abcnovels
Chapter 32: The Trend is Civil Service (3)
Chapter 32: The Trend is Civil Service (3)
At the center of the Anomaly Response Headquarters’ command center, the overly bright ceiling lights erased every shadow, illuminating a room where artifacts crafted with the aid of the Heavenly Demon Cult were strategically placed on the floor in specific patterns.
These installations were all prepared to prevent anomalies from infiltrating the command center.
After all, anomalies despised light, and the impurities of the Heavenly Demon Cult even more so.
On one side of the command center, there was a massive screen. It was the only screen in the world that could display events from the anomalies without any information contamination.
Currently, the screen was displaying the face of a man.
“To think such a psychic with noble rules and powerful abilities existed.”
The officers of the Anomaly Response Headquarters were in awe, having never encountered such a psychic who was neither contemptuous of the headquarters nor lacking in strength.
It was the leader of the Cheonji who had acknowledged the Anomaly Response Headquarters. To be precise, the leader had only promised to annihilate psychics who threatened to destroy the Anomaly Response Headquarters and the government of South Korea.
However, as long as the psychics did not bring about the country’s ruin with their misdeeds, the leader of the Cheonji turned a blind eye.
Ultimately, it seemed that the leader had little concern for the safety of the citizens.Yet, to think there was a powerful psychic who cared for this country.
The staff of the Anomaly Response Headquarters focused intently on the screen, hiding their astonishment.
“Now, I’m off to meet my end. Leave my body here and go on without me.”
These were the words of Director Lee Dok-jun.
And with that, he took out the black brush from his possession.
The black brush, once a traditional brush in ancient times, had transformed into a keyboard-like device in the modern era, known as a tool of the Heavenly Demon. Such tools were called Forbidden Artifacts.
A Forbidden Artifact is activated by consuming enlightenment.
Enlightenment, in essence, is the soul.
And Lee Dok-jun’s soul was nearly spent.
The staff of the Anomaly Response Headquarters silently saluted him, honoring his final moments.
Someday, they too might meet their end in the same manner.
Honorable and in the service of saving tens of thousands of lives.
Yet, some couldn’t help but shed tears at this sight.
It was at that moment.
“Wait, stop!!!”
Yoo Hajin, a psychic of the highest order, intervened before the Director could proceed.
What he said next left everyone in the Anomaly Response Headquarters utterly astonished.
“I’ll do it.”
* * *
“Wait, stop!!!”
Damn it, there goes my civil servant path!
I rushed forward, shouting out loud.
“I’ll do it.”
“Have you lost your mind? Didn’t I tell you that using this will weaken and eventually extinguish your psychic abilities?”
Extinguish psychic abilities?
What the heck is that, you nerd?
The scariest people in this world are those who have nothing to lose. And I’ve got nothing to lose in terms of psychic powers.
“Still, it’s not more precious than a human life.”
“What, what? Don’t psychics kill Buddhas upon meeting them, kill their masters upon meeting them, and kill their parents upon meeting them, all in the pursuit of enlightenment?”
“I’m not one of those despicable people. Give it to me.”
But the director wouldn’t hand over the keyboard. He looked at me and muttered.
“Think again. Losing your psychic abilities means losing the ability to read the heavens and foresee the future, losing the extended lifespan gained by accepting the heavens with your soul, losing various abilities like flight, clairvoyance, and mind manipulation. You know this, right?”
Psychics really are something else. Honestly, I’m jealous.
“Using this will make you lose those powers one by one. I appreciate the sentiment, but I can’t let someone else do this.”
“Then there’s no helping it.”
I stealthily approached and snatched the keyboard from the director.
Taking something from a middle-aged man was too easy for me.
It sounds weird when I put it like that, doesn’t it?
At that moment, the director shouted loudly.
“You, don’t do it, you’ll regret it!!!”
“I’ll regret it more if I leave the director to die.”
“Why are you doing this...”
Leaving the director to die and losing the chance to become a full-time civil servant?
I was so angry I felt like only putting vegetables on my plate for a month.
But then again, I realized vegetables are more expensive than meat. Anyway, that’s how much I’d regret it.
Holding the keyboard, I approached the tower. It seemed to be based on a real car, visible to my eyes. But how do I use this keyboard again?
Looking at the USB interface on the keyboard, I murmured.
“I guess I have to plug this in.”
Looking at the tower, there was a suspiciously placed USB port sticking out.
What if plugging this in summons a demon to finish me off?
Well, that would be even better. Without hesitation, I connected the keyboard to the tower.
A hologram-like display appeared. The hologram had the following messages:
===
[Web Notification][Safety Alert]
[Seoul Metropolitan Government]
An anomaly alert has been issued for the entire Seoul area
Citizens are advised to stay indoors
[Web Notification][Safety Alert]
[Seoul Metropolitan Government]
[Web Notification][Safety Alert]
[Ministry of Public Administration and Security]
[Web Notification][Safety Alert]
[Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency]
[Web Notification][Safety Alert]
[Seoul Metropolitan Government]
Safety alerts not issued by the government are currently being sent
Citizens are advised to ignore any messages other than the stay-indoors alerts
[Web Notification][Safety Alert]
[Pyeon Station]
===
“What a mess.”
A few visible safety alerts among mostly invisible ones. What kind of combination is this?
Thinking about it, there were a few phrases in the Pyeon Station manual that I couldn’t read either.
That’s when the director spoke.
“Are you seeing the safety alerts? Most of those alerts are contaminated by anomalies. Don’t look at them for too long.”
I see. The invisible alerts must have been written by ghosts.
So, I couldn’t read the ghost-contaminated messages after all.
Wouldn’t it be okay to let me read something like this? I’m really curious about what writings by a ghost would look like.
“So, what should we do now?”
“We need to create more safety alerts than those generated by the anomaly. The only thing that can beat information contamination is more information. The Forbidden Device, the black brush, is an extraordinary artifact capable of fixing manuals or information corrupted by anomalies. We can contaminate the anomalies with our essence instead of being contaminated by them.”
“So, you’re saying we need to create a lot of correct safety alerts with this keyboard.”
If only I had a mouse, I could show off my copy-paste skills.
Why is there a Heavenly Demon Keyboard but no Heavenly Demon Mouse?
===
[Web Notification][Safety Alert]
[Seoul Metropolitan Government]
Safety alerts not issued by the government are currently being sent
Citizens are advised to ignore any messages other than the stay-indoors alerts
[Web Notification][Safety Alert]
[Seoul Metropolitan Government]
[Web Notification][Safety Alert]
[Ministry of Public Administration and Security]
[Web Notification][Safety Alert]
[Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency]
===
“Yikes.”
For every safety alert I created, those things were churning out three. I’d need a typing speed of 800 characters per minute to keep up with this pace, but I’m not even close to 300. And the speed at which they’re generating is increasing so rapidly that not even copy-pasting seems fast enough anymore.
“Is this really the only way?”
I started rewriting the messages.
I’ll overwhelm them with sheer numbers. You see, safety alerts actually originated in England.
===
[Web Notification][Safety Alert]
[Seoul Metropolitan Government]
This safety alert started in England and is supposed to bring luck to the recipient as it travels around once a week. This message has now reached you and must leave your side within 10 minutes. If you do not forward this message, including this one, to a total of 20 people who need luck right now and then go inside your house...
===
There’s something funny about chain letters.
They’re called “luck letters,” but in reality, they’re more like curses. I’ve expanded the target of this curse from ordinary citizens to anomalies and evil spirits. Let’s see how they handle this message.
My phone immediately started vibrating.
===
[Web Notification][Safety Alert]
[Seoul Metropolitan Government]
This safety alert started in England and is supposed to bring luck to the recipient as it travels around once a week. This message has now reached you and must leave your side within 10 minutes. If you do not forward this message, including this one, to a total of 20 people who need luck right now and then go inside your house...
[Web Notification][Safety Alert]
[Seoul Metropolitan Government]
This safety alert started in England and is supposed to bring luck to the recipient as it travels around once a week. This message has now reached you and must leave your side within 10 minutes. If you do not forward this message, including this one, to a total of 20 people who need luck right now and then go inside your house...
===
I was flooded with safety alerts of good fortune from people I barely knew from part-time jobs or those whose faces I couldn’t even recall but somehow had exchanged phone numbers with.
The safety alerts inspired by ghosts poured in so overwhelmingly that they obscured visibility, creating a veritable deluge of good fortune alerts.
“We’ve solved one problem.”
I turned to Director Lee Dok-jun with a smile. Incredulous, he murmured into his phone, “After sending the lucky message, you must return home. No, this is, this is the message of a benefactor. It’s the message of a hero who sacrificed themselves to save others.”
I called out to him.
“Director Lee Dok-jun!”
“Ah, ah. You’ve come to your senses. Thank you, truly, thank you.”
Just then, unable to withstand the flood of excessive safety alerts, cracks began to spiderweb across the tower. Suddenly, the tower crumbled, breaking into pieces of what used to be a car. This sight would have been impossible if the tower hadn’t been made from a real car.
The director wiped away tears.
Even grown men cry like this.
“I never thought I’d live to see this day.”
With a look of deep emotion, the director said to me,
“You must have lost quite a bit of your ability? I’m truly sorry.”
“It’s nothing. I was just doing my part as a resident here.”
How’s that for a max-level social skill comment?
Hearing my words, the director burst into laughter.
“A resident here, you say? To think a strong person like you would live in such a place. No, you were protecting the poor here. I heard that an apartment called Louaville, eerily similar to that ominous place, only charges 50,000 won a month. But they say there’s always a victim every few months.”
“There haven’t been any victims lately. Not many people live there, though.”
And it’s not Louaville, it’s Louisville.
I didn’t correct him.
He might become my boss in the future, after all.
The director, as if making up his mind, blinked and then handed me something from his pocket. It was a black USB.
“What’s this?”
“This is the biometric key for our Anomaly Response Headquarters’ website. By recognizing this, you’ll become one of the administrators of the Anomaly Response Headquarters’ site, just like our directors. You wouldn’t believe how much the Celestial Order covets this, it’s quite a headache.”
“Oh?”
An administrator of the site? Could this possibly mean an immediate job offer?
“Damn, I mean, thank you so much.”
I bowed deeply in gratitude. In response, the director bowed even deeper than I had.
“No, I should be the one thanking you. Truly.”
I wanted to outdo him by bowing even lower, screaming ‘I can’t lose!’ in my head, but I restrained myself.
After seeing the director off at the nearby bus stop, I strutted back to Louisville with my shoulders as high as Everest.
As soon as I got home, I performed the biometric recognition through the USB and created my ID. Now, I was an administrator of the Anomaly Response Headquarters site, essentially a civil servant.
“Wow, I can take down users’ posts at will, track what posts a user has made, and block them whenever I feel like it?”
This is practically being a tyrant of the site. But as a public servant, I must act with decorum. Just as I was about to delve deeper into the site functionalities,
“Ah, I’m so exhausted I could die. I’m going to take a shower.”
At that moment, Jamsuni entered my room, whining and soaked in sweat.
“Ugh, you stink of sweat. Go shower in your own room.”
“My room’s a mess right now. I’m crashing here tonight.”
“Again? Jamsuni, you’ve been making a lot of excuses lately.”
“What can I do.”
The sound of water pouring echoed as Jamsuni spoke.
“Did something good happen today?”
“Good thing? Ah, should I tell you about this.”
I chuckled and then told Jamsuni.
“I got a job. As a site administrator.”
“Site administrator? What site?”
“It’s related to anomalies...”
“There are tons of sites related to anomalies. No, what exactly do you do as an administrator?”
Good question.
What do I actually do as an administrator?
I hadn’t asked about that.
“Taking down posts, blocking users, tracking users...?”
“What? That’s just like a forum moderator. You idiot, how is that a job?”
“Jamsuni, what, what are you talking about?”
“Hey, forum moderators and admins work unpaid. Managing a site for free.”
What kind of nonsense is this?
I exclaimed in shock again.
“Who in their right mind would do that for free?”
“Ah, don’t you know? It’s common knowledge that wearing the badge means getting abused and removing objectionable content for free. I told you about this before.”
Ah, right.
I think I heard something like that.
Not getting paid and doing that 24/7???
Are anomalies even a big deal??? Those are the real anomalies!!!
This world is too scary!!!!
I collapsed to my knees, murmuring.
“I should have started with a contract.”
And so, another day of uproar at Louisville passed.
– – – The End of The Chapter – – –
[TN: You can support the translation and read 5 chapters ahead of the release here on Patreon: /Bill94 ]