Chapter 237
Chapter 237
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 237
Chapter Title: Even If I Fall into a Ghost Story, I Still Have to Go to Work
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The underground bunker of the Nameless Radiant Church.
Dinner time, with all the initiates gathered together.
A voice echoes in the silence.
"Wow."
...
"Wow, that's amazing."
The Nameless Radiant Church's ghost story was looking at me.
"The dragon showed up?"
She was smiling brightly.
Her gaze shifted to the two empty seats beside me.
"No fox or Grandma Kim Bokja, just the dragon."
...
"Hey, why do you think those two couldn't make it?"
"Is the fox trash-talking her for being older? Hahaha!"
Hahaha...
Laughter spreads through the cafeteria.
"Don't worry! They're both fine. They seemed like they wanted to sightsee, so I accommodated them."
Sightsee.
Probably.
I'd been trying not to imagine their situation in an excessively 'overactive imagination' direction.
However.
"So, wanna keep eating, or go see those two?"
...Ha.
"Right! But you're not an initiate, right? So you're the exception."
...
"Come anyway! I'll show you. The others will keep eating!"
"Yes."
The people nodded with smiles, then resumed their meal while chatting about spreading happiness to each other.
I stood from my seat, gathered my smoke, and followed the twins...
Assigning numbers to the worst-case scenarios.
'As long as the deputy isn't dead.'
And as long as Ho Yuwon hadn't ditched alone, anything would be fine.
Low chance of that. Keep it in mind...
The twins left the cafeteria on the east side and walked down a dimly lit, cement-finished corridor to the place I'd expected.
The massive central cavity.
The site of the rituals.
And...
"They're here."
Among countless coffins, she pointed to the back of one leaning against the wall.
"Wanna go in?"
The sister beaming, the brother expressionless.
After one glance at that obvious yet unsettling sight, I sent a thick puff of smoke into the space behind the coffin.
There...
"Ah. You came."
...Ho Yuwon with a perfectly healthy complexion, and the deputy disguised as Grandma Kim Bokja, leaning against the wall.
Both seemed intact, at least.
'Phew.'
Catching the deputy's eye signal, I slowly stepped fully into the space. It was...
'...Factory equipment?'
It resembled some kind of facility.
Not as overwhelming as the cavity, but secured with space slightly larger than the cafeteria, humming with pipes and machinery sounds everywhere.
Like an old, rundown factory compressed into a compact setup.
Steam billowed from the installed pipes. I detected the smell of disinfectant lingering in the air...
"Cool, huh?"
I turned my head.
The twins were now standing inside the space as well.
Both grinning widely before I knew it.
"Not curious what they're making?"
...
"Ask. The fox who toured first is right here."
I looked at Ho Yuwon.
He glanced at the facility, then smiled and said,
"It's a place for brewing alcohol."
...
...!!
"Correct... cheers!"
As the twins stepped aside, what they'd been blocking came into view...
A massive vat.
Tall enough for two people to stand in, with an enormous width.
But instead of pottery, a large square tank made of what looked like cheap plastic revealed itself.
I realized.
The scent lingering in the air wasn't disinfectant.
It was the smell of spirits, alcohol.
Coming from that vat.
"How about it? Cool?"
The spot in Jisam Village where they'd brewed the centipede wine, the fresh liquor.
Right beneath the shrine, they'd recreated that exact vat.
Identically.
"Right here, they say. Long ago, there was a festival where the mimic cult drank centipede-brewed liquor. Everyone heard the Name Lord's voice and got their happy ending."
...
"But someone stole all the liquor. Even took every last centipede. So someone had to refill it. We'll do it!"
Wait a minute.
Then what were they planning to put in place of the centipedes...
"Was thinking dragon or fox liquor, but..."
...!
"Nah, you haven't joined the church! Can't do that."
That was.
"For the liquor to let you realize the Name Lord... it needs to be infused with the devout, miraculous powers of the Nameless Radiant Church."
Powers.
The Nameless Radiant Church's language that summons ghost stories.
"So we prepared the powers. Ah, the participants are coming."
Footsteps sounded from behind me.
The footsteps of dozens of people echoing through the massive cavity.
"Congrats on completing your initiation!"
...
I turned my head.
Beyond the entrance.
The initiates who had finished dinner stood there.
The initiates in front of the coffin all stood quietly in line.
Without a word, they smiled knowingly, peering inside.
An eerie sense of unity.
Looking at their faces...
...
Wait a second.
"Hm? Deer sir, it's not your turn for questions, I've told you several times..."
"...You're saying something strange."
Ho Yuwon declared.
"I never touched Deer sir's restriction..."
...
Then.
Why could I see everyone's faces so clearly?
From the first day, in this underground bunker, no one's face appeared as a mosaic or a dripping blob.
I'd accepted it as normal since it was everyone. I'd thought it was because I was temporarily out of Daydream, traveling with Director Ho, and his words about 'gaining temporary freedom.'
I'd accepted it naturally.
And now, I was facing it.
The overlooked truth.
"Spread happiness!"
The initiates' mouths opened as if reciting a set line.
I looked all the way inside.
Those mouths.
The shape of the thing wriggling inside as they pronounced...
It wasn't a tongue. It was something else.
"Let's spread happiness."
Worms.
Red fleshy lumps like tongues, earthworm-like parasites replacing the tongues. They moved naturally and skillfully, fully substituting tongue function, but the maw at the end parted to reveal teeth.
"See? Cool, right? That power's originally derived from a fish parasite horror. It attaches to the tongue root, gradually eats away and replaces the tongue. And then..."
The Happy Ending cult's whisper.
"It spreads fast? ...Just from talking during meals together."
And so I realized.
The sarcasm I'd tossed out so casually, like detached analysis.
-How do they even form that sense of unity.
How arrogant a position that question came from.
Reality isn't a wiki.
Even if the exposed settings seem childish, there's no guarantee of plot holes. How fragmentarily I'd viewed this situation.
In reality, every phenomenon has a reason and foundation.
I just... didn't know.
It existed.
It existed.
'Ghost story.'
All the initiates were contaminated by the same ghost story. That's why I could see their faces.
And that ghost story was...
"Amazing, right?"
One I didn't know.
I knew next to nothing about what ghost story the Happy Ending cult used as their power. Only the strong, memorable ones were listed en masse on the wiki.
...Would it even be worth reading it now?
To control this insane situation, where all the initiates' tongues were replaced by parasites, and they were probably having their thoughts and cognition controlled by those parasites...
What?
'...!'
I stiffly turned my head.
Deputy Eun Ha-je.
The deputy's face staring back was perfectly clear, without a single mosaic or melt... just like the first day.
...
Smoke rose.
However.
"Ah. It's fine. Rosefinch's tongue is intact."
Ah.
"She's already infected. No other parasites can enter."
Wait.
I locked eyes with Ho Yuwon, but there was no time to press him.
Because.
"Talk's over? Then... initiation's done, time to work."
The twins raised both hands.
"Everyone to your positions!"
The people moved.
The initiates entered the facility in orderly lines without hesitation. And...
They brushed past me, proceeding briskly.
Deeper in.
Like items on a conveyor belt, at a steady pace they walked along the facility's pipes, up above...
And threw themselves in.
Splash, splash, splash!
People plunging into the potent liquor.
'...!!'
With clear, even cheerful sounds, splashes accompanied people vanishing into the cheap white plastic tank. They sank. The refreshingly crisp sounds continued without end.
"It's gonna make some great booze."
Dozens of people contaminated by the ghost story, no longer human, steeped into liquor.
...The entire body of initiates as ingredients, in place of centipedes.
That was the purpose of this initiation rite, the reason the bunker was located here.
"Cool, right?"
...
Chills crawled up my spine.
"When it's done, you drink too. Realize the Name Lord."
And I realized one more emotion had returned to me. It was...
Disgust.
"Hm?"
"Right! That's it!"
Right?
But they probably didn't know.
The absurd truth of this doctrine. Do you know what it is?
Actually...
Click the spoiler, and this appears.
The author of the Darkness Exploration Records wiki.
Simple.
Early on, Darkness Exploration Records followed a standard website format. So when contributing to the wiki, a name field would pop up.
But anonymity was the rule, so the principle was not to touch the name field.
Thus, when a contributor posted a ghost story as-is... it would look like this.
In this form.
Thus, every wiki page is authored as 'Author: Name'.
And the Nameless Radiant Church started as nothing more than a small meta ghost story inspired by this.
The chilling idea of entities in ghost stories breaking the fourth wall to recognize their author.
But as countless people piled on, it gained its own life force and ballooned wildly into a massive religious organization.
...Just like a real cult.
And what does that mean?
Actually, it means the Happy Ending cult harbors a fundamental setting error.
"...Huh?"
Do you remember, by any chance?
What I said to the people of Jisam Village, in front of the centipede overseer.
-Those too weak to accept this truth fled the world through death, but that is no escape.
That's right.
"Th-that."
Therefore, death
▶ Cannot be happiness.
▶ Cannot be an ending.
Meaning there is no such thing as a happy ending.
And going around killing people under that pretext is, as well...
"......"
The Happy Ending cult executive shut her mouth.
A serene face, smile vanished, beneath the red headband and over the worn uniform.
A face drained of vitality.
Suddenly, I realized that face wasn't as youthful as it seemed...
And.
"Does that matter?"
...!!
"Isn't it ghost story enough? People dying pointlessly, all a misunderstanding... The Name Lord would take notice. We're doing great."
Splash, splash.
"Right? A hundred people jumping into booze right now, all just meaningless deaths, the whole Happy Ending cult a joke... that's fun, isn't it?"
...Something.
Was off.
This wasn't deliberate creepy staging.
Not the kind of flat expression you see in ghost stories or horror, where mental breakdown suddenly shows on the surface, screaming 'am I scary?'
It was real.
So this was...
"Unique, fun, with twists. Fun."
Fear.
I looked at the twins, pretty teenagers in school uniforms. That overly contrived appearance.
An almost desperate... blatant individuality.
"The Name Lord will like it, right?"
...
"The Name Lord will like it, want to watch longer!"
I realized.
'You knew.'
It wasn't that they didn't know.
On the wiki, it was just fragmentary, unpleasant stimuli pieced together—baseless cruelty and character traits. But reality was different.
It was simply that, to them...
"Then that's fine."
The Name Lord was a horror.
Ghost stories rampant in this world were the Name Lord's will.
They knew that.
So they had to act to suit its taste as much as possible. Do absurd things, stage fun antics, cruel acts, even grotesque situations.
Their effort to act in ways that pleased it.
"Then that's fine."
That was the true identity of the Happy Ending cult.