The mimic beast’s appearance could not be called intact, even as empty flattery.
A living lump of meat. Was there any expression more fitting than that?
Silver-white grenade fragments were embedded here and there amid the raw flesh, so red it had turned almost bluish-black, and the monster kept contracting its muscles as if trying to push them out.
It looked as though it had slipped outside the framework of life itself.
That had once been human, but it had ceased to be human.
Why did they have to meet such a cruel end?
They had been flayed by monsters, and now even their corpses had been reborn as undying monsters, subjected to this humiliation.
Was there no rest for them?
Was there truly no salvation for them…
Wooooooong.
A tremendous wave of power could be felt from the Halo.
Twilight passed, and the surroundings, which had been gradually growing dark, were blanketed in white radiance.
Behind my head, a perfect nimbus rose.
A vast amount of divine power poured forth from the broken dam.
I could not control that flow. That power was like an ocean no mere human could withstand.
The wave of divine power swept even me away.
A power so vast I could not bear it. But because of that, I would be able to show a miracle.
A fateful intuition told me what I had to do.
Where this uncontrollable power would go… at least that was something I could decide.
The flow of divine power reached the mimic beast.
This was a power that held infinite possibility.
So it could become anything, and do anything.
But what I wanted was nothing grand.
Only a small hand of salvation I could extend.
“O being who was once human…”
So, within this great torrent, take my hand as you ought…
“Return once more to the embrace of humanity.”
And then.
Flaaaash—!
A tremendous radiance overlaid the mimic beast, which had been tinged with bluish-black.
Someone’s ragged breathing was buried beneath the wave of light.
The light was fierce, but never violent. It was not the sort of thing that burned, destroyed, and annihilated.
It was simply an infinitely warm hand, returning things that had been forcibly clumped together to their original places.
As the light touched the mimic beast’s body, the grotesquely twisted muscles and blood vessels began to loosen, like snow melting under sunlight.
The bodily fluids that had dripped like black oil and polluted the floor gradually took on a clear glow, then became a milky mist and dissolved into the air.
Plink, plink-plink.
The silver-white grenade fragments embedded in the mimic beast’s flesh were pushed out and spilled onto the floor.
The clattering sound of metal rang through the space filled with light.
In the places where the blood-soaked remnants had fallen away, new flesh sprouted.
The hideous pieces of others’ skin, patched together in fragments, had their boundaries erased and were sewn into one whole complexion.
How much time had passed?
The overwhelming light that had made it impossible to even open my eyes faded as if it had been a lie.
“……”
The corpse had regained its original form.
From human to monster.
And once more, from monster to human.
After going the long way around…
It had returned like this.
*
Silence pressed down on the Fourth Outpost.
The horrific rupturing sounds of flesh tearing and bones twisting as they regenerated, and the nauseating stench of blood that had stabbed at the nose until just moments ago, had vanished as if they had never existed.
The lump of meat that had lost its human shape and been twisted beyond recognition when it was dragged up from the sewer now lay still, like a person asleep.
Thud.
The first thing to break the silence was the dull sound of knees striking the floor.
It was the vampire, Kim Jihu.
He looked back and forth between the corpse and me, then prostrated himself on the cold floor of the guard post. Thick tears poured endlessly down his pale cheeks.
“Oh… Lord. Truly, Your apostle has descended into this hell.”
His voice trembled finely with awe. Normally, I would have shuddered and thought, Here he goes again, but right now I did not even have the strength to stop him.
“The smell…”
Min Aji sniffed with a dazed expression. Color slowly returned to her face, which had been retching over and over until now.
“That disgusting blood smell is all gone. Even though we’re right in front of the post… all I can smell is a cozy, warm scent of sunlight.”
Old Owlbear, Mr. Orc, and Yu Inha also stood there in a daze, their weapons hanging limply in their hands. What dwelled in their eyes was not fear. It was the pure wonder that only those who had witnessed an absolute miracle could show.
But the one who had received the greatest shock among them was none other than Captain Kim.
Clatter.
The rifle slipped from his hands, hands that always maintained a dry, impassive demeanor, and fell to the floor.
He approached the corpse with trembling steps and looked down at it for a long while.
“How can this be…”
Captain Kim’s lips quivered.
I did not know what kind of past he had. But one thing was certain…
Captain Kim turned to look at me with eyes full of astonishment.
“Han Yujin, just what are you…!”
“……”
It would have been nice if I could have given him some kind of answer.
Unfortunately, I did not have even a handful of strength left for that.
Spin—
The world tilted, tipping sideways.
Before I had any time to savor the afterglow of the miracle, a terrible emptiness surged up from deep inside my body.
‘Ah.’
I had overdone it. I knew that without anyone needing to tell me.
The wave of divine power pouring out from the broken dam had been so fierce it seemed ready to swallow even my reason.
For the paltry vessel of a human soul, that ocean-like power had been far too vast and heavy.
The nimbus burning behind my head as if it would illuminate all things went out with a pop, like an incandescent bulb whose fuse had blown.
Even the Halo above my head, which had always given off a gentle warmth, lost its light as if flickering out and trembled faintly.
“Ugh…”
A terrible sense of weakness began at my fingertips and swallowed my entire body in an instant. Even the strength to stand drained away, and my legs buckled helplessly.
“Angel!”
“Yujin unni!!”
At the edge of my vision as I pitched toward the floor of the post, the silhouettes of Kim Jihu and Min Aji rushing over in horror blurred.
I could also see Captain Kim urgently reaching out a hand.
‘…Ah, I’m tired.’
If I had caused a miracle in such a cool way, I should have stood there impressively and finished it off.
Apparently, that was going to be difficult.
I closed my eyes and slipped away.
*
‘…A familiar ceiling.’
When I opened my eyes, the familiar ceiling of the barracks greeted me.
My whole body felt heavy, like waterlogged cotton.
A terrible sense of weakness pressed down on my entire body, to the point that it was hard to even twitch a finger.
Strangely, however, it was not the sensation of depletion, as though my insides had been emptied out.
‘If anything… it feels closer to being terribly stuffed.’
The pit of my stomach was heavy, as if I had swallowed an enormous stone.
I blinked and gathered my hazy consciousness.
Then I slowly retraced the reason I had fainted.
‘I didn’t collapse from exhaustion because I scraped the bottom of my strength.’
It was the opposite.
The divine power that had rushed in beyond the broken dam had been like a bottomless ocean.
I had drawn upon only the smallest fraction of that ocean, and yet my wretched human vessel had been unable to endure that vast flow.
“Yu-Yujin unni?!”
Just then, a presence that had been holding its breath beside me jumped in surprise and popped into my field of vision.
It was Min Aji, her ears drooping like a puppy’s.
The moment she confirmed that my eyes had opened, she burst into tears.
“Unni! You really woke up, right?! Sob, I thought you’d never wake up again…!”
“I told you… not to call me unni.”
A cracked voice forced its way out.
Perhaps startled by my hoarse voice, Yu Inha, who had been coiled up on a mattress in the corner, hurriedly slithered over, dragging her snake tail.
“Thank goodness, I’m so glad! How do you feel? Does anything hurt?”
“Nothing hurts… I’m just tired. How long was I out?”
At my question, Yu Inha let out a relieved sigh and held up one finger.
“Exactly one day. You collapsed yesterday evening, and now it’s the evening of the next day.”
‘A whole day.’
Since this was the first time I had ever collapsed as if fainting, it felt endlessly long.
I tried to raise my stiff body.
“Ah, be careful!”
Min Aji quickly supported my back. With her help, I barely managed to sit up and lean against the headboard of the bed.
When I lightly felt above my head, the Halo that had been flickering as though it was going out was once again giving off a soft, steady glow, as if nothing had happened.
“…How are things outside? That corpse… no, that person.”
I asked about what had been weighing on my mind the most.
The result of my miracle. The situation after that wretched lump of meat had returned to the form of a whole human being.
At my question, Yu Inha’s expression stiffened subtly.
“Captain Kim immediately recovered it and brought it up. And…”
“And?”
“All hell broke loose. As soon as Captain Kim’s report went in, a whole crowd of military doctors and researchers from the upper levels rushed over and took the body away with great care.”
Min Aji chimed in from the side, shuddering.
“Everyone’s eyes were practically rolling back in their heads. They said you hadn’t just killed an undying monster, but turned it back into its original human form, so the entire base was turned upside down. While you were unconscious, the guards in front of this infirmary were doubled too. They’re controlling access so not just anyone can come in.”
“…Haa.”
I ended up pressing a hand to my forehead and letting out a deep sigh.
I had expected it, but things were becoming even more troublesome than I had thought.
‘I need to go into the Blackout Zone and grab that little sister of mine by the hair.’
With things like this, would the military obediently let me go to the dangerous front line?
There was a high chance they would instead hide me deep in the base and force me to safely churn out miracles.
“Ah, right. Captain Kim said to report to him immediately when you woke up.”
Yu Inha glanced at the radio and spoke cautiously.
“Should I call him?”
It was a meeting I couldn’t avoid anyway.
Rather, now that the hand on my side had become its strongest, it would be better to have it out.
I shrugged my heavy shoulders once, smiled, and nodded.
“Call him. We’ll have a lot to talk about anyway.”