I'm Trapped in the Block

’We’re sick, too?’

The janitor looked at the screen. The words were arranged in a meaningless jumble.

He still didn’t quite understand.

"Why are all the words on here scrambled? Does it affect electronic devices?"

But the doctor said gravely, "The device is fine. We are the problem!"

He quickly connected to the security station to report the situation.

"Hello? Is this the security station?"

"Yes, it is."

"There’s a problem at the quarantine point. I suspect we’ve been affected by the distortion..."

But halfway through, he realized something was wrong and fell silent.

The operator at the security station heard the doctor go quiet and quickly asked, "Hello? Doctor, please continue."

The doctor silently stared at the numbers on the keypad, which he no longer recognized, and spoke gravely into the phone:

"What I’m about to say is extremely important. Please notify all residents of the Black Tower Monitoring Station to find some nearby text. If they find they can’t read it, they must report it immediately."

After hearing the doctor’s words, the operator on the other end went silent as well.

A moment later, the operator’s voice began to tremble. He must have understood.

"Understood."

"Highest alert level!" The call ended with the operator’s shout.

Just then, the janitor, who was standing nearby, cautiously said to the doctor, "See? I was right, wasn’t I? The distortion affects text in the outside world, even on electronic devices."

The doctor was extremely anxious by now and said angrily, "It’s a problem with *us*, not with the text."

"What’s the difference?"

The janitor muttered under his breath...

The Black Tower’s distortion was spreading. The entire monitoring station was soon shrouded in shadow.

The signal on the 2nd Floor of the Abyss was severely blocked. Those who tried to get a message out also discovered the Black Tower was surrounded by a kind of invisible wall, trapping them.

The situation grew more severe. Nearly everyone realized they could no longer understand the text around them.

After some time, the entire Black Tower Monitoring Station had descended into chaos.

The public began to speculate wildly, and panic spread.

To calm the public, the monitoring station’s officials announced a briefing and called everyone to the residential plaza.

The doctor, as the one who discovered the phenomenon, took on the responsibility of explaining their research on the distortion.

"This is a distortion that targets the human linguistic system. It starts with nouns and verbs, then progresses to grammar and pronunciation. That’s all we know for now, but it doesn’t affect daily life, so there’s no need to be overly alarmed."

However, his words failed to placate the increasingly fearful populace.

An unending stream of questions rose from the crowd below the stage:

"Then what about that invisible wall outside? Have you reported this to the higher-ups? Is this something you people created?"

The Black Tower’s station chief, standing to the side, announced the measures they had taken.

"We have already tried to contact the outside world using various relics. Please be patient. We cannot afford to lose our composure at a time like this."

But not everyone could remain calm, especially when their own safety was threatened.

"It looks to me like you’ve done nothing! Don’t you officials have those powerful relics? This is a Black Tower Monitoring Station! Are we supposed to just sit here and wait to die?"

The station chief tried to appease them, but it was no use.

Just then, the same janitor from before jumped out and challenged the doctor’s view.

"This isn’t a distortion of the linguistic system at all! It’s a distortion of external text! You keep saying it’s our problem—are you trying to use this as an excuse to ’cleanse’ us?"

At these words, everyone fell silent.

Cleanse.

It was a last-resort measure under the Abyss’s distortions—to prevent a distortion from spreading by eliminating all those affected.

Seeing that everyone else had gone quiet, he grew proud and became even more animated.

"Why else would there be a lockdown measure like this invisible wall? And you’re all doing nothing, just stalling for time. I bet you’re the ones behind this! Maybe you changed all the text yourselves and are trying to make us doubt ourselves!"

Seeing his attempt to reassure them had backfired, the doctor quickly explained, "No, that’s not it. We’ve been working hard to study this, but because of the scrambled text, we can’t operate a lot of the equipment."

"The newcomers who just arrived from outside can still read perfectly fine at first. This proves that *we* are the ones being distorted, not the text. It should be an easy conclusion to draw..."

The doctor anxiously explained his research to the people below, listing his findings one by one.

But a single question from the crowd left him speechless.

"You’ve been researching for so long. Have you found a solution?"

That one question opened the floodgates. No one cared about his research into the rules of the distortion, nor did they care about how it progressed.

"Yeah! Have you found a solution or not?"

"How do we get rid of the invisible wall outside?"

"Can I leave?"

"You have so many powerful relics. Are you unwilling to use them, or just holding back?"

"And you want us to trust you? How can we trust you?"

"..."

Hearing their words, the doctor walked back, dejected and helpless.

The station chief stepped forward again and repeated the measures they had taken, but he was met with the same endless wave of accusations.

Finally, the station chief on stage lost his control and roared, "We’ve tried every potentially useful relic in the entire monitoring station! If there’s no solution, there’s no solution! Why don’t you try for yourselves?"

His subordinates quickly pulled him away. The immense pressure of the past few days had caused the normally composed man to lose his cool.

The people below looked at each other, then began whispering amongst themselves.

"Aren’t you the officials?"

"You want me, a Second-level Hunter, to try?"

"I don’t get paid your high salary."

"..."

They muttered sarcastically about the station chief who had lost his composure, all while making excuses for themselves.

"Just let it go," the doctor said, weakly consoling the station chief.

The briefing ended on a sour note. The meeting that was meant to pacify everyone only intensified the chaos.

A while later, the suspicious crowd took up arms and stormed the hospital gates.

But all they found was the doctor’s body. He lay on an operating table, dismembered beyond recognition.

This only strengthened the crowd’s belief that it was all an official conspiracy.

With the security forces already stretched thin, they then stormed the monitoring station’s office building and seized the officials who were still trying to work.

"Where is your most powerful relic?"

The officials said nothing, so the mob had to search for themselves.

The crowd plundered the powerful relics from the vault, tearing the entire office building apart in their search.

Due to the chaos, security resources were critically low. The guard squad that did arrive was annihilated by the crowd using the relics they had just stolen.

They burst into the station chief’s office and continued to interrogate him, demanding to know his grand conspiracy.

"What are you really trying to do?"

The station chief, tied up on the floor, said wretchedly:

"I want to contact the outside world... I want to get you all out... I want to solve the distortion..."

A vicious slap was his only response.

"Stop playing games! Talk! You killed the doctor too, didn’t you? Did he find something out?"

Hearing that the doctor was dead, the station chief stared blankly ahead, the light gone from his eyes.

"So it was you who killed him!"

Without waiting for an explanation, the leader of the mob raised a newly looted relic and ended the station chief’s life.

"What do we do next?"

"We keep waiting! People from the outside will come save us!"