That Could Happen
Thud!
A dragon lay sprawled beside what had once been a hospital. Vast enough to swallow the building in a single mouthful, it convulsed from snout to tail like a rat hit with a live current.
"Grrrrrrk!"
Foam spilled over its jaws, and both eyes had rolled white. It did not look well.
My neck. My neck—!!!
Thick flesh hid the damage, but the neck bones had twisted out of true. Splinters of bone stabbed into meat, and once the bone failed, muscle clamped down on the airway. Breath thinned with every moment. Blood welled and gulped in the throat. Had it come out, that would have been a mercy. Instead it surged backward and poured into the lungs.
There was no describing the pain of being unable to breathe. He watched himself die in real time, and rather than answer it with reason he abused his lungs for one more breath, and then one more after that. If he had not been a dragon, the wound would already have killed him.
A dying thing, and still—!
They said a wounded beast was the most dangerous of all, and they were not wrong. Where, at the very end, had that strength come from?!
Dangerous. This is dangerous—! I have to recover, somehow—!
That could wait. Survival came first. Even a dragon's regeneration would not close a wound like this in any hurry. He was far enough gone that a third-rate hero could have finished him.
Air. Air—!
Spit the blood. Clear the airway. Stay calm. Stay cold. The body was strong. It did not die easily. The pain would last just as long, but pain was better than death.
Hoo. Hoo.
Slowly. Naturally. Leave yourself room...
A step.
"...!?"
"You certainly went all out."
A frail foot came walking into the edge of his sight. Killing intent dripped from every stride, and wherever the sole touched down a cold sank in—a grudge so thick it had a temperature of its own. A palm closed around the rim of his eye. On any other day it would have been no more than an insect's wingbeat, something he could ignore.
Mi Soryeong stared straight into the golden pupil.
"Must have felt good. Running wild however you pleased."
Mi... Soryeong!
"Grk!"
Blood welled, and welled again. Was it the surge of feeling? The flow thickened until one whole side of his face drowned in it. Mi Soryeong looked down. The blood lapping her ankles was warm, and her expression went cold.
"...I wish it had already cooled."
Not one word of it was ordinary. It was not a human voice. It was an animal's cry. Hair torn loose and standing wild hid the brightness of her face, and beneath the black strands a vicious light flashed.
"Such large eyes. I wonder how these eyes looked at our son."
You—you bitch...! You crawl out after it's already over!
The hand stroking his cornea sent a chill racing up his spine. He could already picture it: fingers driven in to the knuckle. Fear came down on him. What kind of life was a life with one eye gone?
Stop it...!
Even if he lost both, he would not be afraid with his enemy standing in front of him. He had not sworn revenge for that.
"You damned bitch..."
He forced the sentence out and learned, in the doing, that speech was a blessing.
"The bitch who hid because she was afraid of dying. Now that it's finished, you step out and play the mother worried for her child?"
"............"
"He died because of you. Because you were clumsy...! Because you hid him...! You killed the child you went through labor to bear...!"
A cough. A wet, rattling growl.
"How does it feel? Like the sky is falling? It was the same for me. Like the world was ending."
Heh. Heh. Heh.
"Feel it yourself...! Take it...!"
Even as he spoke, a corner of his mind kept working. This woman could not kill him. At worst she would take an eye, and even that was not certain. Soft as it felt, it was a dragon's eye, harder than most stone. Unless she picked up a gun, a bare-handed woman swinging her fists was not going to break it.
"You're next. Then Korea."
And last of all—
"Dan Miryu...!"
All of them. He would chew every last one of them down...!
"...Is that all you have to say?"
Mi Soryeong tossed her head back, and the face she had hidden came into view again. Something in her expression was wrong. She was not angry. She was not grieving. She was not wailing, and she was not shaking. She was empty, inorganic, so much so that he could have mistaken her for a machine rather than a person: a machine raised for nothing but slaughter. An assassin who always killed the target.
Her shoulder twitched.
Crrrrk.
A sound like a drawn cord snapping. It came from right in front of him.
The skin...!
Through a torn sleeve, the skin looked wrong. Veins flushed red, and the apricot tone went blue. Muscle fibers that ought to have lain quiet crawled like centipedes, and the arm bent the way a whip bends. It was an alien thing, easy to mistake for a superpower.
In that instant he remembered what he knew of Mi Soryeong. She was a born slaughterer, brought into the world to kill. A genius among geniuses who had dragged a backwater assassination outfit up to world class by herself. A legend of the underworld who killed supers with an ordinary human body, and assassinated assassins. Codename: Major.
The legend was here.
Squelch!!!
—Graaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!
"......I do like a good scream."
The eye, the eye, the eye—!!! He couldn't see!!!
Thud! Thud!
His tail hammered the ground.
"I promised him I would never become this again."
"You—you fucking—!!!"
Crrrrk...!
—Graaaaaaah!!!
"Thanks to you, I broke that promise."
An unhurried hand raked through the retina. The lens tore free. The vitreous splashed. Like someone packing winter kimchi, her fingers became a rake and dragged from the inside out. The muscles anchoring the eye felt as if they were ripping. In truth nothing was wrong with them at all, but the phantom pain was enough to drive him out of his mind.
Mi Soryeong flicked her tongue and licked the blood from her lips. It was a process. A preparation, shoving feeling down into the deep.
"...Look forward to it. This lady used to be something, back in the day. I've killed more cocky little brats like you than I can count."
Crrrk!
The other arm twisted into something just as grotesque. If one had been a spear, this was a shovel. The palm bent, and gouged the eye.
———!!!
"I'll take responsibility and kill you. Whatever you are. I'll show you properly what happens when you lay a hand on a mother who has a child."
A powerless human. Even so, killing him would be more than enough.
"Shall I tell you how I'm going to do it?"
Mi Soryeong peered into the ruined pupil. Uselessly fine eyes: wrecked, and still able to see her.
"I'll use your eye as a passage and go for your brain."
"Your head's a lizard's, isn't it? The eye and the brain sit close."
"I'll part the muscle, force myself in, and chew that brain one piece at a time."
"I'll wet my throat with your cerebrospinal fluid and fill my belly with the meat of your brain."
"And while I burn your corpse—"
"I'll hold our child's funeral."
"So until then."
"Live a long time."
He trembled.
She was frightening. That woman, not even smiling, laying the words out one after another like a machine. She was sickening. That numbness, with not a trace of feeling in anything he heard.
No.
Pak! Pak!
Bit by bit, scraps of skin vanished into the pool of blood.
Like this, I'll really die...!
Survival screamed at him. It cursed the clumsy thing he was.
"Graaaaaah!!!"
He flung his head back with everything he had, broken neck be damned. Mi Soryeong did not go flying. She had both legs planted in the eyeball, and she kept working.
Splash. Splash.
He thrashed his head without aim or order, and still, with strength past human, she clung on. In the end, he was the one who gave out first.
"Kkh—hk!"
"...Tired? We'll continue."
She said it lightly, with half her body already forced inside.
Monstrous bitch...
The impact had broken bone, and her face did not change. Her arms had to be ruined from overworking the muscle, and the blood running from her head ought to have been swimming in front of her eyes. She moved as if none of it mattered.
Is there no way...?
A wrecked body grew more wrecked. Strength drained out of flesh he had only just begun to recover. Then, all at once, he saw him: Dan Chuyeon, collapsed off to one side.
Dan Chuyeon, gone limp as a corpse after landing the final blow. His eyes were half open and dull, and there was no life in them.
......Huh?
Hoo.
...Did he just breathe?
Had he seen wrong?
Hoo.
From the nose...
Faint, almost nothing, but air was being drawn in. A little later, it came back out.
Insane...
The real monster was over there. Alive, after all of that. The sheer stubbornness of that life was enough to crush his spirit.
Doesn't seem like he's doing it by his own will.
The boy's body was at its limit. He could not move. But the superpower alone was still working as it should. Or was it a superpower at all?
A god called him a Child of Nature...
He did not know which god, but the god had been right. Nature had not permitted that child to die.
Then...
He found a way through.
"Grk. Mi Soryeong."
"......"
"If you don't answer, I'll crush your child's corpse."
"Ha!"
Crack.
"Grrrrk!"
"What. Got some last words?"
"No."
He looked at her face and grinned.
"Your kid still seems to be alive."
"......Don't you lie to me."
"Look. You'd know better than I would."
This woman really had no sense. Didn't people usually check on their child first?
A crack ran through Mi Soryeong's blank face. Something of an ordinary housewife leaked through.
She can't not look.
Because she was a mother.
She pulled both arms free and fixed her eyes on the child lying far off. For several minutes she stared with the vacant eyes of the dead. Slowly, her lips parted.
"Chu...yeon...?"
Mi Soryeong broke into a run. The legs she had driven in came free, and he felt, a little, as if he might live.
"Chuyeon. Chuyeon... Wake up..."
Tears poured down her face as she gathered her son in.
"An ambulance... an ambulance..."
She hauled the child up in frail arms and staggered. His existence had been forgotten completely, and long since.
Now. While I can...
He rolled his body over. He beat the one wing that still worked. Slowly, he rose.
Get to the safe house that's ready, and recover.
He would hold the dragon transformation until safety was certain. For some reason it had not released even when he was on the verge of death, but if it held, that was good enough. He climbed until the city looked small. Endure another few dozen minutes that felt like forever, and this hateful day would end.
Just you wait.
He would come back with this humiliation for fuel.
And so the long day came to an end.
"Hm."
"What are you looking at?"
"Korea."
"I can see that much."
"Do I have to go into detail?"
"Yes."
"What a pain..."
He scratched his cheek. Anastasia looked at him with eyes that had gone cold.
"...You've sealed Korea off, so our informants can hardly obtain anything. Tell me at least a little."
"All right. Don't look at me like that."
He drew a finger down the center of the map of Korea. From Seoul to the Taebaek Mountains. One long stroke.
"Mm... Dan Miryong failed. He even seems to have succeeded at awakening as a dragon. A shame."
"So the experiment was a success."
"Scientist worked hard."
Anastasia did not spare a thought for Dan Miryong's failure.
"What happened to the subjugation force?"
"It succeeded, as expected. No losses. The Heavenly Punishment vanished in obedience to Heaven's will."
"All twelve?"
"Eleven. The Heavenly Punishment were eleven from the start."
He said things no one could follow. He had always been like that.
"Anything unusual?"
"The Dan Clan and the Shrine formed an alliance. Through the Heavenly Punishment, the Shrine finished purging its old corruption."
"The Great Shrine Maidens are dead?"
"All of them."
"...Will you recover the D-series the Great Shrine Maidens used?"
"They took a few samples and researched it on their own in the first place, didn't they? It isn't ours. Leave it."
"But isn't it connected to the Devil's Tree? It had another fit today, for some reason. You ought to recover it quickly..."
He shrugged.
"They can't make any more anyway. The research is interesting, but it's made by grinding people down, so they can't mass-produce it. And the power isn't much."
"...Understood."
Just in case, I'll slip the research logs out.
It would only be an after-action report. He wouldn't take any particular interest.
"That aside, I didn't think it would turn out like this."
He crossed his legs.
"Korea going to hell was fine. It's just far too intact. More than I expected."
"Isn't that because you sent only Dan Miryong?"
If he'd attached even one or two more executives, Dan Chuyeon and Mi Soryeong would have ended right there.
"Everyone's busy. And Dan Miryong is the sort who will grow further. He won't let it end like this."
He smiled, thinking of the cocky brat.
"A foolish avenger, feeling nothing but the elephant's leg. I'm looking forward to the moment he learns the truth."
"A vile taste."
"So what."
It was what the boy himself had wanted.
"Mm. Korea should be peaceful for a while."
He tapped Japan, then Korea. Japan would ache on the inside as well, but in the end it would come out intact.
"Both countries turning normal..."
Could anything be more entertaining?
"What came of Britain learning about the Crown?"
Anastasia set the information in order.
"According to the Magician's report, they identified its existence in an old text kept by the British royal family."
"An old text..."
Did they see Merlin's records? Or else...
"And Russia noticed what Britain was doing and stepped in."
"They'll clash at sea."
"An unrecorded naval battle, then."
Anastasia looked toward the Northern Mariana Islands, out in the Pacific.
"Won't that provoke Korea?"
"There'll be plenty of talk, but that one won't move."
It needs to rest a little, too.
"How does Britain mean to pull the Crown out of there?"
The Mariana Trench. The king of the world of the mind, asleep at a maximum depth of 11,092 meters. The Crown of Mind. Would they even get to look at it?
"If Britain obtains it, what will you do?"
Anastasia asked it flatly, the way a student who already knows the answer asks the examiner to confirm it. He swept a hand across Britain. Britain vanished from the map.
"Does that answer you?"
"Yes."
With a groan, he stretched.
"When do you intend to recover the other four?"
"Who knows..."
Death could not even be touched without Life. Record was troublesome, with the Guardian to deal with. Space was simply too large. With nowhere to keep it, leaving it where it was was best.
"...I suppose I'll have to meddle with Life."
"At last?"
"I don't particularly want to."
The current had accelerated. Things that belonged to the future had been dragged far forward. As if it had felt that, the troublemaker that had been sitting still opened its hands. It wanted its organs back. He had to stop that before it happened.
"...Do you have a plan?"
"I do, but..."
Later.
"First, I need to go somewhere."
"Where?"
"Korea."
He brushed the map.
"Fate has collapsed, so I've got room to spare. I can afford to move in earnest."
"...It could be dangerous."
"That could happen."
But.
"As a fan, I want to see too badly."
"...I'll make preparations."
"Do."
Anastasia withdrew. The Darkness smacked his lips, savoring the anticipation.
"What kind of reaction will you show when you see me?"
He was curious.
Phantom.