Chapter 190: Suited for a Witch
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 190: Suited for a Witch
A monstrosity, disgusting to behold and too vile to speak of, writhed and swelled.
The agents trembled in fear at the sight of the pitch-black flesh, but they still executed the protocol for this exact kind of problem: a biological terror attack.
All the facility's hatches sealed shut, and the incinerator roared to life. Flames hot enough to melt anything, even steel, began to scorch the flesh.
“I-Is it over?”
“You crazy bastard…!”
As one of the fleeing agents muttered the words, his colleague cursed. At that exact moment, the mass of flesh shook off its charred outer crust, smashed through the sealed door, and revealed itself.
The agents shrieked at the sight of the flesh beneath the cooked crust, glistening as if brand new.
“What is that thing!”
“Fuck, why is there a monster like that in the basement! No one said anything about this-!”
The agents, who had expected a biological terror attack to involve a specially developed virus or bacteria at worst, were horrified by the sight of a monster that seemed otherworldly.
Like some fantastical monster a kid might doodle online as a joke, the mass of flesh swelled up and began to seize and absorb the agents.
“Ghh-! Gack, h-help me-!”
As if its goal wasn't to eat the humans but to make them suffer, the monster began to digest them slowly and painfully.
At a glance, it looked like they could be saved, but anyone who got close found them bound by an unbreakably tight grip.
Countless agents had already died after being dragged in while attempting a rescue. They had learned their lesson: trying to save them was foolish.
That in the face of such horror, hope itself was a fool's errand.
Just then, a figure emerged from beyond the writhing flesh. The agents froze, watching a man walk out from between the tendrils as if it were nothing.
“Who…?”
“Wait, how did you get through…”
The agents stared in bewilderment at the man who had casually emerged from the flesh impervious to guns, fire, and chemicals.
The man casually stepped out from the mass, rescued an agent who was being consumed, and then walked toward the others.
“Are you all right?”
“Th-thank… thank you…”
The agent could barely speak, the areas where the flesh had gripped him still wracked with pain, but he managed to offer his thanks.
The man accepted his gratitude with a lighthearted laugh, as if it were nothing, and walked over to where the other agents were gathered.
The mass of flesh seemed to avoid him, not daring to come anywhere near.
“How in the world…”
“How did you get through that monster?”
The agents asked as they took the injured man from him.
Yohan, feeling their intense stares, reached into his coat. He pulled out a mint candy.
“It just seems to get scared of the smell of mint.”
“Huh? What are you talking…”
“There's no way that makes sense—”
As the agents protested, Yohan casually tossed the mint candy.
As if it had a will of its own, the flesh scrambled to get away from the flying candy. The agents who witnessed this stared blankly, their expressions hollow with disbelief.
“What kind of monster hates mint…?”
“Anyway, this means we can get out of here, right?”
“Ah, yes! As long as that monster hasn't reached the surface, we should be able to take the elevator out.”
Having instantly befriended the agents with a single piece of candy, Yohan followed them to the elevator.
The agents had been silent while rushing to evade the monster, but once they were safely inside the elevator, they finally turned to Yohan.
“By the way, I don't recognize you. Which department are you with?”
“That's a secret.”
“Haha, no need for secrets among us. Are you new?”
“It's a secret.”
“Wow, they really drill the new guys well these days.”
Given the nature of the facility, they didn't find it particularly strange that they didn't recognize him or that he refused to state his affiliation.
And so, it was only after the elevator reached the surface and the doors opened to the outside that Yohan revealed his identity.
“The name's Kim Yohan. I was kidnapped and brought here today.”
“What? Kidnapped? Then that means…”
He wasn't an agent. He was a test subject, or something similar.
The moment they realized this, the agents' expressions hardened. They threw elbows and knees at Yohan, but with the strength of ordinary men, there was no way they could hurt him.
Yohan took their attacks without so much as a frown. Realizing they were the same kind of people who had brought him here, he let out a laugh.
“So this place is filled with nothing but scum like you.”
“—Fire!”
“Sorry.”
But the pitch-black flesh that shot up through the elevator floor was much faster, subduing them before they could even draw their pistols.
The agents frantically threw their mint candies to fight it off, but for some reason, the flesh didn't even flinch.
Instead, it crunched on the candies as if amused. Only then did the agents realize something was terribly wrong.
“Did you really believe that? Does it make any sense for a monster to hate mint?”
“B-but just now…!”
“Oh, that. I couldn't find the way out. It took long enough just to find the elevator; I wasn't about to brute-force my way up, was I? It would have been a pain if the path was blocked.”
Listening to him, the agents realized he was speaking as if he could control the monster.
A chill ran down their spines as they understood what that meant.
“P-please, spare me! I had nothing to do with—!”
“W-without us, this country is doomed!”
“Ah, a country that's doomed unless it kidnaps and tortures people.”
If this had happened to someone else, Yohan might have felt a fleeting moment of anger or pity, cursed the government a few times, and then forgotten all about it.
But he couldn't be so detached when it happened to him. He was utterly enraged, and he would punish every single person even remotely involved.
Whether a country or two fell in the process was of no concern to him.
“A country like that deserves to be destroyed.”
Even if the entire planet were engulfed in the flames of nuclear war, what did that have to do with him?
If worst came to worst, he could just return to the other world. He'd miss Earth's food and entertainment, but not so much that he couldn't live without them.
Besides, hadn't he seen for himself that the other world would one day reach a similar level of civilization?
“Hekaterina. Eat.”
“Ah, no—!”
CRUNCH!
As the pitch-black flesh devoured the agents, Yohan nonchalantly walked out of the hidden elevator area.
He emerged into the lobby of a building, where office workers milled about, oblivious to the horror unfolding in the basement.
Normally, he would have thought of them as innocent civilians who should be spared.
But not now.
—Do whatever you want.
Hekaterina's sweet voice echoed from the black flesh. A voice of temptation, beckoning him to fall into the witch's embrace.
Yes, perhaps when this was all over—or when time had passed, his anger had cooled, and reason had reclaimed his mind.
He might regret this. He might even sink into depression for having killed innocent people.
“Hekaterina.”
—Yeees?
“If I fall, you'll catch me.”
—Are you crazy? As if there aren't plenty of others who would catch you.
Hekaterina, now a mass of black flesh, spoke in a voice brimming with unconcealable amusement.
—I'm the one who drags you down.
With those words, Hekaterina shot forward, instantly engulfing the entire building.
As screams of terror filled the building, Yohan surrendered himself to Hekaterina.
The viscous flesh gently received him.
“Damn.”
Arriving in the heart of Seoul, Margaret saw the pitch-black flesh already wreaking havoc on the city and knew instantly that she was too late.
Being the nation's capital, the Capital Defense Division had been deployed to protect it, but they would be powerless against that mass of flesh.
It was a part of Hekaterina, a being of terror born from a witch's magic. It couldn't be defeated by mere firearms.
“Back in our world, this would've been easy pickings for the Holy Knights. But here, she's having the time of her life.”
Of course, in the other world, such a large mass of flesh would have been nothing but prey for the Holy Knights. There was a reason Hekaterina usually limited her transformations to monsters two or three meters in size.
The larger she became, the harder she was to control, increasing her vulnerability to Divine Power.
BOOM—!
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT—!
With the sound of tank shells and gunfire as her backdrop, Margaret headed for the source of the black flesh. There, in the building's basement, she found it, writhing and endlessly pouring out, with Yohan lying upon it as if it were a bed.
Yohan lay there as if he were dead. For a moment, Margaret thought this was all Hekaterina's revenge, a rampage born from her fury over Yohan's death.
“Yohan!?”
Startled, she rushed toward him. She let out a sigh of relief when he slowly opened his eyes.
So he wasn't dead, after all.
Relieved, she continued toward him, but then she froze, staring intently at Yohan. Something in his eyes had changed.
“Yo…han?”
“…Margaret.”
Before, he had never quite managed to shed his humanity. But now, he had become a man truly suited for a witch.
Realizing this, Margaret felt a pang of bitterness, yet she smiled with joy.