Chapter 95
Chapter 95
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: -7
Chapter Title: Human Weapon
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I began to doubt my own perception that my mind was perfectly sound.
Lately, I'd been through some shocking events, and even made a deal with an angel. There had to be something wrong somewhere in my brain.
Otherwise, there was no way that slender girl could unleash power surpassing even the Headquarters Chief.
Ah! World, why have you cursed me with mental illness on top of everything else!
"Shin Jin-seong, what are you doing raising your arm like that!"
No way.
Some might mistake it, but there was no such thing as superpowers in this world.
Tales were the only things that existed.
For example, the Headquarters Chief's physical abilities, which allowed him to confront monsters head-on, came solely from the Chief himself. There was no special superpower mixed in.
That meant the Chief could only exert strength approaching human limits—he couldn't surpass them.
You know the type in real life, right?
The kind of person who deadlifts 500 kilograms through endless effort.
But no matter how hard they train, they can't lift a ton.
And that girl, with not a scrap of muscle on her, went pop! on a monster.
Hmm.
Ah! World, take back this mental illness!
Pop! Puff-puff-bang—!
The massacre unfolding at the hands of that nameless girl assaulted my optic nerves through both eyes.
The fact that she was popping chocolate into her mouth with one hand while doing it sent chills racing across my entire body.
Even the Headquarters Chief, who must have witnessed countless bizarre horrors, seemed to be seeing this for the first time. He was rubbing his eyes with both hands.
Mun Woo-seok's device had already shattered my common sense as an invention, but this was on another level entirely.
The past month of my life suddenly felt meaningless.
Hyuk Tae-jun didn't seem particularly surprised.
Well, they'd been together up until now, and she'd saved his life, so of course he knew.
That made me wonder why he'd been wary of us despite having a human weapon like her, but that wasn't important right now.
Right now, things that must have once been counted in "people" were swarming endlessly toward the noise, fitting the unit "Mary" instead.
"Aaah! Save me, let me out!"
A twisted thing trapped in a translucent giant sack, writhing like it was gestating, approached while crying out for salvation.
The heavens' foul taste lay in keeping that man at the midpoint between monster and human.
The sight filled everyone who saw it with bone-chilling terror that froze their blood—and the pity that barely kept that blood from fully icing over—but it seemed to leave the girl unmoved.
"Aaah! Please!"
Pop—!
The sack tore open under the girl's indifferent fist, spraying the liquid packed inside everywhere.
Wherever the liquid touched, it bubbled and melted away.
A ton of it splashed onto the girl too, but it didn't melt her flesh or even her clothes.
She just shook herself off like it was sticky and hunted the surrounding monsters even more aggressively.
Monsters pulling entrails from holes in their stomachs, spider mimics with veins tangled like webs.
Her overwhelming power turned them all into slush without discrimination.
Foul odors rose, and gruesome shapes filled my entire field of vision.
Even if I added up every scene I'd witnessed since arriving here, nothing would shock me as much as this.
If I had to sum up that girl in one phrase: a machine built to exterminate monsters.
"Ah! I ate all the chocolate!"
No one ignorant enough would call that thing human.
"Do you have any more chocolate, maybe?"
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ Once the situation calmed down somewhat, we moved locations before voicing the hundreds of questions bubbling up.
After crossing roughly five blocks and reaching a house, I caught my breath and opened my mouth.
"Explain."
"Huh?"
"Explain."
Hyuk Tae-jun wore a faint smile, as if he'd expected it.
"I'm really sorry, but I don't know anything."
The tension from our first meeting was completely gone.
"..."
"When I was nearly killed by that monster, she saved me with that power. So she's been that strong since then. Of course, she doesn't know why she has this strength either."
It was frustrating, but I hadn't really expected Hyuk Tae-jun to know anything.
Thinking about it, in this world, Hyuk Tae-jun was just an ordinary guy with no connection to the Tale Management Bureau.
Considering that police in this world left all Tales to the Bureau, he had even less reason to know anything about them.
He didn't even know the girl's name to begin with, so of course he wouldn't know how she could produce such unreal power.
Still, my suspicions now shifted squarely to that girl.
Memory loss, plus that kind of power?
Wasn't that basically begging, "Please suspect me"?
Look, the Headquarters Chief was already approaching her.
The Chief gently pressed a hand to the girl's back to get her attention.
"Kiddo."
She looked more like a "young lady" than a "kiddo" on the outside, but the Chief seemed focused on her mental level.
"Yeah? Why'd you call me?"
The girl shot back boldly in informal speech.
"What's your name?"
"Dunno."
"How old are you?"
"Uh... dunno. One? Maybe two?"
With that appearance, claiming to be one or two years old confirmed something was seriously off.
"..."
The Chief looked utterly exhausted from this brief Q&A.
"Alright... Kiddo, how are you so strong?"
"I've always been this strong."
"No—"
"Ah! Dunno!"
The repetitive conversation pushed the girl—whose patience was barely more than a grain of millet—past her limit. She weakly thumped the floor in annoyance.
"Tae-jun! This old man's annoying! Kick him out!"
Whether early sixties qualified as "old man" was debatable, but the Chief looked pretty hurt regardless.
Hyuk Tae-jun shrugged, as if to say, "See what I mean?"
The conversation had been lighthearted, but it yielded a few certainties.
The Chief had probably aimed for exactly that much info.
The most crucial: the girl's immense strength had weakened.
If she were at full power, even that annoyed, gentle thump on the floor should've at least cracked it.
Just as we could squash a fly effortlessly with our weakest swing, someone who pops monsters one-handed should pulverize soft flooring without issue.
And from that, another fact emerged: Hyuk Tae-jun was lying.
There was no way her power had weakened for the first time today, and he couldn't have been deluded into thinking it was always that strong, having been with her almost from the start.
Come to think of it, Hyuk Tae-jun wasn't an idiot. There was no way he'd fully trust us.
Not when even I was fuzzy on whether we were really middle school friends. Trusting me blindly would've made him the fool.
"Ha..."
I realized my mouth had let out a sigh without me noticing.
I wanted to escape this tangled mess.
But of course, I couldn't actually do that.
That girl was a Tale.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ There wasn't some grand reason I judged the girl to be a Tale.
For starters, as I said earlier, there were no superpowers in this world.
Which meant anything using superpowers had to be a Tale, no exceptions.
Friendly Tales toward humans?
Of course they existed.
The angel I'd contracted with was one, after all.
Tales that took human form?
It'd be weirder if they didn't.
Most of the ones in remote mountain villages were that type.
And considering Tales were bound by "story" rules, her weakened power probably tied into that somehow.
I quietly spoke to the Headquarters Chief.
"Chief. That girl seems like a Tale, doesn't she?"
"Yeah, I'm certain now. I remembered her clothes didn't melt earlier, so I touched them... The texture was like leather."
Considering she wore a frilly dress, that was absurd.
"What do we do? Honestly, she's so friendly right now, we could probably just leave her be."
It was ridiculous to hunt Tales in this already doomed world, but if I had to put a name to it, it'd be guilt over stealing Hyuk Tae-jun's protagonist fate.
It'd be too pathetic if he ended up killed by the girl he called his benefactor.
"Hmm... From my experience so far, there's never been a Tale helpful to humans. Even that angel you keep around ultimately harms people, doesn't it? You... and the squad leader too."
The Chief conceded the Bureau would've collapsed without the angel but stuck to his view that Tales were ultimately harmful.
"By the way, I don't like that Hyuk Tae-jun guy. There's something unpleasant about him, different from Mun Woo-seok. So, he seems more dangerous than that Tale."
I could understand the Chief's thinking.
A monster just hunting for chocolate was less worrisome than a human whose vibe shifted in real time.
"So this time, I'm leaving it all to you."
I pondered briefly, then approached Hyuk Tae-jun, who was gazing calmly at the girl.
"Tae-jun."
"Yeah?"
"You know that girl's a Tale, right."
"No. What are you talking about? She's not a Tale."