Chapter 20
Terminally Ill, but It's Okay — Episode 20
"What?"
Baek Sa-young's eyes flew open in alarm. Joo A-rin, who had been at the front, came running back and shouted.
"What's going on?"
But the shock had only just begun.
The anomaly unfolded all at once, before anyone could even react.
"Get a griiiiiip—!"
"H-Help meee—!"
Two, maybe three.
The remaining team members were sucked in one after another.
The ground suddenly collapsed, or the walls stretched out like long taffy strands and snatched the team members away.
"No way...."
Joo A-rin bit her lip as if she had sensed something.
She urgently ran her hands over the ground, checking one thing after another, then, looking aghast, muttered as if retracing her thoughts.
"This wasn't an ordinary cave. This place was made by the queen—"
She was close to the answer, but it was already too late.
Fwoooosh.
Before Joo A-rin could finish speaking, she vanished beneath the ground just like the other team members.
"Joo A-rin!"
Baek Sa-young shouted urgently, but there was nothing he could do.
Now only Baek Sa-young and I remained. I finished what Joo A-rin had been unable to say.
"It looks like the queen's webbing was camouflaged as the ground and walls in places, targeting us."
"No, how does that make sense? How could spiderwebs...."
"I don't know the details either. But one thing seems certain. She's making her last desperate move."
"Desperate move?"
"Pick us off one by one. She’s probably trying to separate us and take us on individually."
Baek Sa-young seemed to be trying to stay composed and couldn't answer easily.
I kept talking.
"First, trust me. Right now, we need to think about 'how,' not 'why.'"
"What?"
"It's just you and me now. You're the strongest of us, so the queen will probably come for you directly. So we have to go together. You'll have a hard time alone."
I held out my hand and looked at Baek Sa-young.
I had extended it fully expecting him to take it.
But had I been too friendly?
"...How long have you known?"
Baek Sa-young's face, looking at me, suddenly hardened.
...Damn.
"I guessed from the circumstances—"
Just as I was about to make a belated excuse, the ground beneath Baek Sa-young collapsed.
Fwoooosh.
I quickly grabbed his arm before he fell.
I was just about to push off, ready to jump in with him if it came to that....
Swish!
Baek Sa-young shook off my hand before I could.
"If it's dangerous, I'd rather go alone. At least you...."
"Hey, you crazy bastard!"
I swung my arm belatedly, but I only clutched empty air.
That frustrating idiot, seriously.
For a moment, I was so dumbfounded that my head rang.
But there was no time to blame him.
I couldn't escape the queen's clutches either.
Whoosh—
The ground gave way and I plummeted straight down.
The space was deeper than I'd thought.
I felt like I'd been falling for a long time, and only after a while longer did I hit the ground.
BOOM.
The pain was the least of my problems. I was at a loss.
Because the plan I'd been so sure would succeed had gone off the rails.
I was just getting to my feet to assess the location when it happened.
"Park Ha-yul?"
From within darkness far thicker than before, someone called my name.
"What? You fell too?"
It was a familiar voice.
"Cheon Seo-yoon?"
* * *
Snap!
The crisp sound of a finger snap scattered the surrounding darkness.
"What? You fell too?"
Shadows flickered over her face, making her look eerie, but it was her.
Cheon Seo-yoon.
She had a longsword as tall as herself strapped to her back, and glowing mana orbs floated around her.
"What the hell is going on here?"
I rubbed my forehead for a moment.
Baek Sa-young, who should have been with me, was now alone, and instead I'd run into Cheon Seo-yoon, who should have been alone.
Setting aside my confusion, I answered first.
"That's just how it turned out."
"Your team got scattered too?"
"Yeah."
"Damn. That pretty much confirms it."
Cheon Seo-yoon rubbed her forearm like someone who'd just uncovered the secret of her birth.
"No, seriously, I found out something huge. Don’t be shocked when you hear this. This place we’re standing in is actually..."
"That it's spiderwebs everywhere?"
"Yeah. Even for a Grade 6 Monster— Huh? What? You knew too?"
"I had a hunch."
"...Tch, anyway, I really don't like you."
Cheon Seo-yoon pouted.
There was a lot I wanted to say, but I didn't want to waste time on pointless bickering.
We needed to get out of here and find the queen, didn't we?
"More importantly, when did you fall?"
"Not long ago. Maybe ten minutes?"
"What about the Sasikju?"
"Dunno. Haven't seen hide nor hair of them."
Then that probably meant they'd be swarming in soon.
Some of the others might already be fighting.
I walked ahead and kept talking.
"Did you look around?"
"Of course. That's how I ran into you. But something's weird here. The scale is insane. Take a look."
Cheon Seo-yoon twitched her hand, and the mana orb flew through the air.
A moment later, the space that had been swallowed by darkness revealed itself.
"Huge, right?"
As Cheon Seo-yoon said, this place was an enormous cavern.
So large that the orb she'd sent out to measure the perimeter took quite a long time to return.
"This spot is especially suspicious."
Cheon Seo-yoon moved the orb to illuminate one corner.
"Doesn't it look like shells? It's full of those things."
They looked like they'd broken long ago, with fragments scattered everywhere.
"Huh, this is kind of...."
It was at that moment that I felt an ominous sensation along with a strange sense of déjà vu.
A dark underground where light didn't reach.
An enormous cavern.
Shells—no, traces of something having hatched there.
It was definitely a familiar setting. A background I had drawn at some point.
No way...?
"Ch-Cheon Seo-yoon, scratch the floor a bit."
"What the hell, all of a sudd—"
"Just do it if I tell you to. Start over there! We don't have time, so hurry."
I ran in the opposite direction from Cheon Seo-yoon and scraped the ground with all my strength.
I came away with handfuls of stone dust, but I didn't stop, checking one spot after another.
"No, what are you trying to do? It's all just rock. Rock."
The side Cheon Seo-yoon was checking seemed to be the same.
We had checked a fairly wide area, but there wasn't a single spot made of spiderweb.
"If that's the case...."
The moment I realized what this space was, a chill ran down my spine.
I didn't know how or why, but it seemed we had already arrived.
The lowest level of the nest, the true bottom.
The queen's chamber known as the Final Stage....
"We're X-ed."
I swallowed hard, trying to take back the honest reaction that had slipped out.
Wasn't this saving us the trouble of searching for her?
That was true.
But aside from that, everything else about this situation was the worst.
Because the person next to me wasn't Baek Sa-young.
"What? Why are you acting like that?"
She was the poster child for stubbornness, using nothing but pure mana.
It was more a matter of compatibility than skill.
The hardest attributes to fight using pure mana were earth and metal, because their very nature was solid.
Because of this, there had been a major incident in the original work.
Cheon Seo-yoon, while fighting the queen, had been badly wounded and become a burden to Baek Sa-young.
"Ugh, so frustrating. Stop acting all serious by yourself and explain already."
"Well, that's...."
I couldn't say, 'This is all because of you,' so I was trying to explain it in a roundabout way when—
Grrrrrrr.
Once.
Grrrrrrr.
Then again.
The cavern trembled faintly, and then the thick, musty presence unique to Monsters seeped into my skin.
Chitter-chitter-chitter—
Demonic energy, incomparably stronger than before, pulsed from all directions.
At this point, there was no need to explain.
"At least Grade 7 or higher. No..., is it the queen?"
Cheon Seo-yoon drew her longsword, and her head suddenly snapped upward.
Flash—
Then, piercing through the darkness, dozens of stars gleamed.
Ominous stars glowing with an eerie red light....
FWOOOOOSH───────!
Before the eeriness could even fade, they descended toward us like shooting stars.
"Incoming!"
The master of the G-17 nest and guardian of the Final Stage.
The Sasikju queen, her dozens of eyes flashing, had personally launched an attack.
"Don't rush in."
I quickly grabbed Cheon Seo-yoon's forearm. I had acted first, afraid she'd charge in recklessly like in the original work.
"What are you talking about? If we just take down that spider bastard, we’re guaranteed first place. If you’re scared, you back off."
But Cheon Seo-yoon easily shook off my hand and kicked off the ground before I could stop her again.
Longsword raised, she shot into the air like a rocket.
"It's not just a Grade 6 Monster!"
I shouted belatedly, but it was already too late.
That idiot, seriously....
[Activating trait, Heightened Senses.]
I quickly activated my trait and tracked the clash between the monster and Cheon Seo-yoon.
Cheon Seo-yoon's blue mana blade slashed toward the house-sized bulk covered in black hairs.
Slice—
For an instant, it was a blow so fierce that it seemed like it might actually work.
But the sword that had been digging into the queen's chest suddenly stopped advancing.
It halted as if it had struck a solid wall, and the enraged queen opened her maw wide, as if she had been waiting.
ROOOOAR.
A web unfurled across half the open space.
Along with dark-green venom, razor-sharp webbing shot out like tentacles.
"Shit."
Cheon Seo-yoon abandoned her sword and desperately twisted her body.
She seemed to be dodging by using the air as a foothold, looking for a chance to snatch it back.
FWOOSH.
But the webbing, which had been arcing through the air, suddenly surged forward in a straight line like sharpened steel.
"Wh-What is this?"
The special power granted to the queen when she transcended her category.
The authority 'Transformation,' which allowed her to freely alter the very properties of her webbing, had manifested.
SHNK—
This single variable decided the fight.
One of the descending strands of webbing pierced through her left shoulder joint.
Cheon Seo-yoon plummeted helplessly, like a kite with its string cut.
"Damn it."
I sprinted toward her landing point.
Even if the injury was unavoidable, I had to prevent any further damage.
But the queen didn't seem inclined to stop either.
Chitter-chitter-chitter—
She descended at full speed to finish the intruder off.
[Activating trait, Manifestation.]
The moment I sensed the monster was faster, my body reacted first.
I deployed the Attribute Combination Art I had prepared with extreme focus.
I didn't know how many seconds it took.
After confirming the base hour, I simply imagined, overlaid, and materialized it.
A 64-stroke attribute combination. The Blue Flame Art, Hellfire.
[Manifestation Accuracy 79%]
A combination of Fire-Style Sorcery and Wood-Style Sorcery using the principle of wood feeding fire.
This shall kindle an unquenchable flame that burns until the target disappears.
WHOOOOSH.
Blue flames erupted toward the monster like an explosion.
* * *
Meanwhile, at the command and control center where Lee Taek-jin and Kim Mi-young were stationed.
Joo A-rin's emergency report had come in ten minutes earlier.
Crackle. Crackle.
—Professor. ...This is strange. ...With threads... the space is composed... Is that ...possible...?
Questions were discouraged during evaluations. Under normal circumstances, it would have been considered rude and gone unanswered.
But this time was different.
Lee Taek-jin deliberately hardened his expression and asked again.
—Student Joo A-rin. Report in more detail.
Crackle.
—For an ordinary specimen... impossible.... Even so, I... suspect the queen is an Irre... gular....
The mana interference and signal disruption grew worse the closer one got to the Final Stage.
Because of that, the screen was distorted and the voice cut out badly, but at least one word came through clearly.
—Irregular?
A term for Monsters that had gone beyond their category and gained special powers.
These unusual specimens, also called mutants, turned up fairly often because Monsters naturally absorbed energy from their surroundings.
"P-Professor. This doesn't make sense. An Irregular? There was nothing like that in the report."
But as Kim Mi-young said, the problem was where it had been found.
Wasn't this a nest the government had assigned a Grade after a thorough investigation?
And now an Irregular?
If Joo A-rin's words were true, then this was undoubtedly a major incident that threw off the entire dataset.
—Professor. This is Baek Sa-young.... I have something to report....
—This is Lee Dae-ho. The ground suddenly split and....
But as similar reports arrived one after another, there was no choice but to believe it.
The quality of communication varied depending on each person's location, but they were all saying the same thing.
A sudden anomaly!
Suspicion about the queen's true nature!
By this point, taking action had become more important than understanding what was happening.
"Professor. How about suspending the evaluation even now? There's a safety team on standby, so there shouldn't be any major problems."
Kim Mi-young cautiously voiced her opinion.
It also meant the situation was urgent enough that she, usually so tight-lipped, had spoken up first.
"And then?"
But what came back was a firm rebuke.
When Kim Mi-young asked, "Pardon?" Lee Taek-jin said,
"Would suspending it change anything?"