Ghost Mansion

When he first entered Ghost Town, he had to go through various cumbersome rites, but for Solomon now, there was no need for that.

Because the moment he stepped outside this damn hotel, that was it.

“Using the front entrance is rare.”

The skull at the desk said it as it watched Solomon head straight for the hotel’s front door.

“What, is it your first time seeing someone head for the road to the underworld? It’s none of your business, huh?”

“……”

“Lord Oberon, it is a pleasure to see you again.”

Leaving silent Solomon behind, unfortunately the partner he had to entrust his lifeline to cut in.

‘Ah, I’m going to smash that bastard’s mouth…’

Just like that, Solomon and the fairy Oberon left through the front entrance of Hotel Snark. Then he put on the gas mask he’d prepared in advance.

Ahead of them was no longer the inside of Hotel Snark. It was a domain of death where a single breath contained a lethal dose of poison gas.

[The boundary between the living world and the underworld, an immaterial domain where lost wraiths wander, a shadow world…
There are countless names for the domain of the dead, Ghost Town.]

In the past, the narrator had called Ghost Town that.

“Guuuhh… we meet again…”

Outside the front door was the usual zombie who served as both doorman and undertaker. A self-proclaimed ‘woke’ zombie.

“Please, wait a moment. Now… guuuhh, I will open the door for you.”

Soon, as if the doorman were unlocking and opening a locked door, ‘air of death’ began to pour in so thickly he could feel it even through the gas mask.

A gloomy settling gray fog, and a dark, depressed sky. And finally, the black sun, like a symbol of Ghost Town.

The empty, utterly desolate horizon also changed, filling in with countless ashen crowds and street scenes here and there. He had truly entered a ghost city.

Solomon checked how he had changed compared to the first time he entered here. Not to mention he’d gone from level 2 to level 5, and all the experiences he’d had in this world had made comparison feel almost rude.

The proof was that the hordes of wraiths that had once charged him without fear the moment they saw him, now scattered in the sky like they were fleeing as soon as they saw him. Was his presence different now?

‘Or it could just be gear carry.’

Either way, the place he was heading now wasn’t one of the ghost city’s common streets.

“Oh dear, so you made it, huh? The way you’re strutting down the road to the underworld isn’t ordinary.”

“……”

Meanwhile, the only thing that hadn’t changed was the druggie fairy babbling nonsense beside him.

Making Solomon’s prayers feel pointless— there were things in the world that didn’t change easily.

“Hold up. The road’s long anyway, so I’ll light the way while we’re at it.”

Oberon, who had ended up sitting on Solomon’s shoulder, flapped his wings and flew up. Then along the path they were taking, sparkling powder fell, becoming signposts underfoot.

“These powders, don’t tell me…”

Watching that, Solomon blinked. He was a little moved by how freely Oberon scattered that magic powder(?) he cherished so much.

“What about this powder?”

“Weren’t those something you cherished?”

“Cherished, my ass. There was a pile of bone powder on the way, so I swiped some.”

“…What?”

At the next words, Solomon’s expression stiffened. At first, he wondered if he’d misheard, to the point he doubted his own ears.

“How happy would these guys be, helpin’ someone on their way? Don’t hold back, stomp nice and hard. Who knows? There might be a few bits of bone powder mixed in that get excited from being stepped on.”

“…I’m going to lose my mind.”

He’d heard correctly. Solomon thought, unable to stop his shock.

‘Can I even step on this…?’

On top of that, now that he knew it was bone powder, stepping on it felt even more nasty.

But he also couldn’t just pretend not to see the signposts the fairy had scattered.

It had been like this in the past too, but after experience, insight, and leveling up, he felt it more clearly now. Reading Ghost Town literally as a ghost city was a massive misreading.

It was closer to an optical-illusion labyrinth, geometrically complex and twisted, where countless roads leading to life and death existed in an ‘overlapped state.’

As the fairy said, it was because the principles of physical law were blurred. And those principles became even more variable the closer you got to the destination.

The deeper he went, the boundary between life and death, and even consciousness itself, grew hazier.

‘Why is my head so heavy?’

It went beyond just heavy.

His sense of direction faded more and more, and even the feeling of standing on the ground with both feet grew faint. Like swimming underwater, or like his body was floating in midair.

“Good, we’ve entered the Haunting House’s spirit land. Hey, we’re almost there. You listening?”

“I’m… listening.”

Solomon answered weakly.

His senses dulled, and even what was right before his eyes looked hazy, like opening his eyes underwater. He could barely hear what the fairy beside him was saying. His body grew heavier and heavier, and strength wouldn’t go into it. At some point, he couldn’t even tell if it was heavy or light. If anything, wasn’t it too light?

“Where… is this…?”

How much farther did they walk after that? Solomon asked in his blurred consciousness. And then—

“Here is here. There is there.”

“!”

A voice rang out. A voice that yanked at his consciousness intensely, like waking him from a dream.

“Huhk—!”

From the sea to the ground, from the air to the ground. Like forcibly pulling something that hadn’t set its feet where it should and fixing it in place.

“Now can you finally hear what the fairy who’s ‘here’ is saying?”

“Hhk, huh…! What the hell was that just now…?”

“Life not fun for you or what? Want me to send you back there?”

Just as Solomon hadn’t been asking because he truly wanted directions, that voice wasn’t answering out of kindness either. It was to pull Solomon back onto the stage of life.

“…Starting today, I’ll live with a joyful and grateful heart.”

Only then could Solomon truly grasp what it meant to ‘get lost’ here. Just now, his soul had clearly been lost. And if you got lost here, it didn’t end at being a wanderer or a lost child.

“That’s only if your conscience doesn’t blow and you make it back safe.”

“This is…”

Solomon collected himself and looked around coolly.

The Haunting House’s domain, Baskerville Street 221B.

Strictly speaking, it was far from a ‘street.’ And there was no longer any ash-gray left there. Over a wasteland of nothing— there was only the shadow cast by that thing towering high.

One of the Five Great Houses, the Haunting House. Spirit binders.

The mysterious mansion of unknown identity they had raised in the Spirit Realm. Somewhere beyond that was Dr. O’Neill’s soul that Solomon had to retrieve, or remove the problem itself through a conscientious explosion.

The name was vicious too— The Black Hound Wraith’s Mansion.

Rather than a mansion, it was closer to a gothic castle. Though it couldn’t compare to Hotel Snark in size, its oppressive presence didn’t seem lesser at all.

And there was no need to mention how it looked like a ghost could pop out at any moment.

“■■■■!”

Just then, a sound came from far away. A heavy reverberation echoing from a deep, dark place. At a sound that stimulated the deepest and darkest part of his unconscious, Solomon’s blood turned cold.

He thought it was far away. He was wrong.

A beast’s howl. The sound was coming from inside the mansion.

‘This won’t be eas—’

In the instant Solomon was unconsciously overwhelmed—

Wooong.

Suddenly, the Rune Stone of Grand Explosion in his chest began to vibrate and hum, as if it took that sound as proof of weakness and surrender.

‘For fuck’s sake. This is the ignition point? I’m about to start saying bad things. Fuck.’

Solomon stopped panicking and muttered with a hand over his conscience.

“I can do it, I can do it… I haven’t given up yet…”

“What? You gonna quit everything and become a motivational speaker?”

“I really want to quit everything.”

After grumbling, Solomon pulled a glass vial from his chest. Blue liquid. A top-grade invisibility potion, no less.

Fortunately, invisibility was a spell Solomon’s build couldn’t do without, and he had also memorized the effects when the spell was enhanced. Even if it activated in the form of drinking a potion, the effect itself didn’t change.

Becoming unseen, hiding presence, preventing magical traces from leaking out, and so on. Those indispensable infiltration effects aside—

The core of top-grade invisibility was the fact that 「even if you land an ambush, the invisibility does not immediately break.」

In other words, it meant you could land two ambushes while invisible.

‘“Give disease, then give medicine.” That’s what this is talking about.’

Gulp, gulp.

The moment he drank the invisibility potion, his body blurred and concealed its form. Beyond merely being unseen, it was like his very existence had been erased.

And the invisible state didn’t stop at Solomon’s body. Like a kind of force field, it spread outward centered on him, covering even his clothes and gear.

In the end, there was nothing there but empty air.

‘It’s definitely different from the stealth coat’s invisibility spell.’

A sensation that didn’t even allow comparison to a degraded spell embedded in equipment.

‘<Darkvision>.’

Right away, without hesitation, he activated a level 1 spell. Fortunately, the process of getting from outside to the mansion itself didn’t seem to have separate surveillance. The proof was that the fairy who called himself a ‘guide’ had brought Solomon right up to the mansion without any concern.

‘So, where do I infiltrate from now?’

Even so, he couldn’t just kick in the entrance and go in fair and square. As Solomon circled the mansion and searched for an infiltration route, a spot soon caught his eye.

‘That’ll do.’

Between thickly grown weeds and vines. Beyond them, half-hidden and covered, was an underground delivery door. It was tightly sealed with an iron grate and a rusted padlock, abandoned and unused for a long time.

Solomon took out the spider lockpick set from the Ancient Webweaver Kit he’d prepared in advance.

“Spider lockpicks, activate all at once.”

He murmured it softly. Silence settled. Nothing happened. Did they give him defective junk? Solomon blinked, then realized.

“…Ancient spider lockpicks, activate all at once.”

Kkirik! Kkiririk!

Only then did the automatic spiders, packed full of ancient pride, begin to move as if they understood Solomon’s words.

With the sound of countless clockwork mechanisms meshing, the spiders’ legs stabbed into the lock like sharp blades.

Click, click.

The lock came undone. The seven spiders didn’t stop there, they fired small laser cutters and began slicing through the iron grate beyond. Afterward, the spiders’ legs even grabbed it and carefully set it down, not forgetting.

“Damn, spiders are better than people.”

The fairy Oberon, who flew over, muttered beside invisible Solomon.

Solomon silently agreed and stowed the spiders.

After stowing them, he stepped beyond the underground passage there.

Into the long, dark tunnel that led down beneath the ghost mansion.