Chapter 53
[The Bureau Bro's Previous Story]
Author: GalleryingIsEasy
[Dragon Ball Z BGM NewTube Video]
Park Seong-bin nearly got killed by a Management Bureau employee possessed by the soul of a dead person!
Just then, Senior Yoo Se-chan arrived and helped save his life.
The problem was that this was an attack by an entity that used souls, so the remaining Field Response Team members, Park Seong-bin and Yoo Se-chan, were assigned the case.
With Sim Bak-su's help, the two realized that the new religion Bonhyang Haewondang was entangled in the case!
Can Park Seong-bin, posing as a believer, and Yoo Se-chan, preparing to infiltrate, survive long enough to solve the case?
[Comments]
DadIsAMurimPerson: Yoo Se-chan or whatever—just from the posts you write, he feels like an infinite regressor. Did you ask about his ability?
ㄴ(OP) GalleryingIsEasy: They say he's similar, but apparently it's not like in the media. He said he'd explain in detail after the infiltration.
OrphanCrusher: Since when does the Field Response Team infiltrate cults too?
ㄴHound: If an entity's involved, the Bureau handles it. Otherwise, some other place takes care of it.
LastGentleman: Huuuh…. I wondered where the people who said we should play Go had suddenly gone.
WhiteHacker: Who would win if Super Saiyan 7 Yukjiter fought Adamantium Frieza?
***
A common characteristic of cults is that a living person, rather than a god, is worshiped.
That way, the ringleader who incited everyone can live in luxury.
Fortunately, Bonhyang Haewondang was faithfully following the clichés of a cult.
It was my third day undercover as a believer.
Except when sleeping, I attended the hall and watched for anything unusual.
Yoo Se-chan had instructed me to contact him if I noticed any suspicious activity.
Yet despite all the time I'd poured into it, I hadn't found a single strange clue, and as a result, I'd spent two whole days staring endlessly at the same things.
Prayer, testimonials, proselytizing, repeated without end.
[“Only after the Great Shaman, endowed with divine powers, uncovered the secrets of the afterlife did what comes after death become meaningful.”]
[“We must always be grateful to the Great Shaman for teaching us who watches over us and where we are meant to remain.”]
During the empty hours when there was no prayer, praise videos about a person called the Great Shaman played nonstop on the hall's screens.
Believers who had come to pray watched the videos with deeply moved expressions.
Those who had brought their children told them things like, “You, too, must live with gratitude toward the Great Shaman.”
Like blank sheets of paper, the children nodded at their families' words, their pure eyes holding not a trace of suspicion.
I found myself thinking that places on the street claiming to offer psychological counseling, conduct surveys, or show you the way would have been much better.
Bonhyang Haewondang had to disappear. The fact that I was starting to feel those places were better was proof of that.
Whirrrrr!
[Senior Yoo Se-chan: SoulOrb.txt and 3 other files]
[Senior Yoo Se-chan: We're infiltrating at midnight. Memorize the entity reports I sent you.]
[Me: Where are you right now?]
[Senior Yoo Se-chan: Laying out the infiltration route and sending support requests to other branches.]
[Senior Yoo Se-chan: What the hell are you, that not a single support request has been rejected? They even said they'd provide security around the hall.]
[Me: That isn't because of me. Isn't it because the situation is so serious?]
[Senior Yoo Se-chan: That's because you haven't visited a house that's good at refusing yet.]
A joke was only a joke if you knew when to stop.
This was a major incident, serious enough for the Management Bureau to be attacked. There was no way they wouldn't provide support.
No matter how strange the Seoul-area Management Bureau was, there was no way it would refuse to cooperate when its own stronghold was being shaken.
I switched off my terminal and let out a sigh of relief.
He had said that receiving the entity reports was a sign that the internal investigation was complete.
How could I not be glad that we might prevent innocent people from dying and having even their souls used?
Of course, there was the minor step of making sure the operation succeeded first!
With Yoo Se-chan, who was practically confirmed to be a regressor based on circumstantial evidence alone, what was there to worry about?
If I quietly followed my senior and did exactly as I was told, I could save people while reducing the threat to my own life.
Two birds with one stone, a win-win, catching a crayfish while draining the ditch—whatever.
Thus, I spent the time until the hall closed for the night listening to prayers and testimonials.
Hoping that today would be the last of this bizarre situation.
***
Even though the building stood in the middle of the city, with all its lights off, it was extremely eerie.
If it had been a church, at least a red cross would have been glowing.
This was probably just an overreaction brought on by knowing what was happening here.
“Let's go.”
Yoo Se-chan approached from where he had been waiting outside the hall's parking lot.
He was wearing dark clothes for the infiltration rather than his usual suit. So was I.
“Memorized all the reports?”
“Yes.”
Could it be only that?
[Honestly, does a novel's heroine really have to be a virgin?]
Author: GalleryingIsEasy
[SoulOrb.txt and 3 other files attached]
I need the answer, so don't leave shitty comments; I'm warning you in advance.
I'm infiltrating Bonhyang Haewondang now. Give me practical, condensed tips on the entities in the attached files.
Focus on the comments rather than the post. I probably won't have time to look anything up.
[Comments]
Oh,PushItIn: This bastard knows a thing or two![User suspended for 2 hours]
ManageManagement: From now on, please refrain from sending the original entity reports you received from the Bureau. Attach copies at the very least.
The Help Me Management Bureau Gallery, still boasting a 100% win rate! Cheats already enabled.
Right now, I'm at the level of typing “show me the money” in StarCraft and playing against the computer.
“I'm ready.”
“Unless a nuclear bomb goes off in the basement of the hall, the effects probably won't reach outside.”
“With support that powerful, shouldn't they be supporting us for a suppression operation rather than an infiltration?”
“They say they have no~ grounds. Park the Idiot probably blocked the information. And infiltration is the right call. This isn't something the two of us can handle.”
Park the Idiot. What an intensely unpleasant nickname.
“You mean Branch Director Park?”
“Yeah, Park the Idiot.”
“I'm a Park, too.”
“…Branch Director Park the Idiot.”
Yoo Se-chan explained that because the part about an “entity being involved” hadn't gotten through, the other branches had classified it as an investigation-stage mission.
He had also judged during the investigation that it wasn't a situation on a scale where they could hastily recover and contain the entity.
I wasn't entirely free of complaints, but I accepted it for now when he said that even a small operation would be serious enough for the team leader to step in.
“If it weren't for you, they probably wouldn't have even provided perimeter support.”
“That's not something I know.”
“I know. Anyway, let's head in soon.”
Yoo Se-chan patted my shoulder, approached the hall's outer wall, and pulled something from his pocket.
“Watch what I do and follow me in.”
A flask sloshing with liquid.
Yoo Se-chan opened the flask and poured the liquid inside over the wall.
Sizzle, sizzle.
The section touched by the liquid began to glitch and turned semitransparent.
“Make sure you follow properly, okay?”
Soon, Yoo Se-chan began performing a strange series of movements.
Five turns in place with his arms like an elephant's trunk, four claps, and five duck walks.
Then, as naturally as could be, he passed through the wall where the anomaly had appeared.
“What is this…?”
“It's a tool-type entity called a Glitch Potion, used for infiltration. If you watched the movements carefully, follow them and come in too.”
The obvious question of whether it was actually possible to pass through a wall with those movements rose all the way to my throat.
Apparently, some part of me still hadn't been infected by the Management Bureau mindset.
When I touched the wall covered in static, it was, naturally, just a wall.
There was no choice.
Five turns in place with my arms like an elephant's trunk, four claps, and five duck walks.
Then I reached toward the wall and passed through it without any resistance.
“Good.”
“Do infiltration missions always involve movements like these?”
“No, this is one of the better ones. There are ones where you have to touch your tongue to your elbow, too.”
“…Thank you.”
“Huh.”
We moved to the CCTV blind spot I'd been told about in advance, performed the same procedure on the hall building's wall, and only then were we able to enter.
The first-floor lobby lay cloaked in darkness, with both the lights and screens turned off.
In a place where only the operating CCTV cameras should have announced their presence with red dots,
The scent of incense, faint even during prayers, now clung thickly to my nostrils.
“The passage to the basement is over there.”
Yoo Se-chan pointed to the large screen that had played the Great Shaman's praise videos nonstop during the day.
The scent of incense grew even stronger as we approached the screen.
Yoo Se-chan tapped the screen twice with his finger—tap, tap—and it rose upward, revealing stairs leading down to the basement.
“From here on, stay sharp and follow my instructions as closely as possible. Understood?”
“Understood.”
Before we went down to the basement via the stairs, Yoo Se-chan stopped me.
“Our objective is to confirm and gather information on the entity believed to be active within Bonhyang Haewondang.”
“Yes.”
“Keep this in mind. This isn't an operation for the two of us to bring this place down. We'll rescue people if we can, but information gathering is our priority.”
“…Yes.”
“Let's go.”
We muffled our footsteps and descended quite a lot of stairs before finally reaching the basement.
Along with a scent of incense far stronger than before.
“We will remain and live! We will remain and live! We will remain and live!”
“We will remain and live! We will remain and live! We will remain and live!”
“We will remain and live! We will remain and live! We will remain and live!”
At some point, even the prayers began ringing out loudly enough to pierce my ears.
It was proof that we were heading in the right direction.
The basement we entered using the Glitch Potion once again was far too spacious to be an ordinary building basement.
At the end of the wide, long corridor was one room, with two rooms on each side, four in total.
Ironically, the abnormal size only made me more certain that an entity had intervened.
From the nearest room on the left came prayers steeped in madness.
The shouts, almost screams, reverberated through the corridor.
“Let's go in.”
Yoo Se-chan pointed toward the room on the left.
“Won't we be discovered?”
“It's fine. Put this on.”
I took the badge Yoo Se-chan held out and attached it to my chest.
“I trust you understand what will happen if it comes off your clothes.”
When I nodded, he cracked open the door and entered first.
The moment I entered the room after him,
I realized that the smell of blood was mixed with the incense.
A vast room comparable to the auditorium we'd seen aboveground.
Jingle, jingle—!
“We will remain and live! We will remain and live! We will remain and live!”
“We will remain and live! We will remain and live! We will remain and live!”
“We will remain and live! We will remain and live! We will remain and live!”
I saw hundreds of people praying at the top of their lungs while staring at one spot.
At the end of their gazes, a shaman-like figure with its face covered by a veil and dressed in white danced on a platform, shaking a bell.
The prayers intensified in an orderly rhythm in time with the bell.
Five people were kneeling in front of the shaman.
Their faces were pained, but even more than pain, they wore expressions of rapture.
Blood flowing down the densely embedded needles covering their entire bodies soaked the platform.
“These believers have chosen to remain and live first, for the sake of their families and all of you!”
Beside them, the man who had spoken about his mother in the testimonial on the first day was shouting at the top of his lungs as the master of ceremonies.
“Show your respect to these sublime souls, and give thanks to those who will remain and live for you! The Great Shaman will watch over them!”
“Long live the Great Shaman! Long live the Great Shaman! Long live the Great Shaman! Long live the Great Shaman!”
The five on the platform raised their heads and praised the Great Shaman.
Jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle!
The bells grew more intense as the shaman's dance quickened.
Then, without warning, the shaman abruptly stopped dancing.
And then, with a light thud—
The five heads on the platform fell to the floor and rolled around.
The silence lasted only a moment; there were no screams.
“These people will now remain beside us as souls!”
Along with the emcee's shout, prayers accompanied by applause and praise of the Great Shaman began.
“We will remain and live! We will remain and live! We will remain and live!”
“Long live the Great Shaman! Long live the Great Shaman! Long live the Great Shaman! Long live the Great Shaman!”
I stood frozen, unable to process the situation, until Yoo Se-chan shook me.
“We're in the middle of an operation, Park Ppit-pi. Get a grip.”
That's when it happened.
“Those who arrived late in the back, you must also show your gratitude to those who have remained!”
The emcee pointed at me with his finger,
And the hundreds of pairs of eyes that had been steeped in madness until just moments ago turned toward us.