Shopping Mall (5)
The moment I rolled forward, the back of my head scraped the floor and a thunderous roar exploded behind me.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I scrambled to my feet and tried to run, but something pale dropped with a heavy thud.
It was a mannequin torso stretched out long, with only arms attached.
Dozens of arms clawed at the floor, using themselves like legs to prop the thing up.
Fortunately, the part that caught my eye stood still like a statue, but I could feel hands flailing and scraping all around me, rattling with sharp clicks.
When I spun in place, I saw the body that had been trying to coil around me like a snake.
“Get the hell away from me!”
I swung the hammer at a hand that brushed my shoulder as it reached for me.
Damn it, what the hell even was this thing...!
Click-click-click-click!
Tap! Crack!
Rattle-rattle-rattle!
Dozens of noises pressed in from every direction except the front.
Shit. I needed out of here, first thing.
I sprinted toward the torso that had stopped where my gaze had landed.
“Ugh!”
The instant I planted my left foot and tried to jump, my right foot snagged and my balance went.
A hand had gotten hold of my ankle without me noticing.
I crushed it immediately and recovered my stance, but the centipede body had doubled over on itself and formed a wall.
“I said quit it, you bastards!”
I swung with everything I had. One of the torsos tore halfway open, but the right arm that followed froze with a clunk.
Hands reaching from all directions seized my right wrist, both ankles, and every other part of me they could grab.
Shit, this is how I die?
Thanks to the armor, I wasn’t getting cut up, but the hands digging in and the force dragging at me meant I was only seconds away from being ripped apart.
The fingers pounding over my armor sent chills over my skin.
“Let go, I said let go!”
Tap-rat-a-rat-a-rat. Tap-rat-a-rat-a-rat.
In the middle of my panic, the head of the mannequin centipede came up behind my skull and cast a shadow over me.
It clicked its fingers together rapidly, sounding gleeful.
This bastard was laughing at me right now? Having fun, are you? Huh?
The mockery turned my head ice-cold.
Right. So you’re smart, huh?
But maybe you got cocky because you were holding my right hand, the one with the hammer, and didn’t pay much attention to my left arm, did you?
“Who gave a hollow shell like you the right to act tough?”
I dismissed the hammer summon, then called it back into my left hand at once. Twisting my body, I smashed it into the thing’s head.
Clang!
Shit. So boss monsters really do get tougher.
Still, it had some force behind it; the thing staggered a little from the blow to its temple, and the grip binding me loosened slightly.
I spun my body hard, shook the hands loose, then drove the hammer up under its jaw and slipped out through the opening that made.
“You fucking bastard! What, are you some kind of transforming robot or something?”
Meanwhile, the centipede bastard flattened itself out as far as it could, wary of my eyes. Long as it was, it looked like it had even climbed up the ceiling to protect its head.
I glanced around fast, but I couldn’t take in every direction at once.
“Hah, hah. I never heard anything about monsters evolving.”
For now, I’d made it out into the mall corridor, and I swallowed hard at the sight of the writhing body and its shadow behind the storefront window.
How was I supposed to kill that thing?
Should I lure it into the hallway?
If it was a straight corridor, I could keep the whole thing in view no matter how long it got, so that seemed workable.
“I’m over here, asshole!”
I’d put some distance between us and started taunting it while it smashed at the storefront glass.
I even turned my head as if I were running away on purpose, and sure enough, a noisy racket echoed down the corridor.
“It’s a trap, you bastard... huh?”
...Are you seriously a genius?
When I looked back down the corridor, all I saw was a short tail, nothing like what I expected.
The rest was still inside, beyond the shattered glass.
The main body was banging away and tearing through the wall.
A monster using cover?
Was this for real?
The confusion lasted only a moment before alarm bells screamed in my head.
I hadn’t expected it to pressure me like this.
Shit, what the hell was I thinking, not smashing that thing apart from the start and pulling this stunt?
I regretted it too late, but the damage was already done in spectacular fashion.
As long as I keep running down the corridor, it can’t catch me.
The mall’s layout was a straight line.
But because of the loop effect, no matter how far I ran I’d just keep cycling back to the same place.
No matter how hard that thing chased me, it would be fine as long as I didn’t stop.
I didn’t know whether it would stop once closing time ended, either, but I had no other option, so all I could do was run like hell.
Damn it, it’s still at least nine hours until opening. Can I even hold out that long? No way. No way in hell.
By the time I’d circled the same spot four times, my breath was stabbing up to my throat.
I wasn’t some marathon runner. This was impossible.
But the bastard was a monster, so its speed never dipped at all.
Should I just collide with it and fight?
If I was going to do that, I should’ve done it back there.
You think you can win once you’re already exhausted from running and fighting, you idiot?
“Huff, huff... there’s gotta be some way...”
In the meantime, I nearly got caught several times, and half my armor got torn to pieces.
It did regenerate, but so slowly it was practically useless.
In the end I chose sprinting again, and immediately regretted it as my legs grew heavier and heavier.
“I can’t hole up inside somewhere either... if I could just keep it in my sight, the thing would be a pushover!”
The crafty centipede bastard kept chasing me doggedly, stopping its tail and waiting for openings behind walls.
If only there weren’t any walls...
Even while running, I kept grinding my brain for a solution, but instead of any way out, only breathless curses came spilling from my mouth.
If only the escalator went to another floor!
Then I could stop the thing on the way up and kill it.
But if it went up, it just looped back down by taking the lower escalator again, so that wouldn’t help...
Huh.
“Quit following me, you creepy stalker!”
I deliberately stopped and smashed at the tail with the hammer, then dashed for the escalator.
Having been attacked out of nowhere, the pissed-off thing came after me with a horrible racket.
I couldn’t look back.
That thing had intelligence.
From the way it moved, it probably understood the corridor-and-escalator loop too.
Right now, I needed to make it lower its guard and run away like an idiot, so it would think it had already won.
“Hup!”
I jumped and dropped down beneath the escalator.
And as if it had been waiting for that exact moment, the thing burst out after smashing through the wall completely.
The sound of the narrow escalator wall collapsing with a crackling grind chased my skull, but I kept my eyes forward and ran down.
And then the loop.
“So that’s how you want to play it.”
The thing had raised its tail and blocked the front of the escalator, waiting.
Its head was coming down after me on the escalator.
Fine. I’ll admit it, you’ve got some brains.
Right now, I probably looked like a rat trapped in a jar, didn’t I?
But the truth was, this was exactly the picture I wanted.
“Huff!”
I leaped sideways past the escalator, avoiding the tail that had spread its many hands wide to block me.
A grasping hand brushed the back of my head again, but I ignored it and got clear. Once I was out of its line of sight, the tail that had been chasing me belatedly clamped down with its hands.
Bang! Thud-crunch!
Head and tail slammed into each other hard, and the hands they thrust out became so tangled they might as well have been linked together.
When I turned around to look, the centipede bastard was wedged into the escalator in a grotesque donut shape, completely frozen.
“Hah, hah... ahahahaha!”
What, some lowborn monster thinks it can set a trap for a human?
This is the real trap, and you think your little brain can keep up with the human mind, apex of all creation?
Forget breathing. I laughed hard and mocked the thing until I was lightheaded.
Whew. I really thought I was done for.
“You piece of material, where do you think you’re climbing to?”
I kept it in view as much as possible and smashed its head, producing a clear, bright ringing sound.
Ah, but this bastard was really damn hard.
Still, hard material meant good material.
I could feel it: this was the moment to upgrade my armor.
“Now then, how should I cook you up?”
But the problem was breaking its head.
It wasn’t just hard; I’d probably need a full swing, and then I might lose the thing again.
If it escaped once, I’d never catch it again.
While I was agonizing over that, I noticed its hands were still interlocked.
How touching.
Like Gyeonwoo and Jiknyeo meeting across the Escalator Bridge, their two hands clenched tight, refusing to let go of each other.
I’ve always liked a good pure love story like that.
I’d make sure the two of them were never separated again.
“Be together forever.”
Anyway, since a monster is just material, couldn’t I make it into the shape I wanted in this state?
That would be impossible while it was moving, but the mannequin centipede couldn’t move while I was looking at it.
So I fixed my gaze and raised the hammer.
My target was the clasped hands.
I wasn’t destroying them, so I focused on the image in my head and hammered away, and the fingers pressed together against one another began to fuse.
Oh, the hammer really does stick to my hand.
Maybe I’d leveled up by grabbing a monster, because the hammer even gave off a strange warmth as it transformed the thing.
“Heh, heh. Go on, try moving.”
For a moment I took my eyes off it, and there came a horrible rattling scrape as it clawed at the escalator.
But when I looked back, the donut-shaped centipede bastard was still wedged there.
I’d fused everything that touched beneath its tail and head.
After erasing their separation and blessing them to stay together forever, I approached the thing’s head.
The hands on the descending side of the escalator scratched and flailed all they wanted, but half its body was fixed here, so it was useless.
I like how hard the head is.
This time, I wanted to get it intact instead of breaking it.
“Patient, I’m going to start your tooth treatment, so raise your hand if it hurts, all right?”
I slammed the hammer hard into the neck beneath its head, and the scratching grew even noisier.
“Ah, that’s where it hurts? Found the sore spot, did I? Then let’s move on to a root canal!”
In a dental clinic, raising your hand doesn’t stop anything.
It’s like one of those firetruck games that never stops even at the red light.
Not long after I started beating the neck with gusto, the head began to wobble.
“Oh dear, the root’s rotten. Looks like we’ll have to pull it. Don’t worry, I’ll recommend a cheap and good implant.”
I wedged the hammer between the head and neck, grabbed the head with both hands, then stomped down on the hammer handle and pulled with all my strength.
And then came the sound of something flailing like mad.
But with a wet crunch and the sound of some bone snapping, the hands that had been thrashing around stopped moving, and the head flew through the air.
“Heh, heh... hahahaha! That’s what you get!”
Mocking the head rolling down the corridor, I checked the torso in case it might still move.
Thankfully, the head was the weak point too.
When I saw the torso go completely still, all the strength drained out of my body in one rush.
I hadn’t been sparring. I’d come back from a UFC fight, damn it.
Relief at being alive and the satisfaction of having won.
Adrenaline and dopamine mixed together, sending a pleasant electric tingle through my body.
Laughing like a lunatic, I collapsed there, and in my flipped-over view I spotted the monster’s head and something glinting inside it.
“What’s that? I didn’t see anything like that in the heads I broke before.”
I picked up the head and shook it, and something dark red, like a ruby, dropped into my palm with a soft clink.
A gemstone?
ITEM:Core of Malice - Marionette (D)