Regarding the Isolated Hwanjong Finding Employment in Another World (2)
After barely calming Adam, who was seething like boiling lava, I carefully slipped into the arena. Even though Adam and I had been kicked out, as long as we weren't caught, it didn't matter. I blended in with the guests coming and going at the entrance and made my way back inside. No matter how tight the security was, places with this many people moving through were bound to have gaps.
“Someone's smoking over there. That pipe tobacco smells very British.”
Tobacco existed in this world too. The fact that Adam had understood my joke about cigarettes back in the Death Tree Forest suggested it was fairly widespread. Using the photo Naram noona had sent as a map, I walked through the stone corridors. When I headed toward the garden on the outskirts of the arena, I spotted a guard puffing away on a pipe. Now I understood why she'd called it British.
“You.”
The guard noticed me. His gaze hovered somewhere between suspicion and mild curiosity.
“I distinctly told you to leave earlier.”
“Suho-ya.”
She didn't use honorifics……?! My actions had been predicted. Typical of Naram noona. There was that old rumor that perfect scorers on the college entrance exam could read the test-maker's mind and ace the questions—maybe it was true after all.
I tossed him a silver coin.
“Whoa.”
The guard's eyes widened when he checked the amount. It must have been a fortune to him. That meant he was ready to talk.
“I've got a question.”
When he heard a language with a structure he'd never encountered before yet somehow understood, he looked startled again, but after glancing at the silver coin I'd given him, he nodded.
“As long as it's something I can answer.”
“Why did the manager suddenly change his mind?”
From the earlier conversation I'd overheard, I knew Adam had made a deal with the manager: in exchange for freeing his little sister, he'd pay the lord a certain sum. And now the manager had gone back on his word, which was why Adam was furious.
As Woo Suho once said, one of the things that angers people most in this world is having something taken back after it's been given. Back when Eighteen had given me that fancy premium snack, it had been one of the few moments that could actually move someone with a heart as cold as mine. But the second I tried to eat it, he snatched it away because his mouth felt bored—and that had genuinely made me want to kill him. Maybe that's when my language started getting unnecessarily rough……
If even a disappearing premium snack could piss someone off this badly, how must Adam feel when his sister's life was on the line? Bad analogy? Anyway.
“Jason pointed at Eve.”
“Jason?”
“He's the star who appeared in the arena like some kind of holy warrior. The fighter who defeated today's champion and became the new champion. He told the manager he absolutely had to fight Eve. The manager dotes on Jason to an absurd degree—like a lovestruck noble who'd grant his every whim.”
I made a strange face. Naram noona's constant chatter on the other end also fell silent.
“You'll understand when you see him. How incredible a fighter he is, and why the manager values him so much.”
The guard led me to the arena floor. The reason I'd been quiet this whole time was probably no different from why Naram noona had gone silent.
“N-n-n-n-no way!!”
I remembered it was Naram noona who'd once told me that “what ifs” could get people killed.
Vrrrrrm. Vrrrrrrrm.
A loud, mechanical roar that didn't belong in a medieval fantasy world. In my field of vision stood a slasher killer gripping a massive chainsaw, cutting a person clean in half.
“W-what the hell is that?!”
“Jason! Jason! Jason!”
Naram noona's scream mixed with the crowd's frenzied cheers. The spectators clapped and roared without restraint at the slasher's human-disassembly show. Naram noona was probably squeezing her eyes shut and looking away from the screen right now.
From the staff-only area below the stands, the guard shrugged nonchalantly.
“Jason's matches drive people crazy. Whether the opponent is a champion or a beast, he overwhelms them with sheer terror and claims victory.”
“The real highlight is his final performance. Jason uses a special artifact that replays the dying screams of his victims begging for their lives.”
“I've been an arena guard for ten years. But I've never seen a fighter this overwhelmingly strong and terrifying since I started.”
The guard was excited. Whenever he talked about the fighter named Jason, the words poured out nonstop, like when I took Naram noona on a plane. To him, Jason was an extraordinary existence. The guard and the crowd looked no different from each other. To some, this was just a scene from a horror movie. To them, it seemed like the most intense stimulus they'd ever felt.
To me, it felt more like a documentary.
“Hello.”
Memories of cleaning his containment cell came flooding back. The Hwanjong once isolated in the Supernatural Research Institute had reunited with me in this other world. Only now he was even larger, standing as an arena superstar.
“H-O-13.”
Reuniting with him…… wasn't the worst thing, was it?
SERIAL NO:H-O-13
DESIGNATION:Jason
THREAT LEVEL:Harmful
The entity designated Jason wanders its territory clutching a massive chainsaw and radio in each hand, resembling the killer from a famous film. Its territory cycle lasts 42 days, during which it mercilessly hunts any humans or animals within range using the chainsaw. Jason hunts for a simple reason: observation of its hormone levels and brainwaves revealed it experiences extreme euphoria and pleasure while hunting. If denied the ability to hunt, it will even resort to suicide. For this entity, hunting is the sole means of satisfying all its desires.
Furthermore, Jason grows larger each time its prey experiences fear, and the power of its chainsaw increases accordingly. Experiment logs 13-15 confirmed that if prey exists in infinite supply, nothing in this world can withstand being cut by Jason's chainsaw.
With intelligence comparable to a dolphin and no vocal organs, Jason cannot communicate with anyone. Strangely, however, it uses sound during hunts—specifically through the radio as a lure. Jason plays the voice of whatever its prey loves most. When the prey is human, it typically replays words or phrases similar to “save me,” which it has used to claim 32 corpses to date……
“W-w-w-what the hell did I just see?”
“H-O-13.”
We returned to a quiet spot. I sat under the shade of a tree and communicated with noona. I was worried about Adam waiting outside, but he wasn't that stupid. Once warned, he wouldn't do anything reckless.
Adam and his sister were important, but there was a more urgent problem to solve first.
H-O-13. Designated Jason. A Hwanjong resembling the protagonist and villain of a famous horror movie. H-O-13 feeds on the fear of living creatures to grow. Its growth period is extremely short—almost instantaneous.
Once, I'd watched one of Naram noona's experiments with the other researchers. Fourth-class personnel normally weren't allowed to observe experiments, but she'd made an exception for me. Inside the lab were H-O-13 and ten genetically modified monkeys commonly used as test subjects at the Supernatural Research Institute. The reason they used modified monkeys for Hwanjong experiments was something about how they matured and died quickly like lab rats, yet shared physiological similarities with humans…… or whatever. That wasn't the important part.
“Jason won't start hunting unless it establishes a territory. The cycle is 42 days, and today is the 41st day, so it'll probably begin in earnest tomorrow.”
As Naram noona predicted, the real hunt began the next day. Jason slaughtered every monkey in the containment cell. Each time the monkeys screamed in terror, Jason grew larger and its chainsaw became more vicious.
“How cruel……”
Naram noona, the one conducting the experiment, squeezed her eyes shut. But I didn't look away. I kept watching Jason.
Jason glared at all the researchers outside the lab as if it wanted to kill them. Yet for some reason, it never looked at me. The feeling was so strong it seemed deliberate.
Even in the arena, Jason had been close enough to see me clearly. It had looked toward the staff seating area and spotted me—the one who'd cleaned its cell all this time—but once again, it averted its gaze and refused to meet my eyes.