The Calamity-Class Artifacts in Ghost Stories Are Obsessed with Me - Chapter 30

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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 Obsess — Chapter 30
The steel pipe held high catches the flickering light, gleaming with an eerie brilliance.
The Demon shrieks out in panic.
—I will submit to you! I will serve you! I am most useful!
The moment those words left his mouth.
Crash—!
The wall behind them suddenly explodes outward, and familiar figures emerge once more.
“Phew. Some nerve, trying that.”
“Wooju, are you all right?”
It was Hwaryeon, Baekho, and Cheongwoo—the very ones the Demon had just hurled outside with his tricks.
—How?!
The Demon cries out in shock once again.
He had every reason to be astonished. Moments ago, he had banished them to his own Domain—the Nightmare Domain, no less.
Yet in mere minutes, they had torn through it and returned.
“How? What do you mean how? Anyway, you’ve already subdued it.”
Hwaryeon speaks, observing the pale, formless shape pinned beneath Wooju.
“Do with it as you see fit.”
“Can I finish it off like this?”
“Go ahead. One hit from that and it won’t even make it back to Hell.”
—Wait! Did you not hear me surrender? I will serve you as devotedly as I serve my great master!
Wooju had never intended to spare it anyway, but hearing Hwaryeon’s words erased even his last hesitation.
He brings the steel pipe down without pause.
—No, please—!
Crash—!
The instant the steel pipe connects with the pale form, a violent surge of energy ripples outward.
As if something fundamental had shattered into countless pieces.
The mist scatters and dissolves, falling to the floor in fragments before gathering in one place.
A Ring lying on the ground.
Hum—.
The Ring absorbs the mist and vibrates several times before adhering firmly to the floor.
“Phew.”
Wooju retrieves the book he’d been holding in one hand, places it back in his bag, and gazes down at the Ring.
“It didn’t escape into the Ring, did it?”
“The opposite.”
Hwaryeon speaks with a long pipe clenched between his teeth instead of a cigarette.
“It was destroyed so thoroughly it couldn’t maintain its existence, so now it’s trapped inside that Ring.”
Normally, the Ring would have served as a conduit through which the Demon could move freely in and out, but now it functions essentially as a Seal.
Quiet as he’d been, Cheongwoo finally speaks as he surveys the surroundings.
“Since everything’s returned to normal, it seems certain that Ring was the source of the trouble.”
Indeed, the Branch Director’s office has already restored itself to pristine condition.
That is not all.
Near the entrance of the office lies a figure sprawled unconscious on the ground.
From the circumstances, it appeared to be an agent from the Gangneung Branch—the one whose contact had been cut off the moment the office door was opened.
“Over here. There’s an agent from the Gangneung Branch.”
Baekho quickly checks the face and confirms the assumption was correct.
“Cheongwoo and Baekho, patrol around and check the Branch’s condition. It seems already cleared, but be careful just in case.”
“Yes!”
“Understood.”
The two immediately follow orders and walk outside.
Hwaryeon checks on the Branch Director’s condition, then picks up the Ring rolling across the floor and speaks.
“For now, the problem seems well resolved. Thanks to you, Wooju.”
“I was just doing what I normally do.”
“That’s exactly why it’s remarkable.”
Hwaryeon smiles bitterly as he speaks.
“Without you this time, it would have taken far longer to subjugate. There could have been casualties.”
“Mm.”
That was a fact Wooju couldn’t deny.
Honestly, it was only thanks to being able to pressure it so forcefully with the Necronomicon that they’d resolved this cleanly—if he’d just charged in with a steel pipe alone, it would have been quite dangerous.
Never mind himself; the others could easily have been hurt.
“I suppose we’d all grown dull from too long a period of peace.”
Hwaryeon spoke with a somewhat regretful expression, then held up the Ring he’d been carrying.
“I’ll take this and run an investigation first. If it proves useful, you can have it back. Otherwise, you can take a reward and we’ll turn it over to the Inspection Bureau.”
Since you’re the one who resolved this.
Hwaryeon then gestured toward the door.
“Alright, let’s take a slow look around.”
“Yes.”
Wooju left the Branch Director’s office with Hwaryeon and slowly surveyed the interior.
The interior appeared quite ordinary, but what stood out was the fact that people lay collapsed in various places throughout.
It appeared they had all collapsed while preparing to leave work.
Hwaryeon, noting this sight, spoke.
“It seems the Ring somehow made its way into the branch and suddenly exerted power, affecting the entire facility.”
“Hmm. But didn’t the Demon manifest through six sacrifices and six innocent people earlier?”
Wooju carefully moved one of the fallen branch members to the side, repeating what he’d mentioned to Hwaryeon before.
“Doesn’t it seem like those two are different?”
“True. You’re right. The way he referred to sacrifices and innocent people separately does suggest they were distinguished.”
Hwaryeon paused thoughtfully before speaking.
“For now, I’m keeping the possibility of terrorism in mind, not just a simple accident. We’ll need to investigate that aspect more thoroughly.”
“I see.”
Wooju nodded in acknowledgment.
Even with speculation alone, there were competing theories. This wasn’t a matter where conclusions could be drawn hastily.
“Good. We seem to be done with the initial assessment. Is everyone here?”
“Yes. We’ve checked everywhere else, but there were no other notable anomalies.”
“Same here.”
Shortly after, Cheongwoo and Baekho returned from their confirmations.
Hwaryeon looked at the branch members gathered neatly to one side and spoke.
“I just called the cleanup team, so we wait here until they arrive.”
“Yes.”
“Roger.”
“Understood.”
With unconscious people strewn about, leaving abruptly wasn’t an option—waiting was the natural course of action.
Then Baekho, looking down at the collapsed bodies, opened his mouth.
“The frequency of dangerous incidents has really skyrocketed recently.”
At Baekho’s words, Hwaryeon slowly nodded.
“It has. The Hope Meditation Center. The Aquarium. And the incidents at the Jeonju Branch and here at the Chuncheon Branch.”
Hwaryeon tapped the Long Pipe he was still holding as he spoke.
“Events like these should happen once every one or two years normally, but they’ve all clustered together in just a month.”
Wooju nodded at those words.
In truth, Wooju hadn’t thought much about it. Despite the danger, everything had worked out in the end.
But those who had been around longer felt the difference keenly.
When dangerous incidents like these occurred, they inevitably brought casualties, both large and small.
If incidents continued at the recent pace, the field response team would have already gone through several rounds of personnel changes.
“It seems like that time is coming again.”
“That time, yes.”
“We should recommend it to headquarters.”
“Headquarters is probably already discussing it.”
Hwaryeon spoke with the Long Pipe in his mouth instead of a cigarette.
“Forty years ago. There was a time when dangerous incidents suddenly clustered together in short intervals, just like now.”
It wasn’t directed specifically at Wooju, but it was clearly an explanation meant for him, who couldn’t follow the conversation otherwise.
“Back then, domestic organizations merged into the larger framework of the Inspection Bureau, transitioning to a new system. The casualties were quite severe.”
Hwaryeon continued with a bitter expression.
“After that incident, the organization conducted thorough investigations and discovered that such events had occurred multiple times in the past.”
The cycles were irregular.
Sometimes long stretches of peace had continued, while other times such incidents repeated within just fifteen years.
“Is there a cause, perhaps?”
Wooju asked cautiously.
Hwaryeon looked at him, then laughed softly before responding.
“No. There’s no known cause. We’ve investigated it many times, but all we’ve confirmed is that similar events occur globally.”
Some nations claim such events happen when the alignment of celestial bodies falls into precise configuration.
Others say they occur when divine energy grows particularly potent.
Some took a more scientific approach, theorizing that energy accumulates until reaching a critical threshold where these events are triggered.
“Look, what matters right now is switching to the Emergency Response System as fast as possible.”
“The Emergency Response System?”
“That’s right. The higher-ups will make the final call, but we’re going to expand our personnel several times over. We might bump the response teams from one to two, maybe even three. We’ll increase staffing at the branch itself too. Open the vaults and distribute relics, activate emergency channels to pull in as many support personnel as we can.”
“And our own restrictions will loosen up as well.”
The last comment came from Baekho.
Baekho’s mood had clearly brightened; he smiled with his teeth showing as he continued.
“Then we’ll finally get to act like trustworthy seniors. Right, Cheongwoo?”
“You’d look a lot more trustworthy if you dropped that frivolous attitude.”
“Frivolous? It’s positive energy and outlook, thank you very much.”
“The higher-ups won’t see it that way. They might just keep your restrictions in place.”
At that, Baekho’s expression sobered. “Really?” he muttered to himself.
Wooju listened to their cryptic exchange, turning it over in his mind.
‘Seems like there’s something there.’
Either way, the fact that they were expanding the team sounded good to him.
More response teams meant fewer callouts per person, didn’t it?
‘Though the rewards would be smaller.’
Honestly, that hardly seemed to matter.
The bounties and bonuses he’d already accumulated from handling recent cases alone had put him well into nine figures.
Base salary was just the foundation—the performance-based earnings were no exaggeration.
That was when Hwaryeon spoke up.
“Wooju. This job should net you about 100 million won in bounties.”
“That much?”
“The Demon case qualifies for Vatican rewards too.”
Wooju broke into a bright smile.
He really had made the right call taking this job.
* * *
The Gangneung Branch matter wrapped up cleanly.
The higher-ups made no secret of their satisfaction with how it had been handled.
A Demon had manifested directly, yet not a single casualty had occurred.
Wooju was equally satisfied.
The bounty that came in was truly eye-watering.
The rest of that week turned remarkably quiet.
Hwaryeon, the team leader, seemed perpetually busy moving between branches handling the Emergency Response System protocols, but Wooju—a lowly grunt—received almost no assignments.
So he took to descending into the basement to check on the creatures he managed, handling paperwork, and otherwise easing through his days.
Then the weekend rolled around again.
“Weekends are the best.”
Wooju was sprawled across his bed, rolling around idly. Today he intended to merge with the mattress completely.
He read through some novels he’d been meaning to get to, scrolled through short videos, and finding himself bored, started browsing through the games on his phone.
“Hm? What’s this?”
Then something caught his eye.
A game, specifically.
“Urban Horror Survival?”
Wooju blinked.
“Did I download this?”
He thought back, but nothing came to mind.
“Hmm.”
In the old days, he might have assumed he’d installed it and forgotten about it. Or suspected his phone had been hacked.
But given what he’d been through recently, something felt off about it.
A game he’d never installed, now sitting on his phone?
Decidedly suspicious.
‘Still, might as well check it out.’
Leaving a nagging suspicion unresolved never sat right with him.
After a moment’s deliberation, Wooju made up his mind and tapped the screen.
The display went black, and text materialized above it.
—You have fallen into a dark and gloomy city.
—The city’s name is City K. A place people have come to dread visiting since a certain day.
—You are destitute, and City K harbors many strange and dangerous things.
—Survival rate: 0.01%.
—Can you make it out alive?
He clicked through the messages in quick succession. A loading screen appeared, with a TIP materializing at the bottom.
[TIP!] City K is overflowing with dangerous things. But if you manage to obtain powerful and effective items, your chances of survival might just go up.
It seemed that monsters were nothing more than urban legends, and this was the sort of game where you farmed items, grew stronger, and tried to survive.
And so the loading bar crept higher and higher. Until, at last, it reached one hundred percent.
Pop!
A brilliant light bloomed across the screen for a moment.
Thud.
The phone tumbled onto the bed. Wooju was nowhere to be found.
And on the phone’s screen, a single message appeared.
[A lost soul has awakened in City K]
It was a deeply unsettling message.
Meanwhile, at that very moment.
Wooju, who had been lying comfortably in his bed, suddenly realized he was in an unfamiliar place.
‘An alley?’
It was a narrow, damp alley.
Lying there, Wooju furrowed his brow and slowly pushed himself up.
Then he instinctively looked down at his own body.
‘This is….’
He was wearing nothing but blue jeans and a white t-shirt.
He had no possessions on him whatsoever—truly, utterly broke.
Wooju slowly lifted his head and surveyed his surroundings, thinking.
“Hmm.”
An ordinary person would have panicked, unable to accept the situation. But Wooju did not.
‘So it really wasn’t just an ordinary game.’
He’d heard about it in training.
There were urban legends about people being abducted through media like videos or games.
Take the Aquarium legend alone—hadn’t it kidnapped people using an ‘invitation’ as its medium?
“Sigh.”
Wooju felt more sadness at the fact that he’d be working on a weekend than fear of the predicament before him.
Though, in fairness, he’d brought it on himself.
He was the one who’d clicked to check.
So Wooju quickly cleared his mind and thought.
‘So the Steel Pipe won’t come with me either?’
First, he tried to summon his most powerful weapon.
But there was no response. It seemed this place was a space where even the Steel Pipe couldn’t follow.
“Hmm.”
Well then, for now, he’d have to move carefully.
While he was thinking that.
Wooju felt something catch on his foot with a tap.
“Huh?”
It was a baseball bat. He wondered for a moment if it might be the Steel Pipe, but the moment he gripped it, he knew better.
This wasn’t the Steel Pipe. It looked reasonably powerful, but it fell far short of the real thing.
‘What is this?’
Bewildered, he tried to move on.
Tap.
Something caught on his foot again.
He looked down to find a leather jacket lying there. It looked remarkably durable.
“What’s going on?”
Wooju was taken aback.
At that moment, on the phone outside, a message appeared.
[You have obtained the Haunted Baseball Bat!]
[You have obtained the Fox Ghost Leather Jacket!]
[TIP!] With very low probability, you might find powerful items on the street. Though the odds are similar to surviving a fall from a high-rise building with nothing but your body.
Of course, Wooju couldn’t read any of that.
“Is this some kind of starting equipment…?”
So he simply tilted his head in confusion, threw the jacket over his shoulders, and rested the baseball bat against his neck.
As he stepped forward with newfound confidence.
Thud!
Something else fell onto his shoulder. This time, a pair of gloves. At a glance, they looked quite formidable.
‘What now?’
Wooju was bewildered.
Continued in the next episode ▶
Calamity-Class Relics in Urban Legends Obsess
Author
Lee Sehyungsa
Publisher
Kim Seok-hwan, Choi Se-ra
Publishing House
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, and violations may result in criminal and civil liability.
※ Pentagram is waiting for your precious manuscripts.

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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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