At those words, Kang Dohyun’s face grew even more flustered.

It was only natural—the creature before them appeared unmistakably to be a demon beast.

‘If I hadn’t checked the Fortune Window, I would have thought the same.’

═══════════════

[Name] Yang Sera

[Rank] First Ghost Grade

[Five Elements] Earth

[Status] Curse ‘Form Mutation’

═══════════════

“This is a human. She’s under a curse.”

At Seo Kangrim’s words, Kang Dohyun seemed briefly taken aback before his eyes sharpened.

“How do you know that?”

“I can detect curses through my spirit beast’s influence.”

While Seo Kangrim offered Rini as an excuse, the statue launched another attack.

-Kwaang!

Kang Dohyun urgently grabbed Seo Kangrim by the back of his neck and pulled him down.

From the petrified statue’s face, neither hostility nor killing intent could be sensed.

Only mechanical movements directed at whatever target lay before it.

“There’s definitely something up there.”

As the two descended from the staircase to the first-floor hall, the statue ceased its movements.

It seemed to be structured to attack whenever a human entered a specific zone.

Seo Kangrim quietly observed the statue before sheathing his Seven-Blade Sword and ascending the stairs.

Kang Dohyun called out in alarm.

“Seo Kangrim, what are you doing?”

Without answering the question, Seo Kangrim charged straight at the statue.

The statue detected the intruder and initiated its attack, but it was far too slow for Seo Kangrim.

He struck the statue’s face with his fist.

-Peok!

The statue staggered and tumbled across the floor.

Seo Kangrim watched the scene for a moment.

‘Did I kill it?’

He had only intended to knock it unconscious, but more force had gone into the blow than expected.

Seeing the faint trembling of its body, it didn’t seem to be dead.

He couldn’t tell whether the statue was weak or he had grown stronger.

Given that Yang Sera’s grade in the Fortune Window was First Ghost Grade, it appeared to be the latter.

‘Raising it to level 30 really made a big difference.’

Once the statue was subdued, Kang Dohyun also climbed the stairs.

He silently looked down at the fallen statue.

“……You’ve definitely gotten stronger.”

Seo Kangrim let the muttering pass without comment.

Kang Dohyun, apparently intending to pretend he hadn’t said anything, soon brought up another topic.

“So what’s the plan? Are you just going to leave it unconscious like this?”

“I need to lift the curse. Rini, come here.”

Rini, who had been trembling in the corner, cautiously approached and gently nudged the statue with her head.

[The special ability ‘Purification’ is activated!]

[The curse on the target is lifted!]

As white light seeped out, the murky aura gradually began to fade from the statue’s body.

Then cracks began to form across its surface, and the outer shell peeled away like an insect emerging from its chrysalis.

Kang Dohyun glanced around and spoke.

“It would have been a disaster if someone else had found this place first.”

Several shattered statues could be seen scattered along the staircase.

It appeared that those who had entered earlier had killed them.

Seo Kangrim attempted to use ‘Fortune Stealing’ on them but soon canceled the activation.

‘The grade is too low and they’ve been dead for too long.’

Meanwhile, the human freed from the curse coughed violently and opened her eyes.

Her face contorted in pain as she looked at the people before her.

Kang Dohyun examined the woman’s face and spoke.

The woman stared at Kang Dohyun with a vacant gaze—or rather, at the empty air.

“What’s your name?”

“Ah, ahh…….”

Instead of a name, only a strange whimper escaped her lips.

Though her body had returned to human form, her mind didn’t seem to have recovered yet.

Seo Kangrim watched the woman for a moment before turning his steps toward the dining hall.

‘I need to inform Ahn Nabi.’

More than the survivor, he needed to report about the statues first.

In case someone encountered a statue and shattered it.

Seo Kangrim headed to the dining hall and surveyed the interior.

‘Where did everyone go?’

Neither Ahn Nabi nor the people were in the dining hall.

Where could they have all gone?

Amidst this, something felt off.

The moment Seo Kangrim detected the change within the dining hall—

-Kuwoong!

Three or four statues lunged at him from behind.

An ordinary person would have been crushed to death.

Seo Kangrim hastily dodged and checked the Fortune Window—they were humans as well.

-Kwajik!

Seo Kangrim subdued the statues in a single breath.

His rather aggressive method cracked and broke their bones, but they weren’t dead.

“Rini! Over here!”

At his loud call, Rini scurried toward the dining hall and activated Purification.

Soon, the statues returned to their original forms one by one.

“Ugh, ugh…….”

Those who had been turned into statues were the same humans who had entered alongside Seo Kangrim earlier.

They were still groaning, clutching their heads in confusion.

‘What happened to Ahn Nabi?’

When he couldn’t find her, unease crept in.

He exited the dining hall to search for her and found her at the first-floor staircase entrance.

She was conversing with Kang Dohyun.

‘She wasn’t turned into a statue. Thank goodness.’

Seo Kangrim breathed a sigh of relief and walked forward.

Ahn Nabi and Kang Dohyun were persistently trying to speak with Yang Sera.

“Do you remember your name? What happened here?”

“Ugh, uhh…….”

The woman clutched her head, her face contorted as if she didn’t want to recall the memories.

Seeing this, Seo Kangrim knelt on one knee and looked at the woman.

“You ate the food here, didn’t you.”

At those words, the woman flinched and looked up at Seo Kangrim.

Kang Dohyun asked what he meant.

“Food?”

“I just ran into those statues in the dining hall. After lifting the curse, they turned out to be the people who came in with us earlier.”

The sense of wrongness Seo Kangrim had felt upon entering the dining hall was because of the food.

The neatly arranged dishes had noticeably diminished.

Ahn Nabi let out a sigh.

“They’d been eyeing the food since earlier……. They must have eaten it while I was away.”

Kang Dohyun responded in disbelief.

“They’re all out of their minds. So everyone who came in here ate that stuff? They’re not fools, are they?”

If it had been ordinary food, everyone would have held back, but the food here was different.

The dishes imbued with special ability effects emitted a powerful, seductive fragrance.

To high-grade Death Messenger or Seo Kangrim, the scent was harmless, but lower-grade awakeners would have been unwittingly bewitched by it.

‘And if they’d been trapped here for about a month, they would have eaten even rotten food.’

The woman’s cheeks were hollow and gaunt.

Even at a glance, she looked like someone who had starved for a long time.

The demon beasts in this place were all either mud or statues, so they couldn’t be used as food.

Even if the food had been poisoned, they would have swallowed it.

After all, the only choices were death by starvation or death by poison.

“The shop wouldn’t open, communication was cut off, and the flow of time here differed from the outside…….”

Ahn Nabi spoke as if she could understand the woman’s situation.

It was a situation where they couldn’t expect any outside help whatsoever.

Moreover, with time flowing differently, no matter how long they waited for rescue, the outside world would consider it nothing serious.

“We, we…….”

The woman’s lips trembled before words finally began to spill out.

She spoke incoherently.

“We tried not to eat it, but we were so, so hungry……. We broke through the barrier on the third floor and went up to the fourth……. Up there, up there…… something strange…….”

Her eyes darted wildly as if she had recalled something terrifying.

Her face had gone even paler than when she had been a statue moments ago.

When the woman clamped her mouth shut and trembled, Kang Dohyun didn’t press further and turned away.

“I’ve got the gist of the situation. Let’s head up.”

As he moved, Ahn Nabi and Seo Kangrim followed behind him.

Ahn Nabi looked worried about the woman, but clearing this place as quickly as possible would be the best course of action for her sake.

Upon reaching the second floor, they found the interior even darker than the first.

Along with the statues waiting to greet them.

“……Are all of these humans?”

Kang Dohyun frowned as he surveyed the statues.

Dozens of them lined the corridor, even at a glance.

He muttered as he looked at them.

“Can’t we just pretend we don’t know and deal with them?”

“Death Messenger Kang Dohyun. Please don’t say such things even in jest. We are Death Messenger, are we not?”

“I’m not joking. You want me to grab each one and lift the curse?”

-Gigigik!

Meanwhile, the statues detected the intruders and launched their attack.

Just as the nearest statue raised a massive axe to cleave Kang Dohyun’s skull—

Before Kang Dohyun could counterattack, Seo Kangrim moved faster.

-Kwajik!

The head caught on the Seven-Blade Sword was severed in an instant.

The headless statue flailed at the empty air before collapsing.

Ahn Nabi’s startled voice rang out.

“Seo Kangrim, that’s clearly a human—!”

“Not all of them are human. Demon beast statues and human statues are mixed together.”

Using ‘Fate Detection,’ he could identify the different types of statues intermingled.

The problem was that Kang Dohyun and Ahn Nabi couldn’t see the distinction.

Seo Kangrim kicked down another charging statue and spoke.

“I can tell you which ones are human, but there are too many of them…….”

“Just tell me which ones are human.”

Kang Dohyun said as he pulled a talisman from his inner pocket.

At a glance, it appeared to be a binding-type talisman.

“Fourth from the front, fifth, seventh.”

-Chwajajak!

The moment he finished speaking, Kang Dohyun dashed into the midst of the statues.

The statues Seo Kangrim had designated were already immobilized with talismans attached.

Destroying the remaining statues was over in a flash.

“Seo Kangrim, you’re truly remarkable. If not for you, this would have been a disaster.”

Having swiftly resolved the situation without casualties, Ahn Nabi spoke with admiration.

Kang Dohyun kept his mouth shut, but his inner thoughts mirrored hers.

‘Seo Kangrim……. I thought he was special from the Education Facility onward. I suppose it’s because he received a good god.’

As he silently watched Seo Kangrim, their eyes suddenly met, and Kang Dohyun hastily averted his gaze.

He spoke unnecessarily loudly.

“You’re slow, Seo Kangrim. Let’s get upstairs already.”

The upper floors shared the same structure, so reaching the fourth floor didn’t take long.

Kang Dohyun glanced toward the fifth floor and spoke.

“That ‘something strange’ the woman mentioned must be up there.”

Perhaps because of what Yang Sera had said, the darkness of the fifth floor felt even deeper.

As the three ascended, they found this floor eerily quiet, without a single statue.

Then Kang Dohyun stared into the empty air and furrowed his brow.

“Death Messenger Kang Dohyun. Is something wrong?”

“Do you smell that?”

“Smell what……?”

“A foul stench.”

Seo Kangrim could smell it too.

The stench of rotting corpses and blood.

And an indescribable reek beyond that.

Upon reaching the fifth floor, no other rooms were visible.

Only an endlessly long corridor stretched before them.

As they quietly walked down the unlit hallway—

A sound reached them from beyond the darkness.

-Odok, odok…….

The sound of something breaking—or chewing.

“A demon beast? No…… it sounds like a person.”

True to Ahn Nabi’s words, there was a person at the end of the corridor.

From the long white hair and beard, it appeared to be an old man.

“Uh…… uh…….”

The old man, who had been eating something, raised his head and looked at them.

The gleam in his sunken eyes failed to find focus.

“A survivor—let’s secure him immediately—!”

Just as Ahn Nabi rushed toward the old man, Seo Kangrim grabbed her arm.

Startled by the sudden restraint, Ahn Nabi looked at him.

“Seo Kangrim, what are you doing?”

“When was the last party to enter this Demon Realm, excluding us?”

“According to my reports, a week ago…….”

“One week outside equals several years in here.”

Several years was the minimum—someone who had entered months ago would have spent decades here.

Had that man looked like that when he first entered this Demon Realm?

“If you eat the food prepared here, you become a demon beast. But that person didn’t become one.”

“……!”

Only then did Kang Dohyun also realize something was off.

He hastily pulled out a talisman.

The old man was unsteadily rising to his feet and shuffling toward them.

“It’s too long a time to have survived on food brought from outside.”

“Then how on earth……?”

“He probably did survive on something provided from outside. It just wasn’t food.”

Moonlight streaming through a window illuminated the old man.

Seen in the light, the white hair and beard only made him appear elderly—he was actually a middle-aged man.

What he had been eating was now visible as well.

What he had been chewing just moments ago was a human hand.