I opened my eyes.
But there is nothing to see.
I tried to move my hands.
But nothing moved.
I was fixed in place, unable to do anything.
And so I realized.
Why the countless sentient beings trapped within the Quota Worship Sect’s box were tortured for decades until they died, unable to use any of their abilities or possessions they’d had in their life.
‘I’ve been swallowed.’
I could do nothing.
My body was now tightly held and sealed by something.
For meditation.
Digestive fluid is secreted.
-Hell, hell, it’s hell. How can it hurt this much? I have realized the horror of excruciating pain. Descriptions like ‘the saddest memories of my life repeat,’ or ‘it provokes deep trauma’ are lukewarm and convoluted, a meaningless phrase for the ignorant. I envy them. True pain comes from the body. The pain that shatters the mind.
-This pain of scraping skin and nerves, one layer at a time, with needles! Pain all over my body! My twisted skin, my internal organs wherever they are, are burning. It feels like being trapped in an endlessly burning hell. My mouth, are they prying it open and pouring digestive fluid into it? No! It’s fortunate I don’t have an esophagus. No, it feels like my esophagus is being stabbed and pierced...
A voice resounds in my head.
The voice of the Ascetic, reciting my pain, my anguish, my analysis, my pleas, and my screams exactly as I feel them.
And...
-Don’t want to die, want to die, don’t want to die, want to die, want to die, stop! Stop! Stop! Why? Why did it become like this, it hurts so much, it hurts! It hurts!! Ireum-nim, I did valuable work, it hurts! I did valuable work, save me, kill me, save me, kill me
-I’m suffocating. I can’t bear the pain. I instinctively knew that I wouldn’t be able to endure this for decades. I think it’s fortunate that I came in, but the thought of how long this will last is so terrifying that I can’t even predict it, and my mind isn’t even clouding. This kind of Supernatural Disaster...
Two other sentient voices.
The voices of others being tortured, echoed right beside me. Exhibiting us to each other marked the completion of the ‘Ascetic in the Box’.
Like this, we will be linked as part of the Ascetic within the digestive fluid, suffering for decades amidst the maddening whispers created by each other’s pain.
The digestive fluid acts as a preservative, ensuring we don’t die and feel the pain with clear minds.
Madness. Terror.
Agonising pain that prevents escape from descending into madness!
‘Happy Maker…!’
I desperately longed for the item I no longer held, but I, I...
‘Endure.’
I try to emit smoke.
No, I transform myself into smoke.
The smoke is a component of me, so it’s possible even without movement. The smoke tightly fills what seems like the Ascetic’s nurturing sac that has sealed me.
Even as smoke, the pain doesn’t subside. Every surface, every point of contact howls in agony.
But there is one difference.
‘Smoke is a gas.’
Within the smoke, from the inner core, I recreated just one part.
A horn.
And I barely managed to shake it.
Jingle.
The bell attached to the horn rings clearly.
‘…Ha!’
The pain doesn’t recede. But my ability to think and my willpower are restored.
‘Thing, can do.’
Something I can do!
I know there is another human beside me in this sac that has bound me so I can’t move an inch.
‘…Slowly.’
For the first time, I am grateful that I cannot find my vocal cords, even though I want to wail.
‘This time...’
From a place that could be considered on the surface of the smoke, I draw out a patch of skin from beneath my uniform.
My tattoo.
‘Inventory…!’
The tattoo touches the bizarre membrane that has sealed me, and I try to insert this membrane itself into the tattoo.
But it doesn’t work.
‘…!’
Every attempt to insert it only makes the sac constrict. The more I attempt to put into the tattoo, the more it shrinks. So much so that even my body, transformed into smoke, is overloaded.
‘It doesn’t work.’
All it does is make it produce more digestive fluid, as if some lubricant were being secreted!
-Pain! Pain! Even with this body of black smoke, the pain doesn’t disappear. Rather, it intensifies. All physical resistance is futile. As a victim inside the box, I am part of the Ascetic’s stomach, so I cannot inflict harm on the Ascetic!
-But I receive physical pain in its entirety. What an unreasonable and hellish ghost story.
-No, stop, the digestive fluid, I’m going to die, no, it feels like dying, this insane pain, unlike anything I’ve experienced even in a Daydream or on the Tamna Line train, what is this
Then.
-Agent Grapes?
...
…!
-This can’t be. Why? Why Agent Grapes and not the evil person? I assumed it was resentment towards the Disaster Management Bureau that caused that villain to push me, no, the pain makes the reason irrelevant. No.
-You’re saying he has to be here for decades feeling this pain? Him too?
The Ascetic also transmitted mental pain.
Agent Bronze’s anguish.
And mine as well.
-I am accustomed to pain, I can endure it. I am accustomed to pain, it’s a little better because I can take other forms. Shaking the bell within the smoke, no, it hurts! Pain! No, I can endure...
At that moment.
-I understand! Thoughts associated with pain are heard by the other party. Associated with pain, associated with pain...
Agent Bronze realizes.
And the Ascetic’s whisper, which had been transmitting pain, changed.
Faster and more unstable, as if reflecting the subject’s state.
-I am in pain. Therefore, if I can partially transform into smoke, and if I have even a little freedom of movement within it, I will immediately use the Five Colored Shoelace to escape this pain.
…!!
-Immediately. I can no longer bear this pain. Let’s walk after tying the shoelaces. Fulfilling the act of walking is all that matters! Hurry!
...
And then I recall.
‘Agent Bronze cannot leave even with the shoelaces.’
Just as how he couldn’t use the Five Colored Shoelaces at Looky Mart because his legs were cut off, the person sealed and unable to move cannot leave.
Only I can leave.
So, after I leave.
The others who remain will continue to be displayed and tortured, forever stuck in this place.
Along with a new person the box would swallow in my place.
...
...
-I can’t hear Agent Grape’s voice. Did he perhaps leave? Am I the only one suffering this pain? It gives me hope, but will I end up cursing him for leaving me alone? This terrible pain...
I turned a part of the smoke into the shape of a hand.
Exposing bare skin,
I touch the membrane.
To the ‘Ascetic in the Box’.
Ascetic in the Box
An authority appearing in the Dark Exploration Records. A 6th ranked authority in the Quota Worship Sect.
According to the commandments of the Quota Worship Sect, it severed its own legs and sealed itself within a box. Through endless asceticism and meditation, it attained power and became a creature within the box that secretes digestive fluid.
The Quota Worship Sect focuses on the most primal form of suffering.
After swallowing the number of victims denoted on the box, the closed box will never open until the sealed beings die.
Those who come into contact with digestive fluid within the box are bound to the Quota Worship Sect and become ascetics.
Delete.
Ascetic in the Box
An authority appearing in the Dark Exploration Records. A 6th ranked authority in the Quota Worship Sect.
According to the commandments of the Quota Worship Sect, it severed its own legs and sealed itself within a box. Through endless asceticism and meditation, it attained power and became a creature within the box that secretes digestive fluid.
The Quota Worship Sect focuses on the most primal form of suffering.
After swallowing the number of victims denoted on the box, the closed box will never open until the sealed beings die.
Those who come into contact with digestive fluid within the box are bound to the Quota Worship Sect and become ascetics. The once closed box may open if subjected to a powerful shock from within.
Screams.
The Ascetic’s screams, the shock of its narrative being erased, its desperate pleas and prayers in the name of Ireum-nim, the wretched truth, and the hymn of fanatical devotion forged from endless asceticism all lose their entirety as its narrative is helplessly erased, stripping away its perfection and mystery.
I felt nauseous.
No, stop agreeing, don’t agree just because you’ve read it. But there’s nothing to feel nauseous about. Soon, I won’t be able to agree, my mind is collapsing already collapsing turning into mush
No.
I removed my hand.
…
…
Eventually.
According to the newly written content.
The ‘Seeker in the Box’, unable to withstand the shock of being forcibly read, deleted, and modified...
Thump.
It bursts with this ‘strong internal impact’.
Intense pressure.
And the liberation of the Seeker.
Thump.
I feel myself being pushed out of the box, still sealed.
The Jeongwon Chanyangsa, completed through arduous asceticism and meditation, the ghost story of the unopenable box, crumbles with a strange sound.
And mine too.
It crumbles.
My barely regained reason, my identity as a human, my humanity, my emotions.
Crushed into a pulp, leaving only traces.
Jingle.
The sound of a bell.
It can no longer be heard.
But I am not sad.
Nor am I greatly distressed or in pain.
That is the attitude of a worker.
I must return to the Daydream to receive a repaired uniform.
-Your uniform has been damaged. Return immediately and await instructions. Your uniform has been damaged. Return immediately and await instructions. Your uniform has been damaged. Return immediately and await instructions…
I hear the announcement.
The next moment.
I poured out of the box.
Along with two figures.
Ryu Jaekwan realizes that the pain has disappeared.
Pain that has exceeded its threshold leaves a phantom pain even after it’s gone, so he realizes it belatedly.
And he realizes that the voices in his head are no longer heard.
Neither his own pain nor the pain of others.
“…!”
He pushed aside the digestive fluid membrane surrounding him, which had lost its strange power.
The dead Seeker’s membrane no longer exerted its unreasonable sealing power, and he was able to tear it with a small pocketknife and emerge.
Air.
As he inhaled,
He becomes aware of two other membrane masses beside him.
“…!”
He immediately plunged the pocketknife into the one next to him. The result of the desperate process of dismantling was...
‘Ha.’
A man with the appearance of a handsome boy in a school uniform. A stranger. Bronze, realizing this was a figure from a cult swallowed by the box earlier, hastily moved his hand to the next membrane.
A larger mass.
This time, with more reason regained, his dismantling hand is careful. From the hastily removed membrane emerges...
An employee dressed in a black uniform, with countless horns, wearing a gas mask.
Agent Grapes.
…Presumably, a supernatural phenomenon.
“…Agent Grapes.”
But there is no reaction.
Was he unconscious?
He couldn’t be sure as the gas mask was still on, but he guessed so because the light of his eyes, which had been like yellow lanterns, was gone.
Agent Bronze carefully lifted Agent Grape’s shoulder. But there was still no reaction.
However, from the mass of horns on his head, fragments of Jade flowed down. Agent Bronze picked them up and put them away for now.
‘Besides that… what else can be done.’
His thoughts were difficult to organize. In fact, he was still groggy.
‘…What was I hearing?’
The Seeker’s voice, which had been whispering the pain of the ascetics incessantly in his mind, had indeed said something strange just before...
Something bizarre and terrifying, yet about truth...
‘Ugh.’
Ryu Jaekwan frowned and pressed his temples.
Listening too closely to the whispers of supernatural disasters or dwelling on their content was a bad omen.
‘…Contamination?’
But for now, he had more urgent matters to attend to. Agent Grape’s condition, and…
‘…Agent Choi!’
He sprang up, as if doused with cold water, a shiver running down his spine.
Looking around properly in his haste, he saw the space as it was before being swallowed by the box.
The box, with its empty number and blood-soaked hands spread on the floor, and...
No one was there.
The desolate underground bunker was devoid of human presence.
Instead, the door to the underground bunker had been completely torn open.
“…!”
And from outside, an immense roar was heard.
But the agent detected a familiar noise.
The sound of a bell.
‘This is...’
It was the sound of the Ritual Executioner’s Sword being swung.
Ryu Jaekwan grabbed Agent Grapes and rushed outside.
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