Seoul Object Story
Chapter 207: The Labyrinth (1)

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When I woke up, I saw a landscape filled with darkness.

A desolate and barren terrain. Sharp, jutting rocks stretching far into the distance and a dark, ominous sky.

In that sky, a beautiful green aurora crossed the sky.

However, for some reason, the only thing I could feel from that aurora, which should have made me feel surprised and awed, was an ominous aura.

Above it, the vast universe spread out, and the Earth appeared large among the stars.

The Earth in the sky clearly showed that this place I was standing on was not Earth.

When I looked at the sky, I felt uneasy for some reason.

It felt as if I was falling down to Earth.

But something felt strange, so I kept looking up at the sky. Only then did I realized the cause of that feeling sensation. This dry land was slowly, very slowly moving towards Earth.

I tried to open the Garden of The Mini Reaper, thinking that I should call the kids, but nothing happened.

At that moment, I realized.

Ah, this is a dream.

The moment I recognized this as a dream, an enormous amount of malice began to gather from far away. It was so large and evil that I couldn’t forget it. I didn’t really remember, but it was definitely malice that I had felt before.

As all that malice gathered, a bizarre Object that seemed to be a mixture of organic and inorganic elements suddenly took shape. The Object that suddenly appeared seemed to be made of the same material as the landscape, as if the dark and twisted ground itself was alive and moving.

The ominous silhouette roughly twisted, resembling a towering tree or tangled roots, and at the top of the silhouette was a face staring at me.

The Object had no eyes, but it was clearly looking at me.

But for some reason, I couldn’t look at the monster properly.

Even when I tried to focus on it, it was just blurry and hazy.

But the more I looked at it, the clearer it became.

Tap-! Tap-!

But the moment I was about to take a good look at the monster, someone touched my back.

When I looked back, I saw the blue girl shaking her head from side to side with a stern face.

And the moment I looked at that blue girl, I woke up from my dream.

*********

When I woke up, I saw a containment room locked in darkness. The only source of light was the flickering firewood from the Golden Reaper’s body curled up next to me. The light brightened and dimmed repeatedly, like the breathing of a sleeping baby.

I touched the cheek of the Golden Reaper who was sleeping soundly and thought about the ominous dream.

The blue-haired girl and an unidentified Object. It must have something to do with my ‘body’ or with me. Either way, it was definitely related to me.

I thought it was an unrelated dream, so I ignored it, but since an ominous entity that was hard to ignore popped out, I thought I should think about it a little differently. In particular, the ominous Object I saw in my dream seemed like something I had seen somewhere before, but I couldn’t remember it at all.

I was sure it wasn’t something I saw when I was already a Gray Reaper. It must have been something I saw when I was human, but strangely, I only had a vague feeling that I had seen it before.

Eh, whatever…

No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t remember, so I was a little annoyed.

To relieve my annoyance, I grabbed the sleeping Golden Reaper’s small and lifted it up. Just like me, the Golden Reaper didn’t wake up easily once it fell asleep, so it was easy to play this kind of prank.

I taped the golden reaper’s arms and legs and stuck it to the wall.

Looking at the Golden Reaper, who was fast asleep and stuck to the wall in an X posture, my annoyance subsided a little and I felt better.

Hihihi-!

I felt that I needed to properly find out the meaning of that dream that seemed to be related to me.

What should I do?

But no matter how much I thought about it, there was no good way.

The most certain way would be to collect the Moons and the eyes. After all, the more I collected the Moons and the Eyes, the more I felt something changed in me.

The problem was that I didn’t know where the Moons and the Eyes were, or where they would appear.

There was no answer.

Mom…

At that moment, another Golden Reaper who was lying on the bed licked its lips and hugged my hair.

What was it dreaming about that it was so happy to the point it was snoring while stuffing my hair in its mouth, I wonder?

Ah!

The moment I lifted the Golden Reaper who was eating my hair to move it to the wall, a solution came to mind.

Why not use the adventures of the mini reapers?

It was a simple thought. Since the number of Mini Reapers seeking natural encounters with precious humans was increasing, there was no need for me to force the mini reapers to do anything.

Haha, I’m really smart.

I just needed to lie down in Sehee Research Institute eating pudding while the mini reapers found the Moons and the Eyes. It was a perfect system!

After all my worries were gone, I picked all the Mini Reapers sleeping in the containment room one by one and started decorating the wall with it using tape. I placed the Mini Reapers in various poses on the wall like they were Egyptian murals.

In particular, the Golden Reaper who ate my hair, which helped me come up with ways to utilize the Mini Reapers, was placed in the center where it was easy to see.

As I moved the Mini Reapers one by one, I was able to attach all the Mini Reapers that had been piled up on my bed to the wall.

I stepped back slightly with a proud expression and admired the artwork I had created.

*********

Late into the morning In the courtyard of Sehee Research Institute, Yerin was sitting in front of a table full of snacks while sipping on a warm coffee.

The sound of the news coming from the mini TV on the table resonated faintly through the garden.

[ The Object Association decided to leave Mapo-gu as it is. ]

[ I guess Mapo-gu has become the first place to experiment with the coexistence of people and objects. ]

What came out from the TV was news about Mapo-gu where Golden Reapers were abundant.

In the end, the Object Association did not isolate Mapo-gu or designate it as a no-entry zone. Perhaps it couldn’t be helped since Objects that were there were Objects that could not be isolated or eradicated.

In the meantime, the Gray Reaper, who was the cause of the Mapo-gu incident, was playing with the Mini Reapers in the courtyard without paying any attention to the news. Usually, the Gray Reaper would just lie down and rest, but today, he was playing quite actively.

It must have been because the Mini Reapers were displayed with tape like stuffed butterflies in the morning.

[ The safety evaluation of the special Object, Red Lightning Island, which was evaluated as ‘safe’ in Japan, has been revoked. ]

[ Red Lightning Island has been identified as the cause of the mysterious disappearances that are currently occurring throughout Japan. ]

As the story of Mapo-gu ended, a gruesome story from Japan began to flow out on the news. It was a story about a terrifying Object that devoured tens of thousands of people.

Japan has it tough. They are in that situation because they didn’t have Reapers.

Thinking so, Yerin shared a pudding with the Golden Reaper.

*********

Looking up at the clear sky, the girl had a thought.

Today is a really unlucky day.

Actually, it would be a bit much to say that today was the only unlucky day.

Since the moment she was kidnapped to this labyrinth Object Island, she had never been lucky.

An Object Island that suddenly appeared near the coast of Japan.

An Object that humans could not approach, and that could not be attacked with missiles or shells.

Fortunately, it was an Object that was known to be harmless because it did not move at all.

Everyone thought so, and the girl thought so too.

That Object has nothing to do with me.

But the very girl who said so was kidnapped by the Object.

Even now, when she lay in bed and closed her eyes, the memory of the moment she was lying down at home and falling asleep was still so vivid in her memory, but she could never go back.

Have people finally discovered that the seemingly harmless island was actually an Object that randomly kidnapped people all over Japan?

If they had, there would have been at least a little chance of going back…

“Haa.”

Today was a really unlucky day.

The girl sighed deeply and began to pick up the pieces of the shattered sword one by one.

When she bought this sword at a street vendor in front of the labyrinth for 1/3 the price early in the morning, she thought it was her lucky day. But, the sword turned out to be fake. It was a fake sword that would shatter even with a little force.

But even when she bought the glue to repair weapons, she didn’t think it was such a bad day.

A glue that could repair broken swords!

She thought that with this, she could repair the sword and become a proper labyrinth adventurer.

But, as expected…

The glue was fake too.

She glued the shattered sword together with glue and dried it in the sun for an hour, just like the street vendor said, but it didn’t get fixed at all. She kept putting it near a flower pot because she thought it might not be fixed properly because it didn’t have enough sunlight, but she knew deep down.

That glue was also a fake.

But since she couldn’t bring herself to throw away the weapon she bought for the first time, she kept telling herself that it wasn’t.

And that half-fixed sword was shattered again.

But this time, thanks to an unidentified black Object that fell from the sky toward the flower pot.

“Haa. I am so unfortunate.”

The girl lost all the money she had saved.

She was so depressed that she didn’t want to move even a single step, but she gritted her teeth and left the inn. No matter how depressed she was, there was nothing she could do. She still had to collect plants from the labyrinth to pay for food and lodging.

Behind the girl, who was walking with feeble steps, a small, fast black Object was following her.

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