Ghost Mansion
When Solomon first entered Ghosttown, the process had required all sorts of cumbersome rituals. For him now, though, none of that was necessary.
Because the place lay right outside this damn hotel.
“Using the front door? That’s unusual.”
The skeleton at the desk spoke as it watched Solomon head straight for the hotel’s main entrance.
“What, first time seeing someone walk the road to the afterlife? Must be someone else’s problem, huh?”
“…….”
“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Lord Oberon.”
Leaving the silent Solomon behind, the partner to whom he had unfortunately entrusted his lifeline cut in.
‘Fuck, I ought to just rip that bastard’s mouth off…’
With that, Solomon and the fairy Oberon stepped out through the front doors of Hotel Snark. They immediately donned the gas masks they had prepared in advance.
What lay ahead was no longer the interior of Hotel Snark. It was a domain of death where every single breath carried a lethal dose of poison.
The boundary between the living world and the afterlife, a non-material realm where lost spirits wander, the shadow world…
In addition, the domain of the deceased—there are countless names for what we call Ghosttown.
In the past, the narrator had described Ghosttown exactly that way.
“Grrr… good to see you again…”
Outside the front doors stood the hotel’s usual doorman-slash-undertaker zombie. The self-proclaimed enlightened zombie.
“One moment, please. I’ll… grrr… open the door for you.”
Before long, as the doorman unsealed the locked gate, “deathly air” began to flood in thick enough to feel even through the gas mask.
Gloomy gray fog settled heavily over everything, beneath a dark and melancholy sky. At the center of it all hung the black sun—Ghosttown’s signature emblem.
The once-empty, utterly desolate horizon transformed as well, now filled with crowds of gray figures and the outlines of streets. They had truly stepped into a city of ghosts.
Solomon examined how much he himself had changed since his first visit. Reaching level 5 from level 2 went without saying; the sheer volume of experience he had gained in this world made any comparison almost insulting.
The pack of spirits that had once charged him without fear the moment they saw him now scattered and fled into the sky at the first glimpse of his approach. Perhaps his sheer presence had transformed.
‘Or maybe it’s just the gear advantage.’
Either way, the place he was heading toward now was not one of the ghost city’s countless ordinary streets.
“Whoa, you actually survived? That confident stride toward the afterlife is something else.”
“……”
The only thing that hadn’t changed was the drug-addict fairy beside him, still spewing nonsense.
Despite Solomon’s silent prayers, some things in this world refused to change easily.
“Hang on. We’ve got a long way to go anyway—might as well light the path while I’m at it.”
At some point Oberon had perched on Solomon’s shoulder; now he flapped his wings and took flight. Glowing powder spilled in his wake, forming luminous guideposts along the ground.
“This powder… you’re not seriously…”
Solomon blinked at the sight. He was almost touched by how casually the fairy was scattering the magic powder he normally hoarded like treasure.
“What about the powder?”
“Weren’t you always super protective of that stuff?”
“Protective? As if. I just swiped some bone dust on the way over because there was a big pile of it.”
“……What?”
Solomon’s face hardened at the follow-up. At first he thought he had misheard and actually doubted his own ears.
“These guys get to help travelers on their way—how happy do you think they are? Don’t hold back, stomp all over them. Who knows? Maybe a few of them get off on being crushed.”
“……I’m going to lose my mind.”
He had heard correctly. Solomon couldn’t hide his horror.
‘Can I even step on this…?’
Now that he knew it was bone dust, the thought of treading on it felt even more repulsive.
Yet he couldn’t exactly ignore the guideposts the fairy had scattered, either.
As it had been in the past, and even more clearly now after gaining experience, insight, and levels, he understood: interpreting Ghosttown literally as a “ghost city” was a massive misreading.
It was closer to a labyrinth of optical illusions—geometrically twisted and complex—where countless paths linking life and death existed in an overlapped state.
As the fairy had said, the laws of physics grew hazy here. And those laws became even more unstable the closer one drew to their destination.
The deeper one advanced, the more blurred the boundary between life and death became—and with it, consciousness itself.
‘Why is my head so heavy?’
It had gone far beyond simple heaviness.
His sense of direction faded more and more. Eventually even the feeling of standing on solid ground with two feet grew faint. It was like swimming underwater, or like his body was floating weightlessly in midair.
“All right, we’ve entered the Haunting Family’s spirit lands. Hey, we’re almost there. You still with me?”
“I’m… with you.”
Solomon answered weakly.
His five senses were fading. Even what lay directly before his eyes looked hazy, as if he had opened them underwater. He could barely make out the fairy’s words despite him being right beside him. His body grew heavier, strength draining away. At some point he couldn’t even tell whether he felt heavy or light. Maybe he was too light.
“Where… are we…?”
How much farther had he walked? Solomon asked within his blurring consciousness. That was when it happened.
“Here is here. There is there.”
“!”
A voice rang out. It seized his consciousness with the intensity of someone yanking him awake from a dream.
“Huk—!”
From the bottom of the sea to the surface. From the air to solid ground. Like something that had been floating where it didn’t belong being violently yanked back into place.
“Can you hear this fairy who is ‘present’ now?”
“Huk, huuuk! What the hell just…”
“Life not fun enough for you anymore? Want me to send you back there?”
Just as Solomon hadn’t been asking out of genuine curiosity about their location, the voice wasn’t answering out of courtesy. It had dragged Solomon back onto the stage of the living.
“……Starting today, I’ll live with a heart full of joy and gratitude.”
Only then did Solomon truly understand what “losing one’s way” meant in this place. A moment ago, his soul had clearly been lost. And getting lost here didn’t end with simply becoming a wanderer or a stray.
“That’s only if your conscience doesn’t explode and you make it back safely.”
“This is…”
Solomon regained his senses and calmly surveyed his surroundings.
The Haunting Family’s estate—Baskerville House 221B.
Strictly speaking, it was nothing like a “street.” Moreover, no trace of gray remained. Across the empty wasteland, the only thing present was the darkness cast by the towering structure before him.
One of the Five Great Families—the Haunting Family. Soul Binders.
This was the mysterious mansion of unknown origin they had erected in the spirit realm. Somewhere beyond it lay Dr. O’Neil’s soul—the one Solomon had come to retrieve, or else eliminate entirely through a conscientious explosion.
The mansion of the black hound specter, a name every bit as ominous as its reputation.
It resembled a gothic castle far more than a mere mansion. Though it couldn’t match Hotel Snark in size, its oppressive aura was in no way inferior.
Its appearance practically screamed that ghosts could leap out at any moment.
“■■■■!”
At that moment, a sound echoed from afar. A heavy resonance booming from somewhere deep and dark. The noise stabbed into the deepest, darkest part of Solomon’s unconscious, turning his blood to ice.
He had thought the sound came from a distance. He was wrong.
It was the cry of a beast. And it was coming from inside the mansion.
‘This isn’t going to be easy…’
The instant Solomon felt himself unconsciously overwhelmed—
Uuuung.
Suddenly the rune stone of great explosion in his pocket began to vibrate, as if interpreting that sound as proof of weakness and surrender.
‘Jesus. Is this what they call the boiling ignition point? Bad words are coming out. Fuck.’
After a moment of panic, Solomon placed a hand over his conscience and muttered.
“I can do this. I can do this… I haven’t given up yet…”
“What, you quitting everything to become a motivational speaker?”
“I really do want to quit everything.”
After grumbling, Solomon pulled out the glass vial he had stored in his coat. Blue liquid. It was none other than a highest-grade invisibility potion.
Fortunately, the invisibility spell was an indispensable part of Solomon’s build, and he had memorized the enhanced effects. Even when activated by drinking the potion, the core result remained unchanged.
Invisibility, concealment of presence, prevention of magic leakage—those essential infiltration effects aside—
The true value of the highest-grade invisibility spell lay in the fact that “even after landing a surprise attack, the invisibility does not immediately dispel.”
In other words, it allowed for two surprise attacks while remaining invisible.
‘Giving someone a disease and then handing them the cure—this is exactly what that phrase means.’
Gulp. Gulp.
The moment he drank the potion, his body blurred and vanished from sight. It went beyond mere invisibility; it was as if his very existence had been erased.
Moreover, the invisibility did not stop at his physical body. Like a force field, it spread outward from Solomon to encompass his clothing and equipment as well.
In the end, only empty air remained where he stood.
‘Definitely different from casting invisibility through the stealth coat.’
The sensation was on a completely different level from the degraded spell imbued in his gear.
Without hesitation, he activated a single first-level spell. Fortunately, there appeared to be no surveillance on the approach from outside the mansion. The fact that the self-proclaimed “guide” fairy had brought him right to the mansion’s doorstep without any concern was proof enough.
‘So, where do I break in?’
Even so, he couldn’t exactly kick down the front door in a fair fight. As Solomon circled the mansion searching for an infiltration route, he soon spotted a promising location.
‘That’ll do.’
Between the thickly grown weeds and vines lay a basement delivery door, half-hidden and overgrown. It was sealed tight with an iron grate and a rusty lock, clearly long abandoned.
Solomon retrieved the spider lockpick set from the ancient webweaver kit he had prepared earlier.
“Spider lockpick, simultaneous activation.”
He murmured the command. Silence fell. Nothing happened. Had they sold him defective goods? Solomon blinked, then realized his mistake.
“……Ancient spider lockpick, simultaneous activation.”
Creeeak! Click-click!
Only then did the clockwork spiders—imbued with ancient pride—begin to move, as if they had finally understood.
With the sound of countless gears meshing, their legs stabbed into the lock like sharp blades.
Click. Clack.
The lock came undone. The seven spiders didn’t stop there. They deployed miniature laser cutters to slice through the iron grate beyond, then carefully lowered the severed piece with their legs.
“Wow, the spiders really are better than people.”
Oberon, who had flown over, muttered beside the now-invisible Solomon. Solomon silently agreed and stored the spiders away.
Once they were put away, he stepped into the underground passage beyond.
Into the long, dark tunnel leading beneath the ghost mansion.