Setting the Stage
Countdown.
Twenty-four hours.
Cold delivery food and a chaotic mess of research materials lay scattered across the table in our hideout.
We had all cut back on sleep, working from our respective positions to prepare for the impending disaster.
Seyeon, her eyes bloodshot, scrolled through her laptop screen and spoke.
"Just as you said, Sunbae, it's rare for 'low-tier demons' or nameless minor spirits to have physical weaknesses like specific metals or plants. They're so wildly inconsistent that it's hard to find a common thread. However, there is one weakness that appears consistently in almost every low-tier summoning legend."
"Yeah? What is it?"
She zoomed in on a passage from an ancient document displayed on her screen.
"This is about the summoning ritual itself. The ritual is essentially a contract that binds the entity to this world, right?"
"Right."
"It's about what happens when a flaw occurs during that contract process. For example, if part of the magic circle is erased, or if the sacrifice is incorrect, their power weakens, or they get trapped, unable to leave the specific space where they were summoned."
Seyeon's brief presentation came to an end.
I nodded.
There couldn't be a more perfect justification than this.
A summoning ritual performed by clumsy college students in a B-grade horror scenario.
What if I introduced a setting where there was an 'error' in that ritual?
Without disrupting the flow of the story at all, it would create a board that was absolutely advantageous to us.
Naturally, I decided on the setting I would add and pulled the laptop toward me.
Then, I typed into the notepad application.
However, the summoning circle drawn on the floor of the club room is incomplete, as a portion of it was erased by a spilled drink during the ritual. As a result, the summoned demon cannot leave the club room.
"Wow!"
My teammates' eyes went wide when they saw my sentence.
'A spilled drink.'
It was a clumsy, almost childish setting that felt straight out of a B-grade movie.
But.
"This setting will trap the demon perfectly inside the club room. It will prevent the worst-case scenario of the damage spreading across the entire campus. At the same time, it creates a perfect cage where we can take it down within a confined space."
"That's brilliant!"
Finally, the hour drew near.
The atmosphere grew solemn once more.
Deokhu did a final check on the connection between the CCTVs and the wireless microphones, while Minhye secured her telescopic baton tightly to her waist. Seyeon pulled up the club building's blueprints and emergency evacuation routes on her tablet, verifying our final path.
I raised my smartphone.
A countdown was ticking down in red letters on the screen.
Taking a deep breath, I pressed the [Setting Addition] button on the screen without hesitation.
I tapped the Y button.
The sentence I had entered flashed briefly on the screen before vanishing.
"Setting addition complete."
I slipped my smartphone into my pocket and spoke.
"The stage is set. Everyone, grab your gear."
I stood up and took the first step forward.
"Let's go shoot a B-movie."
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
A quiet, sloping road overlooked the university club building.
Inside a battered old van that Deokhu had bought secondhand, we set up our external command center.
I kept my eyes glued to the red countdown ticking away on my smartphone screen.
00:00:03
00:00:02
00:00:01
The moment the countdown hit zero.
The official task has begun.
Vrooooom.
With a low, rumbling vibration, a crimson flash erupted from the third-floor window of the club building in the distance.
The light vanished in an instant.
"Hyung! Look at the screen!"
Deokhu shouted urgently. On his laptop screen, a video feed from a small CCTV camera he had secretly installed in the club room a few days ago was playing.
It was a low-quality, black-and-white feed.
Thick, black smoke was billowing from the crude magic circle drawn in the center of the room. And from within that smoke, a grotesque figure began to take shape.
Long, spindly limbs.
Two small horns sprouted from its head.
It's exactly the low-tier demon I described in my scenario.
The demon scanned its surroundings for a moment before spotting the students trembling in terror in the corner of the room.
Then, it let out a beastly roar.
The creature charged fiercely toward the club room door.
"Oh no!" Minhye let out a short gasp.
Thud! Crash!
The dull sound of the demon's body slamming against the door echoed through the feed.
It threw its weight against the door repeatedly, but each time it was repelled, tumbling backward onto the floor.
Confused, the demon stood up again and charged the door, but the result was the same.
Thud! Thud!
After a few more attempts, the creature seemed to give up, letting out a frustrated, screeching roar.
Watching this, Deokhu pumped his fist and cheered.
"Hyung! It worked! Just like the setting you added, it can't get out of the room!"
The stage we had designed was working flawlessly. I let out a sigh of relief.
But that relief was short-lived.
Realizing it couldn't escape, the demon turned its head, searching for something to vent its rage on. It began to slowly stalk toward the four terrified club members huddled in the corner of the room.
"Graaaah!"
The demon lunged at the male student closest to it.
"Aaaaargh! Save me!"
The student's horrific scream rang out.
Then, violent static filled the screen.
Along with the scream, the CCTV feed went completely black.
"Ah..."
"What... what happened?"
A heavy silence fell over the van.
I clenched my trembling fists tight.
"The demon can't get out. But it's a fact that the students inside are in extreme danger."
I looked around at my teammates.
Shock, terror, and a quiet anger were written all over their faces.
"We have two objectives. First, rescue the remaining survivors. Second, exterminate that damn demon."
I opened the van door and spoke.
"From now on, we move according to the script. But before we do, I need to make sure of something."
"What is it?"
"Deokhu, the audio you set up. Can you still hear it?"
"Oh? Yes!"
Although the CCTV screen had gone black, the wireless microphone Deokhu had installed was still active. Inside the van, we strained our ears to listen to the sounds coming from the club room.
...Sob... Hic...
Please... someone save me...
The terrified weeping of the students echoed through the speaker.
And between their cries, the demon's satisfied, low growling could be heard.
On top of that, a dragging sound mixed into the audio.
"Damn it..." Deokhu bit his lip.
"Is there any other CCTV besides the one that went black?"
"Ah! Hang on a second, Hyung."
Deokhu quickly booted up another program. He had installed a total of three small cameras inside the club room. Even if the main one was down, there were still two left. He scrambled to pick up the signals from the other cameras.
"Oh! It's working!"
The feed from the second camera appeared on the monitor.
It was a camera hidden on top of the bookshelf.
"I see it!"
The club room on the screen was in utter chaos. Desks and chairs were overturned, and faint traces of what looked like bloodstains could be seen on the floor.
The demon stood in the middle of the room, pacing around playfully as it watched the students hiding in terror behind a cabinet.
Like a cat playing with its prey.
"Wait. I see a pattern. It seems to have a habit of some sort," Seyeon said, her voice steady as she stared at the screen.
"Look closely at what it's doing right now. It's not just mindlessly attacking. It's deliberately dragging things out, finding the hidden students one by one, and savoring the terror they feel. It's almost like..."
"Like a killer in a B-grade slasher movie."
I finished her sentence.
How did I know? Because it was exactly as I had described in my scenario.
A typical B-grade villain: physically powerful, but low in intelligence, taking pleasure in human terror.
Crash!
The demon kicked the cabinet. A student's scream erupted. Instead of attacking immediately, the demon turned its head toward another student hiding under a desk.
I bit my lip hard before speaking again.
"Yeah. That's definitely it."
"What is?"
"It's enjoying the hunt. One by one, slowly. That means, depending on how we use our time, we might actually be able to save the remaining students."
"What do you mean by 'how we use our time'?"
"I mean we need to move fast."
Just then, Seyeon cried out urgently.
"I found it!"
She turned her tablet screen toward us.
The screen was packed with the research materials on low-tier demons she had gathered over the past few days.
"I cross-referenced the data I gathered with the behavior pattern of the demon we just saw. Most low-tier demons are bound to their names. A sort of 'True Name.' If you find out their True Name and call it out, it exploits a loophole in the contract, temporarily weakening them or allowing you to control them."
"A True Name?"
"Yes. Sunbae, in your scenario, you wrote that the students stole a magic book from the library, right? Even though it was a clumsy ritual performed by amateurs, the reason a demon was actually summoned is highly likely because that book itself was a sort of 'manual' or..."
"A contract?"
"Ah! A contract. It's highly likely it was something like a contract. If so..."
Seyeon pointed her finger at the area near the magic circle on the CCTV screen, where the demon had first appeared. There, a worn-out book lay fallen on the floor, likely the one the students had used for the ritual.
"There's a very high probability that its True Name is written inside that book."