Chapter 108 - The King in Yellow, Flesh and Blood, Mad Moon (4)
10 min read ·
On the stage where the actors had lost consciousness and collapsed.
Se-geon opened his eyes to a splitting headache.
"Ah... ugh...."
The scenes he'd witnessed before blacking out flickered through his mind.
In the middle of the play, a second act no one knew about had started on its own, and then a mannequin draped in a yellow cloak suddenly began to move and speak... Had it been a dream?
He rose cautiously and surveyed his surroundings.
A mannequin lying abandoned on the ground, a yellow cloak, unconscious actors.
'...Could we have all inhaled some kind of toxic gas, hallucinated, and passed out?'
Just as he was fumbling through that theory with his muddled head.
Squelch-.
Se-geon's gaze dropped to the sticky sensation under his foot.
"...Huh?"
Following the trail of red blood flowing across the stage, he saw a headless corpse.
The client who had hired the actors, and the wizard whose head had been burst open by Hastur.
It was Robert's body.
The lack of any sense of reality kept him from properly registering what it was at first.
"Huh? Ah, ahhh...!"
But the moment he realized it was an actual human corpse, Se-geon fell backward.
Crash!
His legs gave out and he collapsed to the floor.
"Hrrk! Haah!"
He pushed himself backward across the floor with his hands, trying to get even slightly further from the body.
"–?"
Then he felt something wrong with his right hand.
Not pain, not numbness, nothing like that.
The feeling of gripping something.
He raised his trembling hand to look.
A book with a yellow cover had been clutched in it since who knew when.
The power Hastur had bestowed upon Se-geon, the one he'd made a deal with.
The grimoire <The King in Yellow> squirmed in its master's hand.
'He's finally paying attention to me!'
Yellow!
Se-geon screamed at the sight and hurled the grimoire away.
"AAAAAAAAH!"
Yellow-!?
The visions and phantom voices he'd seen and heard before losing consciousness, the headless corpse, the strange book that had somehow appeared in his hand.
All he'd done was take a job as a stage actor to earn a living... He couldn't make sense of any of it.
Still, he could instinctively tell that <The King in Yellow> was no ordinary book.
To escape this situation, Se-geon rose from the floor, his body trembling with terror.
He staggered off the stage, stumbling his way out of the auditorium.
"Haah... haah...."
Bracing himself against the wall as he walked, he frantically pulled out his phone and checked it.
'...Police? Ambulance? What am I supposed to call?'
And then he heard the faint sound of footsteps in the corridor.
Two people were approaching from up ahead.
Se-geon exhaled with relief and began babbling at them.
"H-hey! Please help! People collapsed inside, and there's a, a body... huh?"
But he quickly sensed something was off.
Not because the two approaching people were foreigners.
Because they were armed with guns.
Two mercenaries who happened to be near the auditorium had sensed something amiss and come inside to gather information.
"...A wizard?"
"Looks like a civilian who got caught up in it. Let's just get what we can out of him."
Thwack-!
One of the mercenaries kicked the bewildered Se-geon square in the stomach and pressed a gun barrel to his head.
"Gakh-!?"
"'I'm so confused, I don't know anything~' Save it. If you don't wanna die, squeeze that brain of yours and tell us everything you know."
Senseless, unprovoked violence.
Se-geon's face crumpled with pain and fear, his pupils shaking.
What was he even supposed to tell them? No, even if he told them what he'd seen, would they actually let him live?
Watching the mercenary's index finger creep toward the trigger, ragged breaths escaped Se-geon's mouth on their own.
"Haah! Haah!"
All that surfaced in his mind was the survival instinct screaming that he didn't want to die.
Rage toward the mercenaries trying to kill him without batting an eye.
That feeling summoned the grimoire.
Fwshhh-!
Wind swept through the corridor, carrying the smell of blood.
Without so much as a scream.
".........."
A red line was drawn across the waists of the two mercenaries looking down at Se-geon, splitting them apart.
Thud-.
Their upper and lower halves separated, collapsing in a spray of blood.
Fwshhhh-.
"Huh?"
Se-geon stared blankly at the scene, drenched in the gushing blood.
He slowly lowered his gaze to his hand.
The yellow-covered grimoire he had definitely thrown away just moments ago.
<The King in Yellow> was clutched in it.
Yellow!
As if proudly puffing out its chest, declaring, 'This is how incredible a grimoire I am!'
It thrust its cover forward, but....
Se-geon was in no mental state to notice.
"Ugh, uuurgh-!"
Overwhelmed by the instinctive revulsion of having killed someone, he dropped to his knees and vomited onto the blood-soaked floor.
"BLERGH! Ack! AAACK!"
Though whatever had been in his stomach had already come up during the play. All that came out was stinging bile.
"Aaagh... haah...."
Eyes wet with tears from the retching, Se-geon stared at the severed corpses, intestines spilling from the cross-sections.
'...I killed someone?'
It didn't feel real, but the grotesquely vivid corpses and the stench of blood shoved reality right in his face.
'C-could I call it self-defense? I... I could, right?'
It was to survive, and those men clearly weren't good people, but....
...He hadn't meant to kill them. He'd just wanted to get out of the situation.
The guilt of having killed crawled up his spine.
"Nnnnngh-!"
Se-geon clutched his head and let out a strangled scream.
He didn't understand anything. He truly didn't understand a single thing. Why was any of this happening?
'I– just!'
In his spiraling thoughts, what surfaced, ironically, was the face of the mother who had abandoned him.
The mother who had left to build a new, happy family.
In his own way, he'd wanted to become a famous actor and... see his mom again.
"......Ha."
A hollow laugh escaped him.
Se-geon forced strength into his trembling legs and stood up from the floor.
Nothing made sense, but he didn't want to die.
He couldn't die here.
He couldn't just sit still. New footsteps were approaching.
Mercenaries who had come running at the commotion took one look at Se-geon, drenched in blood and clutching a strange book, and immediately trained their guns on him.
Se-geon gritted his teeth, gripped <The King in Yellow> tightly, and shouted.
"S-stay back! If you come any closer..."
Swallowing his fear to survive, he forced the words out clumsily.
"I-I'll kill you!"
Awkward, but better than doing nothing.
The grimoire <The King in Yellow> wrapped wind around Se-geon's body to support its master.
Fwooosh-!
A high-maintenance master, this one.
***
Rendered invisible to others' sight by the Hand of Glory.
Lee Mun-ryong and I walked through the dark alley, tracking the direction where mana was felt most strongly.
Vrrmmm-!
This way?
Well, "tracking" was really just <De Vermis Mysteriis> vibrating to indicate the direction.
Since there was still some breathing room during the mana detection, I made small talk with Lee Mun-ryong.
"Old man, do you know any magic for silencing footsteps? Or Footwork techniques?"
"I know Footwork. As for the magic, I've seen some mercenaries use it, and a few guys in U.S. special forces."
"...U.S. special forces?"
"There are Delta Force types whose footsteps make no sound."
Why was it that a spell that merely silenced footsteps suddenly sounded terrifying just because the Americans used it?
Anyway, since Lee Mun-ryong said he knew how, I'd need to learn how to erase my presence later.
And as we continued talking.
The subject somehow circled back to my parents.
"You said before you don't know about your father. What about your mother, any interest in finding her?"
"Not really. If she let go of my hand and walked away in front of the orphanage, we're strangers. Better for each of us to just live our own lives."
I'm busy enough worrying about my own life. Why would I waste time looking for someone else?
"And if I'm gonna go find a mama at this age..."
I let out a faint smirk and cracked a joke at Lee Mun-ryong.
"I'd rather find a pretty, big-chested virgin mommy I'm not related to. Why go looking for used goods?"
"Kim Yo-han, you are the greatest wizard."
The moment the words left his mouth.
Bang-!
As if this were Mexico rather than Korea, bullets came flying with perfect naturalness.
Lee Mun-ryong lightly spun his spear and deflected the round.
Clang!
A group of mercenaries ahead had aimed at us and opened fire.
I dropped the now-useless Perception Interference Magic.
Clicking my tongue at the sight of a mercenary wearing night-vision thermal imaging gear.
"Tch, the march of science."
I was enjoying the comforts of modern civilization, so I couldn't complain, but... modern science was just too strong.
At any rate, the presence of mercenaries meant we were getting close to the summoning site.
"You two! If you don't want to die, don't come any closer!"
They ambush us with intent to kill, fail, and then resort to threats. Hilarious.
".........."
'If you don't want to die, he says....'
I did occasionally use that sort of violent language as an exaggerated way of expressing something as mild as wishing someone would trip over a rock, but.
I didn't casually throw around words like "I'll kill you" at other people.
For one, it's just a terrible thing to say.
And for another, if you actually intended to kill someone, why would you announce that you're about to attack?
Fwshhh-!
"Gakh-!?"
The torso of the mercenary with the thermal gear was pierced by the invisible vampire Grizzly.
"GAAAH!" "–!?"
Before the other mercenaries could even react, Grizzly swung its arms in rapid succession.
Heads and bodies burst apart, spraying blood.
Among them, one mercenary who had barely survived bared his fangs and enlarged his body.
Fur sprouted and grew across his frame as he became half-man, half-beast.
"GRAAAAAAGH!"
Werewolf. A lycanthrope.
My eyes went wide. That was a bit surprising.
Then again, if vampires were walking around, it made perfect sense that werewolves could too.
The werewolf mercenary made the sensible choice: rather than fighting an invisible monster, he went for the visible target, the wizard commanding the familiar. He came for me.
Boom-.
He launched off the ground in a single bound, charging with his massive jaws gaping wide. I let out a breath as I watched him.
I raised my fist.
"Hoo...."
I stepped forward and pressed my foot into the ground.
An applied technique of the Breathing Technique I'd learned from Lee Mun-ryong.
Stomp.
Enhance physical ability through breath control. Gather force through the stamp of the foot.
And as the finishing touch, apply my contract with the earth elemental to increase my weight.
My fist came down like an iron hammer and caved in the wolf's skull.
Boom- Crack! Thoom!
And drove it straight into the ground.
"Gravity."
It wasn't like some fantasy gravity spell that pinned an opponent from midair. It was just a technique that increased my own weight to hit harder, but....
Anyway, I murmured it like a fantasy wizard.
"What you just saw looks simple, but."
Feeling good, I dusted off my hands and quipped.
Stomp, Breathing Technique, earth elemental contract.
"It's a combination spell blending three different supernatural powers."
Lee Mun-ryong stared at me blankly, then spoke.
"The mechanism's a bit different, but that's just a Thousand-Pound Drop."
"What?"
'Dammit... it was already an existing technique?'
My eyes sank low.
Deflated.
"...I'm calling it Gravity."
Thousand-Pound Drop, what Thousand-Pound Drop. This wasn't some martial arts novel.
"Suit yourself."
Lee Mun-ryong gave a light shrug and scanned the area.
"Judging by the presences I'm sensing beyond these guys, looks like we've found the right place."
"Hoo...."
I exhaled a breath of my own and looked up at the theater building, not a single light on inside.
"Let's go."
I stepped past the mercenaries' corpses and moved forward.
There was no reason to hesitate after coming this far.