Even after receiving my holy art, it was quite some time before Elder Owlbear came to his senses.
The elder’s eyes were literally round as he drew breath in and let it out again and again.
“Are you all right now?”
“…Yes, yes… I’m all right now.”
Elder Owlbear tried to stand, only to suddenly stagger and collapse back down.
It didn’t look as if he had simply lost strength; more likely, his sense of balance had been shattered. Even while sitting, the way his body kept tilting unsteadily looked terribly precarious.
“Oh dear, my body… Good heavens, my mind seems clear now, but…”
“…Hold on. I’ll heal you too.”
It seemed the problem was that I had cast the holy art for mental protection too late.
It was similar to being exposed to radiation before putting on a radiation suit.
The one fortunate thing was that even that was something I could fix.
Only after receiving my healing as well did Elder Owlbear regain his condition.
But by this point, the questions inside me were only growing larger.
‘…What on earth did he hear?’
For him to lose his mind and try to escape the moment we entered.
Having belatedly regained his senses, Elder Owlbear swallowed hard and opened his mouth.
“…I do not know.”
“…Pardon?”
It made no sense.
But as if he were conveying exactly what he had felt, Elder Owlbear continued with a grave expression.
“I mean I do not know. What I heard, what it whispered to me…”
“So, are you saying you couldn’t understand it, or that you don’t remember it at all?”
“…Closer to the latter. But there is one thing that troubles me… At the time I was hearing the whispers, I feel as though I understood every single word.”
It still made no sense.
Considering he couldn’t remember something that had happened only moments ago, it was highly likely that his claim to have understood was merely the elder’s misconception.
After all, the very first thing the elder did upon hearing those words was none other than run away.
“…Wouldn’t it be more likely that you only thought you understood?”
“That cannot be, that cannot be!”
When I offered my opinion, the elder shook his head fiercely and denied it.
His reaction was more intense than I had expected, so I unconsciously took a step back.
The elder, too, was startled by the fact that he had shouted and apologized.
“…I am sorry.”
“No, well, it’s fine. Elder, then do you remember what you yourself said?”
“…No. Shamefully, I do not remember a single thing.”
“You clearly said you could hear the whisper of a being swimming beneath the Han River.”
Elder Owlbear mulled over my words for a moment, then nodded.
“…Yes. That is right. I believe such a being whispered to me.”
“Good, then. There’s one more thing we need to confirm. Can you still hear that whisper?”
“…No. I hear nothing at all now.”
At those words, I let out a sigh of relief.
“That’s fortunate, at least. Whether it left the area, or whether the holy art of mental protection is blocking it.”
At the very least, it didn’t seem to have much intention of harming us.
When I conveyed my conclusion, Kim Jihu asked, just in case.
“…How can you judge so quickly?”
“In the first place, there’s a good chance that what just happened wasn’t an attack aimed at us.”
If it had truly meant to attack, it would have targeted all of us, not only Elder Owlbear.
And the fact that only the elder became the target was meaningful as well.
“After all, among us, you have the sharpest hearing, Elder, don’t you? It would be more reasonable to see it as something you happened to catch.”
“I see. I am ashamed of myself for harboring base suspicions.”
That reaction was burdensome no matter how many times I heard it. It was only a guess anyway.
“If my guess is correct, that thing probably has little interest in us. Its range of activity doesn’t overlap with ours either.”
We were merely in a position where we had to cross over the bridge, while that being was lurking beneath the Han River.
Unless that thing took an interest in us, it meant there was no need to worry about encountering it normally.
“So… we move for now. Before that, though, receive the holy art of mental protection from me.”
At least this much preparation was only right.
The divine power draining away to maintain the holy art was a little annoying, but it was only a small amount.
‘More importantly, this damned fishy stench is the real problem.’
It did not take very long to cast the holy art of mental protection on everyone.
After a brief period of maintenance, we began our march.
*
The route we could take was extremely limited.
This was a bridge, after all. Unlike back at Gangnam Sarang Obstetrics and Gynecology, the only path was straight ahead.
‘…It even feels terribly stifling.’
It was a petty complaint to make on top of a bridge that was wide even from side to side.
Hannam Bridge was a twelve-lane bridge, and its width was said to reach fifty meters.
‘But what good is a wide bridge?’
As expected of a bridge connected to the infamous Olympic-daero, the road was packed tight with cars like a Rush Hour puzzle.
There was literally no room to set foot.
So we could not travel along the road, and the only thing left was the narrow pedestrian path.
‘Actually, even so, this pedestrian path is fairly wide.’
If ordinary people had been passing through here, they probably would not have felt much discomfort.
If they had been ordinary people.
But we were a team made up of people somewhat far removed from the ordinary.
Everyone was fully armed, and with some of the team members being quite bulky, it felt nothing but cramped.
Because of that, the only place to turn my gaze was below the railing, toward the Han River.
‘…So there’s a monster down there that nearly drove Elder Owlbear mad.’
That fact did stir fear in me, but in truth, it didn’t really feel like much.
The monster’s presence wasn’t easy to sense, and even considering the monster, the Han River looked nothing but peaceful.
The river seemed to be the only thing within the Blackout Zone, where everything had been transformed, that remained unchanged.
The water, a deep navy blue, reflected my light and sparkled, and carrying that light, it flowed off somewhere.
For a moment, I wondered where it was flowing within the Blackout Zone, but that wasn’t important.
In any case, as we moved like that, I spent a long while looking down at the Han River.
Then Min Aji suddenly spoke to me.
“What are you looking at so hard, unni?”
It was a difficult question to answer.
Honestly, it was embarrassing to admit that I had been lost in idle thoughts.
I answered vaguely.
“No, just… This railing is pretty high, isn’t it? I think it’s taller than I am.”
It was something I said to gloss over the question, but it was rather unusual.
To be honest, the reason I felt a sense of stability while looking at the Han River was largely thanks to this.
I didn’t have to worry about falling in.
“Ah, that. It’s simple… A lot of people jump, so they just blocked it off.”
Well, one of the things that came to mind when thinking of the Han River was suicide by jumping.
Even on the internet, jokes about the temperature of the Han River water had been rampant.
If it had become a meme like that, it meant there had been that many suicides.
Just how many people had to jump for such an insensitive phrase to become a meme?
“…Hm?”
As I walked, I suddenly saw a phrase on the railing.
[Is the world still worth living in?]
It was an unfamiliar phrase.
Min Aji seemed to know something about it and tilted her head as she spoke.
“Huh? It’s a suicide prevention phrase. I thought those disappeared a long time ago.”
Ah, now that she mentioned it, I remembered.
It had certainly been abolished after receiving a lot of criticism.
But that was all the phrase was.
It was a little strange that even inside the Blackout Zone, where everything had been transformed, it maintained such ordinary content, but…
“…Wait a moment.”
A thought suddenly struck me, and I stopped walking.
The team members looked puzzled, but they stopped in step with me.
The Han River was still flowing.
‘Just because someone jumps into the Han River doesn’t mean they remain there.’
Corpses float to the surface, and also…
The Han River was still flowing.
Even in a situation where all sides were blocked by walls of humans, water flowed in from somewhere and flowed out somewhere…
Looking back, the Han River, which had seemed to be merely flowing, was also in a greatly altered state.
‘If, just if… this is a world where souls truly exist.’
Even without a body, there was a high chance that the spirit would remain at the place of death.
And so a question arose.
Could the dead, perhaps, have made wishes as well?
In the eyes of those transcendent beings, would the living and the dead truly have appeared different?
If the souls of those already dead had made wishes… then there was a strong possibility they, too, had become monsters no less than the Mimetic Beasts.
I tore my eyes away from the Han River, which flowed on so leisurely.
Before I knew it, my gaze had returned to the suicide prevention phrase.
[Is the world still worth living in?]
According to Min Aji, it was a phrase that had already disappeared.
For something inside the Blackout Zone, it was also a rather ordinary phrase.
It looked ordinary, but for that very reason, it was warped. Infinitely similar to the characteristics of the Han River.
For some reason, it felt as if that phrase were speaking to me, so I opened my mouth to answer.
“…We have to make it worth living, I guess.”
But there was not much more I could say.