Detective POV:

---

The view of the temporary camp seen from the administration office building located on a high hill was certainly a different atmosphere.

The night sky, with even the starlight disappearing behind the clouds, was pressing down on the camp with darkness and amplifying the stillness of the night.

The streetlights sparsely visible inside the camp were piercing through the darkness and creating pools of dim yellow light that seemed to wander on the ground.

Those pools of light illuminated the camp's alleys, which were intricately intertwined like veins, and the small, shabby buildings with peeled paint due to lack of maintenance.

It also occasionally revealed the figures of the men in black wandering in the most foreign darkness of the camp alleys.

"This is a big deal."

It wasn't that big of an issue that the residents wandering inside the camp were all being killed by those 'ninja'-like fiends.

"No matter how much I search, I can't find where the juniors are hiding. Moreover, the phones are dead too."

The biggest problem was that I couldn't reunite with the juniors.

On top of that, the phones went dead after the ninjas appeared.

The juniors must be waiting a lot.

The place my feet led me to was this administration office.

Do I need to do something here?

Or do I need to spend some time here?

Looking down from here, I could see many corpses of the dead camp residents.

Although I had treated the camp residents like zombies, now that I look, they were definitely not zombies.

The camp residents who moved blindly like zombies surprisingly died easily like humans.

Some died from severed carotid arteries and blood loss, while others were stabbed in the heart.

The ninjas were clearly showing that the camp residents were not zombies.

There were still countless assassination ninjas outside with unknown motives.

No matter how I look at it, it doesn't seem like the right time to go outside the administration office, so I should take a closer look inside.

Being careful not to emit any light, I walked deep into the administration office.

Thud, thud.

Relying on a single flashlight pointed towards the ground, I walked through the pitch-black corridor.

I walked and walked until I reached a room that seemed like a basement warehouse of the administration office.

Shining the flashlight, it was a desolate place densely packed with filing cabinets.

Perhaps because of that, the room was filled with the smell of old paper and dust.

I entered the room, opened a random drawer, and took out a file, which showed a familiar-looking uncle's photo.

The uncle who used to boast about his friendship with the client.

Didn't he say he ran a butcher shop?

The documents were a directory with trivial details like age, address, and family relations.

I flipped through the directories one by one.

Starting from the landlord of the building where the client lived, various people were listed in the directories.

Some people had chased me like zombies, while others had eaten chicken skewers with the juniors.

However, the client was not there.

And the file of the client's younger brother was also strange.

If these documents were not wrong, if it wasn't a simple omission,

How should I interpret this situation?

Who exactly is our client, and what's with this kidnapped younger brother?

***

Junior 2 POV:

---

Strange.

"Now, repeat after me. One letter at a time, clearly, Sua!"

"Su. A."

The client was strange.

Even when I told her the name, she didn't seem to fully comprehend it.

At first, the people inside the camp got the client's name mixed up, and now the client herself has forgotten her own name?

What does this mean?

When the camp people went berserk, I was surprised, but I had a feeling that what the client said was true...

Now I'm not sure what's going on.

On top of that, the name has become a trivial issue now.

Because the client's height was decreasing.

I didn't notice it at first, but now it was clear.

The client's height had decreased!

"The situation in the camp is quite dangerous right now, so take a look at this! It's a tool that can be used as both a tool and for self-defense, perfect!"

"A hammer?"

Senior handed the 'evangelism hammer' to the client and made a proud expression.

And the client awkwardly held the hammer and swung it around.

"Senior."

I approached senior and called out to her in a soft, hushed voice.

"What is it?"

"Senior, isn't this strange?"

"Huh? What's strange?"

I quietly reached out, grabbed the hammer, looked at the client who was swinging it around, and said,

"The client height. Isn't her height strange?"

"Huh? Now that you mention it, it is a bit strange. Wasn't the client taller than that?"

"She was around 165cm, but now she's dropped below 150cm, and that's your only reaction?"

"Wait, be quiet for a moment."

The hammer senior suddenly cut me off with a serious expression.

The place senior was looking at was the entrance of the container.

A man with a strange atmosphere was standing at the entrance of the container office.

He was a man wrapped entirely in black cloth.

***

Reaper (MC) POV:

---

The place I arrived at with an eerie feeling was an empty market street.

On the deserted street without a single person, the lonely streetlights were casting shadows on the market stalls.

The stalls scattered around were full of products that hadn't been cleaned up properly by their owners.

I released my ghostification and sat on a nearby stall, biting into an apple.

The mass of malice that could be felt even from afar had already disappeared long ago.

As I was thinking about whether I should track down the eerie feeling here or just return to the cat,

Men dressed in black started appearing from the corners of the market.

The smell of blood.

They were men emitting an intense smell of blood.

Not just ordinary blood, but the blood of those 'fake humans' that were all over the camp.

Those men in black appeared in various parts of the market and started staring at me intently.

Were they trying to pick a fight?

"!"

But the actions of the men in black were completely beyond my expectations.

They gathered around me in a circle and sat down, bowing.

I was sitting comfortably and relaxing, but suddenly I felt uncomfortable.

Why are they suddenly doing this?

On top of that, the flame inside me had absorbed a lot of emotions, but it wasn't a feeling like affection, but a worship kind of emotion.

It was a feeling I had never experienced before.

The feelings I usually get are positive ones like love or affection.

Or negative ones like fear or disgust, but suddenly reverence?

I was 30% thinking of just running away from this uncomfortable situation of suddenly receiving bows.

But 70% of me thought I should stay a little longer because of the strange sensation I was getting.

The feeling was delicious, so I decided to stay a bit longer.

Unlike affection or fear, reverence somehow tickled my heart and gave me a sense of omnipotence.

Somehow, I felt like I was becoming more and more great!

Hehe.

*** 

Detective POV:

---

I put the file containing the personal information of the younger brother that the client had requested to search for into my arms and left the administration office.

After going around the hill and down, what I saw was a plaza filled with corpses.

The eerie streetlights covered in blood, emitting a reddish glow, made the atmosphere of the plaza even more terrifying.

The gravel-covered plaza, which had been well-landscaped, was now stained with blood and littered with corpses.

Among the fallen camp residents, the corpses of the men in black could be seen here and there.

It was quite strange to see the corpses of these quasi-ninjas that gave off an inhuman vibe.

I couldn't miss this opportunity.

All the camp residents had died from clean cuts, showing how skilled these men in black were with bladed weapons.

However, I couldn't shake the thought of why they would bother using bladed weapons in this day and age.

There weren't many corpses of the men in black, but their condition was miserable.

They had died riddled with all kinds of weapons like swords, kitchen knives, and rakes.

I selected one of the men in black whose body seemed to be in decent condition and began analyzing it.

When I removed the mask, what was revealed was a grotesque skin.

There was not a single strand of hair or eyebrow, and only severe burns covered the face.

"This kind of looks like a scar made by an Object, doesn't it?"

However, the wound didn't seem as serious as the degree of the burn would suggest.

Rather, the burn scars looked so natural that I could believe there was a race that originally looked like that.

With burns of that degree, the skin should have been completely peeled off, or the person should have died, so it must be a scar made by an Object.

I had felt that these ninjas were too quiet, and upon inspection, they had no tongues.

What kind of group are these guys?

They burned their entire bodies to create burns, pulled out their tongues.

Drew unidentified tattoos all over the burn scars, and used outdated bladed weapons in this day and age.

On top of that, they were a group that had undergone rigorous training without regard for their lives.

Is this some kind of cult?

If an Object was involved in this religious group, then it would certainly be possible, but I couldn't understand why they had appeared here.

And the most incomprehensible thing was one item that came from the men in black's arms.

A carefully packaged, premium pudding.

What is this?

---

T/N: PUDDINGGGG!!!