Chapter 30 - Episode 5. The Dead (5)
Chapter 30: Episode 5. The Dead (5)
──────
Janya’s lifeless soul turned into silver dust and scattered away. It had returned to the World Tree as nutrients.
Jaehwan rolled his shoulders a couple of times, his lips twitching.
He had meant to avoid using Normal Stab if he could.
The Stab that had pierced Janya was destructive enough to warp part of the sky. It looked as though some enormous club had smashed straight into the heavens.
What the hell was that thing?
From what he could tell, monsters like that were called Deadmans here. Monsters born through soul mutation when soul contamination reached its extreme. Jaehwan was a little surprised.
Whenever he used 「Doubt」, the true nature of a form in this place was revealed. Humans became corpses, monsters became masses of vicious emotion...
And yet those things called Deadmans did not change even when he used 「Doubt」.
That meant those huge mouths and tentacles were their true nature.
For now, Jaehwan decided to head back to the tavern. He had not managed to learn anything about the Dream Demon, but there was still a high chance that some stragglers remained near the tavern.
Then, the moment he stepped inside, Jaehwan realized something was wrong. Karlton, Mino, and the rest of the employees were still collapsed on the floor.
Karlton looked especially bad. The silver wings that had once radiated light were now completely twisted. Fortunately, he still seemed to be breathing. With difficulty, Karlton opened his eyes.
“Quickly... raise the alarm in the Inner Fortress...”
Jaehwan’s expression hardened as he looked at the bulging veins on Karlton’s pale skin. It was a symptom very similar to Janya’s. Mino was in much the same condition.
Supporting Mino, Jaehwan asked, “Why did this happen?”
Mino barely opened her eyes under the faint sunlight falling through the tavern.
“...Soul contamination.”
Her breathing rasped. Jaehwan asked again.
“Wasn’t soul contamination something that flared up when someone failed to take the ‘medicine’?”
“N-Normally...”
In Chaos, soul contamination was a common illness. If one kept taking medicine made from ground Horned Beast horns during the early and middle stages of contamination, it was a disease that could be overcome. That was what Jaehwan knew.
So what was this?
Mino was one thing, but even Karlton looked like this. There was no way Karlton had failed to take the medicine until reaching this kind of critical state.
That left only one answer. Something had severely contaminated the inside of the tavern.
“Was it because of that black smoke earlier?”
Mino nodded weakly. Her fingers drifted unsteadily through the air. Sparks jumped from her fingertips as though the System itself had malfunctioned. It meant her soul contamination had reached its limit, to the point where she could no longer use the System. Mino’s lips moved.
So this is how it ends.
Jaehwan’s face came into view against the light. A face cast in deep shadows, his features sharply defined. It was the face of a man who had overcome every hardship and made it all the way here. She had never looked at that face this closely before. Maybe because she had felt she should not.
“What... happened to them?”
“I killed them all.”
I see. There was no strength left in her eyes. The man’s face gradually blurred.
“I can’t see very well.”
“...”
“How do I look right now? Do I look okay? I’m breathing, right?”
Jaehwan did not answer.
“You know...”
Mino’s lips kept moving. Maybe there had been something she wanted to tell him. But she no longer understood very well what she herself was saying. Her consciousness was steadily fading.
Even so, she kept saying something. Like someone who already knew her own fate. The dark red veins had now turned completely black.
“Don’t say anything else.”
Jaehwan knew what Mino would become now. Like the man he had killed earlier, she would turn into a monster. She would die as a monster that had lost reason, lost memory, lost everything.
Jaehwan did not know how to save her. All he had practiced while climbing the Tower was how to kill.
“This is really shameless of me... but may I ask one favor?”
When Jaehwan nodded, Mino gave a strained smile and said, “Please kill me.”
Jaehwan quietly drew his sword. And the moment he did, tangled emotions whirled inside him.
This person is human.
Contradictory emotions were all raising their voices at once.
Jaehwan couldn't 「Understand」. Why did seeing this woman make 「Doubt」 waver and 「Selflessness」 falter? Why were things he had thought forgotten trying to return?
Emotion was unnecessary on the path he walked.
She had asked him to kill her, so Jaehwan would not hesitate any longer. This was a path for her sake, and for his own as well.
“Wait.”
Someone grabbed Jaehwan’s wrist just then. An old, wrinkled hand, but a gentle one.
“It may not be too late yet. Just wait a little.”
“She asked me to kill her.”
“You fool! Do you think Mino truly meant that? What are you going to do if you really kill her?”
The voice belonged to Claire, the owner of the tavern.
Even in such an urgent situation, there was a steadiness to her voice. She had thrown herself outside the tavern the moment Karlton gave his warning, and fortunately seemed to have avoided the soul contamination.
Soon after, the fortress’s medical personnel rushed into the tavern.
“This way, quickly!”
Gorgon Fortress’s response was fairly fast. The medical officer urgently dispatched from the fortress moved only Karlton and Mino, whose Mutation had not yet begun, to the Outer Fortress infirmary.
Watching Mino being carried away on an escort stretcher, Jaehwan asked, “Can she still survive?”
“If Mutation continues like this, the chances are almost nonexistent...”
One of the medical personnel answered with a dim expression.
Mutation.
The moment that word was spoken, Jaehwan did not miss the fear that passed across everyone’s faces.
[Warning! Soul contamination has surpassed 90%!]
The contamination meter Karlton had been carrying kept blaring warning tones. Right after that, a siren rang out from somewhere in the fortress.
[Gorgon Net alert issued!]
[A small Deadman has appeared inside the fortress!]
[Residents near the northern market district are requested to evacuate immediately!]
The entire fortress was in upheaval.
Having personally fought a Deadman, Jaehwan found the reaction a little excessive.
...Are Deadmans really that dangerous?
Through 「Doubt」, information about Deadmans was flying in from all directions. Then, Jaehwan’s senses caught strange Pushes. Human-shaped figures dressed in red night uniforms were appearing across the rooftops.
...
[Anti-Evil Squad First Company has just arrived.]
[Anti-Evil Squad Second Company has arrived.]
...
Once the reports ended, the one who seemed to be their leader gave the order.
[Wipe them out before the Mutation is complete.]
The Deadman extermination began at once. Most of those calling themselves the Anti-Evil Squad were Third Adapters or higher. In overall level, they were no weaker than the forces of Geumcheon Hall, perhaps even a step above them.
They immediately charged into the tavern.
“Mino! Stay with me!”
Claire was pouring every bit of medicine she had into Mino’s mouth. It was no time to worry whether it came from a One-Horned Beast or a Two-Horned Beast. The medical officer asked one of the staff,
“How much medicine is left?”
“...There’s barely any now.”
“What about the new supply delivered yesterday?”
“It was all used to calm the Fortress Lord’s condition...”
“Damn it.”
The contamination level kept rising.
It was as though something was devouring Karlton’s and Mino’s souls. Something overwhelmingly powerful, something that could never be purified with powder from One-Horned Beast or Two-Horned Beast horns.
When they arrived at the infirmary, the guard standing at the entrance looked down at Mino with a troubled expression.
“The checkpoint chief can be admitted, but I cannot allow this woman in. The remaining medicine...”
“I’ll provide the medicine, so just lend me the equipment!”
Claire shouted. In the end, the guard relented.
“If that is the case.”
The Outer Fortress infirmary was even more poorly equipped than Jaehwan had expected.
It was nothing more than a broad tent filled with hundreds of field cots. Every patient lying limply on those beds was already suffering from advanced soul contamination.
“Move aside! Emergency patient!”
The medical teams bustled about, pressing respirators to Karlton’s and Mino’s mouths. It seemed they intended to administer the medicine directly through them.
Outside the infirmary tent, the tavern could be seen with smoke rising from it.
The tavern had been sealed off the moment the alert was issued, and the Anti-Evil Squad elites were guarding the surroundings. From inside the tavern came the crying of employees who had turned into Deadmans.
“You’re the one Mino talked about, aren’t you?”
Claire asked that without looking at Jaehwan.
“I went out to catch a few red foxes and never expected I’d come back after meeting the Grim Reaper.”
“...”
“They say you reject every rule of this place. That you judge the world, and define what it means to be human, by your own standards.”
Jaehwan did not answer.
“I know your kind well. I’ve seen one before.”
Claire spoke while resting a hand on Mino’s chest, measuring her breathing.
Jaehwan looked at Claire’s face. It was the face of a woman he had first seen today.
“People aren’t adapting to this place and living here because they’re fools. They do it because they have no choice.”
At the deeply rooted helplessness in her voice, Jaehwan spoke for the first time.
“They lack courage.”
“Courage?”
Claire repeated the word.
“Courage for what?”
Jaehwan, who had been about to speak again, fell silent.
Because he had seen Claire’s eyes.
Because he had seen the regret and years gathered in them. The eyes of someone who had barely managed to survive by forcing out courage again and again, until no courage remained to be drawn out.
“Higher ideals, truer justice... You’re probably the sort of person who pursues those things.”
From all around came the shouts of medical personnel. Patients with severe soul contamination were coughing up black phlegm.
“That is surely something admirable, something sublime. So admirable that the people here cannot even dare to understand it... Yes, perhaps you’re right. Because I lack courage, I don’t know what you’re thinking. But there is one thing I do know.”
Claire’s eyes looked exactly like Mino’s.
“That you are dangerous.”
The words Mino had muttered like delirium before losing consciousness flashed through Jaehwan’s mind.
Now I understand. Why I wanted to follow you. Why I kept wanting to stop you whenever you tried to leave.
Those words mixed with Claire’s until they became more and more jumbled. Claire and Mino spoke at the same time.
“You need to leave this place.”
I wish you wouldn’t leave this place.
“The longer you stay here, the more the people will despair.”
Because they’ll see you and begin to hope.
“They’ll be tormented by the illusion that maybe something could change.”
Hope, that maybe something really could change.
“For young people like Mino, it will be even worse. They’ll be tempted easily, shaken easily. They’ll side with you, and in the end they’ll die like this.”
The people of Chaos will hate you. Those who have already adapted to this place even more so. They’ll suffer from inferiority, they’ll be in pain... Someone will hate you. Many people will die, and many will be hurt.
“I really... With someone like you, I...”
Even knowing all that, why do I keep wanting to hold on to you?
Claire could not bring herself to continue. Tears were flowing from Mino’s eyes. Claire hurriedly pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the corners of Mino’s eyes.
Please don’t give up on this world.
Footnotes:
Chapter discussion