Chapter 93: Food Chain

We arrived again at the cemetery where the queen is buried.

It was an eerie place.

There wasn't a single person around. Only a few people wandering near the management office in the distance.

"Hey, are you sure this is okay?"

Jung-seok asked in an uncertain voice, looking around.

It was just yesterday that we were overwhelmed by the Joseon ghost in this cemetery.

The extreme fear and tension that felt like it was twisting our brains then must still be weighing on Jung-seok. The girls seemed equally tense.

Squeeze.

I could feel Yang Juhee's hand tightening on the shovel. By the way, that shovel was brought from the villa with the pond.

"Just try coming out. I'll hit you with this."

Yang Juhee seemed determined to swing the shovel at any ghost. Her expression was serious and she looked quite tense.

"Dahee, I'm scared!"

Bong Ji-yeon was trembling and hiding behind Yoo Dahee.

Despite starting to show interest in superstitions and fortune-telling, Bong Ji-yeon was still very timid.

Isn't she the most cowardly among the girls?

Actually, that's normal. It's Yoo Dahee and Yang Juhee who are abnormally fearless.

"Girls, let's do the crane dance."

Ms. Hong Mi-ri clapped her hands to get everyone's attention. There was a condition that unmarried women had to do the crane dance to summon the queen ghost, the owner of this tomb.

Yoo Dahee swayed back and forth, flapping her arms like wings to imitate a crane. Yoo Dahee dancing under the scorching sun.

While everyone was watching this scene with serious and fearful eyes, I manipulated the status window. I dispatched 'Ghosts come when you talk about them' to myself, consuming 100 points to deploy the mercenary group.

This ghost was a feng shui ghost that appeared because we talked about ghosts at the tomb earlier. As the name suggests, it had the rule that ghosts appear when you talk about them.

If we talk about dinosaur ghosts, dinosaur ghosts should appear. I chanted the name of the dinosaur into the air like a magic spell.

"Tyrannosaurus! T-Rex!"

Tyrannosaurus was the king of dinosaurs for a long time. It meant that a Joseon queen who died from poison was no match for it.

Humans have only been the masters of Earth for about the last 200,000 years. In contrast, dinosaurs ruled this Earth for nearly 200 million years.

Looking at the long history, dinosaurs, not humans, were the true masters of Earth.

Yet, wouldn't dinosaurs feel resentful seeing humans strutting around like they're the lords of creation? Dinosaurs are the true rulers of the world. Is there any other being more deserving of the name King, Rex, than dinosaurs?

Compared to dinosaurs, human kings were nothing more than monkeys draped in crude fabric.

"Come out, dinosaur! Dinosaur!"

While Yoo Dahee and Bong Ji-yeon were swaying back and forth doing the crane dance, I made my fingers into a trident or fork shape and planted my two dinosaur-like legs on the ground.

I was doing a dinosaur dance.

"Jung-seok! You do it too! We need to call the Tyrannosaurus with our hearts, like we're performing ancestral rites!"

Why do Koreans perform ancestral rites every holiday? It's to feed peeled pears or dried persimmons to ancestral ghosts.

Similarly, if we perform rites for dinosaurs, dinosaur ghosts would surely come to eat.

I performed rites for dinosaurs with all my heart, and Jung-seok also imitated a T-Rex following me.

"Kuaooo."

"Kaooo."

"Geez, what are you doing now? Is this really right?"

Ms. Hong Mi-ri laughed as if it was extremely funny. She seemed to be skeptical of this method, probably because she hadn't seen the ghosts I had defeated with dinosaur ghosts so far.

I got angry.

"Teacher! Can't you see we're seriously performing rites right now?"

Who laughs during a ritual?

If we bring bad luck and the T-Rex ghost doesn't come, we're all done for. To make up for Ms. Hong Mi-ri's mood-dampening, I shouted more passionately.

"King of dinosaurs! Tyrannosaurus!"

Rumble-

At that moment, a sound like thunder striking from a clear sky was heard. It was the sound of the earth shaking.

Is the dinosaur coming out?!

As I thought this and turned my head, I saw a woman dancing on top of the tomb, looking at me.

The tomb ghost appeared first!

Her eyes were bloodshot, bright red, and she was shedding bloody tears from her paper-white face. Her terrifying face made me feel like my breath was caught in my throat.

"T-Rex! T-Rex!"

I called for the Tyrannosaurus even more passionately. But either my rites weren't effective or my sincerity wasn't enough to summon the dinosaur ghost, as there was no sign of the dinosaur appearing.

Bong Ji-yeon screamed.

"Kyaah! It's too loud! Be quiet! It's so noisy!"

What could be so noisy? Soon, Yoo Dahee also covered her ears and crouched down.

"Someone's whispering in my ear! They're talking too fast, I can't understand what they're saying!"

Yang Juhee and Ms. Hong Mi-ri were also covering their ears.

It seemed that some kind of noise, inaudible to Jung-seok and me but only audible to the women, was driving the women crazy. Is this the explosion of women's unique empathetic ability!

"T-Rex! Please come out! Aaaah!"

It was a critical situation in many ways. Jung-seok spoke urgently.

"Hey! Young-won! Let's give up on the T-Rex! Let's change to something else!"

"To what! Allosaurus? Giganotosaurus? Or Spino? Actually, I was thinking maybe we should switch to Spinosaurus! Those T-Rex bastards are cowards!"

"No! Not dinosaurs! You! Do you know what women hate and fear the most?"

What could it be? What women hate the most?

Snakes? Spiders? No, I got it.

"Ugly men!"

"No! What women hate and fear the most is mothers-in-law! The only being Jang Hee-bin found difficult and feared in her life was her mother-in-law, Queen Myeongseong! King Sukjong's mother!"

Summon a mother-in-law ghost? It was a brilliant suggestion.

Daughters-in-law can't win against mothers-in-law.

That was a tradition and culture that had continued throughout history, both in the East and West. A perfect food chain.

It could be seen as a clear hierarchy! We study history to understand these traditions and defeat ghosts!

"Dinosaur! Mother-in-law! Anything is fine, just come out!"

I raised my hand to the air and shouted.

At that moment, a cold and fierce wind like winter seemed to blow from somewhere, and Bong Ji-yeon stood up, foaming at the mouth.

"You wench! How dare you cause such a ruckus! You wench! I'll tear your legs apart and kill you! How dare you! You weeench!"

What on earth is this situation?

I could barely stand in the wind and couldn't come to my senses, but I could clearly see Bong Ji-yeon running like a track athlete and lunging at the ghost. Bong Ji-yeon grabbed the dancing ghost's hair and shook it violently in all directions.

"You vicious wench! You husband-eating wench! Die! Die! Die! Die! Bring back my son! My son! Bring back my son! My son you killed!"

Wobble wobble-

The ghost whose hair was grabbed swayed back and forth like dancing for a few seconds. Finally, text appeared before my eyes.

Ding-

『Congratulations! You have defeated the 'Dancing Laughing Woman'!』

『Starting settlement for 6 people's survival.』

『You gain 600P.』

"Oh, damn!"

600 points gained in an instant!

It felt like all the stress was melting away like a snowman in the summer sun, feeling the reward for our hard work!

***

"Blegh, I feel like throwing up. Ugh."

Bong Ji-yeon kept retching. She seemed to want to vomit even after throwing up everything she had eaten.

Ms. Hong Mi-ri, who was patting her back, said.

"A ghost had possessed your body. It's a common possession symptom."

"Why did the ghost enter Bong Ji-yeon specifically?"

Jung-seok asked. Jung-seok was curious about anything related to Bong Ji-yeon.

Soon, Ms. Hong Mi-ri looked around and gave a simple answer.

"They say ghosts are often seen by people with weak energy, right? Yang Juhee and Yoo Dahee all have strong energy. So the ghost clung to Bong Ji-yeon, who had the weakest energy."

That seemed to be the case.

I had thought Bong Ji-yeon was of no help in our party, but now it turns out Bong Ji-yeon had the talent to receive ghosts into her body.

Anyway, although we took a bit of a detour from the plan of defeating the villainess with a T-Rex ghost, we defeated a powerful ghost and earned 600 points as a reward. Suddenly, I became curious.

"But the mother-in-law ghost said to bring back her son. Did Jang Hee-bin kill Sukjong?"

Jung-seok answered my question.

"No. It's actually the opposite. Jang Hee-bin was given poison by Sukjong and died."

Then why did she say such a thing? Soon, Jung-seok provided an answer.

"The ghost dancing on Jang Hee-bin's tomb is just thought to be Jang Hee-bin, but it might not have been the real Jang Hee-bin. It must have been another Joseon-era villainess."

I see. It made sense when I heard it.

Anyway, we successfully added the villainess ghost to our mercenary group. Having such a powerful ghost made me feel like I had become a very impressive person.

684P.

I had gained points that made me feel full even without eating. First, I decided to use 100 points to remove Jung-seok's quirk.

"How is it? Do you feel any different?"

Jung-seok, whose quirk had been removed, looked at his hands and arms. He also put his hand on his chest.

"I don't think anything has changed particularly."

It seemed so. Anyway, villainess ghost exorcism success!

It was a joyful achievement to accomplish a goal we all worked hard for together.

"Good job, everyone!"

I comforted Yang Juhee and Yoo Dahee who were sprawled out by the tomb. Everyone looked dazed and dreamy like heavily drunk people.

After being disoriented for a while, Yang Juhee seemed to come to her senses and asked me.

"So now we won't die on the second floor either?"

Can we easily conquer the second floor of the Nightmare Corridor using the villainess ghost? Actually, this was something we'd have to try to know.

As I was thinking about it, Ms. Hong Mi-ri said.

"The ghosts that appear on the second floor. If what you say is true, Young-won, they won't be easy opponents. You said a music teacher ghost appears, right? The one that ticks. The ghost that says it'll suck your brain."

"Yes. It said it was a teacher."

Maybe the Yeongji High music teacher became a ghost for some reason. Like committing suicide at school...

As I was thinking this, Ms. Hong Mi-ri shook her head.

"I checked on the teacher-only intranet, and none of the music teachers who worked at Yeongji High have passed away yet. They're all living healthily."

"What? That can't be."

The Rhythm Ghost wasn't a music teacher from Yeongji High? Then what the hell is the Rhythm Ghost?

"...Then what could its identity be?"