There Are No Humans in the Monster Company

Wallpaper covered in mold, a broken bed, a single armchair with its leather torn away.

Another door.

A room that was empty as if it were a lie.

An empty room.

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I stood in the doorway, observing the room.

‘There aren’t many rooms with manuals and food…’

I could sit down.

That was all.

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Even if it was only for a minute, being able to close my eyes would be enough.

Just sit.

I didn’t even need to lie down.

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My body was already screaming for me to sit down.

My eyelids felt heavy, and my legs were trembling.

‘…Should I rest for a moment? agent I don’t think it’ll arrive at exactly that moment.’

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Clank.

Instinctively, I took a step inside.

One of my knees nearly gave out.

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Clank.

Without any will of my own, only the weight of my body moved forward first.

Then.

The familiar sound came from far away.

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A sound echoing somewhere beyond the door, at the far end of the corridor.

It wasn’t the noise of my feet or my failing legs.

It was an unpleasant vibration.

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Clank.

I bit my lip and muttered quietly.

My heart hammered against my eardrums.

Thump. accent Thump. album Thump.

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Something dragging across the floor, approaching with a heavy and steady rhythm.

“…Damn it, how did it hear me from there?”

As I crossed the threshold back into the corridor, I heard that noise again—

I let out a sigh and withdrew the foot that had been about to step into the room.

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Walk.

Clinging to my sanity in the face of death, I turned in the opposite direction.

In the face of survival instinct, exhaustion didn’t matter.

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And then I stopped.

To stay alive.

That was all I could do.

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Another sound could be heard.

Beyond the boundary between darkness and light at the far end of the corridor.

In front of me.

“What the hell?”

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Clank, Click, Step.

A different interval from the Presence approaching from behind.

Clank, Click, Step.

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Again, 1.7 seconds.

Clank. adopt Clank. shadow Clank.

I turned my head.

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Something was also approaching from the front.

‘The problem is…’

An exact, constant, familiar interval.

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The tips of my fingers went numb.

“Ha, shit…”

As I pressed my back against the wall, a chill ran down my spine.

Click. amber Step. palette Click. shadow Step.

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What do I do?

I held my breath and forced my brain to work.

The willpower I was barely holding onto felt as if it were about to slip away.

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Not that.

From the persistent way that sound kept following me, it was obvious that the Presence knew where I was.

Hide?

No.

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If I hid, I would end up like the corpse split in half that I had seen upstairs.

‘I’m not Supervisor Shik.’

Then fight?

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If even one of my superiors from Extraction Team 1 were here, perhaps I wouldn’t feel even a tenth of this crisis.

‘I need to find another way.’

But if that Presence was something similar to a dimensional entity, I wouldn’t even be able to escape properly.

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My brain spun at full speed through the pain.

My body temperature rose.

A state of rational panic.

My senses sharpened.

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Calculations optimized solely for survival.

Click.

Step.

Clank.

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About twenty in front.

About fifty meters behind me.

They’re not far.

They’re getting closer.

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In my left ear lingered the ghost of the past.

Among the presences ahead.

In my right, an unknown predator.

Then I noticed a small but unmistakable anomaly.

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“……”

Another sound was mixed in.

Click.

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“…Be careful.”

Step.

And between them.

“……?”

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A clearly different sound.

“……!”

“No, if you go that way—”

Content of There Are No Humans in the Monster Company - Chapter 28: You Can Survive and Return Alive (3) published by TrungTu Reads.

Clearly audible language.

Human voices.

Voices.

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There was only one possibility.

I made a decision immediately.

There was an obvious difference from the Presence, which only followed me with those Clank sounds.

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Even if they were monsters pretending to be human, it was worth confirming.

The ones ahead were living humans.

Someone still breathing within this hellish space.

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Through the corridor.

Past death.

“…Good.”

I swallowed hard and ran with all my strength.

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Toward the direction of those voices that might be hope.

My sweat-soaked breathing.

My rapid footsteps echoed against the walls and floor.

Beyond the corner of the hallway.

Content of There Are No Humans in the Monster Company - Chapter 28: You Can Survive and Return Alive (3) published by TrungTu Reads.

An unfamiliar silence.

As if they had sensed me approaching, something stopped on the other side of the corner.

The heat leaving my body.

My damp clothes.

Content of There Are No Humans in the Monster Company - Chapter 28: You Can Survive and Return Alive (3) published by TrungTu Reads.

The presence of people.

Not a monstrous, sinister, incomprehensible presence.

And then, a conversation.

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“Did you hear that?”

“It’s coming. matrix Get ready.”

“Yes.”

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A woman’s response.

Low whispers.

A man’s voice.

There were definitely people on the other side of the corridor.

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And at that instant—

I rounded the corner without hesitation.

People holding a conversation with shape and meaning.

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An arm shot toward my throat like lightning.

Whoosh!

The moment I felt the precise hostility contained within that hand, my body moved before my mind understood the situation.

“……!”

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With my right hand raised, I deflected his wrist and altered its trajectory.

Training drilled into me thousands of times exploded through my spine.

Just before the force of his grip reached my trachea, I reflexively tucked my chin and slipped inside his guard.

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A low grunt.

“Ah.”

Then I immediately drove an elbow straight toward the underside of his jaw.

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A man wearing a suit.

In that fraction of a second, the man’s silhouette was etched into my retinas under the light.

For an instant, it seemed as though the other man’s balance had broken, but he shifted his hips backward and evaded the strike with his upper body.

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His right eye, gray and frozen like ice.

Sharp eyes like a bird of prey and a long scar running across his right cheek.

Gray hair tied back halfway.

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Aside from that peculiar appearance, he was undeniably human.

I immediately extended my hand and shouted in a hurry.

Two eyes different in both color and focus pierced through me.

His left eye, brown and shining with interest.

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“Wait! acid I’m a person! echo We can tal—!”

Whoosh!

But instead of an answer, what came back was a sharp sound cutting through the air.

A cry filled with relief and desperation at finally finding another human being.

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I didn’t even have time to finish the sentence.

“Hey! artist Listen to what I’m tr—!”

A barrage of blows, much faster and more precise than before, rushed straight toward my face.

As if he hadn’t even heard my words, the man formed a faint smile and threw a punch.

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The tip of his foot struck my shin.

‘This fucking lunatic…!’

I hastily raised my guard, but the heavy impact twisted my head aside.

Taking advantage of my faltering balance, an elbow shot toward my temple.

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He didn’t stop after confirming I was human.

He’s completely serious.

On the contrary, he seemed even more entertained by pressuring me.

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Nor why I had to fight a stranger in the hallway of an abandoned building the moment I saw him.

‘He’s not the type who listens to reason.’

But one thing was certain.

I didn’t understand what was happening.

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I crossed both arms to reinforce my guard, but he kept advancing without pause, throwing blow after blow.

‘I can’t beat him by trading blows.’

The heavy impacts crashing against my defense made my bones vibrate.

In a different way from the monsters that filled the company, this guy was completely insane.

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“That’s enough.”

Then—

I have to grab him and lock him down.

The instant he threw another punch, I lowered my body and caught his right arm, trying to turn it inward and restrain him.

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A woman had stepped between us before I even noticed.

A woman’s cold voice froze the corridor.

She sighed with an expressionless face.

Black hair neatly tied into a high ponytail.

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Dry, tense lips.

Cold, sharp eyes.

The woman positioned herself in front of me and summarized the situation in a cold but firm voice.

“…He’s an ordinary survivor, Team Leader.”

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For someone so crazy, that man fought absurdly well.

Even during that brief exchange, I had realized something.

I also stopped in a low stance, breathing heavily.

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“…Haa… haa… I already said I was a person…”

“Sub-Team Leader, are your eyes just for decoration? meadow Can’t you see that?”

Beneath his half-tied gray hair, those heterochromatic eyes remained fixed on my wrist with an unpleasant gleam.

Before I could feel relieved, the man who had been attacking me lightly shook out his fists and lowered his guard.

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What normally looked like nothing more than a red rosary was pulsing strangely under the influence of this place, emitting a faint warmth.

“…!”

The Relics of the Smiling Martyr.

The man called Team Leader pointed at my right wrist with his chin.

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Then she looked at me with even greater hostility than before and muttered,

Her gaze shifted between my face and my wrist.

The woman’s eyebrows twitched.

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What the hell is that?

“Or the Erosion Alliance?”

“…The Church of the Coming Feast?”

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Seeing the woman continue to jump to the wrong conclusions, the man let out a dry laugh and stepped closer.

And what’s that supposed to be?

“Wearing that stinking bracelet and pretending to be an ordinary survivor isn’t very convincing. alpha Open your eyes properly too, Sub-Team Leader. apron He’s not one of them.”

His footsteps were much slower than before, but the pressure he exuded remained sharper than any Presence that had chased me.

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But I stopped.

Instinctively, I tried to hide my wrist behind my back.

There was no point hiding it.

They had already noticed it.

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“By chance?”

“…It’s something I received by chance.”

The man snorted mockingly and frowned.

“Hah.”

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The man gave a cold smile, ran a hand through his hair, and sighed.

Hearing the name of my company in such an unexpected place, I flinched and looked up at him.

“Just from the way you’re dressed, it’s obvious you’re an office worker. adapt You’re from Limited Company Where the Dead End Up with Ghosts, aren’t you?”

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“Stop dancing around it. adopt What exactly are you?”

The man narrowed his eyes as he looked me up and down.

“What else would I be? alpha A person.”

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Then he asked in a lower voice than before.

‘…Moon Ara?’

It was a strangely familiar name.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of Moon Ara’s people.”

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The first time I met Director Go Gyeol of the Audit Team in the prototype warehouse.

— Moon Ara went out on external security business.

It didn’t take long for the memory to surface.

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Either she held an important position within Limited Company Where the Dead End Up with Ghosts.

The fact that this man mentioned that name after confirming my affiliation meant one of two things.

‘……’

Or she had a very complicated relationship with him.

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Distrust.

Hostility.

As my silence dragged on, the man’s heterochromatic eyes narrowed.

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I swallowed hard as my brain worked frantically.

Would it be better to pretend I didn’t know her?

And barely perceptible anxiety.

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“…Do you know Team Leader Moon Ara?”

Or act as though I knew something and shift the board?

That should be enough.

Assistant Manager Son had said that the head of the Security Team managed the prototype warehouse.

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I answered as naturally as possible, acting as though I knew Moon Ara.

“Do I know her? abstract I know her very well.”

The man frowned.

Just as he took a long step toward me—

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Clank.

The woman’s gaze changed.

Clank.

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“I think we should move first, Team Leader.”

The man’s expression hardened slightly as well.

The woman’s low, rough voice rang out coldly.

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The man called Team Leader frowned as he sensed the Presence approaching from deep within the corridor.

Driven by pointless stubbornness, I asked a question.

“Who are you people to know the name of our company?”

Then he let out a sigh.

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Then she answered with an expressionless face.

The black-haired woman furrowed her brows while looking at the rosary on my wrist with obvious displeasure.

“We are the Anomalous Disaster Management Department.”

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— The Anomalous Disaster Management Department’s surveillance of the Control Zones has become much stricter. acquire We won’t be able to go on assignments for a while.

The Anomalous Disaster Management Department.

The organization that had written the manual for escaping this hellish place.

— The people from the Anomalous Disaster Management Department have been sticking their noses into things too much.

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— You mean the new heterochromatic one? amateur He seemed to possess excellent blood.

The organization I had heard mentioned so many times at the company.

It’s them.

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The mysterious man who had caught Manager Batori’s interest.

It’s him.

The one that was supposedly always interfering in our affairs.

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It wasn’t joy.

It was the trace of an old and heavy enmity.

A strange emotion mixed into the air.

Nor distrust.

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Clank.

“Let’s avoid that damn Presence first, and then we’ll talk.”

Another metallic impact echoed from quite nearby.

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I pulled myself together and quickly moved after them.

The man let out a sigh and immediately started walking.

The woman followed him.

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And an ordinary human caught between them.

The Anomalous Disaster Management Department.

A company of monsters and government officials tasked with controlling monsters.

Limited Company Where the Dead End Up with Ghosts.

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What a shitty combination.