Cheer Station

Kang Yul did not even have the luxury of thinking, What the hell is going on?

From beyond the train came an alien sound, as if something vast were crawling over the earth — and with it, a voice that rang through his skull, screaming a warning that something was drawing near.

Kang Yul and the two team leaders understood at once that something was clearly, terribly wrong.

And then —

In the same instant as that dying scream, something colossal opened its maw from beneath the earth and swallowed the entire platform in a single bite.

"Holy shit…"

Kang Yul could only stare, half-gone, overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the supernatural event unfolding before his eyes. The two team leaders, however, were seasoned hunters to the bone. They were already throwing every means they possessed into an emergency escape from the gate.

But —

"Cat! Shadow! Get your shadow out right now—!!!"

"I cannot."

To put it briefly: every last attempt failed.

"What?"

"I have been attempting it since the moment I sensed the anomaly, but my shadow is not responding to my control."

"Oh, for fuck's sake — you too? My skills have been dead since a while ago!"

A hunter of district-representative caliber always kept an ace hidden up their sleeve, and both team leaders possessed class skills that should have been a ray of light in a situation like this. For reasons neither of them could name, those skills were unusable. If it had to be put into words… it felt as though a will residing somewhere impossibly high above them had simply refused to permit it.

And that impossibly high being was —

— given the circumstances, almost certainly the thing currently swallowing [■■ Station] whole in its gigantic mouth.

"The escape items we brought…?"

"The same as the skills."

"…We're completely fucked."

They could not disembark. They could not force the train to depart. Every emergency escape they had prepared for a situation exactly like this had been sealed off. Half-resigned, the two team leaders stared blankly out the window at the spectacle beyond —

— when a chime they had grown somewhat accustomed to rang out. Even as they thought, The train shouldn't be leaving for a while yet, they found themselves listening to the broadcast that followed.

The moment the announcement ended, the train doors slammed shut. The cars lurched forward, forcing their speed up with reckless urgency, and began tearing their way out of [■■ Station].

As the train pulled free of [■■ Station] and the distance steadily widened, the two team leaders watched the colossal thing expand its reach to swallow even the tracks, as though it had merely been waiting for them to leave. A thought occurred to them.

"…I guess they want to live just as much as we do."

"…So it would seem."

The will to survive. In that moment, a single common thread appeared between human beings and the supernatural creatures they had believed could never coexist.

A Rule-type Gate is a space whose very existence is held together by a powerful set of rules. Those rules forcibly rewrite the gate's ecology, its phenomena, even laws that should have been immutable — and the supernatural creatures that have adapted to the resulting space can fairly be said to live by those rules alone.

Which, turned the other way, also meant that a supernatural creature that broke those rules could very well lose its life. The academic community even told the joke in earnest: There are no exceptions to the rules.

And yet.

Today, a doctrine that had gone unchallenged for decades came crashing down in an instant.

Watching a supernatural phenomenon defy the rules in real time, the two team leaders became living witnesses to a new truth: even rules have exceptions. Of course, proving it would have required the prefix in the face of overwhelming power — but neither of them particularly cared about that right now.

What mattered was that, however the situation had come about, a hope of survival had appeared. If they could just reach Cheer Station, they would make it out alive.

Just as the earlier broadcast had promised, the train passed straight through Return Station. The two team leaders could not hide their smiles. At this rate, they really might make it out —

But only for a moment.

A sound that should never have reached them — a sound they could never grow used to — the sound of something crawling, began to rise once more.

A colossal something surged up from beneath the earth and swallowed [■■ Station] in a single bite.

"Hey. Don't tell me…"

"…I believe it is exactly as you are thinking."

In that moment, the two team leaders arrived at an uncomfortable truth they would rather not have known. The speed with which it was overtaking a train that had departed long ago. The way it specifically avoided the train itself while devouring every station in its path. For hunters seasoned enough to represent an entire district, the situation was strange in a way that set their teeth on edge — strange enough to produce a single hypothesis.

That colossal something might be chasing this train.

Or, more precisely…

"Hss… is that thing Worm, maybe…?"

…it was chasing the rookie hunter riding the train — Kang Yul — who had muttered the words as if he already knew.

And so, as the two team leaders considered that this anomaly itself might be the true measure of the rookie hunter Kang Yul's power, and raised his threat assessment by one stage… no, two, defining him as a supernatural being on par with danger rank A, or perhaps something beyond it —

At that same moment, Kang Yul was thinking,

It feels a little different from Worm, though, doesn't it?

He stared blankly in the direction of the [■■ Station] that had just collapsed, sinking into a deep puzzle over what that colossal thing could possibly be. When he had first watched it swallow a station, the thought that it might be Worm had not crossed his mind at all. Of course it hadn't. The size alone was nothing like the Worm he knew.

There's no way the cute little Worm that used to wriggle around in my palm could be a monster capable of swallowing worlds, right?

That was why he had been so certain it wasn't her — why he had decided it must be some other worm native to this gate.

…Hss? The more I look at it, the more it kind of resembles her…?

There is a saying that you ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠have to look closely to see the beauty. The longer Kang Yul watched the colossal thing, the more he began to think it looked a tiny bit like Worm. On the other hand, he was also having the completely absurd thought, No, wait, it is Worm, but how do I put this… it's like it doesn't have Worm's heart? — and he could not bring himself to decide.

Meanwhile —

The train, never stopping, had built up speed and was approaching the next station far faster than expected. An announcement informed them they were nearly there, much earlier than at any previous stop, and Kang Yul had no choice but to set the question aside.

The broadcast that followed was faintly different from every announcement so far — somehow, it sounded like a woman's voice. The moment it ended, the train rolled into a platform bathed in yellow sunlight.

The instant that yellow light touched him through the window, Kang Yul was seized by a baseless conviction that he could do anything — anything at all. It lasted only a moment.

The train came to a halt at the platform, and the doors opened. Kang Yul could not help shooting the two team leaders a look thick with doubt — Is this actually the destination?

Because —

The place they had believed to be their destination — Cheer Station — was, in a sense, more grotesque than any station they had seen so far.

Yellow sunlight soaked into Kang Yul's body.

And then the sound of cheering filled his mind to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the brim.

Just as it had been at [■■ Station], Kang Yul was seized by an impulse too vast to resist, and his feet began to move as if something else were walking them.

And yet, for some reason —

"…okie! Rook…!"

"…ap… out…!"

— his body would not move, as though someone were holding him in place.

"Snap out of it, rookie! We're all going to die at this rate—!!!"

"…Huh?"

A desperate voice punched through the cheering that had filled his head. Kang Yul came back to himself and found Team Leader Oh gripping both his shoulders and shaking him, her face drained of color — and Team Leader Myo, silent, staring somewhere in naked terror.

No one needed to tell him. He understood at once that something had gone badly wrong, and turned his head to follow Team Leader Myo's gaze to its end.

That was when it happened.

Far in the distance, his eyes met those of a colossal being that was looking straight at them.

…A thoughtform of the main body?

Wait. So that thing in the distance is a thought-construct Worm sent because she was worried about me… an Air Worm…?