There Are No Humans in the Monster Company

Silence.

Min Do-hyeon’s expression twisted slightly.

The short-haired woman beside him instinctively took a step back and lowered her center of gravity.

She kept her hands close to her pockets, in a stance that allowed her to spring into action at any moment.

“…Excuse me?”

Min Do-hyeon asked with a bewildered expression.

I narrowed my eyes and lowered my voice.

“Jeong Haeil, Control Team of the Anomalous Disaster Management Department.”

I slowly took a step forward.

The sound of my shoes crushing the sticky pool of blood echoed clearly.

Behind me, Lee Seong-hoon inhaled nervously as he tightly gripped the edge of my clothing.

Of course, it was all a bluff.

But they didn’t know that.

“I would appreciate it if you could provide your affiliation and identity.”

Silence fell once more.

Min Do-hyeon opened his mouth and then closed it again.

The woman continued watching every movement of my hands and feet.

As for me, I was reading every tiny tremor in their fingers, feet, and lips.

In a battle of information, the winner is always the one who can tell a lie as though it were the truth.

“…Well, you see…”

Min Do-hyeon smiled while scratching his head.

The corner of his lips twitched awkwardly.

It was time for excuses.

I kept my mouth shut and waited for his reaction.

“…The truth is…”

“That’s enough.”

The woman quickly covered his mouth.

Absolute control, without the slightest hesitation.

Min Do-hyeon looked at her in surprise.

“Hyun-yu, it’s okay. They’re also…”

“Be quiet. I’ll decide this time.”

A firm attitude.

She didn’t need to raise her voice to exert pressure.

I turned my gaze toward her.

The sweat running beneath her short hair glimmered faintly.

She was around one hundred eighty centimeters tall.

Even beneath her athletic clothing, it was impossible to hide her muscular and solid physique.

A body like that was a weapon in itself, even without carrying one.

‘Military? Police? No. Her movements are different. They have something wilder about them.’

It was a functional body, shaped through the extreme repetition of specific movements.

An athlete?

My gaze dropped toward her lower body.

Exceptionally developed thighs.

A highly trained core.

“I am Bae Hyun-yu. If you truly belong to the Anomalous Disaster Management Department, show me your official identification.”

She extended a hand toward me as she spoke.

The placement of the calluses on the joints of her middle and ring fingers was unusual.

‘Basketball? Volleyball, perhaps?’

I looked back up at her face.

She showed no emotion whatsoever.

If anything, she seemed to be testing me.

I took a short breath and nodded.

“I lost it while escorting a civilian during an escape.”

A lie wrapped in the appearance of truth.

When dealing with people, my voice can sound calm and steady.

I felt Lee Seong-hoon flinch behind me.

But a crooked smile appeared on Bae Hyun-yu’s lips.

“A lie. You don’t carry identification cards. You identify yourselves through armbands.”

“……”

She got me.

Silence fell once again.

Inside my head, the context of all those words flashed by like an electric shock.

‘…She’s someone who possesses information.’

Does the Anomalous Disaster Management Department use armbands instead of identification cards?

That was something even I didn’t know.

When I encountered those two agents in the infinite corridors, I had been too busy trying to survive to notice something like that.

I slowly lowered my gaze.

‘I’m at a disadvantage.’

Lee Seong-hoon swallowed behind me.

I raised my head and looked at Min Do-hyeon and Bae Hyun-yu again.

“Then… who exactly are you?”

The moment I finished asking, Min Do-hyeon spoke again.

Bae Hyun-yu turned her head and frowned slightly to stop him, but it was already too late.

“…We’re from the Erosion Alliance.”

Bae Hyun-yu shook her head.

But this time she didn’t cover his mouth.

She seemed to have prepared herself to reveal it sooner or later.

I narrowed my eyes.

‘The Erosion Alliance.’

I remembered something Manager Moon Ara had told me.

An organization separate from both the Anomalous Disaster Management Department and Limited Company Where the Dead End Up with Ghosts and the Church of the Coming Feast.

An organization formed by unofficial civilians with no specialized training.

A group that had never been registered by the government.

People who lacked the power necessary to confront anomalous phenomena.

Survivors who, in places like this prison, where structures and rules became distorted, had banded together to stay alive.

In short, an organization of people who adapted to erosion in order to survive.

“Why did you hide it?”

At my question, Min Do-hyeon answered as if he were in a difficult position.

“Ah, well… you seemed a little dangerous, and then suddenly you said you were from the Control Team, so…”

As he left the sentence unfinished and scratched his head, Bae Hyun-yu muttered briefly.

“It’s even more foolish to immediately introduce yourself as a member of the Erosion Alliance to someone who has just entered an erosion zone. You lied too. You said you were from the Anomalous Disaster Management Department.”

At those words, I had no choice but to nod.

“…That’s true.”

And I organized my thoughts again.

The Erosion Alliance.

Lee Seong-hoon.

And the corpses inside the library.

In this situation, the thing I could trust was—

‘Of course, absolutely nothing.’

Bae Hyun-yu immediately continued.

“Then what exactly are you? You’re not one of us, you know about the Anomalous Disaster Management Department, but you don’t belong to them either, so…”

Bae Hyun-yu narrowed her eyes.

“Limited Company Where the Dead End Up with Ghosts?”

At the same time, inside the library, in that damp air mixed with the smell of blood and paper, the gazes of all four people pointed at one another like sharpened blades.

Lee Seong-hoon, who remained pressed against my back, couldn’t endure the strange silence and spoke in a trembling voice.

“T-this… but… if we’re all people, doesn’t that mean we don’t need to fight each other?”

“If you don’t know anything, stay out of it.”

At Bae Hyun-yu’s cold reply, Lee Seong-hoon flinched and shrank back.

He had spoken without thinking, but even so, her response was so sharp that it seemed excessively cruel.

“No, no, Hyun-yu. You don’t have to go that far…”

Min Do-hyeon smiled awkwardly to calm her down, then crouched until he was at Lee Seong-hoon’s eye level.

“Buddy. It’s okay. We’re the ones who are too tense. Try to understand. In a situation like this, anyone would be on edge.”

“……”

“Right now it’s hard to trust anyone, isn’t it? Everyone lies, hides things, and deceives others… don’t they?”

A friendly tone.

But I could sense the hidden intent behind those words.

‘That guy is good at making people lower their guard.’

Sometimes, unnecessary kindness is a form of attack designed to make an opponent careless.

I let out a short sigh.

‘I’m at far too much of a disadvantage.’

The Erosion Alliance.

The group that Manager Moon Ara had mocked and ridiculed without end.

And yet.

‘They know far more than I expected.’

They knew the identification methods used by the Anomalous Disaster Management Department.

They possessed enough information to deduce the existence of Limited Company Where the Dead End Up with Ghosts.

‘Is it possible for an unofficial organization to know even the internal workings of an official institution?’

No.

For now, it was still only a hypothesis.

I didn’t know how far their knowledge actually extended.

‘Then my bluff is still valid.’

I breathed slowly.

Frowning slightly, I slipped a hand into my pocket without saying anything.

Of course, I had nothing in my hand.

It was only a gesture.

And I spoke calmly.

“…I am currently retired, but it is true that I once belonged to the Anomalous Disaster Management Department.”

A brief silence followed.

Amid that silence, I could see both of their pupils waver slightly.

“I come from the Control Team. At the moment I have no way to prove my identity, but if we could obtain some means of communication, it would even be possible for the current head of the Control Team, Yeom Hwi, to come here himself.”

Min Do-hyeon’s expression changed slightly at my words.

Even so, it was still impossible to tell what it meant.

Bae Hyun-yu tilted her head.

“If you belonged to the Anomalous Disaster Management Department, why did you leave?”

“Because of mental health issues.”

I said it without blinking.

“While traveling through erosion zones like this one, there were colleagues who disappeared, and I watched my partner get torn apart right in front of my eyes.”

It was a lie.

But in a place like this, a lie had to be capable of covering the truth.

Min Do-hyeon slowly opened his mouth.

“Then why did you come back here? You said you retired, so why are you in a restricted zone?”

“It’s a personal matter. I can’t go into details…”

“……”

“I received a request from Chief Yeom Hwi. He asked whether I could help unofficially.”

“……”

“I entered temporarily. As support for the Control Team.”

Another lie.

But it was a sufficiently convincing story.

I added nothing more.

Silence stimulates the other person’s imagination and adds flesh to lies.

For a while, nobody spoke.

Then Bae Hyun-yu asked,

“…Don’t they usually operate in pairs?”

“I already told you. This is unofficial support.”

I answered quietly.

She was probably right about the pair system.

After all, Yeom Hwi and Seo Ryu, whom I met in the Infinite Labyrinth, had also been working as a pair.

“And what about you?”

At my question, Min Do-hyeon smiled awkwardly and shrugged.

“We’re conducting a search.”

Silence spread once again.

That was when I realized it.

The tension they were giving off wasn’t simply hostility.

They were frightened too.

Just like me.

They also knew that this library, this prison, and this entire space were an unfamiliar and yet strangely familiar nightmare.

‘I don’t like lying, but…’

Audit Team Director Go Gyeol.

Manager Moon Ara.

Supervisor Hong Na-gyeom.

The humans adapted to Limited Company Where the Dead End Up with Ghosts whom I had met.

Rather than revealing that I belonged to the company, it was better to deceive them.

Creeeak—

A strange scraping sound came from behind the desk Bae Hyun-yu was watching.

It was far too strange to be merely the creaking of a bookshelf.

It sounded as though the very seams of space were falling out of alignment.

“…Something’s wrong.”

Lee Seong-hoon said.

The boy stared at something between the gaps in the bookshelves and suddenly took a step back.

“Hyung, over there… there’s a path that wasn’t there before…”

I stood up immediately.

I turned and looked in that direction.

The place where the bookshelf had been.

The space that, as far as I remembered, had been completely blocked off.

Now it was empty.

The wall was disappearing.

The bookshelves were coming apart as though they were melting.

The structure.

The shape.

The pathways.

Everything was warping.

“That was fast.”

Bae Hyun-yu muttered.

It seemed she had expected it to some extent.

Without even looking at me, she firmly adjusted the strap of her backpack.

“We can’t stay in this library much longer. Let’s move before it collapses.”

I nodded.

“Agreed.”

Only then did Min Do-hyeon relax his shoulders and agree.

“Huff, yeah. Let’s keep talking while we move.”

The four of us stood up at the same time.

Nobody gave an order.

We simply started walking.

The bookshelves behind us no longer looked like walls but like cliffs collapsing inward.

I glanced once at Lee Seong-hoon.

He was still looking around with a startled expression, but at least he was following us properly.

‘For now…’

Without saying anything, I passed by him and took the lead.

The library exit.

The gate we had entered through had changed locations and was now there.

As if the library itself had already decided where to send us.

A gate made of interconnected iron bars.

The upper half was partially raised, and beneath it stretched a dark passageway.

A flickering light shone at the far end.

A strange, whitish illumination.

The characteristic screech of ventilation ducts.

We passed through the gate one by one.

“…A courtyard?”

Min Do-hyeon was the first to speak.

We had arrived at a courtyard.

In a normal prison, it would have been the space used during the inmates’ allotted recreation hours.

But this place was different.

It was an entirely new scene.

The basic structure was still that of a realistic courtyard.

However, countless impossible things were superimposed over it.

Some kind of distortion warped the outer boundaries of the yard.

The sky was half blackened, as though someone had spilled ink across a canvas.

Parts of the tall metal fences had collapsed.

Others stretched unnaturally upward, as though twisted by the hand of an anomalous entity.

The air was saturated with a metallic smell.

At the center of the courtyard stood a massive structure made of steel beams.

Mountains of corpses were piled around it.

At the center of that structure hung a body with a broken neck, swaying slowly like a halted pendulum.

“Disgusting.”

Bae Hyun-yu held her breath.

I slowly narrowed my eyes.

“The situation isn’t good.”

“W-why?”

Lee Seong-hoon asked.

I looked directly at the steel structure and the piles of corpses surrounding it.

Something was moving.

It wasn’t running.

It wasn’t crawling.

It was watching us.

From somewhere.

Without any doubt.

I slowly turned my head.

Exactly.

The remains of what had once been a courtyard.

Everything was open.

Dividing lines that seemed to mark off sectors.

Metal fences.

Concrete walls rising everywhere.

Some protruded upward.

Others had sunk into the ground, forming enormous cracks.

‘…How strange.’

As I stepped across the ground beneath my feet, I slowly scanned the surroundings.

This wasn’t the prison courtyard I had seen when I entered through the main gate.

The structure was different.

The layout was different.

The distance between the buildings in the distance.

The positions of the window frames.

Even the direction of the lighting.

“This isn’t the courtyard I know.”

When I spoke, Bae Hyun-yu gave a brief nod.

“It must have warped. Just like the library.”

“It could also be entirely different coordinates.”

Min Do-hyeon murmured.

I was about to reply when I stopped.

Not because I left the sentence unfinished.

But because I heard something.

Clank.

A strange sound.

Instinctively, I turned and looked toward its source.

In one corner of the courtyard stood a small building covered by an iron door.

The door was slowly opening, swinging without any pattern.

The necklace vibrated softly as it detected a red aura beyond it.

A shadow.

A presence.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

“Well… they’re here. Run!”

The moment Bae Hyun-yu finished speaking, those things emerged from the cloud of dust.