Chapter 114: Tower of Entangled Lines (5)

4. The master of the ghost story is Rapunzel herself, modeled after the fairy tale Rapunzel, and takes the form of a girl character trapped inside a monitor.

She lures and draws people in with innocent words, so do not attempt to converse with her carelessly.

[> ERROR.]

[> ERROR.ERROR.ERROR.ERROR.ERROR.]

Su-myeon turned his head away from the error windows repeating so painfully that they hurt his eyes.

Like the people hanging from the ceiling.

Before he knew it, the life had vanished from Ryang’s eyes as well, and her chattering mouth had gone still.

“...Hey, are you all right....”

CRACKLE!

When Han-su reached toward Ryang, a powerful spark burst out.

Han-su’s fingertips, struck by the sudden strong current, turned red as though something had stung them.

Even Han-su looked startled by the intense pain.

What the hell was this....

-Yaaawn, who’s making so much noise?

Then the sound of a speaker came from somewhere they could not identify.

The sound of a low-quality speaker.

The master of the ghost story was clearly waking up.

Su-myeon urgently shouted at Han-su.

“The anesthetic!”

Han-su immediately understood what Su-myeon intended, opened his inventory, and dumped out the anesthetics they had brought.

This was the perfect opportunity to test Su-myeon’s theory.

-He-llo? Are you listening?

The cables covering the enormous CRT monitor slowly began to pull away.

As the hidden screen was revealed, there was a girl drawn in cute pixel graphics inside it.

The girl reached out as though knocking against the glass screen....

“Hurry!”

But without even looking in that direction.

Su-myeon and Han-su moved quickly.

“....”

How many people in the world had ever stuck a syringe into another person?

Maybe more than he thought.

But at the very least, Su-myeon never had.

He hesitated for a moment, but even that hesitation lasted less than a second.

Su-myeon shut his eyes for an instant and drove the needle into the upper arms or thighs of the people being held by the cables.

Vein or no vein.

They might die anyway, so if this could save them, what did it matter?

“Over here!”

Meanwhile, Han-su called Jae-min, who had been hiding in a corner.

“Aaaah...!”

Jae-min, who had acted shamelessly until now, seemed to finally be panicking.

Still, he definitely had the nerve required to run a mystery YouTube channel.

Even in the middle of all this, he helped Han-su catch one of the people hanging in midair.

Once Jae-min grabbed the unconscious, limp person, Han-su cut through the connected cables with his axe.

They continued safely lowering the survivors to the floor one by one.

After that, Su-myeon no longer hesitated.

Stab, stab. And stab again.

“......Damn it...!”

The more rushed he became, the clumsier his hands felt.

When he snapped the needle while removing the protective cap from one syringe, he threw it away without a second thought.

There were still more syringes in his own inventory.

-Hey? What do you think you’re doing?

Why do you need to know?

In every game or movie, there was always a scene where someone wasted time on something pointless during an urgent situation and missed the crucial timing.

Like slowly turning around in a situation where it was obvious nothing good would come from looking behind you.

Scenes like that, meant to emphasize the drama more effectively.

But.

Su-myeon completely ignored the monster inside the ghost story.

-What do you think you’re doing with all my batteries?!

Dramatic presentation?

To hell with that.

“WOOF!”

The actual dog traveling with them barked fiercely and bit into the bundle of cables trying to interfere with Su-myeon.

CRACKLE-!

A vicious burst of sparks.

Even Su-myeon’s arm tingled from it, but he did not turn around even once.

Mu-yeon’s continued savage barking told him that he was still all right.

As Su-myeon drove a syringe into the thigh of the survivor directly in front of him, his eyes were already searching for the next one.

“Done!”

Su-myeon continued plunging in syringe after syringe without hesitation, injecting the anesthetic all at once.

He knew the common-sense fact that this could cause physical abnormalities or problems at the injection sites.

Before long, the cables all around them began rising into the air and writhing like tentacles.

It looked as though the enormous CRT monitor were a giant head and the cables plugged into it were long strands of hair.

-Stop it!

Even with Mu-yeon covering them, there were simply too many cables, and they began moving toward the survivors they had laid on the floor.

When Han-su’s axe cut them apart, one of them lashed out and struck Han-su with tremendous force.

“Ugh!”

Cable tentacles approached Han-su as well after he was slammed into the wall.

And just as Su-myeon was about to stick a needle into Ryang as well.

“...!”

A cable caught Su-myeon by the wrist.

He tried to pull free with brute strength, but it was hopeless.

It immediately attempted to drive itself into a blood vessel in his wrist.

-Aaaaaaaaaagh!

In an instant, the situation reversed.

The bracelet Sa-rin had given him, which he had practically forgotten he was even wearing.

It suddenly burst into flames, and the fire spread onto the cable.

Su-myeon himself did not feel even the slightest heat, but the moment the cable holding him caught fire, Rapunzel began screaming.

She let out agonized screams like someone truly being burned, while cables all around them struck frantically at the places where the flames had taken hold.

But the more they did, the more the flames merely spread to other cables.

“Aaaagh! W-what do we do?!”

Sparks began flying from the cables flailing all around them.

Jae-min, who had bolted toward the stairs alone the moment he saw Han-su go flying, crouched down with his hands over his head and shouted.

-Aaaagh! No! No!

At the same time, the young girl’s agonized screams sent a tingling sensation through their brains.

But Su-myeon’s eyes caught something above Jae-min’s head.

A directional sign.

[B1]

The ghost story had shrunk as its causality decreased!

Seeing the exit suddenly right in front of them, Su-myeon rushed over to Jae-min, grabbed him, and pulled him upright.

“Carry someone on your back!”

There was no time for anything else.

At Su-myeon’s shout, Jae-min instinctively hoisted one of the people lying on the floor onto his back.

They were breathing, but their body hung so completely limp and heavy that it was honestly questionable whether they could even be considered alive.

“Get out!”

At Su-myeon’s words, Jae-min did not hesitate and immediately ran upstairs.

Meanwhile, Han-su placed one person across Mu-yeon’s broad back and picked up two more himself.

The burning cables thrashed and writhed all around them, but strangely enough, none of them could feel the heat.

“Hurry!”

Su-myeon and Han-su barely managed to carry several people out, but there were also quite a few who seemed already dead after being swept away by the thrashing cables.

People they could save and people they could not.

With Han-su’s personality, it was difficult for him to separate the two, but Su-myeon judged coldly.

-Ugh... ah...... aaah......!

Before long, the speaker’s voice began cutting in and out.

The flames had already traveled along the cables and spread inside the CRT monitor.

Inside the old monitor, the girl appeared to be trying to avoid graphics of fire spreading inward from the edges.

She pounded on the CRT glass as though begging them to save her....

'Wait.'

A CRT monitor could explode if it caught fire wrong, couldn’t it?

And if a CRT monitor that size exploded....

“...!”

***

As the tension continued, the support teams ended up staying awake through the night as well.

Mi-ae’s eyes were half glazed over, but her hands moved across the paperwork with almost mechanical precision.

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“Yep. I’m hungry....”

Mi-ae answered Ji-hoon’s question as casually as ever and stretched lazily.

True to her characteristically carefree and indifferent personality, Mi-ae felt no tension from waiting.

At most, she seemed mildly annoyed about working at a job where overtime never ended.

“If you’re hungry, should we order something?”

Ju-hee said as she opened a delivery app.

They would have to go down to the first floor to pick it up anyway, but it was the perfect hour for a late-night meal.

“Oh, sure. Sure.”

“What should we get? Braised pig’s feet? Chicken?”

Which place was good again?

As Mi-ae began browsing the app as well, Ji-hoon looked around.

“...But.”

Ji-hoon looked around the office several more times before continuing.

“Since when has Manager Park been gone?”

He had definitely been in the office until Hwi-yeon and the medical team left earlier.

But at some point, he had left his seat and never come back.

It felt like it had already been several hours.

At Ji-hoon’s words, Mi-ae tilted her head.

“Who’s that?”

So what are we ordering? Is a large order of pig’s feet too much for three people.... We could probably finish it.......

At the sound of Mi-ae muttering, a chill suddenly ran down Ji-hoon’s spine.

Ju-hee’s expression stiffened as well, and Ji-hoon hurriedly spoke again.

“D-don’t joke around...! Manager Park Du-pal!”

Mi-ae froze at Ji-hoon’s words.

“......I mean. Who is....”

Then she checked the note Su-myeon had left behind.

[Current field investigation team: Chief Han Su-myeon, Team Leader Kang Han-su, Lee Mu-yeon]

There was no name Du-pal on it.

But as far as Mi-ae could tell, Ji-hoon did not look like he was joking either.

No, people whose work involved ghost stories would never joke about something like that in the first place.

Ju-hee had gone almost completely pale.

“......Am I forgetting something again?”

At Mi-ae’s words, Ji-hoon and Ju-hee realized that this was not a joke.

Something was wrong.

***

“Ughhh....”

Inside the dark building.

Su-myeon groaned as he barely managed to push himself upright.

The back of his neck burned and throbbed.

His leg tingled from having struck something hard, so standing up immediately was impossible.

CLICK-

When he turned on the phone tucked against his chest, thankfully, it was unharmed.

No, more accurately, his upper body wrapped in the sukajan seemed completely unharmed.

Unfortunately, his glasses had shattered, so Su-myeon casually tossed them aside.

Fortunately, the eye with the Cyclops Contact Lens fused to it had good vision.

He had no trouble seeing or distinguishing things.

“Is everyone okay?”

Su-myeon switched on his phone flashlight and looked around.

Along with the stale smell of dust, he saw people collapsed all around him.

Spotting Han-su lying right at his feet, Su-myeon hurried over to him.

“.......”

Is he dead...? Should I check?

While Su-myeon hesitated briefly, Han-su fortunately drew in a deep breath first and opened his eyes.

Exactly as Su-myeon’s ominous prediction had suggested, the damned CRT monitor had exploded.

The glass screen had burst outward, and the pressure had thrown everyone toward the exit, which was at least one fortunate part of the disaster.

Even Han-su seemed to be in unusually severe pain this time, grimacing heavily as he barely pulled himself together.

Mu-yeon was beside him as well, whining as he struggled to lift his head.

'For now... are they all safe?'

After checking the condition of his companions first, Su-myeon looked around more carefully.

Jae-min was lying face-down looking as though he had rolled across the floor several times, but his torso rose and fell as he breathed.

Since he had been closest to the exit, it seemed he had only taken the impact of being violently shoved outward.

Several of the survivors around them were still alive and breathing as well.

There were more than ten who had at least been thrown outside with all four limbs intact.

Of course, the cables embedded throughout their bodies as though they had been transplanted into them were still there, but that was something for the medical team to examine.

And among those who had been thrown farther away, there were quite a few who appeared to be corpses.

“.......”

Either way, if even the corpses had been pushed outside, that meant the ghost story had ended.

Confirming that anesthesia could also temporarily eliminate causality was an enormous discovery as well.

They would still have to think about how to use it efficiently.

“..........”

But the biggest immediate problem was.

“.........What the hell. This is insane.”

Ryang had also been brought out into reality with them, her physical body fully intact.