Chapter 137

「Crow」’s claw marks……?

“Director, could you explain again what happened immediately after your memory cut off?”

Manager Kwon Mu-seop hurriedly asked the Director.

His tone was a little excited, so the Director asked back passively.

“How am I supposed to explain it?”

“You should have a perception that you were moved. Please explain whether you were standing upright at that time, or whether your motion from immediately before continued, and so on.”

At the more detailed question, Director Go hesitated and opened his mouth.

“First, I fall with a thud.”

“From about what height do you fall?”

“From about knee height, like this, thud.”

Director Go stretched out both arms and pretended to fall forward.

He fell from knee height and ended up sprawled like that?

Usually, one would describe that as “falling over.”

But to deliberately say he “fell.”

Does that mean he had no awareness of standing before or losing balance?

“And what is the situation after that, until you open the door and come out?”

“After I fall, the surroundings are pitch-black. But something behind me screams, so because of that sound, I almost get chased into opening the door.”

“Screams?”

“Something behind me goes KRAAA, loudly.”

“…….”

“…….”

“…….”

This Director really does not read field reports.

If he had looked at recent reports a little, he would have guessed what that sound was.

The 3 field workers were looking at him with cold, flat eyes, but Director Go was receiving the light alone, so he did not even notice that.

To that carefree Director, Kwon Mu-seop asked again.

“Are there any other wounds or painful areas besides the back of your neck?”

“Mm, the inside of my head also feels a little…….”

Director Go groped the back of his own head with his hand.

I shone the searchlight there, and Kwon Mu-seop carefully parted Director Go’s hair, which had been fixed in place with wax.

We soon found a wound made by something.

It was not a severe wound.

As if something sharp had pecked at it, the skin on the scalp was slightly scraped.

While we looked at that wound and thought, surely not, the Deputy Director murmured,

“It seems it pecked him with its beak?”

“…….”

“…….”

It snatched the back of his neck with its feet and pecked the back of his head with its beak……?

What should I do?

I ended up imagining a scene where 「Crow」, irritated, smacked the Director on the back.

I thought I should not caricature it that way, but still ended up guessing, did 「Crow」 lose patience too?

“That bastard called 「Crow」 seems to have a temper.”

At the Deputy Director’s half-joking, half-serious words, Kwon Mu-seop laughed.

“It is certainly no ordinary bastard.”

Kwon Mu-seop looked strangely pleased as he said that.

So I had to swallow the layers of anxiety piling up inside me alone.

---

“There may be a more immediate hostile reaction on B1.”

Around the time the rest ended, Kwon Mu-seop said this to us.

It was quite harsh news.

We had broken through the lobby after no fewer than 4 attempts.

The main reasons for the previous 3 failures had been Director Go’s mistakes and rampages, but that too had happened because the lobby space itself was dangerous to us.

Moreover, during the final fourth attempt, we had merely passed through quietly, yet strange things had still attached themselves to us.

In this way, this space was wary of us approaching the core.

It had already been like that in the lobby, so naturally, the reaction on B1, where the core was hidden, would be even more violent.

“On B1, there are a high-end restaurant, a cake shop, and so on. Until now, the places where the core has been found include the inside of the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant, the wine rack of an Italian restaurant, the inside of a cake shop’s storage room, a nursing room, and a gap in the corridor ceiling.”

On top of that, we were in a situation where we practically had to go treasure hunting.

To think we had to avoid unpredictable threats and search every corner of one hotel floor.

It was by no means an easy situation, yet in one corner of my head, I was picturing the Special Zone scurrying around in panic to hide its core.

This too was absolutely not something to caricature like this…….

Shaking off my idle thoughts, I asked Kwon Mu-seop,

“Why does this Special Zone hide its core only on B1?”

“We cannot know the entire principle, but I see it as being under structural restrictions. So even when a Special Zone reappears, the core’s location does not change greatly.”

Well, this space is covered in all kinds of restrictions and rules.

Those things that attacked us above earlier too.

For some reason, those beings like hotel employees stopped moving when we looked at them.

Compared to humans who fired guns indiscriminately, it was a very well-mannered attitude.

It was fortunate for us, but because we could not know the reason they did that, at times it instead gave me chills.

Because while we were careless, their restrictions might suddenly come loose.

“If you are ready, we will move now.”

Kwon Mu-seop spoke with a stiff face and pushed the door.

I carefully glared at the gap of the gradually opening door.

But why is it flickering so much……?

B1, visible through the gap in the door, was neither dark nor bright.

Instead, the illumination kept changing, darkening and brightening again and again.

It was not like the flickering of a broken fluorescent light.

The gap in the door widened further, and the scenery of B1 came properly into view.

So I was swept by bewilderment.

The form of the hotel’s B1 was constantly changing.

Without sound or vibration.

While maintaining the larger framework, such as the floor and ceiling.

The lighting, the structure, and the people coming and going were continuously changing by the second.

It looked as if photographs had been taken every day at the same place, then mixed together in disorder and flipped through.

“Huh…….”

As if it was not only my eyes that saw it that way, a sigh burst out from behind me.

“What on earth is this…….”

“Is this not the phenomenon that occurs when we open the door?”

I said this to Kwon Mu-seop, who was murmuring lowly.

“It is just that we are not opening and closing the door, but the phenomenon itself seems similar.”

The hotel space changed when we opened and closed a door.

Right now, that spatial conversion was occurring on its own without the medium of a door.

Kwon Mu-seop seemed to understand my words and nodded.

But he could not readily say that we should go out.

Because we did not know what would happen if we carelessly stepped into that endlessly changing space.

At that moment, as if he had been waiting for it, the Deputy Director used the Director’s left arm.

Whoosh— thud—!

The Director’s left arm flew out the door.

It fell ordinarily onto the corridor floor.

And while leaving that arm alone, the surrounding space continued converting.

“It does not seem to affect us?”

At the Deputy Director’s inference, Kwon Mu-seop also unspooled the wire.

Then he slowly stepped out into the corridor.

But to make our tension feel meaningless, Manager Kwon Mu-seop also stepped onto the corridor normally.

Moreover, perhaps because the scenes were passing too quickly, the people walking around seemed barely able to perceive Manager Kwon.

“It seems safe for now.”

Kwon Mu-seop said with a sigh.

“Director and Deputy Director, please remain in the stairwell and make sure the door does not close. Agent Seo and I will search the space.”

“Very well. Just in case, take that arm.”

The Deputy Director said this while pointing at the arm that had fallen in the corridor.

Deputy Director Kim Seon-ung, who had made Director Go cry that much and was still completely unreserved.

Kwon Mu-seop glanced at the Director and Deputy Director as if troubled.

But perhaps because he could not bring himself to deny its usefulness, he eventually took the Director’s left arm.

Meanwhile, I came out of the stairwell, and after giving the Director and Deputy Director a silent bow, we began searching the space.

Every time we took a step, the space repeated opening and closing.

The people’s clothes kept leaping from summer to winter, and in the corridor, a Christmas tree seemed to glitter, only for decorations announcing Valentine’s Day season to appear.

There were moments in between when the space turned into a sea of fire or a sea of blood, but that did not harm us.

“It feels like watching an immersive exhibition.”

“An immersive exhibition?”

“A media art exhibition. It fills a space with video and gives the illusion that you are in another dimension…….”

“Ah, there are things like that these days too?”

Manager…… you, of all people, should look around the world a little instead of only working.

Then again, to people who went around spaces like this, immersive exhibitions would not be especially interesting.

The space was changing chaotically, but it was not particularly dizzying.

The problem was finding the core amid this distracted movement…….

Pause—

Kwon Mu-seop, who had been walking beside me, suddenly stopped.

“……?”

“Do-un, can you see that?”

I turned toward where Manager Kwon Mu-seop pointed.

In the center of the corridor, near the spiral staircase, there was something.

Something like golden light shimmered and flashed like the sun’s corona, or like an aurora in the polar regions.

We approached that place.

And in the gap at the very bottom of the spiral staircase, we found something like a small black hole.

A black sphere, one that we could not tell whether it was swallowing light or emitting it.

Looking at it, I murmured in surprise.

“Do not tell me that is the core……?”

“That is what it looks like to me.”

It looked that way to me too.

Its size and form matched the core I knew.

We found it?

But the phenomenon occurring around it was too unusual to simply be happy.

A ripple like a dream.

A convection of light was occurring around the core.

So it looked as if something complex was functioning.

With spatial conversions repeating wildly even in the middle of this, it seemed almost as if that core was regulating this space.

Whatever it was, it did not seem like something we should touch carelessly.

If we break only that core, we can leave this place.

Mm, what do we do with this?

I think I should not become used to such inhuman acts, but…….

I looked at Kwon Mu-seop, and Kwon Mu-seop nodded.

Then he threw the Director’s left arm toward the core.

Hoping that this contact would break the core.

But…….

CRUMBLE—!

The moment it made contact with the core, the Director’s left arm disassembled without a trace.

No, it seemed to have been sucked in.

Into that black sphere.

“Do-un, you have a collapsible baton, do you not?”

“Yes.”

Flustered, we took out other items and tried touching the core.

But all of those attempts were simply ignored.

No matter what we touched it with, the core calmly emitted light, and only the object touching it disassembled and disappeared.

This was not the lightly breakable core we knew.

Amid a deep sense of dismay, we faced the reality that our only method of escape had vanished.