I Activated Cheat Mode in a Bizarre Game

We all boarded Baekho's exploration vehicle and crossed through the city of Seoul.
Inside the car, I found myself wondering where exactly this "famous tourist destination packed with people" was supposed to be.

Lotte World? Or maybe Gyeongbokgung Palace?
I could've asked, but since they said we’d be arriving soon, I just stared out the window.
As we got closer to our destination, familiar scenery started to appear outside the car window, and before long, we all realized where we were.

"This is a bridge."
"...Isn’t this Mapo Bridge?"
"Oh… right, it is..."

I’d seen it often.
Mostly in movies or on the news.
The memory was hazy, but I recalled this bridge being one of the ones they regularly showed during traffic updates on the news.

Still, one thing stuck out in my mind.
"Wait… isn’t this Seoul?"
They said monsters rarely appeared near Seoul, didn’t they?

When I said that out loud, Hanbit replied with a slightly bitter expression.
"Yeah… they rarely do."
"...Ah."

Right. In this world, where was truly 100% safe?
By the time we arrived, both entrances of Mapo Bridge were already completely blocked off by police vehicles and Baekho’s own cars.
Red and blue lights from the police cars flashed silently, intensifying the tension in the area.

At the barricades, Han Sora and the rest of our old Team 15 support squad were busy redirecting traffic and sweating bullets explaining the situation to civilians.
They were working hard.
Our team stepped out of the car, bowed briefly to the support team holding the scene, and received a rundown of the situation.
"It started this afternoon. One by one, monsters began appearing irregularly on Mapo Bridge, from the entrance all the way to the far end. Fortunately, there haven’t been any civilian casualties yet, but the number of monsters is steadily increasing."

Monsters appearing on a bridge?
Hearing that, all of us—including me—looked visibly uneasy.
When I glanced up, the bridge looked pretty long.

The idea of it slowly filling up with monsters made my chest feel tight.
We stood at the blocked-off entrance, staring down the length of Mapo Bridge.
Somewhere on that long stretch, even now, monsters were appearing. It would be a completely different kind of fight from anything we’d done before.

But—
"Where are the monsters?"
"Hmm, I don’t see anything either."

From where we stood at the vehicle blockade, the bridge looked perfectly normal. No trace of monsters to be seen.
Puzzled, I voiced my confusion, and Shun nodded in agreement.
As if hearing us, one of the officers managing the scene approached with a grave look and offered an explanation.

"That's how it looks. But the moment you step onto that bridge, it’s like being transported to a parallel-world version of Mapo Bridge. The space changes completely. They say it's filled with heavy fog and swarming with monsters. Lieutenant Park, can you speak to it?"
The officer hesitated, then called over a policeman who had been sitting in a corner wrapped in a blanket, trembling.
He was the one who had first stepped onto the bridge and been rescued.

With a shaky voice, the officer began recounting what he’d seen.
"When I got the call and went in… the fog was so thick I couldn’t see a thing. But… there were unmistakably inhuman silhouettes moving through the mist. The cries coming from all around were eerie—part beast, part human. And both the shapes and the sounds kept increasing."
He trembled harder, as if recalling the fear.

"I instinctively knew something was very wrong. I crouched low and tried to retreat along the railing… and then… I happened to look down over the edge..."
His eyes widened in horror.
"The Han River beneath the bridge was completely dyed in blood! And from that blood-red water, countless human hands kept rising and sinking… over and over again. Like they were desperately trying to be saved!"

"...He passed out after that, and one of the support team women pulled him out."
Apparently, after seeing that horrific scene, he fainted, and luckily the support team had been nearby to retrieve him.
The officer pointed to Han Sora.

“Ahaha…”
Han Sora laughed awkwardly and said she’d only been able to do it because of her brief past experience on the Exploration Team. She added modestly that it was just lucky he’d collapsed right in front of her.
We all praised her bravery—but worry gnawed at us too.

This was supposed to be a suppression mission, but if the officer’s account was right, the number of monsters just kept growing.
It could become an endless fight—like pouring water into a bottomless jar.
“Unless we eliminate whatever’s at the root of this, the monsters might keep coming no matter how many we defeat.”

With that uneasy thought in mind, I stared across the bridge. This mission was going to be far more complicated than we’d expected.
Leaving the police officer’s terrifying account behind, we began our final equipment and condition checks before stepping onto the bridge.
Bora double-checked her talismans, and Shun stretched out to loosen his body.

Then, Hanbit walked over to the back of our vehicle and pulled out a large case.
Clunk!
It looked like a cello or double bass case, but something about its surface immediately radiated an ominous aura.

You could tell just by looking—it wasn’t ordinary.
“Hanbit, what’s that?”
Shun asked on everyone’s behalf, and Hanbit suddenly turned and stared right at me as he answered.

“This is an item I got thanks to Minjun.”
Thanks to me?
I had no idea what he was talking about and just blinked in confusion.

Then Hanbit brought up the time I’d infiltrated that fake Jinmyeong Group supermarket operation and escaped with a few stolen items after smashing through a wall.
Ah. That place.
I remembered Jinmyeong Group’s exorcists had taken over and cleaned it up afterward.

“Since then, Jinmyeong Group has been studying the supermarket’s items in detail. We’ve even started using the place—paying fair prices and everything. We judged that as long as we properly paid, the monster was symbiotic and not hostile. So we became customers.”
He explained that the item in this case was something he’d purchased under that system.
“And with this, I should be pretty useful on this mission too.”

I always thought Hanbit was more than capable, but I guess he didn’t see it that way.
His voice carried a new kind of confidence I hadn’t heard before.
He opened the case, revealing a messy jumble of mechanical parts that looked like debris.

And then, at an incredible speed, he began assembling them.
His hands moved like those of a seasoned craftsman—fast and precise.
The whole team gathered around, mesmerized by the scene.

So he didn’t just have a knack for appraising items—he had serious skill with his hands too.
Click!
“Whoa…”

Before long, the scattered parts came together into a complete weapon.
A heavy rifle, massive and brutal-looking, with multiple barrels.
“Let’s go.”

Once we’d finished preparations, we finally stepped onto Mapo Bridge.
The moment our feet touched the asphalt, the world around us warped. In an instant, thick fog engulfed us.
We couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead. The real world behind us was already lost in the mist.

Keeping some distance between us in case of ambush, we moved forward cautiously.
That’s when we saw it—faintly, through the fog.
A bizarre silhouette. It had a long, unnaturally thin torso—too distorted to be human.

“Minjun! Shun! Grab that thing!”
Hanbit called out urgently.
Shun and I glanced at each other, nodded, and rushed at the monster from both sides, each grabbing one of its arms.

It thrashed and struggled, but it was no match for our combined strength.
“Good, hold it just like that!”
Hanbit brought his newly assembled rifle forward.

And then, something unbelievable happened.
Without so much as a scream, the monster was sucked into the barrel of the gun—just like dust into a vacuum.
He said that’s how the weapon loads.

A gun that uses monsters °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° as ammo—truly insane.
With the rifle fully loaded, Hanbit stepped forward confidently, aiming vaguely into the fog.
He wasn’t even targeting anything specific—he just pulled the trigger.

KRA-KRA-KRA-KROOM!!
It didn’t fire bullets.
Instead, with each blast of deep crimson energy, grotesque wet thuds echoed through the mist—followed by the shrieks of dying monsters and the sound of meaty masses hitting the asphalt.

“…He can’t even see anything. What’s he shooting at?”
“Yeah, seriously…?”
Bora and Shun muttered quietly.

After a long barrage of thunderous blasts, we cautiously began moving forward again.
Through the mist, we saw them—torn-up remains of monsters, dozens of them, littered across the bridge.
Hanbit’s rifle had obliterated the entire area.

“Leave the fodder to me.”
Hanbit calmly reloaded his rifle with more monster corpses.
Watching this, Shun said, in slow but clearly pronounced Korean,

“Tem power.”
…Where the hell did he learn that?
Either way, after seeing what Hanbit had just pulled off, I had to admit something.

“Long-range attacks are definitely convenient.”
“Minjun—er, I mean, oppa—if you master talisman techniques, you could—”
“Throw a car.”

“…”
Bora started to say something, but Shun interrupted.
I chuckled at his joke—except Shun didn’t seem to be joking.

And Bora… actually looked like she was seriously considering it.
Wait, was that not a joke…?