The Calamity-Class Artifacts in Ghost Stories Are Obsessed with Me - Chapter 3

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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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Calamity-Class Relics from Urban Legends Cling to Me — Chapter 3
Ujoo had to admit it.
Ever since he’d picked up the Iron Pipe, his actions had gotten ahead of his thoughts.
That realization became even clearer after he’d brought it down on the man’s head.
Crash!
The head that had come through the window literally smashed through the counter, embedding itself deep inside.
“Damn it all!”
A feeling came to him — a hunch. The walls might clean themselves eventually, but this? This didn’t look like it would come clean on its own.
But there was no time to dwell on it.
“Aaaargh!”
The man whose head had been driven into the counter was trying to lift it again.
His form had already strayed far from anything human.
A normal human wouldn’t have a neck that stretched like rubber, and even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to lift their head again after taking a blow like that.
So the choice came easy.
“Go to hell.”
Ujoo simply brought the pipe down once more on the man’s skull.
The counter was already ruined anyway — a little more damage wouldn’t make much difference.
Crack, squelch.
And that choice proved very effective.
The man’s body convulsed briefly, but not long after, he went limp.
Exhale.
Ujoo stepped back several paces and let out a long breath.
The moment he saw the man wasn’t moving, his racing heartbeat calmed somewhat — but another emotion bubbled up not long after.
“…It didn’t disappear this time?”
He’d half-expected it to fade away like that woman last time, but it didn’t.
The shattered counter remained. The limp body — corpse, rather — also remained.
‘What do I do?’
Could he even run the shop like this?
Ujoo scratched his head for a moment, then grabbed his phone.
It was the middle of the night, but something told him he needed to report this to his boss.
Meanwhile.
While Ujoo was calling his study cafe boss repeatedly,
in a quiet street nearby, there were people who stood out. Two of them — a man and a woman.
They wore black suits and dark sunglasses even in the dead of night.
The two walked along, conversing.
“But isn’t wearing sunglasses at this hour a bit much?” the younger of the two men asked.
The woman answered as if questioning what the problem was.
“What’s wrong with it? It doesn’t affect my vision anyway. These are specially treated.”
“Still. It’s a bit embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing? Ordinary people won’t even notice us because of the Talisman.”
The woman said this while tapping her chest twice.
But the man shook his head.
“Still.”
“What can we do? Orders from above mean we follow them.”
The woman cut off further discussion, then looked ahead.
There lay an unusual street.
The place they’d passed was dark, but nothing more than that — yet just a few steps ahead, a street with an eerie atmosphere stretched before them.
But the two walked toward it without hesitation and spoke.
“What was the name of this place again?”
“Daeseong Study Cafe.”
“Right. Daeseong Study Cafe. The situation took a sudden turn for the worse recently, didn’t it?”
“Yes. Before this, it was just the occasional sighting of Spirit Entities, but recently, the workers suddenly started quitting one after another.”
“And the ones who quit are doing fine?”
“There is someone admitted to a hospital, but it’s not critical yet.”
“Hmm. Even so, normally at that level people would shut down operations or do something. Did the owner get drunk on money?”
“Or maybe they hired people who didn’t know any better.”
“That’s probably it. That’s why we’re here.”
As they conversed, the two came to a stop in front of a building.
It was the building with “Daeseong Study Cafe” written on its sign.
“This is serious.”
“This is serious.”
Without waiting for the other to speak first, both of them frowned at the building.
A sickeningly potent smell wafted from within—not a physical odor, precisely.
The kind only those with ‘opened eyes’ could perceive.
The stench of malevolent spirits.
“Malicious ghosts, certainly, but at this concentration, all manner of vile things will have been drawn in.”
“Shall we prepare immediately?”
“Yes.”
They reached into their pockets and withdrew something each.
The woman held a charred twig.
The man, a colorful box.
Then both stood motionless, murmuring something inaudible while dusting themselves with a powder-like substance, before approaching the building.
When they reached the second floor where the study cafe was located and positioned themselves directly before its door, something happened.
They exchanged a glance as they sensed the malevolent energy emanating from within, then kicked the door open and rushed inside.
“Gasp!”
They immediately spotted something and their eyes widened.
“Uh, that.”
There was a person standing there.
Or perhaps something wearing the appearance of one. For now, outwardly they seemed like an ordinary human.
But what startled them wasn’t the figure itself—it was what he was holding in both arms.
It was a corpse.
Or rather, if you could call it a human corpse when the neck was stretched nearly a meter long, hanging limply.
“Look, this isn’t what you’re thinking, okay?”
The person holding it spoke rapidly, visibly flustered.
At that moment, the man in the formal suit murmured softly.
“Team Leader, that looks like… the one we were chasing, doesn’t it?”
“What?”
“That strange Rokuroukubi. A male Rokuroukubi.”
“Ah. Wait, hold on.”
But then the woman suddenly opened her eyes wide again. Her gaze turned toward the figure’s armpit.
More precisely, at an iron pipe wedged there.
“This is insane.”
The woman felt the overwhelming divine power radiating from that iron pipe and gasped. It was an aura that could never emanate from an ordinary pipe.
It was powerful enough to make the burnt wood twig in her own hand seem pitiful by comparison.
At that level, it was practically a divine or sacred artifact.
The woman swallowed hard and opened her mouth.
“Wait, shall we talk for a moment?”
“Yes! Let’s resolve this through dialogue!”
The other party nodded eagerly, as if they had been waiting for this.
* * *
Heavy silence hung over the counter interior. Heavier than when Ujoo had been sitting there alone.
‘How am I going to explain this?’
Ujoo found himself in an extremely awkward situation.
After defeating the man whose neck stretched like rubber, Ujoo had called his boss.
But the boss didn’t pick up. It seemed he was sleeping at this hour.
So Ujoo spent some time deliberating before deciding to stash the collapsed—objectively speaking, dead—man somewhere out of sight.
Of course, while doing so, a thought crossed his mind.
‘Why isn’t he disappearing? Did I make a mistake? Is he just a person with an abnormally long neck?’
Even by Ujoo’s assessment, the figure didn’t look like an ordinary human, but the confusion was undeniable.
He’d only managed to entertain the thought of moving the body because holding the iron pipe in his hands had inexplicably calmed his mind.
The old Ujoo would have panicked, not even thought to move the body.
In fact, he wouldn’t have swung the iron pipe in the first place.
“So, you directly… defeated him, you said?”
“I… yes.”
Ujoo had initially considered denying it, but realized the point would be lost, so he simply told the truth.
There was no credibility left once you were already dragging an unconscious body around.
Then the woman in the black suit spoke.
“First, you don’t need to be overly anxious. As I mentioned, we have no intention of reporting this, and besides, what you did isn’t a crime.”
“That’s right. Because that isn’t human.”
The man beside her added his agreement.
“That is Rokuroukubi. It takes a form quite different from how it’s typically depicted, but it shares all the characteristic traits nonetheless.”
“What… what exactly is a Rokuroukubi?”
“Rokuroukubi is a type of Japanese yokai that elongates its neck abnormally once night falls. Most often they approach humans in human form, deceiving or harming people.”
At that explanation, Ujoo blinked.
The information was too radical to process casually.
Of course, Ujoo had already suspected that the long-necked man was no ordinary human—from his behavior to his very appearance, everything seemed far removed from human nature.
Yet calling him a yokai, a Rokuroukubi… it felt like too great a leap.
Sensing his hesitation, the two spoke again.
“We should introduce ourselves first.”
“This is who we are.”
The two nearly simultaneously produced business cards and handed them over.
Ujoo accepted them and read the text printed on the cards.
Some information was shared between them, some was not.
—International Paranormal Inspection Service.
“We shorten it to IPIS. In Korea, we tend to use the term ‘Inspection Service’ more commonly.”
A rather complex name.
On the woman’s card, beneath that, were the name Hwaryeon and the title of Team Leader of the Paranormal Response Team.
The man’s card bore only the name Cheongwoo and his affiliation with the Paranormal Response Team, simply stated.
“The International Paranormal Inspection Service is a multinational agency. Its purpose is to respond to all supernatural phenomena and entities—ghosts, spirits, yokai, everything that falls outside the natural order.”
“We came here because we received reports of unusual occurrences in this location recently.”
After hearing all this, Ujoo reflected.
In the past, he would have told them to stop spouting nonsense, insisting that yokai and ghosts couldn’t possibly exist.
But now he couldn’t say that.
Because he had experienced things.
Even one encounter would have left him uncertain, but this was already the second time—no, the third, if he counted the Iron Pipe incident.
‘And I already told them I do my work here thinking something odd was going on.’
What struck him most was that these two remained composed even after watching him drag a corpse across the floor.
“So, the reason you’ve told me all of this is…?”
“Well, first—you’ve never encountered anything like a yokai or ghost before this, is that correct?”
At Hwaryeon’s question, Ujoo nodded.
He had experienced strange things, but never before had he come face to face with something so clearly otherworldly.
“Yes. This is my first time.”
“Then… could it be that Iron Pipe was something you already possessed?”
“Huh? Oh, this?”
Ujoo held up the Iron Pipe he’d been clutching the whole time.
Hwaryeon flinched visibly for a moment, but she quickly steadied herself and spoke again in a calm voice.
“Yes.”
“No. I picked it up a few days ago. I was drunk, heading home from… well…”
As Ujoo spoke with an embarrassed expression, Hwaryeon’s expression shifted subtly.
And understandably so—picking up something that could be called a sacred artifact on the street was no trivial matter.
But what mattered to her now was something else, so Hwaryeon spoke again.
“I see. Then, would you have any interest in working for the Inspection Service?”
“I’m sorry?”
Caught off guard by the unexpected proposal, Ujoo asked her to repeat herself.
Hwaryeon continued.
“I don’t have the authority to formally hire agents on the spot, but I do have the authority to recommend talented individuals for our entrance examination.”
Ujoo fell silent, uncertain how to respond.
The proposal was far too sudden. And as if anticipating his reaction, Hwaryeon went on.
“If you were to join the Inspection Service, you could find out exactly what that object is. You’d also be able to get answers to all your other questions. Unfortunately, there are limits to what information I can share with outsiders.”
“I understand.”
“And though it’s a somewhat delicate matter to mention, once you’ve encountered the paranormal, the odds of encountering it again increase significantly.”
“So… you’re saying I could run into something like that again?”
Ujoo glanced toward ‘that thing’ draped along the wall.
Hwaryeon nodded in response.
“Yes. The probability is quite high.”
That alone shook Ujoo deeply.
But Hwaryeon had no intention of pressuring him through fear alone.
So she presented a condition he couldn’t refuse.
“Additionally, the Inspection Service offers an initial salary of at least eighty million won for contract employees, with hazard pay and field performance bonuses calculated separately.”
Hwaryeon smiled.
“And simply by taking the test and interview, we’ll pay you one million won as interview compensation. If you pass the test with excellent grades, you’ll receive a bonus of at least five million won or more.”
“I’ll do it.”
That was a condition far too good to refuse.
Continued in the next episode ▶
Calamity-Grade Relics from Urban Legends Become Obsessed
Author
Lee Se-gye
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 copying are prohibited. Violation of this provision 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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