The Black Goat
The blade swung before Yeom Sang-hyeon could even react.
Something flashed, and the skin of Sang-hyeon's palm split open just slightly. Blood began to bead and drip.
The blood flew through the air like a stream running in reverse, pouring into the blade.
Clink—
With a sound like chains unfurling, the blade shattered into fragments that tangled and wove together, forming a shape. Then it twisted into a writhing, bizarre form and transformed into a silver censer.
At the same moment, a chilling gaze settled over him.
It was that sensation you get walking down the street, sitting in a chair, or alone in your house — the sudden feeling that someone is watching you, the instinct that makes you glance around without thinking. Only this was nothing like the faint prickle of everyday life. This was a piercing, malevolent stare, as if dozens of hostile eyes had locked onto him at once.
And with it, a passage from the Rule Book rose unbidden in my memory.
Sang-hyeon stared at me as if he'd lost the ability to speak. I held out the chain of the censer still gripped in my hand.
"Go. Fast. You said we were going to save everyone."
"Even so, right now—!"
"Sang-hyeon. Even in this abnormal state I'm in, I don't have the confidence to protect every single person here while moving around. I can see it clearly — someone will get hurt or die. But acting alone and saving just one more person? That I can do."
"…"
"Get into the forest. I'll catch up soon."
I grabbed the shirt the escape room staff had provided and tore it open. I barely put any force into it, yet the fabric shredded like cotton candy under my hands. With quick, efficient movements I tore strips of cloth into blindfolds and bound them tightly over the club members' eyes. The work was finished in moments, and then it was Sang-hyeon's turn.
I tied the blindfold over his eyes and spoke fast.
"You already know most of this from what I wrote in the notebook, but the absolute rule of this escape method is that you must never open your eyes. Don't forget to keep swinging the censer, either. The forest doesn't seem able to physically interfere as long as you keep your eyes shut — but something might whisper to you or try to talk, so be careful of that too."
The moment I finished speaking, I pulled both ends of the blindfold tight and knotted it firmly. Then I led the kids the short distance to the forest's edge. They followed without resistance, holding hands in a line as I guided them.
I scanned the surroundings. Grotesque things were approaching from far off — impossibly massive trees, clay-like killers, formless masses of fog. Just looking at them for a moment was enough to choke the breath from your lungs. I shoved the club members into the forest as if it were nothing.
Only then did Sang-hyeon, who had been silent, speak up.
"Hyung, are you okay? Your shoulder and your hand."
I glanced at my shoulder. Through the T-shirt I'd been wearing, a vast patch of black showed near the joint. On the hand that had gripped the censer, black scorch marks traced the path of the chain.
Kid's sharp.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I'll wrap this up as fast as I can and catch up, so don't worry — just keep going."
Sang-hyeon looked like he wanted to say more, so I simply pushed him into the fog-choked undergrowth that marked the boundary between the village and the forest. Naturally, the club members still holding hands in a chain vanished into the mist after him.
Alone now, I looked at my shoulder again and rolled up the shirt. Near the joint, strangely luminous black sand had clumped and stuck fast. I stared at the black sand that had taken the place of my shoulder for a moment, then pulled the shirt back down.
"Ugh. Damn it. Let's just get this over with."
I kicked off the ground. The scenery around me began to whip past. And so I started running through the village, a place saturated with madness.
Destination: the starting point.
Envy's House.
Fortunately, the place where Sang-hyeon had parked the car — if you could even call that parking — wasn't far from Envy's House.
The bad news was that the Black Goat was on the way.
Those seething, hate-filled yellow eyes locked onto me. I ran straight past the goat without slowing. The creature slowly raised its massive, malevolent body. Just looking at it was enough to drive a person mad; the mere act of moving sent dark waves rolling outward, scattering insanity in every direction.
It was moving slowly now — but it would get terrifyingly fast with time. I'd experienced it once already, so the speed waiting at the end of that acceleration felt even more frightening.
Even as I ran, the goat slowly turned its head, tracking me. I swung my hands as I went, dealing with the killers that got in my way. By the time the goat had begun its slow walk toward me, I was standing in front of Envy's House.
I didn't hesitate. I opened the door and stepped inside — and at the same instant, a jagged blade came flying from the left.
I figured as much. The knife that disappeared — of course the Chairman took it.
I casually bent at the waist, letting the blade whistle past, then grabbed the hand that had swung it from where I was tucked beside the door. Looking left, I saw the Chairman's face — one side painted red — wearing an expression that said he had no idea what to do.
The moment I looked at him with a blank face, the Chairman shrieked as if in a seizure.
"It wasn't me — I didn't—!"
I didn't need to hear it. I twisted the hand holding the knife and ripped it free.
Rrrrip—
An ugly sound, like leather tearing. There was no muscle, no blood, no skin where there should have been — only dry, malevolent hide and an unidentifiable black smoke coiling from the cross-section of the hand.
Just as I thought.
The Chairman on the left had both real hands bound behind his back. Cleverly attached at the shoulder, like a mannequin arm bolted on, was one extra limb. A simple trick you'd catch immediately if you looked carefully — but in a situation this urgent, anyone who didn't know better would kill or subdue the left-hand Chairman first.
I took the hand still gripping the extracted knife and, with everything I had, spun right and drove it toward the door.
Thud!
The blade punched straight through the door itself, pierced the heart of the other Chairman hiding behind it, and buried itself in the far wall.
"…!"
The Chairman's eyes bulged as he stared at me, unable to comprehend. I spoke.
"I told you. I can see everything."
The fake Chairman finally got a proper look at my face — and I turned my head toward the window to look at it myself.
The black sand that had started at my shoulder had now spread across my neck and part of my jaw. My eyes looked entirely black. Looking closer, it wasn't that the pupils had dilated to fill them, or that the blood vessels had burst and painted them dark red — they were simply packed full of black sand.
The fake Chairman tried to say something more, but to me — who could now faintly see even what was happening beyond the wall — it was clear he was out of time.
His mouth opened. I took one step sideways.
At the same instant, a roar that left the ears ringing tore the wall apart. Something enormous and black smashed through the wall where the Chairman had been standing, punched through the opposite wall, and vanished.
Shredded scraps of hide, torn into so many pieces you couldn't tell what they'd been, and fragments of brick flew through the air. Black fog and splinters of wood swept every direction in the blast. In the middle of it all, my transforming eyes locked onto something black tumbling through the air.
I reached out and caught it mid-flight.
At the same moment, another roar came from the wall where the black thing had disappeared. The malevolent cry of the Black Goat echoed through the village like a pealing bell.
Hearing that cry, the real Chairman convulsed as if he were about to lose his mind. I grabbed him and hauled him upright. The sensation of someone gripping his shoulder seemed to pull him partially back to himself.
"Ugh. S-s— koff. Mmph—"
I didn't wait for him to finish. I shoved the pearl I'd just caught into his mouth. He shook his head hard, refusing to swallow, but I clamped his jaw shut and wouldn't let go. He thrashed, and in the struggle the pearl went down.
The effect was immediate. His eyes went vacant, and he began murmuring some bizarre, tuneless chant. The door leading to the basement — already half-destroyed and hanging loose from the chaos — swung open with a soft whoosh.
Before the Chairman could even think, I grabbed him by the collar with one hand and hurled him. Still dazed by the pearl, he seemed to snap back to reality at the sudden violence and let out a single startled scream — but he was already airborne.
"—!"
Screaming, thrashing his arms and legs with no chance to do anything else, the Chairman passed through the basement doorway and vanished. At the same instant, the back door exploded and something came flying through.
Even with my unnaturally enhanced vision, I couldn't fully track the movement. I reflexively planted a foot on the stair railing and leapt upward. Something shot past beneath me like an arrow and smashed clean through what remained of the front door before disappearing.
Then, from the basement, came a heavy thud — the sound of something hitting the stairs properly — followed by a scream and a gurgling noise, as if something had sunk beneath the water.
"…"
Chairman… he'll be fine…
…I don't know. I did what I could.
The moment my feet hit the floor, I sprinted toward the shattered wall beside the back door — and felt something charging up from behind.
The Black Goat, accelerating without end.
Even if I dodge this time, I won't get clear.
Matching the repulsive thunder of hooves rolling in from far off, I spun around and thrust out one arm. The goat was so fast I couldn't tell where it had come from — its grotesquely curved horn drove into the arm I'd reflexively extended without any warning at all.
More precisely, it drove into the black sand shaped like an arm.
As expected. Even this arm can't stop it.
The impact shook my entire body.
BOOM!
It felt like every organ in my body had been flipped inside out. Blood ran from one ear, and in the normal eye that hadn't been filled with black sand, something — burst vessels, maybe — painted my vision red. The arm of black sand held for a fraction of a second, then burst apart and scattered in every direction. At the same time, a wave of nausea hit me so hard I retched, and bright red blood poured from my mouth.
One hit and I'm this fucked.
In an instant I looked half-dead — and at the same time, I grinned like a madman. I was on the brink, reduced to something barely more than a corpse by a single collision — but that same collision had taken the Black Goat's full speed and launched me backward at a terrifying velocity.
The Black Goat bellowed in rage, shaking the air, driving that dark, malevolent sound through my ears and into my brain, trying to seize and rattle it — but this much I could take. I moved the one hand that was still relatively intact, flipped the goat off, and vanished into the fog beyond the undergrowth that marked the village boundary.
Through ringing ears, I faintly heard the Black Goat's furious cry.