Chapter 265.3 |
“…From what I’ve heard.”
Yeongeun-ssi swallowed and spoke.
“They say that if you hear the sound coming from that recorder, your mind becomes calm, your vitality surges, and your wounds heal.”
It was an exceptionally good effect.
“Oh?”
“Then it sounds better than our company’s standard potions.”
But it ended chillingly.
“That’s only at first.”
……!
“They say the addiction is extreme.”
“…Ha.”
That was when I understood why the updated <Dark Exploration Records> had referred to the casino’s long-term missing persons as ‘addicts’.
‘It wasn’t just gambling addiction.’
They had been captivated by ‘something’ that came out of this disposable recorder.
To the point that they would go to the casino and pull slot machines even after losing their limbs and eyes, nose, and mouth.
“……”
Baek Saheon began turning the item over with a deeply uneasy expression.
“…How long can you endure it?”
“Three times. They said that if you listen more than that, there’s no turning back.”
Yeongeun-ssi continued, her face tense.
“But I don’t know anything beyond that. I only heard ‘rumors’.”
“…I see.”
I watched as Baek Saheon finally set the object down upside down.
Then I saw it.
…On the back of the recorder, some kind of design was embossed.
‘What is that?’
When I focused, the outline became clear. Curves, a spiraling shape. It was…
A conch shell.
“…!”
“Mr. Roe Deer?”
I lifted my head reflexively.
Baek Saheon, who had met my eyes, seemed to have noticed the same thing. His pupils were shaking.
And he knew too.
‘…Mermaid Grave.’
The conch shell shaped item we saw there.
Angel’s Sigh
“……”
Why was it appearing here?
But the keyword ‘recorder’ had an unsettling way of matching with melody, which gave me a bad feeling.
And I knew one way to verify it…
‘Braun.’
[I know what you’re going to ask, Mr. Roe Deer.]
[Shall I read the text written on the box?]
‘If you could, I’d appreciate it.’
[Oh, of course.]
I heard the gentleman clear his throat, and then a low voice with pleasant pronunciation resonated.
[‘Angel’s Sigh’.]
…!!
[…Tape recording. ‘Listen to the auspicious melody of heaven at a reasonable price’.]
[That’s what it says. Oh, such obvious marketing.]
A recording?
Then it was possible to guess that the sound heard from the conch shell in the Mermaid Grave was the original, and this was a recording.
But…
‘The conch shell didn’t have side effects like this.’
Addiction.
[Isn’t that simply a limitation of an inferior copy?]
[When the ingredients are different, it’s only natural that imitating the recipe won’t produce a proper dish, Mr. Roe Deer!]
…Is that how it is.
It was a plausible line of reasoning, but something about it felt… more unsettling than that.
Do you remember? In the Mermaid Grave ghost story to begin with, the conch shell had once been used as a bad trigger.
‘Biological disaster.’
The biological disaster that ruined the undersea city and turned it into the ‘Twinkle Twinkle Ocean Palace’ had infiltrated the city disguised as a conch shell.
The tattoo artist from the Moonlight Tattoo Shop even came to mind, making my thoughts more tangled.
What was the connection.
Why was an item with the exact same name as the one from the Mermaid Grave showing up in the casino of the Sekwang City subway.
‘…I want to dig deeper.’
Still, I had intuitively grasped the function of that recorder, so that alone counted as progress.
‘Let’s remember it for now.’
And while I was lost in those thoughts, I could hear Agent Choi interrogating Baek Saheon beside me.
“Mr. Citizen, I’m curious how you hit the jackpot on the slot machine.”
“I was lucky.”
“Really? You were watching it pretty intensely for that…”
Agent Choi’s gaze shifted to Baek Saheon’s purple eye. The one I had bought for him at Death Lane.
When vision is checked through that equipment, the more dangerous the entity, the hotter the color of the halo that appears.
But Baek Saheon was curt.
“Do you think it’s some kind of all-purpose tool? You can’t figure out jackpot methods with this. I just…”
“Just?”
“I could gauge the danger level of the slot machines.”
“…?”
“I only spun the ones that didn’t feel bad.”
Unlike the agents, who looked puzzled, I immediately understood what that meant, and a chill ran through me.
‘Even the slot machines were classified as ‘entities’.’
As creatures within a ghost story.
So the true nature of the slot machines was… ha.
‘No. I’m not thinking about that any further.’
I had never expected a rain of coins from the slot machine room anyway.
‘The dealer room is the right answer.’
A prior case had already proven it.
Assistant Manager Lee Seonghae.
– One day she traded in one more body part to get coins, and using that as capital, she earned hundreds of coins in the dealer room in a single day.
I carefully retraced that course of events.
‘She stayed put for several days, then suddenly exchanged coins.’
That meant she wasn’t just spending time listlessly. She had been ‘observing’ something.
In this casino, the VIP room was closed, but the dealer room door was open.
‘Then you can keep observing the dealer room.’
And the fact that, once that observation was finished, she rushed into the dealer room and earned hundreds of coins in a single day meant…
‘There’s some kind of secret in the dealer room.’
The very place we were in now.
I looked at the old, broken tables, the colorful bulbs flickering on the ceiling, and the abandoned, aged casino scenery that clearly showed its years without restoration.
And the dealer’s hands, shuffling cards at the table.
“……”
Ah.
“So does anyone have an idea what we might try with our war funds?”
……
I raised my hand.
“Oh?”
“I think there’s something worth trying.”
It seemed they’d caught on.
To the method Assistant Manager Lee Seonghae had attempted.
* * *And 73 minutes later.
“Current coin count… 924.”
“…!!”
Our war chest had grown to more than three times its original size.
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