Chapter 5

210th attempt.

The room was spacious with many hiding places.

While repeating this deadly game of hide and seek, thinking that if he kept trying, he might avoid being caught at least once, Yuseong realized that hiding wasn’t the answer either.

“Intelligence isn’t the issue. That thing is certain I’m in this room.”

At first, he thought he was discovered because he hid in too obvious places, but after experiencing repeated deaths, he realized something was wrong.

Despite using methods beyond common sense like hiding in inconceivable clever spots or sticking to the ceiling using Thorny Vine, the monster wouldn’t leave, instead thoroughly searching the room until it finally found him and took his life.

-Could that monster also be returning to the past like us?

“No. Its reactions are too perfectly consistent under the same conditions for that to be the case.”

-Th-then what do we do? If we can’t fight and we can’t hide, aren’t we out of options?

“Not quite.”

If being trapped in a cage is the problem, then getting out is the solution.

Looking around the room, Yuseong squeezed himself behind a large statue near the door.

You could call it exploiting a psychological blind spot – a place that seems like you’d be found right away but unexpectedly remains undetected for a long time.

Shortly after, as the door broke and the monster entered the room, Yuseong carefully moved outside without making a sound, not looking back even once.

-Y-you’re brave. I’d be too scared to move an inch.

‘After dying over 200 times, this much is nothing.’

The pain never felt before in his life and the fear of death might be overwhelming once or twice, but after experiencing it hundreds of times, you stop feeling much of anything.

‘Judging by the room’s size and decorations, this clearly isn’t an ordinary mansion. More like a small castle?’

Endless corridors and numerous tightly closed doors.

Just in case, he tried a nearby doorknob, but it didn’t budge at all.

While walking forward with the priority of getting away from the room, Yuseong had to stop when he spotted a large portrait hanging on one side of the corridor.

“Huh?”

-Oh?

A woman exuding such a mysterious aura that it was clearly noticeable even in the painting.

The issue was the woman’s appearance.

“She kind of looks like you? Like exactly how you might look when you grow up?”

-R-really?

“Could she be your mother?”

-That’s impossible. I’m an orphan. From my earliest memories to my most recent ones, I’ve never seen anyone who looks like me, let alone family.

“Then what is this?”

-I don’t know. I was living alone in the forest trying to avoid people’s attention, and when I came to my senses, I was in that room.

“Even if you don’t know who this woman in the painting is, it seems clear she’s connected to you somehow? You say you don’t know, but there must be a clear reason why you ended up in this situation…”

Drip!

A cold sensation on the crown of his head.

Reflexively looking up, Yuseong froze in place.

A strange creature resembling a sea anemone was wriggling its tentacles while stuck to the ceiling.

When the mucus dripping from its tentacles hit his forehead, he threw himself forward with all his might as his instincts commanded, but tentacles grabbed his ankle as if they’d been waiting, causing him to fall.

“Oh shit! This is too much! The genre is…, urgh?!”

If there was anything fortunate about this situation.

Unlike his unsavory imagination, the tentacles were very gentlemanly.

While mentally thanking the tentacles that merely blocked his mouth and nose and strangled his neck to prevent breathing, Yuseong quietly accepted his 210th death.

————————

He thought it would be better to get outside first rather than repeating hopeless fights with the monster.

But that was a miscalculation.

-…Are you alright?

“……”

He hadn’t lost hope when the first escape attempt failed.

From the moment an unreasonable monster that couldn’t be reasoned with came charging to kill him, he naturally expected the outside wouldn’t be safe either.

But the mansion was vast and opportunities were infinite.

He thought if he tried dozens or hundreds of times, he’d surely find an escape route.

…Until just now, that is.

“What attempt is this?”

-556th.

“You sure?”

-I have a good memory, you know.

The outside was filled with beings even more frightening and dangerous than the monster.

Tentacles that clung to the ceiling and launched surprise attacks, suits of armor that suddenly swung weapons when he thought they were decorations, zombies that pursued relentlessly despite being slow, and chimeras made by stitching together body parts from various creatures.

After experiencing hundreds of deaths in various ways, Yuseong was convinced it was impossible to escape this mansion normally with Alice’s abilities.

At this point, only one path remained.

Crash!

-Um, may I ask why you suddenly broke the window?

“Since I can’t see any solution through proper methods, I’m betting on luck.”

Though it seemed like an absurd answer, Alice, who had witnessed 556 attempts and failures right beside him, could immediately grasp what Yuseong meant.

-Y-you’re not thinking of jumping from here, are you?!

“Yep. By the way, just how high up is this mansion built? Can’t even see the bottom.”

-Wait! Think about this one more time! There’s no way you can survive falling from here! This isn’t an escape, it’s just suicide!

“People have survived plane crashes and falls from skyscrapers, so this is worth trying. With infinite chances, if we keep trying, we’ll succeed eventually.”

-What exactly are those odds?

“I don’t know. But they must be higher than our chances of surviving in here, right?”

-Wait! At least give me time to mentally prepare-

“You can do that while falling.”

After flipping off the monsters rushing in at the sound of breaking glass, Yuseong threw himself into the darkness without hesitation.

After a brief moment of liberation, his body seized by gravity plummeted at terrifying speed.

While his body was buffeted by fierce winds, instead of taking a diving posture or closing his eyes to slow his descent, Yuseong swung thorny vine toward protruding rocks like a comic book spider hero.

Whoosh!

‘Tch, fantasy and reality really are different.’

Thorny vine wasn’t adhesive, and an ordinary girl wouldn’t have the eyesight to accurately spot viable anchor points while falling from a cliff, nor the precision to accurately throw vines at those points while plummeting.

Finally, after several failed attempts and wondering just how high this cliff was since he kept falling, he could see the ground right in front of his face.

‘Ah, this is going to kill me.’

Splat!

A horrific death incomparable to any he’d experienced so far.

However, it was a very satisfying death for Yuseong in that he could meet his end instantly without feeling any pain.

———————

774th attempt.

He realized falling wasn’t the answer either.

-You’re too slow to realize! Are you stupid, Mr. Yuseong? Normally people figure this out after trying once!

“I’m not stupid, you know? I understood there was no chance of surviving a fall from this height from the first death.”

-Then why did you keep trying?

“I thought if I could just hook thorny vine somewhere, something might work out.”

Accurately hooking thorny vine onto protruding rocks while falling through turbulent winds was practically acrobatics, but Yuseong had infinite chances and during repeated falls and deaths, fortune smiled upon him and he managed to cling to the cliff.

However, it didn’t take long for Yuseong to realize he had severely underestimated nature.

Getting down itself wasn’t difficult.

The girl’s body was light, and the freely growing and controllable vines made for the best rock climbing tools.

The problem was nature’s harshness.

‘C-cold!’

They say temperature drops 1 degree for every 100m of elevation.

While he couldn’t know if this world’s physics matched Earth’s, or how high this cliff was, one thing was absolutely certain.

The fact that he was very likely to freeze to death before reaching the bottom of this cliff.

‘…Just a quick nap.’

-No, don’t! If you sleep now, you’ll freeze to death!

‘Just a moment, just a very short moment…’

He squeezed into a gap between the cliffs, pulled out the worn tracksuit from his inventory to use as a blanket, and closed his eyes.

And when he opened them…

“This is driving me crazy. Don’t you have any good ideas?”

-If I had any, I wouldn’t have prayed for help.

“Haah.”

Letting out a long sigh, Yuseong closed his eyes and sank into thought.

Even as the monster that broke through the door approached and swung its arm, Yuseong remained lost in thought without moving a muscle.

Crack!

‘Opportunities are infinite. But even with optimal choices at every moment and consecutive strokes of luck, this body’s absolute stats are too low to escape this situation.’

Neither common sense methods nor nonsensical ones work.

The only things increasing were the diverse causes of death, resistance to pain, and increasingly dulled fear of death, while stats and skills that could actually help overcome this hopeless situation remained frustratingly unchanged.

‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned…’

Crack!

‘…it’s that this guy is the most manageable opponent.’

Unlike the tentacles, golems, and undead that thorny vine couldn’t harm, the monster could at least be wounded by our attacks.

‘Back to square one. In the end, dead or alive, I have to settle things with this guy. But I can’t win head-on. With an adult male’s body there might be some possibility, but with this body, even 2,000 attempts would be like throwing eggs at a rock.’

Thorny vine can’t inflict fatal wounds that would kill the monster.

As for other weapons, there’s nothing weapon-like in this room.

He’d tried using broken furniture pieces and glass shards as weapons, but none were satisfactory.

‘Simply wielding and swinging isn’t enough. I need more applications than just a whip. Methods to kill someone with a rope…’

At that moment, an idea flashed in Yuseong’s mind.

More than an idea, it was a kind of inspiration, and Yuseong desperately built thought upon thought to not lose it.

‘Using this body’s abilities, build, skills, the monster’s strength, physical characteristics, intelligence level, and this room’s structure…’

Crack!

[Failed to meet clear conditions for ‘Please, Anyone, Help Me!’]

[0 retries remaining. Quest resolution failed]

[Beginner’s benefit applied]

[Retry count will not be deducted]

[Starting ‘Please, Anyone, Help Me!’]

A sight so familiar it made him sick.

However, for the first time since starting this game, Yuseong could smile genuinely from his heart.

-*sob* Mr. Yuseong! Please answer me! Please don’t leave me alone! I’m lonely by myself!

“…What’s wrong with you now?”

-M-Mr. Yuseong? Was that really you speaking? Are you really here? Do you know how scared I was when you suddenly stopped moving? I thought you’d gone somewhere and left me behind!

“If that was possible, I would’ve run away long ago.”

-That’s mean!

“What’s mean is being dragged to who-knows-where and dying 774…”

-777 times.

“Right. Anyway, what’s mean is dying 777 times and not knowing how many more deaths await me.”

-Uuu. I’m sorry.

“I told you, you don’t need to apologize. It’s not like you did anything wrong.”

-But I feel so sorry that you’re suffering because of me…

“No need to feel sorry. I’ve found a breakthrough.”

-A breakthrough? What kind of crazy- I mean, brilliant method is it this time?

Though slightly bothered by the ‘crazy’ comment, remembering the over 200 free falls he’d performed while ignoring Alice’s pleas, Yuseong deliberately cleared his throat and spoke.

“Not really that special…”

“Keeeeeek!”

“…I’ll tell you next time.”

Crack!