Chapter 78: The Red Cloak….(3)

[6. The monster referred to as a ‘wolf’]

6-1) It possesses organs resembling human arms and legs, but moves on all fours with its belly facing the sky.

6-2) Its intelligence is low enough that it can easily be captured with traps.

6-3) If it is killed, a penalty occurs within the ghost story.

6-4) If one is attacked and bitten by it...(omitted)....

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***

It felt like they absolutely could not let things proceed that way.

Without showing his alarm, Su-myeon spoke to the old woman as calmly as possible.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. It wouldn’t be difficult to come visit you from time to time, but I don’t think we could really call that work, could we?”

Su-myeon added that this was a matter of principle, and that aside from that, he wanted them to be given some kind of productive work.

Seung-min made a suggestion.

“Then, since you’re right near the logging site anyway, how about cutting wood in the forest next to it? I’ll introduce you to Mr. Jang, the woodcutter.”

At Seung-min’s words, the hunter and the old woman looked at each other.

“Wood is an extremely important resource here. We don’t have proper equipment, so it takes quite a lot of manpower.”

Even so, having some young workers added would help.

Seung-min continued speaking in a tone that seemed intended to persuade the hunter and the old woman.

“You have to adjust to everything slowly. That way....”

“We’d like to find a way out of this place as quickly as possible, if we can.”

At that moment, Han-su added a word.

It did not exactly fit the direction of the conversation, but it was a very reasonable thing for someone who had only just entered a ghost story to say.

When Su-myeon nodded as though agreeing with him, Seung-min gave an awkward smile and nodded as well.

“Right. I mean.... Either way, until you get out, you have to figure out how to live here first.”

The hunter, who had been listening to Seung-min and Han-su’s exchange, nodded.

“That’s true too. If you youngsters are really thinking so admirably, then I suppose I should ask for the favor!”

Then, still looking like a playful middle-aged man, he gave them a wink and added,

“If later on you come crying that being a woodcutter is too hard and you’d rather keep Grandma company~! ......I’ll still take you up on it. So just do your best without pushing yourselves too hard!”

Once again, the conversation contained nothing but goodwill and friendliness.

The feeling was bizarre, but Su-myeon bowed his head in thanks.

His thoughts were a complete mess.

They had not managed to finish their meal properly, but that was actually exactly what Su-myeon wanted.

“Then could we go right away? If we move around a little, we’ll probably work up an appetite.”

He even tried making an awkward joke that the food would be perfect if they came back and reheated it later.

He could only hope it looked like he was making an effort to get along with them.

“Sure, then Seung-min can take you there and show you around. I’ll walk the old lady back!”

Fortunately, perhaps it had looked exactly as Su-myeon intended, because the hunter readily agreed.

Once the hunter disappeared with the old woman, Seung-min suddenly murmured quietly.

“You should be careful what you say.”

“.......”

Was Seung-min somehow different?

In this unsettling village where everyone’s intentions were difficult to understand, could he alone be a little different?

Just as that hope began to form, Hwi-yeon could no longer hold herself back and asked,

“Wasn’t there something you left unfinished yesterday?”

“Yeah. That’s my answer to it.”

Seung-min replied to Hwi-yeon in a somewhat sensitive, sharp tone.

“Don’t go around asking questions recklessly. I don’t know what you know, but....”

“Lee Mu-yeon is my younger brother!”

Hwi-yeon cut him off almost desperately and continued.

Su-myeon was worried that she might make a mistake at this rate.

He stepped between them to calm Hwi-yeon and made her back away.

“Well, you see....”

Su-myeon was trying to work out how to explain it when he looked at Seung-min and froze.

“......You’re... Mu-yeon’s older sister...?”

Seung-min looked as though he had just suffered some enormous shock.

He definitely knew Hwi-yeon’s younger brother.

Seung-min had said he had been here for around ten years....

'Hwi-yeon lost her brother twelve years ago. That means he was alive for at least another two years.'

Even Su-myeon was unsure whether they should press him further.

But Seung-min soon returned to an expressionless face and shook his head.

“......We shouldn’t waste time. Follow me.”

Then he took the lead at a brisk pace.

When Hwi-yeon hurried after him, he brought a finger to his lips with a blank expression, signaling for her to be quiet.

It was not simply a sign that he no longer wanted to talk.

It looked as though even he was holding something back.

Just as he had warned them to watch what they said, he was clearly being careful about their conversation.

“.......”

They had finally found a lead concerning her brother.

Unable to fully control her emotions at that fact, Hwi-yeon let out a rough breath.

The cabin where the three of them had been staying was right near the logging site, so before long they could hear the distant sound of axes striking wood.

It was an area where pine trees stood unusually dense and close together.

Thud- thud-

“Mr. Jang! I brought some new faces to introduce you to!”

Seung-min’s expression had returned to the cheerful, bright one from before.

At his lively voice, the sound of chopping stopped, and soon a shaggy man suddenly poked his head out from between the pine trees.

“Oh, Seung-min? What’s with the new faces?”

He had a rough, heavy build and an intimidating appearance.

But his tone was surprisingly gentle.

“These people just got here and asked if there was any work they could do. You’re always complaining that nobody wants to cut wood and everyone only wants to do the easy farming.”

“So I brought them straight over here.”

He said it without hesitation and laughed brightly.

Watching Seung-min laugh made Su-myeon feel even stranger.

Which one was real—the sensitive man from only moments ago, or the one standing here now?

But even the Cyclops Contact Lens could not tell him that.

Perhaps it meant they were both real....

“Please take care of us.”

His thoughts were still a mess, but Su-myeon bowed politely to the woodcutter.

“I heard the rumors. Yeah, welcome. Though I don’t think we really need the young lady too.”

“I’ve done some training.”

“Well, if you say so.”

The woodcutter handed axes to the three of them.

For tools meant to cut trees, the axes looked unbelievably weak and crude—either badly dulled metal blades or axes fashioned from stone.

“You cut trees... with these?”

Han-su was probably thinking about the various axes stored in his inventory right about now.

But they could not show anything unusual like that here, so there was nothing they could do.

“If I help today, do I get paid too?”

“You shameless bastard.”

When Seung-min picked up an ownerless axe and said that, the woodcutter grumbled.

Still, since he did not stop him, it seemed the shortage of manpower here really was genuine.

After looking the three of them over from head to toe, the woodcutter spoke casually.

“Still, it’s kind of unusual for someone going hiking with his chief to be dressed like that.”

...Damn.

Did rumors spread that fast among the villagers?

Apparently what they had said at the campsite had gotten around.

Knowing that adults would see his sukajan outfit as the very picture of delinquency, Su-myeon deliberately scratched the back of his head.

“They told me to come in comfortable clothes?”

“......Right. I see.”

As though asking what the problem was when he had simply dressed comfortably as instructed, Su-myeon answered back like a hopeless new hire.

The woodcutter alternated between patting Han-su and Hwi-yeon on the shoulders as though sympathizing with what they had to put up with.

Unlike with Seung-min, Su-myeon had a feeling they would not get much out of a conversation with this woodcutter.

“And I heard you had a lantern with an actual light bulb in it, even these days?”

That’s a rare thing you had there. The woodcutter laughed good-naturedly as he said it.

But the way he kept asking probing questions made him seem rather foxlike despite his bear-like appearance.

Su-myeon adjusted his grip on the axe and tapped it against a tree as he answered.

“I found it at Mimi Lodge. Ugh!”

Su-myeon had tried to answer casually while chopping, but using an axe was much harder than he had expected.

He had only struck once, yet his palm was already stinging.

Perhaps because his hands had been injured so often lately, every joint in them tingled.

“Oh, you came from that mountain?”

...What?

At the woodcutter’s answer, Su-myeon looked at him again.

Did that mean there were other mountains?

“...Where did you come from?”

“Me? Bukaksan. If it’s Mimi Lodge, that’d be Taebaeksan? Gangwon Province, right?”

Astonishingly, it was true.

The Mountain of the Red Cloak.... No, this ghost story, which had practically become the City of the Red Cloak by now, had gained more entrances.

Was it because the ghost story’s influence had grown excessively large?

Or perhaps it had always been like this from the beginning.

Inside this ghost story, everything Su-myeon knew truly felt like nothing more than the tip of the iceberg.

“Do people come from anywhere else besides those places?”

Han-su, who had been silently chopping wood, added another question.

The woodcutter nodded.

“Where was it again? Where....”

“There are quite a few people who came from Jirisan too.”

When the woodcutter stumbled over his words, Seung-min added the answer for him.

Then he stared at Su-myeon with an expression similar to the one he had shown back in the cabin.

A gaze that seemed to warn him not to ask anything more unnecessary.

“.......”

There was probably nothing to gain from saying more.

With that thought, Su-myeon resumed chopping.

Splitting wood with a stone axe.

The manual labor he had never even imagined doing was nowhere near as easy as it was in games.

In most survival games, even a stone axe could cut down a tree just fine, but in reality, it took dozens of swings before the trunk even started to show a noticeable gouge.

“Whew....”

At that moment, the woodcutter suddenly began breathing heavily as though exhausted and dropped down onto the ground.

“This is rough. Cough, ngh.... Haa.......”

It was not an especially unusual action.

Unlike Su-myeon, who tried not to pay it much attention, Seung-min watched him carefully.

“Are you okay?”

'He does this all day. Of course he’s fine, right?'

That was what Su-myeon thought, but at the woodcutter’s next response, he turned his head toward him.

“Yeah, ngh... hhk... I’m fi....”

In the middle of answering, the woodcutter suddenly started gasping violently and collapsed.

“Haaah... hhk.... No.... No.... No no no....”

As though suffering from some kind of delirium, he muttered while his limbs trembled uncontrollably.

With his enormous body twisting violently, no one could get close to him.

“Why... why! Why me! Why is this happening to me!”

Writhing in pain, he kept shouting up at the sky.

They had no idea why this had suddenly started, but it was obvious that something was terribly wrong.

Hwi-yeon rushed toward the woodcutter and forced his jaw open.

Keeping his airway clear so that his tongue would not roll back during the seizure, Hwi-yeon shouted loudly as though trying to bring him back to his senses.

“What’s happening? Are you okay? Get a hold of your—!”

At that moment, Seung-min grabbed Hwi-yeon and yanked her sharply backward.

The moment Hwi-yeon released him, the woodcutter began twisting again in an unstable posture.

“What are you doing! If we don’t do this....”

“He’s not sick! Look carefully!”

Seung-min pointed toward the woodcutter’s leg.

“Ghhhk! Aaaagh!”

The woodcutter writhed in agony until his back finally arched grotesquely toward the sky.

The movement caused the hem of his pants to ride up, revealing his calf wrapped in dirty bandages.

“He was bitten by a wolf.”

A wolf—as in, that monster?

And as though proving Seung-min’s words, the woodcutter’s already twisting back arched even higher.

Crack-

The sound of a spine breaking.

With his belly facing the sky, the woodcutter began bending his arms and legs backward.

Along with the vivid sounds of snapping bones, his body began mutating into something resembling those creatures.

“Ughh- nghhhhh- nghhhhhhhhaaah!”

With his bent arms and hands, he began clawing wildly at his face as though it itched unbearably.

His rigid fingernails grew long, and with every scrape, they easily tore through the skin and muscles of his face.

His mouth split open all the way toward his neck. And through the opening, teeth rapidly began growing.

As they watched as though entranced, the woodcutter completely transformed into a ‘wolf.’

The instant Su-myeon realized that—

Thud-

Without the slightest hesitation, Seung-min swung his axe at it.