GDCG c287

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Chapter 287

 

My mind felt blank.

Beyond the hallway-side window of the classroom stood the monster. That monster was the embodiment of miserable, skin-crawling horror, a grotesque mass of tangled human bodies. And the gaze of the upper torso lodged within the split-open center—was directed here.

The owner of that gaze.

The leader of Black Tortoise Team 1.

The Elder’s ruined upper body.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

Why was she here?

As though answering that question, realization struck me.

‘It was Segwang Special City.’

The ghost story where the Elder lost her upper body—was here.

Among the agents who had unofficially entered Segwang Special City while on leave—was Team Leader Park Hongrim.

And the one who used her dokkaebi fire to create the talisman—

‘It was the Team Leader.’

Perhaps she had even “lost” that upper body intentionally.

Using the library checkout slip from Hanbit Library to hastily create the talisman in exchange for sacrificing her own torso.

‘And the teachers lying on the fifth floor too….’

Perhaps they had performed some kind of ritual to protect the students. Like a defensive formation.

But then something went wrong.

The paper talisman and glass lantern buried in the backyard had been damaged…

And that was what turned her into this.

 Now it ends faster faster even faster

There you are

The form of contamination.

It was getting closer.

Students in school uniforms fled through the hallway only to be crushed to death. An appearance that had come too early, breaking the order of the game.

As though even the structure of a horror game could no longer contain the invasion of the impure thing.

The hallway twisted as it became covered in flesh.

The school lost its shape and was devoured.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

It was coming.

It was coming, it was almost her—

Puhk.

I turned my head.

Inside the classroom, Lee Jaheon was shooting people.

'!'

More than half of their necks had already been snapped as they died.

A reflexive chill crawled up my spine—then I realized.

This was what I had asked him to do.

Before they were killed by the teacher…

‘We have to kill everyone first and end this.’

Like being doused in cold water, my thoughts snapped back into focus.

This was a nightmare. This was a dream. If you died, you woke up. Don’t forget that. But if you died to that teacher, you were erased from reality—No! At this point, even the structure of the horror game itself might disappear…!

Quickly.

“Agents,”

I immediately grabbed the people beside me again and whispered.

“Agent Haegum, just give us the glass lantern. And everyone, take a name tag and hurry up and kill yoursel—”

But at the same time, I realized it.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

These people would never do that.

If they were the kind of people capable of such a thing, they would never have become agents in the first place. And even if they were willing to follow the Disaster Management Bureau’s recent policy of prioritizing agents’ lives…

“Grapes.”

After seeing that thing, they could never choose that option.

“I have one difficult favor to ask. …Can you help get the people out of here? Even if it’s hard, save at least a few of them.”

Wait.

“We’ll stay behind and watch Bronze finish carving the talisman strokes into the glass lantern. Got it? …Noona Haegum.”

“Here.”

Agent Haegum lifted the glass lantern and placed it atop the desk.

The dokkaebi fire drifting out from the lantern trembled fearfully before wrapping itself around Agent Haegum’s neck and disappearing into her arms.

“Grapes, hurry! We’re out of time!”

Barely managing to steady myself, I handed Agent Bronze the shattered lantern I had brought from the backyard.

“What about the backyard—”

“We’ll handle that ourselves. Just go!”

And then, in the next instant—

There is no graduation ceremony

…On the hallway window.

It’s coming here it’s coming here it infiltrates it ends it can’t be sealed inside a game it’s coming here

It was pressed directly against the glass, staring at us.

A human face with half its head blown away.

The upper body of Black Tortoise Team 1’s leader swayed as it peered into the classroom through the window.

“…Hong unnie.”

Who is Hong unnie?

Found you.

Who is Haegum?

"......."

Beside me, I saw Agent Haegum’s hand gripping her sword tightly….

And then—

Fwoosh.

Dokkaebi fire burst from Agent Haegum’s body and enveloped the classroom.

A deceptive illusion woven from shadows and blue flames.

Why  is it still here? Why is it still here? Why won’t it release? Why won’t it release? Why won’t it release?

Thud. Thud.

I could see the figure wandering outside the classroom, searching for the door within the shadows.

“Kids. Your team leader became an Elder and is safely at Blue Hope Hospital.”

"......."

“No matter what that thing says… it’s a supernatural disaster. Understood?”

"......."

“I asked if you understood.” 

“Yes.”

Grinding his teeth, Agent Bronze lowered his gaze toward the glass lantern and began searching for meaningful remaining strokes within the shattered glass. 

But the dokkaebi trick spread by Agent Haegum was already flickering. 

It’s unraveling.

Even a stronger dokkaebi trick could not hold long against ‘that thing,’ which had already grown accustomed to them.

“Noona, what about the Four Tiger Sword—”

“The conditions don’t match. I can’t use it.”

Then Agent Haegum urgently spoke to me and Lee Jaheon.

“It’s about to break. Wait by the back door. Once you get out, hurry and send the people back!”

The next moment—

It unraveled.

Darkness swallowed the shadows created by the dokkaebi trick.

"......."

Thud. Thud.

Footsteps. 

It came it’s here now faster faster

The front door opened.

“Grapes, now!”

I bolted out of the classroom through the door.

"…!"

Thud. Between the door I had barely slipped through and the monster, a “teacher’s” arm with a screaming head attached to it slammed downward.

“You crazy bastard, not there—the back door—!”

But while running, I shouted.

“Teacher!”

"...!"

“I’m going to conduct the graduation ceremony myself! Try stopping me if you can!”

“Hey!”

I was certain.

‘They’ve already decided to die.’

If left alone, those agents would gladly sacrifice themselves. So…

‘I have to lure it away.’

I turned and ran. At the same time, Lee Jaheon followed after me, forcibly tearing away the “teacher’s” hand with absurd strength…

‘Crazy!’

It wasn’t working.

The teacher’s arm regenerated as though bursting apart and instead tried to swallow Lee Jaheon’s hand.

Like the flesh covering the hallway.

That meant physical attacks were no longer effective against it.

‘Damn it!’

I dug through my pocket and threw the first thing my hand found.

Something I had brought just in case.

‘Besides, Section Chief already gave it back to me anyway!’

One of the glass marbles I had received like a reward item after clearing the graduation ceremony last time. Like the torn talisman, the character 護 (Protection) was engraved upon it.

And the instant the marble I threw struck the “teacher”—

"...!"

Tok.

The marble bounced off the teacher and rolled away, glowing faintly blue as it cast shadows across the flesh and the floor.

Within those shadows, the appearance of a normal school hallway briefly emerged…

Then vanished.

"...!"

But during that brief moment, Lee Jaheon tore himself free from the teacher’s flesh.

“Run away!”

“Yes.”

And then he followed the direction I was heading.

‘Don’t come with me!’

But there was no more time to argue, so I simply ran upward like a madman.

Thud. Thud.

‘I have to lure it away.’

I can do this.

I’ve done it once before.

Before this entire school gets devoured by the darkness of Segwang Special City or Hanbit Library.

While it’s still progressing in the form of a horror game.

‘The graduation ceremony…!’

If we reach the ending, the 'monster' will be temporarily repelled.

‘Then we’ll at least buy time to make another talisman!’

Right. As for placing it in the backyard, I could ask any other student to do it instead of me…

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

I threw another glass marble behind me.

Every time it almost caught up.

And when it looked like the marble would miss, Lee Jaheon would intercept it midair and hurl it back at impossible speed.

But when thrown from Lee Jaheon’s hand, the marbles produced no special effect. They simply carried insane physical force like bullets.

‘Why?’

Because I was the one who cleared it?

But I had no time to dwell on the question.

It’s here.

The next moment, I barely managed to step onto the fifth floor.

“Huff.”

Just as I caught my breath and tried to rush forward…

The sheer horror froze my body.

‘Damn it.’

The fifth floor. The straight hallway leading to the auditorium already looked like the inside of some creature’s organs.

The traces of talismans that had once covered the walls were completely gone.

And in every empty space where the talismans had been tightly packed writing had been revealed…. 

Date of implementation

We found a way to protect the students.

One of the supernatural phenomena discovered in Hanbit Library uses a school as its setting, so we decided to make use of it.

This should let us hold out until rescue arrives.

There weren’t enough agents remaining in the school to perform the ritual, so we received assistance from the teachers.

We decided to fall asleep.

Until we can endure no longer.

I barely managed to keep running down the hallway.

Day 1 elapsed

It succeeded.

The problem is that my lower body has disappeared.

It seems headquarters’ rescue protocol activated and recovered the rest of my body. During that process, the dokkaebi fire also escaped this place.

I’m glad the creature got out.

Only my upper body remains bound here as the price of the ritual protecting the school.

In the end, a crack formed in the center of the talisman.

But it should be fine as long as I hold onto it.

Because my upper body remains here.

My heart pounded unstably.

Day 12 elapsed

It is safe. The children are peaceful.

Day 23 elapsed

It seems we may endure for quite a long time.

Watching the sleeping people, I too have begun falling asleep more often.

The neatly written words continued intermittently like that.

Calm, organized language—almost like maintenance records—was written across the contaminated walls, half-buried and worn away, utterly mismatched with the corruption surrounding them.

But halfway down the fifth-floor corridor—

Don’t

The writing changed.

Itfounditnononono

Itfoundthebackyardnonono!Howdiditgetin?Whytoastudentthatcan’tblackshadowinsideentered-entered-no-the-game-is-progressingtheprotectionisbreaking

Jagged handwriting filled with agony covered the entire wall in chaotic layers. All of it remained like a brand, untouched by the flesh surrounding it.

And then—

Suddenly, the writing regained composure.

Day ■■■ elapsed

We will use ‘Within the Black Shadow.’

Until we are all consumed as protective wards.

Until the rescue team arrives.

We send the signal and endure.

No matter what.

But that was the last of the neat handwriting.

From there onward, the text twisted into forms increasingly difficult to read.

The closer it came to the auditorium, the stranger the phrases became. Subjects warped. The writing muttered darkly about how to swallow the school whole, how to unravel the dokkaebi fire protecting it.

Waiting for the time. Waiting for the time….

And near the entrance to the auditorium, upon the final wall—

It all came undone

Goosebumps crawled to the top of my scalp.

But I had to move.

‘I have to.’

Breathing hard, I grabbed the auditorium doors. They should have been firmly sealed shut. Instead, the locks had already rusted away and been violently torn apart, hanging open uselessly. I seized the doors and shoved them open.

And then I saw it.

The auditorium had already collapsed.

There was no podium. No chairs. No graduating students still alive.

Only ruins consumed by grotesque flesh.

“.......”

“Mr. Roe Deer.”

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

There could be no graduation ceremony.

It was already over.

“Do you require euthanasia?”

I turned toward Lee Jaheon.

Toward my former superior, strangely appearing as a boy wearing a lizard mask.

‘Can we still escape?’

Hadn’t we already missed even the timing to escape through death?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

It arrived at the auditorium.

Thegameisover

I looked upon the thing once called 'teacher.'

The upper body of Team Leader Park Hongrim, completely consumed by the impure thing she had tried to repel, fused together with the forms of agents and teachers.

No longer something that could even be called contamination.

The supernatural disaster itself beyond description.

A being beginning to shed the framework of the horror game.

Foundyouall

The torn fragment of talisman attached to the upper torso had already been blackened and corroded beyond recognition, even the strokes impossible to identify anymore.

Then—

Clack.

With the sudden crack of gunfire, part of the monster’s flesh recoiled slightly.

A bullet.

“Grapes!”

I turned my head.

“You insane bastard.”

Agent Choi had followed us all the way to the fifth floor and was firing a glass handgun at ‘that thing.’

But he didn’t yell at me. He didn’t tell me to run.

As though he already knew it was too late.

Whoisthat?

The thing struck by the bullets did not even flinch.

“These aren’t my organs anyway.”

Agent Choi fired several more shots. But Park Hongrim’s upper body merely turned its head and calmly approached him.

Stepping on the bullets that hit it and dropped uselessly to the floor.

WhoisChoi■■?

‘It doesn’t work anymore.’

Reflexively, I tried to run toward him— But then realized my legs would not move.

“…!”

The flesh on the floor had grabbed my feet.

No—it hadn’t grabbed them.

Flesh was swelling outward from my own feet, connecting me to the floor.

Thump.

Something came out from my eyes and mouth.

Poured out.

Consumed.

‘Within the Black Shadow’ was over.

Thump.

Without even becoming fragments of pixels—we would be completely devoured by that impure thing that had overtaken the school, and this would all en—

Jingle.

“Let’s set off fireworks.”

I lifted my head.

Once again, beyond the auditorium—Agent Haegum was using dokkaebi fire….

Jingle.

Agent Choi shook the bell hanging from the end of the ritual blade.

Wait. Everything stretched out unbearably long.

As though I could feel each fleeting instant.

Hidden within the shadows of the dokkaebi fire and the sound of the bell, we were granted the briefest sliver of breathing room.

A trick lasting only a moment.

Flutter.

In the place where the dokkaebi fire burned—

I saw Agent Haegum’s empty right sleeve.

“Agent….”

“Here.”

The agent who had sacrificed her arm for this fleeting moment spoke calmly.

“Bronze is carving the strokes.”

“.......”

“Let’s think about what we can still do. Quickly.”

Something we could do.

To buy time.

‘The one thing that worked, even slightly…!’

I pulled out the ‘Protection’ glass marble from my pocket—the reward from clearing the game.

“It only worked for a moment, but this….”

…….

Wait.

We will use ‘Within the Black Shadow.’

Until we are all consumed.

Until the rescue team arrives.

We send the signal and endure.

If this was a signal for the rescue team—

‘Team Leader Park Hongrim… believed rescue was possible.’

She thought there had been a way to reverse the situation.

And if they sent a signal—

‘Then within that signal… there must be a hint about how to rescue them.’

I looked down at the glass marble again.

It had definitely worked.

If this was a hint for rescue—

Then its proper method of use was….

“Agent.”

I raised my head.

“This is ammunition for the glass handgun.”

—A transparent marble that looked exactly as though it were meant to be loaded into a glass handgun.

If it was an item meant for rescue team agents—

Then there would definitely be an intended way to use it.

“Ammunition?”

Agent Choi’s expression changed. Immediately, I tossed the remaining glass marbles toward him. The moment he caught them and began loading them into the glass handgun— 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

The fleeting instant ended.

Above Agent Choi’s head, a hand tipped with a screaming face came crashing down. The agent barely dodged…

“Then here it is.”

He fired into the auditorium floor.

With a cracking blast, several ‘護’ bullets fired from the handgun burrowed into the flesh-covered ground as though that was exactly what they had been meant to do, embedding themselves while emitting auspicious light.

Positioned in perfect formation, they linked together just as they had in Jisan Village, changing the surrounding space.

According to Black Tortoise Team’s sealing procedures.

First. Purification of the ritual space.

Drive away the environment where impure things thrive.

The auditorium revealed itself under the purification blessing carried by the bullets.

The original, intact form of the school auditorium emerged.

“…!”

There were still no students, so the graduation ceremony could not proceed. But at least it could still be confined as a being within the horror game.

A state where 'exorcism' could still work.

‘But what do we do from here?’

The next stage was restraint and sealing….

“Agent Grapes!”

“…!!”

I turned my head.

Something dazzlingly silver arced toward me. Reflexively, I caught it. 

A blade without an edge.

“Catch it!”

The Four Tiger Sword.

Agent Haegum’s weapon.

“I’ll bet everything on you truly being an agent. Hold it with both hands and raise it as though straightening your spirit and body!”

Why?

But at the same time, the answer struck me like a blow.

The conditions for using the Four Tiger Sword.

—When an evil and impure being in the shape of a calamity or ghost directly invades.

That thing was an impure being invading the school.

And I—

Was now a student of this school.

“Recite the sword formula! Repeat after me!”

Heaven descends with essence (精)

And earth lends its spirit (精)

I raised the sword.

Something unbearable stood upright within my grasp.

The sun and moon take form

The mountains and waters take shape

As thunder and lightning surge forth

“Hold on!”

The order of the world

I govern within myself

My palms felt as though they were burning away. Something impossible to endure scorched both my hands. My index and ring fingers shattered.

But I still raised it higher.

To strike down evil as vast as mountains

And sever it in righteous judgment

I brought the sword down.

 

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