Chapter 52
Chapter 52
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 52
Chapter Title: Strange Escort
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Thundering footsteps shook heaven and earth. Ian gripped his grimoire tightly, a chill of unease crawling up his spine.
The aura was far from ordinary. Ian lacked perfect detection spells to sense others' energies, but like sensing a predator upon seeing a bear or tiger, he knew the thing descending from above was no mere anomaly.
"……Damn it."
Staying put meant annihilation. The Watcher's tentacles still thrashed through the stairwell, slaughtering anomalies, but the colossal entity ignored them entirely as it lumbered down the stairs toward the underground parking lot.
It meant one thing.
That anomaly possessed power at least rivaling the Watcher.
"Hurry up and find a car, you dumbass!"
Management Bureau agents prodded the parking attendant, sweat beading on their brows. They seemed to guess what was slowly descending from above. No—more accurately, they had known from the start.
'Suicidal method. Escape not permitted by the space. Error……'
He pieced together fragmented knowledge to assess the situation. Overwhelming killing intent pricked at his back, but he forced himself to think calmly.
The proper way to escape the hospital wasn't to harass the attendant like this. The standard exit was to get discharge papers from a doctor and leave through the main gate with guardians and patients together. Strictly speaking, what they were doing now was an error.
But the anomaly wouldn't permit such an error.
'Anyone not belonging to the hospital is essentially an impurity.'
And impurities should be removed. There was no reason to leave useless viruses without nutrition alone.
So who removed the impurities, the viruses? Vaccines? Immune cells?
No, no. Those roles were already filled by doctors and nurses. Useless or not, they were pouring everything into wiping out the impurities. But they were effective without being potent, and the impurities still roamed freely, trying to leave alive.
To kill such viruses required a higher authority. The master who wielded the vaccine, the owner who meticulously controlled every cell—it had to step in personally.
In other words, the master of this space.
Precisely speaking.
"Hospital Director."
Boom!
At Ian's mutter, the footsteps drew closer.
It was right above them now. A faint gurgling, boiling sound reached his ears.
"Attendant, you fucking bastard! Find a car NOW!!"
Park Hee-su yelled, staggering on the vibrating ground. The attendant stammered, then his eyes lit up as he replied.
"Found one! One car and two motorcycles! That right?"
"……! Yeah, that's it—bring 'em all out!"
"Then I'll need to check the vehicle numbers. Do you know the—"
Bang!
Before the attendant finished, Ian put a bullet between his eyes. The round smashed the anomaly's head, splattering blood and brains everywhere.
The body crumpled with a thud. Park Hee-su, who had flinched as the bullet whizzed past his ear, turned to Ian, lips twitching.
"Hey, you fuck…… shoot more carefully……!"
"Doesn't seem like the time for that. Let's go. The vehicles are here."
Ian nodded toward the cars that had suddenly appeared at the edge of the lot.
One ordinary sedan and two replica bikes.
The group rushed to the vehicles without a word. The Management Bureau agents piled into the sedan familiarly, while Ian and Cecilia mounted the bikes separately.
"You know how to drive?"
"Yeah. Good transport."
Vroom!
Cecilia started her bike smoothly. Ian turned the key in his, released the stand, and twisted the throttle, remembering to work the clutch.
The bikes roared forward menacingly. Having gotten his license in high school, handling them wasn't hard.
He took the lead, speeding through the open parking lot toward the blood-soaked exit.
Thanks to the Watcher clearing everything, there were no obstacles. Ian glanced in his mirror at the others following, then accelerated fully out of the lot.
Roooar!!
As they burst onto the surface amid a cacophony of exhaust, the scene was littered corpses and the Watcher flying overhead. Hundreds, thousands of tentacles still pierced the hospital walls, but a few dangled limply downward, as if it had spare capacity.
It didn't seem hungry. Its eyes remained fierce, but no starvation gleamed within. A small mercy amid misfortune.
"Drive, fuck! To the space's boundary!"
Park Hee-su leaned out the sedan's rear window, blasting his shotgun. Ian stopped observing the Watcher and gunned the throttle. Cecilia overtook him.
Crunch!!
Each twitch of tentacles dropped corpses from the hospital interior. The air reeked of blood and corpse poison, a nauseating stench that numbed the sinuses.
A testament to how many anomalies had died here.
To think one Watcher could crush an entire ghost story.
He knew it was strong from the descriptions, but this was excessive. If this weren't a spatial anomaly but reality, it might have caused a true catastrophe.
'I should stick to weak ones in reality if possible. Better not to use it in cities at—'
The thought was cut short.
KABOOM!!!
The parking exit exploded, unleashing a massive shockwave. Ian wobbled precariously on his bike but clenched his teeth and regained balance.
"Whoaaa!"
"Grip the handlebars, asshole!"
"I am!"
The agents' sedan drifted side to side, and Cecilia pulled alongside Ian, shouting loudly.
"Hospital Director!"
"……!"
Ian twisted back to see the shattered exit.
[…….]
From the rubble emerged an elongated brain.
Literally a 'brain.' It had four long arms, twitching slightly loosened brain folds, and drooling cerebrospinal fluid. The pulsating brain mass sprayed transparent liquid as it scanned surroundings.
No eyes, yet optic nerves; no ears, yet auditory cortex. Sensing all without intermediaries, it fixed on Ian and the group, charging rapidly.
Crunch!!
Its four arms struck the ground like a quadrupedal beast. A blue name tag embedded in the occipital lobe gleamed under the red sky.
[Psychiatrist]
[Hospital Director]
[Yohan]
As Ian predicted, the Hospital Director. He cursed inwardly and floored it.
Park Hee-su didn't curse inwardly.
"You motherfucking SHIT!!!"
Fear and thrill twisted his face as he aimed his shotgun, laughing wildly. His brain boiled with adrenaline and dopamine in the extreme situation. He didn't fight his hormones.
"Fucking gross ass thing!"
Rat-tat-tat!!
The shotgun spat fire at the Hospital Director's cerebral cortex. But bullets turned to newborns upon hitting the fluid, plopping harmlessly to the ground.
"Wah! Wah! W—"
Crunch!
The Hospital Director snatched and crushed a fallen newborn, pouring its blood onto itself. Yeoul let out a hollow laugh at the absurdity.
"Turning inorganic to organic? What nonsense……!"
"That's why it's an anomaly! Uwaaaah, it's closing! Off the brake—full throttle, newbie!!"
"I am!"
Roooar!!
Two bikes, one sedan, and a massive brain raced down the open road. Speeds topped 140 km/h, yet the Hospital Director pursued like it hit 200.
Speed unfit for its bulky form. Kim I-seo fired her sniper rifle from its case, but bullets either glanced off the fluid or became newborns tumbling away.
Physical attacks were useless. Its brain form suggested mental assaults might work, but the group lacked such means.
Surrounded on all sides.
As Ian sought countermeasures in his grimoire, a massive shadow loomed overhead.
Looking up instinctively, he met the gaze of the Watcher, which had swum through the sky.
Its eyes seemed to ask, 'Help?' Ian snapped the grimoire shut without hesitation, smirking.
"Devour it."
[……Heh.]
The Watcher's eye curved like a crescent. It whipped around, launching near-infinite tentacles at the Hospital Director.
Pew-pew-pew!
Tentacles pierced the fluid like shells, bursting blood everywhere.
The Hospital Director shredded into chunks instantly, and the Watcher giggled grotesquely from countless mouths on its tentacles. Immunity to physical attacks apparently didn't apply to Outer Sea lifeforms.
Park Hee-su shouted at the torn-apart Director.
"Got it?!"
"You idiot! Don't say that in the Bureau!"
As Park Min-ah smacked his head in horror, the crushed brains reformed and regenerated.
"See?!"
Crunch!
The Hospital Director slid forward, swinging its two pairs of arms at superhuman speed. The limbs seized all tentacles and ripped them off.
[Kek!]
Blue blood sprayed from severed tentacles. Ian's head, already bloodied, turned blue, as the Watcher regenerated and slammed down a net-like formation.
The Hospital Director fragmented into the net, then reformed. It used loosened folds like a harpoon to pierce the Watcher's body, slamming it down like a hammer.
KABOOM!!
Blue blood erupted from the crushed Watcher like a bomb. Ian, drenched, gaped.
To think an anomaly could fight an Outer Sea being.
Not overwhelmingly or helplessly, but an actual battle. The shock hit hard—something thought invincible wasn't.
'The Watcher isn't weak. The Hospital Director is abnormally strong.'
He knew this wasn't ordinary space, but not to this degree.
If he'd summoned anything weaker than the Watcher…… they wouldn't be racing intact now.
The more he thought, the luckier it felt. Ian spat blood from his mouth and turned from the regenerating, battling Watcher.
Intentional or not, it was buying time—no need to waste it. Ian crouched low, full throttle.
"Cecilia!"
"Yeah!"
Cecilia matched his posture, hurtling down the road. Deafening wind, exhaust, and engine vibrations thrummed through his heart. Ian gritted his teeth, wiping blood from his face with his left hand.
Meanwhile, Park Hee-su, not driving, watched the clashing monsters with sparkling eyes.
"Super Monster Battle……"
"Awesome!"
The newbie floored it in agreement. Yeoul, in the passenger seat, smacked his head.