102 - Piece

TL/Editor: raei Schedule: 5/week

Illustrations: None.

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The statue firmly shook its head at Lee Yeonwoo's reasonable proposal to erase the house from the outside with the eraser.

"Even if I'm destroyed here, I can't give you the eraser. I can't do anything that would harm my master."

"What nonsense! Bring the eraser here now!"

"Isn't this your doing? Take responsibility."

"I told you, I don't know anything about this!"

The two intruders started bickering among themselves.

Yeonwoo's brow furrowed before he quickly composed himself. Various thoughts flashed through his mind. Among them, a usable idea emerged.

'They don't know I caused this rampage. I think I can bluff and threaten them...'

After preparing the dice just in case, he glanced at the blacked-out text. When he spoke, his voice was icy, revealing a chilling intent.

"You've left my house in this state and won't clean it up? Fine. I'll resort to threats now."

"Any threat is fine."

"You said you investigated me. Then you must know what anomaly I possess."

The dice.

Though not without anxiety, it was his final card to turn the situation around and a powerful basis for threatening or persuading his opponents.

Suddenly, the two intruders stopped arguing and fixed their gaze on the camera where the voice was coming from. They clearly knew the basic information too.

"You seem so loyal to the sculptor. If you don't bring the eraser right now, I'll blow off the sculptor's arm."

"It doesn't matter. We can repair that much damage."

The statue didn't seem to care.

The Free Artists Association was quite large in scale.

They rarely cooperated and sometimes fought among themselves over art, so they lacked unity. However, they possessed many anomalies, and the director wielded considerable influence.

On top of that, as artists who create works, they could easily repair most damage.

But Yeonwoo had the dice.

"Heart attack, brain hemorrhage, all kinds of diseases and accidents. Can you recover from all of that too?"

"We can resurrect from that level."

"What if I make it so you can never do art again? Twisting your mind, taking away your senses, making you hate sculpture, turning you into an idiot. Should I go on?"

"..."

"Oh, you'll recover from that too? But I never said I'd only do it once."

The statue's mouth finally closed at the endless threats. Continuous and varied threats. The statue bowed its head, lost in thought.

'The master won't care. He thinks trials add to inspiration. But.'

The risk was too great. Of course, Yeonwoo might die while doing such things if he met the house's conditions, but there was also a high chance he could defend against it.

Finally, the statue looked at the camera.

"I have no choice. I'll bring the eraser. But please forget any grudges from today's events. I'm risking my life here, aren't I?" sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ N0vᴇlFirᴇ.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of nøvels early and in the highest quality.

"I'll do that."

And so the negotiation concluded.

The statue risked its life to borrow the architect's phone and make calls. The architect rolled his eyes nervously, while Yeonwoo observed them, gauging safe actions.

---

---

It would take time for the eraser to arrive.

Yeonwoo stared intently at the sentence "A house that kills you if you ██". Concentrating with all his might, he tried to read the ██ that had escaped recognition.

'Perception distortion. I can't break through with my mental strength.'

How could he figure out the conditions? He tried, but it didn't work. The more he looked, the dizzier he felt, his vision spinning.

Yeonwoo finally sighed. His survival instinct stirred, adding to the ominous imagination.

Unknown conditions. A trigger that kills people.

The number of possible ways to die approached infinity. He could die from drinking water, from sleeping, from his heart beating a hundred thousand times, from opening a door, from leaving the house...

'Don't think too much. I might go crazy at this rate.'

His mind grew more haggard the more he thought. As he tried to calm his pounding heart while looking at the dice, the architect's voice rang out.

"Urgh... Teacher living in the abandoned house. I didn't do anything wrong, but I made a mistake. Please forgive me just this once."

"..."

Yeonwoo looked at the CCTV screen with an incredulous expression. Is he mocking me now?

The architect, his face pressed close to the camera, bowed his head with a pale complexion. He looked properly scared after hearing the threats made to the statue.

"I'll take on 3 commissions! 3 commissions for free! Do you know how valuable an opportunity this is?"

"..."

Yeonwoo didn't respond, but inwardly he cursed.

'These crazy bastards... I really shouldn't get involved with the artist types.'

He definitely didn't want to meet them as enemies, and he didn't want to meet them as colleagues either. Their way of thinking and behavior were far from normal.

Yeonwoo quickly shook his head to clear his thoughts and watched the video sent by the company.

Video footage from when the eraser was stolen.

"Charge!"

An army of statues that burst out of a huge canvas charged towards a building. Lions, knights, mounted knights, monsters - their numbers exceeded a hundred.

Boom boom boom, the ground shook.

"Fire!"



The security guards lined up at the building entrance fired tasers and guns, but to little effect.

They charged with lightning snakes coiled around their bodies, and kept running even with broken arms and legs. The distance finally closed.

Aaaaagh, screams echoed. Bitten by lion statues, necks flying from knights' swords, crushed under monsters' feet.

That's when the agent Yeonwoo had seen at the Creating A Better World factory stepped forward, raising his hand holding the eraser.

"Get out of the way!"

The eraser was drawn. Its trajectory. The statues crowding the street and building entrance were erased in an instant. With successive sweeps of his hand, the street emptied.

Trees were erased, the asphalt road stripped away, streetlights with their bodies erased fell with a thud, a few statues barely dodged, losing body parts.

But Yeonwoo let out a sigh.

'If you don't guard the perimeter like that...'

His head bowed and gaze lowered to erase the statues on the ground.

And an eagle statue falling from above.

With a flutter, the eagle statue clung to the front of the helmet, obscuring his vision, and insect statues falling from the air burrowed into the agent's combat uniform.

For a moment the agent hesitated. If he swung the eraser carelessly, he'd erase himself too.

Seizing that gap, a few more statues fell from the sky, and one insect shaped like scissors cleanly severed the agent's wrist.

The eraser rolled on the ground with the hand. A pigeon statue quickly snatched up the eraser and took it away. The statue, painted to look like a real pigeon, escaped the frame in an instant.

That's where the video ended.

Yeonwoo shook his head.

'If it had been that doomsday cultist, he wouldn't have been caught so easily.'

In terms of skill, instinct, and many other aspects. Looking at it simply, he would have erased just the insects when they clung to his body.

Just then, the statue's voice was heard.

"It's here. Don't come in. Start erasing little by little from out there."

Yeonwoo looked at the CCTV screen. A camera pointing outside. A pigeon holding the eraser was flying in the sky that had cleared of rain.

A sigh of relief escaped involuntarily.

'The shelter is a shame, but at least it's resolved.'

As the pigeon made small circles, its talon holding the eraser twitched slightly. At that moment, Yeonwoo and the two intruders' eyes sparkled with anticipation.

Crack-

Suddenly, cracks appeared on the pigeon's body, then it shattered to pieces right there. Marble fragments rained down like rain.

"..."

"..."

The pigeon died. Outside the house's range.

Yeonwoo suddenly clenched his fist. Had he underestimated the product of critical failure too much? Had he been too complacent, thinking minor actions would be fine?

'The condition... A house that kills if you attack? If so, what's the range of effect?'

If someone fired a missile at this house from the other side of the Earth, the person who fired the missile would die. So would an anomaly that launched an abnormal attack.

Yeonwoo quickly shook his head to clear his stray thoughts.

'Anyway, I know the condition now. It's not "a house that kills if you think about it" or "a house that kills if you look at it". That's something at least.'

Thinking he could stay in the shelter with this level of conditions, Yeonwoo sat comfortably in the chair. In some ways, it had become even safer.

Wouldn't it kill all attackers trying to assault the house?

Outside, the architect jumped for joy, shouting:

"It's a simple condition! Let's get out of here quickly! I don't want to stay here a second longer! Teacher living in the abandoned house, contact the Free Artists Association if you have any commissions!"

The architect left the statue behind and ran splashing through the rain-soaked grounds and-

"Ugh!"

The next moment, his heart stopped and he collapsed. Face planted in the mud, he fell like a statue. His limbs motionless.

Yeonwoo's face turned pale. His voice trembled as he spoke.

"Is... is he dead?"

"...Yes."

"Why?"

Wasn't the condition about attacks? Did he have a heart attack or something? No, no. These thoughts aren't helpful.

He had to assume the worst. Right now, the most life-threatening case.

'...What if this thing is alive? What if the conditions keep changing?'

Yeonwoo looked at the text with shaking eyes.

A house that kills you if you ██.

The blacked-out text seemed to writhe. With malice, with murderous intent.

Goosebumps rose on Yeonwoo's skin. An eerie sensation touched his skin. It felt like he had entered a monster's maw.

'The condition isn't what matters.'

A house that kills. A house that kills people. The product of a critical failure. The worst enemy created by the dice.

His mind snapped to alertness as if doused with ice water. He was inside an anomaly designed solely to kill. Inside something that could kill him without even the possibility of resurrection.

'I'm truly f*cked.'

If this thing killed him, then changed its condition to a house that kills if you resurrect...

The most intense danger to his life ever.

Yeonwoo clasped his trembling hands and brought them to his mouth. His heart pounded as endless vitality coursed through his body, and his sharpened senses spread in all directions.

With the feeling of wearing a bomb necklace, Yeonwoo desperately searched for a way to survive.

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