Entity Hunting (6)
"Cheonma Death Beam."
Whiiiine!
Along with a sci-fi hum of coalescing energy, black light began to condense inside a small sphere. A dark power swelled and bloomed, threatening to burst, from the eerily pristine white machine — this was the fabled state of yin-yang unity itself.
"Firing sequence ready."
Once the black light had gathered past a certain threshold, a mechanical voice flowed out of the white sphere. Being cutting-edge super technology, it apparently came equipped with its own judgment AI.
"Please set the output level."
"Twenty percent. Fire."
KWA-BOOOOOOM!!
A laser so massive I could hardly believe it had started from that tiny sphere punched clean through the Backrooms wall. It seemed to march endlessly forward, quite literally erasing every obstacle in its path.
The reason I say it seemed to march forward rather than break through was that, in reality, after chewing through a wall or two, its output gradually weakened and fizzled out.
Looking at it cynically, I could see the complaint forming: for something calling itself a railgun, why can it only punch through a few walls?
But the truth was that these Backrooms walls were absurdly, unreasonably tough. Two meteor-bomb detonations — the shock dampened, sure, but still — hadn't left a single scratch on the walls or floor. They possessed an abnormal rigidity that didn't budge no matter how much you scratched, hammered, or smashed them. From the start, it had been a mistake to assume Backrooms walls were anything ordinary.
And yet this thing had just blown through them at a mere twenty percent output.
I couldn't even imagine what it would do at full power.
With a soft pop, the holed wall began repairing itself, filling its own wound. Come to think of it, this alone already put it leagues beyond any normal wall. In any case, the conclusion was: thoroughly satisfying performance.
The Cheonma Death Beam trade — of a Cheonma Death Beam. It did strike me as a bit of a steal for a single pomegranate, but she had seemed reasonably satisfied with the deal herself. So the reason Cheonma gave me the Cheonma Death Beam was...
Ugh, repeating the same word over and over is confusing me.
Why on earth did Cheonma name it "Cheonma Death Beam," anyway. Apparently this pristine white sphere was somehow tied to her identity or whatever, so maybe there was a reason for it — but even so, lazily using the exact same name showed a real lack of conscience. What kind of lunatic uses the item sitting in their own inventory as their username, verbatim?
................
Anyway, to avoid confusion, from now on the user CheonmaDeathBeam is just "the Cheonma who posts comments," or, for short...
.........
Let's just call her Cheonma. Moving on.
Cheonma had shown no hesitation whatsoever in handing over the Cheonma Death Beam. Which meant the two of us had each traded something we didn't particularly need for something we genuinely did. And isn't that exactly what a win-win is?
Look at that. Even Cheonma seems deeply satisfied at heart. Swapping a super lost technology — a cheat-code extermination weapon that embodied her very identity — for a simple, nutrient-rich fruit refreshed once a day? Apparently no problem whatsoever.
Let other people look at us however they like — it's fine. We're both satisfied, and isn't that what matters? Plug your ears. Our happiness, not their judgment, is the important thing here.
Of course, if she'd asked for the trade back on the grounds that something felt off, I wouldn't have returned it in a million years.
The reaction to her first post had been lukewarm, so Cheonma immediately uploaded a second one. The format was similar to before, yet something subtly different clung to it.
..........
Hmm. How should I put it. It felt a little... unique? The post had this odd vibe — somehow, out of nowhere, it radiated pure innocence. Childlike wonder, that sort of thing.
Blunt, aren't we. But honestly? It was the thing that needed saying. Good work, dark hero.
Whatever this post was, the kindly senpai who had once patiently fed me information was nowhere to be found in it.
That she was going through a rough time right now — yeah, I could probably figure that part out.
Maybe all the courtesy Cheonma had shown everyone until now wasn't an act of maturity at all. But even so, I had no intention of taking it back. Tragic as it is, the dice have already been cast.
Still, I finally had a sense of what to call her now. The mature, worldly front was all fake — and this present, low-mental-age version of her was the truth, right?
Your name is Cheon-baby from now on. She was only in her twenties — barely into her 2X years — so calling her Cheon-baby was absolutely appropriate.
Now that the nickname was settled, I left the community without a shred of regret. She seemed to have plenty more she wanted to say, but I didn't bother paying her any further mind.
Sorry, Cheon-baby. I've got a mountain of things to do.
The Cheonma Death Beam I'd just acquired was a fraudulent offensive weapon. And the teleportation machine I'd gotten last time — needless to say, it was equally broken. Offense and defense, I was stronger now than I had ever been. If there was ever a moment to hunt the entities, it was now.
Granted, there were other reasons to hurry, too.
"Stored inner energy below 30%. Full-power discharge consumes the entire reserve."
It came from the fact that, ever so pretentiously, the thing burned inner energy — qi, straight out of a murim novel — as its primary fuel. Having it play at being a murim artifact this far into the apocalypse rubbed me slightly the wrong way, but it wasn't really a problem.
Its main fuel was simply inner energy, and the solar charging I'd mentioned earlier served almost the same role. And after checking, it turned out that even the fluorescent lights alone could both charge it and sustain full-power output.
So why the rush, you ask?
Because it'd be a waste, obviously. This thing guzzles inner energy just to fly around — if I got careless and squandered the reserve, it would end up as a pumpkin seed of the Nakdong River, worthless and adrift. The fluorescent charging still takes a while to top off, and I'm supposed to just throw this precious energy away?
Rather than that, better to use the remaining reserve to kill one first, then leisurely let the lights recharge and take out the rest afterward. That way my conscience rested easier too.
"To do that, first I find the one that looks most comfortable to handle."
A position where I wouldn't be surrounded the moment I teleported in, and the entity currently farthest from me. Finding one such among the five and killing it cleanly was the top priority.
I turned on the guide and located the one entity that kept the most intuitive distance from both me and the others.
(79/100)
The one I tested with the meteor bomb.
That was the one I'd experimented on with the meteor bomb. Had its movements slowed because of its wounds? Either way, this was no coincidence — it was inevitability.
Even now, the memory of its claws and that scream sent shivers crawling over my whole body and haunted my dreams. But I had no choice but to advance. Honestly, it was rather poetic. Whether it had seen me before or not, the fight was the same regardless.
"Cheonma Death Beam."
Whiiiine!
Energy began pooling inside the white sphere. Rather than fumbling the condensation process later on the spot, gathering the energy safely here first was the pragmatic move.
"Teleportation machine."
With a thud, the massive machine — the size of a person — dropped to the floor. Which meant it was truly time to go.
"Move."
Brilliant white light wrapped around the Cheonma Death Beam, and I was filled with a sensation of weightlessness. When I opened my eyes, a black, hulking bipedal monster — an entity — stood in the distance. Its torso was relatively slender, but its limbs were all absurdly long. A somewhat different silhouette from every entity I'd known so far.
One word summed it up: it looked like a madman. Like the old saying that a drooling lunatic is scarier than a spitting one.
No point dragging it out. Let's end this now.
"Ready."
The Cheonma Death Beam finished its preparations, energy gathered, primed to fire. And in that instant — with only aiming and the trigger left — the entity began glancing around, as if searching for something.
Before the unease or the question could even form, its gaze locked onto mine. Shivers spread across my whole body. Every muscle began trembling as if in spasm.
"Oh, sh—"
It stared straight at me. One step. Two.
BANG...... BANG... BANG, BANGBANGBANG!
It began closing the distance, each footfall heavy enough to shake the ground. Apparently, an entity that had been attacked once held its grudge forever. It steadily picked up speed. Even though I'd teleported to a spot with a decent buffer, that distance closed in a heartbeat, arriving as raw terror. The tremor of the floor shook my body through.
I tried to steady myself, but every single element was working to scramble my mind. So I slapped my own cheek, hard. The crack of it rang out — and the thing showed no intention of stopping.
But on the flip side, as it closed in, the target I could hit was growing larger by the second.
Now?
"Output one hundred percent — GO!"
Whiiiiiine!
KWA-BOOOOOOM!!!
Energy of a caliber utterly beyond the last shot came pouring out. "Whoooaaa..." By the time the great railgun's trajectory finished its work, even that massive entity's body had long since ceased to exist.
Psshhoooosh.
When the firing ended, a half-melted stretch of the Backrooms came back into view. The wall and the floor had already begun regenerating, but where the entity had been, all I could see was a still, black liquid, quietly pooled.
"Is it dead...?"
I opened the guide and checked the main quest.
#1 Entity Hunting (0/5)
Not dead.
Had my damage fallen short? I shook my head. No way. That had been overkill on top of overkill. Then what was...
(1/100)
Checking again: the entity's HP stood at a mere 1. The odds of it landing exactly on 1 by luck were slim — far more plausible was that it entered an invulnerable state at 1 HP. And in that very moment, the liquid pooled on the floor began to rise, slowly weaving itself into the shape of a cocoon.
(2/100)
The entity's HP was ticking back up. Damn it. A Phase 2, huh?
"Ahh..."
........
Actually — I wasn't in trouble at all.
"Cheonma Death Beam. Ten percent output."
"Converting to pure energy bolt."
Whiiiine!
Who was it that said draining your entire inner energy reserve was just like burning a battery from full to empty?
"Fire."
"Krehk?"
KWA-BOOOOOOM!
And so the entity's cocoon was ground to powder.
#1 Entity Hunting (1/5)