Chapter 67
Chapter 67
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 67
Chapter Title: Monster Gallery (3)
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I returned to the coffee shop, pretending as if nothing had happened.
The part-timers at the counter, along with a few customers, all shot me strange looks laced with admiration.
In their eyes, I probably looked like some troubleshooter who'd cleanly dealt with an annoying problem customer.
Feeling awkward under their stares, I hurried back to my seat and stirred the iced chocolate I'd ordered earlier with the straw, biding my time.
"...Over there."
As the man had said, there should be a path leading underground beyond the door marked [STAFF ONLY] behind the counter.
I took a moment to sip the cool drink and steady my nerves, waiting for the instant when everyone's attention shifted away from me and the counter.
The plan was to use my high agility and skills to stand up naturally during that gap in attention, slip through the door in a flash without drawing any eyes.
Finally, as new customers entered, the part-timers busied themselves heading to the kitchen to make drinks, and the other patrons' focus turned entirely to their own tables.
That's when I used the Assassination skill for the first time in a while.
As the skill activated, I felt a subtle distortion in the air around me, my footsteps vanished completely, and my movements became as light as a feather.
I rose silently from the chair and moved swiftly, undetected by anyone.
Had my Martial Arts skill leveled up? My body seemed to move even more naturally, just as I envisioned.
And just like that, I successfully infiltrated the door in question without issue.
"Huh? Didn't someone just pass by here?"
"Yeah? I didn't hear anything."
"...Really?"
One of the part-timers seemed to have caught a fleeting glimpse of me, but it didn't raise any alarms.
The space inside the door was more serious than I'd expected.
At the end of a narrow corridor stood an old iron staircase leading down.
Peeking over the edge, I saw thick darkness below with no end in sight—it looked pretty deep. A chill even seemed to creep up from it.
To prepare for any contingencies, I kept the Assassination skill active and descended step by step, minimizing my footsteps as much as possible.
After descending the dark staircase for quite some time, I finally reached the bottom.
"..."
At the foot of the stairs was a solidly shut white iron door, guarded by two men.
Not only the guy watching outside, but they had separate guards inside the underground area too.
Both men were even wearing Dongto Exploration Team uniforms.
What kind of monster required such thorough human guards? My questions only grew.
Just then, the two men started talking to each other.
"Do we really have to stand guard here like this? As if those things could get out or anything..."
"Don't worry about inside. Just keep watch on both staircases to make sure no one comes down. We're here to keep people out."
Checking my map based on their words, I spotted another staircase far off on the opposite side from where I'd come down.
Judging by the position, that one connected to the Dongto building.
Was the cafe linked to Dongto?
I hid myself and observed the two men more closely.
Their gear was on a whole different level from the guy outside.
Both had what looked like pistols holstered at their waists—whether items or real guns, they were definitely threatening.
Maybe I should draw the Returning Sword?
Right at that moment.
As I shifted my foot in the darkness to get a better look, I accidentally kicked a small pebble on the stairs.
톡.
The Assassination skill only muffled sounds from my body; it couldn't silence other noises.
The pebble bounced off the iron stairs with a sharp 팅-! that echoed loudly through the quiet underground space.
"Over there!"
"Who's there!"
철컥. The two men instantly aimed their gun barrels toward the sound. Damn, busted. My heart sank with a thud, and my mind filled with the urgent need to do something. Before they could pull their triggers, I yanked something—anything—from my pocket and hurled it at them. What I grabbed happened to be the yellow talisman I'd gotten from Bora to practice with. The talisman fluttered weakly toward one man, carried by the faint energy I'd infused into it. As soon as I threw it, I realized my mistake. I should've opened my inventory first. Being new to the ability, I fumbled it in the heat of the moment.
"...Huh?"
Then something astonishing happened. The moment the two men saw the yellow paper flying at them, they screamed, "E-Exorcist!" and leaped sideways, trying to get as far from the talisman as possible.
"...Now!"
I didn't miss the opening. I charged like lightning and struck the jaw of the first man lightly before he could get up, subduing him.
"Urk..."
"You bastard—" As the other man scrambled up in shock and aimed his gun at me, I lunged forward and swung my fist straight at the barrel. 콰창!퍼엉—! "Urk!"
The gun shattered, and a small explosion erupted from the muzzle at the same time, sending the man flying back into the wall where he slumped unconscious. The unnatural way the gun exploded right after breaking suggested it was some kind of gun-shaped item. I got caught in the blast too, but fortunately, my body was unscathed.
"..."
My durability was so high it even surprised me. There was that saying: a strong body houses a strong mind. Was it because this body was too tough? My sense of crisis and fear had diminished quite a bit lately. Lately, thoughts like this popped into my head sometimes. 'Why should I be afraid of monsters?' Maybe it was the influence of that choir monster from before, or perhaps I'd grown drunk on power. Such thoughts occasionally wormed their way into my mind. Whenever they did, I tried my best to push them away. Because in horror games, the biggest threats always came the moment you let your guard down. So I'd keep those thoughts at bay. At least for now. Still, judging me as an exorcist just from the talisman and jumping away was some pretty quick thinking on their part. It almost made me feel a little sorry for them. If it had been one of Bora's talismans, that reaction would've been spot-on. Unfortunately, mine didn't have any lightning strikes or binding powers yet. It was just a flying scrap of paper. Thanks to that, though, I felt rewarded for steadily practicing talisman arts. I confirmed the two were out cold and approached the white iron door again. The way to open the white iron door blocking my path was, of course, brute force. Lately, it felt like whenever I encountered a strange door, smashing it open happened more often than punching in a code or using a card. A bitter realization. I wedged my fingers into the gap of the heavy iron door and yanked with all my strength. 으그그극! With a deafening groan, the door crumpled like paper and tore free. The sight beyond the door exceeded my expectations once more. It was a long corridor lined with pure white walls on all sides, with several small-windowed rooms like prison cells on either side. The windows were structured for one-way observation from the corridor into the rooms. I cautiously approached the window of one room and peered inside. There, instead of a monster, I found an exhausted-looking ordinary person blankly tapping away at a computer monitor. The other rooms were the same. The young woman in the last room at least had a somewhat decent expression. These were the three "hacker monsters" the Dongto agent had mentioned. Just then, with a 쿵!, the crumpled door I'd mangled crashed to the floor.
"...Did you hear that just now...?"
"I heard it too."
Voices reacted from inside the rooms to the noise from the iron door.
"Hey, um... what's going on?"
"It can't be another person coming, right...? Huh?"
They seemed to think I was one of the guards. After a moment's hesitation, I said, "I'm... here to help you."
The moment they heard that, the man and woman spoke up almost in unison.
"R-Really? For real? Please, get us out of here!"
"We're not monsters! But those guys locked us up calling us monsters...!"
It was as if they'd been desperately waiting for someone to say they came to rescue them. They didn't even doubt my words, pouring out their pent-up grievances in one breath. How desperate had they been? And their cries weren't lies. My map didn't mark them as red dots. At the very least, they weren't monsters. No need to coax them. They weren't monsters. And they didn't want to work for Dongto either. They'd just been captured and forced to do hacking and opinion manipulation here. But there was one odd thing. The woman in the other room kept staring at her monitor, showing no reaction even after hearing the two. She just clicked her mouse occasionally. When I told her I'd help her too, she replied irritably, "Help? I don't need it. I like staying in this room all day looking at computer screens full of info on all sorts of monsters."
She liked looking at monsters? Then, one of the two in the other room said to me, "...Ignore her. She's crazy. Monster fetish, she's got a monster fetish." ...They really existed. People with that kind of fetish. I was struck anew by how diverse humanity truly was, pondering how to handle this bizarre situation. I couldn't just leave them because of the quest. Normal persuasion seemed impossible. After some thought, I decided to target her tastes head-on to convince her.
"...Excuse me."
At my call, without even glancing away from her monitor, she replied irritably.
"What? I told you, I don't want to leave."
"What if... I said that if you leave here, I could let you see real monsters, not just on a screen?"
Her hand stopped moving the mouse. She slowly turned her head toward me—toward the door. Suspicion mixed with a faint spark of curiosity in her eyes.
"How could you show me real monsters?"
"Because I'm with the White Tiger Exploration Team. If you want, I can give you chances to observe various monsters from a safe distance."
At the mention of White Tiger Exploration Team, her eyes flickered subtly.
"...For real?"
It was a proposal she had no real reason to accept. But I had to clear the quest, so she took it. I got all three, including her, out of the rooms first.
[Rescued three humans.]
[Quest Completed.]
After rescuing the three humans, the quest completion notification appeared.