Chapter 77: Song of the Faceless Ones (1)
Chapter 77: Song of the Faceless Ones (1)
【For humans have no faces】
A terrifying voice rang out, flatly contradicting the words spoken just a moment ago.
The activation of an Otherworld Erosion was serious enough, but of all things, it had to be one that encompassed the broad category of "humanity." I clamped my hand over my mouth to stifle the curse threatening to burst out and scanned my surroundings.
"If you two are alright, say some—"
As I turned my head, the words died in my throat. Something hideous was there.
A creature wrapped in a pinkish hide, with two transparent glass beads flecked with black dots embedded in its body, and holes bored into it here and there.
Its general silhouette resembled mine, but the way the terminals of its flesh branched out into five at the ends of its limbs triggered an instinctive sense of revulsion.
Seeing that catastrophe, I understood the nature of this Otherworld Erosion.
The "face" mentioned in the sentence did not refer to a simple body part attached above a person's shoulders.
'What is a human?'
It was a question about the very essence of being. Finding no suitable answer and feeling sickened, I turned my gaze away.
The only thing I knew for certain was that humans did not look like that.
Besides, wasn't there a non-human entity here? He should be able to resolve this mental attrition.
Trusting in him, I turned my head.
I saw a wriggling.
A white, nauseating wriggling of loathsome beings.
The sight made my internal organs throb with a strange delight.
Have you ever seen a dog dying on the side of the road after being hit by a car?
Or perhaps a scene where a neglected Sentient Being dies and becomes a nursery for mindless creatures, giving birth to hundreds of thousands of new lives?
Where tiny, fingernail-sized entities blanket the intellect, coating the surface, devouring the creature's past to become a black mist.
An immense being possessing such aesthetic beauty displayed a structured existence of chaos, as if collapsing in full bloom, and opened its slimy, deep orifices.
"Did you not know from the beginning that it would not be so simple?"
A buzzing sound layered over itself endlessly to form that voice.
The answer to the question of whether a Mutant was human was "yes."
As the King of Decay with compound eyes opened the holes from which sound erupted, a black mist bloomed and enveloped me.
The endless, overlapping rustling sounds made my ears ache.
Scratchy little feet and the fur of mindless beings tickled my skin.
Countless sensations began to coat me, as if eroding my very existence.
Thanks to that interference, I couldn't focus on trying to think, so I swung my Median Tentacle on my right side to escape the situation.
Whoosh.
My proud tentacle, boasting its red muscles, sliced through the black mist.
The tiny entities scattered.
Thanks to that, the meaningless stimuli blocking my thoughts dispersed, allowing me to resume my train of logic.
Let’s think.
What just happened?
To avoid the black mist chasing me again, I spring-loaded my lower spinal membranes and leaped backward, observing the two humanoid entities.
One was clutching its face and wailing with a strange sound, while the other was hovering indecisively, not knowing what to do.
It seemed those two humanoid lifeforms were not enemies. Even in this chaotic situation, they showed no sign of attacking me.
Thinking logically, were they Han A-bin and Irua?
The reason they were acting strangely was likely that they, like me, had lost their reason after seeing forms that didn't look human.
Watching from a step back, it was quite an amusing situation.
This was the first time I’d experienced an Otherworld Erosion that so purely stimulated only the mind.
Even though those two couldn't maintain a human archetype, they moved their bodies freely and acted as if the mist of black abominations covering them didn't even exist.
"Then are these Black Mist Entities hallucinations?"
A loud, beautiful, and sharp sound flowed from my mouth, which was elegantly recessed vertically.
To think I couldn't even control the pitch of my own muttering. I must be excited as well.
I struck away the swarm of Black Mist Entities trying to cling to me again with my terminals.
Even if I recognized them as hallucinations existing only for me, if they were this realistic, they might as well be real.
I had a lot to think about, and their constant clinging was a distraction.
I felt mentally stabilized as I wrapped my radiating terminals around my body and tightened them.
It was a posture humans often took—restraining oneself with one's own thick terminals.
Through this, I cleared away stray thoughts and simply observed the unfolding situation.
* * *
After some time had passed.
The creature covered in pink hide, presumably Han A-bin, had either lost consciousness or stopped moving, blocking the transparent beads with its hide.
The massive proteinaceous heap, presumably Irua, quietly collapsed its colony and ceased movement on the spot.
Both of them remained hideous in appearance, but at least the situation wasn't getting any worse.
Aside from the black Black Mist Entities that kept flying toward me, the situation was quiet and uneventful.
This situation was far too strange.
How peculiar.
Why is nothing happening?
I waited and waited, but there were no signs of anything further occurring.
No enemies attacked, and the Otherworld Erosion didn't intensify.
There were about two possibilities.
First, the one who deployed the Otherworld Erosion has no combat capability and is simply waiting for our minds to collapse.
Second, the Otherworld Erosion wasn't created to target us, and we were merely caught in it by chance.
Either way, I needed data to verify….
Should I try moving for now?
I had been trying to expand my senses to find something suspicious for a while, but my condition was strangely poor.
A bizarre sensation, as if a fog had settled over my eight senses.
Among them, my time perception and spatial touch were particularly strange. It was as if I had only just learned how to use those senses.
Was it because this was a Contaminated Zone?
Having decided to move, I slowly shifted my body and peeled off my membranes.
Feeling the sensation of parched mucus tearing—I must have been sitting for quite a while—I moved my body bit by bit.
Buzz. Buzz.
These damn abominations.
Was it for the sake of realism? After I chased them away a few times, the frequency of their clinging decreased, but I continued to scatter them as I surveyed my surroundings.
A vast wasteland, and a sobbing sound heard from far away.
"Can you even be called human? A magical fluid that bloomed atop a corpse. You, who already died once in the basement."
An auditory hallucination woven from the buzzing sounds.
Enduring all of it, I wandered the wilderness in search of the cause of this bothersome Otherworld Erosion.
* * *
As the sun grew stronger and time passed, stray thoughts began to multiply.
Contaminated Zones weren't usually such annoying places; I wondered what on earth was going on.
Between meeting the Thunder God and everything else, it felt like incidents had been happening around me with strange frequency lately.
Perhaps because I wasn't in any great personal danger, no sense of urgency arose.
While the other two seemed to have had their very forms changed, I remained in my human form and had no trouble moving.
I did feel a bit like parts of my body weren't mine, but that was a common issue in an Otherworld Erosion.
"Seriously, where is it?"
An unusual lethargy hung over my body, and I felt heavy all over.
I needed to deal with the culprit quickly.
"It is because you are not human. A shell, draped in the corpse of a fallen Hero who succumbed to despair, pretending to be him."
On top of that, I didn't know why these auditory hallucinations were so noisy. They were just the usual things I heard, mixed with the sound of wings, so they were definitely hallucinations.
If the repertoire were at least diverse, it might be different, but it was all just things I'd heard before, so there was no interest or inspiration. If I were the type to break from such words, I wouldn't have endured this long in the first place.
"It wouldn't be a bad idea to write a report on this."
The title: On the Problems and Annoyances of Mental-type Otherworld Erosions. The content: I experienced it properly once, and it was total shit.
That sounded pretty good.
While I was at it, I could apply to change my Hero name as well.
If it got registered as curriculum material, I’d even get a bonus.
"How can one who defiled a Hero’s name have complaints about their own name?"
The quality of these hallucinations was incredible.
Was this also the influence of the Otherworld Erosion?
Reading my mind and digging into the most annoying parts? I really wished I could stop hearing that basement story.
They were hallucinations and inner thoughts I’d already heard and contemplated thousands, tens of thousands of times, so my mind wasn't going to break now, but they were still the kind of thing that was just plain irritating to listen to.
As I wandered aimlessly like that, a strange sensation arose.
A place where my instincts whispered, 'Don't go here!'
Given the lack of context for the thought, it was clearly the influence of mental manipulation.
"This is quite strong…."
An ordinary person probably wouldn't even realize they were caught in Mental Magic and would have turned away subconsciously.
But for me, it was nothing.
Using the ever-strengthening Mental Magic as a compass, I moved my body, and changes began to appear on the land that had seemed to stretch on forever.
Footprints, tire tracks.
Grass cut in a straight line.
Artificial evidence that someone was clearly using this for passage.
I lowered the sensory organs that had been attached to my head down to my body to grasp where they were headed.
"Is it there?"
A place where there was nothing.
However, once I clearly recognized that something was there, the suspicious points were caught vividly by my senses.
It was terrifyingly empty.
No smell, no air currents, no movement of anything, no time, no space.
A place alienated from everything.
Therefore, something was there.
"Shall we go?"
It might have nothing to do with the Otherworld Erosion. But this was the first time I’d found anything in this monotonous exploration.
I had no choice but to move forward.
How many minutes had passed since I started moving my body along the path?
Thump.
When I swung a terminal toward the empty air, it was repelled as if blocked by something.
"…It's here."
A place protected by protection magic, a barrier, or something similar.
Judging by how it even cut off my senses, it was clearly a very powerful shield.
Not that it mattered against my strike.
I twisted my body and gathered strength in my Median Tentacle. The tentacle glowed red, signaling that it had gathered power.
Recognizing that the internal muscles were sufficiently coiled, I released the force.
BOOM!
The terminal and the shield collided, creating a massive explosion.
It was only natural. What use was a shield like this against me, who could cleave the world?
Thinking so, I prepared to enter as soon as the dust settled, but…
"…What?"
The shield was perfectly intact. Not a single crack, exactly as it had been.
This couldn't be.
There was no way my strength wouldn't work.
For the first time since being swallowed by the Otherworld Erosion, an intense emotion flared up.
I twist my body.
I swing my terminal.
I collide with the shield.
Simply a repetition of that.
However, no matter how many times I did it, the result was the same.
I thought I had failed to control my strength. I thought the Otherworld Erosion was exerting some influence, so I ramped up my power.
But the result was the same.
My strength did not reach this shield. My strength had been defeated.
"What… happened?"
"That is your limit. Fake Hero. A monster in a human mask. Self-righteous justice."
"Shut up!"
I knew there was no point in shouting at an auditory hallucination. But I couldn't endure it without doing so.
This couldn't be.
I am Crimson★Hammer. A Hero of justice.
One who has reached the pinnacle of physical force, never defeated in strength….
…Crimson★Hammer?
I looked down at the thing on my right.
A beautiful tentacle, powerfully tempered with countless intertwined red muscles.
Even now, it was pulsing violently, boasting its exposed blood-colored muscle.
This was undoubtedly my pride. My weapon that had crushed countless enemies of humanity and protected the people.
But then why? Why is my Hero name Crimson★Hammer? Why 'Hammer'? Why a hammer?
My thoughts began to branch out.
As if something had been wrong from the start.
Old memories were of no help.
What mattered were the discrepancies and errors I’d experienced since the Otherworld Erosion.
Why hadn't my eight senses functioned normally? Why was my movement so uncomfortable? Why was my name 'Hammer'? There was no way to hold a hammer with this terminal.
The errors, piled one by one, gradually pointed in a certain direction. That what I had taken for granted from the beginning was wrong.
"Am I… not in a human form right now?"
From the start, I had naturally assumed my appearance was human.
But what if that was wrong?
Once I denied the common sense I’d taken for granted, my thoughts expanded rapidly.
Think. What does a human originally look like?
What does the terminal that grips a hammer look like?
How does it swing?
In my rapidly racing mind, someone's image surfaced.
The first abomination I had seen.
The hideous creature draped in pink hide, with the terminals of its tentacle organs divided.
For some reason, the moment I imagined that creature holding a hammer, I could understand it instantly. That that was the human form.
A madman laughing brightly while swinging a Golden Hammer.
I understood that that was me.
As my mind recognized its true form, my body, which had been forcibly altered by the Otherworld Erosion, defied the laws of the world to reclaim its original appearance.
Crrraaaaack!
Perhaps due to the sudden change that ignored the backlash of logic, bones snapped and blood sprayed from every orifice in my body, but I felt nothing but refreshed.
A sense of liberation, as if the fog in my head had been swept away.
In accordance with that, the black fly mists all vanished, and I picked up my hammer.
"Ah. Right, this is it."
The familiar sensation, the heavy weight of The Hammer, traveled up my hand.
I knew those tentacles lacked a certain tactile satisfaction.
I saw the glowing shield before my eyes.
"Now then. Shall we try this again?"
I took a step forward.