Chapter 116
Chapter 116
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 116
Chapter Title: The Infant in White
-----------------------------------------------------------------
A groaning sound came from somewhere. It was a woman’s voice. Among the masked figures was a woman.
Her eyes half-open, her mouth agape. Her body trembled convulsively. It was clear at a glance that she wasn’t normal.
“You picked the wrong person.”
Gailbans drew his sword. The path of retreat lay open, but he couldn’t move recklessly.
An unpleasant sensation swept over his body. He realized it was a wave of magic, but his response came a beat too late.
In an instant, his vision went dark. The alley vanished. The people blocking him vanished. What in the world had happened?
Flustered, he looked around. There was nothing. It was a world of pure white.
Was this magic? He’d faced mages on the battlefield before, but this was a phenomenon he’d never encountered.
As he wandered in all directions, he suddenly noticed his hands and feet growing faint.
“Hey! Get me out of here!”
He ran about shouting. His breath caught in his throat, driving him to the brink of madness. It was while he panted and kept yelling.
He saw a baby. In the entirely white world, a baby lay all alone, curled up naked.
The moment he saw the baby, his mind went blank. Even the terror of being cut off from the world melted away.
He walked slowly at first, then broke into a run. While running, he felt his legs disappear and jerked his head down.
His legs were really gone. They’d been cleanly severed below the knees.
There was no pain. The question didn’t linger long. Legs didn’t matter anymore. Gailbans crawled toward the baby.
The baby lay beneath his arms. It was a pristine baby—so pure that even touching it felt irreverent.
For a long while, he simply gazed at the baby’s face. He wanted for nothing. The greatest happiness was right here.
He felt hollow wondering why he’d struggled so desperately to survive, why he’d bothered chasing money. All joy was here.
The baby’s eyelids slowly lifted. They revealed pitch-black eyes, utterly devoid of whites, and they were utterly lovable.
“What do you want?”
The baby spoke. It was a voice so sweet it melted the soul.
He wanted to beg for more of that voice, to gaze longer, to stop time forever like this. But he couldn’t speak. His lips had melted together.
“What do you want?”
The baby asked again. He simply stared vacantly. At those black eyes, at that face that brought satisfaction just from beholding it.
How much time passed? A desire suddenly welled up in him. It was an abrupt impulse, an urge he couldn’t possibly resist.
He raised a hand and tore apart his fused lips. Ecstatic joy poured unbridled from his mouth.
“What do you want?”
The baby said.
He stared into the blackened pupils before opening his mouth wide. He had only one wish.
* * *
That’s enough of that. Belluna placed her clasped hands behind her head and gave a light tug. Her neck felt stiff.
The accumulated fatigue wouldn’t ease. She wanted to tell it all to hell and just leave. Of course, that feeling would never turn into action.
Sneaking out on her own would mean a chase with Stoa agents.
“How’s Hel?”
She uttered the nickname of Special Management Subject No. 11. Her colleague shrugged.
“The same.”
“Good.”
“They’re doing a winter-limited fish dish at that place we go to often. Wanna check it out?”
“You mentioned it a few days ago. More importantly, do we have time?”
“Nope. I asked knowing that. No time.”
Her colleague sighed and set down the papers. Just a year ago, she’d been full of vitality in her skin, but now she looked as dry and crumbly as bread left on the table for days.
“Doesn’t it feel like too many incidents have cropped up in the past year? So many unusual cases. Even digging through the old records, there’s never been anything like this.”
“That’s why the higher-ups are in a panic. Wondering if it’s some kind of omen. Rumor has it the number of root protrusions is increasing too.”
“What if we wake up one day and the world’s ended? I hear the literature mentions times like that.”
“That thing where a dragon turned a country upside down and a safe place became as dangerous as uncharted territory overnight? But if life keeps going like this, it wouldn’t be so bad. At least we could go outside.”
“Yeah. When was the last time we properly went out, aside from the mandatory sunlight hours?”
“Feels like three months.”
“We’re gonna age and die in here. Never even get married.”
“Snag yourself a decent researcher and tie the knot. Have kids here, set up house here. That’s how you become a grandma.”
“Don’t say creepy stuff like that.”
The clock overhead chimed. Time for the rounds, as always.
“Anything unusual?”
“Nope.”
Her colleague waved her off with a “good job.” She grabbed her record book and left the room.
She passed the short corridor and activated the partition. The wall rose, revealing a wider hallway. She started with the first room.
“Chris, how’re you feeling today?”
“You’re on duty today. It’s been a while, Belluna.”
“A while? We exchanged greetings two days ago.”
“Two days is plenty long.”
He was an old man who, if met outside, wouldn’t even warrant a glance.
Neat beard, unremarkable face—an ordinary grandpa. But this old man was a dangerous entity that couldn’t be released into the outside world.
“No unusual activity, so I’m off.”
“Put one woman in here. Or a young man, even.”
“I’ve told you that kind of talk is inappropriate.”
“Then you come in and keep me company. Seems like you can’t even go outside these days, you’re so busy.”
She furrowed her brow. She was supposed to view the subject as an experimental entity and deal with it emotionlessly, but it still made her blood boil every time.
Belluna raised her left hand and touched the device on the wall.
“Damn bitch.”
Chris bared his teeth as he spoke.
“See you next time.”
The mana density in the isolation chamber spiked temporarily. The old man’s head snapped back, and he collapsed to the floor.
No need to worry. It was an environment dangerous enough to send an ordinary person into a coma, but the lifeform inside would just faint briefly.
It was a body so bizarre it barely qualified as human.
“Bizarre body. That man’s the same.”
The words she muttered summoned memories from a week ago.
They were still vivid. The emergency alarm blared, the partition dropped, and an unknown power swirled within the isolation chamber.
She knew better than anyone the destructive force of manifested power.
It was a death sentence. No living person could endure inside there. Yet the man had emerged unscathed.
The raging power hadn’t touched him. When the rampage subsided and the alarm stopped, she was the first to enter the isolation chamber.
The shredded walls of the chamber. The moment she realized what that meant, she staggered back.
Her job was to observe and manage the monsters confined in the lab.
She’d seen countless beings that defied common sense. She was used to it. But that man transcended even those concepts.
“He’ll come today too.”
Belluna shook her head. She needed to focus and get to work. She made her rounds of the isolation chambers, checking on the Special Management Subjects. No anomalies today, just like the day before.
“Put some booze in here.”
“Next time.”
She finished her conversation with the final subject and was heading back to her room when she spotted him walking toward her from the opposite end of the hall.
She swallowed involuntarily. She knew he wasn’t some brute who wielded power recklessly—that he was rational, mannerly, and that even Charlotte took to him well.
Even so, her instincts put her on guard. It couldn’t be helped.
This was the basic posture of any creature. How could she stay calm with a formed unknown terror thudding toward her step by step?
She pressed herself flat against the wall. Afraid even his clothes might brush her, or his breath touch her, she clamped her mouth shut.
She became one with the wall. She’d move once he passed.
With her eyes cast downward, minimizing her presence as much as possible and waiting for him to hurry past—that was when he stopped a couple of paces away.
Her mind went black for a moment. What? Why’d he stop? Why?
He already had the emperor’s permission to roam the facility freely without an escort.
On his second visit, she’d stuck by his side explaining the lab layout, but from the third, she hadn’t said a word.
His status was high enough for the emperor to treat casually, and his power was such that he could be designated Special Management Subject No. 0 and locked away on the spot.
What did that imply? Nothing good could come from getting involved.
Of course, her head knew better. How much he doted on Charlotte, how warmly he smiled.
But scary was scary, and he was someone she needed to keep her distance from.
Just pass by, please pass by. She cracked her eyes open to peek at his feet.
The gods didn’t answer her prayer. Another step, and he stopped right in front of her nose.
No helping it now. She’d have to greet him calmly and move first.
Too scared to look him straight in the eye, she directed her gaze toward his throat.
A tangy aroma brushed her nose. An appetite-stimulating scent.
Her tension-narrowed field of vision widened in an instant. She saw his face, and the basket he held.
“This.”
He proffered the basket. Over his shoulder, she glimpsed her colleague’s face frozen in shock.
She shot her a desperate pleading look, but the colleague quietly shut the door. *You’re taking that for real?*
“If it’s all right, share it with the person in your room.”
“Huh? What’s this?”
“It’s fish stew from a place called Miele. I overheard you two talking about it two days ago. You seemed inconvenienced because of me.”
He slightly lifted the cloth covering the basket. The famous limited menu lay nestled inside.
“Then I’ll go see Charlotte.”
In his other hand was a dainty basket. It held cookies shaped like animals.
“You’re giving that to Charlotte?”
“Yes. Is it not allowed inside?”
“No, that’s not it. They’re cute cookies, though.”
“I asked the shop owner. He recommended these. What do you think? Will Charlotte like them?”
Laughter bubbled up. His serious, impassive face asking so earnestly looked utterly guileless.
The fear didn’t wash away in an instant. She was still scared. But in the space left by the ebbing dread, curiosity welled up.
Which was why an unexpected sentence slipped from her lips.
“Let’s go together. I’d like to say hi to Charlotte too.”
“No need. The food will get cold—go eat it.”
“No. This isn’t food you eat with a traitor.”
“A traitor?”
She gave an awkward smile and turned her body.
“Let’s go. Charlotte’s waiting.”
(Continued next episode)