31 The Forest of Those Without Faces (1)

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[Entity Report] - Temporary

Elder

Grade: Level 4

Classification: Entity Type

The Elder is one of the entities that appears in the 'Village Where Time Stopped.'

There had been no appearance records for about twenty years after the 'Village Where Time Stopped' became a Bureau observation target, but its existence was recently confirmed for the first time during a support mission for a Level 1 entity appearance.

It appears as an elderly man about 3 meters tall, dressed in the clothing of a Joseon-era yangban, and wearing a mask resembling a Hahoe mask over its face.

The first witness stated that the entity was standing hunched over behind the support-mission hut.

According to the Elder's statement, it can exert influence over everything inside the Village Where Time Stopped.

In fact, it has been observed using telekinesis, telepathy, and similar abilities, and some phenomena have matched the entity's claims.

However, with the information secured so far, the truth of that claim cannot be verified.

Like the other entities from the village, the Elder asks the target a series of questions.

If dissatisfied with the answers, it causes abnormalities in parts of the target's body, usually in the form of damage to the skeleton and muscles.

However, it has been reported that no pain is felt during the process of the damage.

Conversely, when the Elder is satisfied with the answer, it is observed restoring the damage caused during the immediately preceding round of questioning.

While questioning, a sound like wood striking wood continuously comes from the mouth of the Hahoe mask,

and observations show that if an answer is given before that sound stops, the Elder interprets it as interrupting its speech.

In that case, additional bodily damage occurs immediately regardless of the content of the answer.

The question-and-answer process continues without a set number of exchanges or time limit, and ends only when the Elder is satisfied.

After the Q&A ends, the Elder returns inside the Village Where Time Stopped without any further explanation.

If the question-and-answer session ends before the injuries caused by the entity have fully recovered,

it has been confirmed that the accumulated damage will all manifest at once on the target immediately after the entity disappears.

According to the information secured so far, the most effective response when the Elder appears is to avoid provoking the entity and answer the questions sincerely.

However, no common rule has been found regarding what kind of answer satisfies the Elder.

※ Because this report was written based on the testimony of a single survivor, it is classified as a temporary report until additional witness accounts are secured.

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"For something temporary, this turned out pretty well, didn’t it?"

Based on the information I provided to the Information Team in the interrogation room yesterday, the temporary entity report had been completed.

Even though I had talked in no particular order, seeing it organized so neatly made me think I had nailed the key points.

Choi Yuna was slowly going over the report.

"For a Level 4, it's extremely short on information."

I thought it looked decent enough. It was the complete opposite of what I thought.

"Is that so?"

"Think about the hospital."

"Hmm. I was thinking too small."

Even though only one entity appears there, Yongsaeng General Hospital still handed us a thick field manual.

Even taking into account that location-type entities are, in essence, collections of multiple entities, it still meant the Elder's information was sparse.

"Don't worry about it~. The fact that a newbie came back alive from a Level 4 entity is absurd enough already."

"No wonder the number of zeroes in my bank account had increased quite a bit."

"It's all~ pointless. The only things you really spend it on are eating and buying clothes."

When I brought up travel expenses, the Team Leader let out a long sigh.

"I've already made enough to last me a lifetime~."

Come to think of it, the amount that came in for each mission was no joke.

Enough to make me not even miss the 3 billion won I'd blown on stocks.

No, but 3 billion won is still a shame to lose.

"Exactly~. I'd have to quit to prepare for retirement or go on overseas trips."

Kang Chaeyeong stretched, extending her arms.

"Come to think of it, how do we even quit?"

"By dying."

Wasn't that a little too abrupt, senior?

"No, I mean how do we walk out under our own power?"

"You need to handle Level 4-class entities 15 times, or produce results equivalent to that."

Imina sipped her iced Americano.

"Sounds like you're telling us to just die."

"But the Team Leader didn't die, did she?"

"Huh?"

Could it mean the Team Leader had already handled Level 4-class entities 15 times?

When I turned my head, I saw the Team Leader looking at us with her usual relaxed, eye-smiling expression.

"To be exact, fifty-nine times! I'm not just stuck alone at the Gwanak Branch for nothing~."

Yeah. As expected, no matter what happens, I should never cross the Team Leader.

Buzzzzz!

The Team Leader's terminal started ringing.

"Haah, I thought the office was finally getting lively after a while."

"A mission?"

"My work terminal doesn't ring for anything else, does it?"

Since this is a world where there are no entities that show humans mercy, the Bureau's field response team, which never gets a quiet day, is busy again today too.

"There are two missions?"

"Huh? What's going on all of a sudden?"

Imina's expression as she looked at the terminal was anything but normal.

"They're saying the Gwanak Branch emergency response will be handled by another branch, so we should go.... I wonder what HR is thinking."

"That's strange."

"What can we do~? If the higher-ups say jump, we jump. That's just how salaried workers are."

I wondered if it was okay to apply ordinary salaryman logic to the Bureau, but if the Team Leader said so, what could a low-ranking employee say?

"It looks like the three of us can go to the Forest of Those Without Faces."

"Eeh? I heard the Yeongdeungpo District team got wiped out there last time!"

What the hell, where is that place even supposed to be?

"The situation is a little different from last time. It's just a light patrol."

Buzzzzz.

[The Forest of Those Without Faces.txt]

The entity report was sent to the terminals of the three of us, excluding the Team Leader's.

"Where's the other one?"

Choi Yuna asked what the remaining one was.

I was curious too what the remaining one was, and why they were sending three of us to that forest while the Team Leader went elsewhere.

"Ah, I'm going to Yongsaeng General Hospital."

"Then, since we're the experienced ones, Senior Yuna and I should go to the hospital...."

"Seongbin."

The Team Leader's eyes sharpened.

"If the director's office hadn't been included in this appearance site, I'd have said that first."

"The director's office?"

"You two were already singled out once, weren't you?"

I remembered the nurse's words from when we came out of Yongsaeng General Hospital.

[Lastly, the director has a separate message for the guardian.]

['The same trick won't work twice.'라고 전하라고 하셨습니다.]

The hospital director had turned a blind eye to us using the entity 'Mokgujin' to cover the rescue target's hospital bill.

"With the director's office attached, the three of us won't stand a chance. Apparently, the director thinks the field response team's bodies are pretty valuable, you know?"

That meant if Yuna and I went back into that territory, there'd be no mercy.

"Will you be okay alone?"

"Of course I'll be fine! Would I go alone if I weren't~?"

"Don't worry about it, oppa~. When the Team Leader says that, she never gets so much as a scratch."

No matter how I thought about it, it seemed dangerous, but the other team members' reactions were calm.

As if they had long since treated this kind of thing as nothing special.

"Then I'm heading straight to the field, so I'll go first? Everyone take care and see you all in one piece."

Clunk.

Imina hummed as she left the office.

After watching the spot she'd left behind for a moment, we prepared for tomorrow's mission.

***

This is a private post [64]

This is a private post [32]

This is a private post [12]

Something weird had appeared on the forum I looked at before leaving my room that morning.

A private post, seriously.

Damn it, why would those bastards, who had been hidden from the whole world until I got there, suddenly post something like that?

Come to think of it, those bastards hadn't answered a single one of my questions.

From what I heard, the human-rights-forgoing track only exists in the Seoul area, and they don't work newbies this hard anywhere else.

But why are you using the Seoul-side method as the default?

I have a lot of questions, but for now I need to go report my survival at the office, so I'm heading out.

I did make that Onure Mammanun joke, but they were already making it among themselves when I first came to the forum, so that probably wasn't the reason.

The congratulatory comments on my survival kept ringing until the terminal battery was completely drained.

I couldn't figure out why no one had answered those questions.

It was a reasonable suspicion that what they were babbling about in those private posts was related to my questions.

I abandoned my lingering attachment and headed to the cafeteria.

What could I possibly do right now?

If I acted up and got banned by the top mod, I'd end up as a lurker who could do nothing but read.

"Good morning, Section Chief."

"Today, hmm~, you look cheerful."

I greeted Section Chief Gwak Chunbong's head, displayed on a tray piled with kimbap.

I didn't want to know why he was also eating his meal there today.

If I seriously thought about things like what happens when a person with only a head left swallows kimbap, I'd go crazy.

"Did you take your medicine?"

"No."

"And yet you're fine after just one day. Press the button for me, will you? I only ate kimbap, so my throat's getting clogged."

As part of our usual routine, when I pressed the button the chef appeared, took off his hat to greet me, and dragged the tray with the Section Chief on it into the kitchen.

If I seriously thought about how the Section Chief gets assembled in there, I'd go crazy.

Come to think of it, I hadn't taken my medicine today.

Come to think of it, I don't remember taking any medicine yesterday either. Why not?

Could that byproduct really be this effective?

Unfortunately, since there was no entity report, I'd probably have to get medicine details from one of the seniors later.

"Bii~bim, bii~bim, bibim-bibim-bibim-bibim-bibim-bibim, bibibim~."

Humming the World Bibim Chief's bibim song under my breath, I mixed the mountain-vegetable bibimbap to the bibim beat and swallowed it with a fried egg.

***

"It's a mountain."

"It is."

"It's a mountain, you know."

Today's field assignment location was Surisan in Gunpo. If you ask why it's a mountain instead of a forest, all I can say is that we came because we were told to.

"We're supposed to wait here for about six hours, and if nothing strange happens, we can clock out."

"If it's like this, why don't they just do it themselves? I don't get why they're making us come~."

"Exactly. I can guard the house just fine by myself."

What can we do? If the Team Leader says do it, you do it—that's just how office life works.

"But, Senior Choi, how do we check for abnormal signs?"

"Senior Choi?"

"We have to distinguish between them. There are two seniors."

If I just called them senior, both of them would look.

"That sounds weird. I'm not calling you senior."

"All of a sudden?"

"Call me Yuna."

"...I'll call you Ms. Yuna."

"What the heck, what? That girl wants to be the only one called by her name again. Me too, me too!"

I didn't know the exact reason, but both of them seemed sick of the senior act.

"Yes, Ms. Chaeyeong."

"Talk casually too, oppa!"

"No."

Choi Yuna blocked Kang Chaeyeong's path as she made a lively move.

Kang Chaeyeong puffed out her cheeks and glared at Choi Yuna.

"Shall we carry out the mission first?"

Why were the two of them exhausting themselves before the mission even began?

"We can decide what to call each other later."

"Nope."

"Nope!"

The Confucian dragon in my head reared up.

This is why I say we should just scrap the whole 'born early' and same-age-friends nonsense and rank people by age.

"For now, let's act like proper office workers and focus on the job. So what's the abnormal phenomenon?"

The two of them at least accepted my attempt to smooth things over with some fawning.

"Fog rolls in, and then the mountain turns into a forest."

"And if the sky suddenly gets dark, that means a location-type entity has appeared~."

"Now they can even mess with day and night however they want."

In other words, if it weren't that kind of entity, they wouldn't have bothered sending three of us.

Come to think of it, didn't I have a note saying I should only handle Level 1 entities?

What level is this bastard?

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[Entity Report]

The Forest of Those Without Faces

Grade: Level 3

Classification: Location Type

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"I'm sorry, counselor."

I don't think I've ever managed to live the life you recommended after leaving that counseling room.