The Hospital Where People Disappear [7]

Plenty of people had let the word end times slip past their lips. But Baek Dong-sik was the first to ever mention the cause of it.

Which meant...

"So Cosmos actually figured out why the end times are coming?"

"That is correct."

Baek Dong-sik answered in a voice brimming with pride. Apparently the fact that Cosmos alone knew what no one else had ever managed to say out loud — and that he himself was a part of it — was more than he could keep from gloating about.

"Then what does it mean, that Baek Gong-ju went to observe the cause of the end times and never came back?"

"Exactly what it sounds like."

In other words, whatever sat at the root of the end times was dangerous to observe at all. And I'd heard a story very much like this once before.

The Chairman.

Nicolas Flamel, chairman of Lostco. When I'd asked him about the cause of the end times, that was precisely the kind of answer he'd given me. But at the same time, he'd said that a Special-Grade would be able to bear the truth.

So why couldn't Baek Gong-ju come back?

That was what I was about to go find out.

"The fact that you said 'never came back' instead of 'died' means she's still alive, doesn't it."

"Well... about that..."

Baek Dong-sik trailed off evasively. Which was, in itself, the most decisive proof that Baek Gong-ju was alive.

"Lead the way."

It was time to confirm the reason for the end of the world.

Vvvvvvmmmm

The place Baek Dong-sik guided us to was an elevator heading underground. But the number of floors it descended was anything but ordinary.

"Surely Cosmos Medical Center doesn't actually go down ninety-nine floors?"

"No, sir. This facility exists only on the reverse side — much like the shelter I was hiding in."

The doors slid open, and a pristine white corridor stretched out to greet us.

"A haunted, abandoned ruin up top, and a cutting-edge research facility hidden in the basement... God, that's a cliché these days too."

"H-haha."

Baek Dong-sik laughed awkwardly. Still, for a facility this enormous, why was there not a single trace of human presence?

"Because the research has already concluded."

"Even so, a place this size — you'd think they'd leave at least a skeleton crew behind."

"...Leaving even a handful of personnel is far too dangerous."

"And Cosmos doesn't exactly strike me as an organization that prizes human life."

I said it while thinking of the people I'd seen in the inpatient wing.

"Th-that's a misunderstanding. It is merely the unavoidable sacrifice of livestock for the sake of the generations to come. Yes..."

"And who gave you people the right to decide who counts as livestock?"

"W-well..."

Baek Dong-sik's voice trailed off. By the time it did, we had arrived at our destination — the place where the cause of the end times waited.

The room at the end of the corridor looked something like a decompression chamber. Double reinforced glass doors, each what looked like dozens of centimeters thick, stood in our way — and beyond them...

"A window... and curtains?"

"That is the cause of the end times."

"The window and the curtains?"

"To be precise — whatever lies beyond the window the curtains are hiding."

Baek Dong-sik rapped his knuckles against the glass wall before us as he went on.

"You may have already guessed, but the curtains, and this glass wall as well, exist for one fundamental purpose: to keep us from looking directly at what's on the other side of that window."

Just as he said, the glass wall ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠distorted the light so strangely that the space beyond appeared warped and writhing.

"Then why not just seal it off with a bulkhead entirely?"

"We tried. But when you block the line of sight physically, the thing on the other side starts moving — trying to look at us."

"......"

I stepped closer to the glass wall and peered at the window.

"So where's Baek Gong-ju?"

"Look closely. Right there, can't you see her?"

I studied the warped space beyond the glass at his words, and only belatedly understood. The curtain was bulging, ever so slightly. Someone was standing there, draped in the curtain, facing the window.

"Baek Gong-ju..."

As I watched her silhouette rising beneath the cloth, I felt something seeping out through the gap in the curtain. And somehow, that energy felt eerily familiar.

"......Don't tell me what's beyond that window is the Outside?"

"...Impressive that you recognized it... Here on our side, we call it the 'Origin Point.'"

The Outside. The place the fake Dragon King had come from when we fought on Yeoin Island. And, according to Cosmos, the cause of the end times.

The Outside is the cause of the end times?

That the Outside was dangerous, I knew just from the fake Dragon King. But as an explanation for the end of the world, it left far too many questions.

Yes, the beings out there are threatening — but they're not beyond what psychics can handle, are they?

I myself, who had killed the fake Dragon King while barely more than a fledgling, was living proof. And since the Yeoin Island incident, I hadn't encountered another anomaly from the Outside. Its denizens were strong, but not absolute — and their numbers weren't overwhelming either.

So how could the Outside be the cause of the end times?

Then something nagged at me — the name Baek Dong-sik, or rather Cosmos, used for the Outside.

Origin Point.

Why would Cosmos call it that? Maybe the secret of the end times was hidden in that word...

Bzzzzt

Just then, my phone rang. Checking it, I found a text from Princess Bari.

Wondering what it was, I tapped the link — and the moment I did,

A god's blessing?

The power I could feel was extraordinary.

At this level, it should at least function as a protective suit.

"Open the door."

"...Understood."

"W-wait a moment!"

Yoon Soo-ah cut in at that point.

"Does it really have to be you, Mr. Yi-yeon? Is there any need for you to shoulder this danger yourself?"

"She may have lost her memories, but that woman is still your grandmo—"

"Then let me go instead!"

For an instant the offer tempted me, but I shook my head.

"This is my job. Open it."

If it were something done out of pure goodwill, that would be one thing — but this was being done for my sake. Whether the other party was human or god, I am the kind of man who pays back exactly what he receives.

"Then... opening it now."

Baek Dong-sik opened the outer glass wall.

"Fey. If this man tries anything funny, subdue him on the spot."

"Don't worry. All I'm doing is bringing back one frozen person. What could go wrong?"

The moment I stepped inside the glass wall, the one behind me slid shut.

"Wh-what are you doing!?"

"It's protocol! The outer and inner walls can't ever be open at the same time — it's built that way!"

"It's fine. Keep going."

The outer wall sealed shut, and the inner one opened.

Haaaaaah

"......"

Despite what was clearly a hermetically sealed environment, a warm breeze drifted over me. The silhouette bulging beneath the curtain stood utterly still, without so much as a tremor. Goosebumps rippled across my entire body in an instant. I felt it the moment I'd crossed into the inner wall — this space was dangerous. If something happened to me here and now, it would not be strange at all.

"Damn it..."

I'd been through hell and back — land, sea, and sky — since the day I first connected to Dongbin's Dao Study Room. But never once had I felt fear this primal.

The fear of the unknown!

Humanity's most instinctive sense was screaming its warning at me. I had no idea what lay beyond that curtain. But I knew, with absolute certainty, that I must never draw close to it — never try to learn what it was.

Just then, as if mocking my terror, the curtain swayed and its inside was briefly bared.

"Ugh!"

I whipped my head away. Thankfully, I hadn't seen what was behind it.

"Whew..."

I can't let my guard down for a second...

I shut my eyes entirely and walked toward the window. Then I lifted the edge of the curtain, seized Baek Gong-ju's arm, and pulled.

"Quit holding out on me, old lady."

Her body was rigid as if locked in rigor mortis, her arm refusing to budge.

"Oh, come on!"

But once I put my back into it, her arm soon came free. I dragged Baek Gong-ju — stiff as rotting wood — away from the window by force. And in the process, with my eyes glued flat to the wall at an angle where the window was absolutely invisible, I straightened out the disheveled curtain.

"Hoo... hoo..."

No idea why I was so winded; I hadn't done anything remarkable. With the curtain seen to, I led Baek Gong-ju back out through the glass wall.

"Mr. Yi-yeon!"

"Hwah! Thought I was a dead man..."

Nothing had gone wrong — which, paradoxically, meant I'd been standing in a moment where anything could have.

I got lucky... no.

I looked down at the Aegis on my hand and thought. More likely, this was the result of Princess Bari's blessing working together with the Aegis's power to bend causality itself.

And then, at that very moment —

Crack!

"......"

A great fracture split across the Aegis. This was the Aegis that had shielded me all this time through the hostility of Cosmos and Jeongmyeonggyo alike. And now, for three minutes of lifting a curtain and dragging out one person, it had all but reached the end of its life.

Fuck — just how dangerous was that place?

No, more than that—

Tch. Add it all up, take it all away, and I'm sitting at zero. A perfect "Origin Point," you could say...

Princess Bari's faith, and the Battle Blossom. The faith was meant to let me wield golden Narrative Coercion in place of perception. And the Battle Blossom was the key ingredient for the elixir I was currently preparing.

A Daoist lives and dies by his pills, after all.

If my calculations were right, taking the elixir distilled from the Battle Blossom would carry me to Special-Grade. But Special-Grade was merely the minimum threshold for securing my own safety.

What I really wanted was to hit Special-Grade while the Aegis's protection still held, and prepare a few more trump cards on top of it...

A shame — but what's done is done. And then—

Twitch, twitch

Baek Gong-ju's fingertips moved. She seemed to be trying to wake.

"What are the side effects of seeing the Origin Point?"

"I don't know."

"What? You said you researched it. Then how do you not know?"

"...Because everyone who ever laid naked eyes on it died with their internal organs melted to nothing. What research we conducted was done entirely through machinery."

"Then why is Baek Gong-ju still alive?"

"I suppose that's simply what being Special-Grade means."

Well, fair enough. This super-hag was hardly the type to keel over that easily. Come to think of it, Gong No-sa, and whatever nameless second Special-Grade Cosmos had in its ranks — none of them ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠seemed like they'd die just from glancing at something.

And then—

Swooosh

Baek Gong-ju finally opened her eyes.

"Are you all right—"

The words died in my throat. Baek Gong-ju's opened eyes had turned pitch-black, empty of any white or pupil. No — more precisely, they hadn't turned black at all. Something else entirely was filling the place where her eyes should have been.

I knew exactly what it was. The presence I felt in the darkness of her eyes was a dead ringer for the fake Dragon King.

Which meant Baek Gong-ju's two eyes had become beings of the Outside.

"Wang Lingguan! Fey!"

At my shout, Wang Lingguan swept Yoon Soo-ah and Baek Dong-sik back out into the corridor, while the wave Fey conjured swallowed Baek Gong-ju whole.

SHAAAAAAAH!

I bolted out into the corridor right behind Wang Lingguan. Behind us, the wave that had engulfed Baek Gong-ju began to whirl, swelling larger and larger. Before long the water vortex filling the entire room began compressing inward into a perfect circle. Naturally, the body trapped within it crumpled beneath the mounting pressure.

The reward Princess Bari had promised flashed through my mind, and the word "stop" climbed all the way to my throat — and I swallowed it. Instead, quite the opposite:

"I'll help."

I scattered special petals, doubly reinforced with the branch rite and alchemy, and chanted the Ksitigarbha Ten Wheels Mudra. The petals whirled through the air, lending their strength to the prison of water.

GRUUUUUMBLE—!

The water prison shrank to a diameter of two meters. Considering the volume of water it had started with, the pressure inside must have been beyond imagination.

With those words, Fey clenched her outstretched palm shut, as if to bring it all to an end. And in that instant—

BWHAAAAAAAM!

Bursting black tentacles tore the water prison to ribbons.

SHAAAAK!

And the black tentacles didn't stop there — they struck straight for Fey's throat.

"Not today!"

I snatched Fey out of the air and retreated backward. The water prison, ripped apart from within, collapsed in a cascading spray.

"Think nothing of it..."

I answered without taking my eyes off the thing that had torn its way out of the water prison. The being standing there was no longer Baek Gong-ju. Her body had gone pitch-black as if drenched in tar, and two tentacles writhed out from where her eyes had been. In that grotesque shape, there was nothing left of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the dignified shaman I had once known, nor of the dependable pillar the Paranormal Administration Bureau had leaned upon. What stood there was nothing but a monster from the Outside, just like the fake Dragon King.

"This is the worst..."

I had always expected that someday the day would come when I'd fight a Special-Grade. But even then, I'd assumed my opponent would be Gong No-sa — or if not her, the cult leader of Jeongmyeonggyo.

I never imagined that the very first Special-Grade I'd ever face... would turn out to be Baek Gong-ju of all people.

My heart was pounding like a war drum. But I hadn't spent all this time idling either. I had trained without rest, and — befitting my class as a sorcerer — I had stacked my preparations for the day I'd fight a Special-Grade.

"These were meant for my fight with Gong No-sa, but..."

I drew the silver dagger from my coat.

"Let's call it a prototype field test."

My trump card against Special-Grades, number whatever. An artifact recorded in Paracelsus's Alchemy Workshop, rated at difficulty beyond the fifth stage — transcendent.