Prologue

A strange and inexplicable "personnel" selection...

All right, actually, it was very much like the opening of an infinite-flow story: everything went black, then with a whoosh he woke up and found himself somewhere else. But not many people present thought they'd been kidnapped or anything. Some of the more frightened ones had already huddled together in a corner, trembling as they stared in terror at the faint figure not far away.

The clothes the other person wore were ordinary, the kind most young men wore. Judging by his build, he even seemed rather frail. The only difference was that you could see straight through his body to what lay behind him. Even though the faint figure wore a bewildered look, the sense of dread radiating from him was still enough to frighten ordinary people.

Add to that his sickly air and skin that was a little too pale, and he couldn't have looked more like a ghost. Quite a few of those present were young. Perhaps they'd once yearned for the supernatural, but actually encountering something like this was another matter entirely.

Quite a few people had tried looking for ghosts and the like. But when they actually encountered one... well, there were probably plenty who wished they hadn't!

"Hmm... I think I was at a crematorium?"

Jiu Ming glanced around, puzzled. He didn't understand why everyone was looking at him as though they'd seen a ghost.

This place didn't look like hell. It just looked like a maze.

A crematorium?

The people who heard Jiu Ming mutter that twitched their lips, but nobody dared ask him about it. They were all ordinary people, with no chance of seeing a ghost in their everyday lives. Now that they had, anyone who could look Jiu Ming in the eye was pretty gutsy.

"Are you human or a ghost!?" Just as Jiu Ming was zoning out, a rough voice rang out. He turned around and saw a burly man with the air of a gang boss walking over. Come to think of it, there sure were a lot of people here—dozens of them, at least.

"Of course I'm... huh? I guess I'm not." Jiu Ming raised his hand and stared at it, then froze for a moment. His hand was translucent; that wasn't some kind of special effect. Come to think of it, was he really dead? He didn't know how he'd ended up here, but the last thing he remembered was feeling hot.

He'd been put inside a furnace to roast. He'd just managed to escape, but after seeing where he was, he'd lost consciousness again from his severe "burns." Hmm... putting it that way, he really was dead?

As his final memories gradually returned, Jiu Ming calmed down. At least he hadn't failed to die. There was no point worrying about what he'd become. His current Soul Body was enough to show what he'd been like in life: a classic frail young man, the sort who might not make it through the day. Even his name had been given to him by a passing fortune-teller, and it had stuck. The reason was that the name was supposed to give him a tough fate, and nine was the greatest single-digit number—one short of completeness, so it wasn't too taboo. Whether it had done any good... well, that was another matter.

He had a given name but no surname. He'd been adopted anyway, so a surname didn't matter.

Looking at things now, the name hadn't made his fate particularly tough. He'd still died when his time was up and been sent to a crematorium...

Hmm, maybe becoming what he was now counted as another kind of life?

"Well, I don't seem to be some evil spirit. Where is this place? Are you having a get-together?" Jiu Ming smiled casually and stopped dwelling on his current state, turning his attention to the people around him instead. A get-together?

If all sorts of people could really get together here.

Office workers, students, laborers, and so on. After the initial panic, Jiu Ming's calm behavior gradually soothed everyone's nerves. They began looking around and paying attention to things they'd overlooked before.

Where were they? How had they gotten here?

"You don't know where this is either?" The burly man who'd questioned Jiu Ming frowned. He'd assumed Jiu Ming would know something, purely out of instinct. There were dozens of living people here, and Jiu Ming was the only "dead" one.

"A maze?" Jiu Ming scratched his head and moved his body. It seemed that without the constraints of a physical body, he'd escaped the shackles of his sickly constitution. His build was still the same, but he felt remarkably full of strength. He was no longer the sort who could throw his back out just by lifting a brick. Come to think of it, his body had been weak, but he'd rarely felt mentally tired. He'd hardly slept, either.

His doctor had warned him sternly about that. Even so, he had to rest regularly—and even longer than a healthy person. His mind might be sharp, but his body couldn't keep up. If he didn't want to die young, he had to stop pushing himself like that!

"Look over here!"

At the shout, everyone turned their attention in that direction. A line of text slowly appeared on the ground—

Ahem! It was a rather bizarre scene: an introduction to the place. The first sentence was enough to chill everyone's hearts. There was no way out. As for the space, it wasn't infinite, but if you ran off alone, you probably wouldn't run into anyone else.

A pretty standard tactic: a stick followed by a carrot. After the threat came a pile of promises that would put anyone to sleep—things like rising above others and living forever. Jiu Ming glanced around. It was obvious some people were tempted. They believed it?

After the promises came the condition... only one person was needed.

"Oh?" Jiu Ming smiled. He even seemed to think the mood wasn't tense enough. "Looks like they want everyone to kill each other?"

First of all, it seemed he didn't count as a person here...

In an instant, the people who'd gathered together scattered. Some went off alone, while others stuck together. Then another assurance appeared after the condition: dying here wouldn't mean really dying. You'd just wake up from a nightmare, so everyone could go all out.

In a vast, empty maze, Jiu Ming figured this "selection" wouldn't last long. But that last sentence had clearly dispelled everyone's misgivings... Hmm?

Was that really so?

Sometimes, making things too realistic had its downsides. People still had their reservations, just as they would in reality!

A realistic experience of death?

Still, those words clearly gave some people an excuse. They quickly weighed the pros and cons. Without food, even if they did nothing, everyone here would eventually go mad with hunger and wipe each other out.

Well, weren't all those people running around just emergency rations?

"Hmm, come to think of it, can you eat human flesh?"

Jiu Ming clicked his tongue, his smile taking on a hint of malice. His voice wasn't loud, but the place wasn't spacious either. Everyone could hear him. They were either panicking or watching those around them with even greater wariness.

"What do you mean!? You definitely know something!"

Jiu Ming's words were downright malicious, and the attempt to sow discord was obvious.

"Huh? That's right! I'm trying to sow discord. Look at me—I'm not even human anymore. So go on, do your best. Just don't end up as someone else's emergency rations."

His malicious words drew angry glares from quite a few people. Jiu Ming shook his head, unconcerned. Could what he was thinking really not happen? Give it a couple of days, and they'd learn what was bound to happen!

"See you, everyone."

Food was definitely useless to him, so he might as well find somewhere to stay for now.

"Stop right there!!" Several burly men rushed toward Jiu Ming, emboldened. They'd had some time to watch him, and he seemed "harmless."

With just a few words, Jiu Ming had shattered the relatively harmonious atmosphere that might have allowed them to work together. How could they let him leave so easily? In fact, he did leave...

As a ghost, wasn't he physically immune? At least nobody here could hurt him. That was good enough. He wandered into a nearby passage. This was a huge maze; after a few loops, people might not be able to find him. He touched his forehead, which could apparently still hurt if he bumped it.

Jiu Ming shook his head. He couldn't walk through walls anymore. Could ghosts feel pain, too?

"Um, does he even count for the condition?" After Jiu Ming left, the people who'd gathered in groups started discussing it. The condition called for a person, not a ghost, after all.

"I don't know, but I'm going by myself. What if someone targets me for food?" A fat man stood up and ran toward another passage. After a few turns, he disappeared from sight. Some people with ideas of their own felt a little regretful. A fat man could endure hunger longer than most, so the one who'd run off had clearly been quick-witted.

Before leaving, he'd still managed to make everyone feel uneasy...

As for death, would it really be nothing more than a nightmare for the person who died? Nobody wanted to test that until it came to the crunch. At the same time, those words gave people an excuse to attack, as well as a "backup plan" for the weak-willed.

It'd only be a nightmare at worst, right? If they were pushed to the edge, they could kill themselves... no big deal, right?

One after another, people chose their own direction and ran off. Once certain things had been pointed out, there was no real way to smooth them over. By now, many people probably thought strangers were looking at them like emergency rations.

In the end, almost everyone went off alone. Better safe than sorry. People these days had seen enough movies and TV shows, hadn't they? Getting stabbed in the back by friends or family... Hey, bro, it's not that I don't trust you. I just don't want this to affect our relationship, you know?

In any case, they'd split up first, as if they were all going home.

The people who stayed in groups were clearly all wary of one another. But once they realized that if they separated, they might never meet again, they didn't think much of it.

Instead of dwelling on all that, they might as well hurry up and find somewhere to stay. Move as little as possible, conserve their strength, and last as long as they could.

"What kind of place is this? It clearly isn't a prank. I can't fake the state of my body. Infinite? Where are the veterans? They left us with only those lines of text—isn't that a little irresponsible? And does it really not matter if someone dies? Those words sounded pretty irresponsible."

Muttering to himself, Jiu Ming looked up at the top of the maze, which was sealed just as tightly. Only then did he notice that there weren't any lights here. If it was a sealed environment, how could there be any light? Yet somehow, it was bright as day...