Chapter 05
Park Seong-gyeon’s lips trembled as he muttered in sheer terror.
“W-What… What is this…? Why is this happening…?”
He stumbled backwards, trying to avoid the system window floating in front of him, only for his back to hit the wall.
Even though he should have known physical force wouldn’t affect it, he frantically waved his hands, trying to make the window disappear.
Pretending not to know anything, I approached him.
“Are you alright?”
“Gah!”
The trembling Park Seong-gyeon let out a startled cry and wildly swung his hand at me.
Having already anticipated his reaction, I dodged his attack by the narrowest of margins.
“Second Lieutenant Park Seong-gyeon!”
Mo Hae-in shouted, her eyes blazing with fury.
But Park Seong-gyeon was no longer in his right mind. Screaming at the top of his lungs, he charged straight at her.
“AAAAAAAH!!”
Normally, Mo Hae-in could have easily avoided him.
But at the moment, she was already busy dodging Tarantella’s attacks while weaving through the falling musical-note gimmicks.
“Ugh…!”
She clenched her teeth.
Blood seeped from between them, trickling down the corner of her mouth.
Princess Tarantella’s toy leg pierced straight through her abdomen.
Suppressing the agony, Mo Hae-in swung the Black Moon Blade.
A long gash opened across Park Seong-gyeon’s chest.
He collapsed onto the floor.
Before he could recover, the toy musical notes raining from the ceiling repeatedly slammed into him, leaving deep dents all over his body.
As the discordant melody continued, Park Seong-gyeon screamed.
His body gradually turned into a rainbow of vivid colours.
Then—
Crash.
He crumbled into a pile of toy blocks.
He had died.
He still has three Hearts, so he’ll revive.
Since we hadn’t activated another save point on the way here, he would probably respawn back in the lobby.
“Damn it…”
Mo Hae-in looked at me with shaking eyes.
She, too, would soon be judged dead and lose one of her Hearts.
Left alone in front of the boss with nothing but a civilian, her eyes were filled with despair, frustration, and helplessness.
She spoke rapidly, almost like a machine gun.
“Listen carefully, civilian! Dying doesn’t mean you’re really dead! You’ll revive, so when you come back, don’t move from where you respawn! I’ll—!”
She couldn’t finish.
Her body collapsed into a heap of toy blocks.
Seeing her worry about me made me feel a pang of guilt.
I’m sorry, Captain Mo Hae-in.
When you come back, I’ll make it up to you.
Once revived, she would prioritise protecting the civilian over chasing after Park Seong-gyeon.
Calculating how long it would take her to realise something was wrong and return from the lobby to the laboratory, I slowly looked up.
Princess Tarantella was staring down at me.
Ding!
A system window appeared.
◆ Main Quest: Calm Down the Angry Princess Tarantella
All of your companions have died.
You are alone.
There is no one left but you to face the furious spider.
You want to calm Princess Tarantella.
To do so, you must win this battle.
The boss’s target had now switched to me.
Musical notes poured down from the ceiling as all eight of her legs lunged forward.
The barrage of attacks came relentlessly.
But they weren’t difficult to follow.
I’d cleared this section countless times in the game without taking a single death.
My body’s moving well, too.
Within the Trial, players were granted the minimum physical abilities necessary to clear it.
It felt strangely refreshing to have a body that moved exactly as I intended.
“—!”
Princess Tarantella let out a sharp screech.
She hadn’t landed a single hit.
Phase Two had begun.
The raining musical notes disappeared.
Instead, Tarantella began spraying strands of yarn-like spider webs throughout the room.
The webs drastically restricted the player’s movement.
If you got caught, you were completely immobilised and would be struck down immediately, resulting in instant death.
I wonder if the bug still works.
I didn’t have much time.
I intended to use a game exploit to clear the fight quickly.
Of course, the chances of success were slim.
It had worked in the game.
Whether it would work here was another matter entirely.
I dashed straight toward Tarantella.
The key was moving before the web network was fully formed.
Using her eight legs as stepping stones, I leapt upwards until I reached the top of her head.
Ugh.
Barely a hand’s breadth from where I landed was a mouth packed with countless razor-sharp teeth.
If I failed…
I’d fall straight into it.
But I still have Hearts left, don’t I?
Gathering all my strength, I jumped toward the darkness beyond the hole in the ceiling.
Pitch black.
My body reached its highest point before slowly beginning to fall.
A faint chill crept across my skin.
The thought of the pain awaiting me if I failed sent a cold shiver racing down my spine.
A brief fall.
My feet touched solid ground.
“Haa…”
I let out the breath I’d been holding and looked down.
Having lost sight of its target, Tarantella stumbled around aimlessly before firing webs in every direction.
The Phase Two exploit involved hiding on the invisible platform inside the hole in the ceiling.
If you waited there—a bugged platform that shouldn’t have existed—Princess Tarantella would lose track of the player, begin behaving erratically, and eventually trigger the player’s victory.
As if broken, Tarantella continued shooting webs at the same spot.
Then all eight of her legs rose simultaneously.
She spat out a cocoon.
The mouth that had split into four sections slowly closed again, returning to its familiar smiling face.
“…”
The sound of a small child crying echoed through the room.
Like a discarded toy spider collapsing, Tarantella crumpled to the ground.
The boss battle was over.
You have defeated Princess Tarantella!
I used Tarantella as a foothold and climbed back down.
The cheerful chiptune music had changed into a gloomy melody.
The cocoon Tarantella had spat out crumbled into dust, revealing the pieces of a doll.
They were the prince doll’s arms and legs.
I collected the pieces and stored them in my inventory.
“…”
Throughout all of this, Tarantella didn’t move at all.
Just as I took out a Nut Candy and gently slid it toward the giant spider—
One of its legs suddenly twitched.
The little pincer at the end of the leg clicked weakly as it tried to grab the candy, but it kept missing.
I unwrapped the Nut Candy and placed it near what I assumed was its mouth.
The smiling face split open slightly before swallowing the candy.
The exhausted Tarantella immediately seemed to regain its strength and slowly lifted itself up.
Before I knew it, the chiptune music had also returned to a calmer, more comforting tune.
Tarantella looked at me and raised one of its legs.
Then the toy spider climbed the wall with its mechanical legs and slowly disappeared into the darkness above the ceiling.
Left behind where it had been was a yarn cocoon.
I already got the doll parts, though?
Puzzled, I picked up the cocoon.
The yarn unraveled, revealing a tiny candy inside.
Bolt Candy: Clank, clank… Upgrading toy…
It was Bolt Candy—the hidden secret item of Happy Smile Factory.
Bolt Candy temporarily increased both attack power and physical abilities by a tremendous amount.
Unlike Nut Candy, it could be used even without equipping toy limbs.
Only one could normally be obtained during a playthrough of HSF, and only by completing a secret quest.
It was also the hidden item I had originally planned to find before Mo Hae-in returned to the laboratory.
But Tarantella had just… given me a Bolt Candy.
It was the first time I’d ever seen a boss hand over a hidden item.
The toys in Happy Smile Factory hated adults.
Even on the True Ending route, they merely tolerated the player rather than genuinely liking them.
Receiving a gift like this…
That simply wasn’t supposed to happen.
Come to think of it, Sad Smiley also asked me to become its owner.
The invitation to stay together forever had been terrifying…
But if you thought about it, it was still a sign of affection.
I pocketed the Bolt Candy, picked up the prince doll from the floor, and reattached its limbs.
After placing the completed doll into my inventory, I also collected another triangular flask filled with rainbow-colored liquid.
As I walked, I sank into thought.
What if there’s another ending besides the True Ending?
Looking back over everything…
There was only one difference.
Sad Smiley had been stained with my blood.
In the game, unless it was part of a scripted event, items never became bloodstained just because the player was injured.
First things first.
I’d worked hard to create an opportunity to separate from Park Sung-gyeon and Mo Hae-in.
This wasn’t the time to get lost in thought.
Leaving the laboratory, I headed toward the next stage—the warehouse.
After scanning the prince doll’s eyes, the warehouse door unlocked, and I stepped inside.
There was a hidden area within the warehouse.
Normally, you had to gather pages from a sketchbook scattered throughout Happy Smile Factory, craft an item from them, and solve the clues before you could discover this place.
The sketchbook pages read as follows:
Unknown Page #1
To save the princess who had fallen ill, the prince summoned an evil demon.
Unknown Page #2
With the demon’s power, the princess regained her health! But she became a terrible monster.
Unknown Page #3
Locked inside the tower, the princess lived forever. She hated the monster she had become and wished to die.
Unknown Page #4
But no matter what she did, she could not die.
Forever…
Unknown Page #5
Enraged, the princess pushed the prince from the tower.
The prince shattered into pieces and died.
Watching the broken prince, the princess envied him.
Once all five pages were collected, they transformed into a single item.
Unknown Storybook: A crude storybook drawn with crayons in a sketchbook. It appears to have been made by a child.
And one final page appeared at the end of the storybook.
I want to die I want to die I want to die I want to die kill me kill me kill me die die die
It was the story that lay at the heart of Happy Smile Factory’s main plot.
But since I already knew every clue contained in the storybook, there was no need to waste time collecting all the pages throughout the factory.
Instead, I looted the symbolic items mentioned in the story—a crown and a tarot card depicting a tower—from inside the warehouse.
Then I walked over to an old cabinet tucked away in a dark corner where it was easy to overlook.
When I pulled on the tall metal cabinet’s door, it merely rattled.
It wouldn’t open.
It seems to be locked…
That was the system message displayed in the game.
However, if you stubbornly tried opening the door more than ten times—
The cabinet door has broken!
The game would display that notification before opening it.
This time, instead of a notification, I simply heard the lock snap apart.
The moment the door swung open, countless doll parts tumbled out.
Every single one belonged to dismembered prince dolls.
After clearing the pieces away, I placed the completed prince doll inside the cabinet along with all the items I’d gathered from both the laboratory and the warehouse.
Then I shut the door.
A brilliant light leaked through the gaps in the cabinet.
After waiting for the glow to fade, I opened it again.
Everything else had disappeared.
Only a single Bolt Candy remained inside.
Now I have two Bolt Candies.
I’d never possessed two of them before.
Wondering how best to use them, I summoned the system.
Park Sung-gyeon’s status.
His status window showed no major changes besides having used one Nut Candy.
Come to think of it, earlier, when I’d sent him a system message, I had been able to see his status window.
Normally, other people’s system windows were invisible.
It was probably because I had created that message myself.
But if I really am the system, shouldn’t I be able to see everything in the first place?
The moment that reasonable question crossed my mind, a familiar rectangular window appeared.
Your abilities are insufficient.
Apparently, it couldn’t even be bothered giving a more detailed answer.
Still, I’d learned what I wanted to know, so I ignored the system’s lack of enthusiasm.
While waiting for Mo Hae-in to arrive, I prepared a few things in advance.
Beginning in the warehouse, the next stage featured a running sequence.
The building would collapse around you while falling debris rained down, so I cleared away the obstacles beforehand.
Just as I moved the last chair out of the way, Mo Hae-in appeared.
“Haa… How did you…?”
She was breathing heavily, as though she’d sprinted here with every ounce of strength she had.
Standing at the warehouse entrance, gripping the doorframe, she stared at me from head to toe.
After confirming that I was completely unharmed, she clenched her teeth and strode toward me.
The Black Moon Spear was already in her hand.
The black obsidian spearhead stopped just beneath my chin.
Looking up at me, Mo Hae-in asked,
“Civilian.”
“Yes?”
“You can see the system windows… can’t you?”
