A Watcher sprang out of the black shadow.
Looking at that Watcher, I drooled in a long stream.
“Hegk, kkgeuk……”
It seemed I’d been so startled that something inside me had broken.
As I clutched my throat and thrashed, my senior, startled beside me, patted me on the back.
“Are you okay?”
“Kghhk…!! Haa… haa. Y-yes…! I-I’m fine.”
Fortunately, I was only a little shocked. After saying I was all right, I took my senior’s hand and got to my feet.
In front of us, the Watcher shrugged and began speaking with my senior.
[What happened for you to be like this?]
“A monstrosity spoke to us through the radio.”
[We were struck by that as well. It seems it somehow managed to break through the Bureau.]
The Watcher and my senior went on to say that, normally, it should have been impossible for a monstrosity to breach the Bureau.
At that, I trembled and looked around.
I glanced this way and that, wondering if those things might be coming here, but fortunately I felt no presence.
‘Come to think of it… why has the part of me that senses presences suddenly become so sensitive?’
Just as I was thinking that, every hair on my body standing on end,
my senior beside me tapped my shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
“…Ah, yes.”
“Why are you like that? Spacing out.”
“No……”
When I explained why I had been dazed, the Watcher beside us offered an opinion.
[It seems the monstrosities mixed into you are struggling to survive.]
“Yes…?”
[It is exactly as I said. From what I hear, several monstrosities are mixed inside a human. Some trait of one of those monstrosities must be showing itself.]
As it said that, the Watcher gathered back the smoke it had scattered around.
“……”
After hearing the Watcher’s words, I stared blankly down at my body.
[Do not worry. This body has arrived.]
The Watcher said that as it calmed me down.
Just as I thought the Watcher somehow seemed more human, my senior grabbed my wrist and said in a serious voice,
“Don’t trust monstrosities.”
“…Pardon?”
[Girl, you seem to have forgotten. Your junior is a monstrosity too.]
The Watcher said that and laughed at my senior.
Looking at the Watcher, my senior let out a sigh, grumbled, and started walking.
“She’s more human than you are.”
At those words, I felt as if something inside me had been healed.
‘Was that… her acknowledging me?’
It felt as though maybe she had acknowledged me.
After that, we quickened our steps.
* * *
Running with rain-soaked breaths, we dealt with the owls one by one.
—Slice!!
—Crunch!
—Splurt!!
Most of them were cut down by my senior or suffocated by the Watcher’s smoke, so I had nothing to do, though.
Under my senior’s and the Watcher’s protection, we sorted out our objective.
“We capture the unidentified monstrosity.”
[That would be best, I suppose.]
“Are, are we catching the owls’ mom?”
When I asked back, my senior nodded.
“To be precise, the monstrosity presumed to be their mother.”
As she said that, my senior once again cut down a monstrosity flying toward us in a single stroke.
She wasn’t using the power of the Jinsa Sword, only cutting down monstrosities with sheer strength.
[Is it fine to cut them like that?]
“They don’t have regenerative ability on their own. So we can just cut them down and move on.”
[I see.]
The Watcher nodded, muttering as it sent a report up to the department head.
The fear had subsided a little compared to before.
All we had to do was move to catch the monstrosity.
My senior was here, and the Watcher was here too.
Honestly, the only thing I could do in this situation was act as a meat shield.
‘Now that it’s come to this, I’ll do my best.’
Resolved to do my best as a meat shield, we continued running through the dark forest.
* * *
Hun sat blankly at the desk and looked around.
[What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?]
‘…A voice I’ve never heard before.’
A voice he had never heard before, not the victim’s voice, rang out.
And from the new radio, at that.
Wearing sunglasses, he considered shooting the radio, but—
“…That might wake the Watcher.”
“I’m on my way now. Capture alive? Kill? Just say the word.”
The Watcher was muttering with its eyes closed.
If he woke the focused Watcher, combat would become impossible, so Sohun sighed and spoke to the Watcher in a slightly louder voice.
“Capture alive if possible. If your life is in danger, kill it and bring the body to the Bureau.”
“Understood.”
The Watcher answered and once again began muttering, reciting Yeonu’s words.
The number of owls seemed considerable.
‘How should we get past this difficulty?’
It wasn’t as if he could go there himself at this hour before dawn.
The current time was 2 a.m.
Monstrosities that should originally have begun showing anomalous behavior from now on were already moving.
“Then has the anomaly itself changed?”
For now, Hun wrote the contents into the report.
Cases where a monstrosity’s anomalous nature changed were common.
Especially with highly intelligent ones, it was frequent for them to apply their abilities and twist the anomaly itself.
The voice was one thing, and the owls moving was another.
Assuming the clue was likely this woman, Hun picked up the radio.
[What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?]
The radio kept asking what he was doing.
Sohun decided to answer and said quietly,
“I’m running around right now.”
What would happen if he lied?
It was the sort of thing the Research Department might do using prisoners.
But in order to give information to his subordinates, Hun decided to cast out bait.
[…Really? I’ll believe you.]
And he obtained a result of sorts.
‘Intelligence high enough for conversation……’
Just because one could converse with a monstrosity didn’t mean everything it said would be true.
No, rather, it would be more reasonable to assume everything was a lie.
Even the Watcher, their ally, lied as easily as breathing when it wasn’t carrying out a mission, so it couldn’t be trusted.
Still, the fact that it was highly intelligent was an enormous gain.
After all, there were more monstrosities that could not be reasoned with no matter what you said.
‘At minimum, Threat Level 5 or higher.’
Muttering that, Sohun said to himself that they had to be cautious, and closed his eyes.
* * *
—Kieeeeeek!!!
“…!!”
“…!!”
[…!!]
I, my senior, and the Watcher were all startled at the same time.
Because the owl my senior had cut down was screaming and attempting to regenerate itself.
“…Disgusting.”
“Uuup…!!”
[How fascinating.]
The monstrosity wept as it fumbled over its own body with white wings, struggling to attach its organs back in place.
Nausea surged up.
‘Am I… am I that disgusting too?’
It felt like looking at something that should not exist in this world.
After vomiting onto the ground, I looked up at my senior. She frowned, then shook her head.
“…You’re not that bad.”
“Ah……”
[So you even care for monstrosities.]
“Shut up, Watcher.”
My senior still grimaced every time she looked at the Watcher.
She slowly approached the monstrosity and cut off its head with her blade.
Then the monstrosity died.
“Watcher, take this.”
[Very well.]
The Watcher seized the owl that had been trying to regenerate with smoke and sent it into another space.
The thing that looked like it would be used for research would not leave my head for a long while.
“…Get out of my head, get out of my head, get out of my head…!!”
Crouching down, I tore at my hair.
I would rather die. If I died, wouldn’t I be freed from this pain?
‘Did Mom… hate me?’
Just as tears blurred my vision,
I felt my senior slowly stroke my back.
“…When we get back, get ready to be beaten until dust flies.”
“Hiiik……”
“If you have the energy to be startled, then walk.”
Saying that, my senior flicked my forehead.
Then, seeing me in tears, she snorted and took the lead.
[You have so many lives, yet how can you act like that in front of a human?]
“Ah……”
[Tsk, tsk… You are a monstrosity.]
Despite saying that, the Watcher supported me.
Surprised that I could touch smoke, we slowly went deeper in.
Into the even darker depths where no light reached.
* * *
Presences were gradually approaching the heart of the forest.
Sensing them, the woman looked up at the moon with a bright smile.
“Ah… c-coming.”
They were coming, her guests.
Though she had not invited them, the monstrosity was ready to welcome those who were, strictly speaking, her guests.
From her opened belly, white grotesque life-forms were pouring out endlessly.
The more blood soaked the ground, the more the monstrosities increased, one by one.
The monstrosity smiled as if she had attained enlightenment.
She was truly happy.
And yet the reason she wore a smile that seemed enlightened was because
that was the only kind of smile she had ever seen.
A smile of someone who, before death, had let go and given up on everything.
Tears streamed down, and drool sometimes slipped from that smile. She had absorbed it as it was and was reproducing it on her own face.
“Hurry, hurry… come… please. Gu… guests.”
Stammering, she spread her arms and stared blankly into the air like a human before death.
In her eyes, filled entirely with black like an owl’s, beautiful stars were embedded just as they were.
Holding the star-scattered sky in her embrace,
the monstrosity shed bloody tears and drooled.
And surrounding her were white owls.
2 a.m.
Those owls began to hoot all at once.
A bizarre sound echoed through the entire forest.
It was clearly the cry of an owl, yet it was not an owl’s cry.
A cacophony so clumsily imitated that it was unbearably unpleasant filled the mountain.
And at that same time, Sion felt as though she would stop breathing because Yeonu was covering her mouth.
“…Please, shut up.”
“…!!”
If she cried, it was over.
She knew that, and yet she could not stop.