A Joke Can Be Violence to Someone
Tracking the organization known as Rabbit's Foot was no easy task.
Above all else, the greatest reason was that there wasn't a single trace of them anywhere.
Forget schemes—I couldn't even tell whether they actually existed. The only grounds for believing such an organization was real came from the testimony of that strange woman who was my client.
At least, that had been true until yesterday. Until I finally managed to find a lead on Rabbit's Foot.
Last night I saw a strange man trying to persuade a gang of thugs with nothing but the pure force of his three-inch tongue, without so much as a weapon in his hands.
What made it even stranger was that the thugs were listening to his proposal in complete seriousness.
Incheon is a demon-haunted ruin crawling with every kind of outlaw and monster.
In a place like that, a man who looked as if he possessed neither weapons nor strength was talking outlaws into something with nothing but eloquence, casually dropping the words "Rabbit's Foot" as he went.
Once he finished saying everything he meant to say, he bowed politely and vanished into dust. It was reasonable enough to suspect he was a member of Rabbit's Foot.
I hadn't been close enough to catch exactly what he was saying, but if I just grabbed those thugs and found out what they'd been told, that would be enough.
While tracking them, I began to harbor serious doubts about the woman named Seong Min-a and the organization behind her.
It was rare for me to question a client. Most of them were people you saw once and never again, and besides, I myself had more than enough circumstances I could never speak of to others.
This time, though, seemed likely to become one of those rare exceptions.
How had that woman spoken as if she were certain the organization was here?
No—were the things she had said even true in the first place?
Once the suspicion started, it kept chaining on after itself.
Even if every word she had spoken was true, I still had no idea how she had learned that Rabbit's Foot was in this place.
Part of that was simply because she hadn't told me, but there might have been a reason she couldn't tell me.
Maybe she was one of the informants the government had scattered everywhere in order to find me.
...No. I still don't think that's it. Even the most loyal dog of the government will speak the truth when a shotgun is shoved in their face.
Besides, if she were from the government she would already know exactly how many hunting dogs' heads I had blown open. Anyone who valued their life would never try to wriggle out of a situation with a lie that would get them caught on the spot.
No—maybe the government side had prepared the lies in advance.
I knew perfectly well that once you start doubting like this, there is no end to it.
There was also the uneasy feeling that this very suspicion might be me cutting, with my own hands, the lifeline that would pull me out of this hell.
If everything that woman had said was true, she might see me doubting her and coldly walk away, declaring I had no right to become family.
...Next time we meet, I should demand the truth while asking her to show mutual trust.
Even though I kept telling myself I shouldn't doubt her, the fact that I couldn't stop made me feel pathetic.
I didn't used to be like this. Just how far have I degraded?
While mocking my own fallen state, I kept tracking the thugs anyway. Whatever else happened, I had to succeed at the job if I wanted any chance of continuing to meet that woman.
When I reached the place they had claimed as their territory, I found dried-out human corpses sprawled haphazardly across the ground.
Only the clothes they still wore let me identify them as the thugs I had been chasing.
...Attacked? I've never even heard of a monster that dries people to death.
It was a demon realm, so anything could appear, but this was a sight I had never seen or heard of.
Could Rabbit's Foot have sent someone to silence them? It was possible. The reason their trail was this hard to follow might be that they simply killed everyone the moment recruitment failed.
If that was the case, it was bad. If I lost what was probably the only clue, I might never be able to hunt them again.
They might even have noticed I was on their trail and started covering their tracks more carefully.
I had to secure any survivors, no matter what.
Fortunately I found a surviving boy without much trouble—unfortunately, that boy was already being held by the hand of an unknown monster I was seeing for the first time.
...That monster vaguely resembled the woman Seong Min-a somehow, yet the overall atmosphere and everything about it was completely different.
More than anything, it couldn't be her. There was no way another being besides me existed that could move between human and monster forms.
"Let that boy go."
But this was no time to dwell on such thoughts. With that kid as my only lead, I no longer had the luxury of thinking about anything else.
"Don't tell me you're talking to me?"
I spoke in a rush, but the moment I met the monster's eyes I felt every muscle in my body tense on its own.
...Just receiving that gaze was enough to tell me. That monster was absurdly strong—strong enough that I couldn't even begin to guess the size of the gap between us.
"...That is the prey I was hunting. Whoever you are, I can't let you snatch it away."
Even so, I had no intention of tucking my tail and running. This was probably the last lifeline of my life.
I couldn't just let it go.
"If it had been a request, I would have considered it... but a command? How arrogant. Know your place, insect."
The monster looked at me as though thoroughly displeased with my attitude, openly offended.
The way the air itself seemed to tremble at that voice was not my imagination.
...This is going to kill me dozens of times at minimum. I should demand hazard pay from that woman. Or extra information, at least.
"That means you refuse to let him go."
I floated a shadow into the empty air, stocked weapons into the darkness inside my sleeves, and finished preparing to fight at any second.
Could I win against that thing?
I didn't know. But if it was a matter of dragging the fight out, I was confident.
This body couldn't die even if it wanted to.
Who would have thought I'd ever feel grateful for the cursed ability I gained from that laboratory. No—if that laboratory had never existed in the first place, I would never have ended up in this situation at all.
"If you want to take him, take him by force!"
Life, really—how did it ever come to this?
At the same moment she flung the boy into a corner, the monster formed a crimson lance in an instant and charged. I fired the shotgun I had drawn from my sleeve straight at her.
It was a point-blank blast of shot, yet in a fraction of a second the monster's form blurred, and before I knew it she had already driven the red lance into my back.
...High-speed movement? Time stop?
Without even a moment to consider what the ability was, the monster slammed the lance that had skewered me with all her strength, then swung it through empty air and hurled me away.
I crashed into a concrete pillar and pain flooded through me, but I ignored it, raining swords and daggers like a downpour from the shadow I had prepared in the air while drawing a rifle from the darkness inside my coat.
The monster casually batted aside every dagger flying at murderous speed with one hand as if she were playing, then vanished the instant I fired the rifle—exactly as she had when dodging the shotgun—and reappeared at my side.
"Don't tell me you seriously intended to bring me down with toys like those?"
She mocked me and prepared to drive the lance into me again.
—Now.
I reached toward the spear blade and called the distant shadow, placing it directly behind the monster's head.
The blade did not pierce my hand; it was gently accepted into it.
The accepted spear blade then burst out from the shadow hovering right behind the monster's skull.
Just before her own blade could touch the back of her head, however, she lightly tilted her face aside and muttered,
"No wonder no blood came out—so that was why. What a cute little trick."
She yanked the spear free and smashed me with the shaft as if swinging a baseball bat.
The blow was strong enough to shatter the pillar behind me; dizzying pain flooded my senses, yet she gave me no time to recover. She thrust her hand into my head and seized the "edge."
"Indeed, just as I thought. No wonder stabbing felt unsatisfying but hitting felt good. You—you're something like a hole punched through empty space."
...So the difference in class really is something that can't be overcome.
Still, I never expected her to see through the ability itself.
"Monster bitch..."
I muttered it with complete sincerity.
"I think you're closer to a monster than I am. Don't you agree?"
That might actually have been true.
The ability I gained from that laboratory turned me into a gate leading to a dimension filled with darkness.
Because my body itself was essentially a dimensional gate, I could store anything smaller than myself, and because my body itself was a dimensional gate, attacks composed of points or lines were meaningless.
Literally empty space.
Even if a slash cut across my body horizontally or vertically, the damage that reached the "edge"—the true body I could actually call myself—remained extremely slight.
Heard only that far, it sounded like a fine ability. The drawbacks, however, were just as clear.
Very wide-area strikes were something I simply couldn't do anything about, and the damage I took whenever an attack hit the edge was considerable.
It never broke, but because the damage was absorbed in full, every blow like the one just now left my vision swimming.
There were plenty of other external problems as well; no matter how hard I tried, it was an ability I could never bring myself to like.
"You of all people know best that you can't win, don't you?"
The monster held my edge and gave it a light shake, mocking me for seriously thinking I could win.
"There are times when you can't back down even knowing you're bound to lose."
"Oh? Looking like a monster, yet you say some rather decent things. Are you truly a monster? Listening to the way you talk, I'd almost think you were human."
With a smiling face she casually spoke as if she had already seen through my identity.
It was fortunate that the face I wore right now was a monster's face that revealed no emotion whatsoever.
If I had still looked human, I would have been found out for certain.
"Well, whatever you are probably doesn't matter."
Saying that, she flung me right in front of the boy's face.
"I don't care for the rudeness of the weak challenging the strong... but the desperate resolve of charging in even while knowing the difference in power—that, I don't dislike."
After a brief groan of pain, the monster simply turned her back and began walking away with measured steps.
"See you next time, nameless soot. I'll be looking forward to you entertaining me more properly then. I'll withdraw for today."
...Just leaving like this? All of a sudden?
While I stared blankly at that retreating figure, unable to understand the action, I hurriedly secured the boy.
He was unconscious, but unharmed.
"Wait—just what is your identity...!"
That unknown monster had already vanished without leaving a single trace.