Sortie
"Alright, now it's time to sortie!"
Redi sprang up with a thump inside the screen, and the display split in two.
"Two things you can pick! Dispatch first."
"Dispatch is resupply, plain and simple. You send monsters out to scrounge up supplies."
Beneath Dispatch, three smaller panels unfolded.
▸ Infiltration
▸ Raid
▸ Biomass Collection
"Infiltration, where they sneak in and clean a place out. Raid, where they smash a building you've picked and sweep it clean. And Biomass Collection, where they haul back living matter—meat, animals, that sort of thing!"
"Stay quiet and you earn a little. Make noise and you earn a lot. But the louder you get, the higher the Public Disturbance Level climbs, so watch it!"
"Biomass Collection?"
"Yep! Like, walking into a butcher shop's freezer and walking out with a whole box of meat?"
"Or cleaning an entire box of patties out of a burger joint's freezer?"
"Once you've got more troops, you could hit hospitals, pharmacies—research facilities, even, down the line!"
"..."
Sion's red eyes narrowed for the briefest instant.
And who's cleaning out that freezer.
A useless thought.
"Huh? What?"
"Nothing."
Sion turned his head toward the orc. Crouched in a corner of the Command Room, the creature was picking between its toes with a thick finger.
Infiltration's a lost cause with a bulk like that.
"The other one."
"Hehe. The one you were most curious about."
Character Abduction blinked red.
"Anywhere the map can see, you can send a monster to bring back whoever you want. And whoever they bring back goes straight to the dungeon!"
"Just keep in mind it can fail, depending on the spot and the area. Too many people, the route's too tangled, the monster goofs off and does its own thing... so read the situation before you send them!"
Sion shifted his gaze to the three-dimensional map on the round dais.
There it was—the Station-front Izakaya, a Japanese-style pub blazing brighter than anything around it. Through the magnified window, Park Hyejin hung off a man's arm, laughing.
Crowded. Exits front and back. A main road right out front.
...Not great conditions.
"That place is pretty full, though. You sure?"
"If it's crowded, it's crowded."
Sion's finger pressed Character Abduction.
"They'll scatter on their own."
"Let's go. Time to grab that bitch."
"Grruk!"
The orc shot to its feet. A black fissure split open before it like a door, and the green-gray bulk shoved itself through.
On the map, a single red dot lit up in the plaza in front of the station.
The Station-front Izakaya was still loud well past two in the morning. Red paper lanterns hung from the ceiling and washed over faces flushed with drink, and every narrow table stood packed with empty soju bottles and highball glasses. Smoke from the grilling skewers rose without pause off the iron plate by the kitchen. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass, the station plaza lay dark.
A corner seat.
"Ah, baby. Seriously, let's finish this and go. Hmm? Just one glass."
Park Hyejin pressed herself right up against the man across from her. Twenty-three, maybe. Neatly swept bangs, the bridge of his nose clean and straight—a face anyone would have called handsome on sight. She had her breasts pushed firm against his arm, and with the tips of her pink nails she tapped the back of his hand.
"Noona had such a hard day today. You've gotta comfort me."
"Noona, you've been saying just one glass for a while now."
"This time I mean it. For real. For real."
She angled toward him the shoulder where her white knit had slipped down, and tilted her head. Eyes half-lidded, the corner of her mouth lifted. It was hard to believe this was the same face that looked down on the part-timers at the store.
The man smiled and raised his glass.
"Then really, just this one..."
THUD!
The floor shuddered. The highball sloshed in its glass, and the empty bottles on the table knocked together with a clink.
"...What was that?"
Someone had barely muttered it.
CRASH!
The floor-to-ceiling window blew apart.
Something came flying in from outside, punched through the glass, and slammed into the table by the window. A delivery scooter. The crumpled frame crushed two tables at once and buried itself in the wall, and beneath the red lanterns, shards of glass poured down like hail.
"Kyaaaaa!"
"What—what is that?!"
"An accident?! Did a car hit us?!"
Screams erupted. Chairs toppled, glasses shattered, and people surged for the exit all at once. Someone went down in the press. Someone else stepped over them.
"B-baby...?"
Park Hyejin had frozen, the glass still clenched in her hand.
A chair scraped.
The man shoved his seat back and stood. Only when she saw his bloodless face turn toward the exit did her mind snap clear.
"Baby, let's go together! Me too...!"
She grabbed his arm in a panic.
Smack.
He struck her hand away. Her arm snapped back into empty air.
For an instant, he faltered. His eyes went round as he looked at his own hand, then at her face—the look of a man only now realizing what he had just done.
"Ah, n-noona... that's..."
His lips worked, but the words never made it to the end.
Another scream burst behind him, and his gaze shot past her to the exit. He turned and shoved himself into the press of bodies. He never looked back.
"...Hey?"
The back of his head vanished beyond the exit.
"Hey! Hey, you son of a bitch! Where are you going?! Where the hell are you going, leaving me here?!"
No answer.
"Fuck. Seriously... he was all noona, noona, right up until a second ago..."
Park Hyejin scrambled up as well. Clutching her chain-strap bag, she was about to bolt into the crowd at the exit when—
BANG!
The door blew inward.
Torn off at the hinges, it flew and embedded itself in the counter. And through that gaping hole, something ducked inside.
Green-gray.
A bulk whose head nearly brushed the ceiling. Boulder-like shoulders bulged over a hunched back, and arms that hung all the way to its knees were wound with veins thick as snakes. From either side of a jutting lower jaw, two yellowed tusks stuck out, and between them sticky saliva stretched in threads before it dropped to the floor.
The people crowding the exit froze where they stood.
The monster raised its head.
Eyes no bigger than beans swept the inside of the shop once. Then it swelled its chest—
"KWAAAAAAAH!!!"
The air shook.
It was a sound heard not with the ears but with the chest. Her breath caught as if a fist had landed dead in the solar plexus. Park Hyejin's knees buckled before she knew it.
A brief stillness.
"KYAAAAAAAAH!"
With the scream, those who hadn't yet fled burst into frantic motion.
In the next instant, the monster moved.
It lifted the nearest table in one hand and hurled it at the wall.
CRACK! The wooden top split in two, and bottles of liquor burst like firecrackers.
It snatched up a chair and flung it toward the kitchen. Skewers leapt off the griddle and scattered in every direction, trailing sparks.
"Aaaagh!"
"Save me! Please, save me!"
People fled through the back door, through the shattered window. The monster didn't chase. It simply took whatever it saw and broke it, one thing after another. The refrigerator toppled. The counter caved in. The red paper lanterns snapped from their cords in a string and fell.
Park Hyejin crawled. Glass bit into her palms, and she didn't feel it. She shoved herself under the corner table and drew both knees up tight against her chest.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
A dream. This is a dream.
CRASH! Something else broke, somewhere.
No—a movie? A shoot? A hidden camera? People do this now. YouTube, that kind of thing...
Shatter!
Then what about the scooter? The door? The people bleeding?
What is this... what the hell is this...
She had her teeth clenched, and still her jaw rattled. Something hot leaked from the corners of her eyes, where the mascara had already run.
And then—
It went quiet.
No more breaking. No more screams. No more footsteps. Only the crackle of a severed wire, and somewhere the soft trickle of liquor running onto the floor.
...Is it gone?
Holding her breath, Park Hyejin opened her eyes, very slowly.
A narrow view beneath the table. Shards of glass, spilled liquor, a few skewers rolled to a stop.
And in the middle of it—
A foot.
Too big to belong to a person. Five green-gray toes crushed the glass without a care, and wherever that foot had stepped, the floor tiles were split with cracks.
Right in front of her.
Her gaze climbed, trembling, slowly.
A thick shin.
A knee.
A dangling arm.
And past the edge of the table, bent down toward her, an enormous face.
Eyes no bigger than beans were looking down at her.
A grin.
Between the tusks, the orc's mouth stretched wide, the corners splitting as if they might tear all the way to its ears.
"H-hiiik...!"
Park Hyejin let out a sound that was neither quite a scream nor a breath and rolled out the other side.
Broken glass scraped her knees. Her heels slipped off and tumbled away, and the chain-strap bag she'd been clutching flew off somewhere and was gone. She didn't look back. Barefoot, she ran for the kitchen.
CRASH!
Behind her, the table split in half. The very spot she'd been hiding in a moment ago.
Deeper in the kitchen, she saw an iron door. The back door the others had escaped through earlier.
If I can just get out there—just there...!
In that instant, a huge shadow passed over her head.
THOOM!
It was the commercial refrigerator that had been lying toppled on the floor. The fridge sailed over her head and slammed down right in front of the back door, and the iron door crumpled inward under its weight.
The alley light leaking through the gap snapped out.
"Ah... no..."
Park Hyejin stopped dead at the kitchen entrance.
Slowly, she turned her head.
The orc stood in the middle of the dining floor. The arm that had thrown the refrigerator hung loose, and it was watching her without the slightest hint of hurry.
...It did that on purpose.
It blocked the door on purpose. That thing.
It was strange, once she thought about it. Even while all those people were fleeing, it hadn't chased a single one. It had done nothing but smash whatever was in reach, and only once everyone else had gotten out and she was left alone did it look under the table.
From the beginning, she had been the target.
Her gaze darted across the dining floor. Where the scooter had punched through, the glass was gone entirely, and the plaza outside lay open.
Ten steps. No—eight would do.
She flung herself along the wall by the counter.
Thud.
The orc shifted one step to the side. That alone was enough. The green-gray bulk blocked the path to the window completely.
"G-get out of the way...!"
She cut the other way, and this time a table flicked aside by the orc's toe came scraping across the floor. The leg of a fallen chair caught her shin dead-on.
"Agh...!"
Park Hyejin staggered back.
For every step she retreated, the orc took one forward.
Near enough that a reaching hand ought to have touched it. Not quite. The orc held that gap with a precision that was wrong.
It's toying with me. This thing...
A chill slid down her spine.
A soft tap. Her back met the wall.
Without meaning to, she glanced aside. It was the corner seat. Between the halves of the split table, the chair where that man had been sitting lay toppled, and the highball glass she'd dropped sat overturned on the floor, ice spilled out of it.
The seat where, not even an hour ago, she'd been laughing, baby, baby.
"D-don't come."
Her voice cracked.
She snatched up a soju bottle from the table, whatever her hand found.
"I said don't come!"
The bottle whipped through the air and struck the orc square in the chest.
Glass burst. What liquor remained ran down the green-gray chest. The orc didn't blink. It only dipped its head, looking down at the drink staining its chest as if it had found something interesting.
"Grruk?"
And then it stopped where it stood.
It came no closer. Those bean-sized eyes simply looked down at her, still.
...It's not coming?
Because I hit it? Did I scare it?
Park Hyejin's breathing eased, just a little. Strength crept back into her chattering jaw, and across eyes still wet with fear, the look she used when she stared down the part-timers at the store laid itself over her face by force.
"...What are you looking at."
She pushed off the wall and took a step forward.
"I said what are you looking at, you monster bastard! Do you know who I am?! I'm calling the police! Take one more step and I swear, I'll really—"
WHUD!
Before the words could finish.
The orc's fist buried itself in the center of her stomach.
"...Ghk."
Park Hyejin's mouth fell open.
Breath would not leave, and it would not come in. From just below her navel all the way to her spine, it felt as if something heavy had driven clean through her, and everything inside her seized at once. A thin ringing stretched long in her ears.
Her mind went white.
The words from a moment ago. The police. Assistant manager. The man who had run. Nothing remained.
Her knees folded.
Park Hyejin slid down the wall and sank. Both arms wrapped her stomach, and from her gaping mouth only animal sounds leaked out—ghk, ghk.
And then—
Something lukewarm spread between her thighs.
Beneath the leather skirt, among the spilled highball and the ice, a small puddle slowly widened. She didn't even seem to notice. Her unfocused eyes wandered somewhere in the empty air.
The orc bent down.
A thick hand wrapped her waist and hauled her up in a single motion. Her limp body was slung over its shoulder like a sack, and her long dark-brown hair hung down the orc's back, swaying.
"Grruk."
The orc snorted once, then turned, unhurried, toward the entrance where the door had been ripped away.
A single red paper lantern, still hanging from the end of a severed cord, swayed slowly in the draft that bulk raised as it passed.
And when the lantern stilled, the shop was empty.
A table split in two. An overturned highball glass. One fallen nail charm. And on the floor of the corner seat, only the small puddle left behind caught the red light and glistened, faint.
Successful