It was the result everyone had hoped for, and at the same time, one no one had expected.
Captain Kim’s child was alive.
Amid this chaos, it was nothing short of a miracle.
At the very least, the child had not met the same fate as the mimic beasts we had seen on the fourth floor.
The mutation phenomenon that everyone here, except Captain Kim, had undergone.
That had helped the child cling to life, however poor the conditions might have been.
Thanks to all of that… the child had survived as a human.
Though not in the form of a complete human, but the same could be said for most of the people here.
In its own way, the child was alive and relatively intact.
At least, that was how it appeared right now.
‘Well, and… I need to do what has to be done. Since I feel like I’m about to pass out any second…….’
I wanted to share in the joy of saving the child, but my head was spinning.
My already pathetic stamina had caught up with me.
Even as I felt like I might collapse at any moment… there was still something I had to do.
I had to restore the mother now.
I turned my gaze to the mother lying collapsed on the floor.
The body of the mother who had spat out the child was rapidly crumbling.
Once the abnormal vitality she had maintained by devouring her own kind drained away, all that remained was tattered skin and grotesquely twisted joints.
‘I don’t know if her sense of self really remained, but…….’
I decided not to think too deeply about it.
I knew far too little to draw any conclusion.
But one thing was certain: even after becoming a monster, the mother had tried to protect her child.
After offering a brief moment of mourning for her, I took my stance.
“Whew…….”
I could tell.
Once I restored the mother this time, I would pass out immediately.
‘…Well, it shouldn’t be a problem.’
We had dealt with the mother, but we wouldn’t be moving on to the next area.
We would find some way back to the fourth floor and make our way out.
Only after my teammates agreed did I use divine power.
“…Good.”
Perhaps because I was already exhausted, I no longer had the strength to control this power.
At its core, divine power was absurdly overwhelming.
Until now, I had somehow managed to use it by controlling that power, but in my exhausted state, that was no easy task.
The one saving grace was that restoring a mimic beast to a human did not require any great technique.
All I had to do was ram an enormous amount of divine power into it.
I only had to guide where that divine power would flow.
“…Ugh!”
Flaaash—!
Light pouring from the halo filled the surroundings.
It was an amount of radiance incomparable to when I had used it on the incubator.
Now that I had gained even a slight understanding of how divine power worked, I knew it was simply because I had failed to control the output.
The uncontrolled pure-white light completely swallowed the mother’s body collapsed on the floor.
Within the intense flash, collapse and reconstruction occurred simultaneously.
The mutant tissue that had swollen to an abnormal size crumbled away like ash, and the horribly warped skeleton found its proper place.
Forcing myself to fix only the direction of the surging power, I silently watched the process.
Before long, the mass of light subsided.
The tattered shell of the monster was gone.
In its place, a woman restored to her original form lay curled up.
‘…That should do it.’
The moment I confirmed that she had safely returned to human form.
The last thread of tension snapped, and the limits I had been holding off rushed in all at once.
My vision flickered violently.
The strength left my legs and my body tilted toward the floor, but I could not even fully feel the sensation of falling.
Someone’s urgent voice calling out to me rang dully in my ears, and then complete darkness covered everything.
*
When I opened my eyes, the world was fairly bright.
Even without the light coming from my halo, the artificial glow of LED lamps filled the room.
Only then did I realize that this place was outside the blackout zone.
It seemed that while I had been unconscious, we had returned outside.
‘So, this place is…….’
I rolled my eyes around and examined my surroundings.
It felt familiar. Apparently, it was the same place I had stayed the last time I had passed out.
Back then, Min Aji had taken care of me, but…….
‘There’s no one here now.’
This was seriously troublesome.
My body wouldn’t move, as if a fuse had blown.
Was I just going to have to keep lying here like this?
Just as I was about to start sighing for no reason…….
Srrrk.
The curtain dividing the hospital room slid open, and someone wearing a doctor’s coat came in.
That someone looked at me, jumped in surprise, and then immediately ran back outside.
‘…What was that?’
The doctor’s reaction was baffling.
It wasn’t as if I had come back from the dead. I had only passed out, just like last time, and yet he reacted like that.
Of course, that confusion did not last long.
The doctor returned before long, with Captain Kim beside him.
“Th-then I’ll be going first…!”
The doctor fled out of the hospital room, looking strangely like a soldier under discipline.
I looked at Captain Kim standing there with his beret pulled low and asked in puzzlement.
“What’s with him…?”
“He’s a little… unusual.”
It seemed he was someone acquainted with Captain Kim.
But a little unusual? To me, he looked very unusual.
Whip—!
As I was making a dumbfounded expression, Captain Kim suddenly bowed his head deeply.
“…Thank you.”
“…You don’t have to go that far.”
“Thanks to you, I was able to recover my wife’s body. And I was able to save my child from that hell. Without your help, it would have been impossible.”
Captain Kim remained silent for a while with his head lowered.
Only after pouring out all sorts of words was I finally able to stop him.
After Captain Kim lifted his bowed head, I was finally able to speak.
“Still, judging by the fact that you’re thanking me like this, I guess things have been settled to some extent.”
“Yes, thanks to you. If you wish, I can explain what happened after you lost consciousness right away.”
That was exactly what I wanted to hear.
I had passed out as soon as I treated the mother, after all.
“Then…….”
Captain Kim explained what happened afterward.
“In any case, nothing major occurred. We had already wiped out every mimic beast inside, including the unique entity.”
“What about the Land Leviathan? It didn’t attack again?”
“Fortunately, we did not encounter it again.”
If even that thing had not interfered, then there would have been nothing left to block our path.
Even if there had been mimic beasts in hiding, we had cleaned them out so thoroughly that there couldn’t have been many.
“So there were no threats. And since we escaped, I assume you went back up to the fourth floor. How did you do it?”
“That was…….”
Captain Kim trailed off.
Was there something that did not sit right with him?
But that silence did not last long either.
“We boarded the elevator.”
The elevator that had continued to guide us to other floors.
He said that the moment I purified the mother, it had come to pick us up again.
“It feels like… we received help, in a way.”
“Yes. That is why it was difficult to bring up.”
In any case, we rode the elevator back to the fourth floor and came outside.
That was all there was to the story, roughly summarized.
‘…I’m glad nothing happened while I was unconscious.’
For now, we had returned safely.
But there was still one more thing I was curious about.
Captain Kim’s child.
I remembered clearly that I had saved the child, but I had passed out before hearing the details.
‘…….’
Just as I found it difficult to bring up the subject because it felt too sensitive to ask directly, Captain Kim gave a faint smile and continued.
“There’s no need to be so cautious. You are my benefactor, are you not?”
“No, still…….”
“If you had not been there, even if my child had been alive, I would have given up.”
Captain Kim took a moment to steady his breath, then continued.
“My child… did not become a mimic beast, thanks to you. It was nothing short of a miracle.”
Instead, the child had become a mutant.
Since society’s view of mutants was already not very favorable, it would have been understandable if he harbored dark feelings about it.
“I have never thought that way. The reason my child was able to survive until now was because my child became a mutant, wasn’t it? If the child had remained human, it would not have been easy.”
Captain Kim added quietly.
“So I have decided to regard the mutation as a blessing.”
“…I see.”
“Yes. Not only you, but the other team members were there with me as well, and that is why it was possible. Even so, I am most grateful to you.”
Captain Kim bowed his head once more.
But I did not feel entirely comfortable accepting that gratitude.
No matter how miraculous it was that the child he had thought dead had returned alive… behind it lay his wife’s sacrifice as well.
Feeling awkward in that atmosphere, I brought up another topic.
“Don’t be like that. Do you know what the child mutated into?”
“Mm…….”
Captain Kim lowered his voice.
But there was a strange pride rising in his expression.
“A dragon.”