The Cathedral's Rules
Park Seona’s sword shot toward me. “Eek! Darling, it’s a ghost!”
I backed away, shouting, “Patel!”
Patel’s face twisted in confusion. “What is this…?! Which one of you is real? Don’t tell me one of you was a ghost all along…!”
Right.
I shaped a club from White Stone and swung it at the panicking Patel. Crack—Whoosh— The seahorse dissolved into dust. So she had been the ghost.
Park Seona’s eyes widened as she looked back and forth between me and where Patel had stood. “H-Huh…? A ghost? Then what are you?”
“I’m me.”
Her reaction was perfectly reasonable. We had confirmed this was our second entry before stepping inside. Trying to subdue the sudden stranger spouting nonsense from the new bulletin board had been the correct call.
Patel’s reaction, however, had been abnormal. The greatest Ghost Shaman in the world failing to notice the ghost right in front of her and instead egging on a fight? That was clearly illogical.
So rule four was correct. The moment we entered, one ghost had already slipped in with us.
That proved the bulletin board mixed truth and lies. Which created a problem.
[5. The enemy is not yet aware of our entry.]
[6. If discovered, the difficulty will rise dramatically. Should you be detected, prepare for the next entry.]
In other words, we couldn’t just summon Bangsil-i and sweep the place with ghost energy.
“First, we need to regroup with Patel.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“We don’t. But Patel will soon know where we are.”
I blew the Whistle of Calling. As long as we hadn’t been transported to an entirely different world, the sound would guide her to us.
Whiriri—
“Let’s move. I’ll keep blowing it.”
The cathedral was vast and labyrinthine. The floor and ceiling were made of dark stone, and a cold wind whispered through unseen gaps. The ground was uneven, yet the finish was strangely luxurious. We walked down corridors lined with inconsistent statues and portraits modeled after the greatest Ghost Shamans.
“Huh? Darling, over there.”
“Yeah. Stairs. Looks like there are multiple floors.”
We found passages leading both up and down. In front of them stood the second bulletin board we had discovered since arriving.
I read the faintly written text.
[Rules for Escaping the Floor]
[1. Your current location is Floor B7678.]
[2. The exit is on Floor 0.]
[3. Descending the stairs may cause the next floor to never appear, leaving only an endless downward slope. If this occurs, immediately crawl back up to the previous floor.]
[4. If you hear the sound of leather scraping while ascending, immediately cover your eyes and ears and shout loudly: “Can’t see it, can’t hear it, it doesn’t exist!”]
[Warning: Any damage incurred from failing to follow the above rules is the responsibility of the individual.]
Damn. This is getting ridiculous.
One glance told me I hadn’t written this. Park Seona, however, had no way of knowing that. She trembled as she read the rules.
“W-What do we do, Darling?”
Baengnae answered in my place. She threw both hands in the air and charged at Park Seona.
“Heehee! Nom nom!”
“Aaaah!”
I let out a short sigh. One of them was overly tense; the other had no tension at all.
“Both of you, quiet. I need to think.”
The biggest question was this: why hadn’t I written everything on the first bulletin board? I could have simply carved the important rules onto White Stone and avoided all this trouble. There had to be a reason. But right now, I had no way of knowing it.
Claiming I lacked White Stone doesn’t feel right… I’m missing something.
For now, I made a decision about the immediate problem.
“We’re going up.”
“Y-Yeah, going up makes sense, right? We’re underground, after all. If we reach Floor 7678, we can escape! Ah, I need to memorize the chant. Can’t see it, can’t hear it, it doesn’t exist! Can’t see it, can’t hear it, it doesn’t exist!”
Did this girl get possessed or something?
I poked Park Seona with a piece of White Stone. No reaction. She seemed human enough.
“Stop panicking, Park Seona. If you’re that scared, summon a few leopards or something.”
“Eek… Sorry.”
Park Seona grabbed Baengnae’s hand and calmed down. Learning that Patel had been a ghost had clearly shaken her. She had brought an expert only to be betrayed the moment they started—her fear was understandable.
Was that the point of replacing Patel in the first place?
We climbed the stairs. The next floor appeared without issue. I checked the entrance leading into the stairwell. No bulletin board. Maybe that was normal, but it still felt strange that only the floor we had started on had one.
“Wait a moment, Darling.”
“Why?”
“I forgot the chant, so I’m going back down with Baengnae to check it one more time.”
Should I just knock her out?
I told her to do whatever she wanted. Having her gone while I thought things through might actually help. But she returned almost immediately, her face deathly pale.
“Darling… the floor below is gone.”
“What do you mean?”
When I checked, the downward passage had turned into an endless staircase. Park Seona had followed the rules and crawled back up on her hands and knees.
Looking at the altered lower floor, I was beginning to understand what this place really was.
“Let’s keep going up.”
We climbed. Even when new floors appeared, we ignored them and kept ascending. The light on the stairs gradually dimmed. After roughly ten floors, the stairs were completely dark, and an eerie sound finally reached us.
Slither— Slither—
The sound of leather scraping across the ceiling. The rules had said that when we heard this, we should cover our eyes and ears and chant that ridiculous phrase.
Complete nonsense.
I turned toward the sound. “There it is.”
“Madda!”
Baengnae rushed forward, grabbed something by the hair from a dark corner, and dragged it out. A snake with a human head. The disheveled serpent ghost struggled as Baengnae hauled it into the open.
Screee—
I brought the club down on it. Thud—
This was the source of our current situation. The ghosts had seen the rulebook I left behind and copied it to play their little game. I had climbed more than ten floors just to catch a ghost that Bangsil-i could have swept away in seconds.
“I-Is this a ghost? It’s ugly…”
The silver lining was that seeing the ghost’s true form had actually calmed Park Seona down. She had only been afraid of the unknown.
“Let’s get out of here.”
As expected, another bulletin board covered in bizarre rules waited on the next floor. We had returned to the original floor. Or rather, we had never left it in the first place.
So we really were dancing to the fake rulebook’s tune.
The original bulletin board, infused with White Stone, must have been difficult to corrupt. That was why they had pulled this stunt—assuming I would follow the rules I saw, they had created rules that should never be followed.
They actually used their heads for once?
As I turned around, a massive figure emerged from the deep darkness beyond. An elongated body with twenty-four arms. A familiar silhouette.
“Patel?”
The Ghost Shaman in seahorse form maintained a respectful distance and bowed.
“You’ve worked hard.”
“You knew we would come out?”
“Yes. I didn’t understand why you entered the serpent’s den, but I knew you would emerge soon, so I waited.”
Serpent’s den?
At Patel’s words, I looked back. The stairs that had filled the space moments ago now formed a cave. In the distance, the snake whose head I had split lay sprawled on the ground.
So it was never stairs to begin with.
I looked at Patel. “Why are you keeping your distance? Because you can’t tell if we’re ghosts or not?”
“Of course not. If I couldn’t distinguish ghosts, how could I call myself a Ghost Shaman? That said, it is true that I’m maintaining distance for my own safety.”
I glanced around. “That’s not it. The Lord of the Equator is deliberately not dispelling the ghost energy right now. Therefore, he cannot distinguish ghosts. He was keeping his distance out of concern that I might suspect him.”
In other words, she was protecting herself, not me. Reasonable.
But I already had a way to identify ghosts.
“Ah, if that’s the issue, there’s a simple method.”
When I raised the White Stone, Patel flinched and took a step back, her eyes filled with fear.
“Th-That object is lethal even to a Ghost Shaman like me. I’ll prove it another way.”
Patel spread her twenty-four arms and began drawing strange patterns in the air with her fingertips. The serpent’s den was drawn toward the center of the formation. The cave where the snake had lived transformed into black clouds and flew into the pattern.
Crack— Crunch—
Moments later, the serpent’s den became a black sphere resting on Patel’s palm.
She spoke proudly. “It is a technique that turns a ghost’s shed skin into an essence. Only the greatest Ghost Shamans can use this ability.”
What’s that supposed to mean?
How would I know about the eccentricities only Ghost Shamans could perform?
“Right. Sure.”
I walked right up to her and lightly jabbed the White Stone into her side.
“Kyaaah!”
Patel yelped and rolled across the floor, rubbing her side with three of her hands.
“So you weren’t a ghost.”
“I told you I wasn’t…”
At least that was one less thing to worry about. With the Ghost Shaman back on our side, we could skip past the minor ghosts and move freely.
After the brief commotion passed, Patel shared what she had learned.
“This place appears to be the Al-Alsa-da of the past.”
“From 666 years ago?”
“Pardon? No. Roughly a hundred years ago…? And during this period, there was one major incident.”
“What was it?”
“The Filth Jar’s rampage. The evil spirits inside the jar escaped for unknown reasons and overran all of Al-Alsa-da. It was a historic event.”
Patel smiled faintly. “Because it was such a massive incident, even a record of the evil spirits that escaped the jar was compiled. I have memorized all of it, so please don’t worry.”
That was good news. It explained how she had recognized the serpent’s den and turned it into an essence. When it came to ghosts, knowing their origin made a huge difference in how difficult they were to exorcise.
“Do you know anything about the door?”
“The door…? I’m not sure. The only thing that comes to mind is that we sometimes refer to the reef path leading to Al-Alsa-da as a door.”
“Hmm…”
It probably wasn’t the reef path. The quest had said “Find the door,” and if it had been that obvious, someone would have discovered it long ago.
Since I couldn’t find any immediate clues about the door, I decided to change direction for now.
“Let’s secure the Filth Jar first.”
How had my past self managed to prepare the bulletin boards in advance? The answer lay with the Filth Jar. If I had used the Filth Jar to travel even further into the past, the existence of the first bulletin board made sense.
[6. If discovered, the difficulty will rise dramatically. Should you be detected, prepare for the next entry.]
That preparation likely referred to the jar as well.
“Patel. Guide us to where the Filth Jar is kept.”
“Understood.”
And so we headed toward the deepest part of the cathedral.