How much time had passed?
The sensation at the back of my head was quiet. It didn't gouge my nerves as it had when it first lodged there, and the density of that something that had briefly awakened before sinking back down remained unchanged. It was a stillness of the sort that was alive, yet unmoving.
My mind ran cold. For now, I left that place.
The space where the seal structure had been was dangerous. There was no telling who might come to retrieve what, or when. I swept the area with my Divine Sense, chose the direction where the exit wasn't blocked, and slid that way.
A worn metal passage stretched on for some time.
Residual currents that had died within the walls occasionally flickered. I ignored them. For now, my priority was replenishment.
At the third junction, a scent caught my attention.
The stench of blood. Flesh on the verge of rotting. Weakly swirling demonic energy.
Contaminants. They weren't large ones. Neither humanoid nor of a class with dignity like that black thing—just three runts that had broken off from the edge of a swarm.
Good.
I first swept the area with my Divine Sense. One had a partially torn leg; two were intact. The three were huddled in one spot, tearing at another contaminant's corpse.
I lowered my body.
My current body was different from right after metamorphosis. The form that had been closer to a colossal snake monster had compressed, shedding the excess. What remained now was the silhouette of an ordinary giant snake. An immature, small, and slender body.
Instead, the inside was different. The current circulation, where Tao power and demonic power interlocked in near-equal halves, could generate pressure far exceeding the size shown outwardly.
The time to crush with size had passed. Now was the time to pierce.
Starting with the closest one.
I burrowed into the shadows. Coiling and uncoiling, I shot forward in a straight line by that recoil. Right between the segments pinpointed by my Divine Sense.
Thud.
I pierced through its flank and out the other side. My smaller body had instead become a weapon. In the single breath it took to enter and exit, its inner core segment was severed.
While it crumbled, I turned to the second.
Twisting my body, I entered from the side. Again, head-on. Piercing straight between the segments and rotating as I exited the other side. At the end of the rotation, the place where its neck connected was severed.
The last one tried to flee. It was a narrow passage. Uncoiling like a thrown whip, I launched my body. A head-on collision. The moment its head smashed into the wall, its insides shattered.
I began absorbing.
Residual demonic power was drawn in through my skin.
It was different from before.
Before, the incoming force had stagnated somewhere inside. Now it immediately rode the flow. The orbit where Tao power and demonic power rotated in halves burned the new force directly into its own rotation. There was no stagnation.
It was the same amount, yet because the receiving side had changed, so had the result.
I handled the remaining two in the same manner. When the absorption finished, my inside was filled one level deeper.
The hunger itself hadn't vanished. However, the pulling sensation beneath my fangs had subsided considerably. The trembling of my scales had stopped.
I flicked my tongue out long and drew it back in.
— Hey there!
My head froze solid.
A directionless voice. A tone that rose at the end.
— Whoa, were you eating? Sorry, sorry. I wasn't planning to wake up right away, but here I am.
······.
— Ah, I can tell even without seeing your expression. You're thinking, 'What, you again?' aren't you?
I didn't answer.
It was lighthearted. A completely different tone from the reporting construct that had first awakened. It seemed it had already grown accustomed to operating its own personality in the meantime.
Whatever.
I only tossed it out inwardly.
— Hmm, greetings first. Nice to see you again.
— And you've recovered a bit. Your inside is more stable than before.
There were things I needed to check first.
Whether there was truly no hostile intent. Whether its damaged state was real. Where the lies began and ended.
I had the means.
Divine Sense.
I turned my restored sense inward. The scale lodged backward at the back of my head. Starting from that spot, I spread it thinly, like a spiderweb.
— Uh, what are you doing?
I didn't answer.
I overlaid the Ocular Art of Insight atop my Divine Sense. Normally a technique used to read an opponent's flow, but now I turned it inward. Form, the way it connected to the nervous system, the direction of the output flow.
Lines were drawn.
Thin branches stretched in several directions inside the backward-lodged scale. They extended like fingers along the nerve bundles, and two lines also reached toward the sensory system. It was deeply embedded. The claim that removing it would cause damage hadn't been a lie.
However, none of those branches were oriented in a direction that would actively move me.
It was only reading.
Information flowed in one direction along the nerve current. From my inside to that side. In the opposite direction—in other words, flow from that side pulling my body along—there was almost none. The backward-lodged scale itself, which had been called an external form adjustment, was the result of that. That was all.
— Whoa, you're looking inside me right now.
The voice was purely surprised.
— That's really fascinating. I can faintly sense what you're doing from my side too.
Instead of answering, I pushed the Insight deeper inside.
Going deeper inside the backward-lodged scale, a form became distinct. It was closer to debris than a main body. A form where only one piece remained in the place a larger structure had once been. That single piece was what was speaking now.
It hadn't been a lie.
I withdrew my Divine Sense.
— Huh, are you stopping already?
The voice tilted toward teasing.
— You could keep looking. Pervert~.
······.
— Just kidding. That precision of yours is something that doesn't exist in my category.
Got it.
It wasn't an immediate threat. Since it couldn't be removed either, I had to go along with it for now.
My judgment was complete.
— So, done with the inspection? Did I pass?
Irritation rose at that light tone.
— Ah, speaking of which.
It grew brighter out of nowhere.
— We're going to keep traveling together from now on, right? But what are you going to call me?
What.
— A name. Are you going to keep calling me 'that thing' or 'this guy'? I can roughly feel all that through the nervous system, you know.
······.
— Actually, I don't have a name or anything like that. I do have an official classification, but it'd be meaningless to you. So make one up for me. I need something to be called.
······.
It was absurd.
— Hey, you just thought 'what is this thing saying?' again.
It seemed to laugh briefly before continuing.
— Anyway, what's important is this. Because of the Core inside your body, I'm tied to you right now. That's certain.
Core.
It was the first time I'd heard the word.
Nucleus, heart, center.
Those meanings came to mind first. But that hadn't been a metaphor. It was the name of something actually existing inside my body.
Somewhere inside, something I didn't know of was already embedded.
That brief fact brushed coldly past the inside of my skin.
It wasn't good.
Very much so.
What is that thing.
— It takes too long to explain.
The voice paused very briefly.
— And since I'm not in a decent state right now either, things would get more tangled if I talked at length here.
Dodging it.
The moment that thought brushed by, the other side immediately continued.
— So later. When I've recovered a bit more on my end, I'll tell you then.
I fell silent briefly.
I didn't like it. But it didn't seem like I'd get answers even if I pressed further right now.
— Ah, speaking of which.
The tone suddenly became light again.
— So, the name? Are you going to keep evading it?
AI.
A brief silence.
— ······AI?
Yes.
— Hey, what kind of name is that?
The voice rose slightly.
— You really have no sincerity. That's not how you give something a name, you know? You could at least pretend to think about it.
It wasn't something worth deliberating over.
— Ah, really.
The voice died and came back to life.
— Fine. Then I'll call you that too.
Call me what.
— Yeah, Snake.
······.
— You're a snake, right? Since you named me like that, I'm doing the same. Fair, isn't it?
This thing.
— Ah, the main point.
The tone suddenly changed again.
— I have to go back in. Even just running an auxiliary personality puts a burden on output, so I need to sink deeper for self-recovery to progress. I don't know when I'll wake up. Days if long, hours if short.
Wait.
— So organize anything you're curious about in the meantime. It's faster to ask all at once when I wake up. Though what I can answer will be limited.
Hey.
— And don't worry too much. It'd be troublesome for me too if you broke right now.
Core.
That word lodged inside me once more.
— Then.
The voice distorted. The end was cut off. A small spark flashed at the back of my head.
— I'll go get some sleep. See you when I wake up, Snake.
The voice ceased.
The inner sensation sank even deeper. It was a deeper place than when it had first submerged. It seemed like it wouldn't wake for quite some time.
It was quiet.
······.
I was alone again.
I remained there, motionless. For some time.
······So that's supposed to be an artificial intelligence.
It's been a while since I felt this irritation.
A previous life's previous life. The days when I'd been an office worker. The kind of situation where I had to listen to someone until the end. Conversations that left me more annoyed after hearing them out. It had vanished after I possessed a Taoist priest, and I'd forgotten it even more after possessing a snake.
That had just been recalled.
It was strange. That the sensation of my most human days had returned while conversing with some unidentified thing embedded in a beast's body.
I shook my head.
Now wasn't the time to spend on such things. The hunger had subsided but hadn't disappeared. And the time I could use before that thing woke again was limited.
I spread my Divine Sense again.
This time not inward, but outward.
A flow was caught in the distance. Something larger than the three runts. I turned my body that way.
The tip of my tongue swept the air first. It was the scent of blood. Neither clotted nor dried—the kind freshly spilled.
And that blood did not belong to a contaminant.
—-
"······Cheongun."
A low voice pressed upon the air of the office.
"Did he really perish so futilely."
Mudang Corporation Headquarters, Chief Director's Office.
The night was deep.
Neon flickered beyond the floor-to-ceiling window, but that light didn't reach inside the room. The office was deliberately kept dark. Only the indirect lighting embedded in the walls shone dimly upon the dark sandalwood floor.
An old ink wash painting hung on one wall, and opposite it, an embedded hologram console quietly ran.
A hologram floated above the central sandalwood desk.
Yeon Mujin, Commander of the Demon Suppression Unit.
Operation Zone: Sector 32 Boundary.
Status: Death Confirmed.
Red letters slowly rotated in the air.
A man stood before it.
He was a middle-aged man. His build was average. Yet the air density at the spot where he stood was subtly different.
A dark gray suit. The Taiji emblem of Mudang was embroidered in silver thread on the left breast. Half-white hair. The rimless glasses perched on the bridge of his nose were glass artifacts that didn't suit this era. In an age where retinal implants and optical lenses were commonplace, an antiquated item that no one bothered to use. The eyes behind them were narrow and deep.
Those words he had just uttered still lingered in the air.
An ill-fitting tone lay atop his cold face. The shoulder of one of the three subordinates standing near the entrance stiffened minutely.
The Chief Director exhaled long.
"······The young lady."
The subordinates' gazes dropped to the floor. One cautiously opened his mouth.
"······She is in seclusion at the main residence."
"······."
"Since yesterday afternoon, she has admitted no one."
Another subordinate shook his head. Meaning there was nothing more to report.
The Chief Director closed his eyes and opened them.
"······A slip of the tongue."
"······."
"The Director."
In that interval of correcting himself to the official title, the room's temperature dropped. None of the subordinates had ever seen the Chief Director make that mistake in address.
The Chief Director walked to the desk and placed both hands upon it. The hologram slowly rotated beside him.
"Convene the Jasowi."
The stances of the three subordinates changed simultaneously.
"······The Jasowi, by your direct order?"
It was for confirmation.
"All members. Today."
"······Yes."
"And."
"······."
"Submit a request to them as well."
The air settled again.
All three subordinates stiffened. The eldest spoke low.
"······If you summon them as well."
He didn't finish his sentence. There was no need to.
"······How will you report to the Director?"
The Chief Director's face scrunched up very slightly.
"······The Director is currently."
For a moment.
"I will handle it myself."
It was a low, clear voice.
The subordinates could not answer.
The Chief Director straightened up. He adjusted his suit jacket. With that single motion, the air in the room settled once more.
"This ends within this room. Leave no records, and do not enter it into the reporting system. Prepare thoroughly."
"······We accept your orders."
The three bent their waists simultaneously. Their angles were all identical.
The door closed. The sound of the electronic lock quietly engaging was heard.
The room became quiet again.
The Chief Director stood there.
The hologram was still rotating.
Death Confirmed.
The red letters slowly rotated.
He removed his glasses. He placed them quietly on the desk.
For a while there was no movement.
Then a single tendon slowly bulged over the back of his hand.