How a Regressor Conquers the Tower of Urban Legends
Chapter 32
The sound of something heavy being dragged echoed through the corridor.
"Let's hide."
"!"
The mascot nodded immediately.
We quickly looked around.
"...In here."
"!"
We found an empty room and slipped inside.
The dragging sound continued scraping through the hallway.
Right.
I never expected things to go smoothly.
We crouched in one corner of the room and stayed completely silent, waiting for whatever was outside to pass.
The only light came from a single flickering incandescent bulb.
And under that weak light, the only thing I could see was its shadow.
But the shadow alone was enough to convince me.
We absolutely cannot let that thing find us.
A shadow cast by light could give you a rough idea of an object's size.
Of course, even someone who studied humanities like me knew that the length of a shadow changed depending on where the object stood.
But nobody would look at a shadow stretched to such an indescribable length and assume whatever cast it was the size of an ordinary human.
We waited until the dragging noise disappeared far into the distance.
Only then did we carefully peek back into the corridor.
"...Phew."
"..."
The mascot stuck its head out beside me.
"You'd lose if you fought something like that, right?"
"!"
The mascot nodded as if the answer were obvious.
It might not remember it, but this was the same mascot that had once gone to fight the whale monster.
Seeing it agree so readily only made me more certain.
We absolutely cannot encounter that thing.
If it came down to it, I could always use the pistol.
Thinking that, I stepped forward.
Splash!
"...?"
"?"
I looked down after feeling something wet beneath my foot.
"...Yeah. We really shouldn't run into that thing."
"!"
A long trail of blood stretched across the corridor floor.
It looked as though something had been dragged along it.
"???"
The mascot immediately took out the Mannequin's Hand.
"No. It's not time to use that."
If we used it here, there was a high chance the mascot would die or suffer something almost as bad.
We should save it for when we truly had no other option.
Besides, the phone hadn't rung yet.
I stopped the mascot from using the hand and looked ahead.
"Let's just keep moving and make sure it doesn't notice us."
"!"
Our goal was to escape this place.
Not solve everything in it.
Keeping away from the blood trail, we continued forward.
Walking with nothing but the faint flicker of old incandescent bulbs to guide us was much harder than it sounded.
After we'd been moving through the corridor for some time...
"!!!!!"
"Yeah."
There was a faint rustle.
The mascot bent down and picked up another yellowed sheet of paper from the floor.
"Let me see."
"!"
It handed it over.
I immediately read what was written on it.
{Day 7}
{I've been hiding all day. How am I supposed to walk around after seeing something like that? Isn't this basically the same as telling me to die?}
{But I have to see my mom again. I have to keep going.}
{I've been walking through this corridor for a while, and I think it might be endless.}
{And something unknown keeps wandering around the corridor.}
{I'm starting to think going into one of the rooms might be the right choice, so I'm going to try it.}
{I don't know if anyone will ever read this...}
That was where the entry ended.
I looked toward the nearby rooms.
The blood trail was still spread across the floor.
"It says this corridor seems to loop."
"...!"
The mascot seemed to have reached the same conclusion.
Fine.
Then we'd try one of the rooms.
I tightened my grip on the pistol inside my clothes for a moment, then released it and approached the room.
[150. If you keep walking through the corridor, you'll encounter something dragging something behind it. I think it's best not to let it find you.]
[150. The corridor seems endless, so I'm going to try entering one of the rooms.]
After leaving the note, I carefully stepped inside.
Cold air wrapped around my body.
And the moment I entered, the overwhelming smell of disinfectant and formalin hit me.
It was so strong that my head started to ache.
"...What is this?"
It was too dark to see properly.
The smell, meanwhile, was absurdly intense.
But strangely enough, that only made me feel more certain.
From everything I'd experienced so far, the more ominous and unpleasant a path felt, the more likely it was to be the right one.
The bigger problem was that I could barely see enough to walk.
My smartphone had completely died by the time I finished the sixth floor.
Fortunately, I still had one thing that could produce light.
I took out the old flip phone and opened it.
A faint glow spilled from the screen and illuminated the room.
"...He's not going to get angry about this, right?"
"!"
Right.
I wasn't making a call or breaking the phone.
Surely using it as a makeshift flashlight was fine.
I raised it and looked around.
"...I should've left it off."
I regretted it immediately.
Square compartments about sixty centimeters wide and tall.
Cold storage drawers with handles.
"This is a morgue."
A chill ran down my spine.
I thought I'd become somewhat accustomed to strange places by now.
But this kind of place gave off a completely different atmosphere.
"If anything jumps out, please knock it back down somehow."
"...!"
After a brief pause, the mascot reluctantly nodded.
We continued through the morgue.
Occasionally, notes had been attached to the storage drawers.
Could those contain useful information too?
I leaned toward one and read it.
[Morgue Compartment 3]
[Attempted escape after removing the boards from Room 203. Failed.]
[Half of the body remains in storage after being used as food.]
[The remaining half will be reserved for use during the Great Famine.]
"..."
I was beginning to understand where the people who failed ended up.
If I'd failed too, I probably would've suffered the same fate.
Was it the same for everyone else?
I checked the other notes.
[Morgue Compartment 7]
[Subdued by medical personnel after becoming violent.]
[During restraint, subject used a hidden handgun to shoot himself in the head and was transferred here.]
