Each One's Role (3)
Each One's Role (3)
Squelch.
"...Fuck."
Idni stepped into a puddle pooling on the floor and grimaced, grinding her teeth.
"Nobody said it would be damp..."
"Right."
Maria let out a small sigh, wiping a droplet running down her cheek with the back of her hand.
Entering the rift had been fine.
The problem was the oppressive humidity inside the cave—not quite fog or steam, but enough to grate on anyone's nerves.
"Hey, leader. Anything yet?"
"...Looking as fast as I can."
Baek Ha-na answered, her stark-white beast ears pricking up.
"Nam Seo-hee. Don't screw up staring at Ha-na's tail."
"You think I'm you?"
"What, are you actually...?"
"D-Don't fight..."
Lee Na-young, walking shielded at the center of the group, flustered. Idni scratched her head, nodding. She knew herself well enough to realize the rising irritation was making her snap at every little thing.
"...This one's a bust too."
A hole bored at a diagonal.
Beside it, an iron plate hammered into the wall had the word "Spot" carved into it with a blade.
In tunnel terrain like this, where passages twisted endlessly and widths varied without warning, leaving markers like this to secure a retreat route was an unspoken rule.
"Was hunting a single monster always this difficult...?"
"Be quiet and just keep walking."
"...When we get out, my first stop is the Magitech Workshop."
Drying every piece of clothing saturated with this miserable dampness until it was crisp and fluffy.
That single thought occupied every corner of Idni's mind.
"Ha, haha..."
Baek Ha-na scratched her cheek at her friend's irritation. Nobody had forced Idni to come; she was here to help.
'I need to find it fast.'
At this rate, Idni was going to lose it entirely before long. Baek Ha-na drew deeply on her mana and sharpened her beast ears further.
...Drip.
"...?"
"What? What is it? Did you find something?"
The moment Baek Ha-na spun around, Idni drew the sword from her waist and pushed Maria behind her.
"...There's nothing here?"
Idni, who had spread her mana and Energy Sense as instructed—always go all-out—blinked and looked back at Baek Ha-na.
It wasn't just Idni. Nam Seo-hee, who had already infused her blade with Thunder Energy and set her stance to throw at any instant, was also staring at Baek Ha-na.
Under the weight of her two friends' gazes, Baek Ha-na's brow furrowed slightly.
"Sorry. Guess it was just a water drop."
"For 'just a water drop,' your face looks pretty grim."
"...I'm a little on edge, that's all."
Baek Ha-na deliberately smoothed her creased brow, her ears twitching. Idni shrugged and pulled back the mana she had projected.
"Um, Seo-hee?"
"...?"
Nam Seo-hee dispersed the Thunder Energy she'd channeled into her sword, her gaze shifting to Lee Na-young.
Lee Na-young fidgeted with her fingers and cautiously spoke up.
"I-I think it's a good idea to be careful with Thunder Energy in here."
"Ah..."
At Lee Na-young's words, Nam Seo-hee and even Baek Ha-na at the front widened their eyes. The memory of their first field exercise months ago resurfaced.
"...Good call. My clothes are soaked anyway."
Nam Seo-hee abandoned the throwing option and, like Baek Ha-na, opted for close combat.
"Then I'll pick up the pace a little."
"Please do. Let's cut some heads and get the hell out of here."
Baek Ha-na gave an awkward smile and a nod.
Then, focusing everything on her hyper-sensitive ears, she quickened her steps.
'...Someone's there.'
She had told her friends it was a false alarm, but what she'd heard just now was unmistakably the sound of a stray stone or loose debris kicked by someone's foot.
Her first thought was that one of the adults had been worried and followed them in secret, but Baek Ha-na dismissed that notion quickly.
The reason was the sticky sensation that now and then drifted from a passageway completely devoid of any presence.
'We need to get out of here...'
A moment ago, there had been nothing. But once she consciously registered it, that unpleasant, clinging energy grew steadily more vivid.
It felt like someone was browsing through products lined up on a shelf. A disgusting sensation.
-Tch. A shield breaking, of all things...
-Hey, hey. At least nobody got hurt.
-Yeah. If they had, everything we earned today would've gone to healing costs anyway.
At the sound of weary voices, Baek Ha-na's ears twitched.
"This way."
"Finally!!"
Idni, whose frustration had been piling up in layers, bounced at the thought that she could finally escape this miserable place.
"Huh?"
"Well, well. Step out of a gloomy hole and flowers come to greet us."
"...Shut your mouth, dumbass. Those girls obviously have backing. Just look at them."
At that, the grinning Awakened who had spoken first flinched and awkwardly wiped the grin off his face.
"Is it okay if we go in?"
"Huh? Oh, sure. We were just heading out."
The man brushed off his gear, stained with pale-green monster fluids and dirt, and casually lifted a bulging sack into view.
"Still, you'll have to go a fair bit deeper if you're looking to hunt anything."
"That's fine."
Baek Ha-na entered the tunnel opening first, and starting with Nam Seo-hee, the others followed one by one.
-Ah, I remember when I had guts like that.
-What're you on about, you dumbass? Quit your whining and walk faster, you shitheel.
-Yeah. Let's go grab a shower and a cold beer.
Even while stepping deeper into the tunnel, Baek Ha-na's ears stayed fixed on the outside, not the interior. The men's footsteps gradually receded into the distance.
"Not going?"
"Wait."
Long after the men's presence had faded completely, Baek Ha-na held still, not entering any further, fully concentrated.
'...It's gone.'
That viscous, clinging, repulsive aura had peeled away. She didn't know why, but it seemed to have followed the group that had just exited the cave.
"I'm going ahead. Follow at your own pace."
"What? Hey—! Baek Ha-na!!"
Leaving Idni's shouting behind her, Baek Ha-na became a beast, tearing through the cave on four limbs.
-Piiii.
-Kik, pii.
She passed several stretches littered with signs of battle and the corpses of Murder Ants before reaching a fork in the path.
'Left.'
After gouging a clear fist mark into the path leading toward the sound of monsters, Baek Ha-na ran again.
Skitter-skitter-skitter!!
The sounds drew closer.
Both of Baek Ha-na's thighs swelled.
Whoooosh──!!
A sudden gale erupted in a place where no wind could possibly blow.
-Kihihiiik?
-Pippit.
Baek Ha-na passed over the heads of the man-sized ants crawling through the tunnel, carried by the wind.
Crunch!
Simultaneously, the head of the ant at the very rear burst.
Splattering fluid sprayed in all directions. The hunk of meat, cleanly killed, collapsed with a thud.
Fwoosh─!!
Having pulverized the Murder Ant's head in an instant, Baek Ha-na spun midair, landed on the ground, and lunged at the remaining ants before they could react.
-Kihihiiik!!
A soldier ant belatedly tried to swing its massive jaws around, but—
Wham!!
Baek Ha-na's kick connected with the mandibles first.
The overwhelming force wrenched the soldier ant's head sideways, its serrated jaws piercing straight through the brow of the worker ant beside it. Having confirmed the worker ant's instant death, Baek Ha-na mounted the soldier ant's head and drove her fist into its crown.
Crunch!!
With a dull thud, green fluid exploded outward as the soldier ant collapsed to the floor.
Three killed in a heartbeat.
It all happened in the span of a single blink.
Without a moment's hesitation, Baek Ha-na blew off the soldier ant's head, hoisted the massive body alone, and retraced her steps back the way she came.
Her objective here was purely to secure a monster sample for dissection assessment—not to make money.
"Baek Ha-na!!"
Soon enough, she ran into her group again, their faces thoroughly furious.
"You crazy bitch!! If you were just gonna run off like that, why bring us at all?"
"...Sorry."
"Ha, honestly..."
Idni clawed at her scalp, then pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped the ant fluid off Baek Ha-na's face.
Nam Seo-hee watched this and remarked,
"It's just going to get dirty again when we dissect it."
"...Th-Then I'll just wipe it again, okay?!"
"Sure. With my handkerchief."
Idni stared at her own ruined handkerchief and gritted her teeth.
Maria, who had been tense, worried a fight was about to break out, let out a sigh of relief and spoke up.
"Can we leave it at that and hurry up with the dissection? I want to get out of here and eat."
"You hear that, Lee Na-young?"
"Ah, yes."
Lee Na-young pulled the dissection tools from her bag and handed them to Baek Ha-na.
A fine-toothed saw, a knife, and a hammer.
"I'll start recording."
Lee Na-young began filming with Baek Ha-na's smartphone, and Baek Ha-na used only the knife—no other tools—to dismantle the ant.
She severed the long, thick legs joint by joint and stacked them to the side, then cut apart the now-headless thorax and abdominal segments to separate them. To finish, she even mimed splitting the thorax and abdomen lengthwise to search for a possible magic core.
"Not that I'm the one to talk since I rushed you, but if we submit this, it's a D. Maybe a C+ if we're lucky."
"It's okay. I don't really care about grades."
Baek Ha-na kicked aside the carefully separated ant parts with her foot, gathered only the tools, and stood up.
"Ah, jeez. If I'd known, I would've just waited outside..."
"Ha-na. Here."
As Idni grumbled and turned away, Nam Seo-hee, who had been holding onto the handkerchief, used it to wipe Baek Ha-na's cheek and hands.
"Thanks."
Baek Ha-na gave a soft smile, placed the gathered tools back into Lee Na-young's bag, and then slung the bag over her own shoulder.
"Let's get out now."
"Well, that was faster than boiling a pot of ramyeon."
"Less noise, more walking."
"I'm already going, see?"
Idni grumbled as she took the lead, and the group slowly made their way back up the path they had come.
Whooosh─
"...?"
As they neared the exit, Baek Ha-na frowned at a sweet scent that brushed the tip of her nose. And then, in that very instant—
'Huh...?'
Her perfectly clear vision began to tilt sideways.
"Ha-na!!"
Nam Seo-hee, standing right beside her, quickly caught Baek Ha-na as she collapsed toward the floor.
-Ha-na...!
-Wh... What the...?
The voices grew steadily muffled.
Baek Ha-na lost consciousness before she could form a single thought.
And then.
Thud.
"Lee Na-young..."
One by one, after Baek Ha-na, the others also lost consciousness and collapsed to the floor.
**
Ssssshhhh.
From the empty air, a middle-aged man emerged.
He looked down for a moment at the girls entangled together and asleep in the tunnel, then approached the beige-haired girl and picked up the smartphone tucked into her front pocket.
Crack─!!
The smartphone crushed to pieces in his grip.
"A priestess of the God of Amusement, and so young."
She had sharply reacted to a friend's comment that anyone might have dismissed as normal, starting a video call and sharing the entire situation.
-Third Bishop. We have located the core.
"Stand by."
-Yes.
The Third Bishop.
A devout servant of Amos, one of the Four Great Evil Gods. From within his robe, he retrieved a mask divided into white and black halves and fixed it to his face.
A God-level Artifact.
Loki's Mask.
Face, build, gender, even the unique energy wavelength—
It perfectly transformed the wearer into a killed target. And if one took the target's heart, even their memories were transferred. An Artifact with an ability befitting its god-level designation.
'Haste makes waste.'
The Third Bishop's gaze shifted from Baek Ha-na to Lee Na-young.
An unplanned variable.
Truly by chance, they had discovered them while waiting for reports from those who had infiltrated the academy even after the Barrier had been restored.
Two Apprentice Clerics favored and watched over by the High Priest.
And a female student for whom the Executor, to them nothing less than a symbol of terror, had personally acted as guarantor.
The student with the closest proximity to the target they needed to contact.
'We must locate the Demon God Bullet at all costs.'
The exercise that should have been engulfed in chaos and explosions had ended without incident, and the believer who had carried the Demon God Bullet inside had vanished like a mirage.
Literally vanished.
For months, they had watched the rift, but the believer who had brought in the Demon God Bullet never emerged.
'They are undoubtedly the key.'
Lee Ye-sol, one of the High Priestesses of the God of Amusement.
She always wore a smiling expression, but anyone who had faced her even once in the past would vividly recall just how chilling that smile was.
And the man to whom that same High Priestess had bowed her head.
They had mobilized every resource to try and uncover his identity, but all they could learn was the name publicly revealed.
However, recently, through the memories of faculty and staff, they had come to know something: Jaden Martel, who wielded authority equivalent to the Chairman and whose pride was fiercer than anyone's, had bowed his head and gone down to meet him.
Thus, the Third Bishop had intended to transform into one of the two Apprentice Clerics, or into the female student under the Executor's protection. Either would make approaching the target far easier.
'This truly is a place where one cannot let their guard down.'
However, the swift reaction of one of the Apprentice Clerics had made it impossible to reach out so easily.
"Though you are not a believer, your sacrifice shall not be forgotten."
The Third Bishop's hand reached for Lee Na-young's heart.
Crunch──!!
A hideous sound of flesh being bored through echoed through the tunnel.
"...Cough."
Blood, dark-crimson, spilled from the Third Bishop's mouth.
As he tried to look down, eyes filled with disbelief—
Spliiick──!!
The Third Bishop's body split in two and crumbled to the floor.
Squelch.
The severed flesh of the Third Bishop writhed, and his heart, still beating as if alive, was drawn out of him by a hazy female hand.
Biche picked up the mask that had fallen to the ground, looking at the beating heart in her hand.
【O merciful master... To grant a death so gentle.】
Along with a ghastly voice that seemed to stir the primal fear of death, Biche's form vanished.
A moment later.
Plip, plop.
Two hearts, still vividly beating, and one mask dropped into Maria's bag.