Chapter 125: Maus.
Chapter 125: Maus.
A dusky night. The hour when all are deep in sleep.
I quietly slipped out and made my way into the sewers, where the darkness lay thick.
Perhaps it was because the temperature had dropped with the night.
The air in the sewer, which had felt strangely tacky even this morning, had moved beyond unpleasant to the point of actually hindering my movements.
I wondered if this was what it would feel like to fall into the mucus flowing through the center of the drainage system.
Every movement met resistance, as if I were swimming through water, leaving me with a sense of profound discomfort.
It was the sensation of sticky slime clinging to my entire body, as if it were trying to embrace me.
Rather than trying to shake off the cloying sensation, I delved deeper into it.
As I moved forward bit by bit, everything around me was swallowed by the dark.
The noise from the upper world that dominated the sewers.
The spatial vibrations that twisted the foundations.
The light that filtered down through minute cracks.
The movements of the creatures nesting underground.
All of it was swallowed by the silty darkness.
All that remained was the heat and the pulse generated by my own body.
Thump.
Thump.
As the absence of surroundings grew, the sound of my heartbeat grew louder as well.
And that sound illuminated the vicinity like a lantern.
In a darkness where one cannot prove they are alive because they can feel nothing, it was the sole means of proving the existence of my consciousness.
Within that recursive proof—where I myself prove my own existence—I continued to move forward.
For what purpose?
I had experienced this somewhere before.
Moving forward was my will.
My consciousness began to drift.
As if an endless slumber were calling to my ego.
As if a body steeped in fatigue were fleeing into sleep.
It was an essential element for maintaining oneself. A natural action.
However, this was different.
My body was not fatigued.
Nor was my consciousness demanding rest.
I was being forcibly pulled into the darkness.
An endless fall.
A plunge of consciousness.
Thump.
As even the pulse that lit the darkness was swallowed by the night, heading toward a void where I would lose myself...
I fell asleep.
* * *
"Hup."
My head slipped from where it was leaning against The Wall, and I jolted awake.
...Did I doze off?
I hadn't intended to sleep tonight because I had business to attend to, but it seemed I had drifted off before I knew it.
How long had I been out?
I pulled out my phone to check the time, and the screen flickered to life.
2:00 AM.
I hadn't slept that long.
Thinking I could still head out now, I pushed myself up from my spot and looked around.
The room was filled with a silence that made the commotion of the previous night feel like a lie.
The only thing lingering in the quiet room was the sound of low, steady breathing.
The breaths were even, and the pulses I sensed were stable, so they were almost certainly asleep. Still, just in case, I moved to the side and quietly looked down at them.
Eyes closed into thin lines.
Ribcages rising and falling beneath thin blankets.
Faint smiles etched on their lips, as if they were having happy dreams.
Those three points applied to both Baek Si-hyun and Han A-bin.
If there was one difference, it was that Baek Si-hyun was excessively stiff.
Even Han A-bin had kicked her feet out, perhaps finding the pilled blanket itchy, but Baek Si-hyun was sleeping primly with both hands folded over her chest.
"I wish she were that well-behaved normally."
After muttering that to myself, I quietly slipped out of the room.
I hadn't received a definitive guarantee that they were asleep, but if my disciples had reached a level of skill where they could even regulate their heart rates, then it was only right to let myself be fooled.
As I passed the room where the children were sleeping, the sight of them caught my eye.
Perhaps the floor was cold, as the four of them were huddled together, seeking each other's warmth.
Even from a distance, I could tell their breathing and pulses were uneven.
...Come to think of it, this is the first time I've seen them sleeping.
For some reason, I had been falling asleep early ever since coming here, so I hadn't seen this scene once.
...I should probably buy more blankets. Cotton-filled ones, if possible.
I doubted such things were sold in Nanjido, and bringing them to this hideout would take considerable effort, but seeing those children made me feel it was necessary.
Engraving that thought into my mind, I left the hideout.
Pop.
As I stepped out, the sound of a bubble rising and bursting in the wastewater at the center reached my ears.
In the morning, such a sound would be drowned out by the vibrations of the earth and the gurgling of the pipes. But now, with all other noise swallowed by the night, only the sound of bubbles and the churning wastewater filled the sewer.
Even in Nanjido, 2:00 AM meant most people had gone to sleep. Even those living in the slums were human, after all.
With that thought, I walked through the sewer.
Pop. Thud. Pop. Thud.
As I walked, a strange harmony emerged.
Bubbles burst between the sounds of my boots hitting the ground, and the sound of my boots mingled between the bursting bubbles.
Of course, the rate at which the bubbles burst wasn't perfectly consistent, but it was enough to enjoy the rhythm.
"Hmm. Hmm. Hmm."
I hummed to myself as I stepped forward.
I felt strangely refreshed.
A peculiar sense of exhilaration, as if this place were blessing me. Enjoying that feeling, I ventured deeper into the sewer.
Searching for a place where no one was. A place where no one could come.
A place where my hammer wouldn't reach others if things went south.
Because the person I was about to meet was that dangerous.
I hadn't expected to meet him this soon, though.
"Well, nothing for it. Might as well handle this quickly since it's come to this."
It wasn't something that could be solved by putting it off.
I didn't know why she was here, but as long as Yumil was in Nanjido, it was obvious she and Baek Si-hyun would clash.
It would be better to coordinate beforehand to minimize the conflict.
I didn't know how a simple villain hunt and a field trip to the underworld for my disciples had gotten so tangled up.
The Society, Nanjido residents, villain groups, and even a traitor from the Management Bureau. Any one of those would be a headache, but all of them at once?
Pop. Tap. Pop. Tap.
The sound of water droplets continued to calm my mind.
They say natural sounds that follow a rhythm are good for mental health.
In the past, I had tried to prove that theory with the sound of rain and Self-Propelled Artillery fire, but all I got was muddy rain and terrible tinnitus, so I hadn't believed it.
But now that I was experiencing the truth of that theory in real-time, it was clear there had been a major flaw in my past experiment.
Was the artillery the problem?
Perhaps because the surroundings were so quiet, such useless thoughts swirled in my head.
My legs had long since been moving subconsciously to the rhythm of the bubbles, and other stimuli had been swallowed by the darkness of the sewer.
All that remained was mental contemplation.
So, it was only natural for my mind to wander toward idle thoughts.
At least it was better than my thoughts turning negative.
"Maybe I should make those disciples of mine study for the college entrance exams."
How much time had passed since I started walking? Just as my thoughts turned to worrying about my disciples' brains...
The sound of bursting bubbles stopped, and the shadows before me began to move as if they were alive.
He's here.
Realizing that what I had been waiting for had arrived, I stopped walking.
"Quilp. Stop hiding and come out."
I thought I had spoken quite loudly, but the sound that left my mouth was as faint as a mosquito's buzz.
Then, I waited for about two or three seconds. He certainly wasn't there, yet it was certain he would be.
Vwoom.
With a sound like a vibrating string, a tremor in the air.
"Greeting. Responding to call. Quilp arrived. O Savior. Business?"
Letting out a mosquito-like voice just like mine, a rat beastman appeared before me.
He held sword-breakers in a reverse grip in both hands and wore a black robe—the typical appearance of an assassin from a fantasy novel.
Emerging from the shadows, he turned his head slightly toward me, his eyes glowing with a green light.
That green light shone in the darkness, yet it did not escape the confines of his hood.
The only thing the green light illuminated was a pointed snout with chipped front teeth.
That grotesqueness would have been enough to strike terror into anyone who encountered it blindly in the dark, but the thought crossing my mind was entirely different.
...What's with the way he talks?
"I thought your brain was healed?"
I had even smuggled out Oxymoron’s blood, a literal panacea, to fix that.
"Language ability unrecoverable. Degeneration confirmed."
What kind of nonsense is this?
"Can you even work like that?"
"Problem."
Whoosh.
The sound of a vibrating string.
He vanished from before my eyes.
"None."
Simultaneously, I felt the cold touch of a blade against my neck.
Quilp, having moved behind me at an imperceptible speed, held a dagger to my throat.
It wasn't that he was fast like the Thunder God.
Nor had he moved through space like Oxymoron’s nurses.
Quilp had been there from the beginning.
This was the trait of the O-Rank Mutant assassin, Quilp, which the higher-ups of humanity had discovered after countless sacrifices.
As long as a human-sized shadow exists, Quilp exists in all places.
At first glance, it sounds like teleportation or a power similar to the Lord of Infinite Castles' Pseudo-Otherworld, but it was a power of a different caliber.
If The Enemy is a teleporter, you can land a hit by attacking the entire range they can move to. They have to move to one of those spots, after all.
However, even if you attack every single place where a shadow exists, Quilp will not be harmed. For Quilp is there, yet he is not.
The research team said something about quantum mechanics, observers, and parallel worlds... but this is how I understood it:
As long as a shadow exists, Quilp can never exist in a place where he would be at a disadvantage.
The solution was simpler than one might think, but since Quilp’s own combat power was immense, there was also the problem of having your head taken by a dagger before you could even think of the solution.
That was why that monster was still alive.
That said, there was no way I would lose in close-quarters combat.
Clang.
The sound of a dagger and a hammer colliding.
The dagger had flown in without delay, but I had parried it subconsciously.
"Hm? Apology. This one. No hostile intent."
Hmph. I didn't intend to parry it either.
"Ah, sorry. Just a reflex."
I couldn't help it; that string-vibrating sound acted as a trigger. I had beaten conditioned reflexes into my body countless times to react automatically whenever I heard that start-up sound.
This very action was the countermeasure found by melee specialists like myself or the Heavenly Sword.
There were a few more methods besides this, so a top-tier Hero wouldn't lose their head to Quilp.
Anyway, putting all that aside, I hadn't come here to fight Quilp....
"Do you have time to talk?"
"Possible."
Good.
I leaned against a nearby wall and continued.
"First, let me ask this. Why are you guys here?"
"Question. Incomprehensible."
"I'm asking why you and Yumil came to Nanjido. Fine, let's say Yumil has her reasons; she's always wandering around. But Quilp, why did you crawl in here the moment you recovered?"
Yumil was one thing; it wasn't like her to stay in one place.
But why did Quilp, an Executive, come?
"Purpose. Kidnapping Kim Tae-jun and rehabilitation exercise."
Quilp spoke calmly, as if he felt no need to hide anything.
Rehabilitation aside, it was Kim Tae-jun after all.
Well, Elder Li had mentioned attacking Kim Tae-jun's kids, so it was somewhat expected.
"What do you plan to do with him after the kidnapping?"
"Kim Tae-jun. Management Bureau high-ranking official. Much information. Society's gain. Yumil’s side. Use said information to attack Management Bureau high command."
Something sounded off.
"Is Yumil acting independently of The Society?"
"Affirmative. Yumil. Submitted proposal. Suggested alliance."
"And The Society wasn't interested at first?"
"Affirmative."
Hearing that, I rested my hand on my chin and fell into thought.
So it was like this: Yumil wanted to shake up The High Command by kidnapping Kim Tae-jun, much like I had done a long time ago.
However, Yumil couldn't kidnap Kim Tae-jun alone, so she asked The Society for help. The Society judged it would be beneficial and dispatched one of The 13 Seats.
...Thinking about it now, my suspicion that Kim Tae-jun was being targeted by the Black Marauder wasn't a delusion.
Hearing the full story of the incident, it was a decent plan.
With this, I would have information to shake the Management Bureau’s high command, and since even Quilp was deployed, there was no way the operation would fail.
Except for one thing.
"I commissioned the information, so why are you guys intercepting it...?"
The fact was that securing Kim Tae-jun was information I had commissioned from The Society.
This was getting a bit ridiculous....
Perhaps he heard my muttering.
"Savior. Suggestion."
Quilp spoke to me.
"Yeah."
"Management Bureau commission. Essential?"
"No, not exactly. But it's better to succeed if possible."
Since money and performance records were on the line.
Not for me, but for my disciple.
"Society 13 Seats. Suggestion exists."
Hmm? A suggestion.
"Let's hear it."
When I replied, Quilp tucked his weapons away.
"Requesting standby."
Leaving those words, he pulled out a small plastic rod that glowed green.
Holding it in his right hand, Quilp brought the rod to his neck.
Crunch.
He plunged the rod straight into his neck.
Simultaneously, the green light from the rod intensified.
"Duration: 7 minutes and 53 seconds. Let's talk quickly, Savior."
Suddenly, Quilp’s speech became perfectly normal.
Was it some kind of medicine infused with a spell?
"You go first."
I didn't have any particular thoughts at the moment.
"Then, a suggestion. We only need to rip out his brain. How about you take the body?"
Was this a suggestion or just rat-talk?
"Do you think that makes any sense?"
"Yes, I know it doesn't. It was just a brief joke."
Didn't you say you didn't have much time?
Before that rebuke could leave my mouth, he continued.
"Then, I have a question, Savior. Between upholding justice and performing this mission—which takes priority?"
There was no need to even ask.
"Upholding justice."
That was my grand principle.
"Then hand him over to us. We will repay you with information of equal value. Even if we have to grind his brain to get it."
"What about the mission? Do you think the Management Bureau will just say, 'Oh, I see,' if I fail and tell them, 'Yeah, I decided to do that'?"
"I'll even provide a reason for the mission failure that will make them think it couldn't be helped."
Ho.
Now we're talking.
"Tell me more."
I faced Quilp with a smile.