Chapter 148.1

Daydream Inc.

A pharmaceutical company known for the improbable achievement of mass-producing potions with wish-granting properties.

The raw materials consist of ghost stories.

……That was all the <Dark Exploration Records> had to say when the company was first introduced.

Because there were no detailed explanations, it sparked more imagination. The bizarre technology, the mystique, the cruelty, the blanks. All of it felt chilling.

But as the wiki grew, so did the breadcrumbs.

‘Backstories started getting attached.’

Of course, even Daydream Inc. couldn’t have just fallen out of the sky with perfect, unknown pharmaceutical tech.

Even if it seemed that way on the surface, digging deeper should allow you to deduce its origins and history… because that’s what made it exciting and fun.

Eventually, as time passed, meaningful exploration logs were added here and there throughout the Dark Exploration Records, and readers began forming and theorizing several conspiracies about Daydream Inc.

—What even is Daydream Inc.?

And the place I had just visited… was evidence for Conspiracy Theory No. 2.

Conspiracy Theory No. 2 : Daydream Inc. was not originally a pharmaceutical company.

The original source of Daydream Inc.’s pharmaceutical technology.

“…Huu.”

I swallowed hard and began to look around the Dream Incubation Room.

The dust-covered lab looked like a disused school science room, or a decrepit lab abandoned after the end of the world.

Everything looked dead.

Worktables and experimental equipment.

Beakers and cabinets filled with unidentified liquids.

And… a massive device at the center.

“……”

The lights were off, and beneath an empty glass tube sat a button panel and keyboard was an old-style experimental machine straight out of the 2000s.

Dream Incubator

And beside it was an experimental logbook.

It was the same one mentioned in the exploration records.

I opened the worn pages and began to read it.

Every single page.

All the clean handwriting that must have once filled the log had been deliberately and thoroughly obliterated.

Filth, blood, ink, and pencil markings covered every surface, drenched in cramped scribbles of madness and screams…

“Uurp.”

I dropped the logbook like I was throwing it away and gasped for breath.

‘I thought I could handle it.’

I couldn’t.

You’d think that I would at least try to restore the text buried below, but I gave up right away. And it wasn’t because this was some plot device like in the <Dark Exploration Records> where information would be blocked purposefully to build suspense. It’s just that, I physically could not.

It was simply unbearable.

“……”

I remembered now.

These were the responses provided by an employee who, by sheer accident, succeeded in conducting trades in the ‘Faceless Market’—an underground exchange located within a manhole—without disclosing his employment status, during the company’s internal interrogation.

Assistant Manager ■■■ : Yes! I was the one who discovered it. The machine looked old, but it still seemed to function properly. There also seemed to have been classified documents on Dream Essence potions and a few certain Darknesses. I was afraid it might fall into outsider hands, so I quickly… pardon?

Assistant Manager ■■■ : ……You’re saying that facility doesn’t belong to our company? …Wait, so it wasn’t contaminated by a Darkness, but it’s because the company…… W-Wait, why are you pointing that at m—

…That record ended with the company successfully ‘cleaning up’ the anonymous employee.

“……”

A chill crawled down my spine.

Something ominous was hanging in the silence of the lab. I wanted to turn around and run out of there right away…

‘No!!’

Time to move to the next step.

Gritting my teeth, I looked behind the machine.

There was a standard office desk with a data-entry PC, and beneath the chair… something heavy had rolled onto the floor.

A corpse.

I already knew, but I still gasped.

The body, as if it had just fallen from the desk, was dried up and lifeless like it had died long ago, which somehow made it even more disturbing.

But I understood what had happened.

Analysis results indicated that the body’s motor functions had ceased five years prior.

Given the circumstances, it is presumed that only vital signs were somehow sustained.

It was the final researcher of this incubator, forcibly kept alive until the note at the Faceless Market was passed to someone else.

The owner of the hand I had traded with.

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