EP.49 – The Most Dangerous Creature in the World Is… (5)

Stand night duty in the army long enough, and you end up watching a great many movies.

It wasn't slacking. In the dead of night, with everyone else asleep and nothing else to do, movies were simply what you were left with.

Well. Lee Han, anyway.

"You again? Another martial-arts novel and another internet comic?"

"Brother Dokgo, it isn't an internet comic. It's a webcomic."

His tastes had never once wavered, so a film was something he sat through only now and then.

"Same thing, isn't it?"

"…Brother Dokgo, you really are only in your mid-twenties, right?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just—that you're very mature. That's all."

"Hnn. I don't like the sound of that…."

"Oh, look, a movie. There's a movie on."

"……."

Unlike Lee Han, who never changed, his superior enjoyed science fiction nearly as much as martial-arts novels, and so long as a picture had even a scrap of SF in it—hero tale or thriller—he did not discriminate. An omnivore, so-called.

Which was why Lee Han sometimes had to keep him company, and what they ended up watching, time after time, was this.

"You really do go out of your way for that stuff, Brother Dokgo."

"I read a lot of American comics when ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I was a kid."

"That's… some early education."

"What'd you say, you punk!"

And so they watched films about parasitic aliens often enough that Brother Dokgo would toss out the same childish question every time.

"If a parasite like that actually existed, what do you figure we'd do?"

"You want to have this talk at your age? …If I have to answer, first thing, we'd hose it down with high explosives, wouldn't we?"

But he had been no more grown-up himself, and the two of them were the sort to spend some four hours arguing over how one ought to kill ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a parasitic alien.

…And now.

Brother Dokgo. Can you see this?

Turns out we weren't immature. We were pioneers.

The dark-crimson liquid monster devoured the half-fiend's corpse and swelled, little by little.

Glug… glug…!

It was a dark-crimson fluid so foul that even touching it seemed unclean, and dreadful besides. It looked like a mass of unrefined oil. At a glance it also looked like lava, hot enough to be holding a flame inside itself.

But one thing could be said for certain.

"…I know without being told."

Even without Sunken-Eye's warning, Lee Han, Lark, and Maximus never laid a finger on the dark-crimson fluid. They backed away as if in flight. They were certain that to touch that thing was to see nothing good—survival instinct was sounding a furious alarm, and as if to prove the instinct had given them the right answer—

Squirm, squirm…. The dark-crimson liquid monster melted the half-fiend's corpse away. Or was it eating? Whichever it was, the sight was hideous.

"……To think I'd lay eyes on that again."

"You've seen it before?"

"Mm. Half a year ago. Do you remember when monsters were summoned into the Academy?"

"How could I forget."

The mere memory of the misery he'd eaten back then was enough to bolt him upright out of sleep.

"Mm. Then do you also know there was a hand behind that incident? And that Galahad and Lionel went out to put that hand down?"

"…First I'm hearing of it."

"Then learn it now. I fought one of them—a priest by the name of Andrea Laurent. And that priest offered up his own body as a sacrifice and summoned that."

"……."

"For the record, after I fought it I needed more than half a month to recover. It was difficult. No—it was exceedingly difficult, and strong."

"…Figures."

Lee Han had not the slightest intention of ignoring that blob, advice or no advice. Hideous as the thing already looked, the pressure it poured off was dizzying before anything else.

Hoooooo—!

While Lee Han and the other two knights hardened their faces and raised their own momentum, an absurd, empty laugh drifted in from somewhere else.

"Heh heh. That Prophet bastard. To think he'd done a thing like this to our bodies…."

"So if we die, a spell comes out on its own. Rigged it that way. Vicious little wretch."

Of those still living—setting aside No. 5 and No. 6, already dead where they stood or maimed past any hope of survival—No. 7 and No. 11 watched their comrades being swallowed, eyes empty, and muttered just so. A moment later they were giggling.

"Well. Dying like this isn't the worst way."

"If it means we can kill them, is it a better bargain than running?"

Not a trace of resistance. They let the will to live go, a gloomy light in their eyes like shades chasing after death, as if they had always known a day like this would come.

And Lee Han, who had the two of them square in his sight—

"Look at the brats who couldn't even hold their piss and shit, striking one last filthy pose."

"!?!?"

"You look set on dying anyway, so I'll ask. Aunt Lime still alive? I've got to kill that woman with my own hands."

"You…!"

That you seemed to have a great many meanings packed inside it. A man and a woman glared at him as if they could not believe their eyes, and Lee Han went on whether they were shaken or not.

"Right. Now that I think of it, didn't you say you'd run off from the assassin corps and opened a bakery? …Way you're standing here, I guess killing really was the calling."

"…!!"

"You. Who are you?"

"Still haven't figured it out?"

They were asking how he could know a secret that belonged to them alone. Lee Han shrugged, and put his old nickname in his mouth.

"It's me. 'Cutie.'"

"????"

"…Why the hell are you freaking out!"

The spearman and the giant were suddenly staring at him the way one stares at a madman, and Lee Han barked before he knew he was doing it.

……To hide the shame.

…Shit.

I didn't even give myself that nickname….

The squirming liquid monster—no, the monster that had drunk down every corpse and clothed itself in a shape—roared at the world. It was as if something had just broken out of an egg, and to look at it was to see a mollusk and a demon pressed into a single body. Something wearing a hide of dark crimson.

The death-qi pouring off the thing, which had not even settled into a definite form, was thick enough that an ordinary citizen standing here would have been eaten through by it and choked to death. That was how fierce the aura had become, and how vicious.

And that monster, without the slightest hesitation—

Fwoooosh!

…Fire burst across its body, out of nowhere.

"You—you're really No. 8!? That No. 8!? Things like this actually happen…. No matter how far a body reverses itself, can the species change? …No. Even pumped full of monster factors, you shouldn't be able to end up like that……?!!!"

The bomber never stopped muttering nonsense, and never stopped raising fire and explosions either. The monster only watched, in silence, as the heat crashed over it, and thought.

…It itched.

The monster ran wild. It still had not properly taken form, and even so it was strong.

BOOOOM! Each time the eight arms it had sprouted swept the air, a brutal shockwave burst outward and turned the surroundings into a wasteland. Had this not been the Sacred Vault, warded by countless Mysteries, but an ordinary city street, the whole district would have come down long ago—and there would still have been force to spare.

"Strength to match a giant."

Thud! The words came from the giant of the North—the only one among them who had actually traded blows with a giant—as he weathered the rampage. That did not mean he had any room to spare.

Fwoosh! The thing was not merely strong. It spat a powerful curse, and to the breed called knights that curse was as fatal as poison.

"A curse, of all things…."

The spearman showed a rare flicker of being at a loss. From ancient times, unprecedented powers such as curses and shamanic arts had been the natural enemy of knights. A knight is strong against a mage, a shaman is strong against a knight, and a mage is strong against a shaman—somewhere in every corner of the world there is a cycle of advantage, and in that sense it was only natural for the spearman to look troubled. Take a curse, and what it leaves behind can be a permanent maiming.

And so.

"To think No. 8—that Cutie—turned into that…. Time is a cruel ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠thing."

Here, of all places, was where a shaman proved his worth.

The Eleventh Apostle—known otherwise as the shaman Yan—gave voice to Curse Speech.

Crash! The death-qi and the curse pouring from the monster's body shattered all at once, like glass. Yan's art was not stronger than the curse the monster exhaled, but offsetting it properly was no difficult thing.

The giant let out a breath of admiration.

"Magnificent!"

"Haha. I'm hardly worth praise from you. Unlike mages, what matters for us isn't how much mana we hold. We need a process as precise as a puzzle."

"…Better than the shaman of my house."

Shamans were rarer even than mages, and those born to the talent were limited to an extreme few. Even within the Pendragon Kingdom they numbered only a tiny handful. Once, the temple had persecuted them until the line was all but dried out of the South; what remained were those barely keeping the tradition alive on the support of Galahad and Lionel. And as if to show why those two great houses had not stinted that support, the shaman asserted his presence with fierce clarity. He made plain why a shaman is a knight's natural enemy—why a shaman is a knight's counter.

"Haha. Now that I look, you were the most dangerous of them. A little less care and we'd have been the ones who fell."

"The praise is appreciated. But for now, let us keep our eyes on what is in front of us. That thing has not finished growing."

"Mm!"

At the shaman's words the giant nodded hard. Certainly—

Crack. Crunch! Even now, the thing's shape was twisting into something still more threatening. Watching it, the giant—no, Maximus—found himself glad to have joined hands with the people he had been trying ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to kill only moments before.

"Fortunate, that the brother persuaded you. Temporary alliance though this may be."

"…She and I are both still rather dazed, that's all."

Yan's gaze turned toward the man who had persuaded them.

In the past he had been a benefactor who saved them, just as those words said.

KRA-KOOM! And now he was a former comrade doing something insane—meeting the monster's fist with his own, and canceling it.

You really did grow into a strong human being. No. Into a dangerous creature, No. 8….

"…Ha."

The shaman could not help a hollow little laugh at himself, following a knight as if spellbound. A shaman, of all people, feeling as if he had been bewitched by a ghost—no. By a knight.