Chapter 111
Chapter 111
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 111
Chapter Title: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
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A bizarre creature called a Nazi Ghoul had popped out, but the task at hand remained unchanged. Ian immediately raised the gun in his hand and fired at the Ghoul.
**Bang!!**
The gunshot echoed, trapped inside the isolated tunnel. The deafening noise assaulted their ears directly as the group raised their weapons, and the bullet struck the eye of the Ghoul at the very front, shattering it.
**Screeech!**
With a gruesome sound, the Ghoul's eye exploded. It let out a scream of agony and collapsed.
The remaining three bared their teeth and claws as they charged. Cecilia faced the bloodshot eyes of the creatures head-on without a flicker of expression and drew the two massive revolvers strapped to her thighs.
She aimed right away. And fired.
**Boom!!**
An explosive roar erupted, incomparable to the shot Ian had fired. Thick silver bullets raced through the modified barrel and rifling, the muzzle spitting fire as it pulverized the Ghouls' heads. Brain matter and blood splattered onto the ground.
"Two."
She muttered in Italian as she regenerated her mangled wrist.
The overwhelming firepower came at the cost of her wrist and arm tearing and shattering. It was a hand cannon only she, with her regeneration ability, could wield.
The power was tremendous. Like firing a shotgun in pistol form on full auto.
Ian noted in his mind that the Vatican's technology was quite impressive, brushed off the spreading dust, and placed his hand on the ground. Then he subtly touched the Grimoire tucked in his coat pocket.
"Be reborn."
**Crunch.**
As he murmured softly, the asphalt road his hand touched warped and transformed into a massive spear that shot forward.
**Whoooosh!**
The launched spear pierced the last remaining Ghoul straight through and pinned it to the ceiling. It died without even putting up a fight.
The Agents from the Management Bureau handled the Ghoul with the shattered eye. They skillfully severed its flailing limbs and crushed its chest with a massive hammer.
"……Hoo, damn it."
Park Hoseok pocketed the pen in his hand and wiped the blood from his face. Kim Seorin, standing beside him, shrank her hammer back down and attached it to her waist.
"These bastards were hiding here……."
"Didn't you know? Or were you pretending not to?"
Kim Yul asked. She tilted her head expressionlessly, staring at the Management Bureau Agents. Color drained slightly from Park Hoseok's face.
"It's definitely not pretending not to know. As I mentioned, the Management Bureau was pursuing the Lunar Nazis as well. We had no idea they were here. Please believe me."
"……."
"If you want, we can use a lie detector. It burns the nervous system and blood vessels if it detects a lie—it's approved for interrogation use."
"Yeah, then do it when we get back."
Kim Yul twisted her lips slightly and continued.
"Focus for now?"
"……Understood. May I give a report first?"
"Newbie? What do you think?"
Her gaze turned to Ian. He nodded casually to indicate to proceed and checked the condition of the fallen Ghoul.
'Nazi officer uniform. Nothing particularly strange, but the symbol is prominently engraved. Advertising that it's a Nazi?'
He clicked his tongue and drew a dagger, slicing open the Ghoul's abdomen. Then he examined the inside.
"……Nothing there."
Albert, standing beside Ian, muttered. It was just as he said.
Organs that should definitely be there in a human body were absent from the Ghoul's gut. At best, there was a heart and lungs. The esophagus was severed midway, and the digestive organs were completely gone. The human flesh they had devoured was piled up like dust in the empty abdominal cavity.
"Is this how all Ghouls normally are?"
"No, they're monsters that feel both hunger and satiety. Of course they have digestive organs."
Albert answered Ian's question. He swept his hand through the Ghoul's empty interior and closely examined the blood smeared on it.
"The blood is extremely thin. That's unusual too. Ghoul blood is supposed to be very thick."
"……I know that. It's even used in medicine."
"Right. But this blood is practically water. And there's way too little of it. The heart's shape is weird too."
He casually ripped out the Ghoul's heart and showed it to Ian.
"Look. It's a perfect sphere, and quite small, right?"
Ian squinted at the limp red lump.
Just as he said, the Ghoul's heart formed a perfect sphere.
It was small too. While a normal heart was about fist-sized, this round muscle mass was only finger-sized. He wondered if it could even pump blood through the body.
"It's a deformity."
**Crunch!**
Albert crushed the heart in his grip and stood up.
"Probably these damn fascist Nazi bastards are the cause. Anyway, they're anomalies."
"……."
"Died clashing with Vampires and turned into Ghouls. But these ones weren't human—they mutated strangely, resulting in this. That's the rough idea."
"Doesn't seem like anything to be wary of."
"Probably. Just don't harvest the blood. You might get infected with fascism or something."
Ian let out a wry smile at his half-joking remark. He stood up, shoved the Ghoul corpse aside roughly, and stared at the village beyond the tunnel.
'What a mess.'
Nazi and Ghoul corpses littered the straight road. There were occasional bodies that looked like ordinary humans, but not in absolute numbers. Most were anomaly corpses.
Perhaps because it was the tunnel entrance, no living entities were visible. They would likely encounter anomalies in earnest once inside the village.
'I was planning to read minds, find the Vampires separately, and take them out…….'
Things had turned out this way, so there was no choice but full-scale combat.
Ian sighed deeply and tapped the Grimoire inside his coat.
He had used Recreation Magic, but since all the Management Bureau Agents were distracted by the Nazis, they hadn't noticed he had two Grimoires. That was a relief, at least.
"Hoo……."
The group waited quietly until the Management Bureau Agents finished their report.
A moment later, Park Hoseok pocketed his phone and bowed to the group.
"Thank you for waiting. We've contacted the Management Bureau, and they've confirmed support in a few hours. Apparently something's happening in Seoul too, so quick backup is difficult."
"A few hours? Too late."
Cecilia muttered with furrowed brows. She twirled the revolvers in her hands and glanced beyond the tunnel.
"If I planned to wait for support, I wouldn't have come. We have to go in."
"I agree. This mission isn't led by the Management Bureau anyway. It's up to Agent Shin Ian, who gathered us, to decide."
Park Hoseok turned to Ian.
"I'll follow Agent Shin Ian's lead."
"Then let's go in."
Ian answered immediately. He tossed his lit cigarette into the Ghoul's gut and rolled his stiff shoulders.
"Support is fine, but we can't forget the objective. If we drag this out and one side gains the upper hand, that'll be a problem too."
The Vampires and Nazis were currently locked in a power struggle. As a third force, now was the perfect time to intervene.
If one side fully took over the village, breaking through wouldn't be easy. It would essentially become a total war.
Ian wanted no part of an all-out war against the Nazis. He summoned the Deep Sea Chronicles, took out a pen, and jerked his chin toward the tunnel exit.
"Take positions. We're breaching."
No one argued with his words. They all assumed the same formation as when they first entered the tunnel.
Ian flipped through the Grimoire's pages, searching for a suitable Summoned Beast for the situation.
'Producer or Watcher wouldn't fit well. Better to pull out a lower grade.'
No matter how strong the Ghouls and Nazis were, they weren't worth deploying a Watcher or Producer.
He could summon them, of course, but if he brought them out unnecessarily and couldn't feed them, they'd turn on him instead. Both required massive amounts of food, so it was risky without knowing the enemy numbers.
So, lower than that.
Stronger than a Messenger, but not reaching higher—a suitable mid-tier. He flipped the pages.
[Twinkle Twinkle Little Star-]
It was then. The moment they stepped past the tunnel into the village depths, a faint song echoed from somewhere.
Mozart's Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. The nursery rhyme and masterpiece known worldwide.
But blaring it openly in a rural area like this was odd. The Nazis must have done something.
Mozart was born in Austria. And Austria was Hitler's homeland. Once annexed by the Nazis, it wasn't strange if they claimed it as their national song and played it loudly.
Still, not knowing what effect it might have, Ian turned to the group and spat out a warning.
"Watch out for the song. Don't listen closely."
"……Damn, not just me hearing it. Got it."
Benjamin replied, sweating coldly. The others were in a similar state. Only Ian remained unfazed.
That proved a mental attack was underway. Ian clicked his tongue and quickly flipped the Grimoire's pages.
As they advanced and he turned the pages, the nursery rhyme from the village grew louder.
After a while, he found a suitable creature and looked up.
"I'm using magic. Stop for a sec."
Cecilia halted with a slight frown at his words. The others stopped in place too.
The group's expressions weren't great. They all seemed to suffer severe headaches, breathing raggedly while clutching their heads. Cecilia looked somewhat okay, but the rest didn't.
"……"
Ian scanned the group sharply while tapping the Grimoire.
Unlike the headache-plagued group, Ian felt no headache—not even a hint. His nose stung slightly from the stench of corpses and blood, but that was it. His mind was crystal clear.
'Probably immune to mental attacks.'
Nothing new. He'd experienced it once with the Monkey's Paw incident.
But he couldn't slack off just because he was fine. Ian quickly uncapped his pen and addressed the group.
"Step back one pace. Don't get caught in it."
The group slowly retreated at his command.
Ian found a relatively intact spot on the blood-soaked ground and drew a magic circle there. The asphalt made the lines a bit crooked, but it would activate fine.
He poured three chunks of anomaly flesh and his own blood onto the circle, opened the Grimoire, and chanted the incantation.
"O Circulator, you who crawl through eternities. As proxy and consort of the One, I command you. I have personally prepared a feast for you—come hither."
As the incantation ended, red blood dripped from the Grimoire. The falling blood hit the circle's center precisely and spread like mist.
Dense blood mist billowed. From within, a small creature emerged.
A black body overall with smooth skin and four arm-like legs extended.
Head-sized, no eyes or ears. Just nostril holes for a nose, and a mouth taking up most of its head, drooling steadily.
"……."
The Circulator, as it was called.
Resembling a lizard, it sensed Ian's presence and raised its front legs high. It looked like a friendly greeting, so Ian smiled faintly and pointed to the scattered corpses around.
"They're corpses, but eat up anyway."
**Pip!**
The Circulator replied with a thin cry and gaped its maw. At that instant, the motionless corpses jerked upright on their own and crawled into its mouth. Astonishingly, as they neared, they compressed into bite-sized pieces.
**Pip pip!**
The Circulator cried happily and chewed the meat lumps entering its mouth.
**Crunch crunch, snap snap**—the clear sounds of bones and muscles being ground echoed. Ian stroked its smooth head with a finger and commanded.
"Kill anything non-human you detect, including what you just ate. Eat them too if you want."
**Pip!**
The Circulator nodded as if to say understood.
Ian patted its head lightly and stood.
Then he opened his mouth to address the group.
"Move again. Don't provoke this thing unnecess… arily……."
His voice trailed off and faded as he spoke. Ian couldn't even close his gaping mouth, staring at the group with trembling pupils.
"……."
"……."
"……."
At the top of his rotated field of vision.
A massive moon, too big to cover with a hand, poured blue moonlight downward from the sky.
And below it.
Ian's companions stared back at him with blank faces, their pale eyes gleaming.
"……."
Chills ran down his back.
[Twinkle Twinkle Little Star-]
[How I wonder, shh, what you are-]
The nursery rhyme grew louder.