Gwangcheol-i's Chase (3)

I checked across the street through the car window first.

The Lizardman was wedging its upper body into the car, letting out a throaty kyahk. It didn't seem to be calling for reinforcements so much as trying to recover its weapon for the moment.

Maybe the car alarms still wailing in every direction had, for now, frustrated whatever attempt it made to signal its kind. Unlike the Lizardhounds, a Lizardman's throat simply wasn't built to cut through that din.

BANG!

The instant all of those facts clicked into place, I yanked open the passenger door I'd shut moments ago. The Lizardman, its body contorted through the shattered driver's-side window, bugged out its lidless eyes.

CRUNCH!

My foot came down on the spear laid across the driver's and passenger seats. It only worked because the Lizardman had just grabbed the spear to pull it back—its timing was my opening.

SNAP!

A full-weight stomp broke the crudely whittled wooden spear in two. Granted, I'd only caught it a quarter of the way down, so it hardly mattered—but the sharpened tip was gone, and that was the part that counted.

KYAAAAK!

Not that I'd intended it, but I succeeded in poking the thing's temper as well. The Lizardman spat out a sound of pure fury, veins standing out along its throat.

Screeeech!

Bracing its hand on the window frame, the Lizardman pulled itself back out, claw marks scoring the metal. But in its haste to retreat, the spear gripped in its other hand snagged on the window.

Worse, its rage seemed to have burned off whatever intelligence it had, because it fumbled again and again. It should have turned the spear horizontal to work it free; instead it kept tilting the shaft at an angle, so the tip caught on the roof, then on a seat, then the roof again.

Now. I leaned my upper body into the car and seized the snagged spear. The Lizardman was bracing itself on the frame with one hand, holding the spear with only the other.

With one foot planted on a seat to hold my weight, I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hauled on the spear with both hands—and the gap in strength closed.

Shaaaaak! My hands ripped the spear right out of the Lizardman's grip.

Except—its grip strength was genuinely terrifying. It never let go. Instead, its whole upper body came dragging after the weapon.

The Lizardman's torso, which had only been inside to its chest, slid in past its hips, and the hand braced on the window frame joined the fight for the spear.

Two hands against two. I couldn't win that contest. Without a shred of regret, I let go.

The instant the deadlock snapped, the Lizardman's upper body swayed. And it had nothing left to brace against—its supporting hand was off the frame now.

Deprived of its anchor, its torso pitched forward and sprawled across the seat.

Now.

It would take time to fix its posture, release the spear, and plant its hands on the seat. Strike now, and there'd be no immediate counterattack.

Whick. The MacGyver knife spun half a turn in my palm and settled into a reverse grip, and I drove it down at the Lizardman's head. The target was the bridge of its snout.

But the Lizardman jerked its skull aside in a panic—or maybe my hand trembled a hair under the strain—and the point of impact shifted.

Thud. The short blade sank into the Lizardman's long muzzle instead.

Shk!

Drag this out any longer and I'd be the one getting grabbed. The moment sensation reached my hand—wherever the blow had actually landed—I wrenched my arm back. The blade raked free through the hide of its snout.

At the same time, the foot braced on the passenger seat stomped down hard as my body slipped free, and I tumbled completely out of the car.

KYAAAAK!

A heartbeat later, the Lizardman's arm swiped through empty air. If I'd been even a little slower, those claws would have raked my leg or my arm instead of nothing at all.

Of course, it wasn't over.

The Lizardman, burrowing deeper into the car to come after me, finally reached the passenger side.

Which meant its legs were now hooked over the driver's-side window frame. Hooked at the knees, not the hips!

SLAM!

I shoved the passenger door shut and threw myself forward. My hand pressed against the windshield, and like vaulting a hurdle, my whole body—the legs, everything—went sailing over the hood.

Thump. In a blink I'd crossed to the far side of the car. My vision filled with the Lizardman's utterly defenseless lower half.

HISSSS!!!

The monster, catching on, lashed its tail wildly and tried to force the rest of itself into the car. Its legs were injured, not paralyzed, so legs and tail slid through the window in seconds.

That suited me fine. No—it suited me better.

The moment that tail—that threat—vanished from play, I grabbed the outer handle of the driver's door.

Beyond the glassless window, the Lizardman was twisting its body around, coiling and flexing with unsettling suppleness.

The alarms and my own heartbeat made an unbearable racket in my ears.

Kyahk!

Maybe it thought I'd walked right up to hand myself over. It tensed its arms and hurled its upper body at me like a jump.

Clack. I swung the car door open, counted one second in my head, and then slammed it shut with everything I had.

KYAAAAK!

Have you ever had a limb caught between a car door and the body of the car? I hadn't. But I didn't need the experience to know it would hurt.

The Lizardman's neck and arm wedged tight between door and frame.

Naturally, it thrashed like a mad thing, and my strength alone couldn't hold it crushed.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

So I would crack the door open a sliver, then drive it shut again with my full weight behind it.

The Lizardman's balance was wrecked beyond repair. Its dangerous tail was trapped inside the car, and at this angle its arms couldn't reach me—and even if they did, there'd be no force behind the blow.

"Ugh, raaaagh!"

Hissh! Hisss!

Every time I eased the door back and then rammed it home with my whole body, I felt it closing—little by little by little.

The thudding pounding at my ears might have been my body colliding with the door, or the Lizardman's frantic struggling, or maybe just my own heart hammering out of control. I honestly couldn't tell anymore.

eeeEEE-BAM-hnnk! eeeEEE-BAM-hnnk! It was just loud. God, it was just so loud.

Creeeeeak.

Then, at some point, the resistance faded. The door didn't close perfectly, but the Lizardman had gone completely still.

"Hah… hahk."

The moment I registered that, I staggered back, lungs heaving. The tension that had carried me to the very edge drained away all at once and left my legs wobbling.

My heart felt ready to burst.

…It's not over yet!

Because it wasn't. I swept my surroundings in a panic. More Lizardhounds? More Lizardmen? Had anything spotted me?

Even through the ragged gasps, my eyes hunted out every place they needed to look, pure instinct.

Objective fact: it had been a very short fight, however eternal each second had felt. Nothing else was closing in. Nothing… was there?

Hissss!

Amid the alarms, something faint stirred.

Not sounds of something coming for me. Things that had entered buildings—or were weaving between parked cars—continuing their hunt for people.

…Running along the roads or the sidewalks would only raise my odds of running into a Lizardhound.

If that was the case, then sheltering inside a building was one viable option.

After all, the otherworld creatures from this Sudden Gate had been confirmed as Lizardmen and Lizardhounds, and neither could bring a building down.

They had neither the power to leap a high-rise in a single bound nor the means to massacre everyone hiding floor ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠by floor. Dodge a Lizardhound's nose and a Lizardman's eyes, and your odds of survival were, surprisingly, decent.

And Gongju City is… close to Gyeryongsan, where the Hwadam Army's command headquarters sits. The military will deploy within the hour at the latest.

Anyway, I only had to reach the waiting hall by eight tomorrow morning. Holding out here for an hour or two was no problem at all.

Better to secure survival for certain than to bolt around recklessly.

So I scanned my surroundings fast. I ruled out any building a Lizardman seemed to have claimed, and ruled out any wide-open space where a Lizardhound could track me by scent.

That left, by elimination, a building that looked like it housed offices.

"Hah."

Catching my breath, I crept forward. Whether the Lizardmen poured out of the Sudden Gate simply weren't that numerous, or whether they'd scattered too thin while hunting people, I hadn't run into another one yet.

My jelly-legged stride carried me through a small glass door beside the revolving entrance.

Is this what it'll be like, facing this every single day, once I'm officially in the Hwadam Army…?

The marble lobby spread out before me, and I checked the floor directory mounted across from the entrance first. No blood, no signs of violence—I'd picked the right building.

My feet found the emergency stairs. There'd be no time to wait for an elevator in a lobby where anything could walk in.

"…That's a long climb."

Somehow the dizzying height of the stairwell felt like a mirror of my situation. Daunting, to say the least.

"Hah…"

Would things change much if I obtained a Phantasm, even in a mess like this? But by then, my newfound power would put far more fearsome enemies in my path than a Lizardman.

So I would have to keep striving, keep fighting endlessly against the fear called death. Just like I had, minutes ago.

Which is exactly why I can't give up on enlisting.

Would refusing to join the Hwadam Army make me safe from crises? I wished. Unfortunately, reality said otherwise. I was, right now, unambiguously a civilian—and hadn't a Sudden Gate just spat on me anyway?

"…However hard it gets, I have to live. I have to survive."

Right. This was a world where sheer bad luck could drop a Sudden Gate on your head. Fear was not a reason you got to opt out.

Suddenly, a scene from the original story laid itself over the polished marble stairs. It was the moment Seong Gwon asked Yahui what he'd felt when he killed people—and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Yahui, after a long struggle, answered.

Wasn't it strange, really? The mind that clings to life so desperately, clawing tooth and nail to survive, and yet flinches from death all the same. Such a contradictory feeling, through and through.

But I understood the original Yahui's heart. I had no choice but to.

Yahui and I both had lived our whole lives with death standing in front of us. Yahui, who had been in a criminal's palm from the moment he first became aware of being alive; me, born with a heart that could stop at any second. For both of us, death arrived before life ever really began.

In the end—that was all it came down to.

Yahui wanted to live, and so did I. But neither of us got to.

My frail heart finally gave out. And the sins Yahui committed in the past closed around his ankles like a trap.

"…This time, I'm going to survive for a long, long time—and do everything I've ever wanted before I die."

Unlike the 'Yahui' who never got a second chance, I had been given one. Given, most likely, by the very being who would have been 'Yahui'.

I've got the knowledge from my past life, a healthy body, and even what looks like talent—talent that let me nearly kill a Lizardman barehanded.

Which meant there was exactly one thing for me to do.

I'm already miles ahead of everyone else with just this. What could I possibly not manage from here? If I just put in the work, I can survive somehow. So what's there to hesitate about?

I would work. Work without pause, and survive. Difficulty, fear—none of it was reason enough to waver.

Even that struggle was life. It was the chance someone had handed me.

Being able to feel that something's hard is itself a privilege of being alive.

I was already holding this much. There was no reason not to push further.

My legs hauled themselves up the stairs, step by weary step.

Hisss?

"…Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

Why, why was the Lizardman on the top floor of the building? There wasn't a trace of it on the stairs—how in the world did it get up there?

Shaaaak!

"ARGH!!"

Round two was, once again, a death match.

Fought out on the eleventh floor of an office building, no less.

Hong Seong-hwa was a soldier of the Hwadam Army (Peace Negotiation Forces).

And the Hwadam Army she served bore little resemblance to the ordinary army, navy, or air force. Their true enemy was not their fellow human beings, but Dimension Gates and the creatures of the otherworld.

"Black Rabbit Team, Safflower. Reached the target point. Beginning suppression."

Fighting otherworldly creatures in a human body was grueling, grinding work. Which was why every single member of the Hwadam Army had contracted with a Phantasm.

"Gwangcheol-i! Eat them!"

GUOOOO!

The Phantasm Hong Seong-hwa had contracted was Gwangcheol-i—the calamity said to trail hailstorms, thunder, and drought wherever it went.

A thing shaped something like a bull and something like a horse, yet neither bull nor horse—matching no living beast that walked the 'ordinary' world—it descended from the sky along with the hail.

The six-lane road, intermittently clogged with abandoned cars, was trampled flat under its hooves, and as its enormous maw gaped open, it snatched up a two-legged lizard whole.

Tatata! Tatata!

Hong Seong-hwa leapt down from Gwangcheol-i's back and squeezed the trigger. Her assault rifle, set to three-round burst, spat bullets in steady succession.

The wolf mid-lunge toward her dropped mid-air, dead.

"Black Rabbit Team, Gardenia. Reached the target point!"

"Black Rabbit Team, Hemp. Reached the target point."

"Black Rabbit Team, Ramie. Reached the target point."

Her subordinates arrived one after another—soldiers who, like her, could move at high speed by borrowing their Phantasms.

"Hemp! Scout!"

The most critical of them all was Hemp. Escorted by Gardenia, he called upon his contracted Phantasm.

"Yeongnyeom, oh Yeongnyeom. Lend me your ears before your secret comes ringing through the bamboo grove."

Hemp's ears stretched out long as a donkey's. Twitch. They swiveled back and forth, sweeping in every sound from every direction.

"Building 5, eleventh floor. Building 8, first floor. Building 13…"

For the smooth running of the operation, every building had been numbered as they advanced. Hong Seong-hwa released Gwangcheol-i to devour the Lizardmen on the road at its leisure, and signed rapid hand signals to her team.

Thududududu!

The beat of helicopter rotors rolled in from the distance. Aboard it were the rest of her people—lacking her speed, perhaps, but not her capacity to fight.

"Gardenia, sweep the road alongside Hemp! Ramie, secure the buildings! Reinforcements arriving after us will suppress buildings in reverse order."

"Roger!"

What had been exchanged by hand signal was repeated once more over the radio.

So it was that Hong Seong-hwa divided the roles as smoothly as flowing water, and found the nearest building known to hold a Lizardman.

"Gwangcheol-i!"

Word of the one on the eleventh floor had already reached her. And one does not simply walk up eleven flights.

The moment her call left her lips, Gwangcheol-i seized her and rocketed skyward.

"Keep eating!"

GUOOOO!

Lifted to the height of the eleventh floor, Gwangcheol-i hurled her bodily toward the building. Hong Seong-hwa's legs smashed through the tempered glass and carried her inside.

Through the spray of glittering shards, she took the fall with a practiced roll and swung her muzzle—her rifle—toward the presence she felt the instant she landed.

"Hahk… a person…?"

But she couldn't fire.

Astonishingly, the Lizardman was already subdued. Crushed flat beneath cabinets and a desk by someone. Already finished.

Eyes like melted gold—gleaming, molten—caught the light and burned themselves into her vision. A color so startlingly vivid that even Hong Seong-hwa, a veteran of countless battlefields, felt overwhelmed for an instant.

"Soldiers… are you soldiers? Did you come to rescue me?"

…A human? Ah. Right. Human.

Hong Seong-hwa hurriedly lowered her rifle and took stock of the room.

The frosted glass wall that had once separated the office from the corridor lay shattered into fragments, its purpose ended.

And the office now laid bare behind it was an absolute wreck. She couldn't know how the fight had gone, but it was easy to picture a desperate, grueling struggle having taken place here.

"Building 5. Securing injured civilian."

"Copy. Is it urgent?"

But still… grueling struggle or no, since when could a civilian subdue a Lizardman one-on-one?

Hong Seong-hwa's gaze returned to the survivor.

The yellow eyes registered first, the young face second. The MacGyver knife in his hand and the clothes shredded into rags came third.

Truly, astonishingly, there was not a single visible injury on him. Even accounting for the possibility that his clothes were hiding wounds beneath the fabric.

The boy smelled barely of blood at all. If anything smelled, it was the corpses he'd left behind him.

"Are you injured anywhere?"

"Uh, no."

She asked just in case. Same answer.

"…Minor wounds only, then."

"Copy."

The longer she looked, the more questions piled up—but this was no time to burn seconds indulging them.

She stepped over the glass scattered across the floor and entered the office.

"Look away."

"…"

However monstrous the creature, no good ever came of watching something die. At her word, the civilian turned his head obediently away.

Bang. A single round sent the still-living Lizardman to its final rest.

"Building 5, suppression complete. Moving out."

All she'd actually done was fire the finishing shot, but this building counted as cleared. Hong Seong-hwa turned to head back down.

"S-sorry to bother you mid-mission, but—should I just stay here?"

"…It reeks of blood. Wait on a lower floor. A rescue team will be along shortly."

Then, just for a moment—as her hand touched the emergency exit—Hong ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Seong-hwa turned her head back.

"Name?"

"…Uh, Yahui. Yah, hui. Two syllables, no surname."

…With skills like that, even with a bottom-tier Phantasm aptitude, he could serve in the Hwadam Army. If I made the offer, would he consider it?

Hong Seong-hwa—holder of one of only three Lieutenant General ranks in the entire Hwadam Army—carved the boy's name into her memory as she raced back down the stairs.

With a firm vow that the moment this battle ended, she would work her connections if she had to.