Chapter 191
Chapter 191
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 191
Chapter Title: Refined Lady, Old Acquaintance, American, Long-Held Grudge (4)
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Two girls walked down the dark, damp train corridor, its walls covered in writhing flesh.
Leading the way was a girl with straight black hair. Even in the darkness, her eyes gleamed, but they held no particular emotion.
In stark contrast, the girl with sky-blue short hair following behind was clearly terrified.
Clutching the hem of the leading girl's clothes tightly and constantly glancing around, she looked just like the first victim in a horror movie.
“U-Unnie… slow down a bit…”
“I’m already going plenty slow.”
Seti and Neti.
The sisters, suddenly dropped into this bizarre train, had been wandering the corridors searching for an exit ever since they opened their eyes.
But after walking for so long, they hadn’t found the entrance—let alone any proper path.
All they encountered were endless corridors and empty cabins.
If there were enemies, they could at least fight, but just endlessly walking was killing Neti.
Was it because of the repulsive, squirming masses of flesh on the walls?
Or the faint stench of corpses drifting in from beyond the windows?
No, it was the oppressively heavy silence that truly churned her stomach—the source of her terror.
You know, that calm before a typhoon, the hush when a beast holds its breath… that kind of silence.
With every step, her nerves screamed warnings, yet nothing visible appeared…
Finally, unable to bear it, Neti broke the silence and called out to her sister.
“U-Um, Unnie?”
“What?”
“You’re really Unnie, right? Not some ghost or anything?”
“…”
Seti stopped in disbelief, turned her head, and upon seeing her sister’s near-tearful face, sighed.
“I’m really your Unnie. Who else would I be, fake Unnie?”
“P-Proof?”
This girl. Seti jabbed her finger into her sister’s forehead and said.
“Proof? What kind of proof?”
“N-Not something hard, like a secret only you and I know…”
“A secret…? Hmm… Like a few days ago in the campsite tent, when you were badmouthing the Saintess?”
“…Uh, yeah?”
Neti’s eyes widened in shock at the unexpected words, and Seti smirked, pressing her finger harder.
“What? Trying to make it a done deal? This is real proof.”
“H-How…?”
“Unnie has sharp ears.”
Hiccup. Neti hiccuped involuntarily. Wasn’t this a nightmare?
‘…I wish it were just a nightmare.’
As she averted her gaze, speechless, Seti turned back and resumed walking down the corridor.
Neti hurriedly chased after her. Only after a while did she stammer out.
“U-Unnie… that… I didn’t mean anything by it, the Saintess is…”
“I know. It’s easier to go from two to three than one to two, right?”
“…”
Her voice was light and casual, as if it were nothing.
Whether because of the place or her guilty conscience, Neti felt like she couldn’t breathe.
Her hiccups stopped, but cold sweat dripped down her back instead.
“Th-Three? Unnie, you’re joking, right…?”
“It’s fine.”
“…It’s fine? Really?!”
“Well, no matter how much that Saintess girl schemes, I’m the first one.”
“The first…?”
Just as Neti was about to ask what that meant.
Seti suddenly halted and glared down the corridor.
Her sensitive hearing had picked up faint footsteps approaching from ahead.
“Who’s there?”
No sooner had Seti’s voice echoed down the corridor than a reply came from the darkness beyond.
“…Not a Yankee? Who are you, then?”
A woman’s voice, carrying neither hostility nor goodwill.
Neti exchanged a brief glance with her sister and immediately prepared a telekinesis spell.
Strike first.
If it was an innocent person, she’d apologize, but if it was the one who dragged them here…
The next moment, a woman in a flowing robe with a hood appeared from the corridor’s darkness.
She held a staff made of bone, as if proclaiming “I’m a necromancer,” and Neti fired her telekinesis at the sight of it.
Not as precise as Yeomyeong’s, but brute-force telekinesis packed with raw power.
Crunch!
She felt the sensation of crushing something through her mana, but Neti frowned.
She’d used it with intent to kill, yet it only twisted one arm.
“Ha, well now.”
The arm holding the staff twisted and fell to the floor. But the woman laughed nonchalantly.
“Magic skill unfitting for your age, and reckless too… I set a trap for beasts, and caught a little bitch as a bonus?”
At her words—like a signal—the flesh on the corridor walls began to writhe.
Unsure what she was planning, Neti felt unease and swung her telekinesis.
A translucent force rippled from her hand, warping the entire corridor space.
But it didn’t reach the necromancer.
Just before it hit, something burst from the wall’s flesh, wrapping around her protectively.
“Crazy…”
Neti spat a curse. The thing that blocked her telekinesis was shocking… no, revolting.
A body the size of a human forearm, with a skull instead of a face—like a maggot.
Was that thing a maggot? Its wriggling skin was unmistakably human, and the blood oozing from where her telekinesis tore it was human too.
“Sorry, a bit shocking, huh? But bear with it—it’s my taste.”
The necromancer bitch smirked at Neti’s horrified reaction.
And before her smile faded, more skull-maggots writhed out from the wall’s flesh.
Her taste? What a fucked-up taste.
“Unnie! We need to fall back fir—”
The maggots filled the corridor, and as Neti prepared Flying Leg Art to retreat.
Seti, who had kept her eyes closed silently until now, opened them.
Her blue eyes were half-stained black. A deep darkness evoking shadows in the night sky.
The necromancer felt an inexplicable chill at those eyes.
Then, as if responding to her emotions, the repulsive maggots lunged at Seti.
The sight of maggots covering walls and floor, raining from above, was nightmarish…
But the outcome was different from expected.
From the corridor’s darkness, shadow blades erupted, slicing the maggots to pieces all at once.
No warning, not even a sound.
Maggots on ceiling and walls plummeted, those crawling on the floor stretched out, spilling their guts.
The contents were as revolting as the exterior—bones, entrails, and hair that looked human oozed out.
“What the fuck…”
With Neti’s curse as background, Seti curled her lips.
“That’s your taste? Sorry, not mine.”
Shadows moved with her voice, darkness tightening around the corridor.
Only then did the necromancer realize she’d trapped another beast.
“To think another star in the same train… Luck or misfortune, I wonder.”
***
At the same time.
Dawn’s sword aura swept the corridor ahead, followed by a streak of flash.
A bullet blessed by the White God Ulthbati.
It pierced the darkness and struck the mummy’s heart dead center.
Near-perfect marksmanship, with a violent reaction.
[Kyaaah—!]
A repulsive scream echoed through the corridor.
Caught off guard, the headless mummy clutched its chest, dropping even its staff.
Soon its body began crumbling to dust, but the Saintess’s reaction wasn’t good.
She frowned and clicked her tongue briefly.
The corridor and the twisted mana around them remained unchanged.
“Tch.”
Just a terminal, then?
She glanced at Yeomyeong, who had retrieved his sword and reached toward the mummy, then asked Scarlett, whose legs were trembling.
“Hey, lady.”
“La—? Yes?”
As a “Who’re you calling lady?” expression crossed Scarlett’s face, the Saintess added.
“You said you had a guess about this place? Explain.”
Scarlett glanced at where the mummy had vanished and said.
“This is probably… a mental space created by Mind Field magic.”
“Mind Field?”
“It forcibly pulls others’ minds into your own mental domain… But compared to the materials needed, the efficiency is poor, and the conditions are tricky, so it’s practically obsolete.”
Is that so? Yeomyeong inwardly rejected her hypothesis.
Plausible, but that was it. It couldn’t explain the sensations he felt if it was just minds transferred.
“God, so unhelpful—Huh?”
The Saintess seemed to think similarly, right as she was about to snap.
Yeomyeong, who had ‘retrieved’ the fallen mummy’s staff, suddenly grabbed her waist and hoisted her over his shoulder.
Likewise, he tucked Scarlett under his arm like luggage, then bolted in the direction the mummy had died.
[Star—!]
The next instant, an enormous mass of flesh poured down where Yeomyeong had stood.
Filling the corridor and surging like a tsunami.
A chase began down the shadow-shrouded train corridor.
Yeomyeong unleashed Flying Leg Art at near full power. Speed enough to nauseate the two dangling women.
Yet the distance to the pursuing flesh masses wasn’t widening—in fact, it narrowed by the second.
Bang!
Each time, the Saintess on his shoulder fired at the flesh, buying only brief moments.
With her revolver nearly out of bullets, the Saintess frowned, alternating glances between the flesh and Yeomyeong’s direction. What the hell?
[You shall not—escape—!]
As if proving the loathsome voice, the corridor showed no sign of ending.
Subjectively, they’d run over 4-5 km already, yet only darkness lay ahead.
Magic? Or a barrier? Either way, they needed a way to break through.
As the Saintess’s empty revolver clicked and Scarlett began dry-heaving.
Yeomyeong thought of a way to change the chase.
If the corridor doesn’t end, what about the roof?
Without hesitation, he gathered mana at his feet and unleashed Flying Leg Art.
Target: the corridor ceiling, free of flesh.
Boom!!!
Mana-accelerated Flying Leg Art punched a massive hole in the ceiling. Yeomyeong leaped up without pause.
He flipped lightly in midair, landing on the roof, where he saw the flesh filling the corridor below.
“…Can’t come up, huh?”
Yeomyeong watched the flesh masses briefly, then carefully set the two down on the roof.
Turning his head, the view was identical to what he’d seen from the cabin windows.
Marshes blanketing everything under a leaden sky.
If anything differed, perhaps the nose-piercing stench of rotting corpses.
“Urp—”
Nausea and smell overwhelming her, Scarlett began vomiting bile.
As the Saintess patted her back instead of ignoring her, Yeomyeong pulled weapons from his inventory.
Soviet rifles, magazines, and grenades from Dreiterial’s underground armory.
He handed weapons to each, and the Saintess muttered.
“…Commie guns? Not my vibe.”
“Now’s not the time to be picky.”
“Weapons made by infidels don’t take blessings well.”
Unclear if joking to lighten the mood or serious, she swiftly loaded a magazine and blessed it anyway.
“What now?”
Soon after blessing Scarlett’s rifle and grenade too, the Saintess asked. Yeomyeong gazed at the passing scenery, gripped his sword, and replied.
“First, find the others.”
“Rescue people in this situation?”
Scarlett, grabbing her gun, asked in surprise, but Yeomyeong nodded.
The mummy’s earlier words—“Not one, but five”—nagged at him.
For some reason, he had a hunch Seti was here.
If Seti was, then Neti too… making exactly five, coincidentally.
“W-Well, I disagree. In a Mind Field, it’s wiser to find and neutralize the caster than rescue—”
Scarlett, unaware, tried voicing opposition, but the Saintess cut her off.
“Who asked your opinion?”
“…”
“If you don’t like Yeo—er, hubby’s plan, go your own way? I don’t care.”
Stung by the Saintess’s blunt words, Scarlett clamped her mouth shut, pondering something. Probably debating whether to reveal she’s CIA.
Irrelevant to Yeomyeong, he looked toward the train’s front and said.
“First, to the engine car. Mage or whoever, we need to stop this train.”
No objections. But as Yeomyeong reached to grab them again, Scarlett looked queasy.
“…Can’t I just walk?”
“Wasting time.”
Scarlett resignedly hung under his arm. The Saintess gleefully climbed onto his back.
Fortunately, unlike the corridor, physics on the roof held. In just over 10 seconds, they reached the end of the car.
Without hesitation, Yeomyeong jumped to the next car.
And the one after.
The stench rotted his nose, mouth, and throat simultaneously, but Yeomyeong didn’t slow.
He accelerated further, heart pumping, muscles screaming.
Finally.
Reaching the engine car, Yeomyeong leaped from the roof, landing right before the coupler.
The moment he grabbed the engine room door.
[Fallen—star—! Loathsome—traitor—!]
A repulsive mummy voice boomed from the swamp outside the train.
Immediately after, the entire swamp began to roil.
Flesh masses, then swamp?
As the Saintess tilted her head, Yeomyeong sensed something familiar.
‘This mana wavelength… definitely from Incheon port…?’
Before his thought finished, suspicion turned to certainty.
[Death—! Reverse flow—! Death—! Pile up—!]
No sooner had the familiar incantation rung out than a massive arm erupted from the swamp.
An Undead Titan’s arm of bone and flesh.
And that was just the start. Bigger than the one from Incheon—building-sized—a titan emerged from the swamp.
Not just one. Nearly twenty filled the horizon.
Yeomyeong fixed his gaze on them and told the Saintess.
“Stop the train first. I’ll handle those.”
She did. As she opened the engine room door and entered, Scarlett said in a daze.
“Y-You’re stopping the train? Crazy! If we stop, those things will surround us!”
Yeomyeong looked down at her coldly.
“…No, think backwards. It summoned those because we’re trying to stop the train.”
“…”
Boom! As the titans stomped in unison, the tracks shook with the impact.
“And you. Explain that ‘fallen star’ crap to Sain—er, my wife. She’s already figured they’re after you, so no excuses.”
“Wait, that’s top secret—”
You can’t tell! Before she finished, Scarlett screamed.
Yeomyeong had leaped off the moving train car.
“You’re insane?!”
No reply came.
Amid the quaking swamp, Yeomyeong charged toward the titans.
Behind him, red haze billowed like a cape.
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