– What a surprise! The moment of a difficult choice has arrived, Friend .
Braun’s cheerful voice echoed in my ear.
– So, Mr. Roe Deer, you have only 10 passes in hand, but there are 45 poor candidates who must fall into that wretched altar of rotting flesh to suffer. What criteria will you use to select the 45 sacrifices and then choose the 10 lucky ones to be spared?
– A trial? A vote? A review process? A lottery? Oh, it all sounds terribly unfortunate…
Braun’s voice grew more and more excited.
– But isn’t that tension, pressure, suspense, relief, joy, and despair the essence of a great show?
– This is the ultimate moment. Ah! Look over there—a panelist is speaking!
At that moment—
“It doesn’t matter, does it?”
Assistant Manager Jin Nasol spoke up.“Assistant Manager?”
“Whether there are 10 painkillers or just one, what difference does it make? Just grab 45 people and throw them out. That’s all.”
Her tone implied she couldn’t understand why this was even up for debate.
She turned toward me and added—
“Isn’t that what you set everything up for in the first place?”
Click.
The assistant manager lightly pushed the door to Car 1 open.
“…! Assistant Manager…”
“Look.”
Through the slightly opened door, I saw the passengers in Car 2, waving and offering concerned smiles.
The hundreds of friendly people, creating an atmosphere where everything was progressing smoothly without friction.
“Well, this turned out better than I thought. I figured all this would be a waste of effort, but now it seems like it’ll make things easier.”
“……”
“After all, the people on this train don’t really understand what’s happening, do they? They won’t figure it out until after they’ve fallen.”
…It was the truth.
I could grab anyone right now and say, ‘You’ve qualified as one of the 45, and it’s your turn to jump out.’
They wouldn’t even know they were supposed to receive painkillers before falling.
They’d simply jump without preparation… into what felt like hours of endless torture.
“And if it doesn’t end at the ninth altar, we can just keep making them jump until no more altars appear.”
“……”
“So, let’s start throwing them now—”
“That’s not possible.”
“…!”
Someone else answered.
It was Supervisor Dolphin.
She looked up at Assistant Manager Jin Nasol and firmly replied—
“It’s not possible.”
“Really?”
Jin Nasol’s temple twitched, but she was skilled enough to give the other person a chance to explain.
“Then what do you suggest?”
Supervisor Dolphin, staying true to her nature, offered a solution that’s very like her.
“Just pick out the worst people and throw them out.”
“Are you crazy? Why would we go through the hassle of doing that?”
At that moment—
<marquee behavior="scroll" direction="left" scrollamount="7">To reach Tamra, offer a sacrifice.</marquee>
marquee.addEventListener('finish', function() { loopCount++; if (loopCount >= 84) { marquee.stop(); // Stops after 84 loops } });
“It’s time.”
Jin Nasol strode toward the exit of Car 1.
Supervisor Dolphin’s eyes gleamed, and her hand twitched as if ready to act… W-Wait just a second!
“Wait!”
I quickly stepped in front of the assistant manager.
“What.”
…It felt like standing on the edge of a cliff.
‘Stay calm. Be cautious.’
I swallowed hard and spoke—
“The supervisor’s suggestion makes sense. We shouldn’t just tell people to jump blindly.”
“……”
“What I mean is, there’s a valid reason to do it this way!”
“A reason?”
“Yes.”
I took a deep breath.
Stay calm.
I had to reflect what I knew from the narrative story into my argument naturally.
“Assistant Manager, when you went out the window, you heard the voice at the altar filled with rotting flesh, didn’t you? The one saying things like, ‘Abandon your sins’.”
Cast away your sins.
Tear off as much as your sins deserve.
The strange, overwhelming resonance that even Happy Maker couldn’t block out.
Without it, I would’ve been clawing at my skin, burning with pain.
“And?”
“If the voice is that powerful, it must be deeply connected to this phenomenon. I think that in this Darkness, the keyword is ‘sin’.”
“……”
“The keyword we need to clear this.”
Jin Nasol stopped walking.
“Keep talking.”
“Yes.”
I swallowed again.
“Isn’t it strange from the beginning? Why do the sacrifices wake up on the train again after falling? If they’ve been offered as sacrifices, they shouldn’t return.”
“They come back messed up, though.”
“Yes, but that’s because they follow the voice telling them to ‘tear off as much as their sins deserve’. The pain drives them insane.”
I connected two things that had been vaguely lumped together over 14 loops.
“So, the sacrifice isn’t the person itself—it’s the ‘flesh’ they offer in proportion to their sins, isn’t it?”
“…!”
Haven’t I gone over this before?
When the cult madness spread, passengers from all the cars killed each other, held deranged rituals, and tossed corpses out the windows.
If you were to count the number of people who had fallen to their deaths, the ninth altar should’ve been easily surpassed by now.
And yet, despite looping hundreds of times, this nightmare never ended.
The reason was simple.
“The people themselves are not the sacrifices. It’s their sins they’re offering at the altar.”
“……”
“And the people return.”
After completing the offering, the person always walks back through the altar and returns to the starting point of the train.
That’s how the loop resets.