Chapter 94
I hesitated, then I spoke quickly.
“Of course, if you want to gather people, you use a landmark.”
I muttered as I looked out at the distance, where a gigantic waterfall endlessly spewed rainbow-colored water. The scale was almost Niagara Falls. There was probably almost nowhere it could not be seen.
Even if you could not see it right away, you could find it without much trouble by walking around a little. We could just tell everyone to gather to the north of that waterfall.
After I relayed the plan over the radio, I headed for the waterfall along with the Hunters whose identities we had verified, including Han Sang-ah.
“This is nasty.”
The water pouring down was not just water. It was a liquid packed with toxic substances that caused hallucinations, sothing you would never find on Earth.
“This must be what a smuggler’s paradise looked like. Right, friend?”
Once I reached the north side of the waterfall, I heard a voice from behind and confird who it was.
“Na.”
“Jung Oh-hoon. You?”
Instead of answering, I threw him another question.
“When you joined Team Headhunter as an intern, what was the very first thing you did in the training room?”
“Egg cracking. Damn it, are you Chan-seok or Sang-ah?”
“It’s Yoo Chan-seok.”
At my answer he scratched his head.
“Then the person next to you is Han Sang-ah, right?”
“Right.”
At Han Sang-ah’s words, Jung Oh-hoon took out sothing with a doubtful look.
“What is that?”
“A negative ion bracelet. I heard it helps with health.”
Han Sang-ah answered to Jung Oh-hoon’s claim.
“The benefits of negative ions have never been proven. To begin with, a negative ion is just an ion with a negative charge. A negative ion is not a specific substance or component. It is a term that refers to a state an atom can have.”
She thought for a mont, then continued.
“If you believe negative ions help your health, you could eat or rub cyanide on your skin. That’s a negative ion too.”
Jung Oh-hoon imdiately answered, sounding delighted.
“Wow, you really are Han Sang-ah huh?”
“You and Yoo Chan-seok both, how can you be so sure? You did not ask a single question about myself.”
She sounded like she could not figure out how he knew Han Sang-ah was real.
I did not feel like explaining.
“Either way, that bracelet has no effect.”
“Really? It was just a normal bracelet anyway.”
He must have lied to test whether she really was Han Sang-ah. While we talked, the Hunters arrived one by one.
“There is no need to fight. Let us weed them out in a single sweep.”
That was what I said to the gathered Hunters.
“In one sweep, how.”
A common-sense O or X quiz. A few among the gathered people spoke up at my words.
“What if soone was not a fake and got a common-sense question wrong…?”
I made a regretful face. What could we do, they had to die then. They would have to consider it the price of a lack of common sense.
And I did not plan on asking anything that hard.
Everyone who had entered the Erosion Core this ti was Korean except for Adakawa Nanami, so I would ask things any Korean could answer.
Of course we would blindfold everyone. If you watched what others did and moved around accordingly, there was no point in trying to distinguish anyone.
First we had to find Adakawa Nanami.
“If you are Adakawa Nanami, raise your hand.”
Four people raised their hands. Picking out Adakawa Nanami was not hard. We had spent a lot of ti together working on this job anyway.
After a few simple questions I found the real one in an instant, then set Adakawa Nanami aside and started a pleasant round of O or X quiz.
“Let us begin. In a Korean restaurant, a bowl of plain rice, gonggi-bap, normally costs two thousand won. Right hand if true, left hand if false.”
If you did not know that was false, you were not Korean. To be blunt, if you died because you got that wrong, I would think that was on you.
Even those price-gouging valley restaurants that went overboard still charged a thousand won for a bowl of rice.
You could cheat the portion of rice, but if the price was over a thousand won, that restaurant would probably go under. Or every custor would have a word or two to say.
If you repeated questions like this a few tis, even if a fake survived by guessing, the number of them would drop sharply.
They had to guess right on a fifty percent chance five tis in a row. After I checked who got the questions wrong, I smashed those people’s heads one by one.
“When you eat wraps at a barbecue place, stuffing the whole wrap in your mouth at once is the proper way. Right hand if true, left hand if false.”
“At a Chinese restaurant, if you order fried dumplings, they give you sweet-and-sour pork for free. Right hand if true, left hand if false.”
As we kept filtering them out like this, the number left was ninety-eight.
“…How did two end up dead?”
I did not rember asking anything a Korean would get wrong. There still had not been any unusual changes inside the Erosion Core. That ant that among these ninety-eight, there were a few counterfeits who had survived on luck.
I did not know how many, but this would not take long. I checked the radio and confird there was no one still on the way.
“Was it not too easy?”
I turned my gaze at Adakawa Nanami’s comnt.
“Was there sothing you were worried about?”
What Adakawa Nanami said was worth listening to. She answered .
“The gimmick was a bit tricky, but it was not incredibly hard. On top of that, there were almost no monsters inside the Erosion Core. They were not very threatening either. In cases like this, either the heart of the Erosion Core was no joke, or there was another gimmick in play.”
So sothing was waiting next. Thinking about it, considering the refrigerator gimmick at Bratsk, a gimmick at this level did feel a lot like a wet firecracker.
“For now, we should finish this part.”
It was ti to filter the people one more ti. Feeling like an interviewer, the four of us sat down, brought the Hunters one by one, asked questions, and checked the answers.
If the answer was wrong, we would jump in together and beat them to death.
Ti kept passing, and those who passed the interview and the corpses of those who failed piled up neatly in a corner.
We succeeded in filtering out fourteen more. With a blank expression, I opened my mouth.
“So there were sixteen people who did not know a bowl of plain rice at a restaurant was a thousand won.”
Han Sang-ah answered.
“Even I know that.”
See, even a chaebol heiress knew it. How could anyone not know?
At that mont, the gray masks that had hidden our faces lted away, and the flat gray outfits scattered and vanished, revealing our true appearances.
“Looks like we found them all.”
So, what ca next? I was wondering that but the gigantic waterfall before our eyes suddenly began to seethe, and an unimaginably huge shape surged up.
“Wow. A kaiju?”
It had the appearance of a young girl. The waterfall that put Niagara Falls to sha looked like a small bathtub next to its size. Its hair glead like obsidian, and the color of its eyes kept changing.
The complex patterns that ford and vanished inside made your vision swim as you looked.
“It is a fake.”
And that was an illusion. I could feel a faint trace of magic.
— How could you end it like this? That was cheating. I wanted sothing a little more fun.
A voice resounded. An old man’s voice, a child’s voice, a young woman’s voice, a man’s voice, hundreds of voices tangled together.
— I want to watch you guys for a mont.
With those words, the huge figure of the young girl opened its mouth, and a keen wail rang out. In that instant, I felt as if my mind reeled.
Ah, it looked like it wanted to enter my soul directly. It would want to inspect a soul up close, then tear it apart and ruin a person.
I glanced aside, and the others were the sa. They stared blankly as if bewitched by sothing. Watching them, I clicked my tongue.
“We probably do not even need to fight this.”
Surprisingly, for how drawn out the Jaun Valley subjugation had been, the ending looked like it would be easy. As my mind slowly grew hazy, I smiled faintly.
Fine, co in. Go on and see with your own eyes.
See what kind of creature I am. See whose soul you were trying to rummage through.
“I can promise it will not be a pleasant experience.”
I closed my eyes.
* * *
The banshee Narsenti was the heart of this Erosion Core. She had lived as an undead for thousands of years, and through that ti she grew stronger and stronger. Even among spirits, banshees were treated as sothing special.
And over long ages, Narsenti had beco even more special among those banshees. Through her wail she shook a person’s soul, entered it, and ripped it to shreds.
She mobilized tragic experiences, trauma, painful tis and burdenso pasts. She used all of that to crack a soul, then pried the crack wider and collapsed it.
Or she revived mories of happier tis, let people imagine joys unlike the present, and made them helpless.
“A reunion with a dead lover, parents who abused you in childhood, the mory of betrayal…”
This ti would not be much different. The souls of those who entered this Erosion Core would be analyzed down to the last by Narsenti, and through that she would smash their souls and absorb them.
A part of the power contained in each soul would beco part of Narsenti’s own power. Narsenti split her soul into dozens of strands and thrust them into the bodies of the Hunters who stood there vacant.
Imdiately, terror climbed Narsenti’s spine. Instinctively, the souls she had split apart fused back into one.
“What is this?”
That was what Narsenti believed. She was a mighty banshee who had lived for thousands of years. She did not think anything like being pressed down by a re human soul could ever happen.
Before her eyes, a vast black fla burned. The searing black fla took the shape of a beast.
“…”
And it was large enough that Narsenti had to look up at it. The beast-shaped black fla was so huge it looked like it could brush the sky. The beast was bound tight, wrapped round and round by blood-red chains.
“I hate this.”
Fear. A distant, primal terror that she could not even bring herself to na swept Narsenti’s body. Just looking at it made her brain feel like butter lting on a hotplate.
Her eyes burned as if they would burst. Her head spun with mounting fear. That… that was inside the soul of a re mortal.
“No. Absolutely not…”
This wasn’t anything. This was ruin. If the concept of the end of all things in the world took a tangible shape, it ought to look like this.
It was a predator that would erase and devour everything until nothing remained. And… that burning black fla was not even this mortal’s soul.
The chains that bound that unspeakable, despairing last end and the end of everything were the shape of the very soul Narsenti had entered.
“That. That… how could that be. Good heavens, I… this makes no sense. I can’t understand sothing like this. How could sothing like this…”
It kept that thing shackled. It had managed to suppress a monstrous sothing like that. That was the greater terror. Even seeing the shape of the soul before her eyes, Narsenti could not believe it.
She was being crushed. She was being ground under by a sight her cognition and reason could never comprehend.
A made-manifest apocalypse that looked too certain. And the chains that suppressed, controlled, and bound that apocalypse.
“No.”
Even the Emperor who ruled the Undying Legion far away in a place called Beijing would be crushed if he faced this soul. He might endure for a mont, but he could not endure for long. No matter what.
This was a different dinsion. The Emperor’s soul exerted a trendous sense of pressure. But this was not pressure. This was existence itself as violence.
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