[Part 2/4]
Heaving, his shoulders rose and fell with ragged breaths.
'Aaa...AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!'
Then, with a roar that echoed through the room, he arched back like a spring──a scream, a lant, a burst of pure emotion.
With the violence subsided, a modicum of reason returned to the monster-like man's eyes.
He understood human language.
'Damn...it!'
It was a curse directed at his own despicable state and his own monstrous actions....
* * *
The ominous youkai child's cesarean operation was fraught with difficulties.
It was only natural.
With no anesthesia, he had to cut open his own chest and pull out the contents himself.
It was a different kind of difficulty to the hellish situations he had been through up until then.
The youkai child was not going to be excised without a fight.
He must have sensed that he was being expelled and disposed of.
He ruthlessly shredded through flesh, muscle, bone, and organs, all while on the run within his own body.
Hell indeed.
He failed 3 tis.
Three tis he annihilated himself and tried again.
On the 4th attempt, he grasped it through the gap in his intestines and yanked it out.
The intestines that were clamped onto it were roughly pulled out along with it.
It was a nightmare.
He scread.
He no longer had the stamina to imdiately dispatch the tiny, limb-laden abomination, even smaller than an immature fetus, infected with miasma.
An annihilation while wailing in pain from the hacked and mangled wound in his abdon.
In the anti, it had escaped sowhere.
And he certainly didn't have the stamina to chase after it.
As his stamina waned, the progression of his youkai transformation was the price he paid to live with his abdon split open.
It was beyond what even the foolish spider's bloodsucking could fully suppress.
Of course, it was inevitable after being torn open 4 tis.
A rampage was bound to happen.
Driven by impulse.
Or perhaps it was still better that way.
The intermittent rationality reminded him of his purpose.
And it led him to this underground hub.
The actions he took along the way are evident in the scattered chunks of flesh here now.
In so ways, it was shallow.
I never intended to go this far.
That...!!
"Hah... hah... ha... Ugh, oh... blegh...!!"
'(＾ｐ＾)Ugh... I ate too much...'
Overco by a wave of nausea, he doubled over and vomited on the spot.
The foolish spider on his shoulder also retched, spitting up red liquid—probably from gorging itself on too much blood.
"Heh... haha... should I be grateful?"
He managed a bitter laugh between bouts of vomiting, acknowledging that the spider's gluttony had helped bring him back to his senses.
Was it a small rcy that he hadn't resorted to devouring human flesh during his rampage?
Had that thin thread of rationality, preserved through bloodsucking, kept him from crossing the final line?
No amount of patching up could change the fact that it was murder.
I'd killed so many before; this wasn't any different.
But it was disgraceful.
...Getting so casual about killing—
That's not a good sign.
"Brilliant, just brilliant... Oh my, truly magnificent."
"......."
'(*´∀｀*) Did I just get a reaction?'
The applause echoed through the silent room.
I slowly lifted my face.
A figure erged from a cabin at the back of the botanical garden.
The presence bustling toward us, clapping in slow rhythm, seed familiar.
Juuyaku Ichishen.
The head of the Juuyaku family.
The master of this underground fortress.
"Hey, grass doll!!"
'(；｀∀´) Pfft... I could tell just by the sll!'
A second later, still fueled by inhuman strength, I slamd the doll's head into the floor.
Its body arched backward—
And the head popped off with a sharp crack.
But the splatter wasn't red. It was green.
The color of chlorophyll.
"Hah... hah... Over there, right? Hah... hah... Why don't you co out instead of hiding?"
'(* ﾟ∀ﾟ)Co on out already... Be a good boy!'
Before I could finish the sentence, a man stepped out from the bushes.
Sa face, sa outfit, as the shadow warrior from earlier.
Even clapped his hands the exact sa way.
"Good grief... As expected. You saw through it at a glance?"
"Hah... hah... Given how those guys were acting, I didn't think the head himself would just show up in person."
'(＾ω＾)Talk about predictable!'
After all, exorcists aren't the type to favor frontal assaults.
Like the ones earlier, they set traps and ambushes.
No way this guy would walk in without his own tricks.
In fact, it was highly likely this appearance was just another layer of the trap.
No room for carelessness. No gaps allowed.
"Very well... Hmm. How about this? Let's ease the terms from last ti. Would you consider making a pact with us?"
"...You're saying that in the room where the remains of our clan are still rotting?"
It's absurd to act self-righteous after committing murder...
But the dead didn't just disappear.
What do you think our clan's lives were worth?
At least say a prayer.
"Not necessarily. If you look back through ancient records, this kind of thing isn't so rare. There were tis when clansn were used as poison bait or sacrificial offerings."
"Is that really the case?"
"Oh? You saw it yourself?"
"I nearly threw up."
"Haha! You're disgusted by sothing like that? You must be joking."
Ichishen answered smoothly, brushing off my words with an amused grin.
It was revolting.
Frowning, I couldn't hold back a biting remark.
"You really think sothing like that can be forgiven?
If the truth about that ca to light, annihilation would be inevitable—you understand that, don't you? No... sothing even worse might happen. What the hell are you thinking?"
'(. ･`з･)How utterly inelegant!'
What flashes in my mind is the scene I encountered after escaping the sewers and climbing the stairs.
...specins cramd into tanks.
They were all the sa beings──those 2 I was familiar with──and... they were clearly grotesque.
Deford, bizarre mutations.
The ones cramd in like fetuses still looked sowhat cute.
There were those with torsos of flesh.
Heads that resembled chiras.
Organs that had ford on the outside... I struggled endlessly to accept that those were fundantally the sa as Juuyaku Hana and Juuyaku Kaya, and only after glancing at the preserved research materials did I finally acknowledge it.
"I'm fully aware of everything. ...Juuyaku Kaya, and Juuyaku Hana, how nostalgic... They were both soldiers who greatly supported the Juuyaku family. In the end, they fought fiercely against the monsters, becoming the foundation for the prosperity of Fusō. They must be a source of pride for the Juuyaku."
"And yet, even in death, you're using and degrading their dignity?"
'(>ω
"What, is that a good thing..."
Let's set aside the comnt about spiders for a mont... ah.
Well, it was indeed on-point.
Using the flesh of the deceased to grow and produce new beings... it bore resemblance to the hundred-faced specter of he as well.
If there's any difference, it's that Juuyaku's goals are higher, but their technology is evidently lacking.
The specins I caught a glimpse of in that room, sealed in glass bottles, were all failures in the production stages.
They were wretched lumps of flesh that never held a trace of life.
What's even more horrifying is that even after gaining life, they could hardly be considered a success.
"It was incredibly difficult to bring that thing to life. The Rasetsu... unlike what just transpired with Household mber Coordinator-dono, this wasn't just a modification; it was a creation. It took nearly half a century just to get it to form properly."
I can't even imagine how many blobs of flesh were discarded in the anti.
Though I can certainly guess how they were disposed of.
If only it had ended there, perhaps there would have been so rcy.
But this man seed to have trouble accepting defeat.
...Are you seriously going to go that far, even using the factor of a wicked god?
You can't make an evaluation without giving it a try, can you? At the very least, it's true that we've overco one hurdle.
It was presumably gathered during the past upheaval──the remnants, or perhaps the factor, of an evil earth goddess.
According to the records, it's said that during the scandal at the Onmyouji Bureau towards the end of the Azuma era, they swiped the hidden items and pinned the cri on soone else.
The factor of the life goddess obtained in that way certainly propelled our Kei (計) project into the next phase.
And it also posed a new challenge.
The challenge of stabilization.
"Ah, how it brings back mories. That truly was nothing short of divine intervention. I have nothing but words of gratitude!"
As Ichishen sighed deeply, as if longing for those tis, it felt like he was recounting a beautiful mory.
"Divine intervention, huh... Ha, spare the flattery. I just wanted to live, you know?"
'(；∀；) I just wanted to live──still want to live!'
I, too, sigh as I recall those tis.
I truly, truly wanted to be spared from it all.
It felt as if rely being alive was so kind of sin.
And that dumb spider shouldn't be singing.
...It dates back a few years when Juuyaku Ichishen first took an interest in .
It all started during the last Joraku (visiting the capital) of the Onitsuki family.
It seems he was one of the exorcists assigned to investigate and track down the commotion with Ako Murasaki in the underground waterway.
"Did you... capture that fallen earth goddess? Unbelievable."
"By the ti I caught up, they were already pretty banged up. Looks like most of their kin had been slaughtered. Honestly, they never had any hostility to begin with. Just a few were eaten during transport, that's all. And... I've also secured your blood trail."
Blood from soone collected in the underground sewers.
By experinting with the hidden sample, finding resistance, and interrogating the captured Youbo (youkai mother), Juuyaku Ichishen led here.
Co on.
Things are starting to take shape, aren't they?
"The amount we could collect was limited. After extracting and concentrating it, we managed to refine only 2 doses of the resistance drug. But the effect was imdiate. Before, inserting the factor would instantly mutate them into youkai, devoid of any rationality──terrible things, as you've seen in the sewers, Household mber Coordinator-dono. They couldn't even communicate properly. But now, it's different. All I have are words of gratitude. Thanks to you, the path has 'opened.' The path to mass production."
"I see where this is going... You've got to be kidding !!"
I finally drop the pretense of formalities and lash out angrily.
The reason this old man wanted wasn't even as a stud.
His grand ambition surpasses even that madness.
To put it bluntly, clone soldiers.
Clone yakuza.
Juuyaku Ichishen plans to mass-produce the exorcists from the clan's past.
Establishing an army of duplicated exorcists.
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And I'm the material for that drug.
A natural ingredient vaccine to prevent runaway mutations.
Now I understand why he wants to produce so much bodily fluid.
They're insane.
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