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Translator: penny
Chapter: 61
Chapter Title: Floor 4: Deduction Survival Tsukuru Game
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'Then, could this even revive someone who's already dead?'
It cannot be applied to those who have already died.
'If I set the target to someone who's dead...,
and if death is just another status ailment,
then it should be able to revive the dead too.'
It cannot be applied to those who have already died.
'So what's your definition of death?
Is it when the heart dies? Or the brain?
What exactly do you define as death?'
Back in the day, I never would've even thought to ask something like this,
but is it because my Insight stat boosted my reasoning skills...?
Thoughts on criteria and definitions of death bubbled up naturally,
and I found myself trying to spot the useful parts and loopholes in what the system said.
I figured that if I understood the system's criteria and definitions,
I could apply them to my maximum advantage.
There are various criteria and definitions of death, but for this skill, being alive is limited to the time when the designated target's cells are alive and their soul remains. If the designated target's cells are still alive, 'True Ultimate Salvation' begins from those cells as the starting point. However, extreme hibernation, mutated cells like cancer cells, or cells alive in culture medium are not recognized.
After hearing the system's explanation,
I looked it up online in the real world: the time it takes for a person's cells to die.
'If luck's bad, 4 hours; at most 36 hours.
In some cases, if the body's well-preserved, up to 72 hours...
The heart stopping doesn't mean every cell in the body dies right away.
They hold out for a while before dying. If luck's good, up to 3 days max.
Within that window, maybe with some luck, this skill could revive the dead.
The soul..., no idea. Don't know how long the soul lingers.
But I absolutely can't use it on just anyone.
It's another life for me.
And the cooldown's way too long.'
This was one hell of a skill.
I had to get it, no matter what—even for my own sake.
"System. I choose 'Park Jun-chang's Villa Survival Escape Game.'"
Commencing trial.
Commencing Floor 4 trial.
Floor 4 trial: 'Survive the killer until rescuers arrive at the villa, or escape the villa. Subduing or killing the killer also counts as survival.'
A bright summer day. The season of summer vacation.
Hot outside, but cool inside the car thanks to the AC. A very comfortable environment.
I was riding in a gray multi-passenger van, the kind called a Bongo or academy shuttle.
Judging by the model, it looked like a Grand Starex.
Including me, there were eleven 20-year-olds—men and women—filling all the seats and chattering excitedly.
They were heading to Park Jun-chang's invite for a college summer break getaway.
To a villa deep in the mountains of Gangwon Province, with great water and fresh air.
'Oh..., so this is what it feels like to have a Tsukuru game come to life. Pretty novel.'
Four guys and seven girls.
The guys were all close friends of Jun-chang, and the girls were all the pretty ones from high school.
The setup was that they'd all hit college, gotten together for the first summer break, and were heading to the Gangwon villa for vacation.
'In reality, I wasn't close to those girls at all.... Probably none of them were close to each other either? The girls have nothing in common except being pretty in high school. You can really feel how virtual this is just from that.'
Why did Jun-chang, now in college, pick high school girls instead of college ones...?
There was a sad truth to it.
Apparently, his department was engineering, with no female classmates.
'Jun-chang spat out a bloodcurdling lament about not knowing engineering was like that.'
In other words, Jun-chang wanted female characters in his game,
so he summoned the most recent girls dominating his mind from his fantasies and plugged them in as cast.
That's the intro plot of the game.
'High school close friends who couldn't forget their bond even in college gather for the first summer break and head to a villa..., only for a chain of murders and disappearances to unfold.... A thrilling horror mystery suspense deduction survival escape Tsukuru game. ...Fuck, why's the genre name so damn long.'
Honestly, it's a bit unbelievable.
Once in college, wouldn't you hang with college friends?
Sure, you might go on trips with a few real high school buds.
But we weren't that close, were we?
'And that bastard Jun-chang. Come to think of it, the three other guys all die early..., the girls suddenly vanish..., but turns out none of the girls actually die—they're all locked in a hidden basement.... With that sleazy vibe. Heh.'
Out of the male characters—including me—there are four.
The protagonist and player character, Jun-chang, doesn't die, so by the original story, that means I croak early too.
All guys die, girls get locked in the basement for sleazy vibes...
If Jun-chang's department had girls, they might've looked at this game with disgust.
But with no girls and just guys in his engineering department, it got praise for being straightforward and honest.
When I asked, 'This plot got good reviews?', Jun-chang said in an all-guys engineering dept, it works.
That place runs by its own mad logic, different from normal society...
Whatever, not my business.
Locking girls in the basement for sleazy stuff...
No explicit sex scenes, but the vibe lets people guess plenty.
'Heh..., this'll be fun. Kill the killer..., steal his role and take over.'
Fresh young adults, barely legal, chattering lively on their way to summer vacation. Full of energy and innocence.
But I knew all too well the grim, cruel, dank genre and future awaiting in this game world.
"Why're you so quiet today?"
"Huh?"
I turned to the girl who called me.
A cute, bright-eyed girl...,
one of the ones Jun-chang crushed on in high school, I remembered.
'...Not a girl I was ever close to,
...ah, but in this setup, we're friends. Heh heh heh.
Man, all these girls...,
they're all the ones Jun-chang once had crushes on.
And they're all gorgeous for it.'
Pretty enough for Jun-chang to crush on in high school.
Honestly, I found all the girls here appealing.
Guys all like pretty girls—it's universal.
'Tastes vary a bit, but pretty is pretty.'
Plus, maybe the game creator's memory bias...,
but they seemed even prettier than I remembered.
'Bet 100% of these girls are virgins right now.'
Even if in reality they weren't virgins by freshman summer,
the creator's fantasies and intent shone through so obviously.
'In real life, maybe they lost it drunk at college OT to senior guys..., or dated during freshman year and already did it—who knows? ...But hey..., virtual or not, virgins are nice. Heh heh.'
Still, the rest was grounded in reality, so banging the real high school classmates in the Tower's VR felt authentic.
Take Choi Ah-young, the school hottie— she had a beauty mark on her collarbone,
and there it was on the girl in the summer dress right now.
Impressively true to life.
'Faces and figures straight from reality,
virginity unknowable, so creator's fantasy filled that in.'
Can't be helped.
Jun-chang couldn't exactly test if they were virgins.
But he probably modeled them as close to reality as possible...,
so aside from virginity, it should match the real girls spot-on.
'Mm..., seven pretty virgin girls..., heh heh, fucking hot...'
Strange assaults by a madman and mysterious chain murders at an isolated mountain villa...
That's the genre of this Tsukuru game, but I already knew who the killer was and all the hidden gimmicks.
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