It was the first time I’d seen Captain Kim make that face.
His expression almost never changed, no matter the situation.
For better or worse, he was a man loyal to his profession as a soldier.
“…Is it someone you know?”
“……It was my wife.”
Captain Kim admitted it readily.
His voice was hollow. Like a man whose soul had left him, his answer was utterly dry and lifeless.
But his tightly clenched fists were trembling with unbearable rage and despair.
“…….”
None of us said a word.
The answer had come too suddenly, too shockingly.
The first to react was the old owlbear.
Without a word, the old man gripped his shield tight. As if he had seen his own family, somewhere in the blackout zone, superimposed over her, a deep sorrow and devastation passed across his feathered face.
Even Kim Jihu, who was always making a fuss and crying out to the Lord, kept his mouth firmly shut this time, quietly crossing himself with a pale face.
Yu Inha and Min Aji were too shocked to speak, and held each other’s hands tightly.
And yet, in the midst of it all, I finally felt every piece of the puzzle click into place.
Why he had tried so desperately to stop us at the start of the incident.
Why he had so thoroughly denied the possibility of survivors inside the blackout zone, offering only hopeless conclusions.
And why he knew the layout of this obstetrics clinic as if he had memorized the blueprints.
‘…Because his wife was trapped in here.’
And because, in his head, he had already known that the odds were highest that his wife had turned into a horrific monster like that.
On top of that, this obstetrics clinic was said to be the first place where the existence of the mimics had been confirmed.
Since each of us had gathered here with similar goals, we could understand his feelings all too well.
“…Can she be turned ba…….”
“No. No, that is not why I revealed this now. I did not say it so that you would show me consideration.”
Captain Kim said, twitching his fingers.
“I came here having already expected everything. I came prepared.”
“…….”
“I am a soldier. Instead of a family member who is already dead, I must prioritize my orders. And besides, there is no guarantee that the thing wearing that skin is my wife, is there?”
His voice was terribly firm.
But that firmness only made him seem more pitiful. Anyone could see it was reason he had forced out in order to brainwash himself.
Hiding behind a pane of glass so thin it looked ready to shatter at any moment, he was desperately enduring by using the shell of a soldier as his shield.
“Let’s take care of it.”
“…….”
“This time… we need to conserve our grenades. The supplies we brought aren’t infinite.”
“…Understood.”
We had managed to bring more supplies than the other soldiers, but even so, there was a limit.
We had already used up a considerable number of the grenades we had brought.
So he wasn’t wrong. In fact, he was right. It was true that we had been throwing grenades around freely until now.
But why was it?
Why did those words sound as if there was the faintest trace of emotion mixed into them?
“…We’re going in.”
Once again, the first to step forward was the old owlbear.
The old man smashed the door apart as he entered and swung his sledgehammer wide.
Kwaang—!
The half-torn door to the consultation room flew away with a thunderous roar.
The edge of the old man’s charging shield swept across one corner of the desk, producing a dull cracking sound.
At our sudden entry, the doctor mimic that had been mumbling while holding a blank sheet of paper twisted its neck grotesquely and turned to look at us.
“Kiaaaaaak!”
The creature tore through its doctor’s coat and drew sharp organic blades from its arms.
We quickly spread out inside the consultation room and surrounded it.
The smell of gunpowder and deafening thunder filled the consultation room.
Even in that chaos, Captain Kim was gripping his gun tightly, breathing raggedly.
His gaze was not on the doctor mimic engaged in battle, but on the wife mimic sitting beyond the desk, eerily motionless despite the commotion.
“…Ho, ney? What on earth is…….”
“…….”
Captain Kim twitched his fingers out of habit.
But what was in his hand was not a cigarette, but a trigger.
Bang—! Bang! Bang!
Ear-splitting cracks rang out one after another in the narrow consultation room.
The bullets struck the wife mimic squarely between the brows and in the chest without a hair’s breadth of error.
But the monster did not fall.
Even with an impact strong enough to snap its head back, the mimic merely staggered and remained standing in place.
With the grotesque sound of bones grinding, the head that had bent backward slowly returned to its original position.
From the holes where the bullets had lodged, leech-like flesh pushed out as if regenerating instead of red blood.
A momentary opening, with our attention stolen by the wife mimic.
The doctor mimic, now being riddled with bullets, did not miss that chance. Its bloodshot eyes flashed as it raised an organic blade toward Captain Kim’s throat.
“Captain, look out!”
The instant Min Aji cried out sharply—
Dadadadang—!
Seo Doyun’s K3 machine gun spat fire, mercilessly shredding the doctor mimic’s upper body.
With perfect suppressive fire, the recoil controlled by the strength of a massive orc, the creature was slammed into the wall.
“Hrrgh!”
At the same time, the old owlbear’s battle cry burst out.
The old man’s heavy sledgehammer cleaved through the air and mercilessly smashed the head of the wife mimic that had been approaching with its neck twisted grotesquely.
In other words, it was over.
We fired a few more rounds into the remains of the creatures twitching on the floor. We had already experienced their tenacity more than enough times to be sick of it.
‘…We fight better than I thought.’
Then again, we possessed combat power that clearly surpassed ordinary humans.
On top of that, the darkness spread throughout the place could be neutralized by my light, so it was possible for us to deal with a small number of enemies easily.
The problem was that we had no leisure to indulge in such thoughts.
“…….”
Click. Click. Click.
In the silence, a dry metallic sound rang out, cutting through the air.
When I turned my head, I had no choice but to bite my lip.
Captain Kim was holding his empty pistol in both hands, continuing to pull the trigger at the remains of the wife mimic, which had already been crushed beyond recognition.
The gun, its slide locked back, had long since emptied every round, and yet his finger did not stop.
“Captain. It’s over.”
When I approached and called to him quietly, Captain Kim finally flinched and lowered the gun.
He reached for the magazine pouch at his waist.
But his two hands, always as precise as a machine, were now trembling miserably like those of a man with palsy.
Clack, clack.
He took out a fresh magazine and tried to push it into the grip of the pistol, but because of his vibrating fingertips, the magazine failed to enter the well and only scraped around the outside with an indifferent rasp.
In the end, the magazine slipped from his hand and dropped with a thud onto the blood-soaked floor.
“…….”
Captain Kim looked back and forth between the magazine on the floor and his own trembling hands.
“…Do you need it?”
I asked.
Pulling his beret low over his head, he muttered in a voice that sounded forcibly wrung out.
“There is no guarantee that this mimic was my wife. Most likely, it was another mimic that coveted my wife’s skin.”
It meant he did not need my miracle.
Even though his mind knew it was a monster, he had shot something with his wife’s appearance with his own hands. The crushing guilt from that, and the final defense mechanism he had built so he would not collapse.
At a glance, it was a rational statement, so I had no choice but to quietly accept that strained excuse.
But that did not mean I would simply look away.
I bent down and picked up the magazine that had fallen to the floor.
Then, placing it in his cold hand, which was still twitching faintly, I looked him straight in the eye.
“…Next time. Next time, for sure.”
“…….”
“I’ll find her for you.”
Captain Kim’s wavering pupils stilled.
He stared blankly up at the halo glowing softly above my head, then tightened his grip around the magazine.
“…Yes. I’m counting on you.”
The short and heavy search of the second floor came to an end.
*
We left the destroyed consultation room and stepped back into the corridor.
Even though we had wiped out every mimic lurking on the second floor, the air inside the building did not clear in the slightest.
If anything, it felt as though something even more unpleasant and sticky was pressing in on us from all sides.
“The direction of the smell has changed.”
Min Aji, who had been sniffing at the front, said with her tail standing straight up.
“Earlier, it was reeking from everywhere… but now, the smell of blood is pouring down from above, like a waterfall.”
“By above, you mean the third floor.”
The orc uncle raised his muzzle slightly.
The emergency exit and the incubator, our final destination, were on the fourth floor.
Naturally, in order to get there, we had to pass through the third floor.
“In that case, the way up is…….”
Ding.
As if it had been waiting for us to finish cleaning the second floor, the doors of the elevator that had brought us up from the first floor slid open.
“I thought it was a trap, but it turns out to be a very faithful guide.”
The old owlbear let out a hollow laugh as he adjusted his grip on his shield.
But we had no choice. The only upward route this hellish building had permitted us was that unpleasant iron box.
Without lowering our guard, we stepped into the elevator.
On the elevator’s floor button panel, bizarrely, only two buttons were lit in a bloody red.
[3], and [4].