Even though the bizarre creature known as a Nazi ghoul appeared, the task at hand remained unchanged. Ian immediately raised the gun he was holding and fired at the ghoul.
BANG!!
The gunshot echoed, trapped within the isolated tunnel. At the noise that seemed to pound directly into the ears, the party raised their respective weapons. The flying bullet smashed the eyeball of the foremost ghoul.
Crunch!
With a horrifying sound, the ghoul’s eye popped. It collapsed, wailing in agony.
The remaining three lunged, baring fangs and claws. Cecilia faced the creatures' glowing red eyes head-on without a change in expression, drawing two massive pistols holstered on her thighs.
She aimed. Fired.
BOOOOM!!
A thunderous roar, incomparable to the round Ian had fired, burst forth. Thick silver bullets tore through the modified barrel and rifling, and the muzzle spit fire, blowing the ghouls’ heads apart. Brains and blood splattered onto the ground.
“Two.”
She muttered in Italian as her mangled wrist regenerated.
A wrist and arm that tore and broke in exchange for overwhelming firepower. A hand cannon only she, with her regenerative ability, could wield.
Its power was considerable—a firepower akin to firing a handgun-sized shotgun on full auto.
Filing away the fact that the Vatican’s technical prowess was quite impressive, Ian roughly brushed off the settling dust and placed his hand on the ground. Then he quietly reached for the grimoire in his coat’s inner pocket.
“Be reborn.”
Creak. As he muttered softly, the asphalt road beneath his hand distorted, transforming into a massive spear that shot forward.
Whizzzz!
The flying spear pierced through another remaining ghoul and pinned it to the ceiling. Unable to resist, it perished.
The ghoul with the destroyed eye was handled by the Management Bureau agents. They skillfully cut off its struggling limbs and crushed its chest with a massive hammer.
“…Huff, damn it.”
Park Hoseok wiped the blood from his face and pocketed the ballpoint pen in his hand. Standing beside him, Kim Seorin shrank the hammer back down and attached it to her waist.
“Were these sons of bitches hiding here…?”
“Didn’t you know? Or were you pretending not to?”
Kim Yul asked. She tilted her head, gazing expressionlessly at the Management Bureau agents. The color drained slightly from Park Hoseok’s face.
“We definitely weren’t pretending. As I said, the Bureau was also pursuing the lunar surface Nazis. We didn’t know they were here. Please believe us.”
“…”
“If you want, we can use a lie detector. It’s a device that makes your entire nervous system and blood vessels burn if you lie. I can arrange it for interrogation purposes.”
“Yeah, then use it when we get back.”
Kim Yul’s lips twisted slightly as she continued.
“Let’s focus for now?”
“…Understood. May I make a report before that?”
“Newbie? What do you want to do?”
Her gaze turned to Ian. Ian nodded vaguely, granting permission to report, and examined the fallen ghoul.
‘Nazi officer uniform. Nothing particularly strange, but the symbol is imprinted quite prominently. Are they advertising the fact that they’re Nazis?’
He clicked his tongue, drew a dagger, and sliced open the ghoul’s belly. He checked inside.
“…There’s nothing.”
Albert, standing beside Ian, murmured. He was right.
Organs that should have been present if it were once human were absent from the ghoul’s stomach. At most, there was a heart and lungs. The esophagus was severed halfway, and the digestive tract was completely gone. The human flesh they had devoured was piled up like dust in the empty space inside the abdomen.
“Are all ghouls normally like this?”
“No, they’re monsters that feel both hunger and fullness. They certainly have digestive organs.”
Albert answered Ian’s question. He stirred the empty interior of the ghoul with his hand, closely observing the blood that came off.
“The blood is quite thin. That’s strange too. Ghoul blood is usually very thick.”
“…I know that. It’s even used as a medicinal ingredient.”
“Right. But these ones’ blood is practically like water. And there’s too little of it. The shape of the heart is also odd.”
He casually tore out the ghoul’s heart and showed it to Ian.
“Look. It’s a perfect sphere, and quite small, isn’t it?”
Ian frowned, staring at the limp red lump of flesh.
As he said, the ghoul’s heart was a perfect sphere. It was also small. While an average heart is about the size of a fist, this round muscle lump was as tiny as a finger. It was questionable whether it could even pump blood throughout the body.
“It’s a variant.”
Squelch! Albert crushed the heart in his hand and stood up.
“Probably caused by these damn fascist Nazi bastards. Anyway, they’re monsters too.”
“…”
“They died after clashing with vampires and became ghouls. But since these guys aren’t human, the transformation went wrong, and this is the result. That’s roughly what we can assume.”
“Nothing particularly to be wary of.”
“True. Just don’t collect the blood. You might get infected with fascism if you mess with it.”
Ian let out a bitter smile at his half-serious joke. He stood up, roughly shoved the ghoul’s corpse aside, and gazed at the village spread out beyond the tunnel.
‘What a mess.’
The long road was strewn with corpses of Nazis and ghouls. Occasionally there were bodies that looked like ordinary humans, but they weren’t in the majority. Most were monster corpses.
Perhaps because it was the tunnel entrance, no living individuals were visible. Once they started moving deeper inside, monsters would likely be running rampant.
‘Originally, I planned to see through any mind-reading and hunt down only the vampires…’
Now that things had turned out this way, it seemed an all-out battle was unavoidable.
Ian let out a deep sigh and tapped the grimoire inside his coat. He had used recreation magic, but with the Management Bureau agents all distracted by the Nazis, it seemed they hadn’t noticed he was carrying a second grimoire. That was a small relief.
“Hoo…”
The party waited quietly until the Bureau agents finished their report.
A moment later, Park Hoseok put away his phone and bowed his head to the group.
“Thank you for waiting. I’ve contacted the Bureau, and they’ve confirmed they’ll send support in a few hours. However, it seems something is happening in Seoul as well, so rapid support will be difficult.”
“A few hours? Too late.”
Cecilia muttered with a frown. She fiddled with the pistols in her hands and cast a glance beyond the tunnel.
“If I’d intended to wait for support, I wouldn’t have come in the first place. We have to go in.”
“I agree. This mission isn’t being led by the Bureau anyway. The decision lies with Mr. Shin Ian, who gathered the personnel.”
Park Hoseok looked at Ian.
“I will follow Mr. Shin Ian’s will.”
“Then we go in.”
Ian answered immediately. He carelessly tossed his cigarette into the ghoul’s stomach and loosened his stiff shoulders.
“Support is welcome, but we mustn’t forget our objective. If we waste time and one side grows stronger, that’ll be a problem in its own right.”
Right now, the vampires and Nazis were locked in a power struggle. As a third force, this was the optimal time to intervene. If one side completely took over the village, breaking through would not be easy. It would effectively turn into an all-out war.
An all-out war against the Nazis was something Ian wanted to avoid. He summoned the Deep Sea Journal, took out a pen, and gestured toward the tunnel exit with his chin.
“Get into position. We’re going in.”
No one argued. Everyone took their positions just as they had when they first entered the tunnel.
Ian flipped through the pages of the grimoire, searching for a suitable summon for the current situation.
‘A Producer or a Watcher wouldn’t be suitable. I should bring out a lower grade.’
Even if the ghouls and Nazis were powerful, they weren’t formidable enough to warrant summoning a Watcher or a Producer. Of course, he could summon them, but if he brought them out and they couldn’t fill their stomachs, they’d turn on him and devour him instead. Both required a considerable amount of food, so summoning them before grasping the exact enemy numbers was tricky.
So, below that. A creature stronger than a Messenger but unable to surpass those higher grades. He flipped pages looking for a suitable entity.
[Twinkle, twinkle, little star-]
That was when. The moment they stepped past the tunnel and into the village, a faint singing voice echoed from somewhere. Mozart’s Little Star. A nursery rhyme and masterpiece known throughout the world. But playing it openly in a countryside like this was a bit odd. The Nazis must have pulled some kind of trick.
Mozart was born in Austria. And Austria is also Hitler’s homeland. Having been once annexed by the Nazis, it wouldn’t be strange for them to blare it as their own national song. Still, not knowing what effect it might have, Ian turned to everyone and dropped a brief word.
“Be careful of the song. Don’t listen to it.”
“…Damn, so it wasn’t just me. Got it.”
Benjamin replied, sweating coldly. The others were in much the same state. Only Ian wore an unconcerned expression.
That served as proof that a mental attack was underway. Ian clicked his tongue and rapidly flipped through the grimoire’s pages.
As they moved further and he turned more pages, the nursery rhyme from within the village grew louder. After a while, he found a suitable creature and raised his head.
“I’m going to use magic. Let’s stop briefly.”
Hearing that, Cecilia stopped in her tracks with a slight frown. The others halted as well.
The party’s expressions weren’t good. Every one of them seemed to be suffering from severe headaches, breathing roughly and holding their heads. Cecilia looked somewhat better, but the others definitely did not.
“…”
Ian tapped the grimoire, looking around at the party with sharp eyes.
Unlike the others suffering from headaches, Ian felt not even a trace of one. His nose stung slightly from the terrible scent of corpses and blood wafting over, but that was all. His head was perfectly clear.
‘Probably because I’m immune to mental attacks.’
It wasn’t surprising. He had already experienced this during the Monkey’s Paw incident.
But just because he was fine didn’t mean he could dawdle. Ian quickly uncapped his pen and spoke to everyone.
“Step back one step. You might get caught up.”
The party followed his order and slowly stepped back.
Ian found a relatively clean spot on the blood-soaked ground and drew a magic circle on it. The lines came out a bit crooked due to the asphalt road, but it was still enough to function.
He poured three pieces of monster flesh and his own blood onto the magic circle, opened the grimoire, and chanted a spell.
“Thou who circulates. Thou who crawls through eternity. As the proxy and vice-lord of the One, I command thee. I have personally prepared a feast for thee; come hither.”
As the chant ended, red blood dripped from the grimoire. The falling blood landed precisely in the center of the magic circle and spread like mist.
The blood mist spread thickly. Within it, a small creature revealed itself. A being with an overall black body, sleek skin, and four arms extended like legs. It was the size of a human head, with no eyes or ears. Its nose was just a hole, and drool dripped from a mouth that took up most of its head.
“…”
The so-called Circulator. If one had to describe it, it resembled a lizard. It confirmed Ian’s presence and raised its front legs high. It looked as if it were greeting him happily, so Ian smiled faintly and pointed a finger at the corpses scattered around.
“They’re corpses, but eat them up for now.”
[Squeak!]
The Circulator replied with a thin cry and opened its mouth wide. In that instant, the motionless corpses roused themselves, crawling into the Circulator’s mouth. Astonishingly, as they neared its mouth, the corpses compressed into small, bite-sized pieces.
[Squeak, squeak!]
The Circulator cried happily and chewed up the chunks of meat entering its mouth. The sounds of bones and muscles crunching echoed clearly. Ian stroked its sleek head with a finger and gave a command.
“Including the ones you just ate, detect and kill any non-humans as you find them. You can eat them too.”
[Squeak!]
The Circulator nodded as if it understood.
Ian patted its head lightly and stood up. He then opened his mouth and looked back at the party.
“Let’s move again. Just make sure not to provoke it… un… less…”
As he spoke, his voice gradually trailed off and disappeared. Ian couldn’t even think to close his mouth, staring at the party with slightly trembling pupils.
“…”
“…”
“…”
At the top of his turned vision. A moon so massive it couldn’t be covered even by a palm, which hadn’t existed just moments ago, poured blue moonlight down from the sky.
And beneath it, Ian’s companions all stared at him with expressionless faces, their eyes flashing with pale light.
“…”
Goosebumps crawled up his back.
[Twinkle, twinkle, little star-]
[How I wonder, hisss, what you are-]
The nursery rhyme began to grow louder.