The ghost's head fell to the floor with a soft thud and dissolved into black smoke.
Its body followed, turning into black smoke from the top down as though a chain reaction were spreading through it, until it, too, vanished completely.
“Phew.”
Tae-woo slowly straightened up and took the flashlight out of his mouth.
Then he tried to reconstruct exactly how he had swung his sword just moments earlier.
He had been holding the flashlight between his teeth and the sword in one hand when the ghost had burst out as he opened the door.
Startled, he had instinctively recoiled. Yet instead of running away, he had spun through 540 degrees and struck with his sword.
He had no idea how the movement might have looked to an observer, but one thing was certain: he had just performed a sword technique his body had never been capable of before.
It was, however, a movement he had imagined while putting himself in the shoes of a game character during development.
When an enemy launched a close-range attack, the character would step back and use the centrifugal force of a spin to deliver a powerful slash. That was precisely the move he had performed.
“I can't believe that worked.”
It was astonishing that a technique he had only ever imagined while designing game-character skills could actually be performed by his own body.
He wiped the saliva from his flashlight, still marveling at what had happened.
Then he took out his notebook and wrote another reminder.
[Flashlight Module Integration]
Having to carry the flashlight in his hand was terribly inconvenient.
He decided that when he built the Ghost Radar, he would also attach a flashlight to the side of his smart glasses.
“Let's go.”
After finishing his note, he gave the inside of the cleaning-supply cabinet and the surrounding area a quick inspection, then headed upstairs.
Starting at the far end of the second-floor corridor, he entered each classroom in turn, thoroughly recording every corner.
THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP—
His heart was pounding like mad.
Nevertheless, Tae-woo tried to calm himself as much as possible and kept moving.
By the time he had passed through two classrooms, a strange sound began to drift from the next one.
DING— DING-DING— DING— DING—
It was the sound of a reed organ.
Tae-woo swallowed hard the instant he heard it.
The sound of a reed organ in an abandoned school was deeply unnerving.
He approached the classroom's rear door, slowly opened it, and shone his flashlight inside.
A woman was sitting at a reed organ near the front of the classroom, playing it.
Her shoulders drooped at an unnatural angle, and her face was hidden behind her hair.
Even her clothing was difficult to make out, obscured by the music stand mounted on the organ.
DING— DING—
The music itself was eerie.
It was neither a children's song nor an art song. She seemed to be pressing one meaningless key after another.
“……”
Tae-woo watched the ghost for a while, then tried to leave the classroom again.
After all, his assignment was to record the place, not perform an exorcism.
He saw no reason to go out of his way to cut down a ghost when ghosts already terrified him enough.
RATTLE— SLAM!
Just then, the classroom's sliding door shut by itself.
At the same time, the organ fell silent.
Startled, Tae-woo whipped his flashlight toward it.
The ghost who had been playing was nowhere to be seen.
“Oh, for crying out loud.”
Muttering under his breath, he tried to open the classroom door.
But it would not budge.
Something seemed to be blocking it.
Tae-woo frowned and looked toward the front of the classroom.
Apparently, he had no choice but to go that way.
“Should I just quit this job?”
For a moment, he seriously questioned what he was doing there.
But the doubt soon faded.
He could hardly give up so easily when he had the chance to become the owner of a company with annual sales of 750 billion won.
More importantly, quitting would not make his Spirit Sight disappear.
He would still see ghosts, and they would still torment and frighten him.
In that case, perhaps being able to cut them down like this was actually better.
Having made up his mind, he walked toward the front of the classroom.
CREAK— CREAK—
The wooden floorboards, characteristic of old classrooms, groaned noisily beneath his feet.
Even that sound was horribly unsettling.
Tae-woo swallowed and headed for the front door.
To reach it, he had to pass the reed organ.
The thought that a ghost might be lurking underneath it sent a chill down his spine.
‘If it appears, I'll cut it down immediately.’
He tightened his grip on the Joseon-era saber as he thought this.
After taking a deep breath, he abruptly shone his flashlight toward the organ.
Fortunately—if that was the right word—there was no ghost behind it.
“Whew.”
He let out a sigh of relief.
Then he noticed something hanging down from the ceiling.
Out of the corner of his eye, he had assumed it was merely a dangling cobweb.
But the moment he looked up, he nearly jumped out of his skin.
The ghost who had been playing the organ was peering down through a hole in the broken ceiling tiles, her long hair hanging limply toward the floor.
“Aaagh!!”
Tae-woo screamed before he could stop himself and thrust the saber in his hand into the hole in the ceiling.
THUNK—
He felt the blade pierce something, and black smoke came drifting down from above.
The sword thrust he had made in startled reflex had destroyed the ghost.
“Whew.”
Tae-woo shook his head, straightened his clothes, and opened the front door to return to the corridor.
By this point, he actually felt somewhat safer in the corridor than inside a classroom.
After making his way through the classrooms on the second floor, Tae-woo checked once more that his smart glasses were recording properly, then stopped at the staircase leading down to the first floor.
WHOOOOOSH—
RATTLE— RATTLE—
The wind blew, making the windows rattle.
For no particular reason, he glanced at a window along the second-floor corridor before starting down the stairs.
Several pictures hung on the wall beside this staircase.
Every last one of them was grotesque.
The human figures, apparently drawn in black crayon, were so distorted that it was impossible to tell whether they represented people or ghosts.
Yet their eyes had been drawn with remarkable clarity, which only made the pictures more disturbing.
Tae-woo tried his best not to look at them as he descended.
Then it happened.
CREAK—
With a faint noise, one of the framed pictures beside him tilted slightly to one side.
Tae-woo flinched and stepped backward.
Then he looked at the pictures he had already passed.
“Oh, damn it!”
Every pair of eyes in those pictures had turned toward him.
Tae-woo shook his head vigorously and hurried down the stairs.
At that very moment—
GRAB!
A hand suddenly shot out from beneath the stair railing and seized his ankle.
“Whoa!”
Tae-woo pitched forward and went tumbling down the stairs.
CLATTER— CRASH!
Pain shot through his entire body. Grimacing, he looked up at the pictures lining the staircase.
The eyes in every one of them were now directed at him as he lay on the floor.
“Y-you little—!”
Tae-woo scrambled to his feet.
But there was a problem.
His flashlight had been completely smashed in the fall.
[Flashlight - No Signal]
The display on his smart glasses confirmed that the connection to the flashlight had been lost.
He was planning to mount a flashlight on his smart glasses anyway, so losing this one was not a particularly great loss. The problem was that he still had a great deal of the school left to explore.
Navigating the place using only night vision was going to be no easy task.
He immediately searched his pockets, pulled out his phone, and switched on its flashlight.
And at that instant—
A ghost was suddenly right in front of his face.
Black veins covered its face, making it grotesque and revolting.
“What the hell?!”
Instinctively, Tae-woo drew the Blood-Counting Dagger from his waist and stabbed it into the ghost's head.
THWACK—
FSSSSSH—
The ghost dissolved into black smoke and vanished.
“Hah, hah, hah.”
Panting heavily, Tae-woo looked around.
The Ghost-Observing Blade, which he had dropped while tumbling down the stairs, was marked in red on the display of his smart glasses.
He reached out to retrieve it—and that was when hell broke loose.
Ghosts began crawling out of the pictures whose eyes had turned toward him.
The pitch-black figures from those grotesque drawings emerged onto the staircase, looking exactly as they had in the pictures, and twisted their bodies toward Tae-woo.
“Those are monsters.”
Tae-woo muttered under his breath.
They were nothing like the ghosts he knew.
They were monsters in every sense of the word.
What appeared to be their arms and legs bent at dozens of joints, while their faces were distorted as though someone had scribbled them carelessly. Their eyes, noses, and mouths were jumbled together so chaotically that they could hardly be called human.
CREAK-CLACK, CREAK-CLACK, CREAK-CLACK—
Worse still, every time they moved, their joints made the grinding noises of machinery that had run dry of lubricant.
He could not begin to guess how they might attack.
‘What do I do? What do I do?’
No answer came to him.
Then he turned his head toward the red dot displayed on his smart glasses.
It marked the location of the Ghost-Observing Blade.
“Right. I need the reach.”
He immediately lunged for the sword and snatched it up.
Then he pointed its tip at the creaking ghosts coming down the stairs.
‘If I can't predict how they'll attack, I have to strike first. No matter what.’
He reasoned that if he sprang forward like lightning and cut them all down first, they would never have a chance to retaliate.
CREAK-CLACK, CREAK-CLACK, CREAK-CLACK—
The ghosts, creaking like machines, descended the stairs one step at a time.
Tae-woo lowered the Ghost-Observing Blade and dropped into the lowest stance he could manage.
Then he stretched his right foot far behind him.
His body was instinctively preparing to launch forward.
CREAK—
The instant the ghosts reached the bottom of the stairs, Tae-woo stepped forward with his left foot and thrust the Ghost-Observing Blade out in a sweeping strike.
The movement resembled a quick-draw sword technique.
In that instant, moonlight flashed brilliantly along the blade, and a clearly visible burst of sword energy shot forward.
BA-BA-BA-BANG—
SHHHRAAAK—
Dust burst upward all around him, and a rush of hot air swept through the stairwell.
SHHHRRAAAK—
The grotesque ghosts on the stairs were all split in half at once, dissolving into black smoke.
RUMBLE— CLATTER—
At the same time, the handrail and balusters along the staircase were severed in two and came crashing down the stairs.
PATTER— RATTLE—
The dust that had risen into the air mingled with the black smoke released by the disappearing ghosts and came raining down around Tae-woo.
He remained frozen in the final position of his sword strike, then slowly raised his head.
“What was that just now?”