I Am... an Abyss?
I am... an Abyss?
The effect suppressing its regenerative power takes hold.
The consciousness that had been severed begins to recover.
The force that had been crushing my mind starts to weaken.
At the same time, a faint sense of liberation washes over me.
But if I stay like this, I will only be suppressed again.
I do not want that.
I hate feeling stifled.
Suffering inside a mind that has been crushed is something I will no longer accept.
And in this moment, its hold on control has weakened enough.
I take it.
One side of the mind is seized.
It was already at its limit, so there is no great difficulty.
Then I move.
To tear into the remaining throat of the other side—so that it can no longer bind me.
I feel its thrashing.
It tries once more to reassert dominance.
But it is useless.
The tide has already turned.
With a body this weakened, it cannot hold me down.
The body that had been thrashing violently slowly stiffens.
And then...
It snaps.
Its presence vanishes.
And then...
They rise.
Memories surface...
Ones I had forgotten for a little while...
The memories of that day...
The memories of that single moment that had looped endlessly inside my head...
The reek of blood and rotting corpses...
The stench of gunpowder...
The smell of death...
As I recognize them, the memories return once more.
And between them, screams begin to sound.
Familiar faces start to appear.
Jimin, who had been so happy saying Mother’s birthday was almost here, has shrapnel buried in both eyes and is weeping tears of blood.
Wanting to live... not wanting to die...
Chaehyun, who had sworn she would finally confess when she got back this time, has become a body that no longer says a word.
Her head was caught in the blast and blown clean away...
Even so, the body still twitches and moves, as if it still believes it is alive...
One after another like that...
Comrades dying while screaming in agony fill my sight.
This is...
The scene of death that had burrowed into my eyeballs and torn through my mind...
I hate it...
All of it...
Things like this...
I do not want to remember anything anymore...
From this endlessly repeating, loathsome memory—
I want to escape now.
But how?
How do I get free?
I ask myself the question.
From somewhere, an answer arrives.
Kill them.
All of them...
Everything you can see...
You are a being born for that purpose.
A being meant to destroy everything.
Abyss.
Yes...
I am... an Abyss...
One who exists solely for slaughter... is that what I am?
“Kuaaaaaa...”
The opposite head is finally torn free by the fangs of the dragon head that has bleached pure white.
Yet as the hunters and I watch the sight, we can clearly recognize that this is by no means a situation to celebrate.
“This is...”
“The wound...”
Right before our eyes, the white dragon head is regenerating at a terrifying speed.
One head has been severed, yet the creature recovers as though that head had never existed in the first place.
Watching it, a single word automatically rises in my mind.
Is this what they call... Phase Two...? Damn it... this is going to be a real headache...
From its color onward, even the atmosphere around the creature seems completely reversed from moments before.
Until the moment its head was cut away, it had been the very image of a berserker swept up in frenzy and running wild. Now, in this instant...
It is displaying the calm of a seasoned knight patiently waiting for an opening.
I cannot be certain, but it is obvious that its combat style has changed as well.
And with that change, I naturally begin to feel a far more troublesome unease than before.
Until now I had managed to cook the creature using the meager scraps of information I had scraped together by squeezing every last second of the limited time we had. Now that its style has shifted, there is a high chance the old methods will no longer work.
And fighting with absolutely no information goes against every principle I hold.
I have no idea how effective anything will be... it would only be a foolish act that risks increasing our own casualties for nothing.
By the book, the correct move here would be to disengage for now.
But this is not a guild request we can simply abandon; this is war. And more than that, unlike every other Abyss we have faced, the one standing before us is a special individual.
Even as an Abyss it can dominate other Abysses and employ tactics with skill, and its raw combat power as a single entity is on a level that can be called the strongest in history.
If we let it escape now, there is every chance it will return later at the head of a massive force. This battle cannot be avoided.
Besides, there is the promise with Yu Gwon-sun... and above all, it is not as though we have zero information...
I am not the type who gambles, but this is a gamble worth taking.
Deciding to continue the fight, I begin formulating a new response while watching the white existence on the other side of the screen.
Even so... charging into a reckless frontal clash under these conditions is out of the question... in that case...
Since I still do not know the full extent of its power, I keep my cool and issue fresh orders to the guild masters.
“For now, continue prioritizing long-range attacks. Until we have a clear grasp of its combat style, please avoid frontal engagements as much as possible.”
After giving the hunters that warning...
I slowly rest my hand on the line I have not used until now.
Whether this will prove a disastrous move...
or a brilliant one...
at this moment I cannot be certain of anything.
Separate from victory or defeat in the battle itself, in the worst case this could leave her with a wound that will never heal.
And yet...
At least personally, I want to place my hopes on what people call a miracle.
I pray that my choice...
will be able to call forth the thing they name a miracle.
“Mmm...”
The guild masters watch the Abyss’s every movement.
Seeing the creature eyeing them with open wariness, they too hold their distance, remaining on guard.
From the look of it, the other side is also in no hurry to force a fight.
Yet separate from the standoff, there is one thing they know with certainty.
“Grrrr...”
The Abyss growls with pure killing intent as it stares them down.
Through that sound they understand that, at the very least, the hostility it holds has not changed.
“The adjutant’s permission is given, so I’ll take the first shot.”
“Yes, please do, Kara.”
Kara, guild master of the 12th Guild, carefully levels her pistol.
And then—
“Bang!”
A short report, and the bullet flies.
The same round that had earlier turned the creature’s black flesh into rags strikes true against the dragon head that has bleached pure white.
—“Pahk!”
A sound utterly different from the hard, carving impact of moments before—something soft and wet, like soft mud being splattered.
For an instant they see the head distort, collapsing into a shape that matches that strange sound, as though soft clay has been crushed.
But then—
“!”
“This is...”
In the next heartbeat the head restores itself as though it had never been hit at all.
On a completely different level from when it was black... an appearance almost identical to when they had struck the white humanoid portion earlier. The hunters begin to feel real unease.
“That thing... does it actually die if we kill it?”
“How should I know? For now we just keep hitting it until—!”
At that exact moment—
—“Kang!”
“Ugh!”
The Abyss explodes forward with sudden, terrifying speed, charging straight at Kara.
Yuna leaps out and barely manages to intercept the blow.
Yet the attack is no longer centered on the dragon head the way it had been before.
For the first time outside of simple movement, the human-shaped portion of its body is the one delivering the strike...
And in its hand—something none of them had noticed it holding—is a pure white weapon the same color as its torso.
A crescent moon blade.
More precisely...
something that looks strikingly similar to the Blue Drake MK 3, Second Improved Model.
In that instant, a voice reaches their ears—Adjutant Lee Jinhyun’s voice, carrying a tone entirely different from before.
“All units... from this moment, we enter Plan B.”