Beyond the Cage
Beyond the Cage
I focused as hard as I could, examining the shape of the cave.
Like most caves, this one had once been a path for underground water long ago.
Wind is a fluid just like water, so reading the flow by looking at the cave's shape wasn't difficult.
"Hati. Can you run all the way over there?"
As I asked, I spread my fingers and pointed to a stalagmite blooming a little further away.
Hati, who had been staring down at the iron door with an uneasy face, flinched with a start, then nodded.
"Ugh, okay!"
I pulled the noose I'd looped around the stalagmite and handed it to Hati.
"Loop this over there."
Hati calmed her tension with a deep breath, then leaped powerfully.
Meanwhile, I made the end of the rope into another noose.
I connected the two stalagmites with the rope like that, and I was just about to hang from the rope and cross through the air when—
Kki-i-ik
The iron door opened.
Beneath my feet, I could clearly see two thugs rushing in.
The thugs dashed into the room where we'd been imprisoned, found their fallen comrade, and began shouting loudly.
"Geb! What happened here! Hey! Wake up!!"
"Senior! Didn't the test subjects in here escape?!"
"Is that your concern right now?! You're not worried about your friend?"
"W-Well, but... the boss-nim said there's also a special-grade test subject here..."
Fortunately.
The thugs didn't look up until I was hugging the stalagmite.
The woman who had been screaming like crazy was quiet now.
Thanks to that, hope appeared.
The opening—hidden from view by the giant stalactite and a deep ravine.
The wind blowing through it felt like a signal of successful escape.
But I was mistaken.
"Senior! Over there!"
The thug had spotted us.
What happened next robbed me of my wits.
"Bind!"
As if responding to the thug's shout, pitch-black vines burst from the ground.
They seemed to be made of some sticky liquid, yet also a heavy gas at the same time.
Those unsettling vines flew toward us at high speed.
I couldn't react.
Before that, I couldn't even grasp the situation.
'What are these vines?'
Only after being roughly yanked and slammed to the ground did a reasonable hypothesis I'd never considered occur to me.
'Magic...'
If this place wasn't hell,
If I wasn't infected with TS cells,
Only one hypothesis came to mind—utterly irrational, but plausible.
'Otherworld reincarnation?'
Not long after, that turned out to be true.
Dragged in, bound tightly by the vines, into an unknown space.
On the walls of a room about twenty pyeong in size, magic circles emitting red light were densely drawn.
Inside the iron cages placed around, what stared back at me weren't people—they were grotesque monsters.
A two-headed ram with a snake's head protruding where its tail should be.
A gorilla with the head of a dog, its skin missing so the muscle fibers were fully exposed.
A giant bat crawling along the ground like a quadruped.
Cages containing such monsters lined the walls, and in the center of the room was a large pit.
A pit filled with a liquid as murky as red bean porridge.
The bubbles rising thickly showed that the liquid's viscosity was also similar to red bean porridge.
All of this wildly stimulated my curiosity.
From what material the black vines still coiled around my body were made, to whether the monsters that went berserk the moment we entered were artificially created creatures.
Desperately reviving memories of fantasy novels I'd barely read, I racked my brain to come up with even a somewhat plausible inference.
So much so that I couldn't even be startled.
I stared blankly into the cage until the thug lifted me up and threw me into the pit.
The skinless monster across from me, viciously biting the iron bars while facing me, barked loudly, then bit its tongue and splattered blood—I was slammed into the pit watching that sight.
Kkulleok
The liquid was so sticky it didn't even splash a single drop.
Like sinking into a swamp, my body slowly submerged, and by the time Hati was thrown in after me, I was completely submerged and couldn't see anything.
Hati's sharp scream turned into a droning noise as it passed through the sticky liquid.
The liquid lurched—probably because of Hati's thrashing.
As it shook with a thick, sloshing sound, I thought.
'What are the laws of this world?'
Would the physics I knew still apply here? If not, what rules governed this world? I desperately wanted to know, but the time I had was slowly running out.
The oxygen left in my lungs was depleted.
Continuing to think, or even holding my breath consciously, became impossible.
My body involuntarily inhaled.
At first, the liquid invaded my airways; when the coughing started, it pushed into my esophagus and even my nasal cavity.
I flailed my limbs meaninglessly, uselessly accelerating my diaphragm movements, hastening my death.
Already in a state considered dead as a human.
I couldn't even register the will to live, let alone think.
So even when a sudden anomaly occurred, I couldn't respond appropriately.
Tung!
With a vibration, the liquid that had been pressing down on my body burst outward.
The liquid spread in concentric circles centered on where I lay, then changed its nature upon hitting the wall.
Cheolsseok!
The liquid that had been as sticky as red bean porridge just moments before was now as thin as rainwater fresh from a filter.
With a bewildered face, I looked around.
The monsters drenched in liquid were cowering in the corners like Chihuahuas in front of a dog trader.
The thugs who had dropped us into the pit backed away with dumbfounded faces, then scurried out.
All these reactions were strange, but Hati's condition went beyond strange—it was eerie.
First, her eyes.
The whites had turned black, and her pupils had turned red.
Her movements weren't normal either.
She twisted her joints at grotesque angles to rise, then wobbled like a newborn lamb, looking around at the monsters in the cages.
Then suddenly she screamed.
It wasn't a scream. It wasn't a wail.
It was a murderous roar like a beast's snarl.
For a while, Hati twisted her body and shrieked madly, then did something even crazier.
She leaped like a flea and rammed her head into the cage containing a monster, flailing her hands wildly at the creature trembling inside.
Then, realizing her hands wouldn't reach, Hati grabbed the bars and wrenched them with a crackling sound—
"There they are!"
The thugs had brought someone.
A man in a black robe.
Black hair.
Black eyes.
Pale skin with blue veins visible.
With a cold face, he alternated glances between Hati and me, then muttered in a low voice.
"How ridiculous. After all this time, the test subject that shows up is this kind of trash."
I still hadn't come to my senses, so I just stared blankly at the man.
Hati's reaction, on the other hand, was intense.
The moment she heard the man's voice, she stopped moving, then trembled as if holding back rage, and charged at him.
The man slowly raised one hand.
And as Hati reached out her arm, he muttered.
"I've never seen someone so clueless about their place."
The phenomenon that followed could only be interpreted as magic.
A sudden explosion sound.
Hati, already collapsed, face-planted on the ground.
It was as if an invisible giant sphere was crushing her body.
The continuous force creating a hemispherical crater in the ground added credibility to that impression.
Just as Hati's beast-like roar turned into a cry of pain and then faded, leaving the surroundings quiet—
"Move them."
The man commanded, and the thugs ran toward us.
Long, long ago,
Before I properly understood what fiction was,
Or possibly including a time when I understood it very well but pretended not to because I wanted to believe in fiction—
I once loved creations made of human imagination.
Dragons and dwarves from fantasy novels.
Aliens and spaceships from sci-fi movies.
Robots and weapons with deliberately crude, non-functional designs made for toy production.
All of them were lovely beings that sparked my curiosity.
It felt like the emotions I'd felt back then, looking at those things, were coming back to life.
'This place is kind of amazing.'
It was like the secret basement of an ancient castle where Dracula lived.
On the stone round table in the center, a magic circle was inscribed that looked like it could summon a demon at any moment, and on the desks lining the walls, antique-looking experimental instruments—the kind medieval alchemists might have used—stood in a row.
I also liked the look of the iron cage holding me, who was called a 'test subject.'
It seemed like a human-sized version of the dome-shaped birdcages Victorian-era noblewomen used.
Hati wasn't here.
In fact, no one was here.
Thanks to that, I could freely observe the bizarre experimental instruments, but because of that, I couldn't properly analyze my situation.
Kung
Deureureureuk
The stone door moved with a heavy grinding sound.
Through a revolving door that looked like a wall when closed, the black-haired man I'd seen earlier entered.
The man approached me as the slowly revolving door completed a 180-degree turn and sealed shut.
I was still trying to deduce the purpose of the experimental instruments.
Looking up at him blankly was just a reflex.
The man misunderstood.
"Insolent bitch."
He muttered irritably, pulling a dagger from his bosom.
His hollow eyes began to frost over with murderous intent.