episode_0169

“Phew.”

The heat wave continues.

The most helpful skill currently in this heat was none other than ice magic.

Took, took.

The round ice that formed at the tip of my finger fell onto the glass of Zero Cola.

I found out this by chance, but the ice made by magic was clean ice without any bubbles, so the ice lasted quite a long time.

I used it a lot because it seemed to melt two to three times slower than regular ice.

Thanks to this, I didn’t have to worry about ice during this summer.

“Hmm…”

I was spying on the quest board with a drink in one hand.

As I cleared each quest one by one, the time I spent looking at the quest board and thinking about it was getting longer.

What world should I choose to enter, and what quest should I take on?

There were so many choices that I couldn’t choose.

“But I think I’ve already experienced most of the famous worlds and genres. Uh…”

At that time, I saw a genre I had never experienced before.

However, as soon as I saw that genre, my expression became distorted.

“This is a bit…”

It was a genre I hated.

It is said that there is no genre like this among enthusiasts.

However, it is a genre that some people dislike or even hate.

“Fear…”

Horror genre.

Among them, the world I saw was the ghost story genre that is popular these days in novels and comics.

“It’s scary…”

It was funny to even think about something like this with someone of this size, but I basically tend to avoid the horror genre.

There was no reason.

Just because I’m scared.

Because of that, I played all kinds of games, but the only horror games I played were one or two really famous ones.

For horror movies, all I had to do was find a few movie reviews on YouTube that said they included an ending.

So, even on this quest board, I tried to ignore the quests that had a horror genre feel and just ignore them.

But why is something like this happening to this quest in the horror genre?

[Become an exorcist (physicist) in the world of ghost stories and save women]

[This is an urgent quest.]

[If you accept the quest now, your reward will increase.]

[This quest has been adjusted to easy difficulty.]

“The reward increases and the difficulty level decreases?”

It was my first time doing something like this.

There were cases where compensation increased.

There were cases where the skill rose by 2 levels when completing a quest with high difficulty or completing several hidden quests.

However, this was the first time that rewards were increased directly on the quest board.

It was the first time that the difficulty level was adjusted.

“Is it because it’s an urgent quest…?”

“Emergency quest” was also a word I had never heard before.

I was in trouble.

I think it’s definitely worth a try.

Considering that the difficulty level was adjusted to easy, there seemed to be less worry about failure, and the reward increased compared to the lower difficulty level, so it was a quest with many advantages in many ways.

It was a fool not to do it.

“Am I just stupid?”

He muttered seriously, his hands wandering in the air.

Even though I tried to ignore it and turn my attention to other quests, it kept lingering in my mind.

Considering it’s an urgent quest, if you miss it now, wouldn’t you never have another opportunity like this?

Couldn’t this be a very rare case?

“…A.”

As I thought about that, my hand moved again.

I closed my eyes tightly and waved my hand towards the quest acceptance button.

I felt a floating sensation, as if my body was floating.

thud.

And I fell onto the floor from my back.

***

“Ugh…”

I looked around nervously.

For some reason, I fell in the middle of the street.

Because I fell from the waist down, I felt stiff.

“Hey, your boyfriend is sitting over there.”

“Where? Oh, what do you say~ Do you want to die?”

“Why~ I’m in good shape~”

Two high school girls passed by, teasing each other as they saw me lying in the middle of the street.

It’s okay to tease each other, but why would they do it to me?

It’s been quite a while since I’ve been treated like this.

Sadly, it wasn’t the first time.

Other people around me also smiled as they looked at me sitting on the floor.

Feeling a little embarrassed, I quickly stood up and shook off my clothes.

“…is it a busy area?”

The place I am now appears to be an ordinary downtown area.

There are restaurants, clothing stores, and a few people passing by.

A place like that everywhere.

No matter how I looked at it, it seemed far from the eerie words like horror or ghost stories.

So I felt relieved.

“This is the first time I feel safe because there are so many people.”

Originally, I hated places with a lot of people.

Today was an exception, no, while I was in this world.

People couldn’t be happier.

At least I felt like I could start in a calmer mood than I had worried about.

I was so scared from the start that I was worried about whether I would be able to save someone.

I came here solely because of the easy difficulty level, but is that really the case?

Beep~

At that time, sounds rang out from everywhere.

It was a sound I heard often recently.

Where did you hear that?

“Disaster text?”

As I searched my memory, it immediately came to mind.

It was the sound of a disaster text message that I often heard due to the recent heat wave.

I heard a sound in my arms, so I searched inside my clothes and found a cell phone.

I checked the emergency text messages on my cell phone, which I had never seen before.

[Jongno-gu, 12:02 Ghost Disaster Occurs / Please follow the manual and move to the nearest safe building.]

[Ghost Story Management Headquarters]

“What is this…”

Crack, crack.

While I was looking down at my phone blankly, people started moving somewhere in a hurry.

Citizens who knew the manuals, which I did not, seemed to be moving quickly to the safety building.

It was almost half speed.

I noticed it and quickly followed behind him.

At the same time, I glanced back.

The street, where many people had just walked by laughing and chatting, suddenly became empty.

People were running towards somewhere at the same time with desperate expressions.

Just looking at this sight felt like a chill running down my spine.

I felt like it was not an ordinary world.

The closest safety building from there seemed to be the nearby fire station.

People who had arrived at the fire station in advance were gesturing with their hands and urging people to come in quickly.

“Hurry! Quick!”

“Thank you!”

I entered the fire station with people saying thank you as if I was late getting into the elevator.

Inside, many people were already waiting for us.

It was my first time inside the fire station.

Is it because so many people are nervous together, or is it because of the orderly and rigid atmosphere unique to places like fire stations and police stations?

Just being in this place made me feel thirsty and chest tight for no reason.

“Now closing!”

A burly man wearing orange clothing who appeared to be a firefighter shouted loudly and pulled down the shutters of the fire station.

Drurk, thump!

When the shutter was quickly lowered and locked, everyone inside the fire station breathed a sigh of relief without anyone having to say who went first.

There was something like an amulet attached to the exact center of the shutter.

Does this at least prevent ghost stories?

Gulp.

When I swallow,

A man next to him put his hands together and began to pray.

Looking closely, it wasn’t just men.

Most people here were praying in their own way or holding on to their cell phones to keep in touch with someone else.

In this world, ghost stories were not accidents that could be dealt with.

Rather, it seemed closer to some kind of disaster like an earthquake or typhoon.

All they could do was hide in a corner like this and pray or stay in touch and wait for the disaster to pass.

“Exorcist, please… save us…”

When I listened carefully, I realized that the man sitting next to me was not praying towards religion.

I was praying to a being called an exorcist.

‘Exorcist?’

Come to think of it, I was possessed as an exorcist in another world.

Plus a physical exorcist.

So, is it me that the people here are desperately waiting for with their hands folded?

Empty.

At that time, a small sound was heard from the shutter.

It was definitely a small sound that only I could hear as I was standing in front of the shutter, but everyone was looking towards the shutter as if they sensed something strange.

Empty.

“This is…”

Someone was tapping the shutter weakly with their hand.

And it was so strange.

Who on earth would knock on the shutter so calmly in this situation?

And without saying a word.

“…It’s a ghost story.”

The man who was praying muttered softly.

The man who appeared to be a firefighter also nodded after looking at the CCTV footage surrounding the fire station that filled one corner of the fire station.

“Everyone, don’t react and stay quiet.”

I also caught glimpses of the ghost story through CCTV.

The types of ghost stories I encountered through novels and webtoons were very diverse.

Sometimes it was any phenomenon, and sometimes it was some kind of existence.

This time, the ghost story seemed to imitate humans.

A ghostly figure who looked no different from an old man was knocking on the door.

Looking at that, I quietly stroked my chin.

‘If you look like that, I could just hit you, right?’

After seeing a ghost story that wasn’t as scary as I thought, I started seriously considering exorcism.