This Mansion Is Mine Now
-Crash...!!!!
“Whew...”
Dozens of dolls had been destroyed. The hallway was a mess, littered with the debris of broken puppets.
“Anyone hurt?”
“I’m fine.”
“Me too!”
Thanks to Hwayoung and Eunji sweeping through the dolls at the front, I didn’t have much to do. I just stood by, watching them destroy the dolls with smiles on their faces. Meanwhile, Aila was sketching the mansion’s layout on a piece of paper.
“Is that a map?”
“Yes. We need to clearly understand the complex, tangled structure of this mansion.”
“Oh-ho.”
She was quite good at drawing. As expected, her aesthetic sense was top-tier.
“Hmm...”
Yoon Hajun was groaning as he poked at the limbs of the shattered dolls. Being an Alcide infected, it was hard to read his expressions. Was he happy about it?
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“Ah, well... hmm... I think I’ll get a better idea if I look at the machinery that creates these things.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes... Even in the long-standing database of our Alcide, there aren’t many records of this type of doll. I think I’ll learn more if I check the production machinery directly... or take apart a doll that isn’t completely smashed.”
“The Alcide database...?”
“Yes. We have our own form of big data. When we successfully parasitize a sentient being, we operate the host’s brain to access the big data imprinted within our genes.”
“Aha... really?”
I didn’t fully understand it, but it seemed the species had information hard-coded into them. They were like a race that functioned as an external hard drive plugged directly into the brain. From what I’d heard, the Alcide had discarded most of their normal bodies and senses to specialize in parasitism... so they must have gained something in exchange for what they threw away.
“Um... these remains. Can I have them?”
“Hm? These?”
Just then, Jung Jiyeon, the engineer, asked while fiddling with the pile of doll parts on the floor.
“Go ahead.”
“Yes. Hehe... I think I can make something out of these.”
She didn’t seem to care much for the automated dolls themselves, but she was delighted at the prospect of using the byproducts to craft something new.
“Hey, Yanhongya. Do you have anything to say?”
“Yes?”
“No, you’re a marionette. I brought you here to ask for your expertise, so why are you just standing there like an idiot without saying a word?”
“Ah... w-well... uh... they’d be easy to control?”
“Is that all?”
“Uh... yes. Well, what do you expect!”
“You’re useless.”
“Ah, what do you expect me to do!”
Perhaps because Yanhongya wasn’t a production-class, all she could say after seeing countless dolls was that they would be easy to control. I’d hoped there would be some interaction since she was a class related to the mansion, but there was absolutely nothing.
“Whew... let’s keep moving.”
After that, we roamed the mansion for about three and a half hours, engaging in several more skirmishes with the dolls. Finally, we discovered a place that looked extremely important.
First was the ‘production facility’ that churned out the broken dolls. A strange, organ-like machine in the facility spat out a malfunctioning doll every five minutes. Bizarre puppets kept crawling out.
“This... it’s missing two gears.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I can hear them grinding...”
Jung Jiyeon said she heard a creaking sound from the large organ-like machine and used a skill to pinpoint the problem. As expected of a mechanic... I was glad I brought her.
“Then if we find the gears...”
“At least they won’t look as hideous as they do now.”
“I see...”
Actually, I decided not to fix them too much; as long as they didn’t look like Aila, the hideous appearance was good for intimidation. I only needed to fix their faces and personalities.
We shut down the production facility for the time being and headed to another area. After leaving the inhumane production facility, we arrived at the master’s office.
“This place is the same as when we came last time...”
I had been here in the past. I remembered coming to get a key. It didn’t look like anything had changed. It was just a luxurious room.
“There are all sorts of books here.”
“Oppa! Look at this!”
Eunji pulled out a mask that had been hanging on the wall. It was a plain white mask with no decorations.
“Ho...”
I fiddled with the mask and tried wearing it on my face. Suddenly, the mask latched onto my skin.
“Argh!! What is this!! Argh!!!”
There was no item description, so I’d assumed it was just a plain white round mask, but I was wrong.
“W-wait a second!!”
“Argh!! F-fuck!!!”
“Jojun!! Calm down! It’s just scanning your face!”
“Huh? Ah...”
Now that she mentioned it, it didn’t hurt; it just felt like someone was pressing clay against my face.
-Pop.
I finally calmed down and waited for the mask to finish molding to my face. Soon, the mask fell off on its own. The plain, round mask had transformed into the exact shape of my face.
“Huh...”
“This... hmm...”
Yoon Hajun, who had been watching the mask, said that if we took it to the production facility, we might be able to do something with it. We trusted his word and returned to the production facility with the mask.
“I’ve been curious about this since earlier.”
“What is it?”
“Don’t you see this? There’s a button here.”
“Oh? You’re right.”
Yoon Hajun pressed the button on the side of the organ-like machine. The cover opened, revealing the interior.
“This is...”
It was a mold of sorts. If you inserted parts for each body part, it would create a doll with the exact same shape. If we inserted the two missing gears here, it would keep churning out dolls identical to the mold.
“We don’t really need the gears... Hey, Yoon Hajun. Use that on your face.”
“Yes?”
“If you create a doll with your face... the body is already grotesque, and the face is grotesque too, so it’ll be the embodiment of horror.”
“Aha...”
Yoon Hajun’s face was incredibly bizarre. True to his Alcide infection, antennae and insect legs poked out of his head, and his eyes were made of multiple lenses; looking at him was enough to trigger trypophobia. If dolls with such faces and grotesque bodies launched a mindless charge, it would truly be the definition of terror.
“It’s done.”
“Then swap out the face part here.”
“Yes, sir...”
The mask that resembled Aila was removed, and the mask molded after the horrific face of the Alcide infected Yoon Hajun was put in its place. From now on, all the automated dolls produced in this facility would have Yoon Hajun’s shitty face.
“Just thinking about it is shocking and terrifying...”
Now, all I had to do was find a way to suppress the indiscriminate aggression of these dolls. That method turned out to be easier to find than I thought.
“Jojun, look at this.”
“Yes? What is that?”
“It’s a command input device. Put your hand on this and give orders to the dolls.”
“Aha...”
Aila said that whoever last operated the production device must have left an order to eliminate all intruders in the mansion before leaving. I didn’t know who that was, but I erased the existing command and issued a new one.
“Obey the commands of me and Yoon Hajun absolutely. And clean the mansion diligently.”
That should be enough. Since Yoon Hajun was the mansion’s manager, I ordered them to prioritize our commands. If any other orders were needed, Yoon Hajun could handle it later. For now, I just needed to be able to operate these things.
-Clatter... -Creak...
When I restarted the production device, dolls with distorted forms and Yoon Hajun’s face began to be produced.
-Bzzt.
The dolls had lost their aggression. They were just staring at us blankly, so I shouted at them to stop standing around like idiots and start cleaning. The dolls then shoved their hands into their heads, chests, and stomachs, pulled out rags, and began cleaning the floors, ceilings, and walls while crawling on all fours.
It was a sight I couldn’t get used to. Automated housekeeping dolls that were so error-prone they had to pull cleaning tools out of their own bodies...
“For now... let’s keep moving...”
“Yes, sir...”
Leaving the dolls to their inhumane cleaning, we headed back into the hallway.
******
“This is...”
“A supply warehouse?”
“It’s huge, and there are so many things.”
After wandering around the mansion for a while, we reached the supply warehouse. There was a lot of stuff. It looked just like an Amazon fulfillment center. It would take more than a day to check everything one by one.
“These are... materials for making dolls.”
“There’s a vast amount of supplies.”
“Check the items here later and let me know if there’s anything unusual.”
“Yes, sir...”
Yoon Hajun was in charge of the mansion, so he’d handle it. We left the supply warehouse for now. If we kept checking this place, we’d miss our chance to enter the Black Market.
After wandering for another thirty minutes, we arrived at the mansion management office, which we had visited before. This was a massive room where you could change the mansion’s internal structure at will, and it contained a mirror gate directly connected to the master’s workshop. It was the heart of the mansion.
“Since we can change the mansion’s structure from here...”
Aila manipulated various levers and began to change the mansion’s layout.
-Rumble...!!
“Eek!!”
“Oppa!! Kyaa!!”
“E-earthquake!!”
Chaos erupted as the mansion began to move. Eunji and Hwayoung, who had been waiting for a chance to hug me while watching Aila, clung to me like cicadas the moment the floor shook, and Jung Jiyeon was busy pushing away Yoon Hajun, who was clinging to her. Yanhongya was curled up in a corner, head buried, trembling. That bastard... he started off with the image of a cold-hearted evil organization executive, but the more I saw him, the more he seemed like a cowardly piece of trash.
“Sorry, everyone. You see, while drawing the map, I realized the mansion’s structure was unnecessarily complex, so I rearranged it to be more efficient.”
“Aha...”
According to Aila, this insane mansion had been a jumbled mess without any concept of floors, causing many problems, such as the master’s office being in the basement and the production facility being near the entrance. She had just fixed all of that.
“Now, the master’s office will be on the second floor... and everything else is easy to get to. And all the extra hallways and rooms that existed solely to prank intruders have been sent to the basement...”
“So the basement of this mansion has become a complete maze...?”
“Yes. Just by swapping the basement with the first floor, any intruder will wander around in circles until they die.”
“Wow...”
It was a multi-purpose mansion. To think it possessed an underground labyrinth of such immense size. It would be fun to lock up annoying bastards here and leave them to rot.
“Alright... then.”
Having checked everything we needed to, we entered the master’s workshop, one of the most important places in the mansion. It was the place where the master’s dead daughter had been kept, and the site where that insane giant of a master had tried to kill me and Meiling with magic.
“Haa...”
“Most of it is in a ruined state...”
“Yeah...”
The stone bed where the master’s daughter had lain was empty, and the master’s works and belongings we had seen back then were all broken or damaged. It was as if someone had deliberately destroyed this place before leaving. Perhaps it was the entity that had issued the indiscriminate attack order to the dolls...
“Oh...? Jojun. Come here.”
“Yes? What is it, Aila?”
“Ah, well...”
I was looking around to see if there was anything worth salvaging when Aila discovered something.
“It’s a letter...”
“A letter?”
“Yes... a letter left by the original...”
It smelled like a linked quest. My head already ached. I had a mountain of work to do... and now another quest.