The Calamity-Class Artifacts in Ghost Stories Are Obsessed with Me - Chapter 40

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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-Grade Artifacts from Urban Legends Develop Obsessions — Chapter 40
Eliminating the target proved almost absurdly swift.
Yet the moment they succeeded, a creeping sense of dread took hold.
“It seems this was their trap from the start.”
As Chaewol had said, the entire situation itself must have been what their opponent intended.
-The arrogant child must be punished!
-Come here!
-Play with us!
Smile was converging from every direction.
Worst of all, they were inside the Theater.
The space wasn’t cramped, but with Smile pouring in from every entrance, any hope of passing through without engagement evaporated.
“I’m sorry. I was trying to prevent this.”
Ryuseondham apologized once more.
From what Wooju could gather, he’d been conversing while attempting something else on the side—and that attempt had failed.
That’s why he’d told Wooju to handle the target immediately.
But failure remained failure, regardless.
As Wooju had said before, now they had only one choice.
Breakthrough by force.
“Let’s head that way.”
Ryuseondham pointed toward one of the exits.
“I’ll lead the way.”
Wooju didn’t hesitate—he moved toward it immediately upon hearing this.
-Wahahahahahaha!
-Play, play, play, play, play.
-Where? Where? Where? Where?
Smile pressed in from all sides, their appearances, builds, and voices each slightly different, swarming like a hive.
A sight that would provoke fear and unease even in someone without coulrophobia.
But it didn’t faze Wooju.
What was so frightening about clowns?
In Korea, they only ever appeared on the internet alongside stock market memes in posts about dying—nothing more.
“Tch!”
Clang—!
Wooju swung the Iron Pipe with all his might, and the Smile that had been descending scattered in every direction far faster than they’d been falling.
Of course, there were still plenty of Smile left.
Wooju’s strength was still sharp, but continuing to push forward like this would inevitably drain his stamina bit by bit.
So Chaewol and Ryuseondham didn’t remain idle either.
Chaewol understood something.
She couldn’t muster the kind of overwhelming power Wooju displayed.
So she channeled her strength elsewhere.
Rustle—rustle—rustle!
Chaewol pulled a handful of Talismans from her sleeve and scattered them in all directions.
These weren’t attack Talismans—they were binding techniques, in a manner of speaking.
Pop, pop, pop—!
“Aah!”
“Huh?”
“Ugh.”
“Mmgh!”
Smoke burst from the scattered Talismans, and out of it tumbled figures that resembled people.
They weren’t people, but people-like things—their appearances were decidedly crude.
As if a child had clumsily molded them from clay.
Anyone with eyes would have no trouble spotting the difference.
-Bad child!
-Punish the intruder!
But the tactic worked on Smile.
If Smile’s true form had manifested, it would have seen through immediately—but no matter how high-ranking an entity was, it couldn’t control this many clones perfectly as if they were its own body.
Which meant the clones were rather dim.
-Waaaaaaah!
As a result, a significant number of Smile that had been bearing down on Wooju scattered off in pursuit of the phantoms the Talismans had conjured.
Bang! Bang—!
Wooju seized the opening and swung the Iron Pipe even harder.
In an instant, a path tore open to the entrance they’d originally aimed for.
But the moment they reached it.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
A clown whose head was a full size larger than the others stepped into view.
From just those few words, Wooju instinctively understood that this one was different from the rest.
The Main Body had revealed itself directly because of the commotion.
Strictly speaking, every clown in Smile Park was Smile, but they carried different weights of presence.
The one before him was an existence saturated with a substantial portion of the Main Body.
But that didn’t make him suddenly afraid.
What concerned him was something else entirely.
The other clones that would swarm back while he dealt with this one.
Then, just at that moment.
“I’ll hold that one for a moment. You break through ahead.”
Ryuseondham stepped forward.
Wooju opened his mouth as if to speak, then nodded.
“Understood.”
“Don’t look back. You might get caught up in it.”
When they’d come here earlier, he’d already glimpsed that the vice-leader harbored formidable techniques hidden away.
So Wooju immediately pressed forward, taking only Chaewol with him.
“Where do you—!”
Of course, Smile didn’t let them slip away.
He immediately stretched out his massive hand to seize them both.
“Look here.”
Right then.
Wooju heard a voice resonating from behind, deep and sonorous.
He nearly turned reflexively, but barely resisted and pressed his feet forward instead. Chaewol did the same.
But Smile couldn’t.
He’d reached toward the two of them when he hesitated, then turned his head toward the source of the voice.
Thanks to that, Wooju and Chaewol passed him without incident and emerged into the Theater’s main hall.
“Bwahahahahaha!”
“Ehehehehehe!”
“Let’s play! Let’s plaaaay!”
Of course, the hall was packed with Smiles.
Again, Chaewol scattered Talismans in all directions to create decoys while Wooju doggedly carved a path through.
The process was anything but easy, but they pushed through a staggering number of Smiles and escaped the Theater.
“Run!”
Once they emerged, the wide-open expanse of Smile Park stretched before them.
He’d worried there might be crowds of Smiles outside the Theater too, but fortunately that wasn’t the case.
Clones still lingered in scattered spots, but it was nothing compared to what they’d faced inside.
Clatter-clatter-clatter!
Wooju and Chaewol cut across Smile Park.
As they ran, Smiles snapped at them one after another, but none could withstand the Iron Pipe.
At this rate, reaching the entrance seemed like it would take mere moments.
But this was unmistakably Smile’s Domain.
“Where do you think you’re running off to!”
Judging that simple physical force wouldn’t suffice to stop them, Smile changed tactics.
Ripple!
Suddenly the ground undulated like waves, pitching and swaying in all directions.
If that had been all, they could have regained their balance and kept running somehow.
But that was only the beginning of the problem.
“The entrance!”
Chaewol cried out in alarm.
At her words, Wooju—who’d been swinging the Iron Pipe—looked ahead.
And saw the entrance receding steadily into the distance.
Smile had twisted the space itself, repositioning the entrance far away.
This was Smile’s Domain.
There was an old saying: even a stray dog manages to eat seventy percent of its meal at its own front door.
How much more so for a powerful Anomaly? For this creature now, warping space like taffy was scarcely difficult at all.
“Just a moment.”
But Wooju had a method of his own.
If the opponent twists space, all one needs do is see through the twisted space.
Of course, the iron pipe possessed no such power. But Wooju carried more than just an iron pipe.
Whoooosh!
An intense light blazed from the eye-holes of the mask he wore, far brighter than usual.
As the mask’s power to pierce falsehood surged forth at full strength, his vision transformed.
The space twisted like taffy in a candy maker’s hands began to blur.
And above it, a new path revealed itself.
“This way.”
Wooju immediately began running toward it.
Chaewol followed behind him, her expression bewildered.
And no wonder—the direction Wooju was heading seemed decidedly strange.
He’d started running in the exact opposite direction from the entrance.
Yet Chaewol raised no objection. She’d witnessed her schoolmate’s abilities enough times to know better than to doubt.
Tap-tap!
But the path Wooju was leading them down grew ever more bizarre.
“Crouch down, please.”
After running for a while, he suddenly ordered her to crawl through empty air.
“Jump here.”
Then he commanded her to leap over flat ground as if obstacles stood in her way.
“Go slowly here. Very slowly.”
Next, he had her creep beside a tent wall at a snail’s pace.
Each instruction made no sense whatsoever.
What was astounding was that these senseless actions were actually working.
The distance to the entrance, which had seemed impossibly far, began to shrink rapidly.
Even though they weren’t moving straight toward it, even though they were heading in completely wrong directions.
At that point, Chaewol gave up questioning altogether and simply followed Wooju’s instructions.
“One foot here!”
And Wooju was experiencing something strange.
Seeing through the path was certainly the power of the Bangshangsi Mask.
But knowing how to walk that path—that came from somewhere else.
Like someone whispering directly into his ear. Wooju had experienced this many times before.
The Necronomicon.
The Necronomicon was whispering knowledge to him.
What Wooju was doing now was, in essence, breaking and trampling the rules and principles laid down by its original master.
And it was the Necronomicon’s power alone that made this possible.
Hummmmm, hum.
The iron pipe vibrated as if deeply displeased with the situation.
The mask showed the way, the Necronomicon taught how to walk it—meanwhile, the pipe had nothing to do.
It occasionally swatted away creatures that drew near, but was that really worthy of being called a contribution?
So the iron pipe yearned.
For a chance to truly shine.
Boom!
That chance came sooner than expected.
Just as they drew close to the entrance once more, something appeared.
—Guahahahahaha!
It was Smile.
But this one was different from any they’d seen before.
It looked as though dozens, perhaps hundreds of clones had merged together.
If you looked closely, you could see the faces of individual clones within it.
It was quite literally constructed by stacking clones like bricks.
—You won’t escape!
“Ugh, I’m sick of this.”
Wooju winced at the sight.
Shouldn’t you just let us go by now?
But Smile showed no intention of doing so, determined only to capture them both.
Boom, crash!
Or crush them flat.
Wooju dodged and swung the iron pipe.
Craaaaaaash!
The enlarged Smile’s body lurched violently from the force of the pipe’s swing.
Or more precisely, one of his feet had been blown clean off.
-Hehehehe!
The problem was that such damage repaired itself in an instant. After all, there was no shortage of clones to use as raw material.
Bang, bang, bang!
Thus, after swinging the iron pipe a few more times, Wooju moved toward the exit again.
But Smile caught on and repeatedly blocked the path leading to the exit.
Time was slipping away.
Even as Wooju pressed the attack, the exit kept gradually widening the distance.
Though the straight line of sight meant it wasn’t growing distant as quickly as it appeared, it was still an unfavorable situation, there was no doubt about it.
Did he need to change tactics?
While that thought crossed his mind—
-Awooooo!
A familiar sound suddenly echoed from somewhere.
No, not just a sound.
Tap!
The sound of earth being kicked, and then a black form came hurtling into view.
-What the—!
Smile reacted a beat too late, only then noticing something approaching. And right after—
Crunch!
Launching from the ground, Happy the Cerberus lunged and sank his teeth into Smile.
Smile’s eyes went wide with shock at Happy’s betrayal.
“Good boy, Happy!”
Happy wagged his tail gleefully as he tore into his former master.
Smile’s face twisted viciously at the sight.
“Maybe you should’ve treated him better!”
Wooju twisted the knife with those words, then brought the iron pipe down on the creature’s leg once more.
-Woof!
Happy barked loudly and savagely tore into Smile with all three of his heads.
It was nothing short of a flawless coordinated attack.
To be continued ▶
Calamity-Grade Artifacts from Urban Legends Become Obsessed
Author
Lee Segyesa-jang
Publishers
Kim Seok-hwan, Choi Se-ra
Published by
Grae Publishing
Inquiry Email
[email protected]
Publication Date
May 26, 2026
UCI
G720:N+A327-20260410110
※ This e-book is protected by copyright law. Unauthorized reproduction and duplication are strictly prohibited. Violations may result in civil and criminal legal liability.
※ Pentagram welcomes 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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