I Activated Cheat Mode in a Bizarre Game

The next morning, I was double-checking the address Choi Yerim had sent me last night, preparing to storm into that so-called nature-worshipping religious group’s building.
But just as I was about to leave the house, my phone rang—it was Cheolsu.
“Minjun, I think today’s going to be our last request. But actually… there’s something I wanted to tell you in advance…”

His voice carried a tension I hadn’t heard before.
He added that this time, unlike previous jobs, the place they were headed might be dangerous.
So if I didn’t want to come, he said it was totally fine to sit this one out.

“Why take on such a dangerous request?”
“Heh… Honestly, we’re in a bit of debt, and the reward for this one is just too good to pass up. I was hoping to clear the debt and maybe… buy a ring.”
“A ring?”

“You probably didn’t know, but… I actually have feelings for Younghee. After this job, I was planning to confess.”
Didn’t know? It had been painfully obvious.
Still, this…

…Wasn’t this a flag?
Lines like that always spelled disaster in horror movies or war films.
“After this mission, I’ll confess to her.”

“I’ll come.”
“Really? Thank you!”
The moment I heard him say that, there was no way I could just let the two of them go alone.

It felt like something bad would happen if I did.
They had started out as mere surveillance targets, but now I was genuinely worried about those two innocent people.
In the end, I decided to postpone my investigation by a day and help them with their final mission.
When I arrived at the office, Cheolsu and Younghee handed me a juice as always.

Shun, unusually, had a bright expression on his face.
He must’ve overheard Cheolsu’s emotional confession.
Maybe the frustration he’d been feeling finally eased a bit.

“This time, there might not even be an item. The retrieval is just a bonus—the real mission is to investigate the basement of a building where an anomaly is suspected.”
“Still, we figured having two strong people with us just in case would be reassuring.”
Despite their warnings, the two of them thanked us for coming to help.

A reconnaissance mission. Definitely more dangerous than the previous retrieval jobs.
Younghee showed us the address listed on the request.
But when I looked at the screen she held out, I instantly recognized it.

“…This place.”
It was the same address I had been staring at all night.
The one from the anomaly gallery post Choi Yerim had sent me.

The one mentioned by Dongto Team 2.
The exact location of the religious facility of that nature-worshipping cult.
And then it came back to me—the reason we’d been assigned to watch these two in the first place.

The serial disappearances of small anomaly offices.
The cult.
And now Cheolsu and Younghee’s final request.

It felt as if some invisible hand had been guiding us to this very place from the start.
I said nothing and nodded. We were heading straight to the epicenter of everything.
“All these cars are going to the same place.”

“Huh… yeah. What are the chances they’d overlap like this?”
On the way to the religious group’s building in Cheolsu’s car, I couldn’t shake the sense that something was off.
And the moment we arrived, that ominous feeling became reality.

Despite it being a weekday afternoon, the church-like building in front of us was surrounded by parked cars.
Among the people stepping out of those cars were several familiar faces—people I’d seen in passing at Baekho HQ, other search team members, and even some of the surveillance targets who ran small anomaly offices.
Among the parked vehicles was one I recognized immediately.

Team 10’s car.
It was the same one Bora and Park Sunja had been assigned for stakeout duties.
I excused myself and walked straight over to it.

When I tapped on the window, Bora and Park Sunja—who had been watching us warily—jumped in surprise, lowered the window, and greeted me.
“Minjun—no, oppa! You’re here too?!”
“What is going on here? Why is everyone…”

Apparently, Bora had become pretty comfortable calling me "oppa."
When I asked, both of them answered with stiff expressions—it wasn’t good.
“We just figured it out, too. Almost every anomaly office our Baekho search teams were watching has been called here, either for some ‘final request’ or an ‘urgent matter.’ They’re all gathered here now.”

A chill ran down my spine.
This wasn’t coincidence.
It was a trap—clear as day.

Park Sunja nodded gravely, confirming she agreed.
“It seems they’ve caught on to our surveillance patterns and Baekho’s operation strategy. We’ve all walked right into their hands.”
“…Yeah.”

I got the feeling that the reason people were huddling outside the building instead of going in was because they were all thinking the same thing we were.
Everyone knew they’d been lured here—but no one dared go inside.
No one knew what would happen once they did.

So they waited, gripped by unease.
“…We tried contacting the support team, but it looks like they haven’t made a decision yet.”
The support team must be stuck in a dilemma, too.

There was a high probability this was a trap—but it was also almost certainly the headquarters of the nature cult and the root of the anomaly office disappearances.
At that moment, Bora and Park Sunja turned to me.
“Oppa—where’s Shun?”

“Oh, Shun is with—”
I reflexively pointed toward the direction where Cheolsu and Younghee had been standing.
But Shun wasn’t there. And neither was Cheolsu.

Only Younghee remained—her face looking on the verge of tears.
“…Huh?”
It wasn’t just them.

Whether it was my imagination, or something had happened in just those few moments, the number of people in the parking lot had clearly decreased.
I frantically told Bora that Shun had disappeared, but her face turned even more serious.
“Oppa… Sunja’s gone too…”

I turned my head—and Park Sunja, who had just been in the vehicle with us moments ago, was completely gone.
And then I, too, felt it.
A sudden sense of weightlessness beneath my feet, as if the ground had dropped away.

The last thing I saw before the world twisted like crumpled paper was Bora’s wide eyes locking with mine.
“Oppa!”
When I opened my eyes again, I was no longer in the noisy parking lot.

I was somewhere else—somewhere damp and filled with the scent of earth and dense greenery.
Anomaly phenomenon.
It was clear. This was an anomaly phenomenon.

Being outside the religious building didn’t mean we were safe.
By now, I shouldn’t have been surprised. There were no safe places in this world to begin with.
I slowly looked around.

Everywhere I looked, the ground was moist and overgrown with thick vegetation and trees.
At a glance, it looked like I had been dropped into the depths of some remote forest.
Yeah, it looked that way.

But the longer I stayed still and really looked, the more obvious it became that something was wrong.
“Why are these trees growing at right angles?”
All the trees in front of me were unnaturally straight—too geometrical to be natural.

And the size… was not normal.
Even for an anomaly, there was no way these were actual trees.
I reached out and touched the nearest one.

It didn’t feel rough or bark-like.
Through the leaves and tiny branches, my hand brushed against something smooth and cold.
“…No way.”

Something felt off.
I brushed the thick foliage aside with my hands.
Beneath it, I found thick ivy—and under that, the truth revealed itself.

Gray concrete. It wasn’t a tree.
It was the column of a building.
Once I realized that, everything around me began to look different.

What had looked like hills in the distance were collapsed buildings.
The straight “trees” reaching for the sky were actually lamp posts or traffic lights.
Beneath the vines and moss, remnants of asphalt and sidewalk tiles remained.

This wasn’t a forest. This was the overgrown ruin of a once-massive city—utterly consumed by nature, its original form lost.
Were all the anomaly office people and Baekho search teams trapped here?
Just how massive was this anomaly?

With countless questions swirling in my head, I began walking through the ruined city—if you could still even call it that.
Squeak squeak!
“…Rats.”

In this place where only faint traces of asphalt remained, the remnants of civilization had been completely repurposed.
Old sedans overrun with weeds had become nests for rats and squirrels, and utility poles entwined with vines now housed countless birds’ nests.
Even amid the destruction, the place exuded a strange vitality that made me instinctively admire it.

I felt, just a little, that I could understand the nature cult’s mindset.
“Wait— is that a person? Hey!”
Then I spotted the back of a woman in the distance.

Thinking she might be from Baekho or one of the anomaly offices, I called out to her—but she didn’t respond.
I walked closer and called out again.
Finally, the woman slowly—very slowly—turned her head.

And I was left speechless.
She had no eyes. No nose. No face at all.
Only a mouth, used for speaking, was positioned in the middle of her face.

Above where her eyes and nose should’ve been bloomed a vivid red flower—its roots embedded in her skull like a flowerpot.
“What the hell…”
“Ah.”

The woman staggered toward me, and from her lone mouth, began repeating the same phrase over and over like a broken record.
“Become one… with us. Let’s become one… with us…”
“No thanks.”

Her voice had an eerie, hypnotic cadence.
“Become one!”
She drew closer, raising her voice.

As the petals shook, strange pollen scattered through the air.
From her fingertips, vine-like tendrils shot out and began wrapping around me.
“ONE!”

“I SAID NO.”
Wham! Crunch!
I slammed my fist into her face—specifically, into the flower.

With one hit, the petals turned to pulp and scattered.
The creature collapsed without a single scream.
The impact and sound hadn’t felt like hitting a human at all.

It was literally like punching wood.
“…That was disturbing.”
Honestly, it creeped me out.

Still, I’d adapted to this world in my own way.
I no longer hesitated to attack things that tried to scare me—or stop me.