Breakdown II
Once you have identified an anomaly's weak point, what becomes important next?
It's the spirit.
In refined terms, it’s 'vitality' or 'mental strength,' and in common terms, it's 'stubbornness' or 'guts.' By unifying your mental state with a marine's, you must push through with sheer determination.
This is no joke.
Let's briefly recount the story from the 90th run when I operated a convenience store under the Sixth International.
Although I haven't mentioned it before, not only human customers but also 'non-human customers' frequented the store.
One night, the bell rang. I immediately turned my head. The digital clock by the door showed 01:59.
"Welcome, custo――"
-Uwooooh...
"――mer. Hmm, take your time browsing."
A stench of rot wafted through the air.
A pitch-black ghost approached, dripping shadows. Its gait was so distinctive that I wondered if I had laid out a red carpet in the convenience store.
'Damn.'
A highly rational judgment was made.
Do you know the Pokémon Muk? Or the sludge spirit from Spirited Away?
The ghost, which resembled those, was gliding around the store before reaching the counter.
My mind was about to go crazy. Just five minutes ago, I had meticulously cleaned the store floor, which was now beautifully coated with the ghost's filth.
-der-taaaakerrrr...
The customer spoke.
"Yes?"
-der-taaaakerrrr, one. Kidney... two. Heart, one... Lung, one. Three fingers... One eyeball... please...
"......."
I was a small business owner with a strict moral code embedded in my frontal lobe.
This meant I had the mental fortitude to never forget the seven-letter word 'service' even when dealing with a problematic customer.
Therefore, I could smile brightly without a trace of confusion.
"Customer, do you want to get hit?"
-......?
"Do you want to get hit? Do you want to get hit?"
The ghost flinched.
I slammed the counter down and took a step toward the ghost.
"Do you see the floor here? Huh? I can't check if you have eyes."
-Uwooo...?
"It's all black like a sewage backup. The smell? We sell food here, but your stench has spoiled everything. Are you going to take responsibility? Will you take responsibility, customer? Why aren’t you answering? Huh?"
Indeed.
If there's an anomaly called a 'problematic customer,' then there must also be a 'crappy store owner' to balance the world.
"What? Stomach? Kidney? Heart? You gotta be kidding me, customer bastard. Pay up. Cleaning fee for making the floor dirty. Mop replacement fee for using the mop. Compensation for the spoiled food corner. And above all, laundry fee for your stench on my uniform. It’s your existence fee, bastard."
-Uwooo...
"No money? You have no money but come in and make a mess? Ah, damn! Hey! Call the police. Call the police! No! From now on, I am the police, you filthy bastard!"
-Uwooo...
Sliiide.
At that moment, the anomaly disappeared. The filth and stench it had spread around the store also vanished.
The digital clock still showed 01:59.
The lesson from this story is simple. Even the most powerful anomaly, strong enough to make time pause, can be defeated with knowledge of its weak point and a fiery spirit.
I, the Undertaker, unlike a certain regressor who took a long vacation claiming he was starved for love, always had an overflowing spirit to give the middle finger to anomalies.
In this story, to help you pave your own paths, I'll introduce a more detailed 'anomaly strategy guide' by an expert who breaks through the void.
Step by step, I walked out of the duty room in a guard uniform.
In my left hand was a flashlight, and in my right, a trunk.
I also had earphones and a small microphone attached. It was my full gear set for tackling anomalies.
At this moment, I felt like Liu Bei, wielding the peerless sword that could make even the mighty Lü Bu tremble in fear under the right conditions.
-Uwooo... ...,
-Hi, hi, hi, hi...
As soon as I stepped onto the first-floor hallway, the ghosts that were lingering subtly retreated.
It was natural.
'Ghosts' are fundamentally anomalies based on human forms. Some ghosts possess a degree of intelligence, and most have the instinct to recognize a strong person.
No matter how difficult the 'Baekhwa Girls' High' tutorial dungeon is, I am a Regressor of the 117th cycle. To the anomalies, it would be a catastrophe akin to Cthulhu suddenly descending upon a beginner’s village.
However, not all ghosts ran away.
Some simply couldn't flee due to their settings.
Therefore, my first destination was the school's boys' restroom.
"Hmm."
Splash-
The soles of my shoes squished. The bathroom floor was flooded with about 0.5 cm of water.
Looking around, I detected a faint bleach smell mixed with a peculiar stench. It was the smell of soaking a bunch of human hair in water.
The faucet was off.
'This is undoubtedly a haunted spot.'
No hesitation.
There were four toilet stalls in the restroom. I knocked politely on the third stall.
"Hanako-san, are you there?"
-.......
"Hanako-san?"
Silence.
I tilted my head.
"Hmm."
-.......
It was a very suspicious silence.
My well-honed sixth sense as an anomaly hunter in the 117th cycle whispered, 'There's definitely a ghost here.'
They may have hastily locked the faucet, but it was too late once the tiled floor was already flooded.
As someone who generously trusts himself, the answer was one of two things: either the ghost couldn't understand Japanese because it was originally from Japan, or it was deliberately ignoring me.
In this global era, the former was impossible. My instinct said it was the latter.
"Oh. I almost forgot. In some versions, just knocking isn't enough to trigger the appearance conditions."
-.......
"Alright. Let's start spinning now?"
Clack. I locked the bathroom door and began to spin in place inside the stall.
"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven."
-.......
"Eight, nine, ten, twelve, thirteen. Done."
I knocked on the door again.
"Hanako-san, let's play. Hanako-san, are you there?"
-Yes.
A reply came immediately.
This is the fate of anomalies. They have their own 'rules' they cannot escape from.
Because anomalies exist in this world only through those rules.
Anomalies like Ten Legs have immense physical destructive power but have the weakness of being 'physically destructible.'
The convenience store ghost can 'appear as a customer in any convenience store at 2 AM.' It seems to transcend spatial limitations but has the weakness of 'only existing as a customer.'
The same goes for the toilet ghost Hanako.
Hanako exists as 'a ghost in the third stall of an empty bathroom anywhere.' A kind of earthbound spirit.
Therefore, to anyone who enters the third stall, especially if they chant the incantation, Hanako must 'appear.'
If it doesn’t respond? It acknowledges that it doesn't exist in the third stall. Exorcism complete.
The toilet ghost murmured in a trembling voice (though it sounded like a ghostly voice to me).
-Red paper or blue paper...?
"Ah. It's the case where it's combined with the red paper blue paper ghost. Not that rare."
-Purple paper...?
"Oh."
The anomaly proposed a compromise.
According to some ghost stories, asking for 'purple paper' made Hanako retreat. A kind of strategy, an exorcism method.
But just now, the ghost proposed the truce without me even reciting the strategy.
I was slightly moved. What a considerate ghost.
"Purple paper isn't bad. But what now."
-.......?
Screech!
I unzipped the leather trunk bag I had brought. This trunk was also an anomaly, but that story is for another time.
What’s noteworthy now is that the trunk contained both 'red paper rolls' and 'blue paper rolls.'
"I brought both red paper and blue paper?"
-.......
"It's the post-corona era. In these times, carrying personal hygiene items like toilet paper is necessary for peace of mind. Right? Hanako. Do you want one too? Red paper? Blue paper?"
-Purple paper...
"I don't have purple paper, you bastard!"
Bam!
I immediately generated aura and stepped forward. The toilet shattered, white porcelain fragments flying everywhere.
Water overflowed, but it wasn't just H₂O. A ghost, resembling a girl in a red cape, sprang out.
I grinned.
"Found-you."
-......!
The ghost’s form trembled violently.
This was the advantage of ghost-type anomalies compared to other types.
Strong against the weak and weak against the strong. Most ghosts had this very human characteristic of being strong against the weak and weak against the strong. The more human-like the ghost, the more pronounced this characteristic.
Most ghosts also had the troublesome trait of being 'immune to physical attacks,' but it didn’t matter. Physical immunity could be bypassed if done right.
For example, like this.
"Got you."
-......! ......!
With a flick of my wrist, I wrapped the ghost’s head with the red paper in my right hand and the blue paper in my left.
No matter how free a ghost was from physical force, 'Hanako' caused physical changes, i.e., death, through the words 'red paper' and 'blue paper.'
This is how you use weak points.
There are no one-way streets in the world of anomalies. Everything is two-way. If they can interfere from that side, we can do the same from this side with the same methods.
The result was the scene before me. The toilet ghost, dangling helplessly, bound by a vice grip in both my hands.
-......! ......! ......!
"Red paper or blue paper?"
-.......
"The correct answer is both. We're having a buy one get one free sale this month, customer."
Crunch!
The ghost's face turned blue and then burst. The whole body melted away into a red liquid, losing its shape.
Even if it was an anomaly resembling a human form, I felt no sympathy at all.
The reason was revealed immediately after the toilet ghost was exorcised.
The water that had pooled on the tiled floor turned red, revealing corpses submerged like a village under a dam.
"......."
There were seven corpses just in this restroom.
Adding up all the other restrooms, it would easily reach dozens. The students trapped in the 'Baekhwa Girls' High Tutorial Dungeon' without knowing anything would have been deliciously weak targets for the anomalies.
I gathered the corpses in one place. They probably wouldn’t rot until the void was broken.
"Hmm...?"
While organizing the corpses, I found something suspicious.
"...Talismans?"
Talismans were hidden throughout the restroom. Behind the toilet where the red paper blue paper ghost had emerged, in the cleaning supply closet, under the sink. There were three in total.
If it had been me after the 200th cycle, I could have deciphered the meaning of the talismans completely. But at this time, although I had read the Analects, Mencius, Great Learning, and Doctrine of the Mean, I hadn't yet fully interpreted the I Ching.
Still, I knew enough to distinguish between talismans for prayers and those for curses. The intent of the characters on the talisman was too obvious to miss.
死. 死. 死. 死.
Even amidst the water bomb in the restroom, the red characters on the talismans gleamed vividly like snake skin.
"Hmm."
It was quite ominous. Even the fortune tellers selling curse talismans usually only wrote '亡' but rarely '死.'
I examined the talismans closely, scratched the red characters with my nails, and even sniffed them.
"...It's real human blood."
Talismans made with human blood. The most dangerous of curses.
Why were such talismans hidden in a school restroom?
I set aside the question and, after storing it in my mind's closet, burned all the talismans.
Then I took out some paper and tape from the trunk bag and stuck a sign on the first-floor boys' restroom door.
[Patrol Completed]
It was a kind of 'safe zone' marker.
I didn't know how many students were wandering around, but it would provide a hint for survival.
"Alright."
I moved again.
There was a reason I exorcised the toilet ghost immediately after entering 'School Ghost Stories.'
Since ancient times, the place where people urinate was considered a kind of taboo.
While a shrine for rituals is the center of light, a restroom is the center of shadows. It's an unavoidable place for humans, but still avoided because it’s considered dirty.
This is why 'places to urinate,' along with 'places to eat' and 'places to sleep,' always hold significant ritualistic meaning in voids.
One of the core pillars of 'School Ghost Stories.'
In contrast, dismissing ghosts in the science lab, art room, or music room as unimportant isn't an overstatement.
‘I’d like to join Cheon Yo-hwa and the survivor group right away, but it's difficult to determine the exact location in such a distorted void...’
Step. The light from my flashlight swept across the pitch-black corridor.
The school space had elongated, duplicated, and twisted bizarrely. The sky outside the windows was dyed blood-red, and white birch trees shattered the glass, poking out into the hallway.
Countless anomalies must be lurking in those white shadows.
I nodded and adjusted the [Guard Undertaker] name tag on my chest.
‘Until I join Cheon Yo-hwa, I’ll just have to deal with all the anomalies I encounter along the way.’
Brrrr...
Maybe it was just my imagination, but at that moment, I felt the void of 'School Ghost Stories' tremble.
Footnotes:
