Sitting in the chair, I pondered the game’s narrative.
Given the prophecy that the young customer would only arrive tomorrow, I figured I could afford to relax a little.
Essentially, [Saving the World within Urban Legends] comprised several chapters, with the first primarily detailing the conflict between the Urban Legend Management Bureau and a group that manufactured urban legends.
It was, predictably, the tired old trope of people undergoing ‘urban legendification’ if exposed to urban legends for too long.
****
CRASH!
“Damn it! Quick, contact the response team immediately!”
Amidst the chaotic cacophony of crumbling, exploding buildings and human screams, the scene before my eyes remained eerily peaceful, like something out of a fairy tale.
Where just moments ago cars and detached houses had lined the streets, now endless stretches of green grass unfurled.
Aaaargh!
If it was going to be peaceful, it might as well have offered birdsong instead of screams.
The absurdity of the situation only brought forth such foolish thoughts.
People fleeing across the grass suddenly exploded without any warning.
Quite literally, they burst with a ‘pop,’ as if crushed by something immense from above.
“Team Leader! What do we do?”
Beside me, Do-hyun and a few members of the investigation team, followed by Choi Seong-min and his family, were running for their lives.
“Hey! Explain again what’s happening!”
“While I was speaking with Choi Seong-min, his mother—”
CRASH!
“Damn it! Anyway, yes! That’s Choi Seong-min’s Mother!”
Do-hyun cursed, a word he rarely uttered, and pointed at something hovering in the sky.
A woman floated above the field, where Choi Seong-min’s house had once stood.
She exuded an enigmatic aura, surrounded by dolls holding hands and circling her like Jupiter’s rings, a sight that somehow irritated me with its pretense of peace.
“So, that’s it?”
‘Human urban legendification… I’d heard of it, but the most recent reported case must have been a decade ago.’
“Furthermore, it appears Choi Seong-cheol, Choi Seong-min’s brother, underwent urban legendification previously, suggesting some group intervened with both of them.”
“What?”
BANG!!
“Ugh, let’s just survive first, then think. Is the response team reachable?”
Do-hyun shook his head.
‘Of course, they wouldn’t be.’
‘If I survived this, the first thing I’d demand was an improvement to our emergency pagers.’
‘Let’s see, I’ll show them I didn’t become a team leader through mere flattery (TL Note: ‘Ssaba-ssaba’ is Korean slang for buttering someone up or using flattery to get ahead).’
Normally, if an urban legend isn’t actively moving, the principle is to keep running, but seeing members of the search team dying off one by one, that strategy didn’t seem to be the right answer here.
First, I needed to understand what force was crushing those people. Was it psychokinesis?
But if it were, why did I hear something falling every time someone died?
CRASH!
“Team Leader! What do we do? We can’t hold out like this!”
“Just a little, just a little longer!”
‘What was with this spatial distortion?’
‘If the urban legend was spatial in nature, then we were simply trapped within its own dimension.’
‘But this felt different.’
After encountering urban legends this frequently, one develops a sensitivity to the peculiar, alien sensation of spatial displacement.
Yet, this time, I felt nothing of the sort.
“Aaaargh!!”
“Help me!”
Two members of the search team following me died beside us.
“Team Leader!”
“Damn it!”
The cries calling my name and the lamentations of those who had lost hope echoed in my mind.
Glancing back, Yu-na was already being carried on Seong-min’s back, and both Choi Seong-min and his wife already looked exhausted.
‘Was this the limit of a civilian’s stamina?’
I needed to find a solution quickly, before they completely wore out.
“Dodge!”
Do-hyun called out to me, pushing me forcefully at the same instant.
BANG!
A powerful explosion erupted where I had just been standing.
I stared at Do-hyun, somewhat stunned.
“If you listen closely, you can hear something hurtling through the air!”
‘What?’
‘I didn’t hear a thing; isn’t your hearing just abnormally sharp?’
“Thanks! If you hear anything else, brief me immediately, and keep running!”
Where there should have been numerous buildings, only the grassland remained.
“Argh!”
‘What was that?’
My body suddenly recoiled as if I had collided with the air.
Reaching my hand into the seemingly empty space, I felt something rough, like concrete.
It extended about five meters horizontally, forming what felt like a wall.
The existence of a transparent wall itself wasn’t the main issue.
The strange part was why a wall that had never been there before suddenly appeared.
‘Ah, right!’
‘I think I understand what’s happening.’
‘Honestly, if I can’t figure it out with this many hints, I’d deserve to be disqualified as a team leader.’
“Do-hyun! This is a hallucination!”
More precisely, everything except the people exploding was a hallucination.
It seemed to be making everything appear different, except for humans.
For instance, that transparent wall I touched must have been an ordinary wall all along, merely obscured by the hallucination.
‘So why were people dying?’
Now that I knew it was a hallucination, if people were being crushed and exploding with the sound of something falling, there wasn’t much to ponder.
Something was being continuously thrown at them.
Typically, it would throw whatever was nearby first, which explained why I hadn’t felt any walls until now.
‘Alright, so how do we escape this hallucination?’
Truthfully, even if I thought about it, there was nothing I could do.
No matter how much we were the Urban Legend Management Bureau, without equipment, we were just ordinary people with a bit more experience with urban legends.
‘If I’d known this would happen, I would have brought my gear!’
Aaaargh!
‘Tch.’
With that last scream, every member of the search team was dead.
Since they weren’t a department meant to directly confront dangerous urban legends, it seemed they couldn’t endure it.
But Choi Seong-min’s family, surprisingly, was still alive.
‘Or perhaps it wasn’t killing them?’
The risk of confirming that now was far too great.
“Team Leader! This looks like a big problem.”
“Huh?”
The entire surrounding area was blocked by walls.
When I thought about it, it made sense.
After all, this was originally an ordinary village, and it was natural for a village to have countless walls and buildings.
But that also meant we were trapped in a transparent maze, not knowing when we might die.
“Damn it. I really want a cigarette.”
But I had promised myself I wouldn’t smoke until this whole ordeal was over.
Although it seemed this was dragging on.
‘This is all because of that shop!’
‘I’m suddenly furious.’
‘If the Urban Legend Shop hadn’t been selling such strange items, we wouldn’t be in this mess.’
‘Wait, the shop?’
“Hey! That pill you traded for last time, was it called ‘A Fleeting Dream’? Do you still have it?”
“Huh? Yes, I still have it.”
“Its effect was definitely to send things like colds away in a dream, right?”
“Yes.”
‘Things like colds’ — in other words, it could eliminate many similar sensations, even if not an actual cold.
I didn’t know if that pill could banish hallucinations, but for now, I had no other options.
“Quick, give it to me.”
“What? You’re not actually going to take it, are you? It could be dangerous.”
“Then what do you propose? We have to try something.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and swallowed the pill.
A nauseating sensation washed over me; it felt as if the pill was moving on its own inside me.
About two minutes after taking the medicine, I felt a change in my body.
“Haha, this is quite something.”
Although an endless grassland was still what I saw, superimposed over it, a translucent panorama of the ruined village became visible.
The urban legend, stripped of all its previous mystique, had transformed into nothing more than a grotesque mass of flesh.
‘Is that its true form?’
“Everyone, follow me!”
Forgetting all pretense, I shouted at Do-hyun and Choi Seong-min’s family.
At this point, even if we couldn’t contact them, the response team would surely arrive soon.
My only course of action, then, was to survive for as long as possible.
Through my half-cleared vision, I sprinted along the village alleys.
****
After a long period of running and resting, the sun was already beginning to set.
I forced open the door of one of the houses, now empty due to the evacuation, and entered.
Not only Choi Seong-min’s family but also Do-hyun and I were thoroughly exhausted.
Though she had spent most of the time being carried, the young girl had held out longer than expected, which was quite admirable.
The response team had already arrived and was engaged in a fierce battle with the urban legend, causing the sounds of exploding missiles and bullets ripping through the air to engulf the entire neighborhood.
Do-hyun whispered to me.
“It doesn’t seem to be going well.”
“Indeed.”
Just as he said, those sounds had been echoing for well over five hours now.
It seemed they couldn’t eliminate it with simple physical force, and the Urban Legend Management Bureau appeared to be trying to at least stall it until they could find an effective countermeasure.
I considered helping, but truthfully, there was nothing I could do even if I went there.
‘I’m part of the New Urban Legend Investigation Team, not the New Urban Legend Eradication Team.’
Turning my head, I saw that the entire family, including Yu-na, had fallen asleep.
Do-hyun also looked quite weary.
“Alright, a short nap wouldn’t hurt.”
With that, I drifted off to sleep.
Unaware of what the dawn would bring.
