Four people burst out of the exit of Fantasy Train and ran.
"Huff, huff!"
On both sides, I could hear the rough gasping peculiar to people running for their lives.
It had to be that way.
Mascots were pouring out.
D i e
"Aaaagh!"
"Huff, hufff..."
At every attraction entrance, every shop, every sign, alien, grotesque bubbles boiled up and spat out slick mascots.
And those mascots peeled back their snouts, exposing countless teeth embedded in their innards, and chased after us in hideous shapes.
Their bodies shuddered intermittently, and things like half-melted tentacles drooped out of their sagging ears and arms.
-♩♪♬♬~♩♬♬~♩♪♪♩♪♬♬~♩♬♬~♩♪♪♩♪♬♬~♩♬♬~♩♪♪♩♪♬♬~♩♬♬~♩♪♪♩♪♬♬~♩♬♬~♩♪♪
-Ahahahahaha! Hahahahaha! Ahahahahaha! Hahahahaha! Ahahahahaha! Hahahahaha!
It was noisy everywhere.
The theme park music and the laughter layered over one another as if spinning in circles, making grotesque noise on all sides.
Loud, frightening, confusing, horrific sounds!!
Every element made my head ache and my sense of direction falter. But....
"This way! This way!"
Grinding my teeth, I turned according to the coordinates I had carved into my head.
At that moment—
Plik.
Squelch.
The slime at the end of a flying tentacle barely grazed my head.
Sssizzle.
"...Huuuh."
I could feel the hair splashed by the slime melting away, I could smell the burning.
'This is insane.'
A cold sweat ran down my back.
But my feet did not stop. No, they could not stop.
'The moment I stop, it's over.'
I would die. No, a premonition worse than that—something more horrific—sent chills racing down my spine.
The one small blessing was that our destination was very close!
Even the researcher ran with drool streaming down his chin instead of whining.
B o r i n g
"G-get away! Get awayyy!!"
"Shut up!"
the butterfly mask shouted. The look in his eyes said it was driving him mad that he couldn't just throw the researcher out as bait to buy time.
It had to be.
'They're too close.'
The mascots flooding in like zombies were multiplying like mad, and some had started appearing frighteningly close.
And they were fast.
Faster than humans!
'Damn it, damn it, damn it!!'
The instant fear made the hair on my back stand up—
"Khk!"
At last, someone got caught.
"Kwaak, ugh...!"
The cow mask stumbled and fell.
'Fuck.'
Without even turning back, I somehow flicked coins out of my pocket to summon the glove.
Then I threw several 500-won coins as if pitching them, creating translucent shadow hands in midair.
Whoosh.
The shadow hands flying through the air shoved the grotesque mascot's head aside.
"Run!"
The Group Y rookie, his shoulder riddled with holes, barely escaped death, scrambling out almost on all fours before starting to run again.
"Huff, huff, th-thank...."
"Later!"
There wasn't even time to stop the bleeding. Exclusive equipment or not, none of that mattered right now!
'Anyway, once it passes a radius of three meters, the shadow hands will disappea—'
A crazed, violent pain slammed into my left hand.
"~!!!"
I almost clutched my hand and collapsed sobbing on the spot.
This sensation—like my hand was being crushed alive in a sharp press and melting at the same time....
'The exclusive equipment!'
I understood instinctively.
The hand I had summoned into the air had vanished while suffering some horrible thing—whether it had been the mascot's mouth or its tentacle.
It was the first time I realized the weakness of my exclusive equipment.
If the hand made by the glove was destroyed, my own hand hurt just that much too!
But there was no time to scream. I ran like mad.
And shouted.
"There!"
I could see the target point.
It was a huge gate.
Painted in colorful hues, carrying the typical style of a theme park....
[Fantasy Land (Westside Gate)]
A decorative structure.
A decorative gate attached to the castle wall enclosing the west side of the theme park.
"It's blocked!!"
"Get under it!"
I was the first to step without hesitation beneath the decorative gate and turn around.
Almost at the same time, two people tried to step under it. The Group A assistant manager and the Group Y rookie.
The researcher was behind them, in a position dangerous enough....
"Move, fucker!"
"Ugh!"
Thud.
The researcher shoved the Group A employee with all his strength, using that force as recoil to fling himself forward.
"...!"
The slender body suddenly knocked away crashed into a mascot.
D i e
Dark-red slime poured from the half-melted mascot's eyes over the butterfly mask.
"Aaaagh!"
Sssizzle.
The sound of something burning rang at my ears.
"Assistant Manager!"
The Group A employee lay pinned beneath a mascot shaped too horribly to describe, his limbs trembling.
The face not covered by the butterfly mask was already bubbling and ruined.
All that was visible were resigned eyes.
The eyes of someone who had calculated with certainty that this was absolutely not a situation where help could be expected.
The moment our eyes met—
"Your nail!"
I shouted.
"Assistant Manager, your nail—here!"
At the same time, I opened my left hand and thrust it out. The Group A assistant manager's eyes widened, and he stretched out his right hand, extending his index finger.
Pik!
The fired nail lodged directly in the center of my palm.
"...!"
But there was no hesitation.
'It already hurt enough to feel shattered!'
Because the greater pain was already there, my grip ignored this new pain and clamped the nail tight without wavering.
Then I pulled.
Whoosh.
With a short noise, the body in the butterfly mask was yanked toward me.
B o r i n g
At the spot he had barely left behind, the mascots' teeth sank in and slime poured down in a rush.
"Huff, huffhhhh...."
"Huuugh..."
Collapsed on the floor beneath the gate, we caught our breath.
And right in front of us—
Countless rabbit mascots weeping slime like tears of blood stood packed together, forcibly halted with empty pupils.
"Hik!"
It looked as though an invisible wall had blocked them.
---------------------=
A Fun Theme Park User Guidelines (applies up to Darkness Exploration Record No. 64)
Enjoy the different zones!
Have the mascots' appearances and the attractions' colors changed? Then you are standing in a new zone.
Unfortunately, mascots from other zones cannot exist inside a new zone.
Please say your goodbyes. Kindly!
---------------------=
I looked down at the floor.
'...The brick colors were different.'
As if by magic, there were exactly two rows of white bricks beneath the decoration styled like a main gate.
The mascots had stopped there, unable to cross the red brick ground beyond it.
B o r i n g
I looked down at my ticket.
[(A Fun) Fantasy Land Ride Ticket ■□□]
[(A Fun) Fantasy Land Ride Ticket ■□□]
No fun
The voice faded.
The mascots crowded in front of us also stood motionless, and then, the moment I blinked—
they disappeared.
"..."
"..."
The sound of panting drifted through the now-quiet air.
I swallowed.
"...It seems Magic Bunny's Fantasy Land ends here."
We lived.
"We escaped."
"Aah...!"
"Huuuu...."
The Group Y rookie groaned in relief and pain, clutching his shoulder as he slumped over.
I too leaned my head against the wall, looked up at the sky, and caught my breath.
'I thought I was going to die....'
My heart was pounding too hard.
And I survived that.
The Group A assistant manager stared icily at the researcher who had shoved him, but after glancing at the flesh gouged out in the shape of his nail on my palm, he calmed down again.
Anyway, we had survived, and it seemed he had decided this wasn't the time to start screaming about killing the researcher.
Even after getting something like acidic liquid dumped over his head and clearly being in terrible pain, staying calm like that was impressive.
"For now."
"Yes?"
The Group A assistant manager took a deep breath.
"Thanks. We lived because of you."
"..."
That was unexpected.
"No. It was thanks to your exclusive equipment, Assistant Manager...."
"There's no point in being humble here. Just say you understand. You played the line well just now."
Ah. Yes.
"Unlike some idiot."
"..."
The researcher desperately avoided his gaze.
The Group A assistant manager watched that for a moment, then turned the topic back to work.
"This looks like some kind of leftover space. Is this what you were aiming for? But it's so narrow that just standing still is cramped... what are you planning to do?"
"This isn't the destination."
"Hm?"
After finally catching my breath properly, I turned all the way around and faced the decorative gate head-on.
"Did you know? Large theme parks usually have something besides just the amusement park."
"...Something else?"
"Yes."
Strictly speaking, under this gate was an empty place that belonged neither to Magic Bunny's territory nor to any other mascot's territory.
A kind of blank space inside the theme park, so they probably wouldn't chase us down trying to kill us for vandalizing park property.
I knocked on the gate-shaped wall with my hand.
Thunk.
It made a hollow sound.
"Assistant Manager. Can you tear this open with your exclusive equipment?"
"..."
Without a word, the assistant manager raised a hand and pulled out the nail from his index finger again.
Then he wedged it into a crack in the wall and gave it a sharp tug.
"Hk!"
Tuk, tuk.
A brick-patterned panel came loose with a rattle, and wind rushed in.
And what rode in on it was... the smell of water.
-Ahahahahaha!
"...!!"
With the cheerful sound of water splashing down, a ship's horn, and the cries of gulls, a merry marching tune flowed in.
Through the gap in the bricks, sunlight poured into a wide-open space.
Huge cylindrical slides winding down through the air shone in every shade of blue, spewing water and tubes.
[Blue Dream Waterland]
"This is...!"
A water park.
A summer space that made up one whole axis of a large-scale theme park.
"This is the blue zone."
The Group Y rookie twisted around so hard it looked like his neck might snap and stared at me in shock.
"H-how?!"
"On the Fantasy Land color map we saw earlier, there wasn't a single attraction that used water."
"...!"
"So I interpreted that it might be set aside somewhere else as one large separate section."
I drew in a deep breath.
"I also reasoned that under normal circumstances it would be difficult to access. Usually they sell separate tickets for it altogether."
"...So you tore open the wall?"
"Yes."
I recalled what Leader Lee Jaheon had said on the call earlier.
-It's the west....
The west.
Of course, what the leader meant was the west from inside that Waterland.
But because we had happened to be at the very western end of Magic Bunny Fantasy Land, it became possible to reason that the blue zone existed separately.
'The east was blocked by forest, the north had the entrance, and the south was a cliff....'
In the end, the only direction where there could be space beyond Magic Bunny Fantasy Land was the west.
That was how I interpreted it....
'And I was right.'
"The blue mascot that got driven out of Fantasy Land must have made a new zone here."
"Ah...."
"For now, let's get across quickly."
"L-let's!"
Hands busily tore away the remaining panels. Even the Group Y rookie with the shoulder injury tried to help somehow with one arm.
In the meantime, the researcher stood in a corner rolling his eyes, but the slickness had returned to his face.
He seemed to have noticed things were going well.
And a few seconds later—
"D-done!"
At last, beyond the wall panels torn open wide enough for a person to pass through, we began slipping out one by one.
I was the last one out. Standing with both feet in Waterland, I looked at the blue pool and the blue sky.
Whoosh, a damp breeze blew by.
'The sunlight....'
It felt absurdly good.
Just as even a strange sense of freedom came over me,
I saw people in the distance spotting me, waving, and running this way.
"Roe Deer!!"
"...!"
It was Group D.
"Are you okay?!"
"Assistant Manager!"
Whether they were carrying tubes or something else, the people of Group D all came rushing closer with one bulky piece of luggage apiece.
Maybe because we had spent a whole month getting shoved together, relief washed over me in a rush.
"Have you all been well?!"
I greeted them back gladly as I walked toward them.
And I started wondering whether, as the rookie, I ought to briskly take the load off the leader's shoulder or something....
Wait.
'That's a human body.'
It wasn't luggage.
A human body hung limply over the lizard's shoulder.
'...A catch?'
Looking more closely, it was wearing a mallard mask.
Group A's leader.
"..."
No.
No!!