I Became a Monster in a T*ash Game

“Where the hell is the entrance?”
“Over there.”
Following Joo-o’s fingertip, Muhae spotted a slight depression among the overgrown weeds. He approached cautiously, ripped away the vines, and revealed a sturdy iron door blocking the entrance.
If even the sole entryway was so overrun with vines, it hadn’t opened in ages.
Yet there were too many signs of human hands here for it to be truly abandoned. Whoever came and went must have been more than some ghost in a silly campfire tale.
Muhae slid his hand through a small hole and grasped the lever. Clank—it felt stuck.
“It won’t open.”
“Is it broken?”
“No. Somebody must’ve rigged it this way on purpose.”
It didn’t seem without power. Normally a shelter’s door stays locked until it receives energy, then unlocks—but here, the lock felt actively energized and immovable.
“They must’ve installed a separate recognition key.”
In the slums, any valuable security device would be ripped off immediately, so they rarely used door locks—whereas wealthier districts often installed them. It’s convenient—you don’t need a physical key—but lose your Link-Watch or corrupt its chip, and you’re locked out for good.
Fortunately, city techs can pick such locks. Unfortunately, that means in a risky place like this, no one’s coming to help.
“Joo-o. Do you think someone’s inside?”
At the question, Joo-o’s ears twitched and his eyes darted. After a long pause, he answered confidently:
“No. I don’t hear any human voices.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing.”
Only then did Muhae return his taser to its holster and begin scanning the area. This region had recorded anomaly sightings.
No doubt it would be a harsh environment. So whoever lost their chip or Watch would need a backup way to open the door…
“They must’ve left a backup recognition key.”
“Teacher Jung said hiding something important outside the door is stupid.”
“That’s because you kept shoving Tinkle-whatever under hospital doors.”
Ignoring Joo-o’s chatter, Muhae started poking every suspicious spot—open ground, matted earth—until he tore away a patch of vine to reveal a flat device mounted on the wall. Tapping it did nothing, but when he pressed his Link-Watch to it, a red dot illuminated on the surface.
A simplified symbol: two squiggly lines inside a rectangle, looking like a tiny footpath carved in earth.
“Jin Muhae.”
Just then, Joo-o waved from afar, pointing to another identical device on the wall. Ugh—there was more than one of these stupid things.

“Mini-game.”
“What kind of game?”
Sure enough, there were three devices in all, each displaying a cryptic symbol: one was a circle peppered like chocolate chips, another looked like a stylized human pictogram.
As Muhae stared, the dots blinked out. When he pressed his Watch again, all three symbols shifted positions.
“Oh, they turned off.”
Joo-o slapped Muhae’s pad without permission and squealed. Absurdly, any electronic device, it seemed, could serve as a key—once recognized.
‘Maybe there’s an order,’ Muhae guessed, but before he could speak,
“You probably have to press them in order, or they shut off again.”
Even this strange kid could come to a similar conclusion. Useful, but kind of bruising to his pride.
So to retrieve a recognition key, they had to tap the devices in sequence within a time limit. Given their distance—one even atop a bulging wall—they’d need flawless execution, or they’d run out of time without a drone.
“Want me to do that one over there?”
If he were alone, sure. But Joo-o waved from beside the far device, laughing.
“How would you know the order?”
At Muhae’s sharp question, Joo-o froze—poor kid had forgotten the crucial detail.
Of course, with only three devices, the possible patterns were limited. Muhae didn’t bother explaining and simply tapped the Watch to the nearest device.
Blink. The human-shaped symbol lit up, then went dark again.
Not that one. The remaining symbols were earth and sky.
“Before it was sky. Then earth.”
“…Right. Good.”
Muhae raised an eyebrow and activated the symbol. Was that earth or sky? It all looked like a square pad or a cookie.
Just then a strange pattern flashed through his mind: square, circle, triangle.
“Got it!”
Joo-o’s shout rang out as the circular pattern filled Muhae’s vision. Though it felt like a wild guess, Muhae obeyed, pressing his wrist out.
Click. The symbol locked in place. Alert, he sprinted half a lap around the building, nimbly stepping on the wall bulge to reach the final device.
The triangular dotted human pictogram glowed. He pressed his Watch, and Vrrr— it hummed against his wrist as if receiving a signal.
Security download blocked.
[Delete] [Ignore and Execute]
‘Not a hacking file or anything…’ The Link-Watch, which had so helplessly locked down the data center when he received his father’s research, now displayed a warning.
After retrieving the recognition key, Muhae tore away the vines covering the entrance and inserted his left hand into the hole again. He pulled the lever—Beek-—a soft signal beep—and the door swung open smoothly.
On the Watch screen, an unfamiliar confirmation window appeared:
ACCESS GRANTED.
A phrase he’d never seen while using his Watch. Whatever it meant, it felt off—if he ran into trouble later, he’d have to report back to Boss Gil.
“The air is nice.”
Joo-o, trailing behind, took a deep breath. As expected, the interior power must’ve been intact, running the air filtration system.
Pushing open the inner door, they entered what looked like an ordinary house, redolent with the scent of inhabited life. Someone had squatted here, patching it up just enough to live.
Of course, “neat” it was not: cups with dried drinks lay ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ everywhere, and near an old computing console, signs of long-term living were obvious.
Wheee-
Powering it on, the dusty monitor flickered to life with surprisingly smooth booting. The first thing that struck him was the language: letters he’d never seen in Goryeo or Seogyeong City, jumbled and baffling.
‘Damn.’
He must’ve come to the right place. Muhae rubbed the back of his neck and studied the faintly recognizable file names. This unauthorized occupant was definitely a Solar City researcher. He didn’t know where the person was now, but at least the research remains stayed intact.
‘Is this… um… an experiment?’
Recalling the long-forgotten language bit by bit, Muhae read through each file. Of course he couldn’t understand. Even in his native tongue, it would be gibberish.
He scrolled through folders and found a few ridiculous programs—the most notable projected holograms of anomalies outside the building, tricking visitors into thinking a shelter had illusions of beasts stalking them.
No one likely came by, but if they did at night, they’d flee in terror.
“Jin Muhae.”
At that moment, Joo-o, who’d been darting around the rooms, called him. He burst into the living room clutching something.
A translucent medicine bottle. Cleaned and dried from reuse, its surface bore a few scratches.
When Muhae glanced back at the ordinary object, Joo-o tugged his sleeve and turned the bottle upside down.
“Look at this.”
Etched on the bottom was a familiar image: an intricate sun symbol…
‘What is this?’
‘Solar City. I saw it in Solar City.’
His heart thudded. A foreboding sensation rose instinctively as recent memories flickered before his eyes—the half-destroyed mini-aircraft at Burkta, the red-cross first-aid kit Joo-o had found, the bones picked clean by something that wasn’t miners or Goryeo City folk.
“Where did you get it?”
“Over there.”
In the corner of the room, identical bottles and tubes were stacked neatly. On top of that, clothes and broken machine parts lay around.
…Coincidence? Now that he looked, the cleared ground in front of the shelter matched the size needed for a VTOL aircraft.
And the vines covering the door had grown thick as if untouched for weeks.
Yet hidden here, the clothes were of such high quality—every fabric he touched was soft and durable.
“I’ve never seen this before, connected.”
Joo-o said, grinning in wonder, as though he didn’t realize the gravity.
Muhae clenched the bottle with a cold expression, recalling the jet-black bones.