-Our Weapon
* * *
Ren transformed into a water snake and leapt into the Han River after the monster that had turned into a crocodile and fled underwater, quietly trailing it.
Fortunately, the monster did not seem to have particularly keen detection abilities. It had no idea Ren was following it.
It simply cut swiftly through the waters of the Han River.
‘I did chase after it, but…’
She had followed at once because she knew she could not let the monster get away, but now Ren had no idea what to do next.
Should she transform into something stronger and finish it off?
First, she wanted to report the monster’s location to the mages, but she had no means of communication. If she transformed into a crow and flew back, the monster would already have left by the time she returned.
Since the monster was a shapeshifting creature just like Ren, there was no telling when it might turn into something else, or what that something might be.
Sure enough, by the time it reached the northern side of the Han River and climbed onto land, the monster had transformed into a giant bear.
‘If it gets up there, it’ll hurt people again!’
Ren quickly climbed onto land as well and transformed into a cat.
The place where they had emerged was a riverbank overgrown with weeds. Perhaps it was fortunate, at least, that they had not come up into Han River Park.
But that thought lasted only a moment. The monster, now a bear, bounded up the riverbank and was already stepping out onto the road.
Cars traveling along Gangbuk Riverside Expressway blared their horns in alarm. To avoid the giant bear that had suddenly appeared, the cars had to swerve this way and that in frantic maneuvers.
With panicked drivers wrenching their steering wheels every which way, an accident was only a hair’s breadth away—but there was no need to wait for one.
“Graaaah!”
The giant bear blocked the cars, let out a monstrous roar, and lifted a nearby passenger car high with both hands before hurling it away. The thrown car crashed into another car behind it and crumpled like paper.
A chain collision followed. The screech of tires scraping against the road and the sound of cars slamming into one another rang out horribly.
‘This won’t do. I have to stop that thing right now.’
Ren could no longer stand by and watch. Without even having time to think about what to transform into, she became a brown bear herself.
Rushing toward the monster, Ren grabbed its leg from behind and dragged it toward the side of the road.
The monster lost its balance, staggered, and rolled across the ground. But it soon got back up, turned toward Ren, and tore at her shoulder.
“Agh!”
A scream burst from her before she could stop it. Terrible pain surged through her, as if a chunk of flesh had been ripped away. Even so, Ren gritted her teeth and kept dragging at the monster’s leg.
The monster struck Ren across the back. This time, she held back her scream.
But at this rate, she felt she would be overpowered. Ren was in the form of a brown bear, but she was far smaller than the monster bear, putting her at a disadvantage. She had to transform into another creature again.
Just then, however, the monster transformed first. Perhaps irritated by being dragged along helplessly because Ren was clinging to it so stubbornly, the monster turned into a giant rhinoceros.
In that instant, Ren lost hold of its leg and fell backward.
The giant rhinoceros’s horn stabbed down toward her. But at that very moment, Ren had already transformed into a small rat.
After scurrying away from the horn, she transformed again, this time into an elephant. It was a choice made to increase her size as much as possible.
“Aaaah! What is that?”
“M-monsters!”
“Are those monsters fighting each other?”
Cars stood immobilized on the road, which had become the scene of a catastrophic traffic accident.
Groans came from the wrecked vehicles, and from the cars that had luckily avoided the crash, people screamed and clamored in panic.
To their eyes, Ren must have looked like the same kind of monster. But Ren had no time to worry about that now. She had to focus on the battle.
Her shoulder and back stung as though they were on fire, but she forgot even that.
‘Come this way! Or just turn into a bird and fly away instead!’
Ren shouted at the monster in her mind and charged straight at it. She slammed her elephant body hard against the rhinoceros’s body, driving it toward the riverbank.
But the giant rhinoceros seemed to be pushed back for only a moment before twisting its body and thrusting its horned head toward Ren.
To avoid being gored by the horn, Ren quickly backed away.
In that instant, the freed monster broke into a full sprint. It was crossing the road and heading toward the residential district.
Thud, thud, thud! The sound of the ground vibrating reached her ears.
‘Stop! I said stop!’
Ren ran after the monster. She could already hear people screaming.
Even as it ran, the monster was ramming its huge horn into cars and people indiscriminately.
‘Ah, why on earth are you doing this? Why are you attacking people at random?’
Ren could not contain the frustration in her heart. The fact that the monster she was facing was also a shapeshifting monster covered her with an inexplicable sense of guilt.
That power to transform must have come from none other than her. It was surely a mutation born from Ren’s own blood and DNA.
But why was it so violent? She had not given birth to it, nor had she created it, and yet the thought that it was kin that shared her blood tormented Ren.
And guilt was not the only problem. The fact that they shared the same blood also meant that Ren’s authority would not work on that monster.
She had been able to suppress lizards and lizardmen with nothing but the authority of a dragon, but she could guess that would not work on this monster.
‘I wish I were a mage instead…’
At that moment, the thought that she was alone sank deep into her.
If she had been with her team members, they would have fought with her. She wished Oudin were by her side.
But this was a battlefield Ren had to resolve herself. No matter what anguish seeped out from within her heart, she had to deal with that monster.
As she entered the residential area, she saw the rhinoceros ramming into walls and trampling people underfoot.
Ren immediately swung her elephant trunk and struck the monster hard across the back.
“Graaaah!”
The monster let out a roar and turned around. Upon finding Ren, it snorted harshly. Aiming its giant rhinoceros horn at her, it began approaching slowly.
It seemed thoroughly enraged.
Ren was the same. Now was the moment for a head-on confrontation. She absolutely had to stop the monster.
And yet Ren still felt conflicted. She felt as though she simply could not kill it.
She knew perfectly well that just because it had been injected with her blood did not make it her child. Even so, for some reason, she could not bring herself to want to kill it.
‘Why am I acting like this? What am I doing right now?’
The division within her heart tormented Ren even more. That thing was killing people right now, so how could she possibly feel any sense of kinship with it?
Even amid confusion and anguish, Ren took a step forward.
The monster began charging toward Ren with heavy, pounding steps.
Just as the giant rhinoceros and the elephant were about to collide, the monster suddenly collapsed. It turned into something like a thick, black liquid and flowed downward, then soon vaporized like smoke and disappeared.
‘What? Why all of a sudden…?’
Ren quickly looked around.
She thought perhaps a mage had appeared and cast a spell, but there was no trace of one. On the street, there were only the people the monster had trampled and Ren herself.
Coming to her senses in a flash, Ren quickly transformed into a crow and flew up into the sky. She, too, had to disappear from the scene.
With the monster having vanished like smoke, if the police or the Bureau showed up, she would be left to take the blame.
Only after she soared into the sky did she finally feel a sense of relief.
‘Thank goodness. I don’t know why, but the monster disintegrated. Now I don’t have to kill it.’
* * *
Yu Jae-seon was busily contacting people here and there. Since the monsters that had first appeared had scattered to several places, he had to check on the situations elsewhere.
Watching him, I thought of Ren again.
What had happened to her? Was Ren fighting the monster alone? The fact that the monster was a shapeshifting creature somehow weighed on my mind.
Just then, Yu Jae-seon finished his call and turned to the mages.
“It looks like the one we caught really was the mother. Whether it was the mother, the father, the original form, or the main body, anyway, killing it resolved everything. They say all the monsters that scattered to other places disintegrated like smoke.”
“Oh! That’s a relief.”
“Then does that mean the raid is over now?”
“That’s good. The way those things transformed was really bothering me…”
The mages let out sighs of relief.
I was relieved as well. It seemed Ren would no longer have to fight the monster.
As for the true identity of the shapeshifting creature, we would be able to learn it from the remains of the main body I had frozen with ice magic. Most likely, it was one of Kim Seon-ho’s creations.
In any case, the remaining work was under the Bureau’s jurisdiction, and the mages were happy that the raid was now over and they could go home. It had been a long day again.
“Then let’s withdraw!”
“We can go home and sleep with our legs stretched out.”
“Everyone worked hard.”
“Whoa, it’s cold! Now that it’s all over, I can really feel the cold.”
As we left the foot of Daemosan and headed out to the main road, I was about to contact Gil when Gil and Cheon Dan-bi appeared.
“Is the raid all over?”
“Yeah, it’s over. Cheon Dan-bi, you’re safe too.”
“Of course I’m safe. I only fell behind because I was treating the injured. But where’s Ren?”
Cheon Dan-bi asked, looking around.
As if waiting for those very words, a crow descended soundlessly from the night sky. It was Ren.
“Ah! It’s Ren.”
Cheon Dan-bi waved her hand.
The crow circled once over our heads and disappeared into a secluded spot. Soon, Ren, having transformed back into her original form, approached us.
“You’re here. I’m glad you’re safe. Did the monster you followed disintegrate?”
At my words, Ren’s eyes widened. Her gaze seemed to ask how I knew.
When I told her that after we dealt with the mother on this side, all the monsters elsewhere had disintegrated as well, she finally nodded.
“It suddenly disintegrated while we were fighting, so I was wondering what had happened. So that was it.”
“You were fighting alone, Ren? Oh dear, that must have been hard. We should have gone with you.”
When Cheon Dan-bi spoke as if comforting her, Ren’s face brightened. Just as I had worried, it seemed being alone had been somewhat hard on her.
Even if she was strong enough to transform all the way into a dragon, she was probably not as used to combat as the mages. And it must have been even harder against a creature with the same trait as hers.
In any case, now that all our team members had returned safely, that was enough.
“Let’s hurry home. I wonder if there are any taxis around here…”
As I led the team members and looked around, Yu Jae-seon took out his phone and said,
“I’ll call a Bureau van right now. There’s one nearby. You all worked hard on the raid, so of course we should take you home.”
“Then could you perhaps take me all the way to Incheon? I’m not a mage, so I didn’t really do much…”
Yantu said, scratching his head.
“What are you talking about? Sir Yantu, you’re also a member of the investigation team. And just now, you lit the way for us too.”
“Oh my, thank you. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this proud in my life.”
At Yu Jae-seon’s amiable words, Yantu’s expression brightened. He looked genuinely happy.
As a dwarf who had lived while subtly suffering discrimination, being treated as an equal to the mages was undoubtedly a rare thing.
To me, that sight felt like proof that the people gathered here were the ones who would save the world.
‘It’s warm.’
In truth, it was a cold night, but at least my heart was warm. If the unseasonably cold weather was an omen of the disaster to come, then this warmth in our hearts would become our weapon to fight against that disaster.
Perhaps everyone felt the same way I did, because smiles rested on their faces.