Gasping for breath, I sprinted down the dark corridor with all my might.

The corridor was so dark that I couldn't see an inch ahead.

The unsteady beam of my flashlight, swaying in time with my frantic running, seemed to mirror my growing anxiety.

All my comrades had been captured by something and burned to death.

What on earth was it? A ghost? An Object?

Crash.

Was it because the corridor was too dark?

Or was it for another reason?

I tripped over something sticking out of the floor and tumbled headlong.

“Huff, huff.”

I couldn’t catch my breath.

The flashlight I had been holding was already gone, vanished somewhere.

I desperately searched for the flashlight I had dropped, but it was nowhere to be found.

Had it broken from the fall?

It seemed impossible to find it in this pitch-dark corridor.

With trembling knees from the tension and fear, I forced myself up and pressed forward.

There were no windows, and now no flashlight.

The dark corridor had no light source, and the uneven floor was full of bumps and protrusions.

Sweat from extreme tension wouldn’t stop running down my back.

I slowly moved forward, feeling the soaked fabric clinging to my back.

With one hand on the wall, I dragged my feet, trying not to trip as I kept moving forward.

The corridor never felt this endlessly long before!

Why, why is it so far?

The end of the corridor wasn’t in sight.

Pant, pant, my breath was labored.

I was getting dizzy.

‘!’

Splash, splash.

Amid the silence of the corridor, I heard the sound of bare feet walking, echoing in a steady rhythm.

Bare feet? In a place like this?

I held my breath, swallowing hard, and just stared in the direction the sound was coming from.

A flickering light, swaying like a ghost, came into view.

Something… something was coming toward me!

“Huff, huff.”

I tried to stifle my heavy breathing by covering my mouth with both hands, but my breath wouldn’t calm down.

Splash, splash.

The footsteps were getting closer.

What should I do?

The end of the corridor was glowing with an ominous color.

It looked like the sulfuric fire that leads to the underworld.

Should I run away now?

Should I go back to where my comrades were burned?

Or should I hide somewhere?

No matter how much I tried to breathe, I kept gasping for air.

Even though I understood it was hyperventilation, I couldn’t catch my breath.

My ears were ringing.

Sweat was pouring into my eyes, blurring my vision.

Breath, breath is too shallow.

Pant. Gasp. Pant.

As I passed by a weeping female ghost scratching at the wall, an incredibly long corridor appeared.

It was a dirty corridor with many sunken and broken spots, cluttered with chairs and desks scattered everywhere.

There were no windows, making the corridor as dark as a photo lab, and it looked inconvenient to move around with all the obstacles.

If you don’t have eyes that emit light like mine, a flashlight is a must!

About halfway down the corridor, I saw a man lying there, his face ashen.

He was gasping for breath, but when he saw me entering the corridor, he fainted on the spot.

At first, I thought he had just passed out, but on closer inspection, I realized he wasn’t breathing, and his heart wasn’t beating either.

What, did he have a heart attack from seeing me?

I jumped up and stomped on the man.

I jumped and stomped on his chest with a thud.

Thud, thud, thud.

After repeating this a few times, he began coughing and started breathing again.

I had performed basic first aid because it wouldn’t feel right if he died here.

He should have regained consciousness by now, but perhaps he had been through a lot because he remained unconscious.

Leaving the still-breathing man behind, I continued my journey deeper into the corridor.

Blood-stained writing was slowly being scrawled across the wall.

<Hurt. Hurt. Hurt. Hurt. Send me. Send me home.> <Hurt. Hurt. Hurt. Hurt. Send me. Send me home.> <Hurt. Hurt. Hurt. Hurt. Send me. Send me home.>

If the ghost weren’t visible, it might have created a rather creepy atmosphere.

The handwriting seemed to be carefully crafted, exuding a ghostly presence.

Except, of course, for the fact that the one writing it was a small boy with sunken eyes.

Thinking about it, isn’t it supposed to be scarier if you can see the ghost?

Looking closely now, this boy also had hollow eye sockets and was dripping blood.

Why am I not scared? I wondered, and then I realized something.

I had lightly thought, ‘Oh, it’s a ghost!’ but subconsciously, I had already recognized it.

These guys are Objects too.

The boy, and the weeping woman at the entrance, were actually Objects.

I guess it’s hard to feel afraid of Objects when you’re an Object yourself.

Noticing that I was staring at the boy writing on the wall, he disappeared beyond the wall.

The eerie writing on the wall vanished along with him.

To me, this abandoned building was essentially a haunted house.

Next time, they should prepare attractions that take into account people who can actually see ghosts.

Tap, tap, tap.

In the silent building, the sound of something running echoed.

Following the sound, I found a little girl ghost stomping her feet in an empty room.

The girl ghost, noticing me, gasped and fled beyond the wall.

This abandoned building was a rather interesting attraction, but the problem was that they didn’t bother to hide their identities.

As I kept going, I saw a man sneaking up.

When he got close, he muttered something incomprehensible, but when I looked back at him, he quietly disappeared.

The reason for his mumbling was that he had his tongue wrapped around his neck like a scarf.

Why would he wear a scarf like that?

As I continued deeper and deeper, I finally arrived at what seemed to be the main attraction.

The smell of something freshly burned filled the air.

A staircase leading underground that refused to accept light.

Charred remains, burned so completely that their original forms were unrecognizable.

The atmosphere was pretty decent.

My heart pounded with anticipation as I descended the stairs, step by step.

As I turned the corner of the stairs, a man, burnt black, suddenly jumped out.

The man, spewing fire from his body, reached out his hand as if to grab my neck.

He reached out…

But when our eyes met, he slowly lowered his hand again.

Though his expression wasn’t visible, the atmosphere became awkward, and he disappeared beyond the wall.

Hearing movement, I turned around to see more burned men jumping out at the top of the stairs.

I guess they were meant to scare me if I tried to escape up the stairs?

When I looked at them, I could feel the men upstairs hurriedly fleeing as well.

The haunted house attraction seemed to end with those stairs.

It was a bit disappointing.

As I descended underground, I found myself in a long corridor flanked by numerous isolation rooms.

A full-fledged laboratory like you’d expect to see.

Unfortunately, the ghosts that had appeared on the upper floors were nowhere to be seen now.

Gradually, I became more convinced that humans had created the composite Objects.

There were countless scattered papers, seemingly left behind on purpose, but not many were legible.

The tools left in the isolation rooms were mostly menacing, like drills and giant saws.

It seemed they used those horrific tools to cut off human limbs, dig out parts, and implant Objects in the empty spaces.

There was one key material that kept appearing in the reports.

Golden Horn.

An Object that, while being an Object, could easily be melted down like gold to make things.

However, handling Golden Horns was illegal in Korea.

That’s because Golden Horns were harvested from human heads.

Of course, despite being illegal, incidents related to Golden Horns never ceased, thanks to their properties making Objects the easiest to process and research.

There were endless crimes like knocking people out with bricks and cutting off only the horns.

Seeing this place, I understood.

The zombie’s golden hearts were made from Golden Horns.

I passed by the scattered papers and kept moving forward.

When I reached the deepest room underground, I saw many familiar faces.

The little boy with hollow eyes who was writing on the wall.

The woman who was crying at the entrance.

The man who had muttered incomprehensibly with his tongue wrapped around his neck.

The burned men.

The girl stomping her feet.

They were all strapped into mechanical devices, hanging on racks like pigs in a slaughterhouse, having turned into zombies.

I now understood why the zombies’ faces were all twisted in agony.

The Golden Hearts were keeping them bound to this place.

And beyond the zombies hanging on the racks was a man strapped to a chair.

He was a fat man in a lab coat, likely a member of this research institute judging by his attire.

He was dead, with wires plugged into his body, so I couldn’t be sure if he really was part of the institute.

And I thought this man was likely the core of the zombies.

It made sense since his body was filled with Golden Hearts.

He had practically replaced all his internal organs with Golden Hearts.

The destruction condition was simple.

[Cut off the power supply.]

I stomped on the wires, severing them.

As the power supply was cut off, the man in the lab coat exploded, his hearts flying in all directions.

At the same time, the zombies hanging on the racks turned to ash and disappeared.

All that remained were the head of the man in the lab coat and the Golden Hearts scattered around.

With this, the Iron Tower incident should be over.

As for tracking down the evil organization that created this laboratory, I’m sure others will take care of that.

Hearing the sound of multiple footsteps and vehicles from above, that’s what I thought.