Yang Seoho hurled what she’d torn from Akiyama’s face down onto the floor.
[squelch]
“Grrrrrrrk!”
A sickening rattle seeped from the new hole in Akiyama’s face.
Calling it a “hole” was charitable.
Most of his face had been ripped away. Even the back of his head. You could see the opposite wall through the clean tunnel.
“So he wasn’t even human.”
Inside the breach there was nothing of a living creature—no vessels, no bone.
His bared skull cavity was packed with a writhing, pink slab of meat.
“Fwhiiuuoooo!”
Even with a fist-sized void in his face, Akiyama swelled and windmilled his limbs.
[System: Penalty trait [Feast’s Offering] activates. An abyssal being grants abyssal power to its offspring.]
“Die!”
Black smoke and crackling thunder lashed Yang Seoho.
[KA-THOOOOM!]
Monstrous brute force.
Hit full-on, Yang Seoho ricocheted, blew through a wall, and vanished beyond what could no longer be called a room.
“GrrrRRRk! Fwiiuoooo—”
Akiyama let out warped noises as he repaired his face—and finished the mutation already underway.
A monkey’s head. A raccoon’s torso. A tiger’s legs. Wings of a giant bird.
“Chirrururuk—”
And a serpent’s head at the tip of the tail.
“A nue! That’s the very shape-shifting yokai from Japan I hunted!”
Seo Cheonseul’s shout.
A chimera blended from many beasts, a monster out of the Heike Monogatari.
He had lived as that thing—“nue”—a terror that shook Japan for nearly a thousand years, but in truth...
“GrrrRRRk! Kim Sinhwa! Where did you put the [Blade of Flesh] and the [Soul Pyxis]!”
“Oh, those?”
The [Blade of Flesh] sat inside the call van’s barrier housing, and the [Soul Pyxis] still rode within a page of the [Laughing One].
Either way, neither was somewhere I could fetch right now.
“More than that, you should worry about Yang Seoho.”
“What?”
[crash—]
Yang Seoho walked back in through the collapsing wall.
She hadn’t been “damaged” by Akiyama’s strike—just shoved by the weight difference.
Untouched, she spoke slowly.
“Illegal resident who entered under forged identity. Cultist. Nonhuman.”
She hates foreigners. Despises cultists. Loathes nonhumans.
She abhors the [Source of Life]—the abyssal being that would ruin this country, harm its people, and wreck its future—and all its by-blows.
Because only by acting that way can she win approval from those she loves.
Akiyama dropped from [legally holds permanent residency in Korea and thus cannot be attacked at will] to [an illegal, alien outsider who should be repelled and executed].
“You have no right to set foot on this land.”
[crack!]
Yang Seoho’s fist punched through his huge torso.
[WHUUMPF!!]
The shockwave finally caught up to her fist and hammered Akiyama’s whole body.
A great hole opened in him. But—
[shrrrrrk—]
The shattered parts liquefied and flowed—his body restored in an instant.
Right.
That isn’t some mere animal-spliced mutant or a garden-variety yokai.
It’s the most ideal progeny-form the [Source of Life] can create—a monster out of the Cthulhu Mythos that can reproduce the traits of every creature that walks, flies, swims, or crawls in this world.
“Tekeli-li!”
The signature scream poured from Akiyama’s mouth.
“Yang Seoho! You can’t beat that with strikes!”
He was a Shoggoth evolved to mimic even human form and cognition.
Smaller than the one we met in Seoraksan, but it wore the Shoggoth’s unbelievable suite of traits all the same.
Which is why, though it sat at ground zero of that horrific blast, it emerged intact and unscathed.
[thud— thudthudthudthudthudthud!]
Despite my warning, Yang Seoho didn’t stop.
“What are you doing? Listen when people—”
[bang! crack! rrrrrip! slash! splat! bang! babababababap!]
“Ho— Kim... Is that really Kim?”
Even Seo Cheonseul, a goblin, hunched against the barrage.
[rrrrumble! rrrrumble! cracklecracklecrackle!]
Friction from her assault churned the air without end—and began to spit massive arcs of electricity.
Again: Akiyama was a Shoggoth in human guise.
And all Shoggoths carry these broken traits: [half damage from fire and electricity], [half damage from all magic], [ignore all physical damage], [hyper-regeneration], [top-tier mutation].
[shrrrrrk—]
Akiyama’s body started reconfiguring at once.
“Tch—”
A short sigh slipped from Yang Seoho.
She kept up an assault that should demand war cries and kiai, yet her attitude was like someone handling a slightly annoying chore.
She opened her hand—and lashed a long, downward arc.
Vwooooooom—
The unreal wind pressure from her palm flipped every scattered fragment on the floor into the air at once.
[shababababapak!]
“Grraaaaa—!”
Akiyama barely found time to turn a groan into words.
[crrrunch]
Foreign bodies punched into his flesh.
He tried to spit them out and rebuild, but Yang Seoho didn’t stop for a single second.
Fist—fist—fist—strike—strike—strike.
A blur of hits too fast to see. Vortexing shockwaves blasting out on all sides.
[KA-KA-KA-KA-KA-BOOM!]
“Ghhh— s-stop!”
“Shut up.”
[bang! CRAAACKLE!]
Chunks of concrete rammed between his parted jaws.
Merciless.
Her penalty {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} that she can’t unleash maximum power—and his power to regenerate forever—only extended this ghastly torment.
Twenty seconds.
That’s how long it took for his grotesque body to mash into a big ball of fragments, blood, and meat.
Even then, Yang Seoho didn’t stop.
[crrrrunch! crackle! thump! rrrrrip!]
Pressure, unending. Foreign matter driven into him, and driven, and driven.
[rrrrip— szzzzzt—]
Stone and metal, altered by excessive pressure and heat, had long since “welded” themselves onto the meatball that was Akiyama.
“Wait... are you seriously trying to seal him—with punches?”
The real Yang Seoho can choose beyond what the NPC version in a game ever could—and that was exactly the result.
“Wait five seconds, Kim Sinhwa. If you run, I’ll kill you.”
With that, she redirected her fist.
[KA-THOOOOOM!]
From above to below.
[KA-THOOOOOOOM!]
Into the floor.
[KA-THOOOOOOOOOM!]
Down into the earth.
Shell and all—stone and metal mutated into a casing—Akiyama slammed into the ground.
[KA-THOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!]
Each punch drove him deeper, the earth yielding like sponge cake under a fingertip.
Time to here: three seconds.
[pop!]
Launching up from the fresh hole, Yang Seoho rammed every piece of furniture and debris she saw into it—
[KA-KA-KA-KA-KA-CRUNCH!!]
Stamped it with surreal strength—
[thud!]
And in a blink turned her hole into flat ground.
That took two seconds.
Five seconds total.
“Phew—”
Yang Seoho let out a long breath, face perfectly calm—not like someone who’d just achieved a great feat, more like someone who’d wrapped an irksome chore—
Then spoke to me.
“Now, shall we resume our fellowship, Kim Sinhwa?”
“I—”
I had a line ready that would hook her interest.
“—gh!?”
But Seo Cheonseul yanked me backward (my neck nearly snapped), and I didn’t finish. “Hey! Captain!” I protested, but he stepped between us and said:
“Do not come closer, Kim. If you are Kim at all—I command you in the name of the thousand-gold captain. Do not approach.”
“Thousand-gold captain?”
Yang Seoho tilted her head at Seo Cheonseul.
A considering look.
It didn’t seem like she was echoing his words. Was she, perhaps, thinking of how to kill a goblin?
You are about to begin actions akin to what you did to your offspring.
Kim Sinhwa appears to have something to say, but comically, a servant of the [Old Dream] prevents a proper declaration.
Thanks to that, [Life] may claim initiative.
[L!U!C!A!: bubble— bubblebubble—]
No.
Your offspring cannot move at present.
If you desire a “break free” check, you must exert influence or pay resources.
[L!U!C!A!: bubble— bubblebubble—]
That declaration is improper.
[L!U!C!A!: bubble— bubblebubble—]
Incorrect.
Because the ability did not target a lawful object, we deem the declaration as never made.
[L!U!C!A!: bubble— bubblebubble—]
It may be invoked against that target.
[L!U!C!A!: bubble— bubblebubble—]
Confirmed.
That action requires a check.
We will dispatch a singularity to an external dimension for adjudication. The result varies by the singularity’s form.
As you know, the higher the number, the better the outcome.
“Huh? What was that?”
Park Gwangrim heard Jang Hyundeok’s voice and opened his eyes. What was...?
A moment ago they’d been in the car, fleeing—and there’d been an explosion...
“Ugh—”
He pried his mouth open, but all that came out was a dry rasp. His mouth felt sanded raw. Something viscous slid down his forehead. Had all the fluid that should be in his mouth poured out instead?
He realized, barely, that he’d been knocked out—bleeding from the head.
The explosion. Right. He’d heard it. Felt a jolt right after—and blacked out?
He managed to look at the passenger window—and realized the glass was completely smashed.
Something had come into the car.
‘An enemy attacked?’
Didn’t they have a barrier device? Did something punch through it? Why hadn’t the bird warned them?
‘What—what happened?’
He prided himself as Paju’s finest detective, but even his deduction could only reconstruct half of what had truly happened.
There had been an explosion, yes.
A shard of gold—steeped in deep-sea miasma and the [Source of Life]’s mana—that Kim Sinhwa and Yang Seoho failed to intercept—had pierced a surreal probability and—
Punched through the call van’s passenger window and grazed Park Gwangrim’s head.
Absurd coincidence?
No.
From the outset, that blast was all a setup for this scene.
None of us thought a blast like that would remove Kim Sinhwa and Yang Seoho.
“Ugh— H-Hyundeok...”
He called to Jang Hyundeok. Of course—good man that he was. He turned his head—barely. Yes, that’s it.
He turned—and looked at Jang Hyundeok.
“!?”
He was shocked. Gooseflesh crawled up his skin. Correction: Park Gwangrim felt fear.
Ah—Jang Hyundeok’s state:
Like Park Gwangrim, he was bleeding.
Ah, trouble.
Unlike Park Gwangrim, who’d only been grazed, Jang Hyundeok was pouring blood from some wound in his head.
“H-Hyundeok... what... is...”
At that volume of blood, wouldn’t most people die?
A mortal wound, it seemed.
Even so, Jang Hyundeok smiled, spilling blood laced with golden light.
He would soon recognize what he had to do. Ah—I should tell him.
Hurry. You have to go. Something terrible is about to happen to the Mage.
“The Mage... is in danger...?”
He fixed his eyes on empty air and mumbled fast.
[vrrrrm—]
Right. Now he cranked the ignition. If the Mage was in danger, he had to help.
“...Ugh.”
But he faltered—his hand stopped; his head drooped.
A problem. I’ll urge him a little more.
Hyundeok. Be strong. Move. Hurry! Save the Mage!
“Right... Got it... Hyeonji... Let’s go help the Mage...”
