༺ Seoul Forest Story (3) ༻
The room I entered was very unusual.
In a room with no windows in sight, a few bony, skinny monster men lay sprawled on the floor.
The room was littered with delicious-looking food, beverages, and plenty of snacks scattered across the floor. However, the monsters were just drooling and muttering with blurry eyes.
Even when I slipped out of my phantom form and waved my hand in front of their eyes, the monster men just lay there with clouded eyes. Perhaps they were already out of their mind.
There were also a lot of doors sealed with chains and locks. I was sure there was at least one monster man behind every door.
‘Just what on earth is this place? Why are there so many monster men here, and why are they locked in these rooms?’
Scratch-!
Scratch-!
When I walked around the house, I heard a faint sound of wood being scratched. Though the noise was faint, it echoed without stopping. Focusing my senses on the sound, I instantly realized that the sound came from the second floor.
The stairs leading to the second floor were covered in a thick layer of dust, likely due to not being used for a very long time. Moreover, they made an unpleasant squeaking sound every time I stepped on them.
When I looked back after climbing a few flights of stairs, I saw a series of small footprints on the dusty stairs.
If I knew this would happen, I would have turned into my phantom form before climbing up…
Leaving my regret behind, I finally arrived at the second floor. And all of a sudden, the incessant scratching sound I kept hearing stopped.
Fortunately, there was only an attic on the second floor, so it was obvious that the sound was coming from there.
Entering the attic in my phantom form, I noticed that it was a little different from the rooms on the first floor. In the dark room devoid of any light, a monster man lay limp, its head leaning against the door. The monster’s red glowing eyes were the only source of light in the dark room, distinctly different from the blurry eyes of the other monster men.
Scratch-!
Scratch-!
The monster man started to scratch the door again. Despite its lack of strength, it didn’t stop scratching at the door even when its fingertips started bleeding, staining the door with blood. Among the monster men that were imprisoned, the only one that was moving seemed to be doing something unreasonable in order to escape.
Since I was pretty sure that I would get a reaction from the monster in front of me, I turned off my phantom form, letting the soft sound of my footsteps permeate the room. However, It was such a faint sound that it got drowned out by the relentless scratching noise.
All of a sudden, the constant scratching stopped, and silence descended into the room.
The monster turned its gaze away from the door and locked eyes with me. Unlike its dry and withered skin resembling that of a dead tree, its bright, shining eyes clearly showed a semblance of intelligence within.
“Who are you?”
The monster, which had twisted its neck by 180 degrees, stood up and slowly approached me. I didn’t realize since it was so skinny and was lying down, but when the monster stood upright it seemed to be over 2 meters tall.
“You’re not breathing. Are you not a human?”
“Before that, how did you get in?”
“It seemed like you suddenly appeared in the room. Do you have some ability to ignore physical limitations?”
Mid-sentence, the monster suddenly stopped, opening its mouth wide and scratching the area where its ears once had been,with both hands. Its once-intelligent eyes that shone red, became clouded, becoming similar to the monsters on the first floor.
Just how often had it scratched the area where its ears used to be for it to no longer have any traces of ear-like organs and only some miserable scratches?
“ThenthencanyoubringmethefirecanyoubringmethefireIneedthefireImhungryI’mhungryIm hungryIneedfoodImhungryImhungryImhungryImhungryImhungryImhungryImhungryImhungry Imhungry.”
The monster rapidly spewed incomprehensible words, before crouching down and repeatedly slamming its head into the floor. It continued to slam its forehead until blood burst from its dry skin, akin to a dead tree, until it finally stopped and rose to its feet.
“Ah. I apologize. I was so hungry that I couldn’t help it.”
You were hungry? Just like other rooms, this one was also littered with canned goods and snacks. Yet, when I picked up a snack from the floor and handed it to the monster, it just shook its head.
“My hunger can never be satisfied with things like that. Ah, I see. Seems like you can’t speak because you don’t have lungs. Interesting. Is there really a need to give an Object that can’t speak the ability to understand speech?”
Is it perhaps inedible? Thinking so, I took a bite of the cookie that the monster had rejected.
But, it’s so delicious! Ohh, was the monster perhaps cursed by some curse that made it unable to fill its stomach with this kind of food?
If someone was hungry enough to make them have a seizure, they surely would find anything they could eat as delicious. Or, has it become difficult for me to empathize since I have lost my sense of hunger and thirst after being reborn and living as an Object for a year?
“I’m sorry, but may I ask you to do something hard for me? I would appreciate it if you could do it for me.”
“Can you go down to the basementbasement and get me the firefire?”
‘Ugh, noooooo!’ After screaming those words loudly, the monster man went crazy and started scratching all the surrounding walls. However, the iron-reinforced walls and doors easily damaged the monster’s body. Yet, even when covered in blood, the monster didn’t stop.
The monster man’s craziness seemed unending, until it finally collapsed onto the floor.
Since it looked extremely dangerous, of course I had taken shelter in my phantom form a long time ago.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. By the way, I can’t see you now.”
“Ah, so it’s like that. Were you a ghost-type Object, like a Specter?”
The monster nodded as I deactivated my phantom form and stepped into the attic again.
“I want to ask you a favor now that I am in my right mind. I want you to end my life. I don’t know why, but for some reason I think you can do it easily.”
Even at a glance, it was clear that the monster was not in its right mind.
Was it affected by a mind-influencing Object?
Little was known about how to deal with Objects. Hence, it was a well-known fact that in cases like this, killing the affected was the solution. However, there was something pressing about the fact that it said it itself.
After saying those words, the monster man closed its eyes.
‘Hmm, this is awkward.’
Even though the world called me the Gray Reaper, In truth I did not possess the ability to kill anything directly.
Then why was I called the Gray Reaper?
It was because I had the ability to know how to easily kill a target. But It was only useful when the target is not an Object. If the target was an object, my ability was only at the level of giving me a hint.
Unfortunately, even though the monster man in the attic who wished for its death seemed to originally be a human, he was closer to an Object currently. So his death condition only looked like this to me.
[Destruction of the source of sweet rice balls made of fire]
Sweet rice balls made of fire? What was that?
In fact, all the monster men in this house had the same death conditions. Even the monster man that was causing a ruckus outside had the same condition. It probably meant that they were all derived from the same Object.
Even if I wanted to grant the wish of the monster man in the attic, I had no way to do so because I didn’t know what the ‘source of sweet rice balls’ was.
I left the attic behind and searched through this suspicious mansion. But what I learned wasn’t much.
I found out that there were a total of eight monsters in this mansion, and that the mansion only had two floors and no basement.
I also found that the rooms where the monsters were confined were always full of food, yet none of them ate anything. And that even though the monster men were all skin and bones, it didn’t seem like they were going to die.
I was certain that Sehee was in this house, but she was nowhere to be found. Come to think of it, when the monster man was talking gibberish earlier, it seemed to mention fire or something.
Didn’t he ask me to go to the basement to get it?
But, this house didn’t have a basement. Or was there one hidden somewhere?
***
Something smelled.
And it smelled very good.
The predicament that I found myself in was obviously a terrible and unsettling situation, but the smell was so good that I was able to forget about it. The smell came from the pig statue that was burning that person.
If an Object has something enticing, no one should ever be fooled by it.
That was a phrase that every Object researcher knew.
But even though I knew that, the aroma was too tempting. I closed my eyes and moved away from the bars, trying to distance myself as much as possible from the pig statue.
If I were to be captivated even for just a moment, I could picture myself reaching out towards the pig statue from the bars. But, If I were to think about it just a little, I would realize that it was something useless to do as the statue was absolutely out of reach from the bars.
Rumble-!
Suddenly, the sound of stones scraping roughly rang out. Did the old man come to visit again? As I had that thought, completely different footsteps began to echo.
It was the sound of stone hitting bare skin. Then, the sound of footsteps echoed.
‘That sounds like something I’ve heard a lot…’
It was a sound of a familiar rhythm I heard several times a day.
No way!
Nowaynowaynoway!
I quickly grabbed the bars and stretched my head as far as I could towards the stairs.
In the dim light cast by a lantern hanging on the stairs, I could see a familiar silhouette.
“Reaper!”
I screamed in joy.
Even though I didn’t know why the Gray Reaper, who was supposed to be in the research institute, was here, I was just glad to see it. If the Reaper was here, then it must have escaped the research institute’s containment facility.
However, the joy that I felt from realizing I was safe, overshadowed the obvious concerns about any repercussions from its escape.
As if it had heard my voice, the Reaper’s footsteps began to echo faster.
‘The Reaper has arrived!’
My heart started beating faster in anticipation.
