Translator: Nox

Chapter 9

I Guess I Have to Go to Work Even If I Fall Into a Ghost Story 9

I Guess I Have to Go to Work Even If I Fall Into a Ghost Story 009

A rainy Monday afternoon.

The employees of Field Exploration Team D were scribbling through situation reports at an unprecedented speed, even finishing the proxy approval process using the Team Leader’s ID.

There was only one reason.

A rookie who ignored the time limit and cleared the ghost story!

“Wait… wasn’t the duration supposed to be three days?”

“That’s correct.”

The Deputy Manager and the staff member sat across from the rookie, who was seated on the sofa, and laid out a spread of snacks they had raided from the pantry.

They exchanged glances and nodded.

It was finally time to ask the real questions.

“So, how on earth did you get out so fast?”

“Ah.”

The new recruit seemed to deliberate for a moment before answering with an expression of understanding.

“I fast-forwarded time.”

He’s answering as if he’s just telling us what he had for lunch…!

Before they could even voice that thought, the rookie slowly began to explain the method he had used.

“Since there was a time limit, I figured there must be an event the world uses to judge that ‘time has passed.’ I focused on that part…”

He even explained how he used expiration dates to trigger the ‘time alarm.’

The superiors listened in silence and thought:

He’s a genius.

He’s never allowed to resign.

Intuition and logic that pierce through the essence of a ghost story in one go? This was a level of talent born for the Field Exploration Team. He could never escape this team… no, they had to help him adjust well!

“I’m not in a position to be giving you a welcome speech or anything, Roe Deer-nim.”

“You’ll probably overtake me and become a Deputy Manager in no time.”

“…!?”

A rookie like this—they’d never find another one…!

“Don’t forget us when you make it big… and come brag to us when you get a Wishright…”

The rookie seemed a bit flustered.

“No, it’s not like that. Uh, actually,”

“Hmm?”

The rookie added, as if making a grand confession.

“I only did it because I was scared and wanted to get out fast.”

“……”

Was it normally possible to escape an urban legend quickly just because you were scared…? It felt like cognitive pollution was about to occur, as if he thought this was some kind of escape room.

His humility is excessive…!

But the rookie remained steadfast.

“I’d appreciate it if you could give me a heads-up next time. I was so scared I thought I was going to faint.”

“Is that something a guy who cleared it in an hour should be saying…?”

With a mysterious expression, the new recruit said, “I thought I was going to die.”

Liar!

Who does a record-breaking speedrun time attack when they feel like they’re dying? That’s pure lunacy that even veteran employees wouldn’t attempt.

Separately, however, they understood his sense of betrayal.

To be fair, it was a bit much.

No matter how safe it was said to be, being dropped into a paranormal phenomenon alone was no small feat.

And they knew exactly how to soothe this wounded heart.

The office worker’s cure!

The Deputy Manager asked while sipping his coffee, “Roe Deer, how much did you get?”

“Pardon?”

“The money you get when you clear it.”

“Ah, yes. Ten million won came out.”

That was right. This F-rank darkness gave a reward upon completion.

And the manual clearly stated:

• When clearing a Shadow (F) rank darkness for which the company has a complete manual, 50% of the incidental profits shall be paid to the employee as a bonus.

Conversely, it meant the company took 50% of the money an employee earned in a darkness using a completed manual.

Furthermore, the darkness first assigned to a rookie was exempt from this clause!

The company’s stance was that they couldn’t give hazard pay for assigning a ghost story whose safety was guaranteed by hundreds of previous attempts.

The rookie had already read this manual.

However…

“The company usually takes all of that… but you should just keep it.”

“…What?”

When you gain seniority and know-how, there are always ways to handle things off the books!

There was even a wonderful internal regulation exception stating that ‘clearing through a new escape method does not fall under the manual,’ so they could process it all. Yes, indeed.

Everything becomes beautified when a large sum of money hits your pocket on your first day of work!

The Deputy Manager and the Assistant Manager performed the same technique they had once been on the receiving end of, looking at the rookie with warm faces.

“Ehey. Put it away, put it away. There’s a way to handle it all.”

“……”

It was actually twenty million won.

Kim Sol-eum, who had intended to pocket half himself, broke into a cold sweat.

The joy of suddenly gaining another ten million won from an unexplainable source and a momentary pang of guilt passed, and he stood up to follow his superiors.

“Since you’ve successfully explored the darkness, we should go and credit the most important thing.”

“Credit… you say?”

“Yeah.”

The Assistant Manager grinned.

“Employee Welfare Mall points!”

---

“Phew.”

I couldn’t believe how happy I was to be in the middle of a crowded city in broad daylight.

Even the future where I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight despite having all the lights on didn’t worry me for now.

I guess having twenty million won in cash in my pocket creates a sense of mental ease…

Even if I had fallen into a ghost story, this was still 21st-century Korea and a capitalist society.

I finally sat at my assigned desk, turned on the computer, and logged into the intranet.

Sitting in a bright office with fluorescent lights on an ergonomic office chair, the insane reality of facing a ghost just moments ago felt like a lie.

There were even quite cute writing instruments and a wide-eyed lizard doll on the desk.

…Doesn’t it look a bit used?

Well, I just hoped the previous user had quit immediately because they won the lottery and didn’t have time to clear the desk.

Anyway, the Welfare Mall was already bookmarked on the PC, so I could access it easily.

[Baekilmong Corporation Employee Welfare Mall]

I quickly signed up using my employee number and clicked the ‘Point Registration’ tab as my superiors had instructed.

• Just select the rank of the darkness you cleared, enter the name, attach the PDF, and submit.

I did exactly that.

And five minutes later.

[Employee Kim Sol-eum / Accumulated Points: 100p]

“…!”

The review was over and the points were credited with surprisingly fast speed.

So clearing an F-rank alone gives 100 points.

Well, regardless of how much I suffered, it was an F-rank, so it probably wouldn’t be a lot of money…. I should lower my expectations.

Still, since I had points now, I decided to check if there was anything I could buy with 100p.

And I was shocked from the very first page.

“…A robot vacuum?”

The selection was better than I thought.

Most items on special offer were 100p, and top-of-the-line large appliances for a dowry were around 500p.

Furthermore, Baekilmong Corporation’s undisclosed reagents were being sold for around 1000p, and among them were numerous levels of shocking over-technology, like corneal regeneration potions.

Ah, for reference, hair loss medication cost about 500,000 won out-of-pocket on the market, but here it could be purchased for 100p.

This is actually great.

I moved the mouse with a slight sense of anticipation.

Now was the moment to check the most important thing.

The glorious name that appeared when sorting the ‘In-house Products’ tab by ‘Highest Price.’

‘Wishright.’

The price of that miraculous potion, introduced as the representative welfare right after the death survival ended, was….

Wishright: 500,000p

“……”

You’re joking, right?

Five hundred thousand?

I just cleared a ghost story and got 100 points….

500,000 points?

Theoretically… assuming I go into an F-rank alone every single day, it would take 15 years.

But there was no way it would be that easy.

If things went according to my plan, it wouldn’t be a company.

It was impossible to pick only F-rank darknesses to clear every day, and there were bound to be numerous variables.

There will surely be many cases where I’m forced into high-rank darknesses with colleagues.

Wait, do they split the points there too?

I searched the Welfare Mall’s point registration tab to find the base points awarded per darkness rank.

F-rank: 100p

D-rank: 1000p

C-rank: 2500p

B-rank: 10000p

A-rank: 100000p

S-rank: Subject to separate review

On top of this, additional pay was added based on the specificities measured by the company.

Things like if a clear was urgent, if information was still lacking, or if there were additional risks.

Since it’s three people to a team, if a three-person clear is the standard…

……I’d have to clear B-rank 150 times to get it?

Are they insane?

At B-rank, the survival rate for civilians plummets to about 2%.

From that rank onward, no matter what choice you make among the given options, it’s a rank where you either die or suffer a fate worse than death!

Entering that 150 times means a regular employee should basically be considered dead.

It was a crazy situation where you’d have to get on your knees and beg to be spared even if ordered to go.

It meant that speedrunning by targeting only high ranks was impossible.

In the end, I have to invest over 10 years just to slightly increase my survival rate.

This isn’t some ‘gentleman’s revenge’ taking ten years….

But even so, if the Field Exploration Team had the fastest pace among all departments, it meant people in other departments would likely never get a Wishright during their entire tenure.

Since there were many diverse products in the Welfare Mall, many in other departments probably resigned themselves to that and were satisfied….

But I couldn’t.

Because my goal was very surreal and clear.

Returning to my original world.

But they expect me to live here for 15 years? I’m saying I’ll die of shock from a heart attack before then?!

No!

A plan, I needed a plan.

I need to properly weigh which ghost stories I must enter and which I should avoid.

I had to maintain a golden balance with safety while gathering 500,000 points in the shortest time possible.

Just before I fell into deep agony, the Assistant Manager tapped my back and asked.

“Roe Deer, did you register? Is the computer working okay?”

“Yes. Ah, the personal items here are…”

“Ah, that’s the Team Leader’s desk.”

“……”

I wondered why it looked used!

“Just don’t break the monitor. Use it comfortably today, comfortably.”

Is this company… really okay?

Is it okay to tell a rookie to temporarily use his superior’s desk?

Come to think of it, there’s no way it’s okay.

It’s a company that grinds people into ghost stories to extract potions. If I applied the common sense of a virtuous 21st-century Korean office worker, wouldn’t shocking situations keep occurring?

……Maybe using a few tricks is the right way after all.

“Ah, Roe Deer, do you smoke too?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

I didn’t follow the superiors for their smoke break.

Instead, I looked down at the desk I was using, took a deep breath, and flipped the keyboard over.

As expected, a Post-it note was stuck there.

[Lee Jaheon Team Leader / 105105301]

ID: yongj1111

PW: dydajflgodks!111

It was a scene I’d seen too often at work to criticize for a lack of security awareness.

If he’s a Team Leader… he must be a Section Chief.

And actually, there’s one specific site in this company that can only be accessed from the rank of Section Chief and above….

That would really be helpful when clearing high-rank darknesses.

“……”

After seeing that insane target figure of 500,000 points, it really felt too good to pass up.

Fine.

Let’s do this.

I made up my mind and accessed the Welfare Mall again.

Only this time, it wasn’t my ID.

ID: yongj1111

Password: dydajflgodks!111

I attempted to log into the Welfare Mall with Team Leader D’s ID.

The password does not match.

“Hmm…”

It’s fine. I expected this much of a hurdle.

Let’s see. If I click sign up, I can check the password setting requirements.

It needed a capital letter.

In that case, if I just change the first letter of the password written under the keyboard to a capital and try logging in with ‘Dydajflgodks!111’…

Ding.

[Welcome, Section Chief Lee Jaheon]

It worked!

I clenched both fists under the desk. It was a ceremony one could do in the office without drawing attention. Even though I was the only one in the office right now.

Anyway, what I needed to find on this page now was… a kind of phishing link.

The so-called ‘Alien Shop.’

There were quite a few alien ghost stories in , and among them were those trying to sell things to Earthlings through clumsy communication methods.

They had no ill intent, but they sold things that were eerie or dangerous from an Earthling’s perspective.

Well, even so, it was close to a comedy and was a rare, heartwarming ghost story.

And they had a business mindset in their own way. Perhaps they wanted to target people who had a use for their goods as customers…….

They had even planted something like ransomware on the Baekilmong intranet.

The shopping mall advertisement phishing link was only visible to those of Section Chief rank and above.

I remembered how to see that phishing link well.

If you just click around randomly in the Welfare Mall and then click ‘Back’ five times in a row…

Click, click, click….

Beep.

Suddenly, a small green hand appeared in the corner of the Welfare Mall screen.

A pixelated left hand that waved as if to say hello and catch my eye.

A speech bubble floated above it.

1st Anniversary Appreciation Sale! ~80%

Is work boring? >>Click

Do you want to get stronger? >>Click

Do you want to own cool things? >>Click

Cheesy.

It looked like an internet banner ad from ages ago.

But surprisingly, if you clicked this clumsy thing!

Like a lie, an external internet window would open from the intranet, and you’d be abducted to an alien site.

I wanted to click it right now, but!

Let’s hold back.

Instead, I only copied the link with a right-click, pasted the link address into Excel, and took a picture with my smartphone.

The company PC leaves a record of all access.

Nothing good would come of leaving a record that I clicked alien ransomware. Especially on someone else’s account.

A moment later, seeing the superiors return from their smoke break, I nodded and greeted them as if nothing had happened.

“Roe Deer~ let’s have a welcome dinner once the Team Leader returns from his field work. On the corporate card.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

And I waited until it was time to clock out.

---

The evening after my monumental first day of work ended.

But my work wasn’t over yet.

“Let’s try it.”

I went home after depositing the twenty million won.

And now, I was in my bedroom, copying the ‘Alien Shop’ phishing link I’d photographed in my smartphone gallery using image analysis.

After correcting a few parts that weren’t read properly, I opened an internet window and pasted it into the address bar.

“Phew.”

Take a deep breath… and Enter.

Click.

The page transitioned through the complex link address.

Then, a screen similar to the Baekilmong Corporation Welfare Mall page appeared… before breaking apart.

And a new page appeared.

A screen where underlines and fonts were starkly exposed, like the internet in the early 2000s.

※Cool things from outer space※~!!

I

see

stuff

Boop boop boop. A green spaceship rotated in the corner.

It’s really tacky.

But one shouldn’t be caught off guard by the tackiness.

If you clicked ‘stuff’ here, you could see extraordinary, supernatural items for sale.

…The prices were also extraordinary, which was the problem.

They started at a minimum of millions of won.

……It was the result of imaginary inflation stemming from the oversized egos of ghost story creators who thought, ‘I should use something more expensive!’

If it were the me of yesterday, I wouldn’t have been able to purchase even one of these items, but….

I have twenty million won.

My heart raced slightly. Being able to directly purchase items from a fictional world was certainly a dopamine-inducing event.

“Phew.”

I finally clicked the ‘stuff’ tab.

The screen appeared.

Stuff

Vampire Cutlery - ₩14,999,999

Further Radio - ₩4,999,999

Alice Picnic Set - ₩11,999,999

We Help! - ₩66,666,666

※Sale!※ Silver Snake Coin -

₩4,999,999

₩19,999,999

“…!”

I knew more than half of the items.

Has my luck finally turned?!

Great.

In my excitement, I quickly recalled my memories.

Vampire Cutlery.

It was a weapon consisting of a small fork and knife; a blade that evolved to be larger and sharper by sucking the victim’s blood.

Literally a growth-type weapon.

Further Radio.

A toy radio that allowed remote communication with others even inside a ghost story.

It would be very useful when I had companions.

Alice Picnic Set.

The name alone was suggestive, but it was a food set inspired by Alice in Wonderland.

It must be a set with a drink that temporarily doubled the effect of an item and a cookie that reduced it by half.

Up to here were the items I knew.

I didn’t know the remaining two, but ‘We Help!’ was far beyond my budget despite its interesting title, so I skipped it.

The Silver Snake Coin is on sale.

Buying something on sale always made me feel like I was getting a good deal.

“……Hmm.”

I crossed my arms.

A weapon, a communication device, buff potions, and a sale item… huh.

My budget was twenty million won.

What would be the most beneficial thing to buy within this?

“Alright.”

I made up my mind and clicked.