Chapter 162
Chapter 162
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 162
Chapter Title: Even If I Fall into a Ghost Story, I Have to Go to Work
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Thinking about it rationally, the sequence of events was incredibly strange.
The sudden, violent catastrophe that had occurred when a Disaster Management Bureau agent forcibly boarded a single infected child onto the escape pod previously.
Acute molting instantly progresses. Grotesque ulcers explosively sprout across the entire body, and all vital signs are catastrophically lost.
The biological contamination spreads rapidly, inevitably leading to a gruesome death.
If this was merely the escape pod's automated defense system attempting to eliminate internal threats, the reaction was far too... deliberate.
It was too malicious. It felt exactly like the direct actions of the infection source itself.
Yes.
It made far more logical sense to interpret that specific incident as the direct doing of the 'Biological Disaster—Mermaid.'
A horrific punishment dealt to a host that dared to stray from, to escape, the boundaries of the colony.
The aggressive, violent recovery of stolen biological energy.
However, only the Disaster Management Bureau agents actually knew the details of this specific incident, while conversely, detailed technical information regarding the escape pod's operation was known exclusively to Daydream Corporation employees...
Fragmented, isolated information.
And that was exactly why no one present could have rationally predicted the apocalyptic situation that was unfolding now.
"Uh."
One of the infected children slowly raised a trembling hand, pointing upward.
"It's the Mermaid Princess!"
With a deafening, thunderous roar, a colossal mass of biological material crashed down through the ceiling, utterly smashing the architecture of the station.
Kyarrararara—!
A horrific sound resembling the distorted echo of children's laughter emanated from the bursting ulcers, filling the entire station with a sickening resonance.
And then, countless tentacle-like tumor strands, spewing horrid, corrosive mucus, descended and braced themselves against the floor, stepping across the shattered space like grotesque feet.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
Like a massive, predatory spider web hanging from the ceiling, colossal flesh masses secreting slick mucus extended limbs like tentacles, violently clinging to every available wall of the shattered terminal in all directions.
From the massive infected hive emerged its most grotesque core. The horrifying, towering form that had previously been coiled silently in front of the 'Dragon Palace.'
Kyarrararara—!
It roared, blanketing the terminal and violently slamming its meaty mass down onto the floor.
"Fuck!"
Baek Saheon stood there dumbly, screaming in absolute terror, before violently shoving back the corporate employee who had tried to push him forward and quickly retreating.
A company employee was snatched instantly by the fleshy mass. The wet, crunching sound of their head being crushed, followed by the sickening slurp of blood and mucus being violently sucked out, echoed through the cavernous space.
'Run! Gotta get out!'
Clutching the bag containing the harvested conch shells tightly to his chest, he charged straight for the escape pod.
But at that exact moment.
Someone grabbed him viciously by the nape of his neck.
"…!"
A baby mermaid.
No, he had already confirmed the true identity of this specific creature through the distinct halo it possessed, but had absolutely kept his mouth shut until now...
'Kim Sol-eum!'
The severely infected Kim Sol-eum grabbed the back of Baek Saheon's head and slammed him violently to the ground.
"Agh!"
In that instant, a massive chunk of flesh flew directly overhead, narrowly missing them.
Baek Saheon swallowed hard, his throat dry with terror.
'Move recklessly and die.'
That massive infected mass had very blatantly wrapped itself around the primary escape pod at the center of the room.
Then, Kim Sol-eum, bearing a strange, unreadable expression, began gazing up at the grotesque mass of infection clinging to the ceiling.
'What the hell is he doing.'
"Why are you..."
The surroundings suddenly turned disturbingly, unnaturally quiet.
"……."
Baek Saheon frantically looked around the terminal.
...Every single baby mermaid in the room possessed the exact same blank expression, looking up at the sky in unison with their hands raised in reverence.
"Princess!"
"It's the Princess!"
The two Bureau agents also turned their gazes to the massive, towering entity that had burst through the ceiling into the terminal.
In an instant, their eyes glazed over, their pupils dilating as their minds blanked.
A blindingly, agonizingly beautiful giant mermaid silhouette appeared, descending as if pure sunlight had poured in from the terminal ceiling—filling the empty white space with an oppressive radiance.
Beautiful.
As if a divine living statue of the Mermaid Princess had come alive, the enormous mermaid glowed with a towering, divine aura.
Overwhelming awe, profound admiration, and absolute enchantment forcibly filled their minds—emotions that one should rightly feel only in the absolute presence of a being so unspeakably great.
"Come here."
The empty white void is forcibly overlaid by the beautiful, sparkling Twinkle Twinkle Ocean Palace. A small, golden, fang-shaped plaza glimmers like a holy chapel. Fill it with praise, worship, and absolute affection—look up to your master, children. But there is no such thing as an escape pod here. This is a place of absolute prayer. A place to pray to the Mermaid Princess.
"Damn it."
Agent Choi lifted his specialized suncatcher and barely managed to block the invasive psychic view.
Beside him, his junior mimicked the desperate action and violently spat blood, having bitten clean through his own tongue to jolt his mind back to reality through sheer physical pain.
But again, the oppressive, divine gaze from above bore down upon them...
"Elder!"
A blinding flash erupted from Agent Choi's grip.
A flicker of intense light, burning fiercely within the antique lantern.
Aggressive red and blue fire flared out, violently pushing back the encroaching golden glow of the mermaid's divine halo.
The Goblin fire blazes, creating a localized space of illusion.
Where the flames reach, traditional tile-roofed houses waver into existence, and the shadowy silhouettes of dancing, singing Dokkaebi loudly flicker.
It was a fleeting, desperate moment where anomaly violently repelled anomaly.
"We won't last long against this—during that time...!"
They had to physically sever as many children's infected tails as possible and force them into the escape pod.
The mermaid—no, the grotesque fleshy mass—raged and thrashed in agony, desperately trying to reach the escape pod again, but the space around it violently distorted, forcing it to circle furiously near the ceiling. Using this brief opening...
The adults in suits scrambled desperately toward the escape pod.
Those wearing the horrific animal masks.
The corporate employees of Daydream Inc.
"……."
Agent Choi's eyes darkened with grim realization.
And at the same time—
'I have to follow them...!'
Baek Saheon was grinding his teeth, watching the chaotic scene unfold. Now was the absolute perfect time to run, but the massive problem was that Kim Sol-eum still had his hand gripped tightly around Baek Saheon's head, pinning him to the floor.
'Fucking hell.'
Desperate cunning flashed in Baek Saheon's remaining eye.
Was there a way to push him off?
This little bastard... Since he looked like a child, maybe he was physically weaker now? No, wait. He's deeply contaminated. He might be exponentially stronger. Still, one tactical fact was universally clear: most contaminated individuals often completely lacked signs of higher human intelligence.
Madness and bizarre, instinctual rules governed their rotting minds!
"Excuse me. Hey. Shouldn't you be more worried about the big one hovering above me? She can't come in right now. Shouldn't you be cheering her on?"
He was baiting him.
Ah. Did turning into a mer-child permanently fry his ability to understand spoken words?
Then Baek Saheon could just write a message on the ground!
But just as he tried to frantically scrawl the same message on the dusty floor with his finger, the crushing pressure pinning his head down simply vanished.
"…!"
It worked!
Baek Saheon shot up, ready to bolt toward the pod... only for Kim Sol-eum to aggressively press him back down to the floor again.
"Argh!"
'Why, again!!'
Then Kim Sol-eum calmly began writing on the dusty floor.
-Carry.
"…?!"
-Carry me and run.
"What the actual f—"
Having momentarily snapped out of his blind panic, a dazed Baek Saheon blurted out without thinking.
"To where?"
Kim Sol-eum shifted his gaze.
Toward the exact opposite side of the escape pod.
The passage leading out.
"…?!"
At the exact same time.
"Are they all complete morons or what?"
Jin Nasoel violently twitched her temple as she glared at the Daydream general team employees clinging to the escape pod like blind moths drawn to a flame.
Even if they miraculously got inside, how exactly did they plan to launch it? The ejection path for the pod was completely blocked by that filthy, writhing biological disaster mass.
They were acting like clueless punks blinded by the prospect of corporate rewards instead of properly reading the tactical situation.
"Ooh! Is there like, a specific spot on the escape pod where we can shoot a laser beam or something??"
Ignoring the money-obsessed rookie's absolute nonsense, Jin Nasoel coldly assessed the situation.
'...Why the hell am I the one stuck doing this crap?'
It profoundly soured her mood to think she was doing all the heavy lifting while the regular team staff loafed around, but if she wanted to escape this hellhole alive, she had no other choice.
'That flesh lump started going totally berserk the moment the mer-children were brought near the pod.'
Hmm.
As a tactical test, she grabbed one mer-child violently by the scruff of the neck and prepared to toss it directly toward the biomass...
"You're out of your damn mind."
"Excuse me?"
The sharp, furious glare of a government agent stopped her dead in her tracks.
Agent Bronze. Having completed a quick emergency ritual under Agent Choi's protection, he had successfully shed his child form through the Dokkaebi trick and returned to his adult self.
A necessary tactical decision, as the situation was escalating far beyond their control. Clenching his teeth, he growled at the employee in the butterfly mask like he was spitting venom.
"You clearly saw that they were originally innocent children, didn't you!"
"If he can't use the conch shell to revert, he's just an infected freak now, isn't he?"
"Even without it! If you just cut off the tail, he can board the pod safely. So stop—"
"Hey."
Jin Nasoel interrupted him, barely suppressing her overwhelming irritation.
"Even if you manage to board, then what? You think you can pry that massive thing off the launch gate with your bare hands?"
"……."
"So, do you have military-grade bombs stashed in your pocket or what? No? Yeah, I figured."
Of course not.
And it wasn't even certain whether conventional human firepower would work, regardless of whether it was a biological disaster or a spectral ghost.
"Let's just throw a few of them outside to scatter the hive's focus, then make a run for it. Take whoever's left if you want to play hero."
"But Deputy! The cat explicitly told us to take all of them! If we leave any behind, we'll get cursed or lose our reward payout... There's even that saying, 'a cat always returns a favor'— Ugh!"
"We're literally about to die and you're worried about a hypothetical curse? Get out alive first and go cry about it when you're outside, yeah?"
That anomalous cat hadn't even shown itself again.
Chances were incredibly high it was a one-off irregular phenomenon.
"So forget the cat or whatever—"
"Please cooperate with the civilian rescue mandate."
A heavy capture cable sprang out from Agent Bronze's hand. Jin Nasoel scoffed loudly and gripped her own specialized equipment.
'No time left for this.'
He had to incapacitate her fast.
Agent Bronze gritted his teeth, glancing anxiously toward Agent Choi's flickering flames. The infected hive's psychic call was beginning to pierce through the warped space and infiltrate the illusion of the fire.
The mesmerizing, divine golden light began to take hold of the children's minds once again.
Somehow, please, just hurry. No, even if they miraculously cut every single child's tail, it was becoming mathematically impossible to see how they could all escape from this place alive...
...Did they... have to make selections?
With grim, darkening eyes, Agent Bronze reached out his hand—
F O U N D Y O U
A malevolent, crushing gaze slammed physically into the space.
A psychic description of a terrible, overwhelming being filled the room, manifesting like a divine descent.
Yes. It was descending.
Descending!
"Lord Cat!"
A voice soaked in rapturous, cultish madness burst from behind the pony mask. All the humans froze in absolute terror.
Bells, voices, laughter, deception.
The psychic call to a beautiful Germanic land, to eternal rot, decay, and mindless servitude!
B E H O L D
The children, who had once been totally enthralled by the biological disaster, violently staggered, lowering their heads.
Their collective psychic disarray aggressively shook the infected hive, and even the towering, divine image of the Mermaid Princess began to violently tremble.
Then came the telepathic command.
C U T I T
A forceful, absolute command.
C U T I T
The children immediately began tearing off their own infected tails with their bare hands.
With faces twisted in absolute madness and primal terror, they screamed toward the sky. Then, sobbing hysterically, they ripped their own tails off.
Blood and corrosive mucus sprayed in all directions. It was a hellish, apocalyptic sight.
"...!"
The anomaly was actively devouring the anomaly...!
Agent Ryu Jae-kwan struggled to his feet and began desperately stopping the bleeding of several children. But his mind had begun to involuntarily comprehend the language of a completely different dimension.
Wouldn't you like to know the horrific truth of this world? Madness shall set you free.
It aggressively shook his thoughts. ...
What?
So this world is actually...
"Bronze-ah!"
Ryu Jae-kwan jerked his head up, gasping.
The sound of that malevolent scripture had vanished without him realizing. All that remained were the children, standing stiff from extreme mental shock, violently bleeding from the spots where their tails had been—
Kyarrararara—!
—and the giant tumorous mass, writhing violently.
The creature, now aggressively severed from every single host, shrieked in pure rage. Or perhaps, in instinctive, primal panic at the sudden threat to its survival.
Agent Choi's Dokkaebi House was starting to rapidly collapse under the strain...
'No.'
Priorities.
Agent Bronze quickly scanned the surviving group. That's right. First, the agents—
But Grapes was missing.
"...!"
Where the hell had he gone?
He frantically looked through the children, but the young agent was truly gone.
'No, it can't be...'
At that exact moment—
He heard the heavy sound of someone running from the far end of the terminal.
From the opposite side of the escape pod, sprinting down the corridor leading out, a Daydream Corporation employee was charging toward them.
Black goat mask.
"...!"
And slung securely on his back, covered entirely in blood with his infected tail completely torn off... was Kim Sol-eum, limp and totally unconscious.
Dripping with blood, the employee screamed at the top of his lungs.
"MOVE!"
What?
"MOVE, YOU FUCKERS!"
Fwick—
Something glittering arced violently through the air from the goat-masked employee's hand.
Ryu Jae-kwan turned his head to track it.
The glass bottle struck the tumor mass of the biological disaster dead center. From the shattered mouth of the bottle, a thick, purplish-pink liquid began pouring out, dousing the creature.
Surprise Syrup for Kids
(Grapefruit flavor)
★★★★
It was the highly specialized potion Kim Sol-eum had picked, based on the security chief's strict advice.
If you converted it into Daydream Corporation's operational terms, its effect would be...
Expose Potion
: The target temporarily loses all higher reasoning and, while severely incapacitated, violently reveals their most emotional and honest secrets.
Incapacitation.
Kyarrararara—!
The Mermaid Princess's massive figure, now drenched in the anomalous syrup, began to rapidly collapse. Twisting violently in agony, it slumped heavily to the floor.
Dozens of tumor tendrils writhed uselessly inside the ulcers, desperately calling to the children, but the psychic connection was already permanently severed.
However, that specific potion had been formulated for humans.
Which meant...
"That stuff isn't going to last long on a monster!"
It was just a very short, desperate opening.
"RUN!"
The agents dashed furiously for the escape pod, physically dragging the bleeding children with them. And then.
"Seriously, what an absolute drag."
Amazingly, Daydream's elite team member also sprang into decisive action, quickly grabbing several children and running straight into the escape pod.
"...!"
She even aggressively barked orders at her fellow employees.
"Grab them all."
"Yes. Yes?"
"Yes, ma'am!"
After witnessing the insane sequence of events just now, they quickly recalculated the corporate risks of leaving the children behind and made the snap operational judgment to comply.
"If you launch the escape pod out first and I'm not back inside yet—know that you're dead."
At that terrifying shout from the elite operative, the employees inside the escape pod clenched their jaws and frantically helped get as many children onboard as physically possible. For those bleeding out badly, they aggressively applied the harvested conches to seal the wounds.
The chaos was barely controlled, but time was rapidly running out.
"There are still some outside!"
"Now..."
[Verification complete.]
"All aboard!"
"Okay!"
Having also consumed his Dokkaebi trick and returned to his adult form, Agent Choi sprinted in last and violently slammed the heavy escape pod door shut.
[Boarding confirmed]
And then—
[Beginning transport to designated destination]
Chiiiiik—
With a massive hiss of pressurized steam from the machinery, the colossal escape pod began to launch from the terminal tunnel.
"Ah...!"
Through the pod's reinforced window, they saw the giant mass violently recovering and moving to block the launch gate once again.
THUD!
Hundreds—no, thousands—of ordinary infected creatures aggressively surged into the terminal.
But it was too late.
The escape pod slipped through the gate just in time and shot out beyond the city limits.
[In transit]
"Ha..."
They were alive.
As the survivors relaxed slightly and slumped heavily in their seats.
"There!!"
Far off in the newly opened view of the city...
"It's moving...!"
The massive cluster that had once clung parasitically to the castle called Twinkle Twinkle Ocean Palace...
Was violently lurching forward.
BAM.
The massive tremor physically reached the fleeing escape pod.
The true hive of the biological disaster was not limited to what they had seen in the terminal.
"W-What is that?"
It had burrowed deep underground; it had spread aggressively across the entire submerged city. Endlessly crawling to the surface, it covered the city's center and spilled violently outward.
A mountain of flesh.
"Ugh...!"
The monstrous mass of flesh, now fully above ground, smashed the castle it had infested and hurled itself toward the escape pod in a final, apocalyptic frenzy. It slapped its sticky, biological mass down on the ground with heavy, thudding weight, violently twisting itself forward.
The grotesque, horrifying, massive biological disaster reared up and fully revealed the mouth that had once been flush with the ground. A gaping, subterranean hole lined with rows upon rows of massive, jagged teeth opened, roaring furiously toward them.
It hurled chunks of flesh like biological missiles.
Sticking.
Latching on.
Catching—
Thunk.
"...!!"
The escape pod shook violently as it was struck by the ejected flesh.
"Aaaagh!"
"Quiet!"
But the pod didn't crash.
"Hrrk."
Agent Choi clamped a heavy hand over an unknown staffer's mouth and looked back out the reinforced window.
"It's not as close as it looks. Everyone calm down!"
And then those who were finally able to gauge the true scale of the biological disaster realized something.
...It was so unspeakably massive that it surpassed the range of human comprehension. The spatial numbers were astronomical, so much so that it fundamentally distorted all sense of physical distance.
"...Ha."
"Huff... huff, huff..."
In the end.
The enormous hive of the biological disaster couldn't leave the city's entrance parameter and collapsed under its own mass.
Kyarrarararara—
Leaving behind a strange, chilling vibration, exactly like the sound of children laughing, the city's underground foundation began to violently cave in, pulling the entire disaster down into the abyss with it.
Deep into the crushing pressure of the sea.
"Ha..."
"......"
The escape pod quickly distanced itself from the apocalyptic scene, safely shooting up toward the surface through the water.
People exhaled hard, cold sweat practically pouring down their faces.
And then, not long after.
[Please board your designated capsule.]
"We've arrived...!"
The Daydream Corporation employees promptly began entering the capsule devices attached to the interior of the escape pod.
Once inside, a person would be enveloped in a bubble-like sphere of strange, anomalous air and launched rapidly toward the surface, losing consciousness in the process. When they woke again, they'd be back in reality.
That was the designated 'escape method'.
The Bureau agents, having overheard this specific procedure while managing the company employees through both carrot and stick, followed suit.
First boarding the rescued children, then securing themselves.
Naturally, the youngest agent was loaded first.
"Grapes-ie."
Because his contamination was so phenomenally severe, they'd used a conch shell to prevent him from violently bleeding out.
He had narrowly avoided death and recovered somewhat, though he still looked utterly exhausted.
And since he still possessed the appearance of a young child bearing the grotesque remnants of an infected mer-form, he looked all the more pitiful.
"Um... Did it all work out?"
"Of course it did!"
Agent Choi grabbed his small hand tightly.
"You did so, so well. I bet you were terrified, huh? You can sleep now. We'll be heading back to base soon."
"Yes... Thank you."
Kim Sol-eum, blinking slowly in exhaustion, climbed into a capsule.
Soon after, he closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath.
We did it.
As the capsule sealed shut with a hiss, I barely suppressed a heavy sigh of relief.
'I almost completely lost my mind.'
The psychic aftereffects of forcibly reading the Necronomicon nearly shattered my sanity permanently.
If I hadn't used the conch shell as a buffer, who knows what might've happened... but it was a desperate tactical gamble I had no choice but to take.
'What else could've possibly cut all the kids' tails at once, incited the Daydream employees to help, and shaken off the biological disaster all at the same time!'
It had been sheer, unbelievable luck that I had been directly connected to the children via the infection-based telepathy network.
In a state where the overarching hallucination of 'Twinkle Twinkle Ocean Palace' had already been severely weakened under the onslaught of madness and fear... And then, someone aggressively yelling 'Cut your tail!' directly inside your mind?
Of course, the kids would follow the command for sure...
'I feel incredibly sorry for terrifying them, but...'
But this was the only viable tactical path to save everyone.
I just hoped the psychological shock wasn't too deep, and that with memory suppression protocols and proper medical treatment afterward, they'd recover.
I bit down hard on my lip.
Still... I felt a bit more at ease.
Because I had successfully brought every last child out with me.
'And now that the entire anomaly city has been physically buried, it'll be exponentially harder for anyone to start snatching kids again.'
Maybe this really was the definitive end of the Mermaid Grave. Of the Twinkle Twinkle Ocean Palace.
And if Daydream Corporation's Research Team threw a massive corporate fit about losing an extraction site? Honestly—not my problem.
'Those psychos can deal with their own fallout...'
I swallowed another heavy sigh and let the growing haze of anomalous unconsciousness wash over me.
A success was a success.
'Now, once I successfully get back to reality...'
...
Wait.
They did say we were returning to 'reality', but where exactly is that physical extraction point?
The coast?
Well, not really my operational concern.
'The veteran agents will handle the logistics, right...?'
I believe in you, sunbaes.
Even as I realized my right arm was still physically missing, I accepted the drowsiness with a strangely peaceful, detached mind.
Escape.
...
"Oho? What's this!"
Huh?
I snapped my eyes open.
All around me were the unconscious adults and children who had yet to fully wake from the stasis.
And standing directly near me was a single man, completely awake and alert.
White lab coat. Glasses.
He stood in front of a now-awake Agent Bronze, grinning brightly, his eyes twinkling with dangerous fascination.
"Ah, government agents, are you?"
A highly familiar face.
'...Gwak Je-gang!'
Research Team 1's Section Chief of Daydream Corporation.
Frigid goosebumps spread aggressively across my entire body.
'Wait a minute.'
No way... this place—
I looked frantically around.
White-walled office space. High-end laboratories. A modern, pristine corporate interior I knew far too well.
Yes, it was deeply familiar. Because...
'This was my literal workplace until just a few months ago!'
We had escaped... right into the dead center of Daydream Corporation...!