll be pulling overtime even after this is over···."
Hakyoon could hear the desperate cries of the team members in charge of props and the outside staff ringing in his ears.
Those villains had driven not only him but the entire team into despair. Now he had no choice but to place his faith in the hidden trump card.
'Lee Gahyeon, show them your resentment.'
The first crocodile bait betrayed by her younger members and corrupted into a zombie··· no, the first sacrifice, Lee Gahyeon.
It was time for the Zombie Queen to enter the field.
***
"This feels like the last room."
At my words, Ryu Ayeon nodded like she agreed.
The lab escape key we had gotten through Yunkyung’s sacred sacrifice, and the passage leading to the fifth room.
Unlike the rooms up to now, the fifth room just had three open corridors, so anyone could tell at a glance that this was the final stage.
The final room.
Only three of us had survived—me, Ryu Ayeon, and Seo Ryujin—but this was still more than enough to call an achievement accomplished by all of Iam working together.
"These corridors are pretty long."
"One of the three is probably the exit, but I don’t think we’ll know until we go there and open it."
Unlike the other rooms, there were no complicated clues here. It was an intuitive setup—go at it physically and figure out which of the three had the exit—so the three of us stuck tightly together and headed for the first corridor first.
The corridor was long enough that we had to walk for about a minute, and when we finally reached the end, there was a firmly locked door.
Click.
The moment I stuck in the key and turned it,
"Shit! It’s a dud!"
A zombie jumped out.
"Go first!"
And Ryu Ayeon immediately threw her back against the door the zombie was trying to burst through without a moment’s hesitation.
"Ryu Ayeon!"
"Move, you idiots! While I’m holding this, go check the other corridor!"
The same Ryu Ayeon who had taken the lead in sacrificing everyone else until now seemed to have decided that this time she would become the crocodile bait herself, and she held the door shut with all her strength.
"···Let’s go."
Nod.
Because I understood her sacrifice, I urged Seo Ryujin on, since she had gone blank and frozen in place. She seemed to come back to herself, nodded, and ran with me back down the corridor.
"Which one do we take?"
"It doesn’t matter! The odds are fifty-fifty now anyway!"
There wasn’t even time to think about which of the two remaining corridors to choose.
From far away, Ryu Ayeon already looked like she was struggling just to hold back the zombie trying to push that door open.
Unlike when we headed through the first corridor, Ryujin and I sprinted in a frenzy toward the second one.
Click.
"It’s another dud!"
"What do we do?!"
"Shit!"
But as if the heavens were mocking us, what waited behind the second corridor’s door wasn’t the exit either. It was another horde of zombies.
"Uuugh!"
An arm in zombie makeup pushed through the crack in the door and flailed as it tried to grab us, and I had no choice but to make a decision.
"Go, Sluggish Ryujin!"
"What?"
"You can’t hold this back anyway! Run while I block it!"
Apparently this zombie laboratory was badly behind the times, because it was packed with nothing but male zombies.
And honestly, stopping male zombies from bursting out like this wasn’t possible for anyone in Iam except someone with a body like mine or Ryu Ayeon’s.
So just like Ryu Ayeon had done, I braced my back against the door and told Seo Ryujin to run for the last remaining corridor.
She hesitated at first, but then nodded and took off again toward the final corridor.
'Seo Ryujin may be a little lacking in strength, but when it comes to responsibility, she has plenty of it.'
If I had to pick the member in our group with the strongest sense of responsibility after me, that would absolutely be Seo Ryujin.
We had to keep using our bodies throughout today’s shoot, so running all the way to that final corridor again was no easy feat.
If it had been any of the others with weaker stamina, they might have gotten exhausted halfway and given up.
But Seo Ryujin was different.
If you gave her a mission, she was the type who would keep running even if she collapsed from exhaustion.
That was why I chose to trust Seo Ryujin and hold the entrance shut, and living up to that trust, she gritted her teeth and ran toward the last remaining corridor with every ounce of strength she had.
"Sorry! Mine broke through!"
And at that same moment came the bad news from the corridor Ryu Ayeon had been blocking.
Apparently the one she was holding back had broken through first.
I still had some room on my side, but that didn’t mean much anymore.
I could already see zombies pouring out from the first corridor Ryu Ayeon had been blocking and heading toward the final corridor Seo Ryujin was running down.
"Uuugh! I am the Zombie Queen, reborn through vengeance!"
"Gahyeon?!"
Seo Ryujin had still managed to make it about halfway down the last corridor thanks to getting a head start.
But then a familiar zombie suddenly jumped out from the side in front of her.
"Gahyeon, what are you doing right now?!"
"Uuugh··· I’m not Lee Gahyeon, I’m the Zombie Queen···."
"Get out of the way already!"
"Stop cutting me off! I have lines too!"
I could see Seo Ryujin floundering, blocked in front and behind by the zombies that had now rushed to the entrance of the final corridor, and by Lee Gahyeon, who had reappeared in the middle as a zombie.
At this rate, she was going to get caught for sure.
"If you don’t escape, Seo Ryujin, then the sacrifices of all us crocodile bait will have been for nothing!"
I shouted with all my strength.
Now wasn’t the time to hesitate.
No matter that she was the same group member, and even the oldest member, Lee Gahyeon still had to be broken through.
Maybe Ryujin understood what I meant, because she fixed Lee Gahyeon with a grim stare.
"Uuugh··· ugh!!! Wait! Ryujin!"
"I’m sorry, unni!"
As if she had finally steeled herself, Seo Ryujin grabbed Zombie Queen Lee Gahyeon by the arm and started spinning in circles, then hurled her straight at the zombies chasing from behind before running for the door.
"Aaagh!"
Lee Gahyeon, caught in Seo Ryujin’s modified giant swing, flew like a bowling ball and became one with the zombies, and screams rang out.
Then I saw Seo Ryujin use that opening to reach the very end of the corridor, unlock the door with the key, and go through, and only then did I finally let a satisfied smile spread across my face.
My··· no, Iam’s victory.
