004. Cosmic Horror

“…Ngh.”

Lee Miso had only just clawed her way back to herself. She clutched a head that still throbbed; her face was bloodless, her breath refused to return, and her whole body would not stop shaking.

One thing, at least, was clear. The side effects of an Outer God artifact grew milder the more you used it. Drive a deeper cut into a wound that has already festered as far as it can, and it still hurts—but not the way it hurt the first time the skin split. By that measure, what had just happened to her was almost impossible to believe.

What the hell was that…?

The memory had already been scoured clean from her mind, so she could not have said exactly what the side effect was. Her instincts, though, were screaming that she wanted to get away from Severance—horribly, desperately far. As if the moment her hand touched it…

“—Ghk…!”

Lee Miso decided, then and there, to think about Severance as little as she possibly could. That dreadful sensation was creeping back: a terrible experience and its memory stirring to life the way a childhood nightmare does. She forced her eyes open and looked around, dragging her mind anywhere else she could.

“An Unidentified Artifact User Cooperation Contract, is it….”

“Yes, that’s right. In place of joining a private guild, you receive the support the Association provides. Medical costs, use of Association facilities, and a cooperation fee when you climb the Tower—that sort of thing.”

“I don’t want any part of it. You’re saying an unidentified artifact might shatter my mind and cause damage on every front, so the state means to manage that—and why would I agree? You saw it just now. The artifact doesn’t affect me in the slightest.”

Astonishingly, Hanshin was locked in a hard fight over the terms right there in front of her.

…How is he that fine? How?

Even Park Dongmin was busy breaking into a sweat, as if the artifact’s aftershock had reached him too. With the Unidentified Artifact Department’s livelihood hanging on the matter, he looked to be grinding his teeth and holding the line. Watching that, Miso felt something entirely natural.

I… I don’t want to be here.

She was afraid of him. He was fiddling with Severance the way a person fiddles with a beloved stuffed animal. Merely holding it had crushed her under a psychological pressure she had never felt in her life, and he was enduring that as if it were nothing?

He said it was mental resistance…! No mental resistance in the world should let someone do that…!!

Something in his head had to be broken. There was even a bit of folk wisdom that people who already suffered from mental illness only caught half the side effects of an Outer God artifact. Measure him against that rumor, and the odds were high that this man was crazier than anyone she had ever seen.

“What I want is contact with the other Outer God artifacts. The Association has plenty of them lying around because nobody’s willing to use them, doesn’t it? I’ll use them.”

“…That’s difficult. Some Outer God artifacts in particular are so dangerous they haven’t even received usage appro—”

“—And I’m telling you I’ll use those perfectly well, aren’t I?”

Look at that. What kind of lunatic asks for more Outer God artifacts? Turn it over as many times as she liked, keeping her distance from this Jung Hanshin was the right call. She gave no answer. Inch by inch she rose and tried to slip out of the reception room.

“Hey—hold on. Where are you going, Miss Miso?”

…Right up until he called her name.

“Uh, um, eh—huh? Wh-why?”

I looked at Miso, her face gone awkward, and couldn’t believe the nerve of her. Why? Because she’d had all the fun to herself and was already trying to duck out.

Think it through. As far as anyone could observe, Outer God artifacts showed no side effects on me. But you had to know what a side effect actually did before you could picture how to use it, didn’t you? Take Miso’s record alone, and Bewitchment looked as if it slowly broke down the user’s ego and made them obsess over the artifact itself. Hand it the other way to an Outer God user who’d gone berserk, and it might serve as a means of putting them down. Or you could deliberately bring it into contact with a mental-type and shut their power off. To do any of that, though, I needed to know which side effects I was dealing with.

“What was it like when you touched Severance, Miss Miso?”

I had to hear that part from her. Miso, tears already standing in her eyes, looked at me. Her lips trembled, and she forced her mouth open almost against her will.

“I—I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know. People who’ve used Outer God artifacts are supposed to be relatively all right when they touch a different one. That’s why the Association called ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you, isn’t it?”

“I said I don’t know! I don’t want to! I said I don’t!!”

What was this? Had she finally gone actually insane? Then again, she’d been crazy to begin with, so I kept grilling her without giving it much thought.

“Haa… spare me the nonsense and speak. I don’t like the Association’s contract one bit, so I’m at least hearing about the side effects you went through before I go.”

“I—I don’t want to. Why should I…! Just get someone else to—”

“—Oh, for crying out loud. Want another taste of Severance?”

Think about it and it was absurd. When she’d put her hand on Severance of her own accord, she hadn’t spared it a thought—and now she wanted to run? The irresponsibility of it, the total refusal to think even one step ahead, was sitting right there in the open. So I took Severance by the blade and brought the handle toward her.

“You fucking piece of shit….”

A small voice like that reached me. Then, with the voice and the face of someone who had given up, she looked at me and spoke.

“F-first… I saw the universe.”

Hoh. The universe. So that was what appeared when you touched Severance.

“A-and then… a-after the universe…”

But the moment Miso tried to put what came next into words, her condition—strangely enough—began to slide the wrong way.

“Hic—hiiik…! U-uaa… huuuh…!!”

Tears spilled in streams. She sobbed without pause, like a mother who had lost her child, and then her whole body shook like an aspen, as if she had come face to face with something immense.

Hmm. I couldn’t tell. Did merely trying to remember reduce her to that? Well, the principle was something I could look into later. The important point lay elsewhere. If, in a crisis, I handed this to an enemy while calling it a fine artifact, the conclusion was obvious: it would make a rather powerful tool for crowd control.

“This is plenty. I’ll be going, then. I ought to climb the Tower quickly if I’m going to do my part for the country, shouldn’t I?”

I gave Park Dongmin a slight nod and made to walk out on the spot. If they weren’t going to hand over Outer God artifacts, what was the point of a contract? I’d just pick up more in the Tower, or buy them on the black market. Park Dongmin caught my shoulder and stopped me.

“W-wait just a moment, please!”

“Why.”

“…All of them would be difficult. That is, we cannot let you freely handle every unidentified artifact in storage. But…”

Park Dongmin let out a long sigh, pressed a hand to his brow, and went on.

“If our department reassesses the safety ratings and then grants you access limited to certain items, we’ll review that approach.”

“A review. Hmm… a review…”

“Th-there are plenty of items that can be released. Which means there should be quite a few things we can give you, Mr. Hanshin.”

Once he had gone that far, I started tapping the calculator in my head again.

“It’s free, right?”

“Yes, of course. There won’t be anything you have to pay. On the contrary, on the grounds that an ‘appraisal’ has to be conducted, we should be able to pay you an appraisal fee.”

Only then did something I actually liked come out of his mouth.

“Yes. Good. You should have brought terms like that from the start.”

I signed my name on the contract and walked out of the Association.

The morning after I wrapped ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠up the contract at the Association and slept the night through, I stood, as a matter of course, before Gwanghwamun Tower. If I had my way I would have bought other Outer God artifacts as well and climbed at my ease, but unfortunately I still didn’t have much money. To get what I wanted, I first had to climb the Tower and raise funds from the byproducts that came out of it.

Well. With just our Danjeol-i, butchering goblins and the like would be nothing at all.

I stepped into the Tower at once. Money was money, of course, but I was also extremely curious about Danjeol-i’s real performance. The only practical use I had gotten out of it so far was cutting up a few rocks, and I was dying to know what effect it would have on the monsters inside, how durable it was, and whether it had any further functions. That was when it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠happened.

A rather interesting line of text surfaced before my eyes—and then, with a skrrtch of rending earth, goblins came clawing up into view. The problem was that they were not ordinary goblins. One carried a shield and a spear, one held a staff of the sort a shaman would carry, and the other eight had a dagger in each hand.

Enter the Tower 2nd Floor alone, and the goblins that appeared numbered only a little more than on the first floor—seven or eight. This was two more than that, with specialized types on top of it.

“…Oho.”

To me, though, the sight could not have been more welcome. If the Tower’s difficulty rose, the quality of the rewards rose with it, didn’t it? The moment the thought landed, I stepped forward on something close to instinct, closed on the goblin at the very front in a single burst, and swung Danjeol-i. There was no trace of a blade’s passing and not a shred of resistance—only a thin shhhk—and yet a bare instant later the upper body and the lower slid apart, as if they had never been joined. The sight settled it for me.

“Our Danjeol-i, how about a snack?”

Those things were my prey now.