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826th Chapter – Room 303, Cursed Room – ‘Time Machine’ (15)

— Kim Ari

At this point, it felt like we had spent nearly half a day on the Parinirvana Train.

After endless battles, we uncovered several more facts.

For example, the people Aleph referred to as ‘demons’ called themselves.

“They call themselves ‘Gardeners.’”

“If you’re a good gardener, you shouldn’t hesitate to use scissors. That was the phrase Ari interpreted earlier.”

“So it wasn’t just a simple metaphor.”

Climbing to the position of the silent ones within the Management Bureau, we realized many things.

Staff and agents end up killing countless people, willingly or unwillingly.

However, murder is not an easy task even for those with frozen souls, and not every member may be cold-hearted.

Ultimately, statistically, over 70% of the staff suffer from depression or trauma during their tenure.

To suppress such incidents, the Management Bureau continuously trains its internal members.

“You are not murderers; you are protectors of humanity.”

“You didn’t kill the innocent; you eliminated the infected to save others.”

It seems that the ‘Gardeners’ formed on the train have gone through a similar process.

“If you’re a great gardener, you shouldn’t feel guilty about using scissors.”

A tree with rotten roots can’t be saved. Don’t feel guilty about trimming.

This is all logic to alleviate the members’ guilt.

At that moment, Pero Gain flew in, flapping his wings as he rummaged through the head of a subdued gardener.

“It feels like rummaging through a dementia patient’s brain, but it seems the leader of the gardeners is in the next car.”

“…”

“The gardener’s leader is said to be able to shake a human’s mind.”

“Is that the power that made me and Aleph get off the train?”

“Maybe. Let’s get ready to fight.”

—

— Clack!

Finally, we arrived at the gardener’s stronghold.

The moment the door opened, the first thing I felt was a headache and noise.

— Crrrsh!

A violent pain, as if someone had shoved a bundle of needles into my head.

At the same time, eyes were appearing all around me, staring at me.

Gritting my teeth against the headache, I shouted.

“I’ll handle this, so you go ahead—”

I let out a laugh mid-sentence.

My shoulders were already light, and Pero Gain was already flying ahead.

“Gain, isn’t it a bit too quick to leave a colleague behind?”

— Clack!

Dozens of people in tattered clothes were rising from the primitive Earth.

Their outfits were ragged, but the weapons they held were nothing but shabby.

At least dozens of makeshift weapons were pointed at me.

There were some familiar guns, but there were also weapons whose identities were hard to guess just by looking.

Weapons provided by the Management Bureau from various eras!

— Swish!

The crimson gleam of an irregular polyhedron shone brightly.

An invisible barrier surrounded me, blocking the onslaught of weapons from various eras.

Typical firearms couldn’t penetrate the spatial disruption of the irregular polyhedron.

Especially at the level of personal firearms.

— Clang!

An unusual weapon appeared.

An unidentified purple wave swept through the area, and I couldn’t even begin to guess its principle or power.

“Ugh!”

More bizarre than that strange weapon were the gardeners themselves.

Their timing of fire and movements to dodge my counterattacks, coupled with the essence of the gazes directed at me since earlier.

There were many gazes, yet they felt like a single gaze.

One for the whole.

The whole for one.

At this point, I began to somewhat grasp what kind of being the gardener’s leader was.

In this extreme tension, as I was fighting against a group of at least dozens of gardeners.

— Thud!

The fight suddenly ended.

The gardeners who were fighting against me collapsed abruptly, like robots that had suddenly lost power.

Pero Gain had taken down the gardener’s leader.

*

Pero Gain’s impression was simple.

“Strange fella.”

There was no grand sense of victory in his voice.

To Gain’s perspective, this level of opponent wasn’t worth celebrating.

“How was it?”

“Ari, didn’t you feel something while fighting?”

“I felt like the gardeners were almost robotic.”

“Exactly. The ones you fought just now are essentially bio-robots, units controlled by the gardener’s leader.”

“So the guy lying on the stone is the leader’s main body?”

“No. Strictly speaking, he’s just a slightly higher-performing unit.”

“Where is the main body then?”

The next words sounded somewhat bizarre.

“There’s no such thing as a main body.”

“What?”

“The gardener’s leader is a being that has shed its physical form and exists only as a consciousness.”

“…”

“It just roams around, exchanging the minds of the gardeners.”

“… Fascinating.”

At this point, I began to doubt whether I could still call the gardener’s leader a human.

Well, this level of being could likely lead an organization comprising individuals from various backgrounds.

At that moment, Pero Gain muttered, seemingly worried.

“This could be a headache later.”

“Later?”

“After escaping the second time.”

“…”

“You’ll need to proceed without getting off the train in the second time.”

“Right.”

“I think it might be tough for just you and Aleph to handle that fella.”

Though Gain was able to easily subdue the gardener’s leader, implying it would be difficult for me was somewhat of a blow to my pride.

Of course, I understood Gain’s concerns, as pride won’t put food on the table.

The gardener’s leader was a being that moved the consciousness of multiple individuals like a specter.

Gain could easily defeat him.

The Book of the Avatar itself was an overwhelmingly superior version of ability.

Would it be easy for me too?

“Let’s save the discussion about the second round for later. For now, we must focus on what’s in front of us.”

Pero Gain nodded.

“Alright. Let’s talk more about this guy.”

“…”

“He’s a consciousness without a body. So, he could avoid some issues arising from long-term travel on the Parinirvana Train.”

“Does that mean his intelligence was intact?”

“At least, it was better than the underlings. It seems he abandoned his physical form for that purpose.”

“Hmm…”

“He’s not completely intact. His memory had significant gaps.”

The characteristics of the Parinirvana Train, where cognitive abilities decline after prolonged travel.

By abandoning his physical form, the gardener’s leader managed to preserve his consciousness to some extent.

That also meant Gain had gleaned meaningful information from subduing the leader.

“The goals of these guys are twofold.”

“Twofold?”

“First, purifying the contaminated humanity.”

“And the second?”

“Second, to stop the train’s loop movement.”

I recalled what the initial staff had told Aleph at the beginning of the first round.

Now the train was malfunctioning, preventing loop travel.

Could the reason for the malfunction be linked to the gardeners?

“Are the gardeners the ones who broke the train?”

“Probably.”

“Why?”

“… They believe humanity is contaminated.”

“Are they possibly preventing contaminated humanity from heading to another loop by taking the train?”

“That could be one reason.”

“One reason? Is there another?”

— Snap!

Pero Gain seemed to be deep in thought, scratching his beak here and there.

He appeared to be analyzing the information gained from the gardener’s leader.

It took quite a while for his beak to reopen.

“… Eldist.”

“Eldist?”

“He says an Eldist is coming.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just listen. An Eldist is coming. Only the oldest voice can stop the Eldist.”

“…”

“That thought is filling the leader’s mind.”

“…”

“From here on out, it’s my speculation. The Eldist seems to be a sort of invader coming from another loop.”

“Hmm…”

“The gardeners, well, they were stopping the Eldist with the help of the ‘oldest voice.’”

It was a sort of vague but familiar story.

In silence, I felt a certain unease.

“The escape alert hasn’t gone off.”

“…”

“According to the hypothesis we set earlier, shouldn’t the escape alert have been triggered by now?”

Pero Gain spoke calmly.

“Our two conditions for escaping. First, save the primitive humans in crisis at 70,000 BC. Second, kill all the gardeners on the Parinirvana Train.”

“…”

“We achieved the second goal. There are no gardeners left.”

“Could it be that Sang-hyun’s side failed?”

We had accomplished our objective, yet the escape judgment was not showing.

Then, could it mean the other colleagues had failed?

“Not likely.”

Pero Gain denied that notion.

“I’m not saying this just because I have a vague trust in my colleagues. Look at the strength of the demons and the gardeners.”

“…”

“How many gardeners were sent to 70,000 BC? I don’t know the exact numbers, but at most, it should be just a dozen staff with future weapons.”

“Hmm… That sounds like Elena could handle it by herself.”

“Not to mention Seungyeop is over there. The chances of a sudden ambush being wiped out are low.”

We had achieved our objective.

Based on the overall power, it seemed likely that our colleagues had succeeded too.

If that’s the case, there’s only one answer.

“The initial hypothesis is wrong. The conditions for escape aren’t two.”

There are more conditions.

“What’s next?”

“Let’s move further. Eldist, the oldest voice. We have to see their faces at least once.”

— Clack!

As we moved toward the next car, the surrounding scenery was drawing closer to the primordial Earth.

We started in the 21st century, and 70,000 BC was when several colleagues got off.

After that, we seem to have climbed back through the times of 300,000, 1,000,000, 10,000,000 years, ultimately even reversing the hundreds of millions of years.

As we moved toward the front car, I could guess why the train’s structures, including protective walls, were disappearing.

If we went back millions of years, it’s likely that the concepts of ‘transport’ or ‘habitation’ wouldn’t even exist, let alone the train itself.

“Ari, what era do you think this area is from?”

The first thought that came to me was how peculiar the expression itself was.

“This area” refers to the spatial location expression, while “which era” refers to the temporal position expression.

Generally, such sentences are uncommon.

Shifting locations wouldn’t change the time either.

This expression could only be used in the context of the Parinirvana Train, where a spatial location change leads to a temporal position change.

“Permian?”

“…”

“It might be Silurian or Ordovician.”

“… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Did you sleep through Earth science class?”

“I’d know if you mentioned the dinosaur era.”

“Gain, you just sounded like a complete maze.”

“That’s harsh. How many people do you think would know what Silurian means if you caught someone on the streets of Gangnam Station?”

“What’s important isn’t Gangnam Station. I know it, and you don’t. Come to think of it, I studied better than you in Room 104.”

“I’d probably be better than you if I attended high school a hundred times like you.”

“You might have gone to high school more often than I did.”

—

— Snap!

Seemingly tired of our pointless conversation, Pero Gain suddenly brought up something serious.

“I don’t know the exact timing, but around a billion years ago, wouldn’t Earth’s environment be something humans couldn’t survive without protection?”

“They say Earth during the reign of Pluto was entirely volcanic terrain.”

“The environment of the earlier cars could be dangerous. I say this because there are no protective walls.”

“… Let’s set up barriers with irregular polyhedrons as we move.”

“Right now, we can do that.”

“What?”

Gain’s next point was hitting on something I hadn’t thought about.

“How did you get through this area before coming to the hotel? There were no irregular polyhedrons. Did you possibly not get through?”

 

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