The view of the temporary camp from the management office building perched on the high hill was certainly different.

The night sky, with even the starlight hidden behind clouds, pressed down on the camp, amplifying the darkness and stillness of the night.

The few streetlights scattered throughout the camp pierced through the darkness, creating faint yellow pools of light that seemed to hover just above the ground.

These pools of light illuminated the peeling paint and small, shabby buildings, as well as the complex, vein-like alleys that wound through the camp.

And in the most eerie of these alleys, the figures dressed in black, wandering in the darkness, were occasionally lit up.

"This is bad."

The fact that the residents wandering inside the camp were all being killed by those ninja-like assailants wasn’t the biggest issue.

"No matter how hard I search, I can't find where the juniors are hiding. And now, my phone’s not working either."

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

To make matters worse, the phone had gone dead ever since the ninjas appeared.

The juniors must be waiting for me.

My steps had brought me to this management office.

Is there something I need to do here?

Or do I just need to kill some time?

Looking down from here, I could see the bodies of camp residents lying everywhere.

I had been treating the camp residents like zombies, but now I could clearly see that they weren’t.

The camp residents, who had been moving blindly like zombies, were surprisingly easy to kill, just like humans.

Some died from blood loss after their carotid arteries were severed, others from being stabbed in the heart.

The ninjas were making it clear that the camp residents were not zombies.

Outside, the area was still crawling with those murderous ninjas with unclear motives.

It didn’t seem like the right time to leave the management office, so I decided to explore inside further.

Carefully avoiding making any light, I walked deeper into the office.

Step, step.

Using a flashlight pointed at the floor, I walked through the pitch-black hallway.

I kept walking, letting my steps guide me, until I reached what seemed like a storage room in the basement of the management office.

Shining the flashlight around, I saw a room filled with file cabinets, a barren and stark place.

Because of this, the room was full of the smell of old paper and dust.

I entered the room, opened a random drawer, and pulled out a file, revealing a photo of a familiar man.

It was the man who had boasted of his close relationship with the client.

Did he say he ran a butcher shop?

The document contained personal details like age, place of residence, and family relationships—just mundane things.

I flipped through the files, examining them one by one.

The files included people like the landlord of the building where the client lived and various other individuals.

Some of them had chased me like zombies, and others had been the ones eating chicken skewers with the junior.

But the client wasn’t among them.

And the file on the client’s younger brother was also odd.

If this document isn’t wrong, and if this isn’t just a simple clerical error….

How am I supposed to interpret this situation?

Who exactly is our client, and who is this supposedly kidnapped younger brother?

Something’s off.

“Okay, repeat after me. One letter at a time, Suah!”

“Soo. Ah.”

The client was acting strange.

Even when I told her her name, she didn’t seem to accept it.

At first, the people inside the camp had confused the client’s name, and now the client herself was forgetting it?

What could this possibly mean?

I was shocked when the camp residents went on a rampage, but I couldn’t help but think that what the client said was true….

Now, I’m not sure what’s going on anymore.

And now the name issue seems trivial.

Because the client’s height was shrinking.

At first, I didn’t notice, but now it was undeniable.

The client’s height had definitely decreased!

The clueless senior, who was too distracted to notice, was busy pulling out a ‘proselytizing hammer’ from his bag and swinging it around.

“Given the dangerous situation in the camp, you should hold this! It’s a perfect tool, both as a weapon and for self-defense.”

“A hammer?”

The senior, looking pleased, handed the ‘proselytizing hammer’ to the client.

The client, with an awkward expression, took the hammer and swung it a few times.

“Senior.”

I approached the senior and whispered in a small voice.

“What is it?”

“Senior, don’t you find this strange?”

“? What do you mean by strange?”

I quietly pointed at the client, who was swinging the hammer, and said,

“The client’s height. The height! Isn’t it strange?”

“Huh? Now that you mention it, something does seem off. The client wasn’t that short, was she?”

“She was about 165 cm tall, but now she’s dropped below 150 cm, and that’s your reaction?”

“Wait, be quiet for a moment.”

The senior suddenly cut me off with a serious expression.

He was looking at the entrance of the container office.

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

He was completely wrapped in black cloth.

Feeling uneasy, I had ended up in an empty marketplace.

A solitary streetlamp stood in the street, casting shadows over the market stalls.

The stalls, abandoned without their owners, were still laden with unsold goods.

I released my invisibility and sat down at a nearby stall, biting into an apple.

The mass of malice that I had sensed from a distance had long since vanished.

As I pondered whether to continue tracking this eerie sensation or return to the cat, something happened.

Men dressed in black began to emerge from every corner of the market.

The scent of blood.

They reeked of blood.

Not just any blood, but the blood of those ‘fake humans’ that were all over the camp.

These black-clad men began to appear all over the market, staring intently at me.

Are they trying to pick a fight?

“!”

But the actions of the black-clad men were completely unexpected.

They gathered around me in a circle and bowed.

I had been sitting comfortably, but suddenly, I felt very uneasy.

Why are they doing this?

Moreover, the emotions absorbed by the firewood weren’t feelings of affection but something more akin to worship.

It was an emotion I had never encountered before.

The emotions I usually absorbed were positive, like love or affection.

Or they were negative, like fear or disgust. But worship?

Should I run away from this uncomfortable situation? That thought was about 30% of my mind.

But the other 70% was thinking that maybe I should stay a little longer, intrigued by the unfamiliar sensation from the firewood.

The emotion was so delicious that I decided to stay a bit longer.

Unlike affection or fear, worship felt like it was tickling my heart, giving me a sense of omnipotence.

I felt like I was becoming more powerful!

Hehe.

With the file containing the details of the younger brother the client had asked us to find, I left the management office.

After winding my way down the hill, I found myself in a plaza filled with corpses.

The streetlights, stained with blood, cast a crimson glow, making the plaza even more terrifying.

The once well-maintained gravel plaza had become a place stained with blood and littered with bodies.

Among the fallen camp residents, I occasionally saw the bodies of the black-clad figures.

It was surprising to see the bodies of these inhuman, ninja-like figures.

I couldn’t miss this opportunity.

The camp residents had all died from simple wounds, showcasing just how skilled these black-clad figures were with bladed weapons.

Though I couldn’t shake the thought of how outdated it was to use bladed weapons in this day and age.

There weren’t many bodies of the black-clad figures, but those that were there were in terrible condition.

They had been killed by an array of weapons like cleavers, Chinese chef’s knives, and rakes.

I chose one of the better-preserved bodies of the black-clad figures and began to examine it.

When I removed the mask, I revealed a grotesque face.

There was no hair or eyebrows, just a face covered in severe burns.

“This looks like a scar made by an Object, doesn’t it?”

But despite the severity of the burns, the injuries didn’t seem too serious.

In fact, the burn marks were so natural that I could believe it was a characteristic of their race.

With burns like those, the skin would either be completely removed, or the person would die, so it must be a scar made by an Object.

I had thought these ninjas were unnervingly quiet, but now I saw that they didn’t have tongues either.

What kind of group are these guys?

They burned their entire bodies to create these scars, and they cut out their tongues.

Their bodies were covered with mysterious tattoos, and they used outdated bladed weapons.

And they were a highly trained group that didn’t value their lives.

Is this some kind of cult?

It’s possible, given that Objects are involved, but I still can’t figure out why they showed up here.

And the most puzzling thing was the one item I found on the black-clad figure.

A meticulously wrapped, high-quality pudding.

What the heck?