Surviving Among the Entities

It didn’t take Shin Yeong-mun long to regain his senses.

[“Uhuck! Huhuuck! St, stop! Mr…Mr. Lee! I’ve come to my senses!”]

While the saying “a beating is good medicine” only applies to animals, the now blackened-eyed Shin Yeong-mun was close enough, quickly returning to his senses after a continuous beating.

“What’s up with that guy? Why’s he acting like that?”
“Seems like a lunatic. Just ignore him.”
“Hey hey, watch out, let’s take another path. He might have a knife.”

Due to the passersby’s attitudes, I relocated with Shin Yeong-mun in tow.

“Have you regained your senses now?”
[“Yes, yes! I’ve completely come to my senses!”]
“Do you still think your skills are exceptional?”
[“Ah, no! I suck! I’m a complete beginner! I’m utterly terrible at mahjong!”]
“You don’t need to berate yourself that much. More importantly, do you wish to be reborn?”
[“Nngh….”]

Shin Yeong-mun, who had been groaning, shook his head.

[“I’m not sure? I don’t really feel like I’ll be reborn or anything.”]
“I see. Then please follow me.”
[“Huh? Wh, where to?”]
“I’ll take you to my home.”
[“Why?”]
“I need to experiment on how to help you be reborn.”

This was the first time I learned that a spirit’s complexion could turn pale.

[“…Do I have to go?”]

My knowledge grew.

“You must.”

To summarize, I failed in helping Shin Yeong-mun be reborn.

[“Huhu, huhuhu, please stop experimenting now….”]

I tried affixing talismans reputed to be efficacious, and sprinkling salt.
I took him to a renowned Buddhist temple and thrust a crucifix at him, even taking him to a church.
I threw beans, drew magic circles said to drive away spirits, and read from the Bible, but none of those methods worked.

[“It, it hurts so much!”]

However, it wasn’t completely ineffective – each time, Shin Yeong-mun seemed to be in agony, and for a while his body would blur and become untouchable to me.

‘A state of completely blocking external stimuli.’

A kind of self-defense mechanism.
Just as living beings instinctively withdraw their hands from hot objects, it seems spirits possess a survival instinct too.

‘Death is not the end.’

Considering some entities, it wasn’t that strange.

“I won’t experiment any further.”
[“Re, really?”]
“Yes. So now you’re free to go wherever you wish.”
[“Ya, yahoo!”]

As Shin Yeong-mun hastily tried to leave my room, I stopped him for a moment.

[“You said I could go!”]
“I have one request for you.”
[“Wh, what is it!?”]
“If you happen to see anything strange while wandering around, please let me know.”
[“…..Strange things?”]
“Anything is fine. Ghosts, monsters, psychics, aliens, holes ripped in the sky, books that eat people, anything.”
[“Do, do such things really exist in this world?”]
“Yes.”

I smiled as I bid farewell to Shin Yeong-mun, who had become quite familiar to me.

“They do.”

‘That makes two things.’

The studio apartment that had been warm over the past few days grew chilly once more.

‘Entity knowledge obtained through My Mind’s Notebook.’

Though not complete, I at least gained all the knowledge I had about the entities.

‘Minimum force for survival obtained through the Girl with Closed Eyes.’

Enough physical ability to flee, and the power to resist even spiritual entities.

‘Three things remain.’

A means to identify future dangers.
An identity allowing free movement anywhere.
And financial resources to maintain a livelihood and easily obtain necessities.

‘The means can be excluded for now.’

Identifying future dangers means foreseeing the future.
There were entities capable of that, not just one but several, but most were too dangerous to handle easily.

‘The relatively safe ones only appear randomly, so I can’t obtain them currently.’

For now, I’m checking every online second-hand trading community, but who knows when they might appear.

‘So I should focus on the other two instead.’

Identity and finances – I already know how to acquire both of those.

‘But the easy methods I thought of are too risky.’

Those methods all involve using entities – not just safety grade ones, but symbiosis or danger grade entities, so the risk was too high. In trying to escape annihilation, I might end up annihilating myself instead.

‘But among the safety grade entities, there’s nothing particularly useful either.’

A duck doll that occasionally goes “quack” if you don’t watch it.
A tree that randomly bears random fruits once a month.
Nail polish that cures ingrown nails when applied – safety grade entities from fixed locations are just collectibles with little actual use.

‘The useful ones appear randomly, so their locations are unknown.’

And there’s nothing more foolish than obsessing over something you can’t resolve immediately.

‘I should do what I can for now.’

Thinking about safety grade entities, one that appears at a fixed location came to mind that could be more useful than I thought.

“The Toywell.”

I prepared to go out.

“It’s worth experimenting with.”

This outing wasn’t a long one. Unlike last time when I went to Gangwon Province to acquire two entities, all I had to do was find an abandoned daycare center in Osan, Gyeonggi Province. After some asking around, I successfully located it within a day.

‘This must be it.’

Late at night, I shone my flashlight and climbed over the crumbling walls of the abandoned daycare center.

‘From what I heard, this place went under three years ago.’

Due to management issues, it hadn’t been demolished and was left as an eyesore until now – the explanation matched the “Sehwa Kindergarten” name from my knowledge.

‘Now where could it be?’

Inside the daycare’s playroom strewn with all sorts of toys, I found what I was looking for.

“Is this it?”

A small well constructed from building blocks. Built atop a large base block, the well was just big enough for my face to fit inside.

To check if this was indeed the entity I was seeking, I dropped it onto the ground. Ordinarily, building block toys would easily break from that impact, but it didn’t break.

Next, I punched it, but it was my hand that hurt instead. Since even my enhanced physical abilities couldn’t break building block toys, this had to be the entity.

“Then let’s experiment with it.”

I took a late-night taxi home and, while observing the toy well, recalled its information.

[The Toywell]
[Grade: Safety]
[A well made of 45cm x 45cm x 20cm building blocks. If something is put inside, it disappears to somewhere unknown.]

An entity that emerged in the game’s early days, simply making things disappear to an unknown place was its entire unsettling mystery, with scant settings and a short wiki entry befitting its safety grade.

‘This was probably made as a collectible too.’

I peered inside the well. The well floor, about a palm’s length deep, was unnaturally pitch black, like gazing into an abyss rather than a natural color.

“My hand won’t fit.”

Inserting my fingers, I only felt the hard block floor.

“Next is something living.”

I went outside, found an ant in the flower bed, and dropped it into the well. The ant scurried up the well’s walls and crawled right back out.

“Living things cannot pass through.”

The information matched what I knew. Next, I put in soil, rocks, and twigs I had gathered from the flowerbed.

“Only non-living things can pass through.”

The items I dropped disappeared without a trace.

“Are severed branches considered non-living? Do the microbes in the soil remain behind, unable to pass through? Or can microbes and severed parts of lifeforms pass through?”

Quite intrigued, I continued putting various things inside.

An egg from the fridge – passed through.
Cake – passed through.
Nails, hair – passed through.
12 types of fruits and vegetables from the mart – passed through.

An unfertilized egg not refrigerated – did not pass through.
Moldy bread – the bread passed through but the mold remained in the well.
A frozen goldfish put into suspended animation – did not pass through.

“The conclusion is lifeforms larger than mold cannot pass through.”

Lifeforms in suspended animation cannot pass through either. Only non-living things or microbes can pass through.

‘I’m not even sure about microbes. They might actually be unable to pass through and remain behind too.’

After the experiments, I was left deeply pondering. The reason I brought this was because I thought I could use it to dispose of small but dangerous entities.

‘If they can be disposed of through this, there’s no problem.’

But I had doubts whether it would even work on entities.

“Experimenting is possible with this as well, but….”

My gaze turned to the notebook on the desk. I could just tear off a piece of My Mind’s Notebook and put it in, but would that really be okay?

“I won’t know unless I try.”

I immediately experimented. I tore off a piece of the notebook and wrote on the torn paper:

[Experimental]

The text I wrote was stored in my mind. This proved that My Mind’s Notebook could still be used even in a torn state.

‘To be honest, the notebook might have a self-awareness and scolded me for tearing it.’

I checked through all the notebook’s pages. There were no warnings written anywhere, and when I returned to the original pages, the torn portion had reverted to its intact state.

‘So tearing it isn’t a problem.’

I checked the very first doodle I had made on the first page.

[1+1=?]

There was still no answer.

‘Then let me put it in.’

Since the torn paper retained its peculiarities as an entity, it could be considered part of the entity.
When I put it into the well, it disappeared in the blink of an eye.

‘It worked!’

Now I had a means to dispose of small but dangerous entities.

“?”

At that moment, objects came flying back out of the well.

Small rocks, copper, iron, zinc and various other minerals instantly flew out of the well, littering my room.

‘This wasn’t mentioned in the wiki at all.’

A phenomenon I had never encountered in the game. To investigate it, I wrote on a small piece of paper and dropped it into the well.

After some time, during which I prepared dinner, a note flew out of the well.

[Hello? If anyone is reading this note, please find the hole around you. It may be a small toy well, or a hole 45cm x 45cm x 20cm in size. And please write a reply and put it in there.]

The note I had written.
And on the back, another message written with it.

[Who are you? What is this? Some kind of prank?]

The note was written in Korean. Unlike my pen writing, the moment I saw the graphite handwriting, I abandoned my plan to use the well for entity disposal.

I immediately tore paper to make another note.

[Hello, my name is Seung-hoon Lee. I’m an ordinary man in my 20s living in South Korea. If it’s not too rude to ask, where are you from and who are you?]

I dropped the note in and waited again. After some time, the note returned, with the reply written on the back of the paper I had used.

[Um, I’m Singu Hwerang. I’m a resident of the United Asia Union, just an ordinary 20s sebulleum. But what’s a ‘man’? And what is this hole anyway?]

I had just become the first human to converse with an otherworlder.