[Breaking, breaking! Laura and the rest of her crew spotted live in Incheon Chinatown!]
[NekomimiChoego]
[Drone photo of Laura and the Florence Mercenary Corps]
Those crazy zombie bastards are landing in Korea in real time!
[Upvote 8] [Downvote 3]
[Comments]
- Ah shit, these bastards got in too? This is gonna be a pain.
- If it's Florence, isn't that those Swiss bastards? The kinda famous psychic group?
ㄴYeah, that's right. The psychics are the executive class, and the regular people who follow them as the new humanity are the grunts.
ㄴPut simply, it's a lunatic cult. Psychics aren't new humanity, they're just mutants. Basically, they're fluorescent cockroaches, yup...
ㄴBugInMyEar: I'd kinda like to see a fluorescent cockroach.
[Florence? What even is this place that a post came up about it? I'm hearing this for the first time!]
[Kim Ari]
[Self-drawn magical tome and her own SD character illustration]
Dolores unnie roughly told me about the Twilight Hour, but Florence and Laura? She didn't tell me about these.
I know they're a psychic group, but they're nothing against a mage, right? Or are they actually quite dangerous?
OㅅO??
[Upvote 0] [Downvote 0]
[Comments]
- ★Daemo: They aren't particularly that dangerous. Even for a psychic group, there aren't many with truly remarkable abilities.
ㄴ★Daemo: Of course, "not many" means they do exist. Anna's telekinetic spear art with its own conditions, Louise's eyes that are like a downgraded version of clairvoyance, and the flesh-eating Features, etc. There are some dangerous ones for sure. If you're not a seasoned mage, they'll be tough to handle since they swarm in groups.
ㄴKim Ari: Ah, I see. I should probably not run into them then?
ㄴ★Daemo: If you want to live, you'd better not. Still, Kim Ari, your magical tome is of a fairly high grade. If you meet them in a workshop, you'd at least be able to respond. Outside, you'd have no chance, since the Book of Moses is a ritual magic type.
ㄴKim Ari: Right... I'm still a baby mage... sob sob...
ㄴ★Daemo: (mage fighting! cheer)
- But aren't you moving around with Dolores right now and gaining experience? You must've grown a little, no? It's the third day of the Twilight Hour today. Haven't you met anyone?
ㄴKim Ari: I've met plenty! But Dolores unnie did all the fighting, so I just watched...
- Ah, well, nothing to be done. If someone just threw you in alone, you'd die a random death. It's a bit tough for a ritual mage to follow a ceremonial mage around.
ㄴKim Ari: ㅜㅜ
[But it's been ages since that crazy bitch Laura showed herself so blatantly. Didn't she always just stay in the background?]
[BugInMyEar]
Her ability's a bit peculiar, so she just shoves her own teams into certain death while she hides in a safe place, observing the situation like some overlord.
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[Comments]
- Kim Ari: What is Laura's ability? Shared vision? Shared senses?
ㄴBugInMyEar: Nothing is publicly known. But the Florence mercenaries won't die even if you kill them. No, they do die, but they revive.
ㄴKim Ari: ??
ㄴBugInMyEar: I know, an ability that interferes with the cycle of life simply can't exist. Even magic doesn't have that. But these bastards can do it. So everyone's thinking Laura might be able to pull off something similar to resurrection.
ㄴKim Ari: That's scary...!
- Normally Laura does come out to the operation area. But she doesn't run the front lines herself. She's probably hiding out with some stealth and utility specialist.
ㄴBugInMyEar: (mage irl... cheer)
ㄴAnyway, the important thing is, that crazy bitch Laura doesn't give a damn whether her team members die. Since she can just revive them anyway.
ㄴBugInMyEar: But how the hell does she revive them? Honestly, I can't believe a fluorescent cockroach can do something even mages can't.
ㄴProbably not resurrection, but some other mechanism. Just something that looks like resurrection.
ㄴBugInMyEar: Like what.
ㄴI don't know, fuck. Go ask someone.
ㄴBugInMyEar: Why are you getting mad, fuck. Log in.
ㄴㅗ
*
A dark basement.
In the center of a secret chamber without a single window, where only ten candles scattered about fought back the darkness, Laura glanced down at the small candlesticks placed here and there while fidgeting with the revolver in her hand.
Click-clack.
Each time the cylinder turned, the bullets loaded inside rotated.
Incendiary rounds, silver bullets, poison rounds, fragmentation rounds. Ammunition crafted using Cartel technology peeked faintly from within the cylinder.
"......"
The Cartel was a very peculiar group. They sold goods without discriminating between ordinary people and criminals, and as long as you paid them generously, they would do anything.
Contract killings, political assassinations, corpse disposal, human trafficking.
They would accomplish any kind of criminal act by hiring cheap mercenaries under the guise of external commissions, no matter what. Though their preference was extremely low, so the pay for completing missions wasn't that great.
But what did it matter? The ones who usually took these criminal contracts were the dregs pushed to the very brink. What they needed above all was money, and for that, they wouldn't hesitate to commit crimes. Why would such people refuse Cartel commissions that offered money and also cleaned up all traces of their crimes neatly?
Many people misunderstand, but Cartel was never a clean, upright, and incorruptible corporation.
Opportunists and capitalists straddling exactly the line between black and white. That was the Cartel. Having risen from the lowest rung of contract workers, Laura understood their gray nature better than anyone.
Well, by the time she had formed her own mercenary corps, things like the black domain weren't really her concern anymore.
"Boss, I've returned as ordered."
While she was lost in thought, the basement door opened, and a burly man walked in.
The corps members filing in behind him were each carrying a corpse slung over their shoulders. Laura stared at them with a blank expression and rose from her chair.
"How many in total?"
"Fifteen purchased from Cartel, and five we procured locally ourselves, so twenty in total. We only brought drunk homeless people, so you don't have to worry."
"I hope you left no traces."
"We didn't. We've already double-checked them."
The man bowed his head and answered respectfully. Laura nodded, then called to the blue-haired woman standing behind her.
"Maia."
"The total personnel deployed for the mage hunt was twenty-five, and the survival status of all of them is unclear. Seeing that all the bugs with copied biometric data have fallen unconscious, they are at minimum in a near-death state."
"Either way, the situation is abnormal. Retrieve them. Prepare."
"Shall we discard the remaining five?"
"It's a noble sacrifice. Watch your language."
"Yes, my apologies."
Maia bowed her head. She immediately had the mercenaries lay the twenty corpses neatly on the floor.
Corpses of different genders, ages, and races. Maia took out bottles containing bugs from her bag, one by one, and carefully sorted through them.
[Anna]
[Hans]
[Hirst]
[Katharina]
Stickers with the mercenaries' names were attached to the glass bottles. Maia put on a mask, opened the bottles, and used tweezers to extract the bugs inside. The limp bugs followed her movements without any resistance.
Squish.
Maia pushed the tweezered bug deep into a corpse's ear. Carefully controlling her strength so as not to crush the bug, she repeated the same task twenty times. Then she turned to Laura and lowered her mask.
"Lady Laura. Preparations are complete."
"Stand back."
"Yes."
Laura handed the revolver to Maia, then drew a dagger from her waist and slashed her palm deeply.
Blood flowed from the torn wound, and she fed it into the corpses' ears and mouths. Whenever the bleeding stopped and the wound regenerated, she would tear her flesh again.
By the time blood began to overflow from the mouths and ears of all the corpses, Laura snapped her fingers.
That triggered the ability. As a psychic power, it required no incantations or spells like magic.
The price was vitality. Roughly one year of her lifespan vanished per corpse, but as a hybrid of vampire and human, lifespan meant little to her.
Bzzt—!
The corpses implanted with bugs began to convulse. Laura looked down at them with her blood-shot, reddened eyes and flopped heavily into her chair.
"A drink."
"Here."
Maia handed her a cocktail, half blood and half rum. Laura shook the blood off her hands and took a sip.
At that moment, a change occurred in the convulsing corpses. Laura's ability read the biosignature data stored in the bugs and began to overlay it onto the corpses.
Crrrk!
With a sound like bones twisting, the appearances of the corpses changed.
An elderly man with graying hair was soon transformed into a young Western girl, and color began to return to lifeless flesh.
Hearts that had long since stopped began to pump blood once more. Along with the circulating blood, the remains of the bugs that had been lodged like impurities melted away, injecting the data into the corpses.
Shortly after, the quietly sleeping girl snapped her eyes open and sat upright.
"Oh you goddaaaamn!"
She cursed, fumbling at her eye sockets, mouth, and ears with her hands. Then, sensing the dozens of gazes upon her, she whipped her head around frantically.
"Ah."
Her terror-stricken expression went blank for a moment, before returning with visible relief.
"Ah, fuck. I'm back alive. Thank goodness..."
"Anna. How do you feel?"
Laura asked with a smile. Anna, not a shred of shame despite her nakedness, jumped to her feet and yelled.
"Filthy. I died with every hole in my body pierced through. A tentacle that came in through my ear burst out from my stomach, and a tentacle through my eye came out my throat. I died without being able to resist."
"Tentacles? A mage wielded tentacles? Was it perhaps the owner of the Necronomicon?"
"No, no. Not that level. Just a crazy bastard. They handled a monster shaped like some kind of cube, and it's definitely not a creature recorded anywhere. I'm an ancient literature buff, you know. I've never seen a description of that monster."
Anna said that, then shuddered all over as she recalled the sensation of the tentacles churning through her insides.
"Ah, damn it. That's poked a hornet's nest..."
"Do you think a hunt is possible? What do you think?"
"Impossible. Even if we threw absolutely everyone at it, it won't work. To have any miniscule chance of winning, we absolutely have to ambush it, but with that cube monster there, even an ambush is difficult. I don't need to spell out the risk of failure."
Anna let out a heavy breath and tilted her head as she watched the fallen mercenaries who were beginning to wake up one by one.
"Hirst. Don't you think so too?"
"...Yeah. It's something that even sniping won't work on. There's no method. Unless we just blast it with a rocket launcher or something."
Hirst, the sniper who had had his eyes and brain pierced by a tentacle, answered right after coming to. He touched his fingers to the corners of his eyes.
"No, I'm not even sure a launcher would work. Pure firepower alone can't catch it. Something of a higher dimension is needed."
"Even if we mobilised all our psychics, would it not work?"
"It won't work, Lady Laura. That's my assessment."
Hirst laughed weakly.
"I've faced a lot of aberrations so far, but this is the first monster like that."
"Alright. Then following your two opinions, I'll abandon hunting that mage."
"Agreed. Fuck, I just can't understand why a mage like that is in Korea. Isn't the Clock Tower going to take them in? Why on earth are they letting a monster like that strut around openly?"
Anna grumbled. She pounded her trembling legs with her fist and looked up at a large, burly man.
"Victor. Go get my alcohol and my spear for me. I'm asking you."
"...I don't like being ordered around, but fine. You look like you've had a rough time, so I'll do it. Wait here."
Victor left the room. Anna plopped down onto the floor, still completely naked, and spread her legs wide. Yet no one felt any lust toward her. Not even Anna herself felt any lust.
It was a side effect of the revival.
The extinction of every reaction that occurs in the brain, including emotions. With each successive revival, another reaction disappeared, slowly bringing them not toward instant death, but toward a gradual one.
And there wasn't a single person here who hadn't been reborn at Laura's hands. Only Maia and Laura were surviving in their original states. It couldn't be helped, since without the two of them, the resurrection itself wouldn't work.
"So all 20 have been resurrected? Good. Those who were deployed for reconnaissance have all worked hard, so take a 12-hour rest. And the rest of you, pursue the new target."
Laura said as she took the revolver back from Maia.
"Name's Eric Xavier. The gatekeeper of the Owl Estate in Korea. One of our mercenaries has located that mage. We've found their hideout too, so break in and kill them."
"Owl? Isn't that a shop run by the Clock Tower? Is it okay to hit that place?"
"It doesn't matter. The Clock Tower isn't the type of organization that cares about that sort of thing."
Laura smiled faintly.
"There must be dozens of Clock Tower mages who've died so far, and they've never shown even a small reaction. Mages are meritocrats, you see. Dead mages are scorned for lacking skill."
"..."
"And it's a festival right now, isn't it? Everyone should enjoy a festival. Mages are no exception."
Laura spun the revolver and crossed her legs. Then, Anna, who had been sitting still, tilted her head, sensing something strange.
"Hold on, why are there only 19 of us? There were definitely 25 deployed."
"Because there were 20 corpses. Five made a noble sacrifice. Given there's still no reaction from the bugs, they're likely dead or brain-dead. The conditions for restoration were met, but may they rest in peace, for they were not chosen."
Maia replied. Anna scrunched her face further.
"That makes even less sense. All dead or brain-dead. 20 prepared corpses. Then there should be 20. But 19 got up. Where's the other one? That one lying over there, who is it?"
"Hmm."
Maia looked down at the body that hadn't gotten up yet with a cold expression. As her gaze slid around, a glass bottle with a name on it came into view.
"It's Hans."
"Hans?"
"Yes."
Maia nodded.
"It seems neither his body nor brain have died yet."
*
"I don't dislike people with guts. I also like people who keep their mouths shut. Ah, and smart people too."
Tap, tap, tap.
The living room was blacked out with blackout curtains, blocking the sunlight. The sound of rain tapping against the window cut into the coldly sinking voice.
"But I don't like people who don't answer my questions. I trust you understand what I mean."
"...Hrrgh."
Hans stared at where the voice was coming from through his vision dripping with blood.
It was right in front of him.
A man in a black coat sitting across from him, staring intently into Hans's eyes, tilted his head slightly to the side. In the dark room, only his black eyes gleamed vividly.
A murderous gaze that looked like it had killed dozens, maybe hundreds of people. Hans felt a stabbing phantom pain from his severed leg and clenched his teeth. Whether he did or not, the mage leaned his upper body forward slightly.
The breath reeking of blood drew a little closer.
"I'll ask one last time. My kindness in speech ends here, and my gentle touch ends here. And I believe you're a smart person."
"..."
"Your name. Affiliation. Abilities. How you found this place. Your employer or boss's name. Spill it all."
The mage said. Behind him, through a faintly glowing blue fish tank, a small cube could be glimpsed devouring corpses.
Hans glanced at it and racked his brain.
'If I die from external trauma rather than internal injuries, Laura-nim can restore me. So instead of dying from excessive bleeding, I should provoke the mage and die from external trauma.'
His judgment was swift. He smiled faintly and moved his lips toward the mage before him.
"Fuck you..."
"..."
A curse uttered in a dying voice. The mage stared at him with no change in expression, no response, then briefly got up and returned with something.
It was a cup.
A metal cup.
A cup with traces of some kind of flesh ground into it.
The mage set it down on the floor and spoke.
"Truth is, even if you don't open your mouth, I have plenty of means to extract information. Still, I captured and questioned you to show you maximum mercy. Because I don't kill people recklessly."
A gentle voice. Yet sharp as if piercing the heart.
"But you kicked that opportunity away as if showing off. So I'll take this chance to satisfy a curiosity of my own."
Swoosh.
The mage stared at Hans expressionlessly. Black water dripped from the edge of the grimoire, which had opened by itself.
"My grimoire is a bit special. It doesn't have any negative effects on me, but I doubt that holds true for you."
"...Hrrrgh, a grimoire is just something a mage wrote. Showing it won't make anything happen—"
"It's a grimoire of an Outer God."
At the response, Hans's movement halted abruptly.
"...What?"
"The reason I'm telling you this is because I'm certain that when you read the contents of the Outer God's grimoire, you won't remain unscathed. Even if you resurrect through some means, the power of an Outer God will affect not just your body, but your soul and mind as well. This is not a guess, it's a certainty. Do you agree?"
With a tone different from before, the mage asked nonchalantly.
Hans's face turned pale blue.
"W-Wait! Hold on! An Outer God's grimoire? What absurd—"
"This conversation ends here. Like I said, I like talking to smart people, but I don't care much for chattering with beasts. And by my standards, you're a beast."
Scrape.
The mage pushed back his chair and stood up. Then, he turned the grimoire 180 degrees and held it so the cover faced himself.
"No, originally, espers are mutants—human, yet not human. Thanks to that, you can't even be used as magical materials, so maybe you're even lower than beasts."
"Wait, I said wait! If you show me that Outer God's grimoire, you fuck, if you show it...!"
"I don't know. No one knows. No one knows what will happen. Because there's no history. So I want to try it out."
The mage pushed the grimoire forward. Slowly, the pages of the grimoire began to enter Hans's vision.
"Ah, Aaaaah!"
He instinctively shut his eyes. But even in the darkness, the contents of the grimoire came through vividly.
A grimoire written by an Outer God is perceived not with the eyes, but as 'existence'. Blocking his vision meant nothing.
"Aaaaaah!"
In a world filled with darkness, a white page slowly appeared. The letters written there were clearly etched into Hans's existence.
[!%!@#$%^!@#$@#%#&^%*!#]
Unreadable characters. Incomprehensible characters.
Characters the soul rejects. Characters that defile existence. Characters that annihilate the body.
God.
The cosmos.
Nobility.
Corruption.
The sea.
The sky.
Nebulae.
Turbidity.
Head and hands.
Heart and brain.
Arms become legs, letters become eyes.
What is worn is muscle and bone.
Worship is the most corrupt emotion.
Brainwashing and anguish.
A cradle means under the bridge.
A collapsing galaxy.
An overflow of information.
Direct gaze.
Contempt.
Disregard.
Oblivion.
Dust.
Trees scatter and become flesh, branches snap and become human.
Life is an existence bloomed from ancient times. But a creature submerged in the sea. Thus, dust fallen from the sky.
Collapse.
Overflow and loss.
Depression and joy.
Joy is the origin that forms bone.
The origin is the cosmos.
And swimming in that cosmos is...
God.
"Ah."
He perceives it.
In the grimoire where nothing could be read, only one sentence was perceived clearly.
[I do not permit it.]
"Ahh..."
Ssshhhlink.
Without any warning, Hans's body melted away, leaving only the brain behind.
The flesh that comprised him turned into black seawater and soaked the floor.