Chapter 177 - Diver IX

'Wait.'

I hesitated. A strange realization—no, something more like static, a precursor to realization—was lightly rubbing against the folds of my brain.

'From Leviathan's perspective... Yohwa is just a bug in its eye, a fucking mosquito?'

Eye. Bug. Mosquito.

There was something incredibly familiar about that sequence of keywords. A good idea hovered just beyond my grasp. I had a feeling that if I could sit quietly in a café and knock back an Americano, it would come to me immediately!

Unfortunately, our current situation left no time to scout out a café with a nice view.

"Oh, all my fingers have turned into bugs... Teacher. I think I'm going to sink inside its eyeball. See you in the next life."

"No, Yohwa!"

With a sharp kick off the air, I used Walking on air to race over and snatch Cheon Yohwa's hand. As though she had been waiting for it, she clamped both hands around mine.

Then I pulled hard, but she wouldn't budge. It was as if her torso were wedged in a crack in a wall.

"Aaaagh! Teacher, my arm! You're pulling my arm out!"

"What the hell are you caught on? What's in there?"

"Bugs! The bugs in this eye are no joke! Millions of water bugs are clinging all over my calves and lower legs, dragging me down!"

She was right.

Transparent bugs the size of human forearms squirmed in teeming masses, dragging Cheon Yohwa down, ever downward.

Yes. Not just Leviathan's body, but even organs such as its eyes were made entirely of water-shaped bugs. Within the eye, an antlion pit of bugs gaped wide, as though determined never to release Cheon Yohwa, who had dared trespass into its eye without permission.

I shouted urgently.

"Just release Gapless's seal instead!"

"I'm trying to negotiate! But that bastard Gapless wants six hours a day in exchange for lending me its power!"

"Absolutely not! You did that in another run, and six hours became twelve, then twelve became twenty-three hours, fifty-nine minutes, and fifty-nine seconds!"

"Right... Oh, I'm really getting sucked in now. It's eating through tons of my aura, too. Maybe sinking in together with you, Teacher, like a suicide pact, could be an option..."

"Hey. You're Gapless, aren't you?"

"Not yet, I'm not!"

BOOM!

I drove my foot down in a powerful stomp, unleashing aura to turn Leviathan's eye socket into an actual hole.

ROOOAAAR!

Leviathan writhed in pain.

But my original goal of rescuing Cheon Yohwa ended in failure. The instant my aura vaporized the water bugs, others replaced them. There were far too many bugs making up the raging dragon's enormous body. They might as well have been seawater.

"Ngh."

I drew my sword cane Doha and tried cutting Leviathan's neck in two.

SHAAASH!

Its neck came apart. But bugs immediately swarmed over the severed surfaces, gluing its neck and body back together.

There was no end in sight. At this rate, I might have to burn all of Leviathan away to rescue Cheon Yohwa.

"Teacher, maybe we really should just give Gapless six hours or so—"

Instead of answering, I squeezed her hand. The hot pressure stopped her midsentence.

I couldn't let that happen.

After stealing Cheon Yohwa's body, Gapless would shamelessly play the part of its own host, winning over her friends, comrades, and subordinates. From the abyss beyond her consciousness, Cheon Yohwa would have no choice but to keep watching Gapless take her place.

There had been a run where that happened.

'Think, Undertaker.'

I kept burning the seemingly inexhaustible water bugs with aura however I could, staving off Cheon Yohwa's fall into the precipice within the eye for even one more second.

A desperate struggle with no end in sight.

In a flow of time that seemed stretched and slowed, I struggled to come up with a way to defeat it.

'Think. Why is Leviathan so desperate to protect its eye?'

'Has it sensed Gapless sleeping inside Cheon Yohwa? Is that why it's trying to digest her into its body?'

'Can Leviathan even devour God of Alienation-class anomalies? No, that can't be. If it could, Gapless wouldn't be so relaxed, raising the stakes...'

Then.

TAP.

I heard a footstep.

TAP.

It was strange.

Leviathan's thrashing sent tsunamis crashing everywhere. The roar of the tidal waves and typhoon swallowed every other noise. Even Cheon Yohwa and I would have struggled to talk without amplifying our voices with aura.

Yet amid all that chaos, the footsteps touched my eardrums with uncanny clarity.

TAP. TAP. TAP.

The sound wasn't the only strange thing.

The scenery around me had suddenly stopped as well. Cheon Yohwa holding my hand, the Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School guild members carrying out their bombardment to rescue their guild leader, the foam of waves hurled high into the sky by Leviathan's back—all of it was frozen.

"—"

I was no exception.

I froze with my eyes wide open. My consciousness and thoughts continued without issue, but I couldn't even blink. Time might feel as though it slowed to a standstill when I concentrated on thinking, but this was far too strange.

TAP. TAP. TAP.

Only the sound of footsteps approaching from behind reached me clearly. Unable even to turn my head toward the sound, I could do nothing but listen.

TAP.

The footsteps stopped right beside my head. The shadow of someone a little shorter fell over me.

『Guild Leader.』

A scent swept over me—beyond sweet, like an apple rotted to mush in sugar.

Go Yori's scent.

『I told you, didn't I?』

Two arms reached out from behind and wrapped around my face. Five fingers crossed five more, laying a spiderweb over it.

Beyond the chunks of my vision sliced away by those spiderweb fingers, I caught a glimpse of Leviathan's eye.

Then the scent drew closer and whispered directly into my ear.

『That is a dragon, you know?』

At that very whisper, the world's stillness broke as if it had never existed.

Cheon Yohwa flailed. The Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School guild members were fighting. The tidal waves that had risen into the sky fell one after another, battering the arks' decks.

SPLAAASH!

A wave washed over me, too. After the frigid seawater soaked my face and fell away, I looked behind me.

Go Yori wasn't there.

Perhaps she never had been.

"..."

I parted my lips in a daze. Realization flowed through the gap.

"... Eyes."

"What? Teacher?"

"Yes. Its eyes!" I shouted. "Leviathan, this monstrous sea dragon—it had to protect its eyes because it's a dragon!"

Painting a dragon and dotting its eyes.

Long ago, a legendary painter was said to have painted four pure-white dragons in a temple. The paintings were so splendid that everyone who saw them showered them with praise. Strangely, however, the painter kept leaving them unfinished, refusing to paint their eyes.

When people asked why he wouldn't add the finishing touches, the painter replied:

["If I paint their eyes, the dragons will fly into the sky."]

The people didn't believe him, so he painted eyes on two of the four dragons. Sure enough, those two white dragons writhed out of the temple wall and escaped into the sky.

From a present-day perspective, you could interpret that as the release of a seal that had imprisoned anomalies.

'A blind white dragon can no longer soar!'

Eyes meant perception.

A blind being that couldn't recognize where it was or what it was could never escape its earthly bonds and fly into the vast heavens.

And if that tale applied to the dragon before me, then a dragon deprived of its "eye of the typhoon" would cease to be a sacred creature and fall to the level of a mere mural.

"Saintess!"

["Yes?"]

"Are you in your study in Yongsan-dong right now? You have Kafka's <The Metamorphosis>, don't you?"

["What? Oh, I do have..."]

"Please don't ask why! Hurry, bring Kafka's <The Metamorphosis> and read it to Yohwa! Don't skip a single letter!"

["I've brought it."]

The Saintess answered in less than a second. She had briefly stopped time to act.

My instructions weren't finished. I looked down at Cheon Yohwa.

"Yohwa! The Saintess is going to read you a passage. Repeat it aloud after her, from beginning to end."

As her talk of a suicide pact even while she risked sinking into Leviathan's eye showed, Cheon Yohwa was fundamentally fearless.

My out-of-the-blue instructions didn't faze her at all. Instead, her expression and voice immediately turned cool.

"Should I read it loudly?"

"That doesn't particularly matter. What matters is that you keep reading without interruption."

"Understood, Teacher."

While the Saintess and Cheon Yohwa communicated privately, I extended my left hand toward the sky and unfurled my ink-black aura.

This wasn't a scorching attack meant to gouge out Leviathan's eye, as before. It was the exact opposite.

I spread a "protective barrier" of aura over the dragon's entire eye.

Like an eyelid.

—...!

My rippling ink-black veil of aura enveloped the dragon's eye in an instant. I extended it not just over that eye, but over the other one as well. A band of aura wrapped around Leviathan's eyes like a blindfold.

It was utterly cut off from the outside world. Cheon Yohwa and I were enveloped in darkness along with it.

ROOOAAAR!

Leviathan screamed. It was far too agonized a cry to be caused merely by obstructed vision.

More importantly—

["...!"]

["The enemy—its movements are slowing!"]

The anomaly's thrashing, wild as an angry colt until now, was rapidly weakening.

The teeming bugs gripping Cheon Yohwa's legs all flicked their tails and surged upward. They threw their entire bodies against the "eyelid" I had spread, trying to gnaw through it.

But it was no use. Just as I couldn't easily burn away Leviathan's entire body, Leviathan couldn't devour my aura all at once.

"Kgh."

The bugs gnawing at the eyelid attacked me, too. My eyes, my mouth, the gaps between my fingers—wherever they spotted even the smallest opening, they immediately crawled in and gnawed at me.

I raised my protective sheath of energy and repelled their loathsome advances. They swarmed and seethed! With their "eyes" about to be sealed shut, the bugs were desperate, too.

["One morning."]

"One morning."

And then.

["When Gregor Samsa was roused from turbulent dreams."]

"When Gregor Samsa was roused from turbulent dreams."

Within that hellish pit of bugs, the Saintess's emotionless voice and Cheon Yohwa's clear, ringing voice resounded in a double melody.

GRRRRR!

The bugs biting me all turned toward Cheon Yohwa. They rushed at her in an enormous swarm.

But I couldn't simply let them go. In one burst, I raised my aura to a dangerous level and burned them away, doing everything I could to keep the anomaly from reaching her.

GRRRR! GRRRK!

Even so, the bugs, as countless as seawater, continued surging madly toward Cheon Yohwa without tiring.

In the heart of the darkness, where the curtain of that eyelid blocked the sunlight, my ink-black aura cast a faint, colorless glow, endlessly, ceaselessly holding off the insect army's suicide attacks.

'If this Great Monsoon anomaly is also connected to bugs in any way...'

My remaining aura was dwindling fast.

'Then what happened to the Saintess must happen to this anomaly, too.'

The Saintess had turned into a potato merely because "a bug got in her eye" while she was walking down the street.

I still didn't know the precise nature of these anomalies associated with "bugs." But one thing was certain.

'An anomaly can never reject its own essence.'

Anomalies couldn't apply double standards. If transforming humans was an anomaly's power, then when placed in the same situation, the anomaly itself had to meet the same end.

The Great Monsoon. Leviathan. Jormungandr.

This merciless white dragon treated us humans inside its body as mere parasites. Then, when one of those "parasites" entered its "eye"—

'Like the Saintess, Leviathan has no choice but to transform into something infinitely close to a bug, even if it isn't a potato!'

The bugs charged with all their might to stop Cheon Yohwa's mouth, and I used every ounce of strength to protect her from them.

As a spear that absolutely had to pierce collided with a shield that absolutely must not be pierced, the incantation was at last recited.

["He found himself stretched out in bed."]

"He found himself stretched out in bed."

["Transformed into a gigantic bug."]

"Transformed into—"

At that moment.

"—a gigantic bug."

Heaven and earth shook.