Seoul Incident (2)
There was no time to process the unexpected appearance of the monster. Multiple sedans came rocketing up from below, locked onto me at once.
They were slower than that tiger-like thing, so dodging them wasn't hard—but I could see people inside, so I clicked my tongue, caught every car, and hurled them one by one toward the magical girls.
The girls tried to evade, then spotted the passengers the same way I had and nearly had heart attacks trying to catch them safely.
The moment I finished handing over the last one, the tiger that had been launched skyward came plummeting back down hard enough to tear its own wings, lashing at me with its tail.
"That's nowhere near enough!"
But instead of dodging or blocking, the tiger drove a fist straight into my tail.
Half wondering what the hell this bastard thought he was doing and half just pissed at the interruption, I swung my tail with everything I had—
—and my tail was the one that snapped.
I'd thrown the strike certain I'd win, so the pain hit so hard I couldn't even scream for a second. I managed to grit my teeth and choke it back rather than shriek in front of the magical girls, but that was the absolute limit of what I could manage. It hurt that badly.
What? Why am I the one losing? That freak should've burst like a fly. Losing to some nobody monster doesn't even make sense—!
"S-Senior… that's an S-rank monster… the Tiger, right?"
"My name is Regulus! I'm not some damn tiger!!"
Hearing one of the magical girls and the monster that had crashed to the ground, I put it together at once.
The arrival of an S-rank monster and member of the Zodiacs: Regulus.
…I should have figured it out the moment he looked like a tiger. I'd been so scrambled I hadn't even recognized him for who he was.
Early on, Su-hyeok alone was enough to put that scrub out of commission. Wouldn't it be weirder if I had recognized him?
Which means I just got my tail broken by that scrub.
That pisses me off.
"Shut your mouth, cat!"
Rage surged up. I forged a blood spear far larger than usual and hurled it with everything I had at the tiger still running his mouth on the ground.
The air tore with a shriek, and the throw hit hard enough to blow the asphalt apart—but the tiger was nowhere to be seen.
Dodged with acceleration, huh. Fair enough. A guy who can dodge bullets wouldn't have much trouble with a spear flying at the speed of sound.
He'd climbed to S-rank on pure physical ability alone, without any particular special power worth mentioning.
The instant I registered that, I triggered acceleration myself and matched my speed to his.
But it was already too late. The glass of the surrounding buildings had just finished exploding outward.
No wings, so aerial combat puts him at a disadvantage. He'll kick off the building walls and come in on some twisted trajectory.
He's definitely gunning for a two-fisted ambush from behind.
…Had my thoughts ever moved this fast before?
Even inside an accelerated world, everything seemed to be flowing in slow motion. Ah—of course, my body was moving just as slowly, so it didn't actually help much.
Judging by the shattering windows nearby, he was already throwing a punch at my back.
I turned my head, and sure enough, the bastard was closing in by the instant.
Too late to dodge—but still enough time to block. Small mercies.
I spun and wrapped my wings in thick blood armor, using them like a shield to take Regulus's fist.
The armor shattered to pieces, but I managed to stop the blow. Action and reaction, though, were another matter—I was driven straight into the asphalt.
My barely recovered tail hit first, so the break broke all over again. Before I could even set it back into place, something massive slammed into me and started shoving me somewhere.
"Heave-ho!"
It was so enormous and pressed so tightly against me that I couldn't see a thing. I figured it had to be another S-rank monster.
Whatever it was, as long as its strength wasn't on the tiger's level, I could handle it. I threw myself into a contest of power with full confidence—
—and got shoved back like it was nothing.
No matter how hard I pushed, even blasting starlight from my back for thrust, I couldn't break free.
"Senior! Ox and Pig confirmed as well!! What do we do?! Four S-rank monsters just showed up out of nowhere!!"
"What do you mean, what do we do? Get the civilians evacuated first! Let the monsters thrash each other—right now we protect the people and the city! As for those things… we watch them for a bit."
Even as I was shoved helplessly along, the voice I'd just heard and the one from earlier both felt somehow familiar.
…Ah. Right. Sky's voice sounded like that.
Watching them scatter as one into rescue and evacuation work, I figured I didn't need to worry about the civilians.
That was that. The one shoving me now had to be Ox.
His special ability was simple: no matter what you did, you could not stop him from advancing.
Literally no matter what.
There was a way, but only Su-hyeok could pull it off. For me, stopping him was next to impossible.
In which case, I just needed to get out of the way. I already had a rough idea of where he was trying to push me.
Straight into Pig's maw, to be digested whole.
Whether the magical girls knew that or not—or whether they simply didn't have the guts to interfere—they were only watching our fight. Radiant White wore a complicated expression, either unable to keep up with the battle or simply choosing not to intervene.
I tried acceleration again, trying to slip free of Ox. I hadn't come here to get manhandled after showing up to punish Radiant White.
…It failed.
With uncanny timing, every time I tried to break away, the tiger smacked or hurled me right back in front of Ox.
No matter how I twisted, I was relentlessly funneled toward Ox's path.
…Wait. Something about this flow felt wrong.
At this rate I was genuinely going to be swallowed into Pig's mouth. And that meant death.
Pig's stomach digested anything. Anything, by any means. Even a hole punched in empty space.
Even Su-hyeok, specialized in escape, had nearly been digested alive in that maw and only survived by a miracle. And I was about to go in with no real means of getting out.
Am I going to die like this? For real?
It didn't feel real. Die like this? This stupidly? There was still so much I wanted to do.
Even as the thoughts raced, Ox kept shoving me steadily toward Pig's open jaws.
Abandoning escape, I flung every blood-forged weapon I could at Ox and raked him with my claws.
Flesh burst. Bone sheared open and marrow showed. And the moment I blinked, his body was whole again, still pushing me forward as if nothing had happened.
I couldn't stop him. No matter what I did.
No.
This wasn't right.
This wasn't some spectacular clash with the protagonists' party. It wasn't a grinding war of attrition against the Hare. I was going to die to a coordinated beatdown from these bottom-tier trash?
Don't even joke. A death like this wouldn't even make a punchline.
"Not like this…!"
I couldn't die like this.
I didn't want to die like this.
I didn't want to die.
I don't want to die.
My heart hammered. Breathing was hard.
I have power like this, and I'm going to die this hollowly?
I still can't die.
My thoughts accelerated.
But still, no method came to mind.
A method…
To have that body and that power and still only use them like this. How utterly pathetic.
Won't you cut her some slack? Even a keeper is still young, after all.
True enough. She's never properly drawn blood—hard to expect her to know how to fight.
Even one born a sovereign can't be strong from the cradle.
Hand it over.
So you want to take the stage.
Now.
If that is your wish, then so be it.
Don't you want to live, too?
…There it was.
I might not manage it on my own right now—but there was an option. Hand everything over to the girl who had once been called the undefeated magical girl.
"…Fine."
Without even the awareness of having done it, I naturally yielded control of the body to her.
And in that exact instant, my body was shoved into Pig's mouth.
Ah.
Too late…?
That was when I learned, firsthand, what it felt like to speak from the bottom of consciousness.
"Far too late."
Shining White, now piloting my body, stated it flatly.
"Finally giving it back to me."
As she spoke, my body had already gone soft and yielding, almost like pudding.
For a brief moment I registered how unbearably stifling it was to experience the world only through Shining White's eyes and ears—then memory supplied the reason my body had gone soft.
When the vampire elder had absorbed a human whole, my body had looked exactly like this.
Neither liquid nor solid, but something in between.
I didn't care to remember it, but in that state I could break down everything I touched and make it mine.
"GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!"
In other words, the instant Pig tried to chew and lick me, its tongue, teeth, and gums were absorbed straight into my body.
Pig writhed, screaming, trying to spit me out.
The more it struggled, the more of its oral cavity simply became mine.
It staggered for a long while before Shining White finally thrust a hand up, seized its brain, and forced it to stop moving.
It wasn't dead. Pig was far too tenacious for that. This much wouldn't kill it.
Shining White pushed her hand out through the shell of Pig's skull, solidified the body properly again, and tore free through the head, ripping her way out of Pig entirely.
…Huh.
She fought a lot more brutally than I'd imagined.
I mean, I hadn't even known I could do something like that.
"…S-rank monster Pig… has been eliminated…?"
Sky stared at "me" and blurted the words like her brain had shorted out.
…And the way "I" looked at Sky in return was… impure.
As if she meant to kill her.