### Chapter 445 – Room 206, The Room of Curses – ‘The Demon King who Revives after 100 Days’ Re (10)
—
– Kim Ahri
—
“This stop is Hoi Ddeuki, Hoi Ddeuki Station. We kindly ask our customers to strip down and show some skin.”
“What the hell are these perverts saying again?”
As Jinchul shouted in disbelief, the wheels in my mind started turning.
From the ‘wiggling white figure’ we saw earlier to the train’s announcement about Hoi Ddeuki—haven’t I heard both of those somewhere before?
Aren’t they both famous urban legends from Japan?
The first is ‘Kunekune’ and the second is ‘Monkey Dream.’
Vaguely, I recalled the content of those creepy tales.
“If this is about Monkey Dream!”
“What? Don’t talk nonsense, Ahri.”
“There’s gonna be a monster with a knife behind that door! Those guys—”
— Creeeak!
The door at the back of the train opened.
Sure enough, just as per the Monkey Dream, a strange dwarf wearing a ridiculous pointy hat appeared.
With a playful but cruel expression and ragged clothing, they brandished a glowing blade in either hand!
“Hmph! You think I get scared over a tiny knife?”
Even Jinchul, full of bravado, along with Seungyub, didn’t seem too fazed.
After all, it’s way past the point where a few knife-wielding dwarfs would scare us, right?
Plus, we didn’t come here unarmed.
— Bang! Bang!
While Seungyub propped himself against the wall, Jinchul and I kept firing our riffles we plucked from Paradise.
Those dwarfs became a mess, but the power of our rifles wasn’t something to scoff at!
“What did you just say? What dream?”
“Monkey Dream, I said.”
“Is that really nothing to worry about? Wasting bullets here.”
“True, we shouldn’t waste bullets. After all, this is just a dream—”
“Attention, please. This stop is Hoi Ddeuki, Hoi Ddeuki Station.”
“…”
“…”
It clearly wasn’t over.
As metallic clanging echoed throughout the train, we started detecting that awful stench along with trembling vibrations coming from the back.
“I think a monster is coming again…”
This one’s definitely gonna be bigger!
“Listen up, everyone! This is just a dream. We’ve fallen into a nightmare!”
“A dream? Oh, is that why you were saying Monkey Dream earlier? Then how do we wake up?”
Maybe it was because we had just recently been floundering around in some unidentified nightmare, but my comrades reacted quickly.
They all began what you could call an RC check—Reality Check!
We twisted our fingers in bizarre angles or pinched our noses to do ‘impossible actions’ and chaos ensued.
Since the RC check is something even the agents from Management Bureau use frequently to handle supernatural phenomena, there was no issue with the response.
The problem was when Jinchul continued to reset his fingers despite having broken them twice or the fact that Yumi, after pinching her nose, started breathing through her skin—what on earth has she done to her body?
After an unintended pause while everyone marveled at each other’s ‘monster-like’ traits, we all froze in realization.
“No matter how peculiar our bodies are, isn’t it abnormal to not wake up like this?”
“…No. The issue is with the content of the legend, Monkey Dream.”
“What’s wrong with the content?”
In the Monkey Dream urban legend, the ‘narrator’ can wake up freely if they realize it’s a dream.
However, the narrator caught in a nightmare struggles to wake up.
“…The legend includes ‘even if you realize it’s a dream, it’s hard to wake up.’”
“Goddamn it!”
“Attention, please. This stop is Hoi Ddeuki, Hoi Ddeuki Station.”
The ominous announcement echoed again.
Finally, Yumi, looking tense, held onto Seungyub’s hand.
“Eh? Y-Yumi?”
“It seems we need shock therapy to wake up from this dream. Maybe if we break a normal person’s fingers, it could work.”
“Uh? Uh?”
“I’m gonna break it.”
“Wait, that’s not—”
“Prince, wake up first and then wake us up!”
“AHHH!”
As the girl with a cold expression lifted Seungyub’s finger to snap it, light suddenly erupted from behind, and Eunsol collapsed to the floor.
“Eh? Sis?”
“What’s going on? Hey! Ahri! Why’s Eunsol passed out?”
“How can she faint when the monster hasn’t even come into our car yet?!”
— Pinch!
“Uh?”
Someone gave me a hard pinch.
Soon, Jinchul and Seungyub’s eyes widened as they rubbed their cheeks.
Clearly, I was here, and no one was touching me, and yet I distinctly felt that pinch.
This meant…
Eunsol just woke up.
“Everyone, wake up!”
…
When I regained my senses, I woke up among the rusty scraps of metal debris.
Eunsol was waking everyone else who was sprawled on the floor one by one.
“Eunsol, how did you wake up?”
Just a moment ago, we knew we fell into a dream yet couldn’t wake up.
‘Even if you know it’s a dream, waking up is hard’ is part of the Monkey Dream’s content.
But how did Eunsol wake up?
“I used the butterfly’s power.”
“Huh, a butterfly dream?”
“The problem is that the content of the dream itself makes it hard to wake up.”
“Right.”
“So, I put a butterfly in my body to change the nightmare’s content.”
“What content?”
“A dream about falling from a building. I woke up the moment my head hit the floor.”
It’s remarkable that Eunsol has become fully fledged as an agent of the Management Bureau too.
—
Maybe it’s because she’s the one with luck?
We had our struggles due to the Monkey Dream, but Seungyub’s suggestion to check the interior of the train turned out to be successful.
There, half-decayed route maps awaited us inside the train.
“…This doesn’t make sense. This is just a piece of paper? Didn’t you say communication’s been cut off for over 100 years?”
It was indeed strange, as Eunsol had said, yet the map remained readable.
Thanks to that, we could find our way in the darkness of the underground city.
Follow the track but consult the map whenever the tracks diverge.
“The white figure Eunsol saw earlier is ‘Kunekune.’ That train we encountered was ‘Monkey Dream.’ Both are famous urban legends in Japan—have any of you heard of them?”
Everyone shook their heads.
It’s hard to tell if it’s because each of us hail from different worlds or if we simply weren’t interested in such urban legends before entering the hotel.
Just then, Eunsol smiled faintly.
“I don’t know what Kunekune is, but I know that.”
“That?”
“That.”
About a minute later, I figured out what that ‘that’ was.
A beautiful woman clad in a pristine white dress, standing vividly against the dark, murky underground cityscape.
She appeared wearing a ‘red mask.’
Jinchul stepped forward.
“Hehe…!”
“Uh…”
“Excuse me, sir. I – ”
“Are you pretty?”
“…”
“Are you asking if I’m pretty?”
“Am I pretty?”
“No? You’re freaking ugly!”
“What the—?”
— BAM!
“Look in the mirror, you brat! Look at your horrendous face!”
Amidst the hilarity of their pointless bickering, I kept chatting with Eunsol.
“From Kunekune to Monkey Dream to the red mask, everything feels so off, right?”
“What’s weird about it? I mean, Kain told me about fighting the ‘Demon King.’”
“The unending whirlpool of urges, a collection of wicked imaginations.”
“Exactly. It felt like that. The Demon King probably manipulates humanity’s dreadful fantasies like magic. If these are indeed famous urban legends, wouldn’t it be possible for them to be summoned into reality?”
“Eunsol, I’m not surprised the Demon King can pull off something like this.”
“What?”
“The real question is, what year are we in?”
According to the history from Paradise, the world collapsed around 180 years ago.
This means the current point in time is roughly the 2200s in a twisted future of Earth.
Only then did Eunsol grasp my point.
“The Monkey Dream and Kunekune were famous tales back in the 2000s, right? By the time of Paradise, they would have been stories famous 200 years ago. It would be completely in the realm of classics!”
“Why aren’t any ‘modern’ urban legends manifesting? Surely with a dystopian reality like Paradise, all sorts of urban legends must have sprung up!”
“…”
I can confidently assert that.
Everyone in this era—people in Paradise—most likely don’t even know what such legends are.
There’s no way tales scraped from the internet would survive for hundreds of years.
Why on Earth are urban legends from hundreds of years ago manifesting in this underground city?
“This is absurd! Let’s get going!”
Suddenly, I recalled the oddity I noticed when we entered the underground for the first time.
Although contact was lost over 100 years ago, there were still human remains that looked as if they had just died weeks ago.
The train map we discovered was still legible.
An underground city where tales from hundreds of years ago came back to haunt us.
“…I’m starting to understand.”
—
[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)
Date: Day 466
Current Location: Room 206, The Room of Curses – ‘The Demon King who Revives after 100 Days’
Sage’s Advice: 3]
—
– Han Kain
—
“Dear Lord… Please allow me to spend this day safely…”
“I’d like to send my thanks to our Father in Heaven…”
“I rejoice in being able to partake in the glorious moment that the Prophet leads the congregation…”
Every hour, every minute, and every second.
The sound of worship has multiplied to an incomparable degree from before.
While there was some validity to what Seungyub said about this voice potentially shaking my sanity, it’s undeniable how prosperous the ‘Han Kain Church’ has become.
The sacred sun has begun to show its weight over time.
I haven’t sacrificed my soul; I’ve just offered my faith, so it’s not fully charged yet, but I can invoke minor miracles without too much trouble.
That’s quite an achievement.
Not just me, but my fellow comrades are doing their utmost as well.
Songee rules the city with an iron fist, exceeding the dead former mayor.
She carefully captures ‘reactionaries’ under any pretext, offering them to the unyielding reason.
Both the teacher and Elena are doing their best, allowing Songee and me to constantly devour the city from above and below.
Right up till here, everything seems fine, but…
We’re seriously in deep trouble.
No matter how I think about it, we’ve faced a tremendous crisis.
“…According to the status window, today marks the 466th day.”
“When did we enter Room 206?”
“Day 380. We’ve been in this room for 86 days now.”
“When did our comrades head underground?”
“Weren’t they gone on Day 400 or so?”
—
It’s been over two months since our comrades ventured underground.
“Are they all still alive?”
“Surprisingly, everyone is accounted for.”
“Then why haven’t they contacted us or come back?”
“That’s a good question.”
Room 206 is titled ‘The Demon King who Revives after 100 Days.’
There are now only 14 days left until the Demon King’s resurrection.
“Kain, big brother. It feels like we’ve really gotten ourselves into a huge mess.”
“…I know.”
We need a special measure.
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