The Calamity-Class Artifacts in Ghost Stories Are Obsessed with Me - Chapter 25
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Calamitous Artifacts from Urban Legends Become Obsessed with Him — Chapter 25
Now Ujoo understands.
He’s become unusually entangled with objects commonly called Artifacts.
The Iron Pipe, the Necronomicon, the Bang-sang-si Mask, even the Bracelet now clasped around his wrist.
All of them rolled in on their own.
Especially this Disc — the way it tumbled toward them made its presence unmistakable, and Ujoo could tell it was a rather proactive type.
“What is this?”
Yet despite these musings, Ujoo didn’t immediately pick up the Disc.
There was no guarantee his assumption was correct, and judging purely by circumstances, a Disc appearing out of nowhere seemed deeply suspicious.
Baekho stroked his chin and spoke in response to Ujoo’s question.
“Hmm. Something’s off. I think this Disc is the reason their scheme fell apart.”
Chaewol nodded in agreement.
The employees who had materialized just moments before were clearly targeting Ujoo’s group initially.
But the moment the Disc appeared, they suddenly began chasing those cultists in the distance.
As though those cultists were invisible to them.
“It looks like an Artifact.”
So Baekho’s conclusion matched the one Ujoo had already reached.
Then Chaewol spoke up.
“Where did it suddenly come from? Something feels off about this.”
And rightly so.
The timing was too convenient. An unknown Artifact materializing out of nowhere to help them?
It was enough to make one wonder if they’d orchestrated this too.
But Baekho, rather than addressing Chaewol’s concern, turned his gaze to Ujoo with a meaningful expression.
“Still, we have someone with a special constitution, don’t we?”
Of course he meant Ujoo.
Everyone on the Response Team knew that Artifacts had a tendency to gravitate toward Ujoo.
They’d never hidden the fact that he used Artifacts, so it was hardly surprising.
Last time, he’d even gone to Jeonju and brought back an Artifact from their branch.
“Besides, I’ve got a feeling about this.”
“A feeling?”
“Yeah. Evil objects give off a distinct stench. But this doesn’t.”
Baekho then withdrew a silver charm from his pocket and held it close to the Disc.
“The preliminary test checks out fine. So let’s use it.”
If Cheongwoo had been here instead of Baekho, he would’ve voiced an objection.
He’d have argued that touching an object without certainty could lead them into another crisis.
But it was Baekho who was here, and the decision rested with him.
“Ujoo. Take it.”
“Got it.”
So Ujoo picked up the Disc.
He felt no resistance.
From the moment he first saw it rolling toward them, he’d instinctively sensed something similar to his experience with other Artifacts.
A kind of certainty that it wouldn’t cause him harm.
Hum—
The Disc vibrated softly in Ujoo’s palm, as though satisfied with the current situation.
But he stowed it in his bag anyway. There was no need to carry it in his hand like the Iron Pipe.
Not long after they resumed moving, employees began passing by them.
Yet they seemed completely unaware of Ujoo’s group.
Even stuffed away in the bag, the Disc continued to exert its power.
And that wasn’t all.
Thud, thud—
Since Ujoo had acquired the Disc, the Drowned Bodies also showed no awareness of him and his companions.
It was as though they’d become invisible.
“Still, we shouldn’t get too complacent.”
Baekho waited until the Drowned Bodies passed before speaking.
“Its power could fail at any moment, and there could be Side Effects either way.”
Everything comes with a cost.
That cost doesn’t always match the power it generates, but fundamentally, all Artifacts carry Side Effects.
While those Side Effects might be negligible or cause no real problems, there’s never been a case where they’re absent entirely.
Ujoo, having experienced this firsthand, nodded in understanding.
In truth, even without Baekho’s warning, none of them could easily let their guard down.
The Second Floor’s appearance was alarming enough to rouse caution, even absent any imminent threat.
It wasn’t merely the grotesque creatures suspended in the tanks.
What truly caught the eye were the traces scattered along the path—traces that materialized with each step forward.
Shreds of black cloth. A shattered mask. Droplets of blood scattered across the floor.
No one spoke of it directly, pointing it out in words, yet all of them understood.
These were the remnants left by the fraudsters they’d glimpsed earlier.
‘They put up a fight and got dragged away.’
That assessment was accurate.
They’d attempted to ensnare Ujoo’s group and instead fallen into a trap themselves—spectacularly so.
Yet, examining the deeper truth, there was something almost unfair in their misfortune.
Not that their scheme had lacked safeguards—quite the opposite, in fact.
They’d actually detected Ujoo’s presence before being detected themselves, having descended already aware that someone had breached the Second Floor.
Upon spotting Ujoo’s group, they’d executed a plan they’d devised while descending the stairs.
If something devoured the group, all attention would shift there, giving them space to escape; if not, no catastrophe would befall them regardless.
They’d coordinated every tool at their disposal to evade the creatures’ notice.
But there was one variable they hadn’t anticipated.
The Disc.
A low hum emanated from within.
The Disc, vibrating faintly inside Ujoo’s bag, had shielded them when danger arose, serving as the first line of defense.
And as if that alone weren’t enough, it had simultaneously rendered every protective measure they carried utterly useless.
In one stroke, the entire situation reversed.
Only something of that caliber deserved to be called a Divine Object.
Their mistake lay in never imagining that an object in their hands could so faithlessly slip into another’s grasp.
“Screeeeeeeeee—!”
They paid the price for that blunder with their own bodies.
Not long after, Ujoo’s group witnessed the masked man being “captured” in real time.
Four drowned bodies clung to him, seizing at protruding parts of his body and wrenching, while a staff member moved as if commanding them, dragging all toward some distant point.
Baekho, however, glanced at the scene and spoke in a frigid tone.
“Ignore them. They’re not human anymore.”
It wasn’t that their actions resembled those of beasts; it was that they weren’t people at all.
“Among them, you won’t find a single purely human soul.”
His words carried their literal meaning.
These members harbored absolute loyalty to the Cult, and to prove it, they’d resorted to extreme measures.
They’d abandoned their humanity itself.
Ujoo and Chaewol soon grasped what Baekho meant.
Crack!
A drowned body exerted force, and a severed arm’s cross-section became starkly visible.
Within it lay not blood vessels or muscle, but something resembling the grain of wood, crystal-clear.
“Keep moving,” he said.
The other two recoiled at the sight, but Baekho, already knowing, quickened his pace.
And finally.
They discovered the staircase descending to the First Floor and practically flew down it.
The initial ascent from the First Floor to the Second had been tediously prolonged.
Yet the return—passing through the Second and arriving at the opposite side of the First—proved mercifully brief.
The exit was visible the moment one turned their head from the stairs.
Still, one thing commanded attention.
“Ah, ah-, ah-, aaah, ah-.”
It was a being trembling violently, releasing whimpers with each shudder.
Black formal wear. A white mask. From these details, they could infer it was one of the group that had fled earlier.
Had it ended there, Baekho would have unhesitatingly passed by and made for the exit.
The problem was that its condition was manifestly abnormal.
Its body lay dissected into pieces, nailed to the wall.
Ujoo spotted it: the paper affixed beside ‘that thing’.
—Please refrain from making a disturbance in the Aquarium.
Yes. It was a warning to visitors. A warning of what would befall them should they create a commotion.
Hands and feet, torso, head, and eyes—every part had been severed, yet it still lived.
It made sounds; its eyes rolled, able to perceive them.
“K-k-kugh, you, you all, Inspection Bureau, dogs. You bastards!”
It spoke.
Its voice dripping with hatred and malice.
Though the cross-section of the dismembered body showed wood grain instead of blood and flesh, the wrongness of it only multiplied—it did not diminish.
“Ignore it and move on.”
Baekho assessed the situation in a brief moment and seemed to conclude they could safely pass without concern. There was nothing the creature could do to them anyway.
“Hick, hee-ick, you hypocrites hick, because of you hick.”
Whatever it screamed, no one there spared it a glance.
They ignored it and passed by, soon arriving at the exit.
“I don’t see any traps.”
“Looks that way to me as well.”
Baekho and Chaewol spoke in turn. Ujoo, wearing the mask, also nodded.
“It appears perfectly safe to my eyes as well.”
The Bang-sang-si Mask possessed the power to reveal what was hidden from sight.
The other two nodded at his words and looked back at the exit.
“Then. Let’s go in order.”
“Yes.”
Baekho didn’t hesitate. He grasped the door handle and pulled. The door swung open.
A familiar scene lay before them.
An office.
“Are we going back to where we came from?”
Baekho, standing at the front, carefully scanned the interior. Then he spoke to the two behind him.
“Stay close just in case. We’ll go through in one go.”
“Yep.”
“Yes.”
To make sure not even one of them would be separated, the three stayed pressed together as they faced the exit.
“Go.”
They stepped forward in unison and crossed through the door. Ujoo passed through without issue.
Tap.
When his foot touched down.
Ujoo saw a snow-white corridor.
“Hick, hee-ick.”
Ahead, the masked figure still made those strange sounds. In the distance, stairs climbed upward.
Which meant this was the same landscape they’d passed through on the way in.
Ujoo spun around in panic. But there was nothing behind him—just a white wall.
As if there had never been an exit at all from the start.
Then.
The eyes of the thing pinned to the wall turned toward Ujoo, and it let out a laugh.
“Hick, you! You’ve been marked! Hick, hee-hick! The Aquarium marked you!”
At those words, Ujoo’s brow furrowed. Even without that creature saying it, he could guess what was happening.
The other two had safely passed through the exit and escaped, but Ujoo had not.
The reason was obvious.
Ujoo was the one who had caused the most rampage here.
That the Aquarium had singled out only Ujoo to keep inside was hardly surprising.
“You! Hick, you’re trapped! Soon hee-hick, you’ll end up just like us!”
It laughed louder at Ujoo, as if it had forgotten its own grotesquely transformed state.
A person who could take genuine joy in the misfortune of others.
But Ujoo did not suddenly rage or despair at those words.
“How many times have we met? Why do you keep speaking casually?”
He stepped forward and gave the creature’s head a light swat with the iron pipe—but it was more like a fond greeting.
The head didn’t split open, and it didn’t lose consciousness. That was just how gentle it was.
Even in that state, Ujoo spoke to the trembling creature, wondering if it still felt pain.
“You’re saying I’m trapped here?”
Hidden behind the mask, Ujoo was smiling.
“It’s the opposite.”
Baekho had moved with Chaewol and Ujoo’s safety as the priority, and Ujoo had done his best to comply.
But truthfully, that wasn’t Ujoo’s nature.
“These bastards are trapped here with me.”
If they could trap him at will, then opening the exit again to let him out was equally possible.
Which meant Ujoo had only one task.
Ujoo dragged the iron pipe behind him as he retraced his steps back the way he came.
First, he would deal with all the staff.
Just as always, the iron pipe knew the answer.
Continued in the next episode ▶
Calamity-class Artifacts from Urban Legends Grow Obsessed
Author
Lee Segyesa
Publishers
Kim Seok-hwan, Choi Se-ra
Published by
Grae Publishing
Inquiries
[email protected]
Publication Date
May 26, 2026
UCI
G720:N+A327-20260410110
※ This e-book is protected under copyright law. Unauthorized reproduction and distribution are prohibited, and violation may result in criminal and civil liability.
※ Pentagram is waiting for your precious manuscript.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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