순환하는 세계(3)
The five who remained instinctively understood in the face of Shagal's lightning-quick killing technique.
"Prepare yourselves."
Those scattered around Etella drew their weapons, murderous intent radiating from each of them.
"We're of the same kind."
"Of the same kind?"
Shagal's eyebrows twitched.
He wasn't entirely convinced they were above him, but even killing techniques had ranks.
"I don't mix with anyone. Save the creepy speeches—only those who want to die come at me."
"We used to think the same." A pot-bellied man without a beard wound a wire garrote a few times around his palm and stepped forward.
"Don't know what era you crawled out of, but this is hell. People like us are supposed to be law-abiding citizens here. If you cling to cheap pride, you'll get baptized by the Heukseung."
"The Heukseung?"
The pot-bellied man laughed.
"You really know nothing. I'll teach you the fear of hell slowly. Ever hear of Strangler Edron?" Shagal's face remained indifferent, but Etella turned to the man with a startled look.
Strangler Edron—the killer who, 180 years ago, strangled 109 people to death.
Edron pulled the wire garrote taut.
"It doesn't matter what it is. If I can choke the breath from something alive, that's fine. Humans are the best—when they stick their tongues out, their eyes roll back. When they thrash their legs trying to live—that drives me insane."
Etella remembered that he'd been imprisoned and hanged himself on the forty-fourth day.
"Human Disassembler Averio."
A man with prominent buckteeth wielded a huge cutter like a pair of scissors.
"Killed 287. Hobby: disassembly. At the smallest mechanical and biological functional units, I dismantled a human into 3,287 parts—that's my career high. Maybe I'll break the record today. By the way…" His lip curled into an evil grin. "You don't die easily in hell."
Two of the killers Shagal had stabbed with his rapid blades were still twitching.
"…Information will be useful." Etella didn't want to help, but being blindsided by ignorance annoyed her.
"I'll give you a chance. Anyone who wants to live, raise your hand. I'll spare exactly one person—one who gives me information."
"Heh heh, knew you'd say that."
A ferret-faced man drew a chain-sickle and crouched like a rat.
"No idea where you crawled from, but your senior treatment's a mess. Consider yourself unlucky. I'll cut off your limbs and put them in a box. You won't even get to meet the Heukseung."
"Senior."
A heat haze shimmered around Shagal and countless short rapid blades fell like hail.
"Come on." The killers hesitated at the unknown phenomenon, but retreat in hell was an eternal fall.
"Attack together."
The five killers pushed off the ground and lunged at Shagal.
The air vibrated, and dozens of rapid blades moved as if they had life.
Before Etella could intervene, two killers fell, blades driven through their bodies.
"Uaaaah! Blood, blood!"
As their bodies gushed all their blood, Shagal's face was stained red again.
"Got them! Now!"
The heavy Edron rolled nimbly across the ground and looped a wire around Shagal's ankle.
Shagal didn't even glance.
"Old-fashioned."
Holding his dagger, he flicked his wrist and the casings of the rapid blades embedded one after another into Edron's back.
"Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!" Blood spouted like a fountain as Averio opened his cutter wide and charged.
"I'll cut you off from there!"
The cutter snapped shut with a thunk near the groin under its leverage.
A puzzled look crossed Averio's face.
'Why is this so solid?'
Shagal, stooped low, had wedged a reverse-grip rapid blade horizontally between the cutter's jaws.
"Hmph! So what!"
Just as Averio tried to crush even iron, Shagal twisted his wrist ninety degrees and struck upward with the blade.
"Uaaaa! My—my face!"
The blade sliced across his jaw, and Shagal, with expert movements, carved him apart.
Averio, with blades in every vital spot, trembled and couldn't even fall down.
"Uh? Uh? Aaaah!"
Suddenly his eyes bulged and, like a bursting balloon, he sprayed blood in every direction.
"Senior? It's just an old-school style."
When Shagal turned his blood-streaked body, the chain-sickle man's face had gone white.
'Monster. What on earth is that?'
A killer who'd terrorized a whole city would have skill in his own way.
'This guy's beyond that. Nationwide—maybe kingdom-level wanted. Maybe… hunted worldwide.'
'I don't get it. A guy like that has the Chain of Fate attached?'
A killer of that caliber should've been relegated to Blade Hell or Cauldron Hell.
'Does that mean that woman is that important?'
As Shagal stepped forward, the chain-sickle man aimed his weapon at Etella.
"Stop! Move closer and I'll kill the woman." Shagal halted, but he felt no concern for Etella.
"Do it. If you can."
"You're not joking! I'll really kill her! If this woman dies, you won't get away either!"
"Then kill her. I don't care."
"You…!"
The chain-sickle man spun, and at the same moment Etella launched herself.
"Gah—!"
A rapid series of Yin–Yang Wave Fist strikes hammered the man's belly like a drum; blood burst from his mouth.
"Guhhhh!"
Clutching his sore belly, the man writhed as Shagal put his foot on his back.
"Now tell me everything you know. If you don't want to end up like those seniors."
"Au… Auuu…"
The man could only nod repeatedly.
"Hmm, Heukseung, huh."
Having squeezed much information from the chain-sickle man, Shagal and Etella wore grave expressions.
"To sum it up," Etella said, "there's an organization called the Inferno Resource Management Corporation that manages hell. Humans who fall here are purified by hellfire and reborn as new demonic beings."
Shagal supplied the information they needed.
"Purified demons can be killed. But those like these guys—those who haven't yet entered the hellfire, the escapees—aren't truly dead even if you kill them." Watching Averio twitch with his jaw split, purification seemed preferable.
"Yes. And the ones who capture and purify those escapees are called the Heukseung (Black Chains). Like death gods, perhaps?"
Shagal asked the man, "Hey, you. Ever actually see a Heukseung?"
The man, even more wounded than before, spoke in a terrified voice.
"Ah, yes. I wasn't taken, but I've seen escapees get caught. Terrifying creatures—full of a black, dank aura. We need to move fast. A Heukseung might show up."
"What do they look like?"
"They're black and dank—" When Shagal wordlessly lifted a rapid blade, the man froze, distraught.
"It's true. I couldn't get close, so how could I describe them? The moment a Heukseung appears, you turn and run. Please, believe me."
"All right. Anyway…"
There was a matter more important than the Heukseung.
"That Inferno Corporation—you said the Karma Management Department was watching us?"
"That's what I heard."
"And they respond if we request how much time we have left to finish our karma?"
"Yes. I saw it—or rather, I heard about it. But honestly, you don't want to hear it. It's an enormous amount of time. The one I saw was 1,200 years. He went half-mad, killed wildly. I don't know what became of him. Probably not purified yet. People with remaining karma like us can neither die nor live."
Shagal looked at Etella.
"Want to ask? How much time we have together."
When someone desperately digs a well, Etella tilted her face to the sky.
'Please… let it be an amount a person can handle.'
"Are you watching even now? How long until our karma is complete?"
"Time until purification is…" A bureaucratic voice came from above.
"87 hae, 2,875 gyeong, 3,241 jo, 6,442 eok, 890 man, and 7,109 hours remain." No one could bring themselves to speak; the chain-sickle man muttered in a daze.
"W-what? What kind of time is that?"
Even though it wasn't his own karma burden, the number was despair enough to bring tears.
Etella collapsed to her knees.
"This can't be. How could such a time appear? What on earth did I do?"
The informant said, "By the way, the purification times for both of you are confirmed to be the seventh-longest in Otherworld history."
First place was Lucifer.
"We appreciate the intense emotion, and we will use the karma you sent for good causes. Always striving—Inferno Resource Management Corporation, informant Leona."
Shagal shrugged.
"Heh heh heh, amusing. Hey, take it easy. You'll be living with me for an eternity, remember?"
With Etella dazed, the chain-sickle man looked between them and asked, "You two… what on earth did you do?"
Tormia Castle.
Shirone, who served as headquarters for simultaneous incidents, closed his book and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
'The outside world, huh.'
Among the countless events unfolding worldwide, this one was particularly shocking.
'OOPArts exist as physical objects. But if you "use" them, even humans become objects. They weren't made for people to use in the first place.'
The high-dimensional nature of the outside world prickled his skin.
'The problem is Imer's mind. It still isn't connected. I don't know what's happening.'
The object "Zhuangzi's Butterfly" had clearly linked Shirone's information with signals from the outside world.
'In other words, the field has shifted. If that's the difference from Giyorghi's Taeguk or the Maika ruins…'
All the answers were likely with Shirone, who was fighting inside Imer's mind.
There was a knock at the door.
"Shirone."
At the familiar voice, he opened the door to find Zulu, still pale.
"Zulu, are you able to move?" She'd only just regained consciousness three days earlier after being fatally struck by Imer.
"Getting better quickly. Still can't fight yet. I wanted to hear the situation."
"Come in."
Shirone handed her a warm cup of tea and sat facing Zulu, recounting everything that had happened.
She listened calmly through the many incidents and lifted her head at the word OOPArts.
"Ancient super-civilization, you mean. You think that might be connected to the outside world?"
"Yes. Not certain. The Maika ruins are completely scattered, and whatever little I'd realized—the quantum signals changed so they don't superpose."
"Hmm."
Zulu drank and then said, "Shirone, will you come with me somewhere?"
"Huh? Of course I can go to concurrent incidents whenever…but your body hasn't recovered yet."
"Middle East. To Paras."
"Paras? Ah—going to your homeland?"
Zulu set down her teacup and, as always, conveyed the exact meaning in the Middle Eastern tongue.
"There's an ancient super-civilization there."