Dream Essence Collector.
As the name suggests, it was a piece of equipment issued by Daydream Inc. to the Field Exploration Team members, designed to collect the liquid known as ‘Dream Essence’ from within ghost stories.
The concentration of the liquid collected depended on the grade of the ghost story cleared.
And the highest-grade liquid I had ever seen with my own eyes was…
‘A-grade.’
During the anomalous manifestation of <Chorus of the Sacrificial Lambs> in Tuesday Talk Show, and inside Segaang Industrial High School when dealing with <Within the Shadow of Darkness>.
Both times, the liquid had been a brilliant, luminous gold.
But the one I was holding right now…
‘Good lord.’
The way its radiance shimmered made it look almost like some kind of elixir.
‘…It reminds me of that Wish Ticket potion I saw when I first joined the company.’
It was eerie how similar it felt. Maybe because this was raw Dream Essence?
No—this wasn’t the time to focus on that.
The important thing was…
‘Does this mean this is S-grade…?’
I turned the cylinder in my hand. Its glow flickered, gleaming.
It didn’t feel real.
‘That grade isn’t just arbitrarily assigned to dangerous ghost stories.’
Abyss (S) Grade.
The creators of the Wiki had all agreed on one thing.
‘For something to be given an S-grade, shouldn’t there be a more special criterion?’
Until then, Daydream Inc.’s ghost stories had always been ranked based on an unspoken consensus—something like, ‘If it’s this extreme, it should probably be graded high.’ 𝐫ÅＮＯʙЕꞨ
Factors like danger level, uncertainty, ominousness, scale—all the things one would naturally associate with ghost stories—were used to determine grades.
But when it came to A-grade and above, something more was needed.
That’s why they came up with this condition.
Who exactly do you meet in the darkness?
A story wasn’t just cosmic horror-themed—it had to be cosmic horror itself.
Only when a ghost story forced you to confront an existence beyond human comprehension—not just its atmosphere, but the horror itself—could it surpass the A-grade threshold and be classified as Abyssal (S) Grade.
‘But was Braun’s Late-Night Talk Show seriously on that level?’
Sure, I worked there for a whole month as a crew member before escaping, but this felt like overkill.
Braun was definitely a deranged talk show host and an incredibly powerful supernatural entity, but did he really qualify as a cosmic horror? If anything, he seemed oddly close to a human being.
Maybe the Dream Essence in my collector hadn’t been gathered during my time there—maybe it was just a bonus feature attached to the merch itself.
‘And the reason I got this merch now…’
Since I cleared a high-grade ghost story without a Dream Essence Collector, the system probably decided I had earned the right to be issued a new one.
But more importantly…
‘…If this really is S-grade, how much would it be worth in company points?’
A corporate payout memo flashed in my mind.
S-Grade: Subject to special review.
I swallowed hard.
A-grade was worth 100,000 points.
Given the increasing trend in rewards…
This could be worth 500,000 points.
‘…That’s enough to exchange for a Wish Ticket immediately.’
Holy shit.
That meant I didn’t even need to worry about whether I’d been sacked.
If I just submitted this collector, the company would—
……
Oh.
‘Fuck.’
My whole body sagged.
There’s no way to submit it.
– Make sure you don’t lose it—those things have serial numbers, and it’ll be a nightmare to explain if anything’s off.
I remembered Assistant Manager Eun Haje telling me that once.
It’s exactly as she said.
Every single Dream Essence Collector was serialized and individually registered to an employee.
Meaning that having a spare was not just weird—it was downright suspicious.
This would be the equivalent of finding an extra bullet casing during an inventory check and cheerfully reporting, ‘Oh hey, I found another one!’
‘They’d demand an explanation, and I… had none.’
There was no way I could just say, I bought it at a pop-up merch store.
Especially not this Dream Essence Collector.
“…Haa.”
The Elite Team Edition was smaller and fancier than a standard collector, too.
I silently peeled off the product sticker from its side.
Dream Essence Collector (Elite Team Edition)
It wasn’t a regular collector—it had been released as merch for a reason.
‘Because it came from a famous game based on the <Dark Exploration Records>…!’
It was a game adaptation of a certain exploration log, where the Elite Team Cylinder served multiple roles: as an identifier for important NPCs, a collectible required to unlock the true ending, and an item crucial to gameplay.
To avoid lore conflicts with the wiki, the game developers even came up with this backstory.
Elite Team Cylinder
A special piece of equipment once produced for the Elite Team, but discontinued due to budget constraints as the design was standardized for all team members.
So, if that in-game lore applied here…
– A piece of equipment, originally produced in limited quantity and owned by only a select few, suddenly appears in the hands of a rookie employee who had been missing for a month.
That’s insane.
‘And if this wasn’t based on the in-game lore, that’s an even bigger problem.’
Bringing back a Dream Essence Collector that doesn’t match the company’s standardized models?
Anyone would see that as a tech leak. The Development Department would have a complete meltdown.
‘They’d think I was a corporate spy.’
Or worse, they might start suspecting I was some kind of parallel-world anomaly.
A missing employee, presumed terminated, suddenly reappears with unknown technology?
I could see my future clearly… as a test subject…