A crumpled information sign lay rolling on the floor.
The words written on it were our first impression of the fourth floor.
[4th Floor: General Nursery / NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) / Mother-and-Infant Room Prep Room / Nursing Room / Pediatric Clinic]
A wet, squelching sound came from beneath the sole of my combat boot as I stepped on the sign.
The blood-red fragments that had filled the elevator were already smeared across the floor, taking on an unpleasant viscosity.
“……Hah.”
Breathing roughly, I stepped out of the elevator.
As the soft glow of the halo shining above my head pushed back the darkness of the fourth floor, the sight spread out before my eyes was another form of hell, wholly different from the chaos on the second floor.
“Be careful. The floor is completely…….”
Old Man Owlbear swept his shield across the floor and warned in a low voice.
Just as he said, there wasn’t a single intact patch of corridor floor.
Torn newborn gowns, shattered baby bottles, and bloodstains stretched long across the walls and up to the ceiling.
They were traces that showed, with brutal clarity, how the swarm of small mimic beasts that had attacked the elevator earlier had swept through this place.
“…Fuck.”
It wasn’t exactly a pleasant sight.
If anyone looked at this and found it pleasant, wouldn’t that just make them a psychopath?
‘…I almost envy psychopaths right now.’
Of course, I didn’t know whether even those people would be fine in a situation like this… but at least they’d be better off than us.
“The smell is different.”
Min Aji, who had gotten off behind me, clutched her nose and frowned.
“If the second floor smelled like rotten blood, then here…… it’s blood mixed with the smell of spoiled milk and something fishy, like amniotic fluid. I can’t breathe.”
“Probably because of those.”
The orc uncle pointed the muzzle of his K3 machine gun toward the full-length glass window on the right side of the corridor.
The sign there, where half the glass had been shattered, read [General Nursery].
Keeping our guard up, we carefully peered into the nursery.
Dozens of small cribs had toppled over like dominoes, and they were empty inside.
No, to be precise, only clumsily remaining scraps of flesh and bloodstains proved that someone had once been there.
‘…Those monster bastards that flooded into the elevator earlier.’
There was no need to ask where those small mimic beasts had come from.
The children who should have let out their first cries as human beings had their skins stolen by undying monsters and had been reduced to a horrific swarm.
An emotion I couldn’t tell was anger or sorrow pressed heavily against the pit of my stomach.
But there was no time to sink into sentiment.
“We’ll move while checking front, left, and right. Our target is the Incubator nesting near the emergency exit. Remaining mimic beasts may still be present, so maintain a thorough all-around watch.”
Captain Kim’s dry voice broke through my thoughts.
His voice had sunk even colder than when he shot the mimic beast wearing his wife’s appearance on the second floor.
That dryness, as if he had forcibly carved out chunks of his emotions, looked dangerous in its own way, but for now, we had no choice but to trust and follow him.
We advanced slowly down the corridor.
At the far end of the hallway, beyond the reach of the halo’s light, darkness still coiled thickly like ink.
The signs for [Mother-and-Infant Room Prep Room] and [Nursing Room] appeared one after another.
The thick soundproofed doors were already grotesquely bent, as if they had burst outward from the inside.
Sssrk.
Yu Inha slid her tail forward and blocked the open crack of the nursing room door.
Her pupils split vertically as she searched for any presence inside.
“……There’s one inside.”
“Is it small?”
“No. Adult…… Judging by the size, it’s female. But…… it’s doing something strange.”
Something strange.
The image of the mimic beasts I had seen on the second floor, grotesquely imitating the actions they had performed in life, flashed through my mind.
I adjusted my grip on the Glock and looked into the nursing room over Yu Inha’s shoulder.
The soft light illuminated the pastel-colored sofa inside the nursing room.
And the horrific silhouette sitting on it.
It was a mimic beast wearing a patient gown.
The facial area of its skin had already been torn away in places, exposing the red flesh beneath, but the creature was making tender gestures as if it possessed the whole world.
What it held in its arms was not a baby.
It was a piece of a small mimic beast’s corpse, its innards spilling out, wrapped in diapers and a newborn gown.
“Uuuh… aaaah…….”
Through its torn lips, the creature let out a grotesque humming like a lullaby, pretending to put its shriveled breast to the blood-soaked remains.
At the sight of that atrocity, as if the noble instinct of maternal love had been maliciously twisted and put on display, nausea surged up from within me.
“…….”
Without a word, I looked at Captain Kim.
Captain Kim was gritting his teeth so hard his jaw muscles bulged. He twitched his finger, then nodded to me.
We needed to conserve grenades for the fight against the Incubator.
I gave a short jerk of my chin toward Old Man Owlbear and Seo Doyun behind me.
Understanding my intent, Seo Doyun pushed the barrel of the K3 machine gun through the crack in the door and immediately pulled the trigger.
Tududududududuk!
The deafening roar of gunfire tore through the narrow corridor.
The merciless hail of 5.56mm rounds literally ripped apart the pastel-colored sofa in the nursing room and the body of the mimic beast that had been imitating that horrid maternal love.
“Kieeeek!”
As the creature rolled across the floor, riddled with bullets, Old Man Owlbear charged in like a beast with his shield raised.
The heavy sledgehammer cleaved through the air and crushed the bastard’s head like a watermelon, without mercy.
Squelch.
Without even being able to finish its death cry, the mimic beast that had been imitating that horrid maternal love was reduced to a shapeless lump of meat.
“Clear.”
At the old man’s low report, we moved again.
The [Pediatric Clinic] across the hall was firmly shut.
Dark red bloodstains were sprayed like paint across the penguin sticker on the wall, the one once called the children’s president, letting us guess what tragedy must have unfolded inside.
Fortunately, neither Min Aji’s sense of smell nor the old man’s hearing caught any signs of movement, so we passed by quickly.
It was around then that the structure of the corridor began to twist abnormally.
“Space is distorting again. The floor seems to be sloping upward, and the tiles on the walls are mixed together as if swirling.”
Seo Doyun muttered as he ran his hand along the wall.
The corridor, which should have extended in a straight line if this were a normal building, was bent as if someone had seized it with a giant hand and wrung it out.
And at the end of that grotesquely twisted corridor.
Just barely reached by the light of my halo, two heavy iron doors stood firmly shut.
[NICU - Neonatal Intensive Care Unit]
And beyond those iron doors, there should be the emergency exit, the only way out of this floor.
Thump.
Thump.
Old Man Owlbear suddenly stopped dead in place.
The feathers all over his body stood on end and trembled.
“……Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
When Captain Kim asked in a tense voice, the old man tightened his grip on his shield and glared at the iron doors.
“Heartbeats. No…… it would be more accurate to call them pulsations. Hundreds, thousands of tiny hearts are beating at the same time like one enormous pulse. Beyond those iron doors.”
At those words, Captain Kim swallowed dryly and carefully gripped the iron door handle.
Creeeeak.
As the heavy iron door opened with an unpleasant scraping sound, the soft light pouring from the halo above my head pushed back the darkness inside the NICU.
And we had no choice but to freeze in place and hold our breath.
“……That’s the Incubator.”
The orc uncle murmured as if his soul had left him.
In the center of the intensive care unit, where small sterile incubators should have been lined up, a massive mountain of flesh was coiled.
It was a horrific wall of meat formed from dozens—no, hundreds—of small mimic beasts crushed together and fused into one.
Across the surface of the enormous amalgam, countless tiny limbs sprouted grotesquely and flailed.
Hundreds of blood-tinged baby faces rolled their eyes back and mouthed soundless screams.
It was just as Old Man Owlbear had said.
Every time the entire gigantic cluster repeated its hideous pulsing like a single heart, the rotten amniotic fluid and blood pooled on the floor lurched and rippled.
“…It’s even more horrifying than what I heard.”
I had never seen any visual records of the Incubator.
The reason was that the soldiers who had subdued it had given up trying to describe it.
I understood how they felt.
Look around.
Every member of the team had gone pale as they stared at that grotesque, blasphemous life-form.
But amid all that, I……
Wuuung.
I could feel the halo holding my mind together so it wouldn’t collapse.
It was also shining brighter than ever before, so bright it couldn’t even be compared to its previous radiance.
The surrounding darkness was driven back. Only belatedly did I realize what this surging power was granting me.
The courage to face and oppose that thing, and the mercy to ultimately grant salvation.
And this power had an explosive nature, to the point that even I could not control it.
For only me to receive its effects was far too self-righteous a power.
‘…If everyone here could receive this power.’
The halo’s light spread wide.
I saw the particles of light seep into the others.
“…What is this?”
Only then did the others clutch their heads as color returned to their pale faces.
Seeing that, I was certain.
As long as I was here, the minds of the others would not collapse either.
“Everyone, prepare for battle. Let’s try saving those children.”