Chapter 35
All the light and sound in the world vanished without a trace.
He could feel nothing at all.
He could neither see nor hear.
Beta suddenly found himself standing in the middle of that darkness.
He opened his mouth in panic, but no sound came out.
He tried to use magic. It failed. Even his mana had disappeared.
Where the hell am I? What the hell is going on?
He shouted with all his might, but the cry existed only in his head.
He started flailing his arms and running.
He threw everything he had at escaping that suffocating blackness.
And then, at some point, a voice reached him.
"What is that. A door?"
He stared at the four doors that had suddenly appeared while he could no longer tell whether he had been running or walking.
Only then did he realize he could hear his own voice again. His vision had returned, too.
All of his senses were coming back.
But it was too early to be relieved.
"Damn it."
There was no doubt anymore that he had taken over Cynthia's body. But the flesh had collapsed, and Beta had been trapped in this strange space.
He had nothing he could do.
Even when he had fallen into this other world, he had never felt this helpless.
"C-calm down."
Forcing himself to steady his pounding heart, Beta studied the four doors set in the darkness.
First came the deep blue door.
It stood wide open. Beyond it was darkness just like the world around him.
Shaped from eyes and ice, it made him feel a chill as though a blade were skimming his flesh just by looking at it.
It was so cold it made his body tremble, like he was standing alone in the middle of a blizzard-swept plain.
He hurriedly looked away and turned to the next door.
A pink door tinged with pale red.
It too stood wide open. Beyond it, there was nothing.
Some unknown, sticky liquid and cotton-candy mist had formed the door's shape.
Gulp.
For some reason, his eyes lost their light and went blank.
Merely staring at it filled him with a maddening thirst.
He wanted to run at it in a single bound, defile it, claim it.
The sticky lust he had forgotten for years lifted its head again.
"Huh?!"
Before he knew it, the pink door was right in front of him, and he staggered back in shock.
Shaking his head wildly to clear it, he covered his face with both hands.
Have I gone insane? It's just a door! Why am I feeling lust? What is this?
With disgust, Beta backed away a few more steps and turned to the next door.
A green door, sad and subdued, as if it were there and not there at once.
This one stood wide open too, and the inside was the same.
Woven from sprouts, it floated above a pool of swamp water.
The pupils that held him in their gaze began to tremble like an earthquake had struck.
What was I thinking? I should have listened to the Union's advice. Idiot.
Ugh. I killed the same people. I toyed with them ruthlessly, cruelly. I can hear their screams. I feel like throwing up.
Ah, they're going to be disappointed. What if he hates me? I can't endure that. Then I'll...
"Ghhk!"
A guilt he had no right to possess shrank his thoughts down to nothing.
His heart cowered and sank deeper and deeper.
He squeezed his eyes shut, clutched his head, and swayed unsteadily.
Then, just as he seemed about to collapse, something hard knocked against his head with a dull thud.
"Ow! What the hell?"
When he came back to himself and looked up, the last door was right in front of him.
A door packed with blacker-than-black darkness.
Its color matched the surrounding void, and only the texture, like sand spilling down, made its outline barely visible.
Unlike the three doors before it, this one was tightly shut, and as Beta faced it, an inexplicable chill crawled over his skin.
Should I open it?
Four doors in a world of utter blackness.
Three were already open, and there was nothing beyond them.
The final door remained closed.
If he wanted out of this bizarre space, he had to do something, and right now opening the black door looked like the only option.
It might well be empty too, just like the others, but his instincts screamed that standing still would change nothing.
After a long hesitation, Beta finally decided to try the door and reached for the knob.
Creaaak-
The black door opened.
And a blinding world spread out before him.
A world filled with light, utterly unlike the darkness he had been standing in.
I'm out!
Beta's face brightened with certainty. There had to be an exit here, somewhere.
Grasped.
"... ?"
Confusion flickered over his delighted face.
He lowered his gaze toward the pressure around his left ankle.
A hand?
A hand the same color as the white world stretched before him had clamped tightly around his ankle.
The moment he realized it, a violent force yanked him backward.
"Aaaagh!!"
He hit the ground hard and fought desperately not to be dragged away.
He clawed at the darkness with both hands, only to be pulled farther and farther through the door.
Before long, his face, drained white with fear, vanished into a dreadful scream.
.
.
.
.
.
.
His bare skin touched the floor, which radiated cold, and his body shuddered in fits and starts.
It was cold. Far too cold.
Whiiirrrrr!!
Something was spinning furiously.
A chilling premonition sliced through the air, sharp as a blade, and came at him.
"Kyaaaah! Aaagh!!"
An arm was cut off.
A leg was cut off.
His stomach was cut open.
His head was severed.
Riiip- riiiiiiip-
Like a beast tearing at its prey, his skin was brutally peeled away.
Squelch. Squelch.
Without hesitation, something reached inside his body and pulled out what was within.
He twisted every muscle and screamed. He begged the pain to stop.
It hurts! It hurts! It huuurts!!
Nothing changed.
His body was dismantled without end.
Again and again, it repeated.
Whiiirrrrr!!
There it was again. That sound again.
Horror was coming for him, grinding him bit by bit from the soles of his feet all the way up to the crown of his head.
Terrified of the pain that would come in the next instant, he began to shake uncontrollably.
This was fear.
.
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.
.
.
He missed a familiar warmth.
Knowing it was impossible, he had hidden among human beings and lived there anyway.
He swallowed a pinch of anxiety and shared laughter, tears, and feelings with them.
And then he was caught.
A child saw his skin blister and burn in the sunlight.
No. No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to...
The heart stained with fear and anxiety turned into impulse and lunged at the child.
The red blood that spilled at will swallowed the small human whole.
The village was noisy for a long while as they searched for the missing child. I held my breath.
The sun. I had to endure that damned light.
Only then could I survive here.
Again and again, I threw my body at it. I burned a countless number of times.
Pain was familiar. I could bear it. I could overcome it.
After a great deal of time, I finally did.
I smiled with joy. Expectation and hope bloomed.
Now I could walk around proudly, showing my face in the daytime too.
Kill her!
That witch!
Give me back my son!
But why? Why were they trying to kill me?
Don't do this. I only wanted to be human again. Just ordinary.
Words sharp as knives and violence tore at my body.
The wildly beating heart in my chest froze hard.
Ah. So it was already ruined. I could never go back to what I was.
I faced the truth I had been avoiding all this time.
The reality of having to accept such loss was terrifying beyond words.
This was fear.
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.
.
Waaaah!!
Someone's thunderous shout beat fiercely against the gray sky.
The inhuman battlefield that stretched across the vast land advanced while crushing the enemy beneath it.
The madness of war. The cry of grief. The despairing screams of mankind.
He stood there in the middle of it all, dazed.
The surrounding air grew so hot it felt as if it might burn.
Flash!
Far away, a massive lump of light punched through the gray sky and fell.
A white pillar of impossible size spread its two wings wide.
Then an overwhelming shockwave swept across the battlefield, so strong it felt as though the unseen world in front of him had suddenly gone bright.
Many allies were crushed and killed in the angel's intrusion.
Thump-
Wiping blood from the corner of his mouth, he instinctively turned around.
Far away, atop a cliff.
A lone figure waved a hand.
The moment that casually swaying hand caught the air as though raking it.
Crackling—
The pillar of light slaughtering their allies shattered into pieces like glass.
Crumbled fragments of the angel's remains scattered everywhere and vanished.
Kill them.
A cold, genderless voice rang through the battlefield, which had been wrapped in silence as if time itself had stopped.
From that point on, the momentum of their forces surged once more.
Their king.
A symbol of despair who stole away the hopes of countless enemies.
That was fear.
"Haaah?!"
Beta shot awake with a gasp, his eyes flying open.
He pushed himself up from the sofa he had been lying on and looked around.
The skins of chimeras mounted on one wall.
A surgery table and equipment for manufacturing chimeras himself.
A fireplace and a classic record player amid the old-fashioned interior he had arranged to create a calm atmosphere.
His familiar room.
Scratch, scratch, scratch-
Winced by the faint noise scraping at his ears, Beta got to his feet and wiped back his sweat-drenched hair.
"Hah, hahahaha."
A dream? Yeah, it was a dream. A vicious nightmare, I thought.
The various terrors still so vivid in his mind made his hands shake uncontrollably.
Memories that did not exist came at him as if they were lived experience and clamped around his throat.
Scratch, scratch, scratch-
It still sounded like he could hear it.
He irritably scratched at his ear and started walking.
He was rattled senseless by some insane nightmare.
He needed to figure out what was going on.
"W-what?"
Beta opened the door to leave his room, and his face filled with bewilderment.
He had definitely opened the door to go out, so why was he looking at the same room again?
"What the hell. What the hell is this?"
Beta went back inside and yanked open the same door again.
But his room still appeared.
"I’ll smash it all to pieces...!"
He swung his hand as if to smash the entire room, but the magic would not activate. Even his mana refused to budge.
Just as fear crept in and he drew a breath,
Scratch, scratch, scratch-
The hallucination circling his ears suddenly grew louder.
"Aaaaagh!!"
He writhed in terrible pain and rolled on the floor.
Something scratchingly crawled out of both of his ear canals.
The thing that popped into the wildly shaking field of view was a pair of centipedes.
They were far too large to be called insects, each one clad in black chitinous armor.
But what frightened Beta even more was the head of the centipede that had appeared.
"How was it?"
"Was it scary?"
The two centipede heads spoke.
Letting their pitch-black hair fall loose,
The head of Cynthia, eyes closed, smiled with chilling sweetness and asked,
"...!?"
Beta stared in silent shock, his whole body jerking.
He could not move at all.
The two heads giggled and split their smiles nearly to their earlobes as they drew closer and closer to him.
"It's the fear I felt."
"I wish everyone could feel it."
Their mouths opened wide.
From inside them, the white hands that had seized his ankle before began to crawl out slowly.
"Come with us."
"You'll understand soon enough."
No, no. Stop. Please! Don't come any closer! Sa-save me—
Crunch. Crack. Crack. Gulp.
＊＊＊
"Hiss. My head..."
I slowly sat up, holding my throbbing skull.
Some pathetic bastard had infiltrated my mind through my clone body.
Not only that, but somehow he had found the self I had wrapped up and sealed away tight, and pried it open.
Now that's a novel way to kill yourself, you piece of shit.
"Uwaeeek!!"
I bent my head and vomited black, dead blood.
One side of the swaying hair reflected in my vision began to darken more and more, turning black.
"Ah, this is rough."
One of the selves I had split off and left lying around because I couldn't find any proper use for it was rampaging inside my body.
Maybe because it had been suppressed for so long, keeping it down wasn't easy.
"This isn't the time for this."
I staggered toward the place where Ma Yu-ri was.
I had only blacked out for a few seconds in reality, but in that time the curse I was controlling had been cut off.
As an unstable chimera, Ma Yu-ri's life was already in danger even in that brief moment.
I arrived at the place where the clone had entered, my vision inverted.
I regretted not coming here myself.
If I had, I could have caught the bastard who tried to enter my mind through Ma Yu-ri's body while he was still alive.
Putting my disappointment aside, I approached Ma Yu-ri, who had collapsed between the passages lined with iron cages on both sides.
"...Uh... grrrk..."
Fortunately, she was still alive. Still, she was in a state where it wouldn't have been strange if she died any moment.
Her breathing was faint, and her heartbeat had slowed.
Even if I suppressed her body's rejection with curse magic again, there was no telling whether she'd survive until she received proper treatment.
"She can't die."
Seo-ah would be heartbroken. She might start thinking terrible things. I didn't want to see that.
I hurriedly opened my inventory and shop and rummaged through them, but I didn't find anything useful.
What should I do? Wasn't there some better way?
I cracked my fingers one by one and rolled my eyes.
Then I noticed that my hair had gone more than half black.
...
Was this really the right choice?
After all, my blood still carried the dragon essence I had eaten before I first met my former retainer.
It had been diluted a great deal over the years, but even so it had to be far better than the lizardman essence implanted in Ma Yu-ri's body.
But could it work?
Like Lime, it wasn't something I wanted of my own will.
My self might not even be accepted by this little human.
"Damn it. No idea."
Thinking things through still isn't my style. Let's do it first and see what happens.
Thud-
I shoved my hand deep into my chest and pulled out what I found.
Like sticky paint being washed away, my hair returned to its original white.
Then the heart in my hand, still beating, slowly turned pitch black and began to glow.
Unlike my other selves, this was the last one I had kept ever since I split it off: fear.
All I had to do now was eat it.
There was no way Ma Yu-ri, who was about to lose consciousness, could do that.
Nothing for it.
Crunching down on the black heart, I drew Ma Yu-ri close.
The blood that spilled as I did so spread around us in a perfect circle.
Her tiny lips, dried out until they had taken on a bluish tint.
Soon my lips pressed over them.
I forced her mouth open with my long tongue and fed her fear.
Like a mother bird feeding her chick.
For a long while after that, we shared each other's breath.