“Junior, stop now.”
A disgruntled voice poured down from the ceiling.
“This is stupid. I’m telling you, let’s expel a few.”
Gong Isu.
He was looking at me with his feet planted on the ceiling.
The second hand on the clock-shaped face ticked noisily, reflecting his displeasure.
Well, fair enough.
We had just failed on the twelfth attempt.
“How are we supposed to get to eat the pasta!”
The guests’ laments from outside the kitchen.
“Give us pasta, now!” “Pasta!” “Why won’t you let us eat the pasta?”
Clamor.
The loud hubbub made by the disappointment and frustration of twelve people.
Rather than the fact that they were trapped in a strange space—
pasta.
Only their hunger for pasta showed through.
It’s the mental contamination effect this space induces.
If not for the protection of [Madness of the Abyss]— I would have forgotten why I came in here myself.
“Junior.”
Weighing for a moment which would be easier, the twelve or the one, I answered the one.
“Did you forget the rule that the moment even one person dies we lose?”
“Right. But you seem to have forgotten what I said too. I can bypass that rule.”
Truthfully, this one man is harder to handle than the twelve hungry people gathered in the living room.
“Bypass or sidestep, dead is dead.”
“It’s not death. It’s just a slight change of state.”
“Ugh...”
This [pension] we’re staying in now.
This pension isn’t actually the [Hungry Mansion].
A similar skin is applied, but there’s no second floor— no necromancer golem— and laughably, there isn’t even the bug where you ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) get stuck in the wall. Shouldn’t it usually be the other way around?
Anyway.
This is a pocket-space built in the rift between time and space, or between dimension and dimension.
And in game-system terms there’s a requirement to exist here as a [Guest], but if you use Gong Isu’s ability you can remove that requirement.
“Anyone not recognized as human cannot be a [Guest]. That person auto-fails out. For the record, I didn’t discover this.”
“Yeah. I know.”
I’m the one who found the bug.
If you herd an NPC into a specific spot, then overlap that NPC with an artifact— and massage it with a forced command— you can induce a bug where the NPC’s species tag changes into the item’s product-name tag.
In short, the NPC stops being [Human] and turns into something like [Ice Cream].
Not that anything truly changes; it only shows like that on the status window— but the bug is useful in events that reference an NPC’s species.
For example, exactly like now.
“Damn that future Kim Sinhwa. He taught Gong Isu something pointless.”
From what I hear, the future me ran experiments reproducing that bug using Gong Isu’s ability.
But that’s a story for when the target is a game NPC that’s just a scrap of data—
“No— in that case it’s worse than death, isn’t it?”
If you get that treatment in a space this unstable— you’re dragged off by the [Tindalos] that dwell on the edge of time.
If Gong Isu had told me that from the start, I never would have begun this plan.
“So what. If we don’t do this, everyone dies anyway. Either you use the golden hairpin to wipe them all out— or we all get swept up in the destruction triggered by the abyssal being.”
“No, the whole point of this is to avoid that.”
Hearing that, Gong Isu flipped off the ceiling— and dropped to the floor.
He landed without a sound like a big cat settling down. Very nimble.
“Hey, don’t you get it? Look! Blond friend.”
“Yup?”
Jang Hyundeok, who had been in the kitchen corner getting snacks from Heo Sanghyun, came over.
“Ah, what about him?”
“Junior, just hold still. Blond friend, stand here. Side by side. The three of us. Like this.”
“Huh? What are we doing?”
“Okay, you too, Junior— the three of us will do the exact same action. Now— raise your left hand. What, why are you already wrong?”
“Huh? Left hand? Ah. Left hand.”
Jang Hyundeok’s airheaded voice. I won’t bother to explain which hand he raised.
“Senior, he’s a bit like that.”
“Huh? Mage? No, I mean—”
Gong Isu waved an irritable hand.
“Then blond friend, step out. Butler!”
“I get your point, so knock it off. And with the four people here we can’t reproduce that analogy.”
Mr. Sanghyun and I will never miss, and Jang Hyundeok will miss even if he’s the only one.
“And you know that and still say this? In the end it’s a mass game. The more people and conditions, the harder it gets! The factors you have to account for increase exponentially! It’s impossible to make everyone obey a set of randomly added rules.”
“I can do it. Hey, you go over there. Senior here— he’s in a foul mood— might catch strays.”
“Ah... okay.”
Watching Gong Isu’s face, Jang Hyundeok slunk back toward Heo Sanghyun.
“You punk, Junior.”
“I’m serious, Senior. I can do it.”
The added rules aren’t random.
One prewritten rule is chosen according to which mistake is made and in what order.
For an ordinary human, remembering or computing every case is impossible, so calling it random is fair enough—
but I can remember and control it.
“How are you going to do that? Up to now you keep failing, and you’ll keep failing going forward. It’s already twelve people. The moment it hit double digits, it was over. Making pasta is now impossible.”
“Come on, don’t give up. Let’s keep our spirits up and try again. Look at Jang Hyundeok there. Still smiling ear to ear— radiating positive energy, isn’t he?”
“Is that blond friend maybe a bit slow?”
“Hey now, just because he can’t hear doesn’t mean you can talk like that. He’s not that bad.”
“The only rule he mustn’t break is ‘don’t say names,’ and already...”
“Mm...”
Honestly, if Jang Hyundeok were a [Guest] instead of an [Employee]— I would have given up long ago myself.
And it looks like even Gong Isu has started forgetting a few keywords due to this space’s mental contamination effect—
but my goal is not to succeed at this ridiculous mass game.
If anything— the mass game itself is the goal.
I extended my mana, adjusted the ritual formula composing this space— and waited for the next guest.
“Ah, I remember!”
With a stricken look as if struck by lightning, Park Jumi hurriedly worked her computer.
“Yes. Here it is! [The One Who Rends the Veil].”
Saying that, Park Jumi began slowly reading what appeared on the monitor.
[He normally dwells between dimension and dimension, attacking those who approach him, but grants the power to move through time and space to the cultist who completes the ritual to summon him.]
Reading on to the part that said the cult that served [The One Who Rends the Veil] was eradicated thirteen years ago, around 2010, by an attack from the Foreigners Administration, Park Jumi— briefly forgetting her interlocutor— muttered to herself.
“The record is incomplete, but there are matching parts with the ritual that cult performed. Hm— but what remains are only eyewitness accounts... Reproducing their ritual would be impossible... Did Kim Sinhwa receive a direct revelation? Or was there a successor cell? Well, it was a cult using magic that handled time-space, so...”
“A ritual? You’re saying all of that was a ritual?”
“Oh. Yes. Forbidding people from speaking names, or preventing them from questioning the priest, are classic taboos. Forcing an unattainable goal to be repeated endlessly is a more common form of ritual than people think.”
Fasting, self-harm, taboo phrases, repetition of behavior outside common sense. Challenges to actions physically impossible.
“Repeating an impossible goal? What meaning could that possibly have?”
“The act itself has meaning.”
Transcending time perception through extreme absorption. A ritual in the borrowed form of a game— or the borrowed form of a play.
It’s often found in primitive religion.
“First, it makes it impossible to think about anything else. Even in what you described, they’re no longer thinking ‘why must we do this?’ but only ‘how do we do this?’ Repeated actions within a unified rite produce a single wish.”
“A single wish?”
“In this case...”
“Pasta?”
“Pasta?”
Feeling a slight thrill, Park Jumi suddenly felt the discomfort of gears that wouldn’t mesh.
Right— why pasta?
Why did Kim Sinhwa make people fixate on that?
What did he want?
And why did they have to make straw dolls?
Both are things not in the records. Were they additions from Kim Sinhwa?
Why?
“Ah, honestly, it is a bit tiring.”
This is a kind of silent discipline.
Mana drawn up to an extreme through taboo and austerity.
It is implemented in the form of a pension and furnishings— but each is a symbol with occult meaning.
Dense formulas, placed between time and space, invisible to human eyes.
A snare to hold [The One Who Rends the Veil].
“He knows that too, which is why he keeps sending people to interfere with me.”
The people trapped here weren’t lured by me. It wasn’t that I didn’t expect something like this— but maybe because of the [Feast’s Offering] trait, more troublesome people are entering in more troublesome forms.
“Ugh, how many people from the Foreigners Administration are there, anyway?”
That’s why I injected the keyword pasta into them.
If I hadn’t, everyone gathered here would already— due to the mental contamination effect— have become cultists of [The One Who Rends the Veil].
“And they would have attacked me. Probably even Gong Isu and Jang Hyundeok.”
It may sound ridiculous— but pasta is protecting me.
“If we could even complete the jaeung (a straw-doll-shaped apotropaic), we could secure a decisive edge. But that’s too much, I suppose?”
It would be easier to just slam power into power— this is a headache.
For now I’m barely keeping the balance.
Hmm...
Was it that the moment you get used to a pattern, he throws in an exception?
“Mage! Mage!”
Jang Hyundeok’s scream from the front door.
A danger signal to indicate that the pattern maintained so far had been broken.
I carefully looked toward the front door.
Whoever had come was blocked by Jang Hyundeok’s body and I couldn’t see. Smaller than Hyundeok, I guess?
Only the voice carried.
“Mage?”
Echoing Jang Hyundeok’s word with a slightly incredulous tone, the guest.
“Ah, no! I mean— guest! A guest is here! Mage! Quickly! Come out, quick!”
“Guest? Ah, I’m a guest? Then what are you?”
“I— I’m an e, employee...”
“Employee? Hm, employee? What do you sell here? Is this a restaurant?”
“Pa, pasta...”
“Pasta?”
It seemed Jang Hyundeok’s courage ended there. He cried out with a tearful face.
“Please! I don’t know anything!”
“You don’t? Is there anyone here besides you and that mage bastard?”
Beyond Jang Hyundeok, I could see the guest rise a little onto their toes.
They must have tried to peer over Hyundeok’s shoulder— but it wasn’t enough, so the guest got annoyed.
“Hey, why are you so tall? Bend down. No, bend like this.”
With a rough attitude the guest grabbed Jang Hyundeok’s head and—
“Aaagh! Why— why are you doing this!?”
“Ah, it’s fine. It’s fine. Just think of me as your friendly older sister. Kid. Friendly skinship. Hm? You can do that, right?”
She wedged his head between her armpits.
“Good, now I can see. Stay like that a second.”
With Jang Hyundeok tucked under her arm, the guest stomped— stomped— into the living room.
“P, please! Please spare me!”
Begging in a voice like he was caught in a giant piece of heavy equipment, Jang Hyundeok.
“Spare you?”
After sweeping her eyes over the interior, Yang Seoho growled in a low voice.
“From this moment, I’m in control of this situation. Anyone with Korean nationality, or who can prove they have the right to stay in Korea, come to my side. The bastards who can’t, kneel— all of you, for now.”
