Chapter 5
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 5
Chapter Title: Invitation
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"I told you, right? That I'm a pretty capable Anomalous Artist."
With those words, I tried to confidently cross my arms.
That had been the plan, at least—
"Ugh...!?"
My legs gave out on their own. My body crumpled to the floor, legs splaying open in an M-shape. I couldn't resist it at all.
It felt like my body had been completely drained. I wasn't hungry, that much was sure. There was still strength left in my limbs, and I felt like I could stand up. But my body just wouldn't obey.
Pinning down the cause wasn't hard.
Signs of ability depletion.
For a baby goddess, using my powers twice was bound to leave me wiped out.
"Are you okay!?"
"Ah... Yeah..."
Luckily, the state didn't last long. After about thirty seconds, strength started returning to my body bit by bit.
But... that didn't mean I was fully okay.
If my body were a phone, this was the 15% battery warning. A sign that hardly any power was left stored up.
What happens at 0%?
Exactly. It shuts down.
I'd be unable to do anything for a while.
Of course, that didn't mean eternal death.
I wasn't some ordinary human. I was born from the fanatical faith of 150 utterly depraved Anomalous Artists.
"I'm fine."
So yeah, I was fine.
All I had to do was catch and thrash the bastard before my powers ran out.
"You all trust me, right?"
"Of course."
Han Yura gripped her gun tighter and answered immediately.
"My wound... there was no normal way to heal that. If you saved someone on the brink of death, what can't you do?"
"Hehe, thanks."
It was faint, but I could feel a bit more strength returning. Was this what it felt like to bolster my powers through faith?
The warm sensation gave me a surge of courage.
It was more than enough to propel a 31-year-old artist named Baek Eunha—who'd been living an ordinary life just yesterday—toward an isolation room teeming with disaster-level monsters.
"I'll be right back."
I waved lightly and headed for the isolation room. Clasping my hands in prayer before spreading them open, four sculpting knives materialized between my fingers.
The isolation room door was in pretty rough shape. I could smash right through without a key.
What came to mind was an ivory door carved with beautiful flowers.
"Hup—"
Starlight gathered at the tips of the knives. I hurled them at the door, and from where they embedded, pure white flowers bloomed.
The door's material—unknown metal, anomalous entity components, traces of living tissue—transformed. In the center of the drab metal surface, an ivory flower blossomed.
"Peanut, smash it."
A wooden fist slammed right into it.
Boom—!
The door shattered, dust billowing up in clouds. Peanut swung its arm fiercely, clearing the haze to reveal the blood-red interior of the isolation room.
It wasn't the sterile white room people typically imagined for "isolation."
This was more like the lair of a mad artist obsessed with their craft.
"Ugh...!"
The moment I stepped in, a thick stench of blood hit me like a wall.
Squinting, I ventured deeper. One entire wall was dominated by a massive painting.
It had that ornate, old-fashioned vibe of 16th- to 18th-century art.
There were multiple statues depicted. Perfectly proportioned and meticulously rendered, they were stabbing a grotesquely posed human with knives.
If you ignored the fact that it was painted in blood, it could've hung in a museum. Unconsciously reaching out, a status window popped up before my eyes.
Artwork Name: Scream of Imperfection
Created: 137 hours ago
Background: A piece made to show the fate of those who reject perfection.
Status: Serial killer imprisoned, then plea-bargained into P-Class employment at the Bureau. Locked in this pose for 137 hours... it hurts so much... please save me... I'm suffering...
"Ah?"
137 hours ago—that was when the Management Bureau was still intact.
If it started creating this artwork back then... things had gotten even worse.
The 'Renaissance Virus' was a growing anomaly. Like an artist itself, it evolved by producing works.
Creating something classifiable as anomalous artwork 137 hours ago? That meant by now, after infecting and turning countless people into statues...
"A new audience member?"
...it had fully awakened to self-awareness.
I slowly turned my head. There was a mannequin.
Wearing a tracksuit, cargo pants loaded with pockets, and a bloodstained white apron, it held a palette. A brown hood covered its blank face.
Its plastic hand reached slowly toward me. Lips painted in human blood twitched.
"Oh my, what a cute young lady."
I smacked the approaching hand away hard. Its power wasn't just turning people into statues.
It wasn't called a virus for nothing. It spread the twisted concept of 'perfection' like a contagion.
"Hmm?"
"I don't agree with your assessment."
"Hm, that's a shame."
Moving its blood-painted lips, it began painting eyes on its face with its finger to express 'disappointment.'
Scritch scritch—eyeliner formed, then eyelashes, then pupils. Squinting those new eyes, it continued.
"I've never seen anyone as beautiful as you. I thought I could make you perfect without any 'measures,' pain-free."
Its voice held not a shred of deceit. It prattled on about melting silver for hair strands, embedding jewels for eyes. Watching it spin its flowery words, I glanced at Peanut.
The statue clearly didn't like what it saw.
Maybe because it was groping its owner's body and judging so freely. For some reason, this guy had sky-high loyalty.
"Take it out."
So when it heard that command, it seemed thrilled.
The moment I backed to a safe distance, it punched the mannequin's head clean off without hesitation.
Shards flew like shattered porcelain.
"Hmm, didn't like what I said?"
The chunks that included both eyes and the mouth landing at my feet? Definitely not coincidence.
Even with its head smashed, it kept babbling.
My response was simple.
"My appearance is already perfect."
This wasn't mere self-praise.
I was a goddess forged by artists mad enough to grind humans into art. There was no way my looks could be ordinary.
Perfect. At the very least, sculpted to the standards those 150 artists unanimously deemed perfect.
So this debate was pointless.
"Your 'perfection' can't even recognize a goddess. It's heresy."
With that verdict, I crushed the porcelain shards underfoot.
Crunch.
The sound of breaking glass echoed through the room.
That's when the anomaly struck.
"Heresy...?"
The voice leaked from the statue's severed neck. Despite the head being gone, the mouth vanished.
I wasn't surprised. I'd seen this phase plenty in games.
"Me... heresy?"
This was the Renaissance Virus. The statue was just a host the Management Bureau had trapped it in. The gas thickly filling the isolation room now? That was its true body.
"Stick behind me, Peanut."
Saying that, I stepped forward. A status window floated above the green gas.
Artwork Name: Renaissance Virus
Created: 317 years ago, in the atelier of a rural French town
Background: The obsession of an artist pursuing perfection, crystallized into will.
Status: Host destroyed. Attempting to claim you as new host.
I inhaled, and obsession flooded my mind.
I must become perfect.
I must become perfect.
If not, I'll end up like the figures in the mural.
If not, life has no meaning.
To become perfect, shed this human shell, accept perfect material, evolve further, discard the old flesh...
"Nonsense."
I severed the whirlwind of obsession.
"Perfection, you say?"
I agreed that art needed to be perfect.
I was an artist myself, chasing perfection, so I understood the compulsion.
"Your version of perfection is fake."
But art wasn't complete just by looking perfect.
No matter how beautiful. No matter how enviable.
It needed someone to behold it, to give it meaning.
To me, art was something to proudly show the world.
"A work of art is only complete with an audience. With readers."
Without viewers, even the most beautiful art was meaningless.
Without readers, the finest novel was just a lump of text.
That was why a thing that turned even its audience into part of itself could never be perfect.
"So, time to vanish."
My power enveloped me as green gas swarmed my body.
Starlight overwriting information clashed with the obsession for perfection.
"-----!!!!!!!!!"
"Ugh...!"
The gas ballooned with physical force. Unlike ordinary statues, three centuries of obsession wouldn't yield easily.
The weight of three hundred years was no light thing. Noise glitched the surroundings, and the isolation room's paintings began to writhe alive.
The countless statue figures on the walls clasped hands, forming a massive square along the walls. They started circling round and round.
"What do you know...!"
Their speed ramped up. Blood-painted statues blurred with afterimages, their colors shifting.
From eye-searing red to beautiful gold.
The pitch-black ceiling of the blood-red isolation room tore open to an autumn sky.
The claustrophobic space morphed into a rural town.
Undulating golden wheat fields.
Cloudless blue sky.
An old wooden villa built in the midst.
Recognizing the place wasn't hard.
"Phew, finally showing your true form."
Its hometown.
The origin point of the virus that ruined countless lives.
A modest wooden house in France's Avignon region.
Creeeak—
With the groan of ancient hinges, the cabin door swung open on its own.
As if inviting me in.