Ch.356356 – Event Enhancement

<356 – Event Enhancement>

Good intentions don’t always lead to good results.

The activities of the organization that Morb and Oknodie played with proved just that.

[What is this.]

[Every single one of them is just studying.]

The upper classes studied because they were conscious of Oknodie and the hero.

The lower classes studied because they were conscious of Oknodie’s gang.

Even those who weren’t part of either group ended up studying after receiving help from or being subdued by Oknodie’s gang.

The Dragon Principal, who had intended to give the first-year students a sense of despair with two weeks’ worth of assignments after they held a fake festival to have fun, became very displeased.

The fact that Oknodie, whom he had high expectations for, was the main culprit behind the study sessions was particularly vexing.

“Aren’t you proud that the students are voluntarily studying hard?”

The Dragon Principal snorted at Professor Mahabharata’s attempt to salvage the situation.

[With such a naive mindset, they’ll just be used and discarded once they enter society.]

[I’ll make the first-years realize that the world isn’t all about studying!]

‘Wasn’t this week-long event meant to teach them not to give in to temptation and to study diligently…’

As always, Mahabharata suspected that discipline was just an excuse and that the principal’s desire to have fun took priority. He couldn’t help but feel sorry for the first-year students.

* * *

The first to notice the changes in the Exorcism Festival were the students who were hunting ghosts that the seniors had left behind out of conscience, considering them too insignificant to bother with.

“How’s the back alley?”

“It’s a goldmine. What about in front of the drain?”

“It’s no joke here either. They’re suddenly pouring out everywhere.”

Weak ghosts have a gimmick of hiding in all sorts of places to survive.

Just as hermit crabs hide in hard tin cans like they would in shells, ghosts would arbitrarily inhabit suitable objects left by students.

Taking advantage of this, lower-class students would place coins or straw dolls in dark, shady places and make rounds to find their hidden items after attending lectures.

Until now, even if they set up ten such traps, they’d be lucky if one remained after the seniors swept through them all. But suddenly, five out of ten coins were rattling and five out of ten dolls were moving on their own.

“The seniors must have gone to attend a group lecture!”

“Wow, isn’t this a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?”

“Let’s gather them quickly!”

The students frantically picked up the moving coins and straw dolls from the ground and stuffed them into their bags.

“Huh? Wait a minute.”

One of the lower-class students picking up coins noticed something strange.

The coin pouch had become noticeably heavier, containing far more coins than they had originally placed.

“Whose coins are all these?”

“Mine are right here. Don’t leave your coins in other people’s spots.”

“What nonsense are you both talking about? Mine are here too!”

No one had confused their spots.

All three felt a chill as they looked at their bulging pouches.

“Then whose coins are these?”

The jingling sound from the pouches no longer felt pleasant.

“L-let’s throw them away!”

“Right. I don’t want to keep these creepy coins.”

“I agree. Now’s not the time to stick to our plan of taking them to places where seniors have performed exorcisms to piggyback on the remaining holy power!”

These students had come up with a scheme that would have earned applause from others for its cleverness.

“Are you going to throw them away?”

“Of course we’re throwing them away! You just said we should and now you’re asking something weird… Huh?”

The shaggy-haired student was very confused when he spotted his skinny friend and chubby friend walking in front of him.

There are three of us.

Then who’s speaking behind me?

“What are you mumbling to yourself… uh… uhh…?”

“Hurry up and follow… AHHH!”

His friends suddenly let out shrill screams and collapsed after turning to look at him.

When the lower-class student turned his head, he saw a ghost with a neck over 3 meters long, curved like a question mark, looking down at him.

“Are you going to throw them away?”

“S-splash holy water on it now!!”

This was dangerous.

This was no joke.

This wasn’t some low-level ghost hiding in coins.

Rather, it was an entity that minted haunted coins from its possession, observing such habits. A ghost that lured people for some purpose, like someone luring ghosts for exorcism.

Pop.

The cheerful sound of a bottle cap being opened.

As the student tried to splash the low-grade holy water consecrated at the altar, the long-necked ghost reached out and grabbed his arm.

Splash.

The holy water spilled onto the bare ground.

After witnessing their captured friend wet himself, the other two friends ran in different directions.

So that at least one could escape.

* * *

Everyone sometimes has such fantasies.

Wanting to see someone better than themselves beg for help.

Morb wasn’t immune to such human feelings of jealousy and envy.

“Morb, please help us find Booby! We’re classmates!”

But in his imagination, when his peers clung to him, they would at most beg to see his assignments, not search for missing persons with hollow eyes as if clutching at the last straw.

“Wait, what are you suddenly talking about? Find him? Did he hide somewhere in the third-year area because he didn’t want to attend lectures?”

In the “Organization That Plays with Oknodie,” which had many Wiheomhae Foundation scholarship students, information about upper-class students naturally circulated.

Even information like hands suddenly protruding from walls belonging to third-year students wasn’t particularly surprising within Oknodie’s organization.

“It’s the Hook Ghost. A ghost with a neck bent like a hook spilled the holy water and took Booby away!”

“What did you guys do?”

“We ran away. We knew right away. That was absolutely not a low-level ghost. It was something that should be handled by upper-class students, but for some reason it was loose in our first-year area.”

So a fairly strong ghost had appeared.

But that didn’t resolve all of Morb’s questions.

“Why are you asking me to search for the missing person? I’m not a professor or an instructor, just a fellow classmate.”

“Morb, you’re strong.”

Strong. Me?

No matter how many times he experienced such honest evaluation from others, he couldn’t get used to it.

Is that so?

Am I strong?

Although he had diligently followed Oknodie’s training, when he thought about the gap between himself and Oknodie, his own strength didn’t seem very convincing.

“And the professors and instructors said they couldn’t help because more urgent matters had come up.”

“Did the chairman of the Wiheomhae Foundation invade with troops or something?”

“Not that, but apparently Dragon Principal opened too many gates to the negative dimension, which caused hell gates to open as well, so they’re busy closing spatial rifts.”

“…”

What a complete mess.

“The student council has taken over security activities, but there’s an even bigger commotion in the upper-class areas, so they don’t have the capacity to help us first-years.”

So Booby, who was captured by the Hook Ghost, has been abandoned?

“Wait. Let me think about whether this is possible or not.”

Morb went straight to find Giselle.

“Miss Giselle.”

“What is it, Black Knight?”

“Does the Dark Association have information about the Hook Ghost?”

“Yes, we do. We’ve received several eyewitness accounts and related information from within the academy.”

He was right to seek out Giselle.

Although her information might not be as suspiciously accurate as Oknodie’s, Giselle’s information was the next most reliable.

“If you’re planning to exorcise the Hook Ghost, I suggest you reconsider. It’s quite dangerous.”

“Someone from my class who I know by face has been captured.”

“You could just ignore it, but you really have a personality that seeks out trouble.”

“If Oknodie were kidnapped, I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. Such dangerous ghosts should be dealt with when possible.”

“Haha. Our little lady? Kidnapped? Unless it’s a kidnapper using food as bait, how could a ghost possibly kidnap Oknodie?”

Even if there were a ghost capable of that, they should immediately issue an evacuation order for the academy and flee the island through the dimensional gate.

After all, if Oknodie could be defeated by such a ghost, there’s no way they could overcome it themselves.

“But I do like your kind heart. I’ll give you this information without the usual fee, just this once.”

“Thank you.”

“Save your thanks. After seeing the confirmed information, you might not feel so grateful.”

Giselle’s kind face with its narrow smile flashed sharply as she turned the mana panel.

━━━

Dangerous Entity: Hook Ghost

Physical Information: Long neck shaped like a hook, unusually hard arms

Characteristic 1: Places new cursed items near existing cursed items.

Characteristic 2: When someone discovers a cursed item, it asks “Are you going to throw it away?” three times whenever they try to give up ownership. If they don’t answer, say they will throw it away, or try to escape, they are immediately attacked.

Characteristic 3: All 4 missing persons are presumed to have been captured by the Hook Ghost and taken to its unique dimension; their survival status is currently unclear.

━━━

“Weak ghosts are desperate to hide themselves, but powerful ghosts don’t hesitate to reveal themselves. They use fear as power to grow stronger.”

“This is… quite something.”

“On the monster hierarchy scale, it would easily rank at level 5 or higher. Do you still want to challenge it?”

Morb realized this was not an entity that could be dealt with through diligent training alone.

‘I need Oknodie’s help!’