A trigger pull without hesitation. Bullets tearing through the air struck the villagers’ bodies with precision.
Blood spurted. A villager unable to overcome the kinetic energy toppled backward. A woman with her forehead pierced twitched and fell face-first.
But they soon rose again. With faces covered in blood, they continued approaching while muttering incomprehensible words. The villagers who had been crushed by Kim Yul’s magic also dragged their broken bodies and crawled across the ground.
They did not regenerate. Their shattered bodies continued moving in their broken state, scattering blood and bone fragments.
It seemed they possessed immortality without regenerative abilities.
“It doesn’t seem like they’re physically immune…! Huff…! More importantly, I don’t know why they’re suddenly acting so hostile….”
Lee Minsu spat out, clutching his shoulder. Ian frowned.
“Is that what’s important right now? It’s fine to be curious, but use your head in a way that helps the situation. Now that we’re already hostile, dialogue is meaningless.”
“Hmm, you’re right…. Excuse me.”
Lee Minsu smiled bitterly and exhaled heavily. The pain starting from his shoulder seemed to heat his brain, but it rather served as the driving force to maintain his sanity. Bone chips falling from the scraped bone randomly stabbed into his muscles every time his joints moved.
The situation was no different for Kim Miryeo. However, without a single sign of pain, she drew the katana she had kept hanging at her waist and lowered her stance.
A sharp momentum, as if she would charge at any moment. Ian stared at the back of her head for a moment, then turned his head toward the villagers.
Though he had spoken like that, Ian too harbored curiosity toward them deep down.
A sudden mental attack? It wasn’t a strange occurrence. Hadn’t he already heard that both the Monkey’s Paw and the Buddha were capable of mental attacks? That they could momentarily captivate Bureau agents and even mages was unexpected, but since they had broken free anyway, it was ultimately a good thing.
What interested Ian was their characteristic of “immortality.”
Immortality without regenerative abilities. Having obtained an ability tantamount to a curse, could they truly move normally even if their heads exploded?
From an extremely magical perspective, what constitutes a human is usually defined as the head.
Precisely, the “brain.” They believe that as long as the brain is intact, and if one can dominate it, a mage can live forever.
It wasn’t a nonsensical tale. In fact, a certain grimoire recorded a magic that allowed one to transform into maggots, seize another’s brain, and live forever. There were quite many similar magics. Magics such as excising someone’s brain and transplanting one’s own brain in its place were fairly famous in the magic industry.
Criticism about acts that violate human ethics was not a story applicable to mages in the first place. Human ethics were merely obstacles to the development of magic, not stepping stones for advancement. It wasn’t for nothing that most magic had developed on battlefields.
Anyway.
Not through magic, but through mystery—where lay the foundation of their immortality? The heart? Or the brain? Which of the two must be destroyed to sever their immortality?
Did the fact that they didn’t die despite having their foreheads pierced mean the heart was important after all? Or was it because the brain hadn’t been completely destroyed?
He wanted to verify. There was no reason he had to refrain.
Ian holstered his pistol, opened his grimoire, and began chanting an incantation. Black seawater swirled around him.
“I, the Lord of the Sea and Her husband, do command. O Sea, swing the blade that shall cleave them.”
As the incantation concluded, flooding seawater crashed over the villagers. Compressed hydraulic cutters precisely sliced through their bodies. Their flesh, torn into pieces, thudded to the ground, and blood flowed like a river.
At a glance, the situation seemed to be over, but the party held their breath without letting their guard down.
And as expected, yet also in a slightly different form than expected. The shredded villagers raised themselves.
[Ahahaha!!]
Faces bloomed from the split chunks of flesh. Like red spider lilies, they burst into laughter simultaneously, laughing loud enough to blow the village away.
“Kuhak!”
“Uuup…! Uwaaack!”
“…!”
Those who heard the sound all collapsed to the ground, convulsing. Expressions that seemed both to laugh and to cry were carved onto their faces. Kim Iseo was relatively unharmed, but even she didn’t look normal. The corners of her bizarrely torn mouth stretched upward endlessly, slowly ripping her skin.
“….”
Ian watched those sights and quietly tapped his grimoire.
Unlike the four writhing people, he was in a state of receiving no significant mental damage, just as when he had first set foot here. Laughter? It was literally just laughter. Loud and bizarre, but not something that would drive one mad simply from hearing it.
It was hard to believe he was unscathed simply because his mental barrier was thick. He probably possessed immunity to mental attacks themselves, but he couldn’t guess the cause.
Perhaps the grimoire was helping with his mental barrier.
Whatever the case, it was a situation with nothing but benefits for Ian. He watched the villagers approaching even as chunks of meat, and quietly organized his thoughts.
‘Judging by how they haven’t launched any significant physical attacks despite having faced off for quite some time, it seems they don’t have any special means of attack.’
The knives or axes the villagers wielded were fairly threatening, but unlike the cruise ship captain, they didn’t seem capable of such things as extending tentacles or thrusting out their tongues to use like spears.
Probably because the type of monster itself specialized in mental attacks.
This was a favorable turn of events for Ian. He exhaled heavily and walked toward the villagers.
“S-Sir Ian…!”
Kim Iseo, who was laughing and crying at the same time, called his name. Ian ignored her and looked up at the sky.
The risen sun was shining brightly upon the ground. Sunlight, penetrating even the interior of the mountain that had been nothing but dark, led faint auras of light and replaced the places where darkness had been. Beneath it, the other shore flowers and villagers still bloomed with smiles and squirmed crawling forward.
“Reveal yourself.”
Ian looked down at them and muttered in a low voice.
Magic is fundamentally greatly influenced by the environment. Naturally, atmosphere, attitude, form, and outward appearance are also important. To use vast magic, one must don the appropriate mask and garments. Reality differs from fiction; it is impossible to slam down lightning or scatter flames without any process, as an archmage would.
Hence the need for trigger words suited to the situation. However, the magic of the Outer Gods did not require such things.
Yet he chanted trigger words simply to increase the power of the magic.
And to make the environment favorable to himself.
“Original sin runs deep.”
Ian opened his grimoire and murmured.
At that moment, blood flowing from the grimoire’s cover dripped to the floor. The grimoire’s blood, swimming like red fish, touched the villagers’ blood and began devouring them in reverse.
“All original sin in this world began from the sea, therefore how can that sin not be my sin?”
[Ahahaha!!]
“Our original sin can never be washed away, only melted down. Thus the Mother of the Sea forged that sin anew in creation, and we resolved to call it love.”
[Aha—!]
“Then what is love? Aah, love is our devouring our own sin, so we are fated to kill one another for all eternity.”
[Ah.]
“In this act there is neither God, nor Buddha, nor human. We must kill one another while loving, and love one another while killing. Truly a beautiful sight. You shall be no exception. But.”
As the incantation continued, the laughter subsided. The sound of flowing water replaced it.
“I, who am Her proxy and husband, am thus free from such laws.”
Rain.
It rained.
From below to above.
Reverse-flowing rainwater pooled on the ground and flowed skyward. A phenomenon that denied the laws of physics head-on. The villagers’ laughter sank buried in the sound of rain, and blood was smothered by blood and perished. The red spider lilies withered, and a thick fishy stench and the scent of blood smothered the sweet floral fragrance.
“Keuheuk… haak…!”
“…How absurd.”
As the laughter subsided, the party’s minds also returned to clarity. They showed varying reactions upon seeing Ian standing squarely before the villagers, the reverse-flowing rain, and the surging black seawater. But soon they came to their senses and approached his side.
“…Are you alright?”
Kim Iseo asked. Instead of answering, Ian placed his hand upon his grimoire.
“As I said, original sin runs deep.”
“….”
“You have no qualification to preach the will of Buddha. You possess no faith to cry out the name of God. You who begged a mere trivial creature for wishes and obtained happiness have no qualification to be happy.”
“Shh.”
Kim Yul, realizing Ian was chanting, covered Kim Iseo’s mouth with her hand and smiled brightly. Then she gazed at Ian, her eyes sparkling.
Ian noticed her gaze, but without paying it any mind, he uttered the final incantation.
“Thus I claim.”
[Ah.]
“The sea remembers, so I shall melt down your original sin once more and take it away.”
[Aah….]
“Before the Mother of Love, be forgiven for your sins.”
[Aaaaah!!!]
The villagers screamed and began staggering back toward their homes. But as the floor became covered in black seawater, they could do nothing and floundered upon the surface. The reverse rain beat upon their bodies and bored holes into them.
Conversely, it could not affect the party at all. The raindrops that avoided the others clung to Ian alone, wriggling as if showing affection.
Thanks to that, he was drenched like a drowned rat, but Ian closed his grimoire and swept back his hair. Then he turned to the party with a slightly tired expression and spoke.
“I leave the cleanup to you. I’m a bit tired….”
Fortunately, no one refused his request.