Chapter 97 - Pentagram (Expanded)

People loathe cockroaches because they're dirty and disgusting. They loathe the house centipedes that eat cockroaches for the same reason. Naturally, they can only loathe parasites even more.

Disgusting worms crawling around inside me?

I wouldn't want a single one left alive. I'd want to burn every last one I saw.

That was why, ever since learning parasites existed, I'd faithfully taken deworming medication every year.

For a while, I'd even had nightmares, simply from imagining that revolting swarms might be swimming around in my stomach.

The Skin-tapeworm was that nightmare manifested in another form.

SHHHHH!

Beneath the still-pouring water, I pushed through the fog and looked down at the Skin-tapeworm segment on the floor.

It was roughly four to six meters long, like two grown men joined end to end, and two to three meters wide. Definitely much wider than a meter—wide enough that I could clearly see what lay within its soft inner flesh.

The Skin-tapeworm's two sides were different.

The outside—the shell it showed its victims—had a smooth, glossy sheen. Skin was probably a better word than shell. Extremely shiny, sleek, smooth skin, studded with clusters of eyes like shellfish, scanning its surroundings.

The real spectacle was the inner flesh.

SPLAT. SPLAT.

The bullet-riddled segment floundered in a shallow puddle, spilling bodily fluids. Its struggles let me see not only its insides, but how this monster worked.

Human organs dangled from its inner flesh. Only the hearts retained their original shape. Digestive organs like the large and small intestines had been spread into broad sheets, their villi merely swaying limply. A Skin-tapeworm segment wasn't made from just one person.

It looked as though humans had been stretched impossibly thin and stacked in layers, like laminated pastry dough baked layer upon layer.

Hearts embedded here and there pounded, pumping revolting fluids instead of red blood. Bones that had melted and been reassembled anchored the internal organs. What had once been human blood vessels spread like spiderwebs, stacked upon one another to cover the different layers.

But the most horrifying part of this segment was what dangled from it.

Hamza and Go Ryeo-ha followed me over a moment later. When they saw the Skin-tapeworm segment dying in the puddle, both made retching noises.

"Ugh, bleeegh..."

"Ugh. I didn't realize it'd be this disgusting."

Predatory spine tail stingers, their skulls melted away, and Amalgam heads sprouting like pimples were tangled together on the segment. The monsters squirmed as though trapped within it. At first, I thought they'd ended up that way because it had eaten them.

Then a realization suddenly swept over me.

I'd experienced so many different examples of the monsters' loathsome ecology that I understood instinctively.

The Amalgams and predatory spines trapped in the Skin-tapeworm's skin were being scattered as its prey. It was a kind of forced symbiosis. In return for helping Amalgams and predatory spines reproduce, the Skin-tapeworm devoured them.

Perhaps...

It was doing this to neutralize resistance from its human prey—to create confusion so it could devour its true prey, humans.

That was enough ecological analysis.

Standing beneath the pouring sprinklers, water pattering against my poncho, I raised my muzzle.

CLICK.

The bumpy eyelids studding the Skin-tapeworm segment opened all at once.

Every eye of the broad, flat-bodied monster made from mingled human skin and flesh glared at me.

I answered this revolting monster with nothing but bullets.

RAT-TAT-TAT!

Casings flew, and blood mixed with sickly yellow pus began spreading through the puddle like ink.

I still had plenty of rounds left.

And Eye magic, Stage One at 100%, hadn't ended yet either.

"Hamza, stay close with the extinguisher. Go Ryeo-ha, follow."

I'd seen how the Skin-tapeworm moved.

It had no separate legs. I could surmise that it braced its segments' inner flesh against surfaces that could serve as walls, or, being a Skin-jellyfish subspecies, fluttered through the air in defiance of physical laws.

Either way, it would turn invisible, hide, and ambush us.

I made my decision quickly.

We had to hunt it here on the fifth floor, while the water was still pouring.

"We're going after it."

SPLASH!

My footsteps carried me past the now-motionless tapeworm segment. Hamza and Ryeo-ha followed silently behind me.

But we couldn't run.

Ryeo-ha and I had heart magic, so we were fine. Hamza couldn't keep up.

He was carrying a backpack and an extinguisher, and every step had to be taken under extreme tension. His exhaustion mounted rapidly.

"Hah, hah..."

Naturally, our pursuit had to slow.

I abandoned the idea of running it down and went back to basics. Stepping without compromising my stance, I aimed at the ceiling and pulled the trigger whenever I spotted a sprinkler.

With every gunshot, water poured down harder.

It was now virtually impossible to inspect the fifth floor with the naked eye. The already-dense fog combined with the sprinkler streams to create more moisture than the foot of a massive waterfall.

Even my gas mask clung tight to my skin, as though saturated with damp.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't have been able to see a thing in front of me.

But Eye, Stage One [Cognitive Expansion] at 100% swept aside the gray fog and showed me the monster's trail: its retreating rear, segments fluttering like curtains in the wind as it braced against the ceiling and fled.

I raised my gun.

The metallic tapping of droplets against the barrel sounded particularly loud.

HUUUFF.

One breath through the gas mask.

That was all the time I needed to pull the trigger.

RAT-TAT-TAT!

The result was the same this time.

The monster unhesitatingly severed the segment I'd shot and slipped into a patient room with no door. The detached segment remained active, splashing in the puddle.

SPLAT. SPLAT.

I stepped forward before its revolting fluids could reach me.

At that moment, the Skin-tapeworm segment twisting in the puddle sprang up.

But I reacted faster.

CRUNCH!

I bit my tongue.

My attempt to bite it off rewarded me with the taste of blood and searing pain. Tears prickled my eyes.

I alone am exalted in this world, and thus only my pain is absolute.

Therefore, my pain alone endures and endures...

Eye, Stage Two [Cognitive Distortion].

The leaping segment stopped dead in midair.

That was enough.

I blinked.

PSSSHHH!

"Aaaaaagh!"

I heard the extinguisher spraying, seasoned with a liberal sprinkling of Hamza's screams.

Then came a series of small pops.

I pictured Ryeo-ha relentlessly launching bloodied bottle caps.

I forced my buckling legs straight and opened my eyes.

Overflowing tears blurred my vision.

Only after seeing the tattered Skin-tapeworm segment hanging limp and dead could I let out the groan I'd kept trapped between my teeth.

"Fuhck..."

I'd bitten too hard.

It fucking hurt, goddammit!

And yet we'd failed to kill the monster. This revolting Skin-tapeworm had both the reflexes and the vitality to cut off shot segments and escape.

I strode over to examine the second segment and noticed something different from the first.

There were no Amalgam heads or predatory spine tail stingers.

Was the first segment for spreading monsters, while the second onward formed its actual body?

Then Ryeo-ha pointed at the very center of the second segment, at an uncanny shape so pronounced that even the thick fog couldn't conceal it.

"Junior, Mr. Muslim. Look."

Ryeo-ha was crouching to observe it up close, with the sort of spirit that could crush cockroaches barehanded.

"Do we have to?"

Hamza complained, but apparently curiosity won out.

He approached before I did and examined the spot Ryeo-ha indicated. Then he pulled up his gas mask and actually vomited.

"Bleeegh..."

Hamza awkwardly backed away to put as much distance as possible between himself and the monster's remains.

Having just used [Cognitive Distortion], I'd weakened Eye, Stage One [Cognitive Expansion] too much, so I had to roll my tongue inside my mouth.

Target, monster, kill, five minutes, route.

Only then did the obscuring haze, hidden behind Hamza's movements and the dense fog, clear more fully.

Determined not to be outdone by some Four-Tiger Sword scanner, I stepped forward, and the shape became clearer. Tiny clustered hands reminiscent of a newborn's flailed in their final struggles, hoping to touch anything at all.

A gaping mouth sat at their center.

The mouth consisted of human strata stacked like pastry dough, covered in capillaries that writhed like tentacles. Resting her folded arms on her knees, Ryeo-ha recited her observations with interest.

"Junior, it looks like it assimilates people by inserting these blood vessels into them, applying something like digestive juices, then stealing the heart and other internal organs. If each segment has a digestive and reproductive organ like this, perhaps it increases its numbers by cutting segments off and letting them grow into separate individuals?"

Instead of answering her, I raised my gun again.

CLICK.

RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!!!

I spread the shots evenly, riddling the revolting monster with holes so it would never move again.

Only when I heard clicking did I realize I'd emptied the magazine.

I discarded it without hesitation and fitted a fresh one.

Only after watching the gunsmoke dissolve into the fog did I reach inside my clothes to take out my phone and hand it to Hamza.

"Hamza. Check the phone's connection."

"Urp... Huh? Why the phone all of a sudden, Je-min?"

"I want to see whether the interference weakens every time we shoot a segment dead. Check it."

"Y-yes..."

The phone's weight passed into Hamza's hands.

The instant I handed it over, I aimed at the room the monster had crawled into and held still.

"Well?"

"I-I don't think it's working yet."

"Pick the extinguisher back up. Check again after we kill a segment. Ryeo-ha, cover Hamza. Let's go."

We established our formation and moved.

I took point, able to identify danger. Hamza handled suppression with the extinguisher, while Ryeo-ha kept it at a distance and struck. Our cooperation clicked into place without a word. I didn't even have time for my usual displeasure at that.

The places where the fog had cleared. The spaces my eyes could see sharply and distinctly.

Watching the red footprints appearing there drove home how cunning the Skin-tapeworm was.

SHHHHH...

My poncho caught the pouring water.

Some parts were soaked, but water still pattered off the areas that remained waterproof.

PATTER. PATTER-PATTER.

The rain sounded especially loud whenever it struck my hood. I didn't even have time to wipe the droplets running over my gas mask's lenses.

Aiming at the places where red footprints appeared and vanished, I advanced slowly, one step at a time.

The closer I came to the doorless room's entrance, the farther away the surrounding noises seemed with every wavering footprint left over a puddle.

I desperately repeated what Instructor Song Smith had taught me.

Don't expose your body. Show only the muzzle and one eye. Minimize the target.

As I finally stepped right up to the doorframe, I remembered one more thing.

The Skin-tapeworm was invisible.

It didn't need to cling to anything to lie in ambush.

The instant I slipped my muzzle through the doorframe, my right eye saw the disordered room.

Beds had been dragged every which way, as though to make a maze, and stained blankets lay scattered across the floor.

That was enough.

I swung my muzzle in one swift motion.

Empty air.

I pulled the trigger at the empty space around the doorway.

Flashes erupted. Casings rained down alongside the pouring water. Gunshots came in a barrage. Spent casings splashed into the shallow puddles and sank.

I heard no screams or howls from the monster.

Only the bursting of thinly layered flesh and skin, only the rupturing of murky blood mixed with pus, filled the surroundings. When its concealment broke, I could no longer see into the room.

The space immediately beyond the doorframe was filled with Skin-tapeworm segments.

The revolting monster had surrounded the doorway in a hemisphere.

"Hamza!"

I could hear only my own voice.

My ears, muffled by gunfire, couldn't hear anyone else. I could only assume Hamza had heard me because white powder came pouring from behind me.

The extinguisher had suppressed it.

Now was my chance.

I'd freeze it with [Cognitive Distortion] and finish it.

Inside my mouth, I moved my tongue—

"Je-min!"

My gunfire-deadened ears caught a human scream.

At that moment, I realized a chilling truth.

Nothing was falling.

The droplets that should have been pattering against my poncho had stopped.

All I could feel was a faint weight, as though a thin piece of fluttering cloth were settling over my hood.

A chill ran through me.

Then all the pain faded.

Facing the Skin-tapeworm's rolling eyes beyond the doorframe, I felt cold creeping up my spine. A chill that seemed to stop my heart coursed through every capillary in my body.

I couldn't even feel afraid.

It simply didn't feel real.

I was going to die?

... Here?

KEEEEEEN!!!

A metallic shriek pierced my ears.

At the same time, someone grabbed me and hurled me backward.

SPLASH!

Even after landing on my ass, my blurred vision left me unable to see. No—all my senses were in disarray.

My eyes were open, but I couldn't see. I was breathing, but couldn't smell. My ears were clear, but I couldn't hear so much as ringing.

A throbbing headache and dizziness struck first.

At first, I thought it was only pain, merely the repercussions of using magic repeatedly.

But as my senses slowly returned and my mind recovered its composure, what I was feeling became clear.

This wasn't a headache.

Only when I realized my teeth were chattering uncontrollably and the hand against my forehead was trembling did I understand.

Fear.

Fear had finally exceeded my limits.

The instant I realized that, something surged upward. I pulled up my gas mask and threw it off.

"Urgh, urk. Ghurk..."

I was retching.

I'd only had water and a few plain crackers before coming, so I wouldn't throw up. And yet...

Even those came back up with sour stomach acid.

"Bleeegh... Bleeegh...!"

The more I vomited, the clearer my mind became.

Every time I spat out the fear I'd been swallowing along with the acid, my senses returned.

Excessive concentration, repeated pain, all the fear that must have accumulated until now—everything erupted at once.

I sobbed, choking as vomit, saliva, tears, and snot streamed through the creases of my lips.

Yet, paradoxically, fear was also what made me choke back my crying.

An ending worse than death.

The beginning of being trapped inside a monster's body, dwelling on the memory that I had once wielded magic, forever yearning for the potential stolen from me, violated by the monster's flesh.

—Eternity.

At that moment, my crying stopped.

Then I gathered my fear and every remaining scrap of emotion and spat them out.

"Hawkk, ptoo!"

I lightly rinsed my face in the pouring water and picked up the gas mask I'd thrown away.

Looking around, I saw Hamza and Ryeo-ha standing back to back, watching every direction. Hamza was even waving the extinguisher hose around and shouting at the top of his lungs.

"God is greatest. God is greatest!!!"

I let out a long, deep breath. Time to put the gas mask back on.

One short breath through it.

As soon as I'd checked the filter, I picked up the gun lying on the floor.

"Where'd it go?"

"It disappeared. I'll take point from now on."

"Why?"

"The letters on your poncho are red now, Junior. All of them."

I understood.

First, I checked the gun. Some water had gotten inside. I was worried sick about a misfire, but turned my head without letting it show. The magic had expired during my panic.

Fog had already rolled in again, whitening even the fluorescent lights.

I rolled my tongue inside my mouth again.

Target, monster, kill, five minutes, route.

Watching the fog clear in an instant, I switched the selector to safe and slung the gun over my shoulder.

Instead, I drew my military knife.

SLICE!

I smeared [Blood of the Right Hand] thickly over parts of my poncho.

It stung like a fucking bitch, so coating the sleeves and blade was the best I could manage.

Now I understood why the Seoul mages had classified the Transparent Veil—the Skin-tapeworm—as impossible to resist.

"There was another segment left on the ceiling."

When we'd shot off the second segment, the Skin-tapeworm had severed one more.

While we'd been preoccupied with targeting and examining the one on the floor, the third had concealed itself in ambush right in front of the doorframe. I'd predicted the hemisphere surrounding the doorway, but failing to anticipate that it could sever another segment at will had been my losing move.

Now that the ancient Hebrew enchantment bearing the power to ward off evil had expired, the limits of my taking point were clear.

I only had one life.

If someone had to die, it couldn't be me.

"Go Ryeo-ha takes point. Restrain or strike the Skin-tapeworm. Hamza suppresses it. I'll detect it and lock down its movements when I find it."

The one that died had to be the monster.

Ryeo-ha turned toward me and tilted her head.

"Skin-tapeworm?"

"It's a Skin-jellyfish subspecies, so Skin-tapeworm."

"Aha."

And it was fucking disgusting.

Realizing I'd recovered, Hamza nodded repeatedly too.

"Je-min, let's just leave now. Please?"

"No. Check the connection again."

Pastor Park Yo-han had theorized that subspecies were born when monsters ate mages.

But this was on another level from something like the blood net, presumed to have been created when an Amalgam ate a mage.

Even the Seoul mages classified it as impossible to resist.

If it ate more people here, even the Supreme Mages might not be able to handle it.

And I wasn't particularly fond of that kind of maddening fucking disaster.

"... Still not working."

Having checked in the meantime, Hamza put the phone away like lightning and raised the extinguisher. Apparently, killing segments didn't end the interference.

Did that mean each segment could interfere with communications?

I felt my concentration heightening again.

The danger was too great.

Only moments passed, but within a perception that made them feel like hours, I adjusted my grip on the knife.

"It's not the kind that gives up on prey easily."

It was still on the fifth floor.

Given the cunning it had shown in setting a trap while fleeing, I was a hundred percent certain. It might have already claimed one stair entrance and be waiting there, but I suspected it would change its ambush position depending on where we went.

"We're going again. If it reproduces any more here, we're screwed."

The three Supreme Mages formed up again and resumed the hunt.

We were more cautious this time.

With paranoid vigilance toward the ceiling, walls, floor, and even the possibility of it floating in empty air, I gathered spent casings too. I intended to locate the Skin-tapeworm by tossing them one at a time, deliberately making noise and watching its response.

But the Skin-tapeworm was cautious too.

We'd killed roughly six segments at the patient room, in addition to the three severed so far. Though we didn't know its total segment count, we could at least assume we'd killed a substantial number.

Both the Supreme Mages and the Skin-tapeworm understood painfully well.

We were each other's prey, and hunters capable of targeting one another.

Privately, I judged not using Eye, Stage Two [Cognitive Distortion] at 100% to have been a wise decision.

Choosing to focus on detection had ultimately been correct.

This thing had destroyed the ancient Hebrew enchantment on contact.

Even if I could move freely through time, I couldn't guarantee I wouldn't be sucked dry if I touched its concealed skin.

Halfheartedness wouldn't do.

Monsters were alien organisms that grew and multiplied by desecrating and trampling humanity. Without magic, humans were nothing but prey to be hunted.

Only mages.

Only mages had a chance to survive and resist.

And being a mage didn't guarantee survival.

We searched every corner of the fifth floor. I even sprinkled [Blood of the Right Hand] at the stair entrances just in case, but got nothing. Ryeo-ha used [Spirit Sight] everywhere it might be, but the Skin-tapeworm didn't react rashly this time.

Hamza's doctrinal magic, [Angel's Intuition], couldn't function properly because it judged the entire fifth floor dangerous.

That remained true until we arrived back at the conference room.

The conference room door stood open, with only the curtains covering its windows fluttering bleakly. There was no one inside. Realizing what that meant, Hamza let out a despairing sigh.

"Ah..."

The owner of the orange armband hung with dog tags, marking service at the cordon—specialist soldier Staff Sergeant Jeong Sin-il—had vanished without leaving even a bloodstain.

Hamza pointed the extinguisher hose into the empty room and backed away.

"... Danger."

Ryeo-ha clenched her fist.

Ready to swing my military knife if necessary, I raised my right hand, prepared to scatter blood once more.

A world where everyone was someone else's prey.

Walking through that world, we took the first step.

Ryeo-ha launched a bloodied bottle cap.

BAAAANG!

A window shattered, and the fog was pushed back. One segment appeared and broke off.

Not this time.

Clenching my teeth, I took in the ceiling, walls, and floor.

I set my teeth against my tongue, ready to stop the main body the instant it moved.

That was when the Skin-tapeworm revealed itself.

I bit my tongue immediately.

Only my pain is absolute...

CRUNCH!

But the moment I bit down, I understood just how vicious the Skin-tapeworm was.

Already caught in my sight, it had rolled and twisted its body like tissue inside the conference room, openly exposing its inner flesh. Strange flesh where human organs and blood vessels lay stacked in layers, serving the monster as they pleased.

Magic script was inscribed there.

A distorted square trapped inside a triangle.

The magic symbol representing the eye branch.

But its use was something I'd never anticipated.

"Urgh, urk!"

Hamza retched first.

"Wai—urgh!"

Ryeo-ha, barely holding out, fell to her knees too.

Because I'd immobilized the monster—because I'd frozen the Skin-tapeworm with its eye-script-bearing flesh exposed—both of them were exposed to it. Neither Ryeo-ha nor Hamza had enough experience to acquire a new branch of magic, and both were seized by intense vertigo.

I was moved by the monster exposing its eye-inscribed flesh while bound in my magic. There was no other word for it.

Even the weight of my trembling eyelids trying to close couldn't overcome this emotion, this surging joy.

I shuddered.

Because I could now truly feel why the Seoul mages had classified it as impossible to resist.

Was this how a hunter with a shotgun felt while pursuing a ferocious bear?

The maddening fear of being killed the instant you made a mistake.

The overwhelming, dizzying sensation born of that fear.

A biological gulf that seemed impossible to overcome.

At the end of it all, joy awaited me.

Behold this hideous monster.

Its cunning intelligence, which no human could ever have faced.

And I, Archmage Baek Je-min, had touched a fragment of the omnipotent power capable of facing it.

I rolled my tongue inside my mouth.

I alone am exalted, and thus only my pain is absolute...

CRUNCH!

Blood burst out the instant I bit my tongue. Jamming one more tooth between already-split taste buds made no difference.

The leisurely drifting fog slowly stopped.

Hamza, groaning with his head in his hands, and Ryeo-ha, retching on her knees, gradually came to a halt too.

I stepped forward, toward the Skin-tapeworm waiting with its bait laid inside the conference room.

SPLASH.

I advanced, pushing aside the droplets floating in the air with my body.

Beneath the frozen fog, every step through the puddles sent ripples spreading like cracking thin ice, then stopping.

I kept approaching with my knife raised and aimed at the Skin-tapeworm's revolting inner flesh.

When I finally entered the conference room, one thing was out of place in the stopped time.

A faint weight settled over my poncho's hood.

But I understood instinctively.

The 100% Cognitive Distortion targeting the Skin-tapeworm would have its effect halved the instant it left my sight. That made sense for a monster that had stolen eye magic. The clever creature had noticed that the ancient Hebrew enchantment was spent and was trying the same trap again.

I felt the veil curling around me, enveloping me. Through my poncho, I felt it bite down on my head and send its capillary tentacles slithering over me.

Disgusting. Terrifying. Maddeningly grotesque.

But I hadn't let it happen without a thought.

At this moment, inside a mind that had already endured the fear of death once, clues were mixing together explosively.

The pentagram inscribed on my heart once I'd attained all five branches.

Monk Cheong-hwi's words that the self-alteration magic system was a system of secret arts for transcendence and ascension.

And the theme of upright alteration-type magic Pastor Park Yo-han had spoken of.

["Even amid all manner of horrifying truths and monsters..."]

The capillary tentacles crossed my hood and began caressing my gas mask.

It was a clever monster.

To keep the tentacles out of my view, it deliberately crawled over and stroked the rubber near my cheeks. It was trying to draw my gaze down.

Gripping the knife, I glared at the Skin-tapeworm.

["If you preserve the five elements symbolizing humanity..."]

Within stopped time, as the segment that had settled gently from the ceiling enveloped me, I loathed the monster. Hated it. Raged at it. Not because I possessed great altruism or love for humanity.

I was human, so I feared the predator trying to desecrate and devour me.

And because I feared it, I would kill it.

At last, a toothless mouth covered in bundles of capillary tentacles slipped over the crown of my head and began working its gums.

Chewing, chewing...

Beneath the waves of that horrific sensation—being kneaded by gums while still alive—I held my stance.

And finally.

Finally, the capillaries reached the wrist of the hand gripping my knife. Fine blood vessels that had once been human capillaries extended as though caressing my skin.

Tap, tap.

The sensation of them tapping against my skin gave me goosebumps.

I didn't close my eyes.

Seeing tentacles unaffected by eye magic didn't send me into a panic.

Then.

The instant the monster's blood vessels burrowed into my skin.

["Can you remain human?"]

THUMP.

My heart beat.

An emblem appeared on the back of my hand.

The hand branch's magic symbol. A magic square.

At the same time, a scorching sensation engulfed me, as though my veins were burning.

The heat was worse than when I'd shot my left hand.

I was burning now.

My heart, and every drop of blood that passed through it, was being heated fiercely.

Then the monster's capillaries recoiled.

Thoroughly cooked, they thrashed in their death throes.

At that moment, I could move without hesitation.

I don't know whether I shouted or screamed.

But one thing was certain: I hacked away with everything I had to kill the revolting monster before me.

Relentlessly swinging the blade coated in [Blood of the Right Hand], I chopped and split its layered human skin. I crushed its blood vessels underfoot as they spewed pus-mixed blood, then drove the knife's tip into the eyes rolling toward me.

All while desperately keeping my eyes wide so my eyelids wouldn't close.

Inside the gas mask, I simply hung my mouth open and expelled breath, slashing like a madman.

Right now, it was pure murderous intent.

An intent so intense that even my resolve as an archmage grew faint.

When it was all over, I could see an arm buried in a Skin-tapeworm segment.

A soldier's arm bearing an orange armband protruded alone from one limp segment. Perhaps he'd thrust it out in his final moment, begging to be saved. Only after seeing that rigid arm did I close my eyes.

I blinked.

"Bleeeeegh..."

I collapsed immediately.

Lying facedown, I began throwing up everything I'd eaten. Of course, there was nothing left, so only stomach acid leaked out.

The smell of vomit accumulating inside the gas mask made me retch harder. The more I retched, the worse the smell became, and the worse it became, the more I retched...

Only after someone removed the mask could I barely regain my senses.

"Je-min! Je-min!"

"Huhh, huhh..."

My heart was pounding hotly.

I couldn't even let out a scream or a cry.

And finally.

"Heh heh heh..."

"Junior, it's okay. It's dead. You can cry now."

"Hahahahahaha!!!"

"Je-min?"

At last, I laughed.

Before Ryeo-ha and Hamza, who stared at each other with wide eyes, I laughed like a madman.