The Calamity-Class Artifacts in Ghost Stories Are Obsessed with Me - Chapter 49

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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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Urban Legends and Calamity-Class Artifacts Obsess — Episode 49
It unleashed a threatening roar.
Ujoo lifted the steel pipe and looked at it.
The creature’s form wasn’t entirely clear, but Ujoo somehow thought it resembled a lion.
He couldn’t say why.
Just a vague instinct, nothing more.
-ROOOAARRR!
At once, it launched itself from the ground and charged at him.
His hesitation was brief.
Ujoo met the charging creature head-on.
Thoom!
The instant they collided, the stone floor beneath his feet cracked with a sharp snap.
Ujoo felt as though a truck had barreled into him.
But while Ujoo held his ground, the thing that charged forward was knocked backward faster than it had come.
It had taken a steel pipe swung with full force—unsurprising, really.
For an ordinary monster, one blow would have sufficed.
-Grrrrrowwwl!
But the creature bounced back, tumbled across the ground, and rose to its feet almost immediately.
‘Tough stuff.’
Ujoo adjusted his grip on the steel pipe and mused.
He felt it instinctively.
The blow had landed, but it was far from a killing strike.
Still, it was different from those creatures his attacks couldn’t touch at all.
The impact registered, certainly—but with an almost absurdly stubborn durability.
A remarkably tough specimen.
-ROOOAARRR!
It charged again.
This time, instead of rushing straight at him, it wove side to side, closing the distance unpredictably.
Had Ujoo only strength, he would have struggled.
But when he held the steel pipe, what increased wasn’t merely muscle.
Crash!
As soon as it narrowed the gap, the steel pipe whistled down in an overhead arc, driving straight into the creature.
The floor cracked again, and the creature’s body slammed into the stone.
But this time it didn’t retreat—it swiped at him with a foreleg.
Clang!
Ujoo blocked the strike with the steel pipe and countered.
But the creature twisted away, evading the blow.
Crash!
It dodged the second strike, though not entirely.
Yet as the exchange wore on, Ujoo felt a growing frustration.
Something—the damage wasn’t penetrating deeply enough.
‘Is this not enough?’
Until now, he’d never doubted the steel pipe’s power, but in a situation like this, that nagging dissatisfaction was unavoidable.
Then, in that moment.
Whirrrr—!
The pipe vibrated.
At first, he thought the pipe was sensing his disappointment and bristling in offense.
But quickly he realized that wasn’t quite it.
Not wounded pride, not anger……
Relief? Joy?
‘Why?’
His confusion at the emotions emanating from the steel pipe was short-lived.
-Grrrrrr……
Just as the creature prepared to charge once more.
The pipe’s vibrations intensified dramatically.
Ujoo suddenly felt a far more vivid will transmit through the steel pipe.
‘Harder.’
Grip it tighter, swing it harder.
“Right.”
Ujoo smiled and shifted his stance.
—Grrrrr!
The creature advanced slowly, measuring the distance between them.
It moved in a circle, as if closing in for an encirclement.
After taking several hits, wariness had settled into its nature.
Ujoo tracked its movements with his eyes and raised the Steel Pipe gradually.
He released his tension, steadied his breathing.
He felt the moment the creature gathered strength into its hind legs for the next leap.
That was when Ujoo drove his feet into the ground.
Snap!
The distance collapsed in an instant.
The creature, which had seemed to hesitate, instead rushed forward to meet him and whipped out its claws.
And the moment the Steel Pipe collided with those claws, golden brilliance erupted from the pipe.
—Boom!
The shockwave pushed the air around them outward.
Ujoo felt it in his bones—this strike was on an entirely different level from anything before.
What happened next was utterly strange.
Rather than being knocked backward, the creature’s outline blurred as though deep darkness had met light, and it dissolved into the air and vanished.
Silence fell.
Ujoo stared at the cracks in the stone floor and the dust where the creature had been, then lowered his gaze to the pipe in his hand.
Thrum-thrum-thrum.
The Steel Pipe vibrated once more.
It was a different resonance than before—weighty and deep, with a distinct texture.
As if something that had slept for a long time had opened its eyes.
And there was something else: above the Steel Pipe, a faint shadow of a wooden staff materialized and then faded away.
And then, immediately after.
Whisper—
The darkness surrounding the space began to dissolve and scatter slowly.
* * *
Ujoo opened his eyes slowly.
The first thing he saw was a desk. When he lifted his head, a familiar scene greeted him.
It was the Office.
Ujoo raised his upper body slowly and looked around again.
Everything was exactly as it had been.
Hwaryeon still sat in her place with her eyes closed, and the Office was quiet.
‘A dream…?’
But it had been far too vivid to be merely a dream.
Ujoo reflexively turned his head to the side. There was his Steel Pipe, leaning against the wall.
“Hm.”
The Steel Pipe looked much the same as always.
Ujoo scratched his chin, then picked up the Steel Pipe. The moment he did—
Flicker.
Golden patterns flickered across the Steel Pipe and then disappeared.
“Huh?”
He’d never seen anything like it before.
Ujoo lifted the Steel Pipe and examined it closely.
Then he noticed another difference.
‘It seems to have more shine to it, doesn’t it?’
Before, it had felt somewhat worn and rough; now it had a peculiar brightness to it, as though it gleamed with renewed luster.
Just then, a voice came from behind him.
“Hm? Something feels different about it.”
Ujoo spun around in surprise. Hwaryeon was standing there.
She’d definitely been sitting with her eyes closed just moments ago, yet somehow she’d moved behind him.
“Ah, yes. It does seem to have changed.”
“Really? Just now?”
“Not exactly. It’s that—”
Ujoo told Hwaryeon about the dream he’d had moments before.
Hwaryeon listened carefully to his account, then nodded and spoke.
“It seems your Bond with the Artifact has grown stronger.”
“A Bond with the Artifact?”
“Yes. Sometimes Artifacts are like that—ones where you can’t draw out their full power from the very beginning.”
Hwaryeon, seated in the chair beside him, produced something from her pocket and held it up.
It was a wooden staff, no longer than two finger joints.
“This is that kind too. At first, that’s all it could do—conjure a tiny spark. Like this.”
Whoosh!
A flame no larger than a lighter’s flame bloomed atop the staff.
“Then one day, I had a strange dream too. It was grueling. But the moment I woke up.”
Crackling-roar!
The flame suddenly swelled to many times its size.
The heat radiating from it forced Ujoo to instinctively lean back.
“That’s when I realized I could enlarge it like this. And for the record, I can make it even bigger. I can move it around freely however I want.”
The flame lifted off the staff and darted this way and that through the air.
Ujoo stared at it with his mouth agape, then spoke.
“But I’ve never seen you use it in your everyday work.”
“There’s a cost.”
“A cost?”
“Yeah. It drains my stamina fast. Light use like this is fine, but if I really go all out, I’d need someone to carry me around. So unless it’s absolutely necessary, I don’t use it much.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Yours has a cost too. You just don’t notice it yet.”
At her words, Ujoo nodded slowly.
Truth be told, he had his suspicions. Though it was less a cost and more of a side effect.
When he held the Steel Pipe, he thought less somehow. How else could he put it?
A bit more reckless, maybe?
Usually the Steel Pipe’s power overpowered such drawbacks anyway, so it rarely became a problem.
“At any rate.”
Hwaryeon extinguished the flame on her wooden staff and regarded Ujoo’s Steel Pipe once more.
“Want to go run a test? See what’s changed and how.”
“Right now?”
“Yeah. We’ve got nothing else to do anyway, right?”
That was true enough.
They’d both been napping in the office for lack of anything better to do.
“Then let’s go.”
Ujoo rose from his seat.
Beneath the Gamchal-guk building lay the Test Zone.
It was ordinarily used to test new weapons or Artifacts, or to assess the capabilities of newly hired personnel.
Ujoo had visited once before, when he first joined.
‘There were so many people back then.’
Now it was deserted.
Likely they’d all come to watch back then because a new recruit was being tested.
“Feels like it’s been ages since I was here. Though it hasn’t really been that long.”
“That’s how it goes with this line of work. You experience in succession what ordinary people might witness once in a lifetime, if ever.”
That was certainly the truth.
Even just a few months ago, Ujoo couldn’t have imagined the darkness that lay behind the world was this vast and deep.
“Let’s see.”
Hwaryeon approached a control panel at the center of the Test Zone and manipulated the screen.
Hummmmm.
A massive Target rose from the floor of the testing ground.
In truth, calling it a target was generous—it was essentially a solid block of metal.
“Huh, this is different from what we used last time?”
“I had a feeling the old one wouldn’t do. Besides, you already smashed that one to pieces, remember?”
“Right, I did.”
Ujoo nodded.
Back then he’d been genuinely startled—he never expected a casual swing to obliterate the target.
But this new target looked sturdy at first glance, which brought him some small measure of reassurance.
Walking toward the target, Ujoo turned to Hwaryeon.
“So how should I hit it?”
“Full power. That’s the only way to get a proper test.”
“What if I break it again?”
“This one shouldn’t break that easily. Even if it does, well—don’t worry about it!”
At her reassurance, Ujoo lifted the Steel Pipe.
And the moment he tensed his arm.
Crack!
Golden light shimmered across the Steel Pipe’s surface once more, then vanished. And immediately after.
Boom!
A tremendous shockwave erupted outward with a deafening roar.
Even Hwaryeon, standing some distance away, flinched at the impact.
And what lay revealed was…….
“Uh…….”
Ujoo turned back to Hwaryeon with a slightly bewildered expression.
“It’s completely destroyed, isn’t it?”
The Target that Hwaryeon had assured him would be fine was now in pieces—literally shattered beyond recognition.
“……Well, yes.”
Of course, Hwaryeon was equally caught off guard.
She’d always known full well that Ujoo’s Steel Pipe wasn’t ordinary in its destructive power.
The manufacturing team had even called it one of the finest Artifacts they produced.
That’s precisely why upper management kept throwing bonuses at him to keep him here.
But to destroy it in a single blow? Just like that?
“Hold on a moment.”
Hwaryeon spoke quickly and checked the control panel.
The measurements from just now were displayed there. The data wasn’t perfect since the Target was destroyed, but.
“Good grief.”
The remaining data alone was staggering.
This level of force exceeded what a massive truck slamming into something at full speed would generate by several times over.
That was pure physical force alone—and when she considered that Ujoo’s Steel Pipe could also deal damage to Spirit Entities…….
He was essentially a walking tactical weapon.
“So? What are the results?”
Hwaryeon spoke to Ujoo, who was waiting with no idea what had happened.
“Hmm. If you have that dream even one more time, things are going to get very dangerous.”
“Sir?”
If this strengthened one stage further?
That would just be a nuclear weapon. A nuclear weapon designed specifically for Urban Legends.
Hwaryeon pondered how to apologize to the maintenance team while thinking such thoughts.
After all, she’d heard that Target alone had cost over a hundred million won.
Continued in the next chapter ▶
Calamity-class Artifacts from Urban Legends Grow Obsessed
Author
Lee Se-gye
Publisher
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. Violations may result in criminal and civil liability.
※ Pentagram eagerly awaits 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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