Chapter 238
Chapter 238
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 238
Chapter Title: Even If I Fall Into a Ghost Story, I Have to Go to Work
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Fear.
Terror.
Emotions that were once intensely familiar to me are now vividly surfacing in the frantic, desperate words of these Twin Happy Ending cultists.
I can't physically feel those emotions anymore in my current state, but because my mind still perfectly remembers the visceral weight of what they feel like, that shocking realization sinks in endlessly, chilling my analytical thoughts to the absolute core...
'The Name is scary.'
So that's why they're performing these horrific acts? Simply to appease the whims of the unseen wiki writers?
The entire Happy Ending Church is operating on this pathetic premise?
But that system commentary only makes the reality feel infinitely more pathetic.
The crushing pathos of being forced to perform unspeakable horrors that you don't actually want to do.
Especially when that forced act is a grueling display of human slaughter.
Struggling desperately to escape that cosmic malice under the crushing pressure of an uncertain, malice-filled divine being looming over the entire universe.
'Who the hell do I even blame for this...?'
If this entire world turned out like this because the wiki writers simply wrote those parameters into existence—no, but if we're tracing that logical line, the original ghost story creators were just writing fictional stories for fun on the internet.
Who in their right mind would ever think the ghost stories they drafted in their bedrooms actually physically existed in a parallel reality?
How am I supposed to accept this absurd situation and continue to act?
Splash, splash.
Even amid my spiraling thoughts, the heavy sound of human bodies dropping sequentially into the vat of alcoholic liquid does not stop.
Initiates of the Happy Ending Church, thoroughly corrupted by the rules of the ghost story, are lining up in a trance to dive into the bubbling booze.
A completely mad, blood-soaked spectacle.
"Come on, everyone, let's make some high-quality booze!"
The twin sister, currently playing her assigned role, had already completely packed away her brief, desperate air of terror and was shouting cheerfully once again.
"What fun, exciting things can we do with this fresh batch of booze? Isn't it exciting? Right?"
It felt as though my very breath was catching in my throat...
"No."
...!
"Wow. Real textbook culty vibes."
I turned my head toward the voice.
There stood Deputy Manager Eun Ha-je, leaning against the damp wall with a thoroughly bored, unimpressed expression.
'Deputy Manager Eun Ha-je?'
"They systematically fool the lay believers, squeeze them down to the bare bone for resources, and then spout entirely different nonsense to themselves in private. A textbook, run-of-the-mill cult."
Deputy Manager Eun Ha-je stepped forward into the dim light of the bunker.
"And leaving your own decision-making criteria entirely to the whims of others like that."
......
"Deer. There's no grave in this world without an excuse."
She glanced coldly at the cultists who had just revealed their deep, underlying fear—specifically noting the reporter who had successfully enacted his revenge among the crowd.
"You can certainly feel a sense of pity, thinking they are merely victims brainwashed by the cult. That is entirely understandable."
Deputy Manager Eun Ha-je pointed her finger.
Directly at this sprawling underground bunker where dozens of people had already died today, and where more were still actively lining up to die behind us.
"But do not forget the physical situation we are in."
The realization cleared my mind like a bucket of ice water.
Deputy Manager Eun Ha-je didn't know the terrifying, meta-implied meaning hidden behind the twins' words or the cosmic details I had noticed.
She possessed absolutely no knowledge of the Happy Ending Church's transactional relationship with the Name or the wiki files.
But precisely because she wasn't caught up in those overwhelming, narrative details, she was able to nail the core essence of the situation far more clearly than me.
The absolute core of it.
"They are actively murdering people right now, in this room, simply for their own selfish gain."
And I personally knew people who, even when placed in a similarly desperate situation, would never choose to make such a horrific compromise.
......
The mental fog in my head cleared a bit.
But...
'Did she really have to provoke them so blatantly in their own territory...?'
I anxiously turned back to face the twins.
The smiling, joint head of the twins creaked as it turned toward Deputy Manager Eun Ha-je, who was currently disguised as an old grandmother.
Kriik.
"You're not actually a grandma, are you?"
......
Damn it.
"I knew that already, but I think I'll let you taste the quality of our booze first! Let's get to know the Name together and see the Happy Ending firsthand."
"Even now that your entire operation has been exposed, you're still pushing that pathetic narrative. Ah, Deer. No need to step in."
I immediately moved my body to step between the twins and Deputy Manager Eun Ha-je, but she gently shook her head to dismiss me.
"We've stalled for more than enough time."
Crack.
The distinct, heavy sound of something structural cracking echoed through the bunker.
And then...
Bang!
Not thick, traditional pottery, but a cheap, plastic white container violently exploded, spilling highly concentrated liquid in all directions.
The primary brewing jar had been shattered.
'...!'
The liquefied human flesh and writhing parasites contained inside spilled out in a sickening wave onto the concrete floor.
I hastily channeled my mist, catching the desperate people who had leaped into the air and sweeping them roughly downward to safety, while rapidly confirming that Deputy Manager Eun Ha-je was entirely unharmed.
She gave me a quick, sharp glance, signaling that she was planning to execute our escape plan amid the sudden chaos, but...
"Wow. That popped remarkably nicely."
Ho Yu-won stepped forward out of the shadows.
Held lightly in his hand was an empty, medical-grade vial.
'Explosion D-Grade.'
...A proprietary Daydream Corporation potion.
The high-ranking Daydream executive smiled faintly, adjusting his glasses.
"Even if it was merely for the sake of your entertainment, leaving highly suspicious, armed individuals unsupervised in an important operational facility... Your managerial judgment is sorely lacking, executives. That is exactly why incidents like this occur, isn't it? Seo Yu, Seo Bin."
The twin executives stared blankly at the ruined scene.
The half-shattered brewing jar, and the highly infectious initiates afflicted with the nine-tailed fox plague crawling on the floor.
"Ah, please do not misunderstand. I wasn't the one who physically triggered the explosion. The old grandmother over there did... I simply happened to pick up this discarded, empty bottle."
"Ha."
"Anyway... Judging by your physical and verbal reactions just now, you seem to experience genuine fear toward the unknown... So,"
A pure, clinical joy appeared in Ho Yu-won's eyes as he stared at the twins.
The absolute joy of a researcher who had just successfully solved a complex equation.
"Your underlying biological identity is still fundamentally human, isn't it?"
The parameters for initiating the binding geumje spell were now fully met.
The crawling plague approached our boots.
"Could you perhaps make a binding promise with me?"
And the dazed twins, looking at the ruin of their laboratory...
Grinned widely, their mouths stretching to impossible angles.
"Hey, how about we just turn this entire underground bunker space into a single, massive booze jar?"
"That sounds like an excellent idea."
What?
"You gather the rest of the initiates. I'll personally tell the dragon and the fox about the glorious Name here! Let's brew the dragon and the fox into our booze as well."
"Right."
Ho Yu-won was desperately trying to turn the twin executives into his personal puppets to extract classified data with the binding spell, while the Happy Ending Church executives were attempting to violently brew all of us into their next batch of liquor.
The massive problem was that I was physically caught dead in the middle of their clash.
Ho Yu-won had naturally, ruthlessly dragged me into his scheme to shield himself.
"Let's start the recipe with the dragon!"
Seo Yu's head suddenly detrained from her neck and fell.
It rolled wetly across the booze-soaked concrete floor, tracing a long, crimson trail of blood, and around its path, a bizarre, flesh-like red spatial distortion began to flicker into view...
'Damn it.'
And the violent fallout from this impending madness could easily hit anyone in the room.
Even Deputy Manager Eun Ha-je.
'No. I have to prevent that.'
In that case.
...I ended up aggressively snatching the rolling head off the floor first.
"Wha-wha? Wha-wha?"
As the severed head grinned widely, its jaw stretching to swallow my arm whole.
I enveloped it entirely in my thick, neutralizing smoke first.
And then, my mind read her status...
Seo Yu
Real name is Lee Unseon. One of the Happy Ending Sect’s 5th-rank Authority holders and an active participant in the Death Performance.
As a holder of this Authority, they compulsively reconstruct their name and personality parameters to present an appearance suited to the Happy Ending Sect, and experience a violent fear toward the stillness that undermines that foundation.
A person who originally fled from [REDACTED]. Entered the Infinite Praise Church through the teachings of the Garden Praise Church, but within those teachings experienced a volatile mix of both glory and fear, eventually embracing the scriptures of the Happy Ending Sect.
Their corrupted relic has a total of one barrel, and the only function they are capable of utilizing is the direct manipulation of the body that [REDACTED].
'Hold it in.'
If this isn't about completely erasing her, but merely placing a crushing psychic burden on her cognitive thoughts to halt her movement.
'Hold it in. Endure.'
You have successfully executed this exact move on Ho Yu-won before.
'Hold it in.'
'Endure.'
But my mind began to crack... What was the concept of "enduring" again? What did it even mean to have to endure, what does it feel like to even ask that question, what was a human feeling, and why am I... performing these tasks, I need to go back to the isolation roo—
"What is this, what is, oh, highly familiar, uh, what the [REDACTED]."
The twin's psychic voice rapidly faded, leaving only a final, gurgling utterance like a death cry.
"Name-nim?"
......
I immediately released the physical strangulation on the head.
The severed head rolled harmlessly across the concrete floor.
The body of Seo Yu, separated from its head, collapsed limply in the corner, and my own brain felt utterly crushed under the weight of the feedback. My dull, hardened mind could no longer properly process thoughts...
Jingle.
The crisp, sharp sound of a bell echoed in my mind.
A clear, resonant tone.
It violently restored my cognitive parameters, pulling me back from the brink of the abyss.
Jingle.
I took a deep, desperate breath and fully came back to my senses.
Thanks.
-Don't mention it, friend! Just doing my job!
Standing right next to me, Ho Yu-won politely clapped his hands in mock admiration.
"Wow. That was remarkably fast execution!"
......
I completely ignored Ho Yu-won's commentary and looked directly at the Deputy Manager.
"Let's go."
Yes, sir.
I had already successfully located the primary emergency exit route.
We just needed to head straight for that door.
"Right now."
Deputy Manager Eun Ha-je, already positioned near the exit coordinates, moved with extreme professional efficiency.
We quickly slipped out behind the shadow of a large stone coffin.
Kicking away the pooling streams of strong, fermented liquor that had begun to spill across the cavern floor, we pushed through toward the far end of the passage.
At some point, I could hear Ho Yu-won's light, matching footsteps falling into perfect sync beside mine. That much I had already expected, but...
"They're pursuing us."
The twin brother, Seo Bin.
The one who had been standing blinking in place, as if entirely unable to process his sister's defeat, had abandoned her body and was now walking silently toward us.
Heavy, rhythmic ripples began to spread across the surface of the black liquid pooled in the cavern.
......
I need to subdue him before he cuts us off.
This won't do.
I had already used my authority once—I just needed to execute it one more time to clear our path.
And if I file a detailed report with the Disaster Management Bureau afterward...
The remaining cultists will be systematically cleaned up by the state. In many tactical ways, the Bureau will gain a massive informational advantage. With that decision finalized, I turned my body to face the threat.
Of course, subduing him would not be an easy task.
He was originally sourced from one of those notorious serial killer urban legends.
...The raspy sound of ragged, heavy breathing began to echo from somewhere in the dark.
The twin brother had already almost reached the physical center of the cavern.
He was passing directly by a heavy, black wooden box used by the cult for disposing of dead bodies, and with his heavy step, a corpse drowned in the dark liquor drifted over and bumped into the side of the box.
At that exact moment—
Thud.
The liquor-soaked wooden box slowly slid open by itself.
A single, ancient character was painted on the top lid.
三
......
Wait a second.
-Oh, is something highly unusual occurring here, Mr. Roe Deer?
"How far do you actually think you're going to— huh?"
The exact moment the man playing the role of the twin brother stepped in front of the open box and turned back to look at us—
He vanished.
As if he were a cheap illusion, his entire physical presence was instantly erased from the room.
"......"
And then, the character on the lid shifted.
三
二
From the empty, dark interior of the black wooden box, multiple pale hands emerged, reaching out of a pitch-black void where absolutely nothing could be seen.
Their palms were laid flat on the stone floor, facing upward in a gesture of supplication.
......
Ah.
We need to escape immediately.
I grabbed Deputy Manager Eun Ha-je's arm and began running toward the exit at my absolute maximum speed.
"Noru!?"
I knew exactly what that wooden box was.
That is not an anomaly created by the Happy Ending Sect.
It is something infinitely older and far more dangerous.
Back when the very early, highly volatile horror stories of the Nameless Brilliant Church were first being systematically catalogued on the wiki database, there was a particular entry that used to consistently rise to the top, backed by an overwhelming number of recommendations.
The legendary horror story of the Capacity Worshippers.
[The Practitioner Inside the Box]
No.
Countless early, fanatical believers of the Nameless Brilliant Church sought to contemplate the true, terrifying meaning of this universe, and among them, a few highly devout ascetics chose to do so through long and grueling physical meditation and self-mutilation.
To fully suppress their own rising madness, they sealed themselves inside massive temple bells, rejecting all numbing drugs or hallucinogens, attempting to maintain absolute clarity of mind solely through the intense, agonizing pain caused by the bell’s constant tolling.
Decades passed in that state.
Out of dozens of such sealed bells, only a single believer managed to survive—and that entity eventually declared to the church that they had come to understand several of the Name’s true intentions.
And those intentions were documented as follows—
I ran, dragging Eun Ha-je behind me.
Heading directly toward the exit passage I had located.
The Name desires pain.
The brief comfort, peace, and fleeting joy granted to the biological constructs of this world are nothing but minor arrangements designed solely to prepare them for a greater, far more exquisite shock and fear.
Even this realization itself is a form of madness and pain, and thus could not be a more doctrinally accurate answer.
But the pursuit of forbidden knowledge did not stop there. Those believers who followed this dark revelation subsequently sealed themselves into various closed implements in search of their own understanding, and soon came to understand through agonizing physical pain.
The Name places far greater meaning not in a simple, statistical mass of pain summarized by sterile numbers and charts, but in each individual character's special, highly detailed, and unique suffering.
The more heartrending, prolonged, and meticulously detailed the agony is, the better.
Thus they resolved to praise the Name’s grand will by exhibiting their own long, drawn-out pain to the universe.
That is—
The Capacity Worshippers.
They firmly believe that, rather than a generic story featuring a massive number of casualties, it is the highly detailed, psychological record of a few select characters feeling prolonged and extreme pain within the depths of terror that will truly please the Name.
They worship the capacity.
A horror story with a strictly set, limited cast size—the optimal number of people required to turn raw human pain into a perfect narrative.
A horror story designed specifically to inflict unbearable, endless suffering upon its characters.
Especially that specific being—
[The Practitioner Inside the Box]
A terrifying, ancient power of the Nameless Brilliant Church logged in the Darkness Exploration Records.
Ranked as a 6th-class high member of the Capacity Worshippers Order.
According to the rigid law of the Capacity Worshippers, they cut off their own legs and, after centuries of repeated asceticism and meditation inside a sealed box, awakened their anomalous power—becoming a grotesque, symbiotic creature inside the box that continuously secretes highly specialized digestive fluids.
They are Capacity Worshippers who focus entirely on the most fundamental physical pain of digestion.
After swallowing the exact number of sacrifices currently assigned to the box's counter, once the box lid closes, it is mechanically and anomalous locked, and will never open again until every single sacrifice inside is completely dead.
Any sacrifices who physically touch the corrosive digestive fluid inside the box instantly become telepathically connected to the Capacity Worshipper, transforming into Ascetics.
The Ascetic, trapped inside the dark box, undergoes a incredibly long and agonizingly slow process of being digested alive over decades until they completely disappear, while the Capacity Worshipper constantly recites the detailed pain they are feeling in highly refined, poetic language directly inside their minds.
The longer, more grueling, and more detailed the process, the more doctrinally correct it is considered.
An Ascetic is physically incapable of dying until they are completely, molecularly digested and gone.
Average digestion period: 27 years of constant, living torment.
At the end of an exhibition, the box enters a long rest period in which it consumes a massive amount of cloth to line its interior.
And when that rest period ends—
When a new sacrifice enters the box, the Practitioner's meditation is complete.
The Practitioner Inside the Box will extend its pale hands to recruit the exact remaining capacity of sacrifices, then exhibit their pain to the Name.
These extended hands are an absolute rule. They cannot be physically refused.
So do not under any circumstances approach them.
Your 27-year asceticism will begin.
"......"
We violently stopped in our tracks.
At some point during our escape—
Another black box had materialized, resting silently right next to the bunker's primary exit door.
The Capacity Worshipper inside was extending both pale hands outward through the opening in a silent gesture of supplication.
The painted character on the lid read:
二
Announcing the remaining capacity required to close the box.
'......'
Request: Analyze a way to move past this point without going through the main exit.
"If you require a specialized tool for immediate, blind escape in the dark, I know of a few... but I do not possess any of them in my active inventory right now."
Damn it.
Then, in the end, there was only one highly risky option left.
Request: Fall into the mist.
I released a massive cloud of my neutralizing smoke into the corridor.
...It was incredibly fortunate that I wasn't capable of feeling intense, paralyzing fear right now. Without the immediate dread that I might lose my cognitive sanity to the horror, I was able to act with cold, mechanical efficiency.
'I have to do this.'
Throw the Capacity Worshipper's targeting into as much confusion as possible with the smoke, and violently force the exit door open—
Knock, knock.
......
"Excuse me? Is anyone in there?"
A physical knocking sound came from the heavy exit door.
A voice that felt somehow incredibly, relief-inducingly familiar.
And then—
"Oh, here it is. The signal leads here."
Bang!
The heavy security door was violently kicked open from the outside.
As the fresh, cool air from the surface, completely free of alcohol fumes or corporate decay, flooded into the damp passageway, the silhouette standing beyond the threshold revealed itself.
"Ah! Finally located you, staff-nim!"
...Deputy Lee Seonghae?
'How the absolute hell did she manage to find this hidden bunker?'
"It is incredibly good to see you alive. And there are some very important people here who have been dying to meet you, staff-nim...."
Deputy Lee Seonghae politely stepped aside to clear the doorway.
...And I instantly recognized the heavy, armed presence of those standing directly behind her.
"Here they are, agents! Secure the room!"
Disaster Management Bureau agents.
Xuanwu Team 1.