Chapter 33, The Company (5)
My right hand currently looked like this.
The pitch-black Shroud wrapped around my hand like a glove.
Above it, blue flames danced.
If I had seen someone like this in a game, I would probably have wondered whether they had chuunibyou, middle-school syndrome.
To put it nicely, it looked ridiculously cool.
To put it more directly, it was kind of embarrassing.
The strange feeling of shame that came with it was a bonus.
My companions gathered around and examined my hand with curiosity.
Arlin used magic to test several things.
Hwa-ryeon and Lee Yeonhee poked and touched my hand.
Lee Jinsung had been muttering strange words with unusually high excitement for a while.
“Is it really okay to leave this alone?”
I asked while standing still like a living decoration as everyone examined me.
The first to answer was Arlin, who had been giving my hand something like an electric massage.
“There don't seem to be any negative effects, so I think leaving it alone should be fine.”
“Still, this is the fire that already killed all of you once. And the fact that it's an Imitation Mystery made by the Company also bothers me.”
The flame did seem to have become bound to me.
But it wasn't as though there were absolutely no methods I could try.
For example, I could cut off the entire arm with the flame and ask Lee Yeonhee to heal it.
Of course, that would be one of the most extreme options.
There was no guarantee the Mystery would actually separate from me.
And even if it did, I might lose the Shroud as well.
My point was that if we searched hard enough, there might be a way to remove it.
But everyone told me to leave it alone.
They said dealing with the Company was more important right now.
I nodded and began searching the 500th floor with them.
We found nothing else.
It seemed the entire 500th floor existed only for that one Imitation Mystery.
There was nothing like the clue we had expected to find for destroying the Company.
After finishing our search, we prepared to head down to the 499th floor.
That was when something felt wrong.
“Kim Hyunwoo is gone.”
I realized that the Company employee had disappeared from sight.
The others looked surprised, as though only now realizing it.
“When did he disappear? I don't think I saw him after I came back with the flame.”
“I don't know... I thought I was watching him carefully.”
“This is strange. Even if Kim Hyunwoo escaped while avoiding our eyes, I should have sensed him.”
“He must have used some special method to escape.”
“Come to think of it, we haven't seen a single Company employee other than Kim Hyunwoo since entering.”
“...That might be connected to how he escaped.”
We eventually came up with a theory.
Kim Hyunwoo's disappearance might be related to the fact that we hadn't seen any other Company employees.
We weren't certain.
We had only visited the 1st and 500th floors.
And judging from Kim Hyunwoo's reaction, the 500th floor wasn't somewhere people normally visited.
To strengthen our theory, we needed to visit another floor.
Didn't Kim Hyunwoo come down from the 327th floor?
Let's start there.
We entered the elevator and went to the 327th floor instead of the 499th.
The doors opened in less than five seconds.
Since there might be Company employees waiting, we immediately became alert and checked our surroundings.
There was an office.
It looked like an ordinary Company office, no different from the 1st floor.
The strange part was that there wasn't a single person.
Just like the 1st floor.
That made our theory a little more believable.
Still, our sample size was too small.
Let's visit one more random floor.
We pressed the button for the 98th floor.
Another office.
It had exactly the same structure as the 327th floor.
“This is obviously strange.”
“The layout is exactly the same as the office we saw earlier. It's almost like... someone copied and pasted it.”
“Let's check just one more floor. One more.”
After that, we checked the 27th, 71st, 219th, 400th, and 499th floors.
Not a single one had a different structure.
Every floor was made of the exact same office layout.
A powerful sense of wrongness came over me.
“Didn't Kim Hyunwoo say that once you went above the 100th floor, there would be laboratories?”
“But every floor above the 100th was still just an office.”
“That means Kim Hyunwoo was lying... or, surprisingly, he was telling the truth.”
“Doesn't that make no sense? No... if it's a Mystery, maybe it could make sense.”
“If Kim Hyunwoo really was telling the truth, then perhaps... the Company's space is divided into two separate spaces. One is the space where Company employees actually work.”
“And the other is a fake space meant to protect the Company from intruders?”
“That seems likely.”
It was still only a theory, but we were already half convinced.
We had evidence.
And the explanation made sense.
From that moment, we began searching for the Mystery that had separated the Company's space.
The method was simple.
We would check every floor from the 2nd to the 498th, one by one.
It sounded stupidly inefficient.
But it was also the most reliable method.
In the end, after searching every office one by one, we found the Mystery.
It was on the 412th floor.
It took four days to search up to the 412th floor.
During that process, I regressed once.
The reason was simple.
We became insanely sleepy.
Because of Mystery No. 619, Eternal Dream, we couldn't sleep while we were in Busan.
So eventually, regression became unavoidable.
After regressing once, the psychological barrier toward regression became lower.
I didn't feel much about doing it anymore.
After the regression, we continued the mechanical work of taking the elevator from floor to floor and searching offices.
That exhausting process finally ended when we found the Mystery on the 412th floor.
“Phew. Finally!”
“We still shouldn't relax. The real work probably starts now.”
“Why do these bastards have to make everything annoying by using Mysteries? If they're a Company, they should act like one and show off technology!”
