The Shadow Finally Awakens (2)
Lee Jun stared at the presence waiting up ahead.
A black something, shaped like a person.
But that was the extent of the resemblance — nothing else about it bore even a trace of humanity. Where a head should have been, there was no face. No hair, either. Its voice didn't come from a mouth, either; it simply arrived in the ear by some means he couldn't begin to fathom.
It looked, in a word, like a black mannequin.
A mannequin, seated in a chair, watching him.
That was all the surface had to show.
"……"
And of course, there was no way the thing could be as ordinary as a mannequin. Even now, the dread coiling through the air felt ready to numb his senses outright.
Yet there was nothing concrete he could actually grasp about it. As if something had been severed — blocked off entirely.
The only honest description was: one mannequin.
But one thing was certain.
That thing was
no skill, and no artifact.
"...The Shadow Finally Awakened."
"Hm? You know me? What an interesting human."
Now the pieces finally fit.
Shk—
Lee Jun shoved Seo Yoon aside and drew a pistol from his Pocket.
"Combat positions, now! Move!"
Shrrk—
In the spot where Seo Yoon had been standing not one second before, dozens of black thorns erupted from the ground.
"...Damn it."
"Good instincts, hm? You won't be detecting this one with mana, though."
The hollow voice filled the entire cave. Moments ago it had been a tone that lured at the soul; now it clenched the heart in a fist and squeezed. The voice spreading along the cave walls kept sloshing around in his skull, refusing to settle.
"I've been locked away for so, so long — I am so very very bored."
I want to gouge out my own eardrums.
I want to scrape out the inside of my skull.
It felt filthy, like some enormous insect crawling over every inch of his skin.
"And just how much fun do you think you can give me?"
The black shape slowly rose. The chair beneath it dissolved into shadow, and a black carpet unrolled across the cold cave floor — pointed this way. And across it, the thing began to walk.
"If you amuse me enough to repay all those long years... I'll reward you in kind."
Tap—
Tap—
Tap—
"I'll make it as painless as I can, so do try to earn it."
To the rhythm of those graceful footsteps.
Slowly.
One step. And another.
Bang—
The muzzle flashed, and the bullet spat out into the dark.
But before long, the round flying through the air was swallowed into the shadow.
And that was the end of it.
The bullet that vanished into the void never escaped the darkness again.
"What the hell even is that thing...!"
Physical attacks did nothing at all. Was it made purely of mana? Whatever the case... if it couldn't be touched, no attack meant anything.
Somehow. I have to solve this somehow.
'If I use mana-hardened rounds...'
Bang— bang— bang— bang—
A rapid barrage emptied the magazine. He threw away the supply-issue Glock he'd been carrying and pulled out a revolver instead — a gun enchanted to cycle its rounds faster. Its only flaw was being an outdated Webley, but in raw stopping power it was second to none.
At the same time, he drew a speed loader of hardened rounds from his Pocket.
'Six rounds, all at once.'
Click—
Krrrrk—
Reloading in an instant, Lee Jun emptied those six rounds faster still. Aimed true.
At the shadow.
Rat-tat-tat—
The full six rounds poured toward the thing.
"Hmhm, those sting a little more than the last ones, don't they?"
"...To hell with you."
But even the mana-hardened rounds dealt no real damage. All they bought was a marginally longer moment before vanishing. That shadow, aged by several hundred years, didn't so much as scratch against things like this.
"That's all you've got? Now I'm actually disappointed."
The thing said this — and then suddenly melted into the floor.
And where it reappeared was... right beside Lee Jun.
Squelch—
The defining property of a shadow is that it can project anything.
The thing turned its arm into a long blade and ran it through Lee Jun's abdomen.
"Ghhk...!"
Lee Jun tried to react at maximum speed, but the attack landed anyway.
Was the thing fast?
No — that was part of it, but there was another reason.
Its attacks refused to register properly. He knew one was coming. He could predict where it would strike. But blocking or dodging never went smoothly — some smearing blur sat over the whole exchange.
So his movements lagged, and in the end he had no choice but to take the hit.
'It keeps blurring my perception. Why...?'
That this thing was no ordinary monster, he understood perfectly well. It was a being sealed inside a space this elaborate, to begin with. And then there was that image of Avitatur he had glimpsed earlier. Something... clearly beyond the reach of human hands.
"Yes, keep thrashing. Make it more fun. You're still far too boring, you know?"
The shadow's fingertip stroked Lee Jun's cheek. A bizarre texture — a warmth that was somehow also bone-chilling.
"Boss...!"
Seo Yoon's voice sounded far away.
She was holding off the shadows the thing deigned to spew out at her. But deigned was exactly the right word — like someone idly playing with a toy it had lost interest in, it puppeted a few shadows around, halfhearted and careless.
She had more mana than Lee Jun, higher stats across the board — and yet for some reason, this shadow showed no interest in her whatsoever.
Had his wandering attention offended it?
The shadow spoke to Lee Jun, whose focus had slipped elsewhere.
"Hmm, so it's her that's caught your eye, is it?"
Squelch—
"Ghhah...!"
"Don't look away. Keep your eyes on me."
The whisper thickened. And at the same moment, a blade of shadow burst out through his arm. Through the blurring fog of his perception, sharp pain crashed in, vivid as a brand.
'Damn... it.'
This was not a situation where help from anyone was coming. Lee Jun, alone. Only if he got himself out of this could he do anything for Seo Yoon.
"Nurturing pointless hope, are we."
Thk—
This time, a leg.
Shk—
The abdomen again.
Thk—
And then the shoulder.
Blades of shadow kept sinking into him, here, there, everywhere. And with every fresh surge of pain, the senses that should have sharpened instead grew duller. Bit by bit, even the feeling of pain itself drained away —
as though he was about to sink, just like this, into perfect and utter nothingness.
"How is it? Do you like the way this feels?"
Her voice rang at his ear.
Her.
At some point... the shadow had taken on a woman's face.
"Hmhm, it's been a while, hasn't it?"
"……"
Lee Jun couldn't speak.
No — precisely... he did not want to let this moment pass by opening his mouth.
"It's the lingering thing inside your memories. Hm, what could it be, I wonder? Regret? Or some other emotion entirely? Hahaha... now I want to know."
With her face, the shadow spoke. Smiled. Met his eyes.
"Won't you tell me... a little more?"
Get a grip. This thing isn't real. It's just playing with me.
"How did you..."
"You told me yourself. Like this."
Shk—
The black blade stirred his insides once more. But this time there was no room to register the pain — every last nerve had been stolen away by the one standing before him.
"Humans are such fools. What is this thing you call emotion, that makes you like this?"
The shadows wavering around them slowly began to take shape.
One.
Two.
Before he knew it... dozens upon dozens of people filled his vision.
"Your memories are delicious. You lived a good life."
Eeeeeeeee—
Hallucinations — sound and sight alike.
Each time the faces of his old comrades surfaced one by one, Lee Jun's cruelest trauma clawed its way back to life.
They still look so vividly alive.
I don't want to send them off again.
If I stay here... could we stay together, always?
—You will keep moving forward.
"...Ah."
Yes.
A line he'd forgotten resurfaced. That's right — that was how it was. That was why this godforsaken life was still going.
That was... how it was.
Tk—
Lee Jun seized the blade jutting out of his stomach with his left hand. The rippling shadow had a strange, dull warmth beneath his grip.
"Hm, quite the mental fortitude you have."
"……"
His head was swimming. The voice flowing from right beside him sank thick and viscous along his eardrums. A little longer of listening, and he would go mad — he could feel it. That voice carried not just cognitive interference, but a mental attack layered on top of it.
"...No."
In Lee Jun's right hand, at some point, was not a gun — but a dagger.
And where that point was aimed—
Thk—
His right thigh.
The instant the dagger sank in deep, life surged back into Lee Jun's eyes.
"...You laid the provocation on far too thick."
Right up until
his reason woke all the way up.
"Hmm... where did I go wrong, I wonder?"
"Everywhere."
Anger is the nourishment of the mind.
Turbulent emotion generally clouds judgment — but in a haze of dulled cognition like this one, it works instead as a stimulant.
"Fine. I'll admit it. Seems I dug in a little too deep."
The shadow — still wearing her face — gave a nod.
"But... does that actually change anything? All you've done is break the toy a little sooner."
It might have been the stupidest move he could have made. The thing was keeping Lee Jun alive purely out of its own amusement. It could reap his life in an instant whenever it pleased — that was the only reason it could afford this much leisure.
But there had to be a way to crack it. He had to find it.
Self-rescue from an overwhelmingly disadvantageous position. That was what Lee Jun had spent his whole life doing — and what he had to do now.
'This thing... has a self.'
A being with intelligence. A being you could talk to. Which meant its gaze could be diverted, its mind muddied. In other words — psychological warfare worked on it. Which meant that, depending on his own skill, gaps could be forced open by design.
And a being with intelligence has preferences, too.
For whatever reason, this thing seemed to like Lee Jun. Otherwise it would simply have killed him — there would be no reason to keep him alive and chat. Unless, of course, toying with its prey was simply its taste... in which case, that too counted as a preference.
Find that seam, and the fight would become that much easier.
And one thing more.
"...Now I finally see it."
The previous cycle.
The first raid team: annihilated. This thing was the reason, surely.
And the second raid team as well... annihilated, most likely.
'There were no survivors of the second raid team.'
By every circumstance, the sole "survivor" Lee Jun had interrogated back then could only have been this thing in disguise. For a power that had fooled the world into calling it a skill, imitating any object or any person would be trivial.
Thinking back now, the odd details surfaced one by one.
'All those questions it failed to answer — things it obviously should have known. It was never some temporary symptom of PTSD. It was simply that the thing I was interrogating was never human at all.'
Of course lie detection hadn't worked. Of course nothing had. Those tools were built from the ground up to be used on humans. It was only natural.
And... an oath upon mana?
What good would that possibly do against a thing like this?
'Transformation into a target — and replication through shadows.'
It had used those two abilities to deceive everyone, thoroughly.
The Shadow Finally Awakened was said to be the dungeon's Hidden Piece. It had devoured the original owner of its body and tried to go on living as a hunter. Why it had latched onto Kapman, he didn't know... but it had ended up flowing into Liberation, of all places.
No — maybe it had devoured Kapman, too.
Either way, the truth of the previous cycle didn't matter now. What mattered was how to take this thing down. Once he'd learned a certain amount about his opponent, the next step followed on its own.
'For now... I do whatever I can.'
The thing seemed able to read a target's memories through these blades. It would peer into Lee Jun's memories... and gouge at his trauma, again and again.
Fine. Memories.
If it was going to use them as a weapon—
"...Go ahead, then. Feast until there's nothing left to feast on."
"What?"
Shk—
Lee Jun's memories began to pour down along the shadow's blade.
Whether it liked it or not.
Thirteen years' worth — the previous cycle included — every last piece of it.