Chapter 3

What the hell was that bullshit?

I exhaled the breath I had momentarily forgotten how to release.

The wound the monster had licked throbbed unbearably. I barely managed to close the book before retreating two steps.

“Sir, we need to stop the bleeding first.”

Perhaps because I had lost so much blood, I remained dizzy the entire time Myeong Haebin tore apart a disposable cloth and bound it around my wrist.

“Are you all right?”

My coworker, Lee Jaewon, was still sitting there in a daze, staring at the monster. Only then did his unfocused eyes turn toward me.

When he saw my missing hand, his shoulders flinched.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t even realize you were—”

“Where were you? I don’t think we saw you on the first floor.”

“I-I was... between the washing machine and the wall in the utility room. When the monster went into that room, I came upstairs to find somewhere to hide, but it chased me....”

He rambled incoherently, but not so badly that I could not understand him.

I had suspected that one more person might still be alive, yet I had deliberately postponed searching for him. That meant I could hardly blame him for letting the monster discover him.

“B-But Hanmu... how did you stop that monster?”

“I didn’t know it would fall asleep either.”

The reason I had chosen [Adoration of He Who Has Forgotten Satiety] from the two prayers was simple.

They set up an altar, offer sacrifices, and even pray to it. They wouldn’t call such a being a mere beast, would they?

To me, it was a monster that devoured humans. But to the owner of this house, it seemed to be an object of worship.

“This still isn’t over. We need to get out of here.”

“R-Right. We have to leave...!”

“But didn’t you say we needed to find the altar first?”

I took the book from Myeong Haebin and reread the prayer I had recited.

I had been thinking about it for a while.

Perhaps we had been searching for the altar in entirely the wrong place.

“I think I know where it is. Grab the equipment. Let’s go downstairs.”

Afraid of waking the monster, we made our way down the hallway and into the living room without making so much as a footstep.

The two behind me glanced toward the master bedroom and guest room we had yet to search, but my gaze remained fixed beneath the stairs.

“From a place lower than the soil beneath your feet, we revere the stirring of your stomach.”

That was what the prayer had said.

Yet this house had no staircase leading underground.

If it can’t be seen, why not assume it’s hidden?

I lifted the edge of the carpet beneath the table covered in red candles with the toe of my shoe.

Riiip.

The thick, heavy carpet did not lift easily, but flakes of dried blood clung to the tip of my shoe.

A powerful intuition told me that if there was an altar used to summon that monster, it would be here.

“Jaewon, help me move this table.”

“Uh, r-right....”

Quick to understand, Myeong Haebin helped Lee Jaewon move the table aside and pull back the carpet.

“Ugh... Why is there so much blood...?”

Beneath it, the floor was buried under a chaotic mess of coagulated blood, hardened into irregular clumps.

Lee Jaewon hurriedly put on a mask and covered his nose with his arm. I raised the mop with my right hand and tapped the floor.

Tap, tap, tap, thunk....

It produced the distinct, resonant sound of an empty space beneath it.

“If you’re not going to help, stay out of the way.”

“You want to clean at a time like this? Sure, there’s some blood, but... it’s just the floor. Hanmu, this isn’t the time for that....”

Lee Jaewon folded his arms and looked unhappily between me and the upstairs floor where the monster slept.

Myeong Haebin, meanwhile, rolled up her sleeves and picked up another mop.

“I’ll help too, sir. We just need to clean here, right?”

“Yeah. I think there’s an empty space underneath.”

“I won’t leave so much as a speck of dust!”

When we pressed the wet mops firmly against the floor and pushed, the blood dissolved and spread into red smears.

This isn’t easy with only one hand.

Blood seeped through the cloth wrapped around my wrist, staining it red, while cold sweat ran down my body.

But it appeared that choosing the wet mop had been the right decision. The grain of the wooden floor was beginning to emerge.

Whoooosh....

A wind from some unknown source swept through the room, extinguishing several of the red candles.

“Ah, shit... Whatever. Do we have another mop?”

Lee Jaewon still did not seem to believe me, but his anxiety apparently got the better of him. He picked up a cleaning cloth and began scrubbing from one corner.

“There’s hair here too. Ugh....”

“If you’re going to vomit, I told you to stay out of the way.”

By the time the formerly clear water had become almost entirely blood, Lee Jaewon—whose face was practically pressed against the floor as he scrubbed it by hand—was the first to notice something unusual.

“There really is something here. Some kind of seam....”

Now that the blood had been removed, a clearly defined rectangular groove could be seen in the wooden floor, along with a recessed handle.

“Isn’t this a door? I knew there had to be something here!”

“Th-There’s something underneath?”

Leaving the two of them behind me, I pulled the handle upward and opened the hatch.

“...It smells even more strongly of blood down there than it did on the floor.”

“This looks ominous as hell.... You don’t think it’s filled with corpses, do you?”

I shone my light down the wooden staircase.

The dark basement appeared quite deep, and a foul stench thick with the reek of blood wafted up from below.

With the cleaning bag over my shoulder and a bucket carrying the wet mop in my hand, I stepped onto the stairs.

I had no choice.

Now I understood why characters in horror movies crawled into places that were obviously dangerous.

“If you’re nervous, you can stay up here.”

“I’m going down.”

“Who knows when that m-monster will wake up? I’m coming too!”

After hesitating, Lee Jaewon followed us and closed the hatch.

The basement was instantly plunged into absolute darkness, but someone felt along the wall.

Click.

With a faint sound, a filament began humming overhead. A moment later, a bright yellow incandescent bulb flickered on.

“At least there’s a light down—gasp.”

Myeong Haebin, who had been peeking over my shoulder, abruptly fell silent.

The upper floors had resembled an ordinary house aside from the monster roaming through them.

The basement was clearly the den of a cult.

Blood was splattered across the stone floor. There was a symbol resembling a summoning circle, so damaged that its original form was impossible to discern. Red candles lay scattered everywhere, along with... severed chicken heads and human skulls.

“Urk....”

Lee Jaewon made dry-heaving sounds after meeting the wide-open, glassy eyes of a severed chicken head.

“I told you that you could stay upstairs.”

“I don’t want to become that monster’s dinner... Ugh. This is insane....”

I searched the equipment bag, pulled out a garbage bag, and showed it to them.

“This is only a guess, but cleaning this place might let us escape.”

Apparently unwilling to remain here for even a moment longer, Lee Jaewon snatched the bag from my hand with his gloved one.

“Then let’s do it right now. Hurry!”

But was that really correct?

Would stuffing everything here into garbage bags, then sweeping and mopping the filthy floor, make this place clean?

Was it really supposed to be... that simple?

“Hanmu, what are you doing? We need to get out of here.”

Lee Jaewon held a red candle in one hand and a chicken head by its comb in the other, staring at me impatiently.

“I’m beginning to think this isn’t the right way to do it.”

“What are you talking about? We scrubbed the floor upstairs and found this place, didn’t we?”

Unable to understand my concern, he tossed both objects into the garbage bag.

“Wait. Didn’t that chicken head just move?”

It was the last object he would see.

“Aaaaaargh! My eyes!”

Small monsters attacked Lee Jaewon’s face.

They resembled pieces torn from the creature upstairs and rolled into black lumps, each with nothing but a human mouth attached to it.

Their blunt human teeth bit through skin and flesh. The sounds of tearing meat became entangled with Lee Jaewon’s screams.

“Sir! Help me! Why are these things so slippery?”

Myeong Haebin tried to pull the monsters from his face, but no matter how often she tore them away, they relentlessly threw themselves at Lee Jaewon again.

Why are they only attacking Jaewon? Why aren’t they attacking Haebin when she’s pulling them away...?

For ■ to return, the altar must always be kept clean.

“We’re not supposed to throw these things away.”

The rule had said to keep the altar clean.

That did not mean wiping everything down and discarding it. It meant cleaning it properly as an altar.

Because Lee Jaewon had ignored that and stuffed its components into a garbage bag, the altar had judged him to be someone destroying it rather than cleaning it.

I carefully wiped one of the bloodstains on the summoning circle with a cleaning cloth.

As I had suspected, the stain left on the cloth was black rather than red.

“Haebin, gather everything scattered around here.”

The candles, chicken heads, and skulls had all been placed on the summoning circle.

This was the altar.

“Jaewon is... Okay, I understand! But what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to restore the altar.”

Cleaning was not limited to removing things.

Returning objects to their proper places and arranging them was also part of the job.

And I had to finish before Lee Jaewon was completely devoured.

Here too.

Beneath the grime I had wiped away were grooves resembling those I had found in the living room.

But these were different.

They were not meant to be opened. They were carved into the floor in the shapes of unknown symbols and patterns.

“Do we have any blood left?”

“It all spilled out. The buckets are empty. I’ve gathered the candles and heads, but what should I do with them?”

With the flesh torn from his arms and neck, Lee Jaewon could no longer even scream. He merely twitched and convulsed.

“Put the candles where the wax melted. Fit everything else into the matching grooves.”

“What about the altar’s design? We don’t have anything to redraw it with....”

The original circle had been drawn in blood.

That meant it had to be redrawn with blood as well.

“I’ll take care of it.”

I unwrapped the cloth tightly bound around my left wrist, exposing the filthy stump beneath, caked with dried blood.

The mere sight of it was agonizing.

But I could hardly drain more blood from an unconscious man.

“Urgh...!”

Without hesitation, I gripped and twisted the swollen flesh above my wrist, rupturing the vessels that had only just stopped bleeding.

Pain fierce enough to make me want to bite through my tongue tore through me as fresh crimson blood pattered onto the floor.

“Sir, have you lost your mind?!”

“This is the fastest way.”

Why go searching elsewhere when blood was already pouring from me?

“K-Kill... me....”

Leaving behind Lee Jaewon, who could barely force the words through his rattling breath, and the horrified Myeong Haebin, I used the blood dripping from my wrist to redraw the altar’s circle.

Red candles were erected around me as I moved toward its center. The chicken heads—truly blinking now—and the skulls were returned to their places.

“That’s the last one. There’s nothing else.”

“...All right.”

At last, I marked the center of the altar with one final drop of fresh blood.

Fwoosh!

The unnaturally red candles ignited all at once.

The freshly drawn, blood-soaked circle glowed. The chicken heads decorating its perimeter opened and closed their beaks, flapping as though they might take flight at any moment.

“We have to go. It’s time to go.”

“But I’m still hungry!”

The small monsters swarming over Lee Jaewon rolled their bodies across the floor and leaped into the altar.

Thump. Thump.

Something knocked on the basement hatch.

Then, even though no one opened it, the enormous monster began descending the staircase one step at a time.

“Three.”

It looked back at us as though reluctant to leave, but an irresistible force dragged it into the altar.

Rumble... Crash.

The entire basement began shaking as though an earthquake had struck. The incandescent bulb flickered, and debris rained from the ceiling.

“Sir, let’s go!”

“U-Ugh....”

I pulled up Lee Jaewon, who appeared to be clinging to life by a thread, draped his arm over my shoulder, and climbed the basement stairs.

The steps creaked as though they might collapse. Chunks of concrete broke from the ceiling and shattered against the altar.

One more step.

No—two—

Bang!

The instant we all emerged, the basement hatch slammed shut behind us by the narrowest of margins.

Then it vanished without a trace.

“Haa... Haa....”

The living room looked as though nothing had ever happened.

There was no sign of the red candles. Even the bloodstains by the front door and the carpet we had overturned had returned to how they had looked when we first entered.

It was as though the building had become an ordinary house again.

Bzzzzzz.

My phone vibrated for an unusually long time.

[Our sincerest congratulations. You have completed the cleaning.]

A hollow laugh escaped me.

It seemed I had survived.

Then an almost excessively cheerful voice struck my ears.

“You passed, sir. Would you like to join our company?”

Something was wrong.

The stump of my wrist burned as though it had been pressed against fire. Lee Jaewon lay sprawled across the floor, drenched in blood and barely breathing.

Yet Myeong Haebin was smiling as though nothing was wrong.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

What did she mean, I had passed?

And what company was she talking about?

I did not understand.