Bailonz Street 13-Chapter 241.2

Erase.

Screams.

The ascetic’s screams, the shock of its narrative being erased, pleading, prayers lifted to Ireum-nim, the pain of a hymn of fanatic praise completed through wretched truth and agonizing meditation as its completeness is helplessly erased, becoming imperfect, losing its mystique.

Is this pain also Ireum-nim’s will?

Did You intend my pain?

If so, then to accept it would be righ—

The bell! The bell rings. It must ring. The bell’s sound, Kim Soleum collapses, is restored hold out don’t erase one more only one more only as much as I can endure

Overwrite.

I take my hand away.

……

……

In time.

According to the newly written contents.

The ‘Ascetic in the Box’, unable to withstand the shocks of being forcibly read, erased, and revised…

Burst.

Ruptures under this ‘powerful internal shock’.

Crushing pressure.

And then

the liberation of the penitents.

Burst.

I feel myself, still sealed, being shoved out of the box.

With a strange sound, the ascetic melts. The ghost story of an unopenable box, which the Quota Worship Sect completed through brutal asceticism and meditation, collapses.

And mine, too,

Collapses.

The rationality I had barely reclaimed, my identity as a human being, my humanity, my feelings—

Pulped to mash, leaving only a trace.

Jingle.

The bell’s sound.

I hear it no longer.

Yet I am not sad.

Nor am I tormented or in great pain.

Because that is the attitude of a worker on duty.

I must return to Daydream Inc. to receive a replacement for the damaged uniform.

– Your uniform has been damaged. Return immediately and stand by. Your uniform has been damaged. Return immediately and stand by. Your uniform has been damaged. Return immediately and stand by…

The guidance voice sounds.

The next moment.

I spilled out of the box, together with two figures.

* * *

At some point, Ryu Jaekwan realizes the pain is gone.

Pain beyond the threshold leaves a phantom ache as if it were still there, so the realization comes late.

And he realizes the voices in his head are gone as well.

He hears neither his own pain, nor the pain of others.

“……!”

He pushed at the slick membrane of digestive mucus encasing him, now stripped of its uncanny power.

The dead ascetic’s membrane no longer exerted its unreasonable sealing Authority, and he was able to slice through the giving membrane with a small pocketknife and crawl out.

Air.

As he drew a breath,

he became aware of two more clumps of membrane beside him.

“…!”

He immediately drove the pocketknife into the one at his side. After a frantic process of cutting it open, what emerged was…

‘Hah.’

A young-looking man with the neat face of a schoolboy in a uniform. A stranger. Realizing this was the cultist who had been swallowed first, Bronze hurried his hand to the next membrane.

A larger mass.

This time, with a bit more reason restored, his hands worked more carefully. From within the hastily stripped membrane emerged—

An employee in black uniform, bristling with countless horns, wearing a gas mask.

Agent Grapes.

…presumably, a supernatural phenomenon.

“……Agent Grapes.”

But there was no response.

Had he lost consciousness?

The gas mask was still on, so he couldn’t be sure, but the yellow, lantern-like glow that had been in the eyes was gone, so he guessed as much.

Agent Bronze carefully took Agent Grapes by the shoulders and lifted him up. Still no reaction.

Only a shard-like fragment, like broken jade, slipped out from the mass of horns on his head. Agent Bronze grabbed it as well and stowed it for now.

‘What else… can I do?’

It was hard to string thoughts together. In truth, his head was still foggy.

‘…What was it I heard?’

The ascetic’s voice, which had ceaselessly whispered the penitents’ pain inside his head, had definitely said something strange just before… Something bizarre and horrible, yet about the truth…

‘Ugh.’

Ryu Jaekwan grimaced and pressed his brow.

Listening too closely to a supernatural disaster’s whisper, or chewing over its contents, was a bad sign.

‘…Contamination?’

But there were more urgent matters to handle right now. Agent Grapes’ condition, and…

‘…Agent Choi!’

With a jolt, as if doused in cold water, he sprang to his feet.

A quick scan of the surroundings showed the space exactly as it had been before the box swallowed them.

The box sat open, blood-smeared hands dangling over the edge to the floor, and…

No one was there.

The desolate underground bunker held no trace of people.

Instead, the bunker door had been ripped completely off.

“……!”

And from outside came an enormous crash.

But the agent recognized a familiar sound within it.

The ringing of a bell.

‘That’s…’

The sound of a jakdu being brought down.

Ryu Jaekwan hoisted Agent Grapes and sprinted outside.

Salt Goblin

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