"Ugh, damn it. What is this?"
A small hanok built in a traditional style.
This is the place where, long before the Great Collapse, the last successor of those who stood guard here to prevent the descent of the [Great Origin] kept watch.
So that’s the story of this quest.
One: beneath Seoraksan there is a site where the descent of the Abyssal [Great Origin] can be attempted.
Two: Yeonam Construction, recklessly digging up Seoraksan’s land, ended up breaking into that site.
Three: the Sokcho-based cultists who serve the [Great Origin] seized this moment and began to move.
Four: a problem occurs.
And right around then, the player approaches Seoraksan.
Usually it branches into a development where you fight cultists of judge-class empowered by the [Great Origin], or a development where you fight monsters created by the power of the [Great Origin].
In the worst case, it can continue into a development where the [Great Origin] itself descends.
‘Given the mood right now, the chance of a descent is highest.’
In short, if you don’t stop it, it’s a destruction ending.
To halt the coming doom, the player explores various places around Seoraksan and Sokcho, gathering faint clues.
And then comes five.
Five: the resolution part.
Anyway, it’s a game, so a solution exists.
The player reaches this fortune-house where I’ve arrived, Bongamdang.
Waiting in Bongamdang, the [Guardian of Bongamdang] lends the player power, and the player defeats the cultists together with her.
It’s fine even if you didn’t stop the cultists’ scheme in advance.
The [Guardian of Bongamdang] possesses an ancient grimoire so old it’s dizzying, called the [Bongam Grimoire], and in that grimoire is recorded a spell to prevent the descent of the [Great Origin].
“Protecting the guardian granny is the hard part, but the clear method itself was an intuitive quest.”
So how did it turn out like this?
What was waiting for me in Bongamdang was not the [Guardian of Bongamdang].
What was waiting for me just inside the main gate—
“Fuu—”
A sigh.
It was a truly grotesque and horrible sight.
Not merely scary or disgusting—an unpleasant, alien scene in which a kind of religious reverence is mixed in. Just looking at it seemed enough to exert a special influence on human mind and feeling.
[System : ‘Madness of the Abyss’ activates. It nullifies the mental shock you have received.]
[crackle]
Right. That’s a little better.
“Who are you, exactly. Who did this crap?”
Cultists?
The word cultist came to mind on the spot—it was that blasphemous and bizarre a sight.
The entire square yard of Bongamdang was covered with pristine white mulberry paper.
On that paper sat headless corpses in reverent postures.
Not just one or two.
“Three, four... a total of eleven?”
The [Guardian of Bongamdang] is one elderly granny. She has no disciples, no successors, no family.
Which means these eleven were brought from elsewhere.
Why on earth are as many as eleven people dead here in such a freakish manner?
They weren’t ordinary corpses, nor ordinary deaths.
Headless bodies dressed in white hemp clothes sat in uncanny postures as they died.
“No, it’s not just sitting—more like a meditation posture?”
Seems so.
Like statues frozen as they were, each sat in full lotus, hands forming a mudra, and died like that.
Again, this is not an ordinary death.
A death steeped in religious intention and a sorcerous context.
“Ki-iiing—”
Red, perched on the wall, gave a worried cry.
“Don’t worry. There doesn’t seem to be any immediate hazard.”
I’d already confirmed it with Perception.
“So, Red, circle the buildings a bit. If you spot anything odd nearby, let me know.”
“Kiiiii—”
With a whump of feathers, Red took off.
After giving Doldori a similar request, I moved deeper into the yard.
More sensitive than usual, my Perception relayed details about elements inside Bongamdang.
“Nnngh—”
Because of that hypersensitivity, I could tell how these bodies had died, and also why they were maintaining such rigid postures.
Iron stakes were driven through both knees and both hands.
Worse, those stakes—
Damn it. These people were still alive at the moment the stakes were driven into their limbs.
Traces left on the skin and the set of the hardened muscles testified to the ghastliness of that moment.
Someone forcibly drove stakes into their bodies to impose this uncomfortable posture and—
‘The instant the posture was completed, they severed the heads.’
Whoever carried this out did it with extreme coldness and cruelty—and with power beyond the human range, proceeding very easily and very quickly.
“Damn, I didn’t want to know it in this much detail.”
A truly blasphemous, horrific method of murder. With a will so firm and unyielding you could almost call it reverent, the killer conducted this atrocious rite.
“Moreover, these people...”
They lacked heads, but they still had hands.
From the small tattoos engraved on the backs of those hands, I could identify who they were.
All eleven bodies laid here had the same tattoo on the backs of their hands.
Not ordinary corpses, not ordinary deaths—and they weren’t ordinary people to begin with.
“What is even happening with this quest?”
Passing through the yard where that dreadful scene sprawled out—I slid open the paper doors of the temple hall placed opposite the main gate.
[rattle]
“Mm. Excuse me.”
Beyond the paper doors stood a multicolored painted screen of the sort you often see in fortune-houses.
Korean-styled though it was, it depicted the symbols of transcendent beings—ancient gods hostile to the [Beings of the Abyss].
And what’s that?
Did someone burn talismans? In the corner of the room remained the traces like a wad of paper had been burned.
No, that’s not what matters.
The most important thing was in the center of the room...
A rectangular coffin.
“I can more or less tell what you wanted to do now. I doubt it was your own will. Isn’t that right?”
Lying in the coffin was an old woman in a white shroud.
In other words... the [Guardian of Bongamdang].
Unlike the bizarre corpses arranged in the yard, the granny’s body felt like it had been treated with great decorum.
The bodies murdered by sorcerous means, and the granny’s body arranged as if enshrining a sacred being.
So—this is...
“Reversal of Soul, is it?”
Reversal of Soul.
A sorcery to return the dead to life. In any case, a technique that falls within the category of magic. Because of that, I felt that sensation like something writhing under my skin. I want to burn this entire Bongamdang to the ground.
Calm down—calm down—calm down.
“Can you speak, by any chance?”
The Reversal of Soul had not yet been completed.
Thus I wasn’t addressing the body lying there.
From behind the painted screen in the temple hall, a hazy spirit slid into view.
The soul of the [Guardian of Bongamdang] slowly shook her head.
“I see. I’m sorry.”
Even in life she couldn’t speak. I didn’t expect to face her in death.
“What about what I asked earlier? By using the law of reversal, were you attempting resurrection?”
At the same time, in a low murmur I added the words, Are you the one who did that filthy, vile thing?
She looked at me with sorrowful eyes for a moment, then shook her head.
“Then someone, against your will, is performing this wicked, depraved sorcery, yes? Well, it is—”
It was far too sloppy to have been something the [Guardian of Bongamdang] directed someone to carry out.
Merely cruel, and even cruder and clumsier than what Heoju did to Heo Sanghyeon.
Several prerequisites that should have been in place were missing. With this method, a proper resurrection is impossible.
The [Guardian of Bongamdang] parted her lips slightly and drifted closer to me.
“Uh? No, I get what you intend, but don’t come closer. I—”
[System : ‘Madness of the Abyss’ activates. It nullifies the effect of possession.]
[CRACKLE!]
The [Guardian of Bongamdang] reeled, blasted back by a heavy shock.
“Granny, I’m the type that possession doesn’t work on.”
That’s what I said, but she probably didn’t quite catch it. As if burned, she flinched back and hid behind the screen.
“I can’t really help with what’s happening here. Where is the [Bongam Grimoire]? The warding of Bongamdang is on the verge of breaking.”
I doubt I can activate the spell to prevent the descent of the [Great Origin] in my current state, but I have to do something.
If there’s even a scrap of helpful information...
A small hand of the granny reached out from behind the screen.
What she pointed to was...
“That?”
The charred traces where a wad of paper had been in the room’s corner.
“Ugh, damn.”
A few pages barely survived, but most were burned. And those few pages happen to be...
“Reversal of Soul?”
Looks like someone saw this and attempted that shoddy Reversal of Soul. Thanks to that, one thing I wondered about is cleared up, but it doesn’t bring relief—only compounds the frustration.
This quest is truly ruined.
Even without other problems, it’s on the verge of failure thanks to absurd madness; how did it manage to fail doubly and triply on top of that?
The people from Yeonam Construction I’m supposed to protect have all gone missing, and the person who was supposed to serve as the quest’s solution is dead.
And the last remaining method has been burned?
The sun had fully set by now.
The sky was pitch black, and through the heaving black clouds, a trickle of moonlight seemed to seep out.
“If it gets any later, it’ll be trouble.”
I should hurry back and take a closer look at the construction site, too.
There’s still something in this house I can check.
I sensed it from the start, but I also confirmed his condition, so I’d pushed it down the priority list—coming out of the temple hall, I headed to the storage shed set at one side ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) of the yard.
[squeeeak]
A moldy, dusty smell.
Anachronistic odds and ends.
Talismans pasted on the walls.
And a middle-aged man, bound to a shed pillar and lying unconscious.
“Hmm.”
His suit was torn like it had been dragged through a net, and he even wore a dress shoe on one foot. On the other foot he had only a sock.
Judging by the leaves and dirt caked on his clothes, he must have wandered the mountains for quite a while dressed like that.
Blood was seeping through the sock on his left foot.
He’s not a stranger to me.
But why is this man captured here in this state?
“Hey. Mister, Kim Seonghwan.”
I shook his shoulder, calling his name.
“Uuugh—”
He groaned briefly, opened his eyes, and when he saw my face—no, my mask—he let out a strangled scream.
“You! Y-you-you—!? Wha— you?”
“Mm... I can guess what misunderstanding you’re having, but I’m not that kind of person.”
At a glance, my appearance and attire don’t match this depraved, wicked, sorcerous place, do they?
A long coat that ripples without wind, magestones dangling in bunches at my waist, a Sainchamjeong Sword of peculiar form. And the [Mask of Carcosa] covering my face.
“...”
If he misunderstands, there’s nothing I can do.
“Anyway, here. Mr. Kim Seonghwan. Why are you tied up here?”
“Uh— u— y-you, what are you? How do y-you know my— my name?”
I lifted my hand and tapped the back of my left hand with the right index finger.
“Uuugh—”
He squirmed where he was bound to the pillar.
I couldn’t see the backs of his hands, but I knew what would be on them.
“How I know you isn’t the point. Who killed your cult people—what few there are—in this way?”
Kim Seonghwan, a cultist who serves the [Great Origin], broke into a full sweat, his body shaking, and blurted as if in a fit.
“[Sangnok Mountaineering Club]! Those crazy old men did this to us!”
“[Sangnok Mountaineering Club]? Didn’t you people hire the Sangnok Mountaineering Club?”
“We hired the Sangnok Mountaineering Club? What nonsense! The Conqueror of the [Sangnok Mountaineering Club]! That monster attacked us!”
What kind of development is this now?
This quest was already complicated—why twist and kink it like this?
I was about to press him for more, but—
[System : The [Offering of the Banquet] trait activates.]
With a piercing tinnitus, a message window popped up.
The problem wasn’t close by. Far off, at the construction site—one of the undead golems had been destroyed.
“Ah, damn it.”
No time left.
