Chapter 502
The sky was overcast, and the humid air made her skin feel sticky.
The woman stopped, wiping the cold sweat from her forehead.
It was a familiar walking path, yet everything felt strangely unfamiliar.
The shadows of the trees stretched longer than usual, and even the birds’ chirps seemed distorted in some way.
“This is strange…”
Her head throbbed.
She had chosen this quiet path to calm the increasingly severe headaches, yet they were only getting worse.
The reason she had picked this secluded route was the Golden Reapers she kept encountering in the city.
The mental contamination they emitted was causing her intense headaches.
While most people, unlike her, had already come to accept the existence of the Mini Reapers, even viewing the idea of raising an Attachment Reaper as a trend, the woman couldn’t quite do the same.
She sighed.
Sometimes, her strong resistance to mental contamination felt like a blessing, but at other times, it felt like a curse.
Unlike others, she couldn’t easily accept the Mini Reapers, and so, she often received strange looks from those around her.
And, as time passed, it seemed like more and more people had begun to view those without Attachment Reapers as criminals.
A thick fog began to settle.
The woman quickened her pace.
But the path grew more and more unfamiliar.
The trees grew denser, and the earth beneath her feet felt damp.
Had there always been a place like this?
Just as the thought crossed her mind, a massive silhouette emerged through the mist.
It was a mansion.
A grand Gothic-style building stood tall in the middle of the jungle.
It looked like something straight out of a fairytale, but at the same time, there was an unsettling aura surrounding it.
The windows seemed to stare at her like black eyes, and the weather vane on the spire creaked and spun without any wind.
It was then that the woman realized.
She had fallen into a powerful mental contamination.
But it was already too late.
The forest path she had entered had already disappeared.
Even when she tried to walk away from the mansion, she inevitably found herself back at its entrance.
And the more she repeated this behavior, the stronger her headache became, and her legs grew heavier.
Moreover, at some point, she began hearing strange sounds coming from the forest.
It was as though something was threatening to kill her if she ventured deeper.
‘If I had known this would happen…’
Regret washed over her.
If only she had given in to her stubbornness and adopted an Attachment Reaper, none of this would have happened…
But it was too late now.
The woman glared at the mansion.
Then, she slowly began walking toward it.
The heavy gates slowly creaked open.
With a screech, the mansion invited her in.
As if it had been waiting for her all along.
Once inside, the mansion’s interior was as bizarre as its exterior.
The corridor decorated with a grand chandelier and red carpets looked luxurious at first glance, but the sinister energy hidden within that opulence wrapped around her like a shroud.
The woman’s face grew pale as she read the rulebook handed to her by a butler-like man.
“Do not open the door after sunset. Do not open the door even if someone knocks or calls. If you find a window in the corridor, immediately close the door and do not leave.”
“What is this…?”
The rules sounded less like hotel guidelines and more like a horror game scenario.
Each one was nonsensical and eerie.
The bigger issue, however, was the rule that she couldn’t freely leave the mansion.
The moment she stepped inside, she had already become a prisoner of the mansion.
‘What should I do? What should I do? What should I do?’
The woman gripped the heavy key, her mind racing, but no matter how much she thought, no solution came to mind.
She had no power to face such a vicious object, and there was no way to escape.
At this rate, she would simply be sacrificed to the object.
The only hope left was one thing.
‘Please, please let the Golden Reapers…’
Clutching the key tightly, the woman closed her eyes and prayed desperately.
That the Golden Reapers would find this mansion.
That those small and powerful Golden Reapers would deal with this dreadful object.
If she survived this, she vowed never again to ignore the Mini Reapers.
The moment she saw the first Golden Reaper on the street, she would grab it and make it her Attachment Reaper.
With this firm resolve in her heart, she prayed.
The red carpet in the lobby was tinted a deeper color by the setting sun.
The woman sat on a comfortable-looking sofa, but she couldn’t relax, feeling as though she were surrounded by vipers.
Though quite some time had passed since entering the hotel, the heavy key labeled “Room 301” still pressed down on her palm.
The rulebook handed by the butler exuded a menacing presence as it lay on her lap.
The book didn’t mention what would happen if the rules were broken, and that only made it more terrifying.
The woman didn’t want to go up to the room she had been assigned.
Just the sight of the rule numbers, each one a potential death trap, made the hotel room seem the most dangerous place.
But she couldn’t stay in the lobby forever.
The shadows stretching beneath the grand chandelier grew darker.
Through the window to the west, the sun was slowly sinking behind the mountain range.
The golden sunlight turned red, casting its glow on the marble columns of the hotel.
Time was running out.
She had to go up to the room before the sun set.
The sinking sun beyond the horizon felt like the remainder of her life.
Screeeek—
A sudden sound made the woman jump, her head snapping around.
The front door of the hotel slowly opened, letting someone in.
A girl entered the lobby.
At first glance, she looked perfectly ordinary.
Ash-colored hair.
Skin so pale it was almost white.
Chubby cheeks and an adorable face.
But something was different.
Something was wrong.
As a slight headache began to form, her gaze finally fell on the girl’s outfit.
Only now did she notice: the girl was wearing a shark onesie!
The hotel was located deep in a dense jungle, surrounded by bushes and mud.
Yet the girl’s shark onesie looked as if it had just been picked up from the laundromat.
There wasn’t a speck of dust or dirt on it.
And the strangest part was that none of this seemed odd at all.
A chill ran down the woman’s spine.
She realized.
The fact that the girl seemed normal was the most abnormal thing.
‘That… That girl is an object!’
And not just any object, but a high-ranking one, one so powerful the woman couldn’t even fathom it.
The woman was now even more terrified by the appearance of this new object.
She prayed desperately, hoping the girl in the shark onesie wouldn’t look at her.
With trembling hands, she gripped the heavy key even tighter.
She hid behind a pillar, watching the girl in the shark onesie.
The girl, with a curious expression, was looking around the place.
She picked up a large porcelain vase and checked underneath.
She hopped over to the hotel lobby counter and poked around every corner.
She even jumped up to try to grab a candlestick hanging high.
Then, she began pounding on the sofa in the lobby before lying down comfortably and eating pudding.
She randomly poked at the staff object standing near the entrance.
None of these actions seemed like something an ordinary girl would do in a suspicious hotel.
After observing her, the woman realized a few key features of the girl in the shark onesie.
She didn’t speak at all, and perhaps thinking she was a Mini Reaper, she walked like one too.
But the most important detail was that the girl’s detection range was incredibly narrow.
It seemed like she could only see about 5 degrees directly in front of her face.
It was the kind of limited sight you’d expect from a dumb NPC in a stealth action game.
Maybe that’s why the girl in the shark onesie kept turning her head, constantly looking around, trying to widen her view like a curious child.
Having deduced this, the woman realized that by simply staying just slightly out of the girl’s line of sight, she could continue observing unnoticed.
As the girl in the shark onesie busily wandered the lobby, she suddenly stopped, as if pinned to the spot by something.
The girl didn’t speak a word, but the way her cheeks twitched seemed to express something like “Wow!” or “Awesome!”
The girl was staring at a large painting of dinosaurs.
A rough, wild painting that suited the grand mansion perfectly.
The woman couldn’t help but smile, as the girl’s delight reminded her of the Golden Reapers.
‘Ah!’
In that moment, the woman, half consumed by the mental contamination of the girl in the shark onesie, was startled.
To shake it off, she lightly slapped her cheeks and shook her head vigorously.
As the mental contamination subsided, the woman sighed in relief.
But when she opened her eyes again, she found golden, gleaming eyes staring up at her.
“Ahhh!”
The woman screamed, her heart dropping, as the fearsome shark onesie object stared right at her.
