Chapter 5: Welcome to Extraction Team 1

“Huhk…!”

I opened my eyes gasping and saw a ceiling different from the office’s.

A completely white ceiling, illuminated by sterile lights and perfectly clean, like a dried and stretched membrane.

It looked suffocatingly cold.

I tried to get up instinctively, but at that moment my arms, firmly tucked beneath the blanket, resisted stiffly.

Something was stuck in my wrist.

‘…Where am I?’

When I slowly turned my head, a place both strangely familiar and unfamiliar appeared.

A stretcher with medical charts, shelves neatly arranged with medicine, an immaculate white space, and even a small infirmary bed.

It looked like a completely normal infirmary.

Except for certain impossible things.

For example, a jar with pulsating eyeballs inside.

Glass tubes glowing like frozen black blood.

And emergency equipment connected to something beating like a heart.

My gaze finally stopped at the end of the IV needle stuck in my arm.

The liquid slowly flowing through the tube looked far from a normal saline solution.

It was a murky fluorescent green liquid.

A crooked label was attached to it that read.

“Vitality Potion (Industrial Use)”

And bubbles floated inside the liquid, violently boiling from time to time.

It looked very similar to the things I had seen yesterday in that extraction room.

A chill ran down my spine.

I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I was absolutely certain it wasn’t ordinary saline.

“No… this can’t be.”

I grabbed the IV tube with trembling hands.

My arm throbbed as though trying to warn me while I forcefully pulled to rip it out—

Shhk.

The curtains suddenly opened, shattering the silence.

And the thing that appeared behind them wasn’t very human either.

It wore a white coat.

The typical clean coat of a hospital doctor.

But protruding from inside were dozens of black gelatinous tentacles.

The tentacles slowly crawled across the floor.

Some held stethoscopes on their own.

Others carefully cleaned sharp metal forceps.

And a few slithered while brushing against the tips of my feet.

‘At least it dresses like a doctor.’

In this damned company, if something wears a coat, it’s a doctor, and if it wears a tie, it’s an office worker.

Apparently having too many arms or melted legs doesn’t affect job evaluations.

When the creature slowly lifted the sleeve of its coat, a bunch of shiny flesh masses resembling tongues protruded from inside.

One of them wriggled like a tongue and spoke.

“Pa-tient awa-ke on his o-own. Excellent reco-very. Marvelo-us.”

Every time that tentacle-made mouth pronounced words, the syllables warped like melting jelly.

A voice filled with an unpleasant sensation.

The grotesque doctor took another step toward me while making wet and sticky sounds.

Inside the coat, unknown organs and protrusions twisted around, producing repulsive noises.

“Reco-very confirmed. Enough rest.”

One of the transparent tentacles took the IV and skillfully removed the needle before pressing gauze against the wound.

It had no gloves or fingernails.

Only a layer of mucus coating its surface, releasing a scent similar to disinfectant.

“You are fine now. You may return to work.”

“Ah… thank you, doctor… I suppose.”

Instinctively, I ended up speaking to it respectfully.

The mere fact that that mass of tentacles wore a white coat was enough to grant it a professional title.

To survive in this company, intuition and manners were mandatory.

The tentacle doctor seemed satisfied and lightly waved one of its tentacles.

I didn’t know whether that meant “goodbye” or “next time we’ll meet during lunch.”

Clack.

At that moment, the infirmary door opened and familiar footsteps began approaching.

A firm walk.

And an unpleasant sensation that was all too familiar.

I automatically turned my head.

“Oh— you’re awake already, rookie?”

Hand Head.

Not Assistant Manager Son.

A large-built man dressed in a completely normal suit.

But when I saw the fist atop his head opening and closing again, a wave of nausea ran straight through my brain.

“You fainted, huh? Health is important in this company too.”

“Ah… yes. I think I pushed myself too hard even before coming here. I stayed up all night preparing to find employment… but I’m fine now.”

It was a surprisingly natural and calm lie even to myself.

Fear instantly turned me into an actor.

The forced smile remained perfectly attached to my face.

“Hahaha, I see! Young people these days really do work hard. I like seeing that hardworking attitude!”

‘I don’t want praise from you….’

To begin with, how the hell did he even speak?

He had no mouth or human head.

Where was the sound coming from?

When I slightly turned my head again, the hand serving as Assistant Manager Son’s head was opening its fingers and slowly waving them as if greeting me.

“The serum was special, so you should already be full of energy. Let’s hurry, lunch break ended a while ago already. Manager Myeon more or less handled the morning work.”

“Yes. Thank you. I’ll get ready immediately.”

I carefully followed Assistant Manager Son out of the infirmary while slowly getting off the bed.

My legs were still trembling slightly, but I held myself together solely through my determination not to faint a second time.

After the tentacle doctor lightly patted my cheek with one of its tentacles and left, I finally managed to leave the infirmary.

Assistant Manager Son was already leaning against the wall outside the door.

The fist atop his head twitched again before speaking.

“What a shame about lunch. Our cafeteria is excellent. The menu is always very fresh.”

No matter how much I thought about it, I seriously doubted that this company cafeteria served anything like fresh bibimbap or duck salad.

“Yes. What a shame.”

“Or maybe you’re the type who brings homemade lunch like Manager Batori.”

“Yes. Honestly, I prefer bringing my own food.”

The answer came out automatically.

At the very least, if I brought my own lunch, I’d have an excuse not to go to the cafeteria with Hand Head.

Upon hearing my response, Assistant Manager Son’s head made a clicking sound while one of his fingers struck the thumb.

“That explains it! Our rookie really is diligent! Then let’s finish work quickly too.”

With the sound of the infirmary door closing behind me, I once again advanced toward another nightmare.

“By the way, Haeil… what did you study?”

As he walked beside me, Assistant Manager Son continued slowly opening and closing the enormous hand he had for a head.

Crack, crk.

Every syllable driven into my brain was accompanied by the sound of the joints in that fist twisting, like bones scraping against one another.

Every time that hand slowly opened and closed, I felt as though unfamiliar joints were creaking inside my own body.

I never imagined the day would come when a monster would ask me typical job interview questions.

“I studied Psychology. But I dropped out of university when I became a noncommissioned officer, so technically I only finished high school.”

I kept my head slightly lowered to avoid making eye contact while responding.

Though of course, since he didn’t actually have eyes, it really didn’t matter where I looked.

“Oh, what a peculiar background. And I like that you studied Psychology. Mental fortitude is quite important in our department.”

I was already feeling that down to my bones.

Assistant Manager Son slightly tightened his fist.

“Anyway, you did well joining our team. Extraction Team 1 is quite a good department.”

“…Yes, it seems that way.”

I replied while trying to sound as sincere as possible.

The fluorescent lights at the end of the hallway flickered faintly as we crossed that irregular space.

The floor was impeccably polished, but on the reflected surface, I felt as though the shadow of someone who wasn’t me was following behind.

Ignore it.

Getting used to it is the only way to survive.

“Almost everyone here is talented, and our team always has the best performance. Of course, that also makes some people look at us resentfully, but properly extracting from dimensional entities is impressive no matter what.”

“Extracting… from dimensional entities?”

“Yes. You know, those little buddies you saw yesterday during the tour.”

Hearing that unfamiliar word again, I asked without thinking.

Assistant Manager Son nodded.

Or rather moved his wrist.

Whatever counted as nodding for him.

“We extract the energy source from them. Most remain isolated under control.”

Although saying “isolated under control” was pretty debatable considering I had made eye contact with them and could even feel them on my skin.

“The work we do consists of drawing a stable amount of energy every day from those isolated entities. It’s like milking cows, I guess.”

“Ah….”

“Sounds complicated, right? Don’t worry. We’ll teach you everything. Normally we also do field work, but lately we’ve been resting a bit. The Anomalous Disaster Management Department has been causing too much commotion.”

Faced with that flood of incomprehensible terms, I forced a smile.

“The extracted energy then goes to the Refinement Team. There they remove impurities, and afterward they send it to the Fusion Team. And the Fusion Team uses that to….”

Assistant Manager Son lightly rubbed his fist.

The movement of that palm without warmth or sweat sent a chill down the back of my neck.

“No, there’s no need to explain that much to you yet. Do you have any questions?”

“Then… the dimensional entities….”

“Yes?”

“No, it’s nothing. I was just curious about how you handle dimensional entities.”

As I swallowed the questions that kept surfacing, I thought about it.

The baby monster from Human Resources.

The seven-faced Manager Myeon.

Assistant Manager Son with the fist-shaped head.

The tentacle doctor from the infirmary.

Why weren’t they considered dimensional entities, but employees instead?

They definitely resembled the absurd monsters I had seen yesterday in the extraction room.

No, in fact they were even more grotesque.

But they told me their names, held positions, carried conversations, and sometimes even laughed.

There was something different.

Definitely different.

But I couldn’t understand what it was.

“We’re here.”

Assistant Manager Son said.

I raised my head.

In front of me stood the heavy metal door I had seen yesterday.

The red letters reading “Extraction Room — Sector D” glowed faintly across it.

Beside the door was a scanning panel large enough to accept something much bigger than Assistant Manager Son’s palm.

The assistant manager tilted his head and pressed his head against it.

That is, his hand.

Beep—

An absurdly cheerful electronic tone sounded, and the door slowly opened.

“Welcome, rookie. This is the place where we’ll spend most of our time working.”

I stepped inside the extraction room.

It was a space with a strange texture, as though metal, glass, and organic flesh had been mixed together.

Countless isolation chambers lined the walls.

And inside them, indescribable creatures continued writhing.

All of them had different forms.

Some floated in the air, pulsing like gigantic hearts.

Others combined bones, fur, and blood vessels while reproducing themselves and muttering something incomprehensible.

And others rolled across the floor in states impossible to distinguish between liquid and solid while constantly destroying and reconstructing their own structure.

Each isolation chamber was connected to complex tubes, and through them a reddish, viscous liquid was being pumped.

All of that liquid eventually gathered inside an enormous transparent tank positioned in the center, where it concentrated and churned as though it were fuel…
or blood.

This was the extraction site.

And those things were the dimensional entities.

The place where I would work.

The work I would have to do.

The dizziness struck me again.

My vision wavered and the world began to sway.

And then something strange crossed my field of vision.

‘…What is that?’

That was when I saw her.

In the middle of that extraction room overflowing with grotesque monstrosity stood a person.

She wore a white coat.

Her long, completely white straight hair fell to her waist.

On her skin, so pale it looked transparent, not a single blood vessel could be seen.

Her eyes were a deep ruby red, yet carried an inexplicable sadness and emptiness.

Cold.

Beautiful.

I exhaled unconsciously.

Her appearance was so perfect that even looking at her felt disrespectful.

It was as though she gathered all the beauty in the world into a single existence.

Her mere presence resembled a mirage of salvation.

A balance.

The fact that there was a living person there and moreover, someone so noble and dignified just that alone made something inside me collapse.

My legs began trembling.

“…Haeil?”

I heard Assistant Manager Son’s voice beside me, but it sounded distant, like an echo inside an enormous water tank.

I only looked at her.

She didn’t even turn toward me.

She simply stood in front of a gigantic isolation chamber calmly reviewing some sort of record.

It no longer mattered what she was doing.

At least in this moment, I felt overwhelmingly relieved by the mere existence of that woman.

And exactly three seconds later, that feeling was shattered to pieces.

“You’ve arrived. You’re quite late.”

She spoke without even turning her head.

Her voice was beautiful and clear, like jade beads rolling across glass.

But behind the tablet she was holding, something red began dripping.

Drop.

Drop.

It wasn’t ink.

It was the metallic smell of blood.

“Ah, Manager Batori. The rookie fainted this morning. We took him to the infirmary to put him on an IV.”

At Assistant Manager Son’s report, she slowly turned her head.

Skin white as porcelain.

Red lips.

A perfect face.

But the instant my eyes caught the red stain around her lips—

Riiip.

With a nauseating sound, her cherry-like lips split open all the way to her ears.

The skin tore apart, revealing sharp shark-like fangs and a gigantic red maw.

All the beauty from before vanished.

In front of me remained only the monstrous mouth of a predator.

“Hooh… So this child is the new member of my lineage you were talking about?”

Between her torn lips, a tongue as long as a serpent’s slowly slid out and licked the red liquid around her mouth.

‘Ah…….’

I had truly felt relieved.

Because I thought I wasn’t insane.

Because I believed I had seen a noble existence.

But the moment those beautiful cheeks split apart, I felt as though I had seen the true nature of an angel hidden behind the mask of the Bible.

The beauty was a lie.

And the truth melted my spinal marrow from my feet upward.

While staring at that grotesquely torn face, the only thing I could do was desperately cling to my consciousness so I wouldn’t faint from fear.

Her elegant voice carried a soft metallic tremor, like an old classical music record playing on an antique gramophone.

“You really do seem very fragile. Such a miserable and repressed face. The taste of your blood… no, your expression… is extremely delicate.”

There was something strange in the way she spoke.

She was definitely smiling.

But it was the smile of a beast licking its lips before eating.

I stood completely frozen.

The certainty that I had found a human being shattered into pieces with every word she spoke.

“So… you are Jeong Haeil, correct?”

Creak, creak.

Beneath the elegant curve of her neck came the sound of vertebrae turning like gears.

Her head twisted grotesquely nearly one hundred and eighty degrees to look directly at me.

I felt a horrible dizziness, as though I were staring at an unfocused world.

“I’ll remember you. Now that you’ve become a member of my lineage, I hope you survive for a long time.”

Those words were not encouragement.

They were a prophecy.

A curse, or perhaps simply the desire of a gourmet contemplating fresh blood before tasting it.