Humanity Protection Company

Illustrations: None.

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They were trapped in the house. A few villagers surrounded the house, keeping watch over them.

Gathered in a spacious room, they bit their nails, trembled, and swallowed hard.

"What do we do now?"

One member asked, his face weary. The food was gone. No water either. They were uneasy about eating anything from this village.

And a killer was after them.

The man didn\'t answer. He closed his eyes, deep in thought. After a moment, having regained his composure, the face of the old man who had always feared the company came to mind.

\'That old geezer was right. I was the one lacking experience.\'

He had stumbled upon an anomaly by chance and joined the club. Living comfortably as a regular member, he accidentally discovered an abandoned anomalous city and hit the jackpot, rising to become a high-ranking member.

He continued exploring after that, but most attempts failed. Even when successful, he only found safe cities and never faced any major problems.

He had never truly fought the company to the death either.

\'That\'s why I made such a stupid mistake.\'

He shouldn\'t have fled recklessly out of fear. He shouldn\'t have let the 2nd team die so meaninglessly. He should have tried to persuade the shaman blocking their path somehow.

And.

\'If only I hadn\'t underestimated the opponent from the start.\'

His fist clenched tight. His nails dug into his palm.

He had been fooled by the clumsy and awkward appearance. No, he had assumed the opponent was a newbie and only saw what he wanted to see. He shouldn\'t have done that.

The man opened his eyes. They glinted with determination. It wasn\'t too late yet.

The man set a simple goal.

"The objective is survival. We escape at dawn. If we\'re attacked during the escape, fight back. Don\'t hold back on bullets. Spray them everywhere. Even if one stray bullet hits, that\'s enough."

The members nodded with resolute faces. Then one by one, they lay down on the floor or leaned against the wall. They needed to rest now to have strength at dawn.

The man pointed at two people.

"You two take the first watch, change shifts every two hours. And, 1st team. 1st team, do you copy?"

- This is 1st team.

"Prepare to return. Stay alert."

- Understood.

As he put down the radio, one member asked.

"Yes. But what about that corpse? The old man?"

At those words, everyone\'s gaze turned to the mummified old man.

"Kill me... Please..."

That thing, which Lee Yeonwoo had secretly brought, was presumed to be from a grave. Those who lost even natural death, having offered death to the god of the River Styx.

The man spoke indifferently.

"Leave it be."

There was no time to worry about such things. No reason to consider that person\'s intentions either.

The man closed his eyes and tried to sleep. Though sleep didn\'t come due to his tired and anxious mind, he somehow managed to drift off.

His hand, clutching a bundle of bills and a lighter, went limp.

....

"Boss. Wake up. Boss!"

"Huh, what!"

The man bolted upright. His vision blurred from sleep. He quickly shook his head, holding the bills to the lighter. He was ready to light them at any moment.

"Are we under attack?"

"No. The atmosphere in the village is a bit strange right now."

The member subtly pointed to the paper door. The other members had also woken up, looking outside with bleary eyes.

Outside, so many torches had gathered that their light reached even this house. Faint shouts could be heard.

"Kill them! Kill them!"

"He promised! He will free us from hell!"

The man slapped his cheeks to snap out of it. Then he flung the door wide open and tapped one of the villagers watching them nearby.

"What\'s going on?"

"I\'m not sure-"

"Hey! Hurry up and come out! We don\'t have time to worry about guys like these!"

Suddenly, the main gate burst open and another villager stuck his head in. Under the torchlight, his face was flushed red with hope and fervor.

That villager waved his torch wildly.

"He promised us!"

"W-what are you talking about?"

When the man asked, the villager grinned.

"That he\'d get us out of this realm of asuras, this endless hell! That he\'d free us from the shackles we bear! As the first step, he said he\'d punish the shaman!"

A hopeful future shown through an eraser. A life where they no longer had to offer death.

At the same time, a roar of voices surged like a wave. A swarm of flickering torches rushed towards them.

The man\'s eyes widened.

Torches peeking over the wall, and flagpoles standing precariously upright, swaying.

At the top of the flagpole with white and red cloths fluttering from the shaman\'s house, hung the shaman. With their head erased, limbs twitching.

"F*ck."

The man instinctively stepped back. His hands and feet trembled violently. Less than a day had passed since Yeonwoo had gone into hiding. Yet he had turned the villagers to his side and killed the shaman.

Now this village had fallen into Yeonwoo\'s grasp.

\'This, this is.\'

The man swallowed hard.

The opponent was hiding with a stone, controlling undying villagers from the shadows. No, he never gave them a chance to attack from the start.

He poisoned them in secret, stole supplies, wielded the eraser from behind, and took over the village.

To prevent any engagement from the outset. To give no opportunity to fire a gun.

\'This is a newbie? This is someone with less than a year of experience?\'

This was more like an elite agent from the Intelligence Department, wasn\'t it?

His heart sank. He finally realized. This opponent was no good. The hope of somehow shooting and hitting him was a delusion, misguided from the start.

"Ah."

Crack, his mind fractured, and the sound of collapse echoed.

The world blurred, torches spinning round and round.

Having lost his only hope, the man opened his mouth wide and wailed.

"Run! Run to the portal!"

"That won\'t do. He told us to kill you all."

The old man stepped forward. The elder who had first greeted them when they approached the village tilted his head, hands clasped behind his back.

"Kill them. Only then can we die too."

People swarmed in, torches in one hand and farm tools in the other. Through the narrow gate, over the wall, through the back door.

That horrifying momentum. Killers trained by periodically killing each other.

"Run!"

Bang- Bang-

The club members scattered like locusts, spraying bullets, but the people walked steadily forward and buried sickles in the members\' necks.

Under the red torchlight, blood redder than the flames spurted. Screams and shouts echoed.

\'No, no. I can\'t die.\'

With a pale face, the man lit the bills with trembling hands. The bundle of 50,000 won notes went up in flames.

\'Hurry! I have to escape! Head for the portal!\'

The time-buying bills took effect. The man\'s form vanished in an instant.

Yet the old man remained calm.

"Is it done?"

"Yes."

Yeonwoo revealed his natural presence while putting the stone in his pocket. He glared at the shaman writhing on the flagpole. Tsk, he clicked his tongue.

\'If only they hadn\'t interfered, this would\'ve ended much sooner.\'

Those guys needed to flee for him to learn how to open the portal, but the shaman had prevented that. So he dealt with the shaman.

His fluorescent vest glinted in the torchlight.

The old man looked at Yeonwoo with worshipful eyes. The effects of the stone and fluorescent vest were interpreted in a strange direction.

\'This person is greater than some god of the River Styx. He dwells in all of nature, so it\'s only natural for him to appear anywhere in the world.\'

Meanwhile, Yeonwoo pulled out a few time-buying bills from his chest. He had stolen and acquired supplies. He had seen the man use them twice. He had a general idea.

Time-buying bills. An anomaly that completes labor without delay when paid the value of the labor. It could be used like a superpower.

"Chase after that bastard."

Whoosh, the bills burned up. Yeonwoo gripped the stone again and vanished.

In the place he disappeared from, a long scream cut off abruptly. The villagers roughly pulled out the bullets and began offering death.

---

---

Hah, huff, huuuh!

Harsh breathing echoed on the dark mountain path. The man climbed the mountain trail, sweating, sometimes falling, sometimes on all fours, heading towards the gate.

\'It was about breaking through the encirclement. I didn\'t have enough money.\'

It wasn\'t enough money to buy sufficient time. He had broken through the encirclement, but arrived at the foot of the mountain.

The man moved without rest, as if someone were chasing him from behind.

Finally, he reached the gate.

"...1st team? 1st team!"

To an empty space before the gate.

The 1st team that had been guarding this place was gone. No barricades, no tents, no supplies, all gone.

The man pulled out his last few bills, swallowing hard.

\'The last time I communicated with the 1st team was before I fell asleep? He attacked here too while I was briefly asleep? After getting the village under his control? What\'s the timeline here?\'

He probably dealt with the 1st team first, then went down to the village and mobilized the villagers. In other words, this place was safe now.

\'Now\'s the time! I have to escape now!\'

The man hurriedly pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket. A small paper similar to an amusement park pass or movie ticket.

The moment he moved towards the gate, holding out the paper that could open the door just once.

Swish-

His forearm was erased. His palm, the pass, fell to the ground, and blood splattered on top of it. The man looked down at his palm with a blank expression.

"Huh?"

"Is that the anomaly that opens the portal?"

A voice rang in his ear. Right next to his ear. Breath brushed his neck.

Step by step, Yeonwoo moved forward from beside him. He bent down to pick up the fallen pass. He gripped the pass with the hand holding the stone.

Yeonwoo\'s expression became strange. The pass looked similar to the guaranteed draw ticket he had once tried so hard to make.

\'Did my future self get the idea from seeing this?\'

He had given up after everything he made turned out to be things he didn\'t want, but seeing it now gave him an odd feeling.

\'I guess the dice dislike predetermined results, so guaranteed draw tickets always fail.\'

Yeonwoo glanced at the man. The man, with a crazed look, was banging his head.

"Wake up, wake up!"

It\'s perception distortion. A roadside stone couldn\'t possibly speak. This is the stone\'s effect.

Of course it\'s natural, but this isn\'t a natural occurrence. It\'s the company\'s fluorescent vest. The company\'s investigator who had been harassing them appearing like this now isn\'t natural.

Thwack, blood vessels in his eyes burst and blood trickled down. Only now did the man look straight at Yeonwoo.

A bestial howl echoed through the mountains.

"Why! Why are you doing this to us!"

Shouting like this was all he could do. The enemy even had an eraser. So he poured out all his resentment.

Yeonwoo waved his hand lightly. The pass clutched with the stone fluttered.

"To find out how to open the portal."

"Just, just for that you did all this sh*t? You, you crazy son of a-"

Swish-

The eraser in his other hand traced a short arc. Only the man\'s head was neatly erased.

Yeonwoo looked down at the man blankly.

"Your language is harsh. This is the surest and safest method, you know."

The headless body of the man swayed and fell backwards. Yeonwoo turned his gaze to the tree with colorful cloths.

After coming down from the grave, he had been moving non-stop, so he had checked the contents translated by the club. The god of the River Styx and the undying tree.

Yeonwoo pondered, then put the stone in his bag, took off the fluorescent vest as well, and placed his hand on the tree.

"Are you here? Is this the undying tree?"

- That\'s right. I am here. O evil spirit wielding eternal death, no, great sage. Please grant this humble one\'s wish.

The evil spirit, having seen everything through the villagers\' eyes, spoke with a terrified mental wave. Yeonwoo tilted his head.

"Why should I?"

- ...Uh, well.

The evil spirit was at a loss for words. The villagers had already fallen into that terrifying human\'s hands, and if it tried to threaten, it seemed likely to be erased while still sealed.

In the end, the evil spirit appealed to sympathy.

- I have dwelled in this tree, suffering for centuries. It\'s not a difficult request. Just kill the wall and send this place back to the netherworld-

Swish-

The eraser grazed a branch of the tree. A hole opened in the center of the net-like branches, and the evil spirit\'s mouth shut.

"Let\'s talk slowly."

There was a lot of cleanup left to do. Of course, that was the company\'s job. The evil spirit would probably be used as a useful anomaly by the company.

Yeonwoo swung the pass towards the gate, and the portal opened. He returned to the original world with light steps.

\'I survived. Phew. I really shouldn\'t do this kind of thing again. Don\'t go to isolated spaces, and don\'t work with hostile groups.\'

He could have died without knowing anything if he had made even a small mistake. Yeonwoo shuddered. Goosebumps rose on his skin.

\'The world is too dangerous.\'

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