112. Human Garden (1)
112. Human Garden (1)
"Huu... Huu..."
Leaning against the cave wall, I took a deep breath.
There was no time, but due to my innate ability, my entire body trembled from the hostility I felt from all directions.
If my concentration wavered even a little, the legs I had barely managed to create would give out.
Since I never knew when something might happen, I had to conserve as much mana as possible, so I focused on maintaining my legs.
When I carefully stepped outside, I sensed a benevolent presence nearby.
Until just now, I couldn't distinguish it because of the overwhelming hostility, but as soon as I came out, I detected a very small and faint goodwill.
A goodwill tinged with loneliness, waiting, pain, and pleasure.
This energy was something I had never seen from a creature before, so it could be a clue to escape this place.
The place where I felt the goodwill was not far.
Right next to the door I had just come out of, there was an identical door.
'What is this...'
The problem was that the same doors were lined up continuously.
Rooms that seemed designed for observing humans.
The sight of those rooms lined up in a row looked less like a prison and more like a zoo.
First, I opened the door where I felt the goodwill and entered. What I saw was a room identical to the one I had been in.
A glass that pretended to be a mirror, a structure that allowed a clear view of the room, and inside that glass, everything was exactly the same as the room I had been in, without a single omission.
In other words, all those countless doors I had seen were rooms like this.
There was a woman in that room.
But that woman was different from how I had been on the bed.
She was naked, blindfolded, gagged, and suspended in the air.
'The rope isn't just a rope—it has flowers... That means...'
The power restraining this woman is that woman named Yui.
'So I could have ended up like this too...'
Goosebumps covered my entire body.
No matter how I thought about it, this place was created by monsters to imprison and gawk at humans.
If I hadn't been able to use mana, I would have ended up as a spectacle for the monsters in that miserable state.
'Saving her... is impossible.'
It wasn't because I lacked power.
Those flowers were definitely not just flowers; they had to be considered creatures.
The flowers binding the woman weren't just sitting still; they were moving little by little, torturing the bound woman.
That meant they weren't simply flowers but creatures.
I had no information about those flowers yet. If they could see and hear, my escape would be immediately discovered.
I had no choice but to leave that woman behind and go.
'I'm sorry.'
In my heart, I bowed to that woman and left the room.
The endless line of doors.
The doors that stretched on without an end gave me chills.
'Just how many humans...'
"Kyaaaaaaaah──!!!"
'That's eonni's voice...!'
A scream came from afar.
That scream was a familiar voice.
I couldn't run, but I walked as fast as I could toward the direction of eonni's scream.
"Keu, keuuuuuueuk! Kkeo, kkeouuuuueuk!"
My heart burned at eonni's agonized screams.
==
As soon as the archer regained consciousness, her body trembled at the sight of the countless creatures before her.
Her last memory was being devoured by a massive mouth.
She thought she had definitely died, and tried to feel grateful for being alive when she came to her senses, but the sight of the numerous creatures before her erased any such gratitude.
She even thought, 'Wouldn't it have been better to have died in that last memory?'
The creatures now before the archer were none other than those that cause erosion and decay.
They were similar to Centipede Creatures yet distinctly different.
If Centipede Creatures invade the brain and transform it into a creature, the creatures before the archer now were ones that invade the body.
Their appearance was like plants.
Except the vines and flowers moved as if they were living creatures.
These creatures were born from Yui.
Yui originally lived with a creature called Raksha, the same type as Stacey.
Raksha are creatures specialized in shapeshifting by nature.
The creature that had been attached to Yui, replacing her lost arms and legs, gradually changed as it lived with Yui.
The reason was unknown.
Evolute studied Yui and formulated various hypotheses.
Evolution due to Yui's mana, assimilation as Yui gave up being human and ate humans to become a creature herself, mutations from being attached to a human body—many hypotheses were proposed.
But no one knew the truth.
However, the Raksha Creature attached to Yui's body evolved by eroding Yui's body in a plant form.
It wasn't simply that the Raksha Creature changed its shape into a flower form.
It evolved to make erosion smoother and stronger.
Evolute succeeded in increasing the Plant Creatures through Yui, and chose the archer to conduct new experiments with those successful Plant Creatures.
The archer, chosen as the test subject for the new creature, screamed at the Plant Creatures swarming toward her.
"Kyaaaaaaaah──!!!"
She flailed wildly, pounding desperately against the Plant Creatures climbing over her body, except for her bound hands.
But the Plant Creatures didn't just crawl up her body—in the process of climbing, they embedded their very fine thorns into the archer's skin, so even her thrashing couldn't dislodge them.
As the Plant Creatures' thorns penetrated her entire body, pain began to spread throughout.
It wasn't simply thorns piercing; it was a pain that slowly spread as the thorns embedded themselves into her skin.
"No──"
The archer tried to cry out for help, but vines shoved into her mouth, preventing her from finishing the words.
Her body reflexively gagged and tried to vomit from the vines traveling down her esophagus.
"Keu, keuuuuuueuk! Kkeo, kkeouuuuuueuk!"
Since Plant Creatures are specialized in erosion, their other abilities are very weak, so the archer's gagging pushed the vines back out.
But other vines pushed back in, pressing against the ones being expelled.
She kept gagging, but the vines ignored it and continued forcing their way down her throat.
They writhed inside her mouth, embedding thorns everywhere to erode, while tiny vines also bored into her ears, rustling and squirming.
The sounds generated by the vines penetrating her ears—the very organs meant for hearing—were terrifying, unlike anything she had ever heard in her life.
Her eyes were already blinded.
Countless flowers and vines had covered her face and were even boring into her eyes.
The archer imagined what would become of her.
Though she was being eroded, she thought she was dying as nutrients for the flowers and vines, becoming their nourishment.
Envisioning her body, with roots digging into every part, dying not as a human but being used to create new creatures, the archer fell into despair.
'N-no...! I don't want to die like this...!'
Her mouth was already full of flowers and vines, so her screams no longer escaped.
The sensation of them burrowing into her throat and even into her lungs and stomach made her nauseous.
The archer desperately resisted.
She fought with her whole body, trying to push out the creature that sought to claim her, but it was useless.
Just as the archer was about to lose consciousness from the unbearable pain—
Flash──
A holy light enveloped the archer's body.
[ Kiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!! ]
The flowers and vines screamed in reaction to the light.
The scream was so horrendous and grotesque that just hearing it sent chills down one's spine.
Thump.
"Gueeeeeeeek──!"
The archer collapsed to the floor, frantically pulling out the flowers and vines that writhed in agony from the Holy Power from her mouth, nose, ears, and eyes.
The creatures were pulled out endlessly, without end.
She pulled them out so urgently that numerous cuts appeared on her face from her own fingernails.
But the archer had to extract the creatures that had entered her body so quickly that she didn't even feel the pain from the wounds her own hands were creating.
"Eonni...!"
The healer hurriedly approached the archer.
"Je, Jena?"
The archer gagged and embraced Jena, who appeared before her.
"It's a relief. You're alive...!"
"We haven't found oppa yet."
"Is your ability working well?"
"Yes. I can feel oppa's energy very faintly. And the creature that just attacked eonni—it's definitely connected to that being called Yui, so it must have known the situation eonni and I are in."
"Yui? Did you just say Yui?"
"Do you know her?"
"Uh... She was an adventurer I had some acquaintance with. A B-rank adventurer. I knew her from doing quests together before. But she's here now?"
"Yes... From what I saw, she was already in a state that was hard to call human."
"I see... Let's find them quickly and escape from here."
This place was clearly a den of creatures.
There was no knowing when or where some creature would appear, and the terrifying being that had annihilated their party might also be present.
The healer and the archer moved with the determination to gather their comrades as quickly as possible and escape from this place.
A very tiny creature clinging to the cave ceiling was watching the healer and the archer.