Before leaving the bumper cars, Ian casually asked an employee who was cleaning up the broken debris.
“Do you happen to know where the theme park manager is?”
“The manager? The manager is in the tower!”
Fortunately, the employee answered kindly. He nodded, came outside, and unfolded a booklet.
“The manager’s location is pinpointed. Now if I clear just one more, the exit will open too.”
“R-right…… It’s faster than I thought…… hehe.”
He had already cleared two rides. Now that he knew the manager’s location, all he had to do was clear the remaining one, extract the heart, and escape.
He didn’t blindly trust the employee’s words. But with no information at all, there was no need to deliberately doubt and avoid the information given. He would go check first; if it wasn’t there, he could look around elsewhere.
Thinking that, Ian threw his cigarette on the nearby ground and looked over where to go next.
“Oh? Guest?”
Just then, an employee passing by the two tilted her head quizzically and approached.
Her face was no different from an ordinary human’s. But a streetlamp was embedded where her spine should be, and light bulbs were embedded in her two eyes. The two were faintly reflected in her eyes as they blinked and lit up.
“……!”
This was the first time an employee had spoken to them since they entered the theme park interior. Ian tried to stay as calm as possible, gripping the revolver inside his coat tightly. Yuna also tightened her grip on her staff.
“……What is it?”
“The parade is about to start, and you can’t be here like this. Please put on a mask quickly and gather at the square.”
The employee spoke as if coaxing a child, curving her lips into an arc.
“……You mean the parade?”
“Yes! It’s our theme park’s pride. All guests and employees are obligated to attend the parade!”
At the creature’s words, Ian let out a low groan and turned his head slightly.
A long procession of employees stretched across the once open streets of the theme park.
Not one of them looked normal. Their bizarre appearances went without saying, and their expressions were all contorted as if they were mad with anticipation for the parade. Some even had chunks of flesh stuck to their mouths and teeth, as if they had just devoured a human somewhere.
He couldn’t tell exactly what kind of parade it would be, but it was definitely not normal. Ian spoke in a polite tone, trying to find a way out.
“I’m sorry, but we’d like to enjoy the rides a bit more—"
“Guest.”
“……!”
The atmosphere changed. The moment the employee cut Ian off, all the moving park employees stopped in their tracks and glared at him.
“Ugh……”
Yuna, pale-faced, gripped her staff tightly. Ian quickly decided, smiled awkwardly, and nodded.
“……I spoke out of turn. We’ll attend the parade.”
“…….”
“Where can we get masks?”
Instead of answering Ian’s question, the employee just stared at him blankly.
The other employees also glared at the two, heedless of the blood dripping from their eyes.
Silence ensued. Feeling a cold sweat trickle down his spine, Ian mentally mapped out an escape route in case things went wrong.
Then, the employee’s face brightened.
“I’ll get the masks for you! Could you wait here just a moment?”
“……Yes. We’ll wait.”
Ian answered with a sigh of relief.
“Haha!”
“Ahaha!”
Only then did the employees start moving toward the square again. The murderous intent they’d just felt scattered like a lie, and the streetlamp employee handed Ian and Yuna two cat masks she had obtained from somewhere.
“Put them on and come! We can’t be held responsible for any disadvantages if you don’t!”
With those words, she dragged her feet and walked toward the square.
“…….”
Once her back was no longer in sight, Ian leaned against the wall and let out a suppressed breath. Yuna also stood beside him, breathing heavily as if she’d aged ten years.
“Th-that was dangerous……”
“……Tell me about it.”
It goes without saying, but being a wizard doesn’t make you invincible against monsters. They might handle one or two, but with dozens of creatures glaring at them, their legs couldn’t help but give out. A head-on breakthrough was impossible.
If they had been fleeing, the situation would have been better. They’d only need to worry about those chasing from behind, and if they minimized combat, escaping wouldn’t be too difficult.
But when hostility was openly displayed right in front of them like just now, even running away was hard.
With a monster planted firmly right in front and others pushing in from behind, how could they escape?
If they had continued to resist, they’d have been torn apart on the spot like that Bureau agent.
‘There was a rule to follow the employees’ words, but can we not refuse even a trivial order like this?’
He had expected this place to be difficult, but it was far harder than that. He really missed the times when he was just smacking vampires around.
“……Once this is over, I should take a break until the new year.”
Ian murmured that as he looked down at the mask.
It was an ordinary mask with nothing special about it. Though it looked a bit grotesque, there was no shamanistic treatment or curse on it. Putting it on wouldn’t cause any problems.
“Let’s go, Han Yuna.”
“Uh, yeah……”
Ian put on his mask. Yuna also placed her staff in her guitar case, then donned a pink mask and joined the moving procession.
A moment later, the two arrived at the square.
Boom! Boom!
Blood-red fireworks burst from the fountain and climbed into the sky, drawing a clown figure.
All the gathered employees wore masks of unknown identity. There were a few animal masks like Ian and Yuna’s, but most wore masks that looked like grotesquely carved human skin masks.
“……Th-that’s real human skin.”
“…….”
The two watched the square from a spot slightly apart from the gathered monsters.
Soon, colorful mist began to spread from the center of the square.
“Waaaaah!”
“Ahaha! Hahahahahaha!!!”
Even though it was only smoke, the gathered employees burst into cheers and laughter.
He wondered if it was laughing gas, but the smell was quite ordinary. It didn’t make him laugh either.
Ian idly fingered the revolver inside his coat and quietly watched the parade.
Zzzzt.
From within the dispersing smoke, clowns began to crawl out.
They looked like clowns a child had assembled from human bodies.
All of them wore grins, dancing with light steps as they looked up at the sky. Music played in time to their comical movements.
‘Nothing special so far. I hope it stays this way until the end.’
Just as he thought that, a clown snapped his fingers in the air. At the same time, a slender skewer appeared in his hand.
A human was impaled on the end of the skewer.
Not a grotesquely twisted human, but a pure human, as is.
But perhaps because he was already dead, the pierced body didn’t even twitch. Only blood trickled down the skewer.
“This is our special guest who succeeded in being enlightened! Overwhelmed by our theme park’s service, the guest specially allowed himself to be used as fertilizer!”
The clown spoke. He gradually shortened the skewer until he was eye to eye with the corpse, then suddenly planted a light kiss on the corpse’s lips.
The corpse that touched his lips bubbled and boiled, then all over its body, smiling faces bloomed like flower buds.
The corpse, now forced with dozens of eyes and dozens of mouths, opened its eyes wide. Then it opened all its mouths wide and began to vomit organs.
“Here!”
The clown picked up the fallen entrails and shouted in a delighted voice.
“Let us use every last bit of food our guest has provided to make the theme park even greater!”
The moment he spoke, the employees rushed like beasts toward the fallen organs.
The clown chuckled at the ravenous sight and pulled out dozens more skewers. As if it were only natural, corpses hung from those as well.
“……This place is psychologically harmful.”
“Yeah……”
From a distance, Ian and Yuna watched the dismembered corpses, the employees showering in blood, and the tearing organs. Fortunately, no creature was forcing them to eat the flesh.
“Thank you for enjoying today’s parade! This has been everyone’s clown!”
Soon, the parade ended. The clown exited in a comical fashion, and the employees left to return to their posts.
Ian stared at their retreating backs for a moment, then removed his mask and turned to Yuna.
“Let’s go too.”
“W-wait a moment.”
Yuna answered without removing her mask, staring at the stairs leading into the square.
“Th-there’s something coming up from over there……”
“……What?”
“Ah, the Management Bureau!”
At Yuna’s words, Ian hastily put his mask back on.
He instinctively threw his grimoire into a nearby bush.
Turning his head, he saw men and women in suits climbing the stairs. Among them was the agent Ian had seen at the convenience store.
All of them looked tense.
The woman with a sword at her waist seemed a bit better off, but the rest couldn’t hide their nervousness. It was written all over their faces.
‘Even Management Bureau agents find this kind of space unnerving.’
Apparently, even the Bureau considered this place an extremely tricky anomaly.
Indeed, it was absurdly vast, had entry conditions that restricted exploration, and even survivors were hard to find, so they had no choice but to see it as tough.
Until they figured out how to conquer it, they could only respond passively from their end.
It wasn’t particularly important to Ian. He wasn’t a Bureau agent, nor was he in a cooperative relationship with them.
He could infer their circumstances, but there was no reason to care.
What mattered was whether their presence would help resolve the request.
“…….”
They were already aware of each other. The Bureau agents were staring at the masked Ian and Yuna, and the two wizards were also blankly staring back at the agents.
Now that it had come to this, blindly running away wasn’t a good option.
If he didn’t want to openly advertise ‘I’m a wizard,’ now was the time to act appropriately. In an already difficult space, if he ended up confronting not only the monsters but also the Bureau, things would clearly get even more complicated.
So it would be best to deceive them by pretending to be ordinary people caught up in the anomaly, with the mask not coming off.
Ian organized his thoughts, cleared his throat, and glanced at Yuna.
“……Han Yuna.”
“Uh, yeah. I think I had the same thought……”
She trailed off and let out a fake cough.
The moment Ian confirmed Yuna’s slight nod, he shouted toward the Bureau agents.
“P-please save us!”