Chapter 123
━Boom boo boom pow, gari geck geck.
"Look at this, it cries so strangely. But it's cute! Its tail is so chubby! And it follows people well!"
Yoo Dahee, who came to visit our house, was very excited looking at my pet Giganoto. Yoo Dahee liked animals, and it seemed she also liked reptiles, which some women might dislike.
"Aaah─"
Yoo Dahee opened her mouth wide.
She pretended to put Giganoto, which she had lifted onto her palm, into her mouth. She used to do the same with squirrels, almost half-eating them, and now she was doing it with the lizard too.
Pop-!
Of course, Giganoto was a swift lizard and could quickly escape from Yoo Dahee's mouth.
Rustle rustle rustle-
The little lizard hid under the refrigerator. It seems to be scared of Yoo Dahee. In about 30 minutes, it'll come out on its own to eat and such.
Jung-seok, who was carefully watching Giganoto, said.
"So that's the unidentified creature that was clinging to Jin Seo-yeon? It looks like a lizard, but there's a chance it's not actually a lizard."
"Yeah. I thought about getting rid of it, but it chased away all the bugs in our house, so I'm just keeping it. It doesn't seem like it'll harm us either. I think we can just live with it like this."
The true identity of that lizard was actually a kind of urban legend or ghost. Getting rid of it would give me points, but I decided to keep it because its ability to chase away bugs was more valuable.
━Geck ko. Geck ko.
With that feeling, our pirate crew's regular meeting was held at my house.
The people attending the regular meeting were Jung-seok, Yoo Dahee, me Ha Young-won, and Kwon Sua.
By the way, Kwon Sua was recently unemployed due to her idol group disbanding.
"I might transfer to Yeongji High when the new semester starts. It might be fun if we all go to school together."
An idol transferring to school.
It felt a bit unreal to think that something that usually only happens in games or cartoons was happening in real life.
Of course, after going through so much together and seeing each other at our worst, Kwon Sua now felt more like a timid crew member than an idol to me. Literally having been through life-and-death situations multiple times, we're now friends. Comrades.
"Seok, how's Seo-yeon? Is she okay?"
Yoo Dahee asked Jung-seok about Jin Seo-yeon's well-being.
I was also a bit worried about the cool beauty Jin Seo-yeon who had been entranced by the unidentified animal.
"She seems fine."
Jung-seok answered nonchalantly. He didn't seem very interested in Jin Seo-yeon.
From what I saw, Jin Seo-yeon seemed to like Jung-seok. I didn't expect Jung-seok to take the position of being uninterested and bothered by attention from a pretty girl.
As I was feeling quite envious, Kwon Sua made a fuss.
"I can't believe you chased a strange animal in Seoul. I wish I had been there too. It's a shame I had an appointment because of the group disbandment."
"Sua, we're all the same age, so speak comfortably."
I instructed Kwon Sua, who kept using formal speech with us, to speak casually. But Kwon Sua shook her head.
"I'm more comfortable this way! There were many older members in my group, and all the seniors I met at broadcasting stations were adults, so I got used to it."
If she's comfortable that way, there's no need to worry about it.
Is she still shy? It doesn't seem like she's putting up a wall. She'll probably do it naturally as time passes.
Now, let's get to the main point of the meeting.
"We're going into the corridor again tonight. This time we're aiming to enter the third floor, so everyone be alert. We're going with an elite team. No one knows what will happen on the third floor."
The first floor of the nightmare corridor had scary ghosts, and the second floor had even scarier ghosts.
Honestly, I have no idea what's on the third floor.
Since it's showing a strangely game-like system, if we consider it in game terms, it's natural for the difficulty to increase as we go up.
Can we survive on the third floor, which might be even more hellish, when we already have a low survival rate on the second floor? If there's a way, it would be relying on my status window.
"I have 1520 points now. Let's use this for gacha. I'm planning to use at least 400 points."
One gacha pull costs 80P.
And since one out of every five pulls guarantees an "Escape Talisman", I decided to do five pulls as the basic set when doing gacha.
"Here goes a 5-pull!"
Beep boop-
Beep boop-
Beep boop-
Beep boop-
Beep boop-
I pressed the gacha button five times.
Every time I do gacha, I feel my hands and feet get cold, a chill runs down my spine, and my hair stands on end. This must be why people can't quit gambling.
Swish-
I brought five boxes placed in front of our house. The sizes of the boxes varied, with the smallest being smaller than my palm and the largest about the size of a watermelon.
"This is really amazing! Let's open them quickly to see what's inside!"
Kwon Sua, experiencing the gacha event for the first time, was the most excited. I've noticed recently that Kwon Sua has very big reactions.
Is it a response trained from her life as an entertainer? Thanks to that, the pirate crew's atmosphere became quite cheerful.
"Then let's open the biggest one first."
Swish-
I opened the packaging of the box with a kitchen knife. The packaging was more thorough than I expected, so it wasn't easy to open.
Seeing this, Jung-seok asked.
"Who on earth packages and delivers these things? Or do they suddenly appear out of thin air?"
I don't know either. The contents are more important than the packaging, right?
Crack, crackle-
Rip rip rip-
I tore open the boxes roughly. I was the death and destroyer of boxes.
『Strange Walkie-Talkie. A walkie-talkie that works well anywhere. It can transmit voices no matter how far apart. Sometimes strange sounds can be heard.』
『Demon Doll. A cute little devil plush doll. It's a dud prize. It has no effect or efficacy. How about using it to decorate a room or office?』
『First Aid Treatment Set. A first aid kit that treats injuries. It can perfectly heal any wound or disease as long as you're alive. Disappears after one use.』
『Mysterious Talisman. A talisman made by mysterious methods. As the name suggests, it has mysterious effects. Looking at the characters written on the paper makes you feel slightly dizzy.』
『Old Camera. An extremely old and worn-out camera. The remaining battery is displayed. It has an antique butterfly engraved on it. It's questionable whether it can take good pictures.』
"These are the descriptions of the five items."
I wrote down the text that appeared on the status window in a notebook and showed it to everyone.
We could acquire various items with diverse effects, and the reactions were all over the place.
"This doll is cute! You call this a dud?"
Yoo Dahee picked up the "Demon Doll".
It was about the size of Yoo Dahee's face and looked like someone had clumsily stitched together cotton and cloth.
Although it was called a "Demon Doll", it looked like a long-haired woman. It even had a round, curled demon tail on its butt, like a squirrel from a cartoon.
"If it's a dud, can I have this doll?"
"No. We don't know what side effects it might have. It's called a demon doll, after all."
Jung-seok firmly rejected Yoo Dahee's proposal. Dahee frowned slightly as if a bit upset, but I agreed with Jung-seok's opinion too.
They wouldn't call it a 'demon' for nothing, right? Let's just display it casually in the secret base.
Jung-seok said.
"I'm concerned about this 'First Aid Treatment Set'. It says it can perfectly heal any disease or wound. Does that mean it could even treat a terminally ill patient in the ICU?"
Now that I heard it, it was surprising. If it can cure incurable diseases, isn't that a miracle?
But it was an item that disappears after one use. It meant we couldn't test it on someone else.
Bang-!
Just then, something flashed. As if lightning had struck our house.
"Aaah!"
"Eek!"
"Ugh."
I screamed, Dahee screamed, Jung-seok screamed.
Beeeeeep-
It felt like I had tinnitus.
What on earth? Did North Korea fire a missile at our house?
As I was thinking that, after about 10 seconds, my vision gradually returned. In the slightly hazy view, Kwon Sua was scratching the back of her head and laughing awkwardly.
"I just pressed the camera once..."
Camera. I see.
I could viscerally feel the power of the "Old Camera".
I really thought we'd been hit by a flash grenade. That's not something that should be used on people. Then how about on ghosts? What if we set off this camera's flash at ghosts? They'd probably hate it.
"We can use the camera right away when we go in. The talisman is an escape talisman. The rest is a walkie-talkie. How do we use this?"
It was slightly bigger than my palm and quite heavy.
As I was examining it from all angles, Jung-seok, who had searched for walkie-talkies on his phone, said.
"It seems like you usually need two of these for it to be effective. Having just one is useless."
That was true. So this could be considered a dud item for now too.
Five gacha pulls.
My evaluation was fairly satisfactory. We got a talisman, acquired a camera, and obtained a first aid kit.
“When your character level reaches 5, you can carry two items at once. It means our conquest will gradually pick up speed. With items like these, even the creatures on the second floor won't be a big deal."
What existed on the second floor were Japanese ghosts.
They were bastards who tainted everyone who approached with malice, without any grudge or reason. But it wasn't like we had no way to deal with them.
***
"Camera. It's here. The talisman too."
Opening my eyes in the dark, gloomy corridor, I carefully picked up the camera lying around me.
Today wasn't a random matching, but a formal conquest day. My goal was to reach the third floor.
"Gu Hyena, you're here today? It's been a while."
As always, I headed to the basement of the old school building first. In the basement, Gu Hyena was sitting on a sacred statue.
Gu Hyena being here... meant that Wang Ja-hyun's party wasn't in this corridor. When Wang Ja-hyun's party entered the corridor, Gu Hyena would flee to avoid their crosses.
"I'm bored."
The high school girl ghost, Gu Hyena, seemed bored. I chatted about everything that had happened recently.
"Dorangmul Girls disbanded?"
"That's right. And one of the members, Kwon Sua, joined our pirate crew."
"Wow. I met and talked with her before. I wonder if she remembers me? If I become friends with her, it might be easier to debut in the entertainment industry when I become human later, right?"
Gu Hyena was a high school girl ghost, but she had a dream of returning to being human. That dream was also why she was cooperating with us.
"Next time I come, I'll bring Kwon Sua. You two can have a good chat."
"Great!"
Gu Hyena laughed, but it was really scary. Gu Hyena was still a ghost after all.
The easily scared Kwon Sua might faint if she saw this scene...
"Hey, why did you pack so many items? Is this right? Your bag's going to burst."
Yang Juhee, wearing an Hermès bag, appeared in the basement. Jung-seok and Yoo Dahee also showed up.
"We're going to the third floor today, right?"
"Maybe it's because we're all together, but I'm not scared at all."
This combination feels the most stable, I tell you.
Although Kwon Sua, who recently joined as a party member, had a pretty good trait, she was only level 3, so she could only carry one item, which was a shame, so we left her out today.
Yang Juhee's 6 items – Box cutter, Magic wand, 1st floor map, First aid kit, Zippo lighter, Straw doll. My 2 items – Camera, Escape talisman.
Jung-seok's 2 items – Highlighter, Walkie-talkie. Yoo Dahee's 2 items – Paper crane, Shaman's bell.
A party with a total of 12 items.
Even Wang Ja-hyun and his maids probably haven't experienced this. The old "Film Club" probably didn't, either.