## Chapter 170 – Ghost Story City (1)
“Hoo.”
The heatwave continued relentlessly.
In this heat, the most helpful skill was none other than ice magic.
Plop, plop.
Round ice cubes created from my fingertips fell into the glass of zero cola.
I’d discovered by chance that ice made with magic was so pure, without any air bubbles, that it lasted a surprisingly long time.
It seemed to melt two or three times slower than regular ice, so I was using it a lot.
Thanks to that, I didn’t have to worry about ice all summer.
“Hmm…”
I held the drink in one hand and scanned the quest board.
With each quest I cleared, the time I spent agonizing over the quest board grew longer.
Which world should I choose to enter? Which quest should I attempt?
There were so many options that I couldn’t choose.
“I feel like I’ve experienced most of the famous worlds and genres by now… Oh…”
Then, I saw a genre I hadn’t experienced before.
But as soon as I saw the genre, my expression twisted.
“This is a bit…”
It was a genre I loathed.
A genre that some consider the best,
but others hate, even despise.
“Horror, huh…”
Horror genre.
Among them, the world I was looking at was a ghost story genre, which was trending in novels and comics these days.
“Scary…”
It was ridiculous for someone my size to be thinking this, but I generally avoided the horror genre.
There was no reason.
It was just scary.
Because of that, even though I played all sorts of games, I’d only played one or two truly famous horror games.
As for horror movies, I’d only watched a few movie reviews on YouTube that included the ending.
So, in this quest board as well, I was planning to just pretend I didn’t see the quests that reeked of the horror genre.
But why was this happening to this particular horror genre quest?
[Become an Exorcist (Physical) in a Ghost Story World and Save Women]
[This is an urgent quest.]
[Rewards will be increased if you accept the quest now.]
[The difficulty of the quest has been adjusted to Easy.]
“The reward is increased and the difficulty is lowered?”
This was a first.
There had been cases where rewards were increased.
Mainly when completing high-difficulty quests, or when collecting multiple hidden quests, skills would sometimes increase by two levels.
However, this was the first time the quest board itself had directly increased the reward.
The difficulty being adjusted was also a first.
“Is it because it’s an urgent quest…?”
The term ‘urgent quest’ was also new to me.
I fell into 고민.
I definitely thought it was worth trying.
Seeing that the difficulty had been adjusted to Easy, there seemed to be less to worry about failing, and the reward was higher compared to the lowered difficulty, so it was a quest with many advantages.
It would be foolish not to do it.
“Should I just be a fool?”
I muttered seriously, my hand hovering in the air.
Even when I tried to ignore it and turn my eyes to other quests, it kept lingering in my mind.
Seeing that it was an urgent quest, wouldn’t I miss out on this opportunity if I didn’t take it now?
Wasn’t this a very rare case?
“…Ah, whatever.”
Thinking that, my hand moved again.
I squeezed my eyes shut and swung my hand towards the quest accept button.
I felt a floating sensation as if my body was risingㅡ
Thud.
And I fell to the floor, back first.
***
“Ugh…”
I nervously looked around.
I had fallen in the middle of some street.
I felt stiff because I had fallen on my lower back first.
“Hey, hey, your boyfriend’s sitting over there.”
“Where? Oh, shut up~ Wanna die?”
“Why~ He’s got a good body~”
Two high school girls passed by, teasing each other while looking at me, who was sitting on the street.
It’s fine for them to tease each other, but why do they have to do it with me?
It had been a while since I’d been treated like this.
Sadly, it wasn’t the first time.
Other people around me also laughed and passed by as they saw me sitting on the floor.
Feeling a little embarrassed, I quickly stood up and dusted off my clothes.
“…A downtown area?”
The place I was in now looked like an ordinary downtown area.
There were restaurants, clothing stores, and some people passing by.
A place like any other.
No matter how I looked at it, it seemed far from the eerie words ‘horror’ or ‘ghost story’.
So, I felt relieved.
“It’s the first time I’ve felt relieved because there are so many people.”
I originally hated crowded places,
but today, no, while I was in this world, it was an exception.
I couldn’t have been happier to see people.
At least I could start in a more peaceful atmosphere than I had worried about.
I was worried about whether I, who was so scared from the start, would be able to save anyone.
I had only been drawn in by the word ‘easy difficulty’, but was it really?
Beepㅡ
Then, a sound rang out from everywhere.
It was a sound I had heard often recently.
Where had I heard that sound before?
“Emergency alert?”
As I searched my memory, it quickly came to mind.
It was the sound of an emergency alert that I had been hearing often recently due to the heatwave.
The sound was also ringing from inside my clothes, so I rummaged inside and found a phone.
I checked the emergency message on the phone, which I had never seen before.
[Jongno-gu, 12:02 Ghost Story Disaster Occurred / Please move to the nearest safe building according to the manual.]
[Ghost Story Management Headquarters]
“What is this…”
Tap, tap, tap.
While I was blankly looking down at my phone, people started to move somewhere in a hurry.
The citizens who knew the manuals that I didn’t know seemed to be quickly moving to safe buildings.
They were almost running.
I watched them for a while, then quickly followed behind them.
At the same time, I glanced back.
The street, where many people had been laughing and chatting until just now, was suddenly deserted.
People were running towards somewhere with desperate expressions.
Just seeing this scene made my spine feel chilly.
I could feel with my skin that this was not an ordinary world.
The nearest safe building from where I was earlier seemed to be the nearby fire station.
People who had arrived at the fire station in advance were gesturing and urging us to come in quickly.
“Hurry! Hurry!”
“Thank you!”
Just like getting on the elevator late, I entered the fire station along with the people who were saying thank you.
There were already many people waiting for us inside.
It was my first time inside a fire station.
Whether it was because so many people were nervous together, or because of the neat and rigid atmosphere unique to places like fire stations and police stations.
Just being in this place made my throat feel dry and my chest feel stuffy.
“We’re closing now!”
A sturdy man in orange firefighter gear, who appeared to be a firefighter, shouted loudly and lowered the fire station’s shutter.
Clatter, thud!
As soon as the shutter was quickly lowered and locked, everyone inside the fire station let out a sigh of relief, as if they had agreed to do so.
A talisman-like object was attached to the center of the shutter.
Was this supposed to block the ghost stories?
Gulp.
As I swallowed,
a man next to me started to pray with his hands together.
Come to think of it, it wasn’t just the man.
Most of the people here were praying in their own way, or holding their phones tightly and contacting someone.
In this world, ghost stories were not an accident that could be dealt with.
Rather, it seemed closer to a kind of disaster like an earthquake or typhoon.
They were just hiding in a corner like this, praying or contacting someone, and waiting for the disaster to pass.
“Exorcist, please… save us…”
Listening carefully, the man next to me was not praying to a religion.
He was praying to an exorcist.
‘Exorcist?’
Come to think of it, I was possessed as an exorcist in this world.
And a physical exorcist at that.
So, the thing that the people here are desperately waiting for with their hands together is me?
Tap, tap.
Then, a small sound was heard from the shutter.
It was definitely a small sound that could only be heard by me, who was standing in front of the shutter, but everyone was looking at the shutter, as if they had noticed something strange.
Tap, tap, tap.
“This is…”
Someone was weakly tapping on the shutter with their hand.
And that was so strange.
In this situation, who would be tapping on the shutter so calmly?
Without saying a word.
“…It’s a ghost story.”
The man who had been praying muttered quietly.
The man who appeared to be a firefighter also looked at the CCTV around the fire station, which filled one side of the fire station, and nodded.
“Everyone, don’t react and be quiet.”
I also peeked at the ghost story’s appearance through the CCTV.
The forms of ghost stories that I had encountered in novels and webtoons were very diverse.
Sometimes it was a phenomenon, and sometimes it was an entity.
This time, the ghost story seemed to be imitating a human.
The ghost story, which looked no different from a regular middle-aged man, was knocking on the door.
Looking at that, I stroked my chin.
‘With that kind of appearance, I could just beat him up, right?’
Looking at the ghost story, which had a less scary appearance than I thought, I seriously 고민 about exorcism.
