Holy Idol [EN]: Chapter 522

◈ 522. Don’t Trust Too Much

Even before looking inside the room, I could tell something bad had happened.

People were screaming, vomiting, and trembling against the walls. It was clear there was something terrible inside.

Rembrary pushed his way through the crowd.

Opening the door, he understood why people were reacting that way.

Rembrary slowly walked over and pulled the paper from the dead Min-soo’s mouth.

Unfolding the twice-folded paper, he saw crooked writing inside.

—This place is fake, but

“What do you think it means?”

As he stared at the short message, Shin Jo-woon asked from beside him.

Rembrary shook his head.

“I don’t know. It seems like there should be more to it.”

As he looked at it, he could hear people chattering among themselves behind him.

“Who is it? Who did this?”

“If we ask the culprit to come out, do you think they will? Isn’t this dungeon about avoiding or catching the culprit?”

“Damn it, I thought I could just come here and eat ice cream! I wanted to eat ice cream! I didn’t want to come to this kind of R-rated [explicit content] place!”

“XX, who do you think wanted to come here?”

“No one forced you to open the door and push you in, did they?”

The people who had been trying to maintain their reason at first were slowly losing it.

During the first incident, they seemed to be speaking according to their assigned roles.

But this time, everyone was just shouting without any regard.

Someone snatched the note from Rembrary’s hand and shouted.

“What does this mean?”

“Beep (no detective role)?”

“Stop making that R-rated [explicit content] beep sound!”

“I’m not making it because I want to! You’re the one who shouldn’t be cursing! XX!”

Rembrary moved away from the commotion and looked at Min-soo’s body.

The employee who gave the apple had said ‘one of the group’ after Min-soo disappeared.

Did that mean one of the group had disappeared, or that one of the group was suspicious?

Either way, it was clear that the employee had seen something…….

‘Writing only that much on the note means they couldn’t say everything. If I go and ask, it might make things difficult for them too.’

Rembrary looked for the note again to read it, but it was nowhere to be seen as people were passing it around.

Shin Jo-woon tapped Rembrary’s shoulder and nodded towards the hallway.

It seemed like he wanted to get out of here for now.

Rembrary nodded and slipped out of the crowded room.

He left the reception room and went to the living room, but there were still quite a few people there, so Rembrary and Shin Jo-woon went up to the study on the second floor.

When they went up to the study, In-soo, Kyung-soo, and Cheol-soo were not there. Shin Jo-woon immediately asked.

“Who do you think did it?”

“Actually, one of the employees secretly gave me a note. After Min-soo disappeared.”

“An employee?”

“It was written, ‘one of the group’.”

“The crucial part is missing.”

“So, I don’t know if it means one of the group disappeared or is suspicious.”

Rembrary frowned, resting his arm on his knee.

“Could ‘this place is fake’ be about death? That dying here doesn’t mean you really die.”

“Maybe.”

“Then what would they be trying to say after that?”

“Since the end is ‘but,’ probably the opposite will come. If they’re talking about death, it would be like, ‘death here is fake, but death elsewhere is real.'”

“If that’s the message, who do you think it’s for?”

“I wouldn’t know if it was a normal culprit, but.”

Shin Jo-woon, who had been scanning the books on the bookshelf, glanced at Rembrary.

“Why?”

“If the culprit is one of our group, wouldn’t it be a message to you?”

* * *

Sagamjae wouldn’t kill Woo Sung-woo, so if there’s a culprit, it would be Noir or Cheol-soo…….

Late at night. Rembrary, alone in his bedroom, sat on the bed but couldn’t fall asleep for the first time in a while.

‘If one of In-soo or Kyung-soo, disguised as Sagamjae, is the culprit, I’d just assume they were a demon. But Cheol-soo…… what is he? Who is that guy?’

If he’s completely an enemy, why would he bother telling me who Shin Jo-woon is?

Was he not completely an enemy, so he told me who Shin Jo-woon was and was worried that the demons might be eavesdropping on the conversation?

And what did that palm mean?

* * *

Before getting up, Woo Sung-woo only moved his eyes to look around.

The floor was made of stone, and it wasn’t cold, but there was no warmth in the floor.

It was dark, but there was a faint light, so it wasn’t impossible to see the surroundings.

After confirming that no one was around, Woo Sung-woo slowly raised his upper body.

The events before coming here came to mind.

Someone had spoken to him. “Excuse me.” When he turned around, one of the participants he didn’t know the name of was standing there.

That person had brought in a mirror with a somewhat frightened face.

Wondering what it was, he looked back and forth between the mirror and the person, and the person held out the mirror and said in a trembling voice.

“This mirror. It seems a bit strange.”

“A mirror?”

Woo Sung-woo took the hand mirror that the person was holding out.

It was just an ordinary mirror. He could tell that the frame pattern was pretty, but that alone wasn’t enough to consider the mirror strange.

What’s strange? At that moment of wondering.

He felt a dizzying sensation in his hand, and then he completely lost consciousness.

When he woke up, he was here.

Woo Sung-woo got up and tried to find the door, but he couldn’t see it.

‘Why isn’t there a door?’

If there’s no door, leaving is secondary, but how did I get in?

Judging that the door might be hidden, Woo Sung-woo examined every gap and crack in the stone floor and walls, knocked on them with his fist, and pushed and pulled them, doing all sorts of investigations, until he discovered a mirror attached to a drawer and flinched.

Looking at the mirror, he frowned and touched his face with his hand.

The reflection in the mirror did the same. It started to touch its own face.

When he lowered his hand, the reflection in the mirror did the same.

Woo Sung-woo looked up at the empty space and frowned.

‘Was I not just knocked out, but processed as dead? Eliminated?’

The reflection in the mirror was not Min-soo, but his own appearance.

But soon, Woo Sung-woo remembered that his own appearance had been reflected normally in the mirror before the first week of role-playing began.

It wasn’t Min-soo’s face then.

‘Either I was eliminated from the game and returned to my original appearance, or my face looks like my real appearance to my eyes. One of the two.’

Either way…….

‘Getting out of this room seems like the most urgent thing to do.’

* * *

Because he had been lost in thought and barely fallen asleep, Rembrary couldn’t wake up early in the morning to have breakfast.

It was two in the afternoon when Rembrary opened his eyes.

‘Seriously, why didn’t anyone wake me up.’

Rembrary briefly resented Shin Jo-woon and Sagamjae, but then remembered that the system automatically locked the door when it was closed, and he dropped his resentment.

Of course, no one could have come to wake him up.

Rembrary yawned and opened the door.

But unexpectedly, Shin Jo-woon, Cheol-soo, and the two Sagamjae candidates, In-soo and Kyung-soo, were standing in the hallway.

“Seriously. Why are you all waiting here?”

When Rembrary asked in bewilderment, Shin Jo-woon gestured for him to go inside, then pushed Rembrary into the room.

The other three followed and closed the door as soon as they entered.

“What’s wrong?”

When he asked, wondering what was going on, Shin Jo-woon immediately answered.

“Another body was found this morning. Inside the study on the first floor.”

“Did you really have to talk about that in hiding?”

“The body had another note.”

“So, something was written.”

“It said, ‘It’ll be real elsewhere, Young-soo.'”

“That’s what it said?”

Kyung-soo quickly added from the side.

“If you think about it, the fact that such a message was left means you’re not the culprit. But people are so caught up in fear that they don’t think that far.”

“Don’t think that far?”

“Because your name came up in the note, they’re whispering that you seem to be related to the culprit.”

“I think I’m related to it too, though.”

“People are just imagining it in a bad way, that’s why.”

Rembrary blankly nodded at Cheol-soo’s cold words. I see.

“Still, I don’t think I need to be hiding, though.”

At Rembrary’s words, In-soo looked around the room and smiled.

“The people here have to catch the culprit within a week, no, now it’s three days.”

“?”

“What if they rush to pin it on you?”

Rembrary raised his eyebrows.

There’s no match for numbers, but out of the 20 participants, after excluding the dead and Rembrary’s group, the remaining number was about twelve.

That wasn’t a number that was so scary that he had to keep running away.

Because of the restriction that he had to follow the majority vote, Shin Jo-woon couldn’t easily take Rembrary’s side if Rembrary fought in front of people.

That’s why he deliberately brought Rembrary to the room separately, but to Rembrary, who didn’t know Shin Jo-woon’s role, he seemed too worried.

Rembrary was more concerned about the other thing.

‘This place is fake, but. It’ll be real elsewhere. Is this about Woo Sung-woo?’

Dying here is a fake death, but in the future, I’ll kill you for real…… something like that? If they’re making threats, it means they want something.

Rembrary looked back and forth between In-soo and Kyung-soo.

* * *

Meanwhile, Woo Sung-woo was still trapped in the dark room, not knowing why.

He wondered how he had gotten into this place. A room without doors or windows.

How long had he been there? When Woo Sung-woo, who was starting to feel hungry and thirsty, was in trouble.

Rembrary and Shin Jo-woon, who were talking, appeared in the mirror on one side of the room.

“Then what happens to Beep when we get out of here?”

“They said they don’t die. I think those employees are the eliminated ones.”

“Like the butler and cooks?”

The two people’s appearances were not the changed ones, but their real appearances. Their names were still being beeped out, though.

‘So, I was processed as dead. Then is the person who brought me the mirror the culprit?’

No, more than that, if I’m really trapped here because I was processed as dead, what happens?

Working here wasn’t the problem.

The problem was that he was a central figure playing a key role in Nakru [likely a group or organization within the story].

If he’s gone, their power will immediately decrease.

What about his younger sibling, who has become very dependent on him mentally after the two upheavals?

Rembrary and Shin Jo-woon in the mirror also seemed to be concerned about that, and they were talking about it.

‘If I could use my strength, I would try to get out. But using strength is completely blocked.’

Woo Sung-woo bit his lip anxiously.

It was truly a hopeless situation with all sides blocked. Just like this room he was trapped in.

At that time, a note appeared in front of the mirror.

“?”

Woo Sung-woo walked over to the note and picked it up.

—If you come to the Demon King, you can have freedom.

‘Are you kidding me?’

Do they think I’ll listen to this? Woo Sung-woo tore up the note in disbelief.

When he looked at it, the sentences written on the two torn pieces had changed.

—Don’t trust the High Priest too much.

—Don’t trust the High Priest too much, Woo Sung-woo.