“What did I just hear?”
‘I’ve heard so many stupid things my head is ringing.’
To make sure I’d understood Jang Hyundeok’s request, I asked again.
“You want me to give you one of my masks?”
Of all things, he asks for a mask. A bit disappointing.
I do have a lot of them, so if that’s the wish, maybe I could spare one?
“Eh? What are you saying?”
Before I can answer, Jang Hyundeok mimes tugging at his own face.
“Your face, Wizard! Your face! Take off the mask and show me your bare face!”
Jang Hyundeok suddenly recedes. No— I stepped back.
“A mask? You want me to take off the mask? My face? What would you even do with it?”
“I’m just curious?”
“Curious? That’s... all? What about— hey. I said I’d buy you a car. Don’t you need a car?”
“Come on, who asks for a car off a bet like this? That’d be shameless.”
Wow, so our Hyundeok actually has common sense?
But, uh.
If you make over ten million a month, that’s more than one hundred twenty million a year, right? Is buying a car at one hundred ninety million a year in interest common sense for someone like that?
Before I can retort, Jang Hyundeok has already moved to the next phase.
“Okay! So! Take off the mask and reveal your face! Please!”
He strikes variety-show poses and shouts.
Overwhelmed by his energy, I back up a few more steps and blurt out at him, flustered.
“M-my face is... Right! You saw it last time, remember? Here, look.”
I lift both hands for a moment to cover my face— no, the [Mask of Carcosa] on it—then drop them.
In an instant the [Infi Mask] locks on, its special function triggers, and a featureless, arbitrary face manifests.
“How’s that? Look, a face. A face.”
“Uh, that’s still a mask.”
A pinpoint rebuttal.
‘Right, this punk has [True Seeing].’
A minor ability he got the day he read the Demon Church’s grimoires and cultists chased us.
It doesn’t grant true x-ray vision, but it can pierce the presence of trickery.
‘If you can do that, maybe try spotting the used-car dealer’s scams!’
In the end I scratch my head and answer lamely.
“Mm... The face under the mask looks roughly like this anyway. Why are you so set on seeing my face?”
“Just curious?”
“Just?”
“Yeah. Just.”
No rational reason—that means I can’t argue him out of it.
“So it’s a no? You can’t take it off? Because of magic? Something like that?”
“N-no. Not that...”
My tongue gets tied.
I can take it off.
If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t be able to swap masks at all.
In a perfectly sealed space, alone, I can take off the mask and even wash my face.
“Then you can show me? Your face.”
“No— Hyundeok. Not that— I could do something a bit better...”
But the very act of imagining taking off the mask in front of someone standing there just to “appreciate” my bare face floods me with a vile discomfort and indescribable revulsion.
Dizzy.
Blood drains rapidly from my limbs. My hands and feet go cold.
“Come on, just once. You said you’d grant my wish.”
He keeps coming with that playful grin. Has he lost his mind? A flood of thoughts flashes through my head.
‘Is this an enemy trap?’
Did an Abyssal being plant this horrific suggestion in his mind? Was everything planned? Did someone orchestrate this to corner me?
[vmmmm—]
Mana blasts outward, rough, in all directions.
My sensing, shaped like tendrils, gropes the surroundings with near-paranoid thoroughness.
Nothing.
No hostile presence, no killing intent.
Only that Heo Sanghyun has stopped cooking and is looking this way.
And Achilles, Doldoli, and Red looking up at me.
“Come on, Wizard! Hurry up! Okay, take it off! Take it off!”
A deep sigh.
Right, it’s just a prank. No complicated calculus behind it.
Jang Hyundeok just wants to see me as a more familiar person, so he’s doing this.
‘This is... harder than I thought.’
Cold sweat.
In another situation, maybe I could show my face more easily.
But... as introverts often do— I’ve become overly conscious of the situation of [taking off the mask].
It’s stuck in my head; I can’t take it off.
Baseless anxiety. Contextless shame.
My breathing shortens.
And Jang Hyundeok, finding my hemming and hawing amusing, keeps inching closer with a teasing smile.
“Okay, okay— Wizard! Just once! Wow!”
[clap clap clap]—his hands.
“Ah, you little—”
Anyway, the mask-obsession got pretty well alleviated thanks to my Masquerade reward.
Even the status window tags it as [Latent].
Maybe I can take it off briefly and—
“Mm—mph!?”
I clamp a hand over my mouth and bow my head.
I can’t breathe; my throat cinches tight. My guts writhe and constrict in nauseating waves.
My legs go weak. I stagger back a few steps and grab my knee—
Ah, damn it. Kim Sinhwa, you idiot, your left hand doesn’t work right!
My left hand, which won’t move properly, misses my knee, and then the whole world tilts.
“Wizard?”
Impact on my left shoulder.
I’ve gone down.
I’ve fallen into such confusion I didn’t even think to steady myself with magic.
“Hey, don’t... come... closer...”
I’m going to throw up. I might cry.
It’s a mask, but the [Infi Mask], which perfectly reproduces a human face, mirrors what’s happening to my face.
My skin is probably beet red or bone white, my brow or mouth twisted.
Ah— is this Panic? All of a sudden?
“Wizard? Uh— I’m sorry. Wizard? Wizard!”
Jang Hyundeok flails, pale.
“Sir!”
Heo Sanghyun rushes over.
Ah, give me a break.
What is this?
“This is a serious problem.”
“Agree.”
“T-that’s... troublesome.”
I’m exhausted.
I answer my split-off selves, each speaking in short bursts.
“Guys, give it a rest. Talking with you, I wake up from sleep feeling like I didn’t sleep.”
“Kim Sinhwa, you idiot! Sleep matters now? You ate fine right after that!”
“They put out spicy soybean paste stew with Cheongyang chili for the first time in ages—how was I supposed to skip that?”
Maybe thanks to Heo Sanghyun hurrying over to help, the bizarre fit subsided faster than expected.
‘Though my appetite did drop short...’
It felt wrong to make Jang Hyundeok suffer when he’d caused an accident unintentionally—
And there was Heo Sanghyun worrying to an excessive degree—
Anyway, to show them the “perfectly fine, healthy Kim Sinhwa,” I had to eat.
“Ugh, I’m bloated. I figured my dreams would be rough, but I didn’t expect you lot to chime in too.”
“Sinhwa, this is important.”
The crow mask leans close and whispers seriously.
“I know.”
There was no message window.
When this kind of event happens, that thing always pops up to yap, but it said nothing.
“S-so then— it wasn’t induced madness, right? D-did I get that right?”
The one in the buffalo skull speaks, confused.
“Yeah. Kim Sinhwa’s in big trouble.”
The nasty fox agrees.
“You make everything sound apocalyptic.”
When I grumble, the fox points at me.
“Hah? You aren’t scared? You didn’t even take off the mask.”
“...”
I am scared.
Honestly, I’m terrified.
What is happening in my head?
Has latent madness— my mask obsession— ossified in my psyche and started turning me into a real lunatic?
“Mm, Sinhwa. It might not be the mask obsession.”
The crow, ever cautious.
I start to answer, but the fox cuts in first.
“Hey, it’s scarier if it’s not the mask obsession.”
“Enough. We need to analyze Sinhwa’s state to devise a response.”
“Hmph.”
Great, they’re entertaining themselves.
It’s not like I can fall any farther off the cliff of crazy.
In terms of severity, the very fact I’m having a serious talk with other personas in my head is the bigger problem.
Weirdly, framing it that way calms me down.
“Is it because of the wish? What [The Smiling One] said that time. Was that real? What do you think?”
“Could be. You just tried to change Jang Hyundeok’s [wish] into buying a car by any means, didn’t you?”
“...Yeah.”
I’d meant to play off the mask thing as a joke— then conjure a decent pretext to persuade him, and buy him the car.
“Maybe that’s when the rejection kicked in. If we think systemically, the problem should trigger when you take off the mask. It’s odd that it triggered before you did.”
“Sigh...”
A sigh slips out.
Tudor told me once: I’ve been granting wishes for people around me.
[The Smiling One] said something similar.
That I got upset when I couldn’t grant a wish.
‘The [Dream Weaver] behind Gapureum called me [Monkey’s Paw].’
Strip the unpleasant ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) connotations from “Monkey’s Paw” and you’re left with “a tool that grants wishes.”
“Interesting.”
“F-funny?”
The buffalo mask questions my mutter.
“Hey, he’s talking like Gong Isu.”
The fox snipes for no reason.
I don’t answer; I sink into thought.
‘What am I? Is this really my desire?’
It’s not shown as a system tag, but it’s like the mask obsession.
<Accept requests from in-game characters, clear the mission, receive the reward.>
A quest.
Work any gamer does without a second thought.
After getting trapped in this game world, I executed these [quests] without much question.
Because they give rewards.
Because it’s fun.
Because that’s how you move to the next stage.
Because you get to see new events.
And this is a game.
Of course, right? I’m trapped in a game! In that situation, who doubts the quests handed to them?
But, rephrase [quest], and you get:
<Grant people’s wishes.>
And by granting their wishes, I earn rewards, uncover this world’s truth, grow stronger.
“[The Smiling One] told you.”
The fox cuts in.
“Told me what?”
“How to become an [Abyssal Being].”
“By eating things related to the Abyss and becoming an [Abyssal Being]? What’s that got to do with this?”
“No. He didn’t say ‘you become Abyssal by eating Abyssal things.’ He asked back, ‘how would I become an [Abyssal Being]?’”
Before he met me, what [The Smiling One] did was—
Grant people’s wishes and make them his slaves.
“No way?”
“He’s satisfied now because thanks to you he can eat Abyssal-related stuff, but the proper route might be this: the [Abyssal Beings] do the same. Why do those things grant wishes in the first place?”
It’s plausible.
“Then why would this game— or the game’s administrator— trap me here and make me do that?”
“That... uh, I dunno?”
Naturally, the fox, the buffalo, and I all look to the crow.
“Mm. I don’t know either. But now that you say it, our relationship with you does feel similar to the relationship between Abyssals and their avatars.”
“O-oh, then am I— Kim Sinhwa’s a-avatar?”
“Ha! Hilarious. Hey, come up with a cool epithet in advance.”
“Th-then— [Blood-Craving, Hungry Darkness—]”
“Please, don’t.”
Watching a guy with my face say that is mortifying.
“Sinhwa, got your thoughts in order?”
The crow speaks calmly.
“Yeah.”
“Then it’s time for the usual question.”
“Go on.”
“What will you do now?”
“Hmm...”
Right.
What do I do?
I think for a moment, but nothing convincing comes.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know?”
“I’m short on clues. I’ll dig through the Lacrex tome tomorrow and think it through properly.”
