How Strong Are You, Among Humans?
"Ughk—hhak!? K-ck… haak!? Haak!?"
Celine let out a groan of agony, and then, as if her throat had sealed shut, she abruptly tipped into hyperventilation.
I was no better. The crushing terror bearing down on my entire body left me kneeling on the floor, unable to do a single thing.
Rebelling, gripping a gun—even simply breathing…
"…Ah, I see. My apologies. I've grown somewhat more emotional than usual, and it seems I've hurt you."
The moment the monster offered a candid apology to the two of us, looking for all the world like we might drop dead on the spot, the suffocating fear of death that had colonized the air vanished as if it had all been a lie.
"Cough! Cough!!…"
"Hhaah… hhaa…"
As soon as her breathing returned, Celine collapsed prone on the floor, coughing until even drool spilled from her mouth, while I took long, deep breaths and willed my pounding heart back down.
"Are you alright?"
At the voice that came suddenly from behind me, along with a hand settling on my shoulder, a chill crawled up my spine and I jolted violently.
"Hiik!?"
Thwack!
Spinning around, I instinctively slapped the hand away, then—still on my knees—scrambled across the floor on all fours, putting as much distance as I could between myself and the monster.
The monster stared blankly at its own rebuffed hand for a moment, then turned its characteristically expressionless face toward me in silence.
The bloodlust had drained away, but when I met those unfathomably deep crimson eyes, fear surged through me all over again.
The one small mercy was that I seemed to have built up some tolerance, because I'd at least regained enough of my wits to think rationally.
Re-reinforcements…!
Ting!
With a violent shift in my thinking, sparks burst from the monster's flank.
In the blink of an eye, something had streaked toward the monster at high speed and been deflected away—I barely registered it at all.
At the thunderclap that erupted from the radio, I realized that reinforcements had arrived—and that the sparks a moment ago had been the product of a sniper's shot.
And simultaneously, that this flawless ambush had been swatted aside like nothing at all.
The monster turned its listless, careless gaze toward the direction the sniper round had come from, then murmured low.
"Ahh… it hasn't even been that long since we parted, and I already miss him. Come to think of it… it's nearly time to make his dinner…"
…He?
Rumble… FWOOMP, boom!
Something rolled into the building, then erupted, spewing smoke in every direction.
My chance.
I kicked off the ground in an instant, hauled up Celine—who was still completely out of it—and dove behind a pillar.
"Hhh…"
Even propped up against me, Celine stayed unresponsive, drool trailing from her slack mouth.
Why?
Fair enough that I'd been knocked off my feet by the appearance of an unknown monster—but I couldn't understand why she, a Rank-A, still hadn't pulled herself out of the shock.
…Could it be… the Parasite cells…?
There was no evidence, but a gut instinct was telling me exactly that.
The moment the monster appeared, the Parasite cells injected inside me—not my human survival instinct, but those cells—had pulsed and writhed.
Maybe it was precisely because Celine's awakening rate was even higher than mine that she was reacting like this.
It was pure conjecture, but I had a strange, unshakable certainty about it.
Hissssss…
The smoke gradually thinned, and before I knew it, three agents had the monster surrounded in a perfect circle.
I realized these were the Rank-A operatives who'd been promised—but I couldn't understand why, even as the fog cleared, none of them was striking first.
Then I saw the terror and dread etched into their faces, and the situation made sense.
The monster had retracted its killing intent, yes—but that overwhelming weight and dread still saturated the air.
If my earlier hypothesis was right, then perhaps the Rank-A agents, with their high awakening rates, were sensing a fear far greater than anything the rest of us could perceive.
If so, it was understandable that they couldn't simply charge in.
…Wait. Only three?
Presumably the Rank-B operatives were standing by in the perimeter, braced for other Parasites that might join the fray—and the remaining one… was the Rank-A agent who'd just taken that sniper shot?
"Tch…"
One of the agents leveled a katana at the monster, muttering hoarsely in Japanese.
Yoshimatsu.
I'd only seen her once in the past, but she was a heavyweight—ranked within the top ten of all Rank-A agents, no less, for having killed two Lukes.
The other two weren't in the top ten either, but they were well-known top-tier agents, familiar by face if nothing else.
And even they couldn't bring themselves to attack a monster that had yet to unfurl so much as a single tentacle—standing there, utterly defenseless, to this very moment.
"This is nothing like the briefing!? You said Luke-class, you sons of bitches! That thing—that thing… that's at least a high-tier, minimum!?"
"High-tier? You're kidding me."
"Is this really the time to be arguing? We can't request backup from HQ again! Shut up and focus!"
Korean, Japanese, English—each speaking a different tongue, all of them too busy cursing their circumstances to coordinate.
"The other Rank-A who was supposed to be on-site is…"
Yoshimatsu's eyes darted—and when they locked onto mine as I peeked out from between the pillars, her brow slammed into a scowl.
"Tch…!"
Then she spotted the second agent lying unconscious beside me, seemed to piece the situation together, and readied her blade again.
Through all of it, the monster watched the spectacle before it with drowsy, half-lidded eyes—then slowly raised a hand.
Clack. Shing. Tap.
Even that one simple gesture was enough to steep the agents in fear; they reflexively re-gripped their respective weapons and readied themselves to lunge at a moment's notice.
"I have a question."
At the monster's absurdly courteous conduct and question, the air across the entire floor went numb for a beat.
"…What is it, Parasite?"
Helena—Western, like the thing itself—asked heavily, her voice steeped in tension.
Sharpening my vision for an instant with Parasite cells, I could see the monofilament wire of the gloves fitted over her palms trembling, ever so faintly.
Every single one of these Rank-A agents could go toe-to-toe with a Luke—a Parasite that transcended humanity.
It was a rank you couldn't reach unless you'd killed at least a high-tier Knight or Luke, or racked up achievements on par with such a kill.
They had high Parasite-cell awakening rates, of course—and like Celine, each of them possessed a unique ability born of that awakening.
Only a handful in a thousand of the Rank-D agents churned out ever managed to climb to Rank-A, which said everything about how brutally hard it was to ascend by strength alone.
And agents like these… were this terrified… what in God's name was that monster?
"How strong are you, among humans?"
"Are you shitting me? What the hell would we know about tha—"
As the Korean agent, Lee Si-young, began spitting profanity at the monster's inscrutable question, Helena stretched out a hand to cut her off, took a single step forward, and posed a question of her own.
"And if we tell you?"
"I won't kill you. I had no intention of killing you from the start. You'll lose your memories, but I intend to erase only today's events—so there's no need to worry. No aftereffects, either. I promise."
The monster rolled its world-weary, exhausted eyes toward Helena and said it all, deadpan.
"That sounds an awful lot like, if you felt like it, you could kill every last one of us."
"If I put it that way… would that upset you?"
Astonishingly, the monster asked with caution.
If this were all an act of provocation, why would it bother with such theater at this point? It didn't add up.
"…What do you mean, you had no intention of killing us from the start?"
Regardless, Helena—the de facto leader—coolly kept trying to extract information from the monster.
"I made a promise to my lover. That I would avoid killing humans whenever possible. But you attacked first, so even if I did kill you, it wouldn't be a violation. …Let me say it once more. If you answer my questions about me obediently, and quietly lose your memories, I won't kill you. If you can't do that… then I'm sorry, but I'll have no choice. …So—your answer?"
"Ha! Negotiation? Is this bastard completely insane?"
"So you and the Koreans can occasionally see eye to eye."
"That's not gonna happen… I mean, giving intel to your sworn enemies is insane on its own, and honestly? I don't think you'd actually let us walk out of here intact."
Yoshimatsu and Lee Si-young each gave their answers to the monster's question, and Helena, though she worded hers more diplomatically, clearly shared the same view.
"I see… I understand. Your position is a reasonable one. That's a shame, then."
The corners of the monster's eyes drifted slowly downward, and somehow, inexplicably, it looked sad.
"If you wanted the intel that badly, you could've just killed us and eaten our brains, no?"
"I'm aware that's an option. But I had hoped to resolve this through conversation."
When the monster answered Si-young's sneering remark, everyone—without a word being said—visibly sank into the same numb bewilderment.
Conversation?
Between a Parasite and humans?
And the Parasite was the one proposing it?
…It's a performance. A performance to lull us into dropping our guard.
"Don't make me laugh!"
Enraged by words that made playthings of them all, Yoshimatsu lunged—and I heard the monster murmur, its face drained of everything.
"How disappointing."
Thud… rumble-roll… CRASH!
At the same instant, came the sound of something falling—and then an ownerless body crumpled limply to the floor with a tremendous clatter.
…Huh?
Watching the scene from a distance, I couldn't make sense of it at all.
Thanks to my enhanced vision, I'd caught the barest glimpse of something streaking past Yoshimatsu.
That was all.
The instant the shadow-like blur vanished, Yoshimatsu's head was lying on the floor—and naturally, the body it had abandoned collapsed after it.
All of it had happened in a span of time beyond mere seconds—in an interval no human being could ever hope to perceive.
Si-young's eyes went wide as she stared at the floor—at Yoshimatsu's face, twisted in stunned horror, blood seeping slowly from the severed stump and pooling across the ground.
"What the absolute fuck…"
Rustle.
Whether my eyes had simply grown accustomed to it, I caught a faint glimpse this time—I did see it.
But.
Even so.
Nothing changed.
…CRASH, KUUUUNG——!
Another Korean agent's corpse toppled in its wake.
"…Ha……ah…!"
Helena stared in open disbelief, and then barely forced out the air that terror had stolen from her lungs.
Her pupils trembled visibly—shaking with panic and fear both.
Swallowed whole by an indescribable dread, Helena stood rooted to the floor as if nailed there, unable to move, unable to do anything at all.
"I see… I understand now. So you were among the weaker humans, were you. That explains it."
The monster stroked its chin, exactly the way a human would, nodding slowly—and then one of the tentacles stirring behind its back extended toward Si-young's fallen head.
The tentacle split its maw wide, baring rows of grotesque teeth, and swallowed the agent's severed head from the floor.
Crunch-crunch… squelch, drip… ptoo!
After only a few chews, the monster's tentacle spat the half-liquefied, horrifically mangled head of Si-young back onto the ground, as if revolted by the taste.
The monster's own face was twisted too, like someone who'd bitten into something foul.
"I thought it might be interesting to eat a human again after so long… but it's disgustingly vile. You people are no longer my food. …Speaking of meals, I find myself craving his cooking again. Has his food become the only thing left that can satisfy my hunger…? That's not so bad. No—rather, it's good. A life of depending on him… truly, that's not bad at all."
The monster licked its lips and wore a look of rapture, as though savoring the memory of what it had just eaten.