“Hah, hah……”
The Incubator’s impact after collapsing was as tremendous as its massive majesty.
True to its appearance as a mountain of flesh, its form came apart like a landslide crashing down.
But that did not mean it completely disintegrated, as I had been told.
The pieces of flesh tangled together had not melted away, even with the core destroyed.
“…Hah. It ended more easily than I expected……”
Min Aji muttered.
Until we saw the thing regenerate cleanly even after taking dozens of grenades, it had seemed hopeless.
It clearly reacted to explosions and bullets, screaming whenever they hit, so they did work—but then it regenerated right away.
Even so, my astonishing eye for detail shone through.
“…How did you do it? I followed your instructions, but……”
At the orc man’s question, I explained my astonishing deductive process in detail.
Only then did he seem convinced, letting out a strange sound of admiration as he prodded the inactive Incubator with the muzzle of his gun.
If I had my way, I would have liked to celebrate my astounding and mysterious achievement a little more… but I couldn’t exactly do that in front of the children.
“…Then let’s hurry up and settle this.”
I examined the collapsed heap of flesh.
Every now and then, I could see a baby’s tiny limbs and wrinkled face. And all of them were tangled and stuck together, taking on a shape closer to slime.
‘It’s… different from the person I restored before.’
Back then, I had turned one of them back into a human. And then I had passed out immediately.
So my power was not particularly efficient. It took a full day just to restore a single person.
On the other hand, the Incubator was an aggregate.
An aggregate made up of dozens, hundreds of newborn babies.
If I had to separate the aggregate one by one and purify them individually, then at the very least, purifying it now would be impossible.
But at the same time, that thing had shut itself inside a chrysalis in order to become one.
It was also in the process of becoming one. The way that flesh was stuck together proved it.
‘So… it’s worth trying, at least.’
I raised my hand.
It wasn’t difficult to revive the sensation from back then.
No matter how much of a goldfish brain I had, an experience like that was impossible to forget.
The tremendous amount of light pouring from my halo seeped into somewhere deep within my heart.
And that light soon turned toward the children named the Incubator.
It was exactly the same sensation as back then.
This task was harder than before, but that wasn’t a problem.
No matter how high the difficulty, divine power was an inexhaustible force. I only had to crush it with sheer quantity.
However.
‘…Huh?’
The moment the divine power formed at my fingertips touched the Incubator.
I realized that something had gone wrong.
My mind began to flicker.
But it was different in nature from the exhaustion I had felt before.
Back then, at least, the fatigue had only hit after I had operated my divine power, but now……
‘It feels like… something is interfering……’
My halo began to hum and tremble.
The ability that served as an anchor, keeping my mind together, was activating to its limit.
But it was not enough.
The moment the strand of divine power extending from within me touched that enormous lump of meat, I realized that something had gone terribly wrong.
‘Cut it off, I have to cut it off……!’
My instincts screamed warnings like mad, trying to shut down the channel of power.
But it wouldn’t go as I wished. I wasn’t the one pouring power in.
Hundreds of tangled, hideous thought-forms were using my strand of divine power as a rope and forcibly dragging me in reverse.
Crack, craaackle—!
The light of the halo above my head, which had been supporting my reason, flickered like a scream.
“Yujin unni?! Why is the light suddenly……!”
“Angel! Your face is……!”
The urgent voices of Min Aji and Kim Jihu beside me grew muffled and distant, as though I were hearing them from deep underwater.
My vision distorted grotesquely.
Black stains spread like a drop of ink falling into the brilliant white sight cast by the halo above my head.
And in an instant, those stains swallowed my entire field of view—no, my very existence.
Whiiirl—.
The sensation of my flesh evaporated.
The sticky feeling of the combat boots supporting me on the floor, the weight of the Glock at my waist, even the sensation of the cumbersome wings attached to my back were erased into pure white.
Like a pebble swept away by a dam with its floodgates opened, my insignificant ego was caught in a vast muddy current and began to plunge toward an endless bottom.
Only a fall with no end in sight.
And at the very end of that end……
[…….]
I faced something.
*
My mind had abandoned my body and been dragged into a strange dimension.
I had no idea where this place was, or what the fuck was happening.
As though caught up in some law, only the result remained for me.
[…….]
And I faced something.
No, even the word “face” did not apply. My existence was far too lowly and insignificant to perceive the other party’s face.
A colossal existence that seemed capable of paralyzing reason itself. It was fundamentally different from the warm and benevolent being I had met in that ridiculous dream before.
Was this the frightening being that Shin Ayun and the other mutants had seen in their dreams, the one that must never be mixed with humanity?
No, even that would not be this absurd.
They had certainly said they felt a vague fear.
But if I learned one thing today……
In the face of overwhelming enormity, even fear is a luxury. You are simply crushed.
I could still feel the faint thread connected to me from the divine power protecting my mind.
And yet, even so, it felt as though I would be swept away like this, my very ego melting into that enormous muddy current.
Would giving up make it easier? If I entrusted myself to this incomprehensible flow of power, could I escape this terrible hellscape?
‘……No.’
I tightened my grip on the thread of reason I had nearly squeezed shut.
In the unseen abyss, I forced my head up and stared directly at that indescribable enormity.
Why had I walked into this hell with my own two feet?
A noble sense of mission to save the world? I had no such thing.
It was only so I could grab my boar-like little sister, who was probably holed up somewhere in Gangnam, by the hair and drag her home.
And yet.
If I couldn’t even save the pitiful children trapped inside that lump of meat, what was I supposed to do?
When I couldn’t even purify the souls of newborn babies suffering right before my eyes and had been dragged into this abyss because of it, how in the world was I supposed to break through that dreadful den of monsters and protect my sister?
So I……
‘I can do it. No, I have to.’
Toward the colossal existence crushing down on me, I took one step forward.
I had no physical body, but my will was clearly moving ahead.
To call it standing against it might have been presumptuous.
After all, when an ant lifts its chin toward a typhoon, no one calls that a struggle.
But I did not bend.
The right to control the divine power within me belonged entirely to me.
My resolve to return those pitiful children to the embrace of humanity was not something that would break, even before this vast cosmic existence.
That was what I thought.
[…….]
And only then did that existence recognize me.
It had no eyes, but we perceived each other’s existence.
At the same time, I understood information about it.
That thing, distant and endlessly distant, was also a kind of colony.
To be precise, it was one part of a certain colony.
The Incubator, too, had likely been created by that existence using newborn babies as material.
Because I had attempted to purify the Incubator, I had been called here.
That was as far as I could know.
As I had done so, that existence must have learned about me as well.
No, it had not merely learned about me. That existence had surely learned everything about me.
A candle in the wind.
I was a candle before the wind. No, I might not even be a candle.
I was nothing more than a tiny spark.
[-------?]
It spoke to me.
That alone would have made my mind burst apart.
If not for the faint thread of divine power still connected to me.
This thread of divine power was so weak it could snap at any moment.
If that thing merely wished it, this thread could be severed at any time.
But the reason it did not, I could not know……
Even though my mind was in a state no different from being crushed beneath a compression press……
I was able to protect myself.
Thanks to that, I could speak.
Even if I was nothing more than a spark.
Even though I knew I was an existence that could die out at any moment……
‘I must save those children, so please leave.’
[----]
It was still looking at me.
Silently. Very silently.
But that gaze did not last long.
Had it understood my will?
Or had it simply lost interest?
It quietly withdrew.