Chapter 265

265

Baek Saheon was in full sprint, clutching a pile of coins and rewards that had erupted from a lucky slot machine.

Nipping at his heels were the “missing persons” from the local legends—shambling, desperate figures who had traded their very flesh for gambling credits. They were charging directly toward our group.

“That absolute lunatic,” I muttered, a cold shiver racing down my spine.

It made tactical sense for Baek Saheon to retreat toward the strength of the group to save his own skin, but this felt like a repeat of the mountain killer catastrophe. I decided I would settle the score with him later; for now, I had to react.

Facing a horde of mindless, mutilated ghosts was a daunting prospect.

“Move out, now!” someone shouted.

“Fan out and create space!”

“Stop!”

Ms. Go Young-eun’s sharp command made those rushing for the exit freeze in their tracks.

“They won’t stop! If we leave, they’ll hunt us to the death outside. Our only chance is to endure within the casino walls!”

“Will the house intervene if there’s a riot?” I asked urgently.

“Yes! We need to evade them without causing structural damage to the facility…”

Those familiar with the “ghost stories” of this place caught on immediately. We didn’t need to defeat them; we just had to survive until the casino’s security—beings far more terrifying than these addicts—arrived to restore order.

I quickly assessed our assets. “Manager! Take the Goat Child and move!”

“Understood,” the Manager replied.

Baek Saheon let out a pathetic yelp as he was snatched up, but no one cared. We began a frantic game of cat and mouse, weaving through the decrepit floor to lose the pursuers. My mind raced to find a sanctuary.

“To the Dealer Room!” I signaled.

There was a 50-coin entry fee there. These slot machine husks, likely penniless and broken, shouldn’t be able to cross the threshold.

We rounded a corner at a breakneck pace. Thump. One of the creatures lunged, missing me by an inch and slamming into a wall. The sound of bodies hitting concrete followed, coupled with the Manager’s explosive, inhuman leaps. The old building groaned under the weight of the chaos.

Beside me, Ms. Go Young-eun was flagging, her breath coming in ragged gasps. I hauled her forward. The Dealer Room doors loomed ahead.

“Inside!”

The agents didn’t waste time fighting; they used tactical shoves and trips to keep the path clear before ducking inside.

“Are we safe?” someone panted.

The mob had indeed slowed at the entrance. My theory held—mostly. However, a few of the persistent entities managed to force their way in, trampling over those who had stopped.

“Damn it,” I cursed. The dealers behind the tables didn’t lift a finger.

“Noruya,” one of the team members whispered, “is it possible they’re being counted as a single group with enough coins to enter?”

It was a grim possibility. We had entered under similar “group” logic. However, the number of pursuers had dropped enough for us to maneuver. We began darting between the gaming tables to put obstacles between us and the ghosts.

Then I noticed something strange: the creatures were ignoring everyone except Section Chief Lee Ja-heon, who was currently hauling Baek Saheon.

Agent Choi realized it too. He vaulted over a table and snatched the winnings out of Baek Saheon’s arms. “Sorry, citizen, just testing something.”

He waved the coins to lure the ghosts, but they didn’t even turn their heads. They remained locked onto Lee Ja-heon.

“They don’t want the money,” Agent Bronze noted.

“Are they hunting the winner specifically?” I wondered aloud. The situation was becoming unsustainable in such a tight space.

Suddenly, a calm voice cut through the noise. “Guest.”

It was a dealer.

“Manager, lead them past that specific table!” I yelled.

Lee Ja-heon followed my lead, skimming the edge of the dealer’s station. The frenzied addicts charged after him, but their momentum was their undoing. Unable to navigate the turn, they crashed into the table, flipping it and smashing the wood into splinters.

“Cease this at once,” the dealer commanded, raising a single hand.

The effect was instantaneous. The “missing persons” froze like statues, trembling with a primal terror.

“Disturbances are strictly forbidden,” the dealer said coolly. He produced a slip of paper—an invoice. “Payment for damages is required immediately.”

Thud. Rumble.

The sound of wet impacts filled the room. The limbs and organs of the pursuers began to detach and fall away.

“The costs for the table, the doors, and the lighting have been settled by the responsible parties,” the dealer announced.

Those who had been waiting outside tumbled down the stairs as their legs vanished. Those inside were reduced to quivering piles of flesh that soon faded into nothingness. It was a stomach-turning display of supernatural debt collection.

“Are you unharmed, Guest?”

I turned to see the dealer—wearing the face of Deputy Lee Seong-hae—offering a hollow smile.

“Yes… we’re fine.”

“Splendid. Since you did not cause the destruction, you are welcome to continue your stay. Enjoy the casino.”

Baek Saheon looked like he wanted to complain about the “trauma” to get a refund, but he thought better of it. We retreated to a quiet corner to regroup.

Section Chief Lee Ja-heon dropped Baek Saheon like a piece of trash. I walked over and placed a firm hand on the “Goat’s” shoulder with a sharp grin.

“Mr. Goat, I should thank you. You’ve secured quite a bit of funding for the team.”

“Wait, I—”

“I’m being sincere,” I said, leaning in close until our faces nearly touched. “You surely weren’t planning on keeping those coins for yourself while we did all the work, right? You wouldn’t put your comrades in mortal danger just for a personal payout, would you?”

Baek Saheon’s eyes twitched, but he forced a smile. “Of course not! I’m thrilled to contribute.”

“Impressive,” Deputy Eun Haje whispered.

I ignored the sarcasm. I was starting to understand how to manage this guy.

“Let’s count the loot,” I said.

Between our starting capital and Saheon’s winnings, we were sitting on 256 coins. It was a fortune compared to what we started with. We returned the funds to Eun Haje for safekeeping.

Next, we examined the physical prizes.

“A slot machine reward,” I noted, handing a small box to Baek Saheon. He opened it to find a blue plastic device with two buttons.

“A voice recorder?”

It looked cheap and flimsy. Baek Saheon looked at us with a rare moment of genuine vulnerability. “You aren’t taking this too, are you? Anyone can run, but I’m the one who hit the jackpot. Let me keep this one thing.”

Ms. Go Young-eun looked at the device and turned even paler. “I wouldn’t use that if I were you.”

“Why not?”

“There are rumors,” she whispered. “The people who never leave this place… they aren’t here for the money. They’re here for the prizes.”

A chill went through me. “Were they chasing us for the device?”

“Likely. They say if you play the recording, your pain vanishes. Your mind finds peace. Even physical wounds close up instantly.”

“That sounds like a miracle,” someone remarked.

“Only at first,” Go Young-eun warned. “It’s a trap. It’s more addictive than any drug.”

Now the “Darkness Exploration Record” made sense. The “addicts” weren’t just gamblers; they were junkies for the sound inside those recorders, willing to lose every limb just to hear the melody one more time.

Baek Saheon looked disgusted as he flipped the device over. On the back, there was an embossed image. A spiral shape.

A conch shell.

My eyes met Saheon’s. We both remembered the Mermaid Tomb. We remembered the “Angel’s Sigh.”

Braun, I called out mentally.

[I’m ahead of you, Mr. Roe Deer. Shall I read the inscription?]

Please.

The gentlemanly voice echoed in my head, reading with a sophisticated lilt. [‘Angel’s Sigh. Audio Recording. Experience the melodies of the heavens for a modest fee.’]

“A recording?” I thought. The shell in the Mermaid Tomb was the source; this was a cheap, corrupted copy.

[A poor imitation, perhaps?] Braun suggested. [When you change the ingredients, the result is never the same.]

But it felt deeper than that. In the Mermaid Tomb, the shell was a precursor to a “Biological Disaster.” My mind drifted back to the Moonlight Tattoo Shop. What was the link between that underwater nightmare and this subway casino?

I pushed the mystery aside for a moment. Agent Choi was currently grilling Baek Saheon on how he won.

“Luck,” Saheon claimed.

“You were staring at those machines too hard for it to be luck,” Choi countered, eyeing Saheon’s specialized purple eyes.

“It’s not a cheat code,” Saheon snapped. “I just used the eyes to see the danger levels. I avoided the machines that felt ‘wrong’ and played the ones that felt ‘neutral’.”

I realized then that the slot machines weren’t objects. They were living entities—part of the ghost story itself. I decided not to dwell on what was inside them.

“We shouldn’t rely on the slots,” I told the group. “The Dealer Room is where we make our move.”

I thought of Deputy Lee Seong-hae. She had observed the room for days before winning hundreds of coins in a single session. She had cracked a code.

I looked at the dealers, their rhythmic shuffling, and the blinking lights above the scarred tables. The secret was right in front of us.

“Does anyone have a plan for our funds?” Agent Choi asked.

I raised my hand. “I think I know what the Deputy did.”

Seventy-three minutes later.

“Total count…” someone whispered in awe. “924 coins.”

Our capital had tripled, and we were just getting started.