I don't know.
Why the birthing mother had carried out such enigmatic behavior.
Perhaps, just as Captain Kim and I had wildly speculated, some ego had remained in the mother.
Even if not intact, at least a fragment was.
Glug. Glug.
The third-floor corridor fell into silence. The gunshots that had spewed a merciless barrage until moments ago, and the mother's shrieks that had been like the final agony of a beast—both had ceased.
Only the sound of the giant monster's belly hide writhing grotesquely on the floor struck our eardrums.
"......"
No one dared approach rashly. They couldn't help it.
It was a belly that had chewed and swallowed numerous small mimic beasts alive, pouring all that terrible vitality entirely into it.
No one could even imagine what would leap out from within.
It could be a new type of special entity, or a colony of parasites bursting out like an explosion.
But we couldn't flee.
We had to confirm.
Whether what lay inside was a disaster aiming for our throats, or a miracle that had survived against overwhelming odds.
I gulped dry saliva and readjusted my grip on the Glock.
"Maintain alert status. It's not over yet."
At my low, dry voice, the frozen group began to move again.
Elder Owl Bear approached the thing's head, gripping a heavy war hammer in both hands, while Min Aji and Yu Inha watched both sides of the corridor, guarding against any potential rear ambush.
"Captain Kim."
When I called out, Captain Kim's shoulders flinched. He had been staring at the mother's belly as if his soul had left him.
His gun barrel was trembling faintly.
If what came out tearing open that belly was a terrible monster, he would have to shoot even what emerged from his wife's womb with his own hands.
It was painfully obvious that this cruel irony was gnawing away at his sanity.
"...Yujin?"
"Put down your gun, Captain. What if you hit the wrong mark with shaking hands?"
At my deliberately curt scolding, Captain Kim seemed to lack even the strength to resist and helplessly lowered his muzzle.
I made him step back behind me, then turned my head toward the hulking figure standing at the front of the formation.
"Mr. Seo Doyun."
"...Speak."
"Could you open that yourself?"
At my request, the Orc uncle silently gazed at the fallen mother's belly for a moment.
A lump of flesh like a bomb on the verge of detonation—touch it wrong and who knew what would leap out.
But it was also true that there was no one more suitable for the task.
"...There is no suitable person indeed. Very well. I shall open it."
The Orc uncle carefully placed the broken K3 machine gun on the floor.
Instead, he gripped firmly in a reverse hold the wicked military greatsword he had used to block the thing's charge.
Thud. Thud.
With each of his heavy steps approaching the mother's corpse, the air in the corridor seemed to stretch taut.
The remaining team members, including me, held their breath and aimed their weapons at the belly hide.
Whatever leaped out, we were ready to pour immediate firepower into it.
"Everyone, don't take your eyes off. If anything happens, turn it into a beehive immediately."
The Orc uncle warned in a low growl and knelt on one knee before the thing's grotesque belly.
Glug!
As if sensing it would soon be opened, something inside thrashed roughly toward the outside.
A bizarre lump rose and fell across skin stretched as thin as it could possibly go.
"...Hoo."
The uncle exhaled short and heavy.
Then, without a moment's hesitation, he plunged the tip of the sharp greatsword into the dead center of the mother's taut belly hide.
Thud!
A dull sound of thick hide being pierced.
Then, the uncle tensed his arm muscles and drew the greatsword downward in a long cut.
Scriiitch-!
With a horrifying tearing sound like rending tough fabric, the giant belly hide split cleanly in half.
"......!"
Nothing poured out from the split seam. No disgusting blood or rotten fluid.
"...This is."
Instead, what tumbled out amid tense vigilance was, contrary to all expectations, something scaly and curled up.
...Something scaly?
Any form of a newborn infant was nowhere to be seen.
Something lay curled up, covered in grotesque and hideous scales that clearly could not be called a normal living creature. Protruding jaggedly between them were things like deer antlers.
"Ah......, ahh......"
What broke the suffocating silence was Captain Kim's bestial groan.
He dropped the gun he held powerlessly to the floor and collapsed to his knees on the spot, filled with despair.
"......"
At this tragic conclusion weighing down on the corridor, the atmosphere of the gathering sank endlessly low.
Elder Owl Bear could not bear to look and turned his head away.
I too lost my words, able only to helplessly stare at Captain Kim's hunched back as he crouched on the floor, sobbing in silence.
To some extent, it was an expected result.
But I had definitely wished for a miracle.
Even if it was a very slim probability, if only there had been something to give hope... it would have been good.
That was when.
"...Wait."
The Orc uncle, who had been biting his lips grimly, suddenly jerked his head up.
He set down the bloodied greatsword and carefully brought his face closer to the hideous, scaly lump of flesh.
"Uncle?"
He did not answer my voice asking without understanding the situation.
He merely stared at it with wide, disbelieving eyes.
Soon, his trembling, thick voice split the silence.
"...Breathing."
"...What?"
"I can still hear breathing!"
At those words, Captain Kim, who had been prostrate on the floor, raised his head like lightning.
I too couldn't help but widen my blank eyes.
It was nonsense.
Inside a monster's belly. For a human newborn to survive in that hellish environment was logically impossible.
The amniotic fluid must have been grotesquely contaminated, and the nutrients supplied through the umbilical cord would have possessed terrible toxicity that a fragile human fetus couldn't endure.
Above all, there was no way a fetus could have endured the extreme shock that must have occurred during the process of the mother's body mutating into a terrible mimic.
'No, it's not entirely impossible.'
A thought flashed through my mind.
There existed one slim possibility.
The only way the child could have survived in that cradle of death.
It was undergoing mutation while still a fetus.
The culprit behind this bizarre incident transforms ordinary humans into much sturdier and stronger lifeforms.
Like the Orc uncle or Elder Owl Bear.
If that bloodied lump had undergone the entire process of mutation from inside its mother's womb?
If it had been born not as a fragile human fetus, but molded into the body of a sturdy monstrous beast capable of withstanding even harsh environments—the story changes.
Furthermore, there had been a massive nutritional supply that the mother had gathered by ruthlessly devouring her own kind.
That blind instinct that poured all energy into only the child in her belly, even as she herself was being turned into a beehive while dying.
That grotesque yet desperate maternal love, and the mutation the child had undergone, had transformed and saved it as a powerful mutant.
The child was alive after all. Through those incredible coincidences piling upon one another, it had survived without being corrupted into a mimic.
"Wait......"
What pulled my consciousness from contemplation back to reality was precarious breathing.
The baby's condition, examined up close, was critical.
The small chest covered in hideous scales was rising and falling irregularly, very faintly.
Foam mixed with sticky fluid bubbled between small lips.
Perhaps because it had been forcibly separated from the mother's womb, the thing's vitality was scattering at a rapid pace.
And fortunately, I was here.
An unlicensed quack of a doctor without a medical license.
I immediately stepped forward.
"Step back."
I gently pushed aside the frozen Orc uncle gripping the bloodied greatsword and knelt before the curled-up bloodied lump.
And quietly closing my eyes, I focused my consciousness on the Halo floating above my head.
A blindingly pure white wave of light bloomed from my fingertips.
I carefully covered the small body of the scaly baby with that warm miracle light.
As the light seeped through rough, grotesque gaps in its skin, the dying vitality that had been flickering out like embers began to stir again.
"Ahh......"
From behind me came Captain Kim's trembling exclamation.
The light washed away the festering wounds and tangled bodily fluids of the lump of flesh, forcibly pulling up and stabilizing its faltering heartbeat.
The desperate wheezing, as if something were tearing, gradually subsided and soon changed into small but regular breaths.
Hff. Hff.
Though it was a grotesque form with hideous scales and deer antlers, those delicate breaths were unmistakably those of a newborn infant.
Finally confirming that the baby's breathing had completely stabilized, I let out a short sigh of relief and withdrew my hand.
Truly... I hadn't expected it to be alive.