The instant he emerged from the water, the weight that had been pressing down on his entire body until moments ago vanished.
A much thinner, lighter current brushed between his scales. Air, moisture, and the stench of rotten water clung to his body all at once.
His wet body slid long across the floor. His scales scraped against the concrete. It was rough and hard, but it did not hurt.
If anything, he felt it too clearly.
His scales noticed first where force caught and at what angle resistance disappeared. It was a sense he had never possessed as a human. And yet now, that felt more natural.
He stopped. His body reacted before his thoughts did.
He held his breath. No—he sank his very presence. He suppressed even the flow within him, lowering it.
At that moment, the outside came in first.
Air. Heat. Moisture. Wind seeping through cracks. Somewhere above was open, and through the collapsed structure, an extremely faint current was circulating.
Above the sewer, below the surface.
It was an ambiguous layer wedged between collapsed structures.
He swept his gaze over the surroundings.
Concrete, cracks, exposed rebar. Traces of rust. It was old. But it had not completely collapsed.
More than the signs of collapse, he sensed the time it had spent abandoned.
At the edge of his vision, symbols and numbers were engraved on a broken metal plate.
32
He paused.
This was another world. There was no reason the writing should be the same. And yet the meaning simply entered his mind. He had not interpreted it.
There had been similar times when he had been a Daoist. Moments when unfamiliar texts suddenly unfolded into meaning on their own. He had not known the reason then, and he did not know it now. Only the fact that the sensation continued even in this body briefly caught his attention.
Sector marker.
He left it at that and moved on.
There was something that had entered his senses before that.
Heat.
Flow.
Movement.
He turned his head.
Something that looked like a rat crawled out of the darkness.
It was the size of a wolf. Its fur had fallen out in patches, exposing flesh, and its eyeballs gleamed far too wetly. Its gait was crooked. Even the way its joints meshed together was abnormal.
At that moment, something inside him twitched.
He could see the energy remaining inside the creature’s body. It was extremely faint, but it was definitely there. A murky energy of the same kind as his. The demon core he had swallowed wriggled as if drawing it in.
It was a pull lower and hotter than hunger. So strong it was impossible to resist.
The creature saw him too.
Its muscles contracted first.
His field of vision overlapped thinly.
Heat moved, air split, and he read the trajectory of the creature’s body just before it sprang forward. He had neither the strength to spread his spiritual sense as he had in his Daoist days, nor the leisure to prepare talismans or formations. Instead, the new senses laid into his body filled the gap.
He laid a thin layer of Daoist power over the trajectory he had read.
The force was weak, but it was enough to throw off the creature’s senses for an instant.
The creature faltered. It was closer to its senses snagging than its feet.
That was enough.
His body slid first.
He did not clash head-on. He flattened himself low, twisted, and burrowed under its neck before its foreleg could land.
Crack.
His jaws bit through its throat.
Black bodily fluid burst out and soaked his scales. The stench was terrible. And yet it was not only disgusting. The faint heat left inside the creature spread across the tip of his tongue. More than the sensation of swallowing flesh and blood, the energy tangled within scraped down his throat first. The flesh crushed inside his mouth slid down slickly. An energy neither hot nor cold seeped along the inside of his throat. The acts of chewing, swallowing, and absorbing happened almost at the same time.
He did not stop.
He chewed, crushed, and swallowed.
He scraped up every last trace of the faint energy remaining inside the creature’s body and took it in.
At that moment, something opened inside him.
It was a predatory impulse more naked than hunger. A filthy, hot greed that made him want to draw in more even when he was already full.
A short breath leaked out.
He had to stop.
That thought was certainly there.
But his body did not hesitate. It scraped in the remaining flesh and blood to the very end. It was not a feeling of wastefulness. It was not enough. There had to be more.
This makes survival easier.
That conclusion settled into place with strange speed.
Suddenly, it caught on something.
This was not a human reaction.
There was no revulsion, no resistance. It was too natural.
So.
So what?
Right now, only that mattered.
Absorb. Survive for now.
Everything else could come later.
He pulled his body away from the remains. The black fluid smeared across his scales spread long over the concrete floor, but he had no intention of lingering. The smell of blood and the murky energy were both too distinct to leave behind here.
He lowered his body and slid into the darkness.
Only after moving some distance away did he stop again. The tip of his tongue split the air. Between the stench of rotten water and the smell of metal, he caught another extremely faint heat.
A rat.
It was not alone.
Beyond the darkness, among the collapsed structures, similar presences were moving low. Weak. But still there. Things he could swallow.
His body leaned toward them first.
This time, he did not resist.
Silencing every sound, he slid toward the next presence.
—-
Bzzzt.
Static flowed.
A broken drone was lodged against the wall. Its outer shell had half-melted and twisted, warped into something that seemed less like metal than another substance entirely. Its internal circuits flickered red at intervals. A weak spasm from a machine that had not completely stopped.
The smell of scorched metal and the acrid odor of fluorescent gas clung thickly to the air.
Above it, space distorted.
Very slowly.
An invisible membrane folded inward once, then spread open again. The air was pressed down. It was not air pressure; it was closer to space itself bending by one layer.
Tap.
A middle-aged man walked out of the gap.
A black robe. Long, hanging sleeves. The fabric brushed the floor and dragged slowly. Neither old nor new, it had the texture of accumulated time.
The moment his foot touched down, the air sank. The fluorescent gas lying damply in the air was pressed downward first. Even the faint vibration leaking from the drone seemed to be suppressed for an instant and fell still.
His steps were slow. He did not hurry. As if there were no need to.
His eyes were red.
His steps stopped in front of the drone. When he raised his hand, the drone floated into the air without the slightest resistance.
His fingers moved.
The outer shell split apart.
Like a thin husk rather than metal.
Bzzzt.
The inside opened.
The space between the red-eyed man’s brows narrowed by the faintest degree.
Once.
That was all.
The air twisted. The fluorescent gas was pushed away. It did not scatter; it was pressed aside. The flow itself was put in order.
After briefly checking the inside of the drone, the red-eyed man soon lowered his gaze to the floor. Concrete cracks, exposed rebar, splattered marks.
A piece of rebar floated into the air. It rotated slowly. The scratches and minute distortions on its surface peeled away layer by layer before his eyes.
A brief silence.
His hand lowered.
The rebar fell.
He had already lost interest.
At that moment, space tore open again.
This time, it was rough. As if it had been forcibly ripped apart. Light flashed, and the fissure shook unstably.
Then a person shot out.
Silver hair.
Short and light. When it caught the light, it gleamed white, and beneath it flowed an extremely faint blue energy. Her coat, mixed with metal ornaments, layered magical currents over a near-futuristic design. It was foreign, yet strangely stable.
The woman quickly checked her surroundings.
“As expected, you came alone.”
The words slipped out like a mutter to herself.
The red-eyed man was only looking at the drone.
The woman swept her gaze around the area. She raised her hand and moved it as if feeling along the currents in the air, then stopped. Her eyes narrowed.
“I knew you might move without even reporting it.”
“Quiet.”
A low voice, as if annoyed.
The corners of the woman’s mouth rose by the slightest degree.
“I know you prefer being alone, too. Still, this case seems a little too valuable to simply pass over.”
Instead of answering, the red-eyed man reached toward the drone.
The woman stepped closer to the drone. She nudged a fragment of its outer shell aside with the tip of her foot, examined it briefly, then tilted her head.
“This wasn’t caused by the environment.”
“I saw.”
“And you’re still going to let it go?”
A brief silence.
“It has no value.”
This time, the woman looked back at the red-eyed man. Her face was questioning.
The red-eyed man was still looking down.
“It is not the trace I was looking for.”
Short and firm.
Only then did the woman’s expression change by the faintest degree. She had understood.
Her gaze dropped downward again. The half-submerged sewage, the damp moisture, the rotten smell, the acrid traces of toxic gas. Everything had sunk below.
“It slipped down.”
Her face creased a little more. Her fingertips slowly swept through the air.
“There’s mana left.”
Her fingertips paused once in midair. It was extremely thin and shallow, but it was different from a flow that had been completely severed. It was not a murky trace stuck to the floor, but a line still connected to somewhere.
For the first time, the red-eyed man looked at her.
“What is it?”
“It’s not dead. It’s still connected.”
The red-eyed man’s eyes narrowed by the faintest amount.
“······Weak.”
“But it hasn’t been cut.”
A short silence.
The woman paused briefly, as if choosing her words.
“It’s not a trace from this incident, is it?”
The air around the red-eyed man pressed down just a little more.
“Those above don’t know.”
“······.”
“They couldn’t.”
The woman’s eyes widened slightly. She did not understand everything, but her face showed that she had grasped the gist. She did not ask further.
Instead, she looked down and said,
“It got away.”
The red-eyed man was looking below.
The woman let out a short breath.
“If it gets caught one more time, that’ll be the end.”
“It is already finished.”
The air dropped low and heavy.
The woman briefly looked as if she were weighing the weight of those words, then soon turned her head. The tips of her feet were already pointed toward the sewage.
“The smell really is awful.”
Despite the grumble, her eyes had grown sharper.
The red-eyed man stood where he was and did not move. He did not look down for long, either. Soon, he turned away with a face that had lost interest.
“Pointless.”