Ne Job: The Intern from Hell — Chapter 116: "Paperwork of the Damned"
The audit chamber had grown colder.
Stacks of parchment hovered like ghosts, each glowing faintly with bureaucratic life. Every page whispered fragments of divine code — half prayers, half receipts. Ne Job sat at the center of it all, buried up to his neck in backlog forms, every one stamped with his cursed signature.
> "RETURN TO SENDER: SOUL UNACCOUNTED FOR."
"REJECTED DUE TO IMPROPER REINCARNATION CHANNEL."
"EXCESSIVE MORTAL MEMORY RETENTION."
Assistant Yue stood beside him, her hair tied up, sleeves rolled, expression razor-sharp. The tips of her quills glowed blue as she manually recalibrated forms faster than divine automation could.
"Seventy-three cases reprocessed," she said under her breath. "Three still flagged for inconsistency."
Ne Job rubbed his eyes. "You know, for a department that literally handles eternity, they sure love deadlines."
"Stop talking and sign," Yue snapped, sliding him a thick stack. "If we don't stabilize the reincarnation queue by noon, the system crashes."
"Then everyone gets reborn as paperwork," Ne Job muttered, scrawling his name with a spark of celestial ink.
The air shimmered again — the mark of Inspector Zhaoren's return. He stepped through the corridor like a blade through fog. "Status report," he demanded.
Yue didn't look up. "On schedule."
"Unlikely," Zhaoren replied, raising his hand. A dozen sheets flew into the air, rearranging themselves into glowing symbols that pulsed like a heartbeat. He frowned. "There's corruption in your data stream."
Ne Job froze. "Corruption? You mean—"
"Unauthorized interference," Zhaoren said. "A spirit embedded in the documentation layer. Someone — or something — has been rewriting divine records."
A thunderclap echoed through the hall.
From the far shelf, a scroll snapped open by itself. Letters crawled off the page, twisting into a shadowy figure — laughing in a voice that made the paper curl.
> "Oh, don't look so shocked," it hissed. "Who do you think's been fixing your numbers, darling interns?"
Ne Job's jaw dropped. "The Manual Spirit—"
"Evil Manual Spirit," Yue corrected grimly, stepping forward as her aura flared to full power. "You shouldn't exist anymore. Lord Xian exorcised your core months ago."
The spirit grinned, eyes like smoldering ink. "You think bureaucracy kills that easily? I am bureaucracy. Every correction, every misplaced comma, every soul misfiled—I feed on your incompetence."
It lunged forward, claws tearing through glowing reports. Each shredded form bled light, spilling corrupted script that began infecting nearby scrolls.
Zhaoren reacted instantly. His palm opened, unleashing a chain of pure celestial code that lashed around the spirit. But it only laughed, dissolving through the light like smoke.
Yue's quills split into dozens of shimmering blades, each striking the corrupted lines to contain the spread. Ne Job, meanwhile, stumbled back — until a rogue scroll smacked him in the chest, bursting open with radiant sigils.
He looked down and realized — it was his old form. The first one he'd ever filed as an intern. The one that had started everything.
And the corruption… was spreading from his signature.
Yue saw it instantly. "Ne Job—your signature's acting as a conduit!"
Ne Job gritted his teeth. "Of course it is. I never read the damn manual."
Zhaoren's gaze hardened. "Then you'll have to overwrite yourself."
Ne Job blinked. "Come again?"
Yue's eyes widened. "He means you'll have to counter-sign — against your own divine imprint. You'll rewrite your own authority seal!"
"That's… not even allowed!"
"Neither is surviving an audit from Hell," Yue said, thrusting a fresh parchment into his hands. "Do it before the spirit merges with the system!"
The room trembled as the Manual Spirit shrieked, its form unraveling into a storm of paper shards and ink.
Ne Job took a deep breath, dipped his quill in light, and slammed his name down across the cursed page.
> ✦ NE JOB — REVISED ENTRY ✦
A surge of energy erupted outward. The corrupted pages disintegrated into golden dust. The Manual Spirit screamed — then was sucked into the seal, vanishing into a point of light that dissolved between Ne Job's fingers.
Silence.
The room was wrecked — but stable. The papers fluttered down gently, reassembling into orderly stacks.
Yue exhaled, brushing stray strands of hair from her face. "You… actually did it."
Ne Job smiled weakly. "Guess I passed the audit after all."
Zhaoren's cold expression softened — just barely. "Not yet," he said. "But you've proven one thing, intern."
Ne Job blinked. "What's that?"
"That even chaos," Zhaoren said, turning toward the door, "can be filed correctly — if guided by the right assistant."
Yue smirked faintly. "You hear that? He complimented me."
Ne Job groaned. "He complimented you. I'm still the problem file."
And somewhere deep in the filing shelves, one last page glowed faintly — a faint echo of laughter written between the margins.
The Evil Manual Spirit wasn't gone. Only… reorganized.