Chapter 01
“Freaks like to imitate humans.
The problem is that the ‘humans’ the freaks imagine are vastly different from actual humans.
A simple example: they cannot understand abstract expressions commonly used by humans.
There was an agent who managed to gain a freak’s favor and became its companion. They performed their role well and survived in the Citadel for nearly six months.
But one day, the agent carelessly said, ‘Our relationship depends on how I feel.’
After that remark, the freak demanded that the agent ‘offer their mind.’
The freak confused ‘mind’ with the human psyche, and firmly believed that the human mind was located in the bundle of nerves between the cerebellum and brainstem.
The agent tried to make the freak understand it was a misunderstanding, but it was futile.
In the end, only after breaking their own [redacted] with an ice cream scoop and spoon-feeding portions of [redacted] and [redacted] to the freak could the agent be ‘liberated.’
Some consolation is that after that incident, the knowledge that the human mind is an abstract concept, not an actual organ, was shared among the freaks.
However, it cannot be stressed enough: you must never take the freaks’ goodwill as genuine goodwill.
○ Month ○○ Day, 20○○, Amelie B.”
“Hey, who said you have to actually die? They say there’s a way to come back to life. And when you return, you just need to bring back one person we’re looking for, right? Ah, how simple is that?”
“Exactly. If we succeed, the debt gets wiped out, plus there’s a hefty reward. Man, if the conditions were right, I’d want to do it myself.”
“For real? Then how about you go in next month?”
“Ah, of course I’m joking. I’ve seen things and heard things, would I be crazy enough to go in there?”
The two men chuckled, and I gritted my teeth. The scar-faced man on the floor looked at me, kneeling, and clicked his tongue.
“See, you should’ve lived a little nicer. Looking all prim and proper, yet you had the nerve to skip out on that much money?”
“I… did nothing wrong…”
Clenching my teeth, I barely managed to get out. The blood streaming from my nose made it hard even to breathe.
But it was unfair.
Sure, all kinds of shitty things happen in life. But none of them were my doing.
Is it my fault my parents fell into a cult? Is it my fault they donated all our assets and dumped the debt on me too?
I glared at the man as if to kill him, but realistically, there was nothing I could do. Seeing me like that, they bared their teeth and laughed mockingly.
“Got some spirit, huh. Maybe this time you’ll actually succeed.”
Tap tap, the man flicked the syringe with his dirty fingernails. Another man roughly pulled me to my feet.
And then.
“This’ll sting a little.”
A splitting headache and a bone-chilling tinnitus rang in my eardrums.
“Ugh…”
As I lay face down on the cold floor, shivering, the man tossed something heavy in front of me.
Clunk.
“Here, until the drug kicks in, cram as much of that into your head as you can.”
Forgetting the headache, I reached out and grabbed it. It was an old, thick book. The General Manual for Citadel Entry. The very book I had struggled countless times to get my hands on while locked up by those bastards.
With trembling hands, I turned the cover and flipped to a random page. Blurry-eyed, the bold printed letters came into view.
“Chapter 6: Gwangryun Comprehensive University Survival Guidelines…”
“Pfft, haha, she’s actually reading that?! What a unnecessarily diligent girl?!”
The men laughed, but I ignored them and focused on the letters.
The City of Gods, the ‘Citadel.’
Spanning the boundaries of reality, it is inhabited by incomprehensible beings commonly called freaks.
There is only one way for an ordinary human to officially enter this place. And that method is known only to the ‘agents’ of the ‘Agency.’
All other humans who enter the Citadel are drifters who slipped in by accident.
It is nearly impossible for drifters to escape on their own, but if they succeed in returning, merely providing the escape method can earn a considerable reward.
That is why people sometimes deliberately cause ‘accidents’ by betting on others’ lives.
The most vicious of these ‘accidents’ is my case—I am now in a situation where I am to be ‘killed under specific conditions at a specific location.’
They say only one in a hundred people who enter this way actually succeeds. There’s a high probability I’ll just die a pointless death.
But if there’s even a sliver of a chance—if I do end up in the world of the freaks—my best bet is to memorize as many words from the manual as possible.
And this book in my hand right now is the one and only manual those thug bastards smuggled out of the ‘Agency.’
Gwangryun Comprehensive University was closed in 199○. Only authorized Agency personnel are permitted access, and civilian entry is strictly prohibited.
All information encountered at this location may cause severe damage or alteration to cognitive functions.
The Agency is not responsible for any harm incurred by failure to follow instructions, and you are warned that additional penalties may be imposed.
I don’t need that explained. Don’t give me warnings—tell me what I need to do to survive…!
I flipped through the pages like crazy.
Let me make this clear: I have a pretty good memory.
I wasn’t particularly smarter than anyone else, but with parents who fell into a cult, I had to memorize all sorts of crappy scriptures from a young age, so I got damn good at rote learning.
The only effective survival manual in the Citadel is the one made by the Agency.
This manual, which the loan sharks must have obtained through illegal routes, is probably heavily distorted and contaminated.
Still, it’s fine.
To survive, I had to ‘cram’ every piece of information I could see into my head, just as the loan shark said.
Then,
[Entering. Prepare yourself.]
An unfamiliar, cold voice echoed in my head. As if struck hard on the back of the head, my vision began to tremble violently.
[Entering…]
No way.
I clutched the manual tightly. The letters no longer entered my eyes.
[Connecting to system… Searching for the nearest contact point…]
And then,
[Welcome back, Amelie!]
I lost consciousness. When I opened my eyes again, my hands were empty, and I was standing alone in a narrow, dark corridor.
“Just now… what was that?”
My voice echoed hollowly through the corridor. A green light flickered above me.
I carefully looked around. No windows, and a distinct damp smell—it seemed like the basement of an old building.
At the end of the corridor was a door, and from there, the path turned to the right.
A nameplate was attached to the door. I squinted, trying to read the letters on it.
Beeeeep.
“…Huh?”
A tinnitus-like warning rang out, and my nasal passage stung sharply.
I quickly averted my gaze into empty space. Immediately, a thin trickle of blood dripped from my nose.
‘…Just reading a letter does this to me?’
Wiping my nosebleed with my sleeve, I thought.
It seemed I had somehow succeeded in entering the Citadel safely. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, though.
The exact scale of the Citadel isn’t known, but from what I overheard from the loan sharks, it’s roughly the size of a district in a decent-sized city.
Then how could I possibly guess where in that vast Citadel I had landed?
I carefully reviewed the manual in my head. The last—actually, the only—place I had memorized was ‘Gwangryun Comprehensive University.’
The freaks that appear there are said to be relatively non-threatening to humans. The truly dangerous ones are the ‘higher beings’ hidden deep within the unexplored campus.
And according to the manual’s vague description, higher beings are…
Clank.
The sudden sound broke my train of thought.
It was definitely the sound of a doorknob turning.
Creak.
Against my will, my body stiffened. A narrow basement corridor with no escape route. And the only door was the one at the end.
From that room, where just reading a nameplate had made my nose bleed, something was now about to emerge.
As I tensed up, unable to collect myself—clunk, the door opened.
And what came out was…
“…Huh?”
A tall man with disheveled blond hair and thick glasses stepped out.
He wore loose training clothes and a white lab coat, holding a large tumbler in one hand.
The man silently looked at me, flustered.
A moment of silence passed.
Then the man, in a deep voice as if waking from a long slumber, asked me,
“Are you an undergraduate?”
[General Manual for Citadel Entry (20○○ Revision, for External Agents)]
Supernatural beings residing in the Citadel are generally neutral toward humans.
What you must know is that this fact does not always work in your favor.
Their common sense differs markedly from human common sense, and the goodwill they offer can potentially cause fatal damage to the human body.
Among the supernatural beings residing in the Citadel, those with intelligence equal to or greater than that of humans tend to have a tendency to imitate human ecology.
What you must be careful about is that even if their imitative behavior seems unnatural, do not point it out or let it be known that you have noticed.
If they find out you suspect their identity, that entity will meet you.
No manual exists for correct responses when encountering a higher being.
