The Brain Hunter's Trap
When the god and monster that sows chaos by hunting the Notorious caresses the city, contamination inevitably takes root in the Gallery City. The shadows in the alleys grow deeper, and people revert closer to their original form—the beast. They either cower in fear or turn even more vicious. In the gaps between the countless Dioramas that have been swallowed, contaminants slither upward, and the fog thick with corruption summons grotesque phenomena from the darkness. On nights like this, those who stroll through the Gallery City after dark are mostly lunatics. Just like me, who had just blown someone's head off.
-Gurgle!
The pressure of flesh chases right behind my head as I slip out of the alley. The noise and shockwaves produced by the brain's meat walls that shatter the air and swallow obstacles.
-Swoosh!
Using that energy, I leap and land in the open clearing.
-Eeeeeeeee!
If it were an ordinary culprit, the brain's resonance that could drive someone mad would sweep the area, making passersby vomit and trigger seizures. On the other hand, I couldn't hold back the bloody smile forming at the corner of my lips.
“Whoa, they're really coming after me?”
-Kwaaaa!
When I saw the meat walls stretching toward the lower districts, a burst of laughter escaped me. My finger had long since settled on the trigger. I aimed the muzzle at the meat walls. It looked like a meaningless gesture at first glance, but my eyes and the gun barrel were locked onto the brain hunter walking out from between them.
“Have you given up on running? To destroy your own loved one with your own hands. Truly the solution of a madman and a beast. But it was an excellent choice! Thanks to that, I simply cannot let a specimen like you slip away!”
The agitated Morel walked out with his arms spread wide. At the same time, tentacles extended from beneath his unbuttoned frock coat, becoming the legs that supported him.
-Swoosh! Slither!
I suppose it resembled a spider crab that crawls across the deep sea. The only difference was that those legs and the ground were made of meat walls and brain tentacles. Morel levitated his body and looked down at me. Yes, the eyes blooming on the brain at the very top did exactly that. Checking how to dissect and extract me, like a doctor standing over a dissection table. A truly magnificent performance. Seeing it made a chuckle slip out.
“Old man. You've got quite the showmanship. Why walk around like that when you've got two perfectly good legs?”
-Bang!
Once again, the guns in both my hands spat fire. Smoke and sparks from the twin pistols. The bullets aimed precisely at his forehead were blocked by brain tentacles that had turned into whips.
“How boring. Is that all you've got?”
His indifferent reaction was less provocation and more genuine disappointment. It seemed he was underestimating me. But my hands were already loading different bullets.
-Click!
“What are you on about? I'm zeroing in.”
It was different from point-blank shooting. Completely different. Besides, my current specs were closer to dogshit, so I had to be a bit more careful, didn't I? But it was fine. Lumen Lux, who had nothing left to protect, was strong. And dogshit Lumen had his own methods. Because there was nothing holding him back.
-Bang! Bang!
The pistols gripped in both hands spat fire again. Shots that relentlessly targeted his forehead or heart. When the flames that embedded uselessly into the meat walls oxidized, Morel responded by launching tentacles in kind.
-Swoosh!
Even if he was a mage of the life school, and even if his specialty was mental attacks, it was useless against me. The physical force Morel wielded had to be accompanied by flesh and meat walls. That's why I could dodge it. There wasn't a shred of fear in the gaps where I rolled and leaped through the violence he unleashed, evading by a hair's breadth. Only a familiar inertia washed over me. So this was the margin. Fear. Fighting spirit. Those things had been paralyzed for a long time. Even the air rippling between skin and weapon was nothing more than a tool to measure the gap for me.
-Rip!
Moreover, the pain of my blood being stolen sharpened the textbook of violence, and both body and mind grew exhilarated.
“Combat sense. Dynamic vision. Clear composure and the rationality of madness. Remarkable skill, but you can't dodge forever.”
As Morel said, there were weapons that landed effective hits. The sharp tips at the ends of the tentacles raked across me. And as the gurgling masses gradually filling the clearing tightened in, the encirclement accelerated.
-Crunch!
When I spun like a dancer, using the bundle of tentacles as an axis to evade them all, the fired tentacles embedded into the ground.
-Crack!
Immediately retrieving all of them, they became flesh-eating halberds that raked at me before returning to their master. The brain hunter commanded all those attacks with leisure. As if curious about my limits. I couldn't help but speak up to that.
“How boring. The Witch Astarote was hundreds of times more unreasonable than this.”
“Oh? Astarote? Are you referring to the Witch of the Tower, one of the board members of Necro Corps?”
“Aha, so you know her. But I thought you were a secretary—turns out you're a career woman? No wonder you kept talking about business.”
My knowledge had grown once again.
“Hah, are you claiming you faced her? Stop it. That kind of bluff only makes you look pathetic. Even if you are special as a specimen, to an inhuman being like her, you are nothing. If a 7th-tier witch had shown you her black spheres, you wouldn't have survived.”
Morel laughed without a trace of mockery. I completely agreed with that statement. Indeed, to Astarote, I was nothing. Because in front of the witch's black spheres, all my suffering and struggles simply vanished. In fact, hadn't I died several times because of it?
“You're hitting where it hurts. But did you know?”
You're not Astarote, are you? To a big shot like her, I'm just an insignificant thorn right now, but to the Morel I'm facing, I'll be a very big thorn. No, I'll become one. I could become a pain that Morel simply couldn't ignore.
“I never said I survived.”
-Crunch!
A sound of a different resolve mixed into the tearing noise spat out by the meat walls. At the same time, Morel's face was dyed with pain.
“?!”
-Splatter!
The bullets trapped inside the wall of flesh exploded. A blooming that held the magic seed of crystallization before bursting. The bullets I'd fired at Morel, only to be blocked by brain tentacles and meat walls, bloomed all at once.
-Shatter!
Into a flower of shrapnel that tore apart the surroundings. I'd infused them with just a handful of mana for the bullets to bloom into crystals, along with a tiny bit of the immortal's secret arts.
“I told you I was zeroing in, didn't I?”
“Kgh!”
Blood and groans. Morel's body, turned into a porcupine by the crystal fragments, staggered. The blood he shed. The crystal fragments embedded in the eyes blooming on his brain convulsed. It was like an extended version of the magic I'd shown while competing with Ellen. Planting the seed of crystallization into objects and making them germinate. And to the enemy, I planted pain. Yes, the pain of bleeding. The eyes glaring at me did exactly that. Thanks to it, the tentacles supporting him shook. Morel's body fell heavily from the air to the ground. A massive opening.
-Tap!
I drew the sword from my back and charged against the wave of meat walls.
“Huu!”
I suppressed my laughter to seize victory. A light victory even this crude body could reach! Bleeding meant I could kill him! I leaped. The brain hunter's vital point that looked like a perfect target. The sword path that would bisect that brain and neck stretched out like a highway. Right before I could claim my first victory in this other world. Right before my sword, which was about to split Morel into Mo and rel, could connect.
“Aiming for a great truth from a meager futility. Not bad, but perhaps this old man expected too much.”
“?”
-Crunch!
The sound came first, the impact followed, and the pain arrived last.
“How disappointing.”
“Kugh!?”
And then I realized. That I was impaled on a brain tentacle. The sensation of it digging between my fragile muscles and bones screamed. A marionette skewered between sky and earth. That was me. Pierced in a form where I couldn't move an inch. A skewer shape driven from head toward my legs. The pain of violence digging into the grain of flesh. Pain bloomed from the clean violence that didn't even let blood flow. Where had all that pain come from, and what had it targeted? The direction wasn't Morel's main body. It wasn't the meat walls surrounding us either. It was simply the sky. The city's fog parted slightly. The veil draped over the contaminated city revealed one layer.
-Goooooo
At the same time, swaying brain stems flowed down like the hem of a skirt. It came from the massive form hidden in the fog. Countless eyes attached to the brain were looking down at me. A brain architecture built by mixing the blood and bone fragments of victims as mortar, molded from the lives and truths of madmen. It was observing everything from the air. A brain five meters in diameter extended tentacles in all directions. The so-called 'brain in a vat' floated while rolling its eyeballs.
“Did you not notice? That you had already climbed onto this old man's operating table. Did you not see? That the body of this old man before you was nothing more than the tip of a single brain?”
Morel hung from the brain stem and stroked his bleeding body. The fragments were pushed out from the wounds turned to mush by shrapnel. Crystal fragments stained with blood fell from Morel's face and his wounded brain. I took in that sparkle.
-Plop!
That was Morel, stroking a body that regenerated in real time. On the other hand, I was a wreck. When I exhaled through my torn lungs, blood flowed up my esophagus.
“Wh─when did you…?”
Even to my hollow question with a pierced lung, Morel was kind.
“From the moment you started running. It is this old man's masterpiece, summoned through domination arts. Is it not beautiful?”
Morel gazed at the 'brain in a vat' floating in the air with an ecstatic look.
“One by one from the skulls of the volunteers. And even the brain stems—I extracted them all myself and crafted this masterpiece. Enlightenment that looks shabby when separate becomes beautiful when bound and molded together like this.”
“Pff, heh. No wonder it felt too easy.”
A chuckle leaked out. It was a paradoxical laugh emerging from a desperate situation. It felt so refreshingly good that even my pierced lungs tickled. Enough to make the brain hunter tilt his head.
“Fear. Pain. Survival instinct. Not even the smell of hormonal reactions that emerge when nearing death. How is that possible? Your life is already hanging by a thread and you have ultimately been defeated.”
Morel grabbed my face. Fingers that flipped my eyelids observed the movement of my eyeballs. Disgust surged at the sensation of being toyed with however he pleased.
“Instead, you're filled with conviction. What kind of conviction is it? The conviction that you can overcome this situation? An oversight born of ignorance? You shattered your loved one's head yet failed to protect a single thing! Madness. You set foot in that name, yet your eyes are full of conviction, already plotting the next move. Since this old man has given you an answer, now it is your turn. I would very much like to hear the answer produced by those lips and that brain.”
“Ar, are you curious?”
“Yes, I am! I want to hear your final answer before extracting you!”
“Wh─”
I murmured. The dissonance produced by my torn lungs and convulsing lips. As my crushed pronunciation drew all of Morel's nerves toward me, the brain hunter brought his ear closer. He literally did so. The floating brain, the eyes in Morel's bare skull—everything. Even the area extended through domination arts. All despair focused on me.
“Wh, who─ whose head did I smash?”
“?”
A clear question mark rose on Morel's expression. A smirk rose at the brain hunter's reaction.
“Ellen─ she's alive, you know?”