74. My Buff is a Drug
74. My Buff is a Drug
Since it was best to come armed, I'd told Na Hee-yeon to bring her bow. With her chest protector on, her breasts were noticeably compressed.
That thing was amazing every time I saw it.
"Ugh..."
Na Hee-yeon couldn't even raise her head properly as she came out to walk with us.
"Wh-what's going on? Th-the person next to you is... Pang... Pang, right?"
"Please call me Lanfang."
"Uh, uhhuh. Lanfang. Explain to me too what's happening."
I'd given Na Hee-yeon a light explanation last time, like when the Geum Na-rin incident happened.
Even a light explanation would be enough for her to catch on.
"It's similar to back then. An Aberration attacked. This is a space like someone's dream."
"Huk."
Na Hee-yeon flinched.
The memory from that day seemed to resurface.
"I-I see. Someone's going through what I did..."
And she had no idea!
Na Hee-yeon's face flushed with embarrassment again.
"Hee-yeon, look at that."
"Huh?"
Dangle...
The moment she saw the corpse hanging dead in the hallway, the color drained from her face instantly.
"Th-that...!! Don't tell me they're dead!?"
"No. I told you this is a dream world. They're just dead inside the dream. Once we crush the cause, they'll come back to life like nothing happened. Won't even remember."
"I-I see... Hye-yong, you're so unbelievably calm even in this situation..."
"I've been through it a lot."
Watching Hye-yong speak so composedly, Hee-yeon thought to herself.
'I had a feeling, but... Hye-yong's been fighting things like this every single time. He really is amazing. Isn't he even scared? My heart still aches and my knees go weak whenever I think about back then... It feels like we live in different worlds.'
And then another precious friend came to mind.
"Ha-yoon! What happened to Ha-yoon?"
"I was already planning to check on her. She wasn't answering my calls."
"If Ha-yoon ended up like that too..."
"It's sad, but... we have to focus on crushing the cause."
Hee-yeon took the lead and headed straight for Ha-yoon's room.
Bang, bang, bang.
"Ha-yoon, Ha-yoon!!"
There was no answer from Seo Ha-yoon.
Beep, be-be-beep!
They must've been close friends, because they even knew each other's door codes.
Hee-yeon rushed into Seo Ha-yoon's room, found Ha-yoon lying on the bed, and breathed a sigh of relief.
"Phew, thank goodness."
Seo Ha-yoon didn't wake up despite all this chaos.
I didn't know if she was naturally a heavy sleeper or if it was the Virus's doing, but it seemed best to wake her up.
Hye-yong grabbed Ha-yoon's stomach and shook her, trying to wake her.
"Ha-yoon, Ha-yoon."
"Mmnya..."
She still won't wake up?
"Hee-yeon. Try tickling her."
"Uh, okay. Got it."
Tickle, tickle, tickle!
Na Hee-yeon started tickling Seo Ha-yoon's stomach with both hands.
"Heek, heek-heek, kyuub, heek-heek! Eee-hee-hee-hee!"
She twisted her body around while still lying down, making weird noises, but absolutely refused to open her eyes.
The second the tickling stopped, she went right back to sleeping peacefully.
Na Hee-yeon made a dumbfounded face.
"Sh-she doesn't usually sleep this deeply."
"Something's affecting her, probably. Let's leave her to sleep and go on our own."
"Alright... If she's sleeping quietly, she should be safe..."
Leaving Na Hee-yeon, who seemed reluctant, I stepped out of the girls' dormitory.
"What do we do? Even Hwa-ra is...!"
Na Hee-yeon had discovered Chae Hwa-ra's corpse by the stairs earlier, and she seemed to have taken quite a shock.
"What would be the best thing for us to do?"
"We have to look for clues. Things that'll help us find the Aberration."
"H-how?"
"First, we have to look around."
Hye-yong said that while looking at Mina, who was walking beside him.
He gave a chin-jerk gesture telling her to take the lead.
"Yeees― sir!"
Mina walked toward the path connecting the girls' dormitory to the lecture hall building.
The group followed behind her.
-
"Here, there, everywhere... nothing but corpses."
"I'm scared..."
Hee-yeon and Lanfang stuck close together, trembling.
It really was incredibly creepy.
Still, would things be different once we entered the school building?
I followed Mina deeper and deeper inside.
— Geuk, yeuk, kkeu, eouk.
'Sounds like I'm hearing a strange noise?'
Hye-yong quickly created a Hearing Concentration buff and listened more closely.
He noticed what sounded like moaning coming from the area called the self-study room.
Hye-yong immediately swapped to firearm-related buffs, flung open the door to the self-study room, and aimed his gun.
"Kkeu, kkueo...!"
"What are you doing!"
This whole area was dark, without a single flame.
Especially inside these dozens of self-study rooms, it was so dark you couldn't see an inch in front of you.
Hye-yong was about to create a Night Vision buff right then, but the black figure smashed through the window and bolted away.
Hye-yong dashed over and looked out the window, but he barely managed to catch the figure's receding back.
'The uniform. Shorts. Shorts are the girls' uniform...'
This facility's uniform doesn't include skirts.
Guys wear long pants, girls wear shorts with stockings or leggings, or sometimes just show bare legs.
He couldn't clearly see her hair length because of the darkness, but he definitely saw the flesh tone of her lower body.
Hye-yong approached the person the girl-shaped black figure had attacked.
'She's already dead.'
The victim was a first-year high-division girl named Han Su-ji.
A diligent student who'd stayed in the self-study room late to study, only to get viciously attacked by some crazy bitch.
'She died similarly to Choi Ah-young. Strangled, eyes open, utterly brutal.'
Hye-yong was certain.
That bastard who just bolted was the culprit who killed Choi Ah-young.
He didn't know about anything else, but that one thing was unforgivable.
'How dare she do that to Choi Ah-young, who gave me her first time and whom I'd never refuse when she asked me to do things for her!'
Mina, who'd come in with him and was observing the situation, interjected.
"She seems like an ordinary student originally... but it looks like she's possessed by the Virus."
Yeah.
I did have a gut feeling that capturing and beating down that thing was how this would end.
Still, we seemed to have gotten a clue as thin as a thread.
"Wh-what's going on?"
"Master— I mean, Mister Buffer?"
Hee-yeon and Lanfang, who'd followed a bit late, walked over toward Hye-yong.
Then they saw the dead body and flinched.
"Th-this person. She was strangled to death!"
"Up until now, everyone was hanging dead... what happened here?"
Hye-yong was thinking that part was odd as well.
Strangling a female student to death was the Virus's doing.
Then what about all the hanging marks all over the place?
Who did that?
KABOOM! KABOOM-BOOM-BOOM!!
Right then, a massive roar surged from the hallway where the lecture halls were.
"We have to go right now!"
Hye-yong created a Movement Speed buff and ran, all while buffing, to get eyes on the situation.
-
"Death row prisoner. State your prisoner number."
"Wh-what the."
A giant man garbed in what looked like stitched-together black leather.
If you run into him, he always asks one question.
What your prisoner number is.
"What's that supposed to mean? Who are you!"
When one male student challenged him aggressively, a noose materialized around his neck.
"Keu, keuk...!!"
And then, he was hanged in midair.
He couldn't even think of resisting.
No matter what he did, the noose just kept tightening around his throat.
Squeeeeeze...
Crunch!
And just like that, death.
One student became a hanging corpse.
The man dressed as an Executioner, his hood pulled down low, walked past the dead man as if he held no lingering attachment.
BOOM-BA-BANG!!
At that moment, three heavy bullets exploded against the back of the man's head.
Sparks flew from the man's head, and he staggered for an instant from the impact.
The one who'd scattered anti-tank armor-piercing rounds from her arm was the firearms instructor with hair dyed red.
It was Baek Yun-seo.
CHUNK-CLANK!!
Her right arm transformed, becoming a viciously shaped minigun.
"I figured something was noisy, so I came to check... You've gone and done something horrifying here. How many students did you kill and string up?"
Baek Yun-seo strode forward, using that as a threat against the man.
As with every Awakened who'd fallen to her, the natural response was to let your guard down at the sight of a gun.
The man opened his mouth as if it were nothing.
"Death row prisoner."
"Bullshit. What the hell kind of bastard are you, anyway."
"State your prisoner number."
Tch.
Baek Yun-seo clicked her tongue.
DRRRRRRRRR!!
Moments later, the minigun spun and began spewing bullets like a storm.
BOOM-BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BANG!!
She thought this much would at least push him back a few steps and stopped firing.
But the man was walking toward her, looking completely unharmed.
'What the...'
CHUNK-CLANK!
Baek Yun-seo began priming every heavy weapon and round attached to her body.
But then, a Debuff suddenly landed on her, leaving her unable to move a muscle.
[ Death Row Prisoner ]
You are a death row prisoner!
You cannot resist the Executioner who has drawn near!
"Kheuk... This is?"
Her body reverted to its original state.
"Death row prisoner. State your prisoner number."
"Go fuck yourself."
Instantly, a noose wrapped around Baek Yun-seo's neck.
It tightened and hoisted her into the air.
"Keu... heuk...!"
She paniced at the loss of breath.
Due to her bodily modifications, the inner skin of her neck was made of a new material that rapidly hardened upon impact, forming armor.
Being strangled by a mere noose was absurd.
'I can't... breathe? From something like this?'
She felt her consciousness blurring.
'At this rate, what was the point of hiring me.'
This entire incident was far beyond anything she understood.
-
"Wh-what the hell."
What Hye-yong discovered upon arriving at the scene were two corpses hanging in midair and shell casings strewn thickly across the floor.
'Th-this outfit is.'
Baggy pajamas.
An outfit Hye-yong had seen very often.
Sure enough, the person hanging dead from a rope was Baek Yun-seo.
'Even Baek Yun-seo was done in? This person was definitely an Awakened Reaper, half her body's a cyborg, they said she was insanely strong.'
As he stood there stunned, Mina, who seemed to have followed using a sort of teleportation, observed the situation and spoke.
"Why are you making such a serious face?"
"This person... they said she was incredible, and she was taken out brutally."
"In the end, things related to the Virus are hard to solve using only the characters' own power. No matter how strong they are, they're utterly helpless against it."
"Is that so?"
"If the characters' inherent strength could defeat the Virus, I would never have asked for your help, Creator-nim."
That did make complete sense.
"You, Creator, are the key card. If we can just figure out the Virus's traits and cooperate with the characters, we can definitely crush it!"
"Yeah. I need to get my head on straight."
The things Baek Yun-seo fired weren't Mana Bullets, judging by the intense smell of gunpowder.
The lingering scent suggested she hadn't been killed long ago.
Let's chase after it quickly.
-
Stomp, stomp.
Not long after running down the hallway, the giant man's back came into view.
He gave off a different vibe from the Masked Man.
Like an assassin, his face was deeply hidden under his hood, but his back was only covered by what looked like suspenders, making the contours of his small back muscles clearly visible.
'The murderer is a girl... but this guy is massively inhuman too.'
Either way, he didn't look like a being that belonged here.
Hye-yong was a bit scared, but thinking 'Who'll do it if I don't?' he shouted out toward the man.
"Hey there! Stop!!"
Slide.
The man turns around.
"Th-that. Those corpses! Did you do all of that?"
"Death row prisoner."
...Death row prisoner?
Hye-yong decided to listen to what the man had to say more carefully.
"State your prisoner number."
The hell is a prisoner number now.
'Huh?'
While he was thinking, as the man drew nearer, a Debuff was placed on him.
[ Death Row Prisoner ]
You are a death row prisoner!
You cannot resist the Executioner who has drawn near!
'Executioner...?'
The corpses all looked like they'd been hanged to death, so the keyword Executioner had appeared.
'He sure looks the part.'
He gave off the impression he'd be good at stringing up prisoners.
'Anyway, I really can't move a single finger.'
They said you couldn't resist, and it felt like I couldn't move at all.
'It seems like I can at least talk.'
What would be the right thing to say?
Flinch!
'Think, think. Think!'
But the man kept closing in with every passing second.
"If you will not speak..."
"Creator-nim. What are you doing?"
The other kids couldn't keep up with Hye-yong's speed when he received the Movement Speed buff at full power, but Mina alone could sense his presence and stick to him via something like teleportation.
'Nice, Mina! Buy me some time!'
Mina glanced around for a moment, then looked at the Executioner with admiration.
"Ah. It's a Virus."
"...Death row prisoner."
"Huh? I'm not a death row prisoner, though?"
"State your prisoner number."
Mina put a finger to her chin and deliberated before speaking.
"Mmm... Number 183?"
"No such prisoner number exists."
"Eht."
No sooner had the Executioner finished speaking than a noose was placed around Mina's neck, and she shot up into the air as if being dragged away by a ghost.
Beneath her formal skirt, Mina's pale legs thrashed wildly right before my eyes.
"Ghak... hgk. Kck, kck... Gahk!"
Squeeeeeeze!
Snap!
"Hyiiieek!!"
With the sound of her neckbone snapping, Mina's body went limp.
While Mina had bought time, I'd thankfully managed to think of something to say.
The man stepped almost directly in front of me and asked.
"State your prisoner number."
"J-just a moment, I, I'm not a death row prisoner."
"I will not ask twice."
Damn, why's he so uncompromising?
Remembering what to say had all become pointless.
Hye-yong desperately extended the line of thought he'd had moments earlier.
A way to escape this situation!
Likely because he'd strained his brain to the max, one idea flashed through his head.
'Could it be...'
This is inside the Inner World.
This kind of Buff might actually work properly here.
[ Good Citizen ]
This person is not a death row prisoner, but a good citizen!
'Using the exact same format as the Debuff the Virus placed...!'
Hye-yong cast the 「Good Citizen」buff on himself.
And then he let his mouth run.
"L-l-look closely! I am a good citizen!"
"..."
Beneath the darkness of the hood, eyes swirling with a vivid heterochromatic light stared into Hye-yong's eyes.
[ Death Row Prisoner ]
[ Death Row ]
[ ]
And then, the Death Row Prisoner debuff vanished.
The man turned around without another word.