The Regressor Only Protects Me

Chapter 34: The Swamp of the Alligator Snapping Turtle (2)

Alligator snapping turtle.

A turtle also known as a living fossil.

Its appearance is distinctly dinosaur-like, with a colorful and rough shell as a key feature.

The most notable characteristic is that unlike other turtles, the alligator snapping turtle doesn’t actively move to hunt.

It merely opens its mouth and waits for fish to swim inside.

The alligator snapping turtle camouflages itself as if it were part of the underwater environment.

The vibrant, worm-like protrusion on its tongue serves to lure fish.

And the moment the fish enters its mouth, it snaps shut, not letting go.

Anything caught in the jaws of the alligator snapping turtle is inevitably consumed.

Just like the yellow-haired man in front of us.

“Alligator snapping turtle.”

“......”

I glanced over at Jin Jae-hee.

For the first time, she seemed visibly flustered.

“There was nothing there, and suddenly the turtle’s face appeared. What’s going on?”

I stiffened my body, turning my eyes to survey the surroundings.

There was truly nothing there.

It was hard to comprehend how a monstrous face so massive could appear suddenly without anyone noticing among the dozens of people here.

Equally puzzling was how such a large face vanished instantly.

Jin Jae-hee swallowed hard and answered.

“Of course, no one can know. Even fish caught by a real alligator snapping turtle don’t realize it. They don’t know that it’s the turtle’s tongue. The alligator snapping turtle is a master of disguise. Humans won’t be able to distinguish it either.”

“……We can’t tell if something around us is its tongue?”

“That’s the terrifying part. The entire building could be its tongue.”

A monster so massive that its tongue camouflages into objects around it to devour humans.

The idea alone was horrifying.

The yellow-haired man had only lightly brushed his hand against the wall.

But that wall was the turtle’s tongue, and the yellow-haired man was ultimately devoured.

At that moment, Lee Chung-chun spoke to the group.

“I…… will be the bait.”

His hands were trembling uncontrollably.

I turned to look at him.

No, everyone here was staring at him.

“I’m a police officer. It’s my duty to ensure the safety of civilians. I…… will be the bait, so everyone, don’t look back and run out of the building.”

Some people’s faces lit up with faint smiles at his words.

Was it relief at their own survival?

Perhaps it was an instinctive reaction, but to me, it felt nauseating.

Lee Chung-chun slightly shifted his arms, preparing to run.

But Jin Jae-hee stopped him.

“It’s useless. The alligator snapping turtle’s jaws are instantaneous.”

“……What?”

“The trap it sets is instantaneous. The moment you touch it, it closes like an automatic door. We don’t even know how many alligator snapping turtles are in this building. It’s a pointless act.”

At Jin Jae-hee’s words, Lee Chung-chun froze in place.

Then, a woman at a table across from us yelled at Jin Jae-hee.

“Then, what are we supposed to do?!”

Jin Jae-hee hesitated for a moment before replying.

“……It’s not that there’s no way.”

“Then what is it? Tell us quickly!”

This time, a man next to the woman shouted at Jin Jae-hee.

She stayed silent briefly before finally opening her mouth.

“The alligator snapping turtle has to move to breathe. When it moves, its camouflage will break, and we’ll be able to see it. That’s when we run.”

“Then, w-when will it breathe?!”

Jin Jae-hee tightly shut her eyes.

She, who always maintained her composure, was now flustered.

Seeing her like this made me realize the gravity of the situation.

“I don’t know. It could be 10 years.”

“1…10 years?”

“That’s ridiculous… 10 years? Are you saying it only breathes once every 10 years?”

“Then we’ll be stuck here for 10 years?”

Despair spread among the group.

Some began to shed tears.

The situation couldn’t have been worse.

If even the regressor Jin Jae-hee was this shaken, we were truly in dire straits.

We had essentially crawled into the swamp of the alligator snapping turtle on our own.

At that moment, a middle-aged woman shook her head.

“But how do you know that? Are you… an Administrator?”

That should have been the first question asked.

It made no sense how Jin Jae-hee could know all of this, and people couldn’t easily accept it.

The woman’s eyes shimmered with unshed tears.

She looked like she was about to break down.

“I can’t trust you. I just can’t!”

The woman turned in the opposite direction.

That direction led to a staircase going down.

Everyone was watching her.

“It’s a lie. You’re lying, that’s why you’re so confident. Right? A lie. A… a lie.”

The woman seemed torn by her decision.

Caught between hope that Jin Jae-hee was lying and despair that she might be telling the truth.

As if mesmerized, the woman took one step forward.

A few steps later, she reached the stairs.

Then she turned back with a smile.

“See? Nothing’s hap-”

Crunch!

The moment she took another step, the monster’s face appeared again.

The creature swallowed her whole before disappearing back into the void.

All that remained of her was splattered red blood.

“Ah…”

“Ugh…”

“Aah…”

Sighs of despair broke out all around.

By now, darkness had fallen, and night arrived.

And no one here could move.

Not even a single step.

Three hours passed.

No one moved.

The night had come, and cold air seeped in through the broken windows.

People shivered and blinked their tired eyes.

Thud.

Finally, a man, unable to endure the cold, collapsed where he stood.

Hours, days… perhaps even years of waiting loomed ahead.

There was no plan.

For three hours, I hadn’t stopped moving my eyes.

Scanning left, right, up, and down.

I strained to catch even the slightest change.

From the start, every situation has a solution.

I wasn’t going to die here.

I would survive.

Jin Jae-hee spoke to me.

“……Waiting for movement is pointless.”

“I know.”

I wasn’t expecting movement.

What I was looking for was something else.

Eyes.

Somewhere, it had to be watching us.

Even if it could hold its breath for a long time, it couldn’t stop watching us.

The alligator snapping turtle’s eye might be the small scissors on the table.

Or it could be the CCTV attached to the corner of the wall, or even the tiny button on the elevator.

According to Jin Jae-hee, the alligator snapping turtle’s camouflage abilities defied human comprehension.

Everything visible to us might ultimately be part of its trap.

‘…Stay calm.’

I had to remain calm.

Only by staying calm could I organize the situation and find a solution.

Shaking with fear wouldn’t change anything.

In the end, we had to act.

Time was on the alligator snapping turtle’s side.

This was a game of Minesweeper.

Like the Minesweeper game I used to play in the computer lab back in elementary school.

The strategy for Minesweeper was simple.

You start from where you stand and slowly expand the area step by step.

“Jin Jae-hee.”

“Yeah, what is it?”

She answered immediately when I called her name.

I carefully took off my padded jacket and placed it on the ground.

Then I removed my windbreaker, fleece, and hoodie one by one.

Finally, I revealed a plain white T-shirt and took that off as well.

“What are you doing?”

Jin Jae-hee asked as she glanced back at me, but I ignored her.

I took off my thermal undershirt as the last layer.

The cold pierced my bare skin for a moment, striking like a whip.

Holding the undershirt in my hands, I hurriedly started putting my clothes back on.

I could feel the stares of a few people.

Once I zipped my padded jacket all the way up to my neck, I began tearing at the undershirt with my teeth.

Rip. Tear.

When my teeth couldn’t manage, I used a military dagger to cut it apart.

I stretched the fabric as much as I could, turning it into a makeshift cord.

By the time I finished, I had a cord about 1.5 meters long.

I attached one end of the cord to the dagger.

“Start poking at everything nearby with this. Every object you can see.”

I tossed the makeshift dagger with the undershirt cord attached to Jin Jae-hee.

She caught it, examined it, and nodded when she understood.

“Alright, I’ll do it.”

My focus was on finding the eye.

And Jin Jae-hee, being skilled with a dagger, was the right person to carry out this task.

The cold intensified, and our exposed bodies were rapidly succumbing to hypothermia.

We had to get out of this place as quickly as possible.

Jin Jae-hee threw the dagger.

Whoosh. Clink!

The dagger shattered a plate on the dining table.

There was no movement.

The plate wasn’t part of the creature.

Jin Jae-hee pulled on the cord to retrieve the dagger and repeated the process.

Over and over, again and again.

Whoosh. Clang!

Whoosh. Thud!

Whoosh. Stab!

Plates, corpses, doorbells, frozen meat, forks, chairs, cushions.

Objects and objects.

Corpses and corpses.

Jin Jae-hee hurled the dagger at everything.

“Hah…”

White puffs of breath escaped her lips.

The deeper the night grew, the harder it became to breathe.

Every inhale felt like frost was filling our lungs.

After prodding every object around her, Jin Jae-hee finally took one step forward.

That was only one step.

How many more steps would it take to reach the building’s entrance?

The thought alone was dizzying.

The process continued for hours.

In this silent space, only two sounds existed.

The groans of people.

The sound of something breaking.

Thud.

As the night deepened, people began collapsing one by one.

They fell, unable to withstand the cold and exhaustion.

By now, Jin Jae-hee had taken only five steps forward.

Meanwhile, five people had already fallen unconscious.

All of them succumbed to the freezing cold.

This endless task felt like trying to find a landmine in a vast meadow with nothing but a small stick.

At this rate, we’d never escape the building alive.

The cold persisted, and our body temperatures dropped.

Once the body reached its limits, the brain couldn’t think clearly either.

Even I felt my eyelids grow heavy, as though I might topple forward at any moment.

No.

I couldn’t lose my mind here.

“...Kang Sion!”

Jin Jae-hee was calling out to me.

But I couldn’t look at her.

Her voice echoed in my ears, alternating between my left and right sides like the buzz of a mosquito.

Tap. Tap.

I slapped my temples with my palms.

I couldn’t sleep.

If I fell asleep.

“…I’ll do it myself if I have to.”

Shing.

At that moment, something faintly gleaming entered my blurry field of vision.

I managed to lift my head slightly and saw her.

Jin Jae-hee had drawn her sword from its sheath.

She intended to kill the alligator snapping turtle by herself.

The blade gleamed as it reflected the moonlight streaming through the window.

That shining blade made me squint my eyes.

And as I looked at that gleaming light, something clicked in my mind.

Jin Jae-hee stepped forward.

‘That’s it… That’s the solution.’

There was a way.

I wasn’t destined to die here after all.

Through my fading consciousness, a faint smile formed on my lips.

“Wait.”

Jin Jae-hee stopped and looked back at me.

She held the sword tightly in her right hand.

“I’ve found it.”

At those words, everyone who was still conscious turned to look at me.

I brushed my hand over my mouth.

Straightening my back, I met Jin Jae-hee’s gaze.

“There’s a way for us to get out of here.”