Chapter 25 - Ghostbuster (9)

Yohan opened and closed his hand for a moment, recalling the sensation of the grimoire answering his summons earlier. He had never been separated from it since acquiring it, so he hadn't known, but apparently the grimoire had a convenient teleportation feature that brought it to its master when called.

He effectively had his grimoire, even if it wasn't in his hand, and Grizzly was beside him. Until he could find the grimoire, recovering it had been his top priority, leaving no room to consider anything else. But now that he knew he could safely retrieve it—the most important objective—he had a choice to make.

Should he simply follow Sion out of here, or...?

I stole a glance at Grizzly, who tilted its head.

I doubted Grizzly had behaved itself on the way here. You could call that a lack of trust between master and familiar... but I was thinking this way precisely because I understood my familiar as its master.

I wasn't one of those optimists who said, "My dog doesn't bite."

I'd learned my lesson at Smith's mansion. Grizzly was curious and mischievous, and leaving it alone without its master was a guaranteed recipe for trouble. If it had found something like a huge refrigerator in a morgue, it would definitely have opened and closed the doors.

Maybe it hadn't, but the possibility was there...

And if this underground workshop had CCTV, Sion's fellow government officials would find the footage when they searched the place from top to bottom. If Grizzly had left any evidence that might expose what it was, I had to find and destroy it.

... The problem was how to separate from Sion without making it look suspicious.

"..."

Yohan had fallen silent because of the grimoire's teleportation feature and his plans, not because of the ghouls. But he looked genuinely shocked, and Sion studied him for a moment.

"Yohan, it's all right. Take slow, deep breaths."

Unless it was confirmed that Yohan owned a grimoire and was responsible for the university murders, he was still a citizen Sion had to protect from inexplicable supernatural incidents.

I nodded along appropriately.

"... Thank you. I'm all right now."

Whatever else was going on, there were fucking monsters eating people right nearby. I couldn't just stand around. For now, I'd follow Sion.

If there really was evidence that could expose me, I could kill Sion and the officials and destroy it, even if that meant taking a risk. Killing government officials would only create more problems, so I wasn't keen on it, and they would surely pick up my trail and hunt me down.

But that would be better than getting caught right away.

It had already happened, and complaining wouldn't help. I'd come to a farm just to make some parchment, and now I was tangled up with a government agency. ... Just my luck.

I might have to prepare to flee the country sooner than I'd expected.

... I seemed to remember a spell that helped you learn foreign languages quickly.

Sion looked at me and spoke again.

"You're staying calm and handling this well. Let's back away and find another route."

I decided not to interfere unnecessarily for now and to wait for an opportunity.

"That sounds best."

I followed Sion, slowly backing away so the ghouls wouldn't notice us. Or, more accurately, I tried to—until a tense, irritable voice sounded behind us.

"Hah! Hah! Found you."

"Did you find a way out? Where are the police? You said your colleagues were coming."

Sion and I froze at the same instant. Two of the prisoners, the pair who had looked like a couple, had followed us out, ignoring Sion's warning to stay in the cell because it was dangerous.

She raised her palm to stop them from coming closer, but of course they didn't listen. They approached her as if they'd found a lifeline and spoke in low, irritable voices.

"Why are you taking so long? Hurry up and find the exit."

... Well, ... I could understand. Of course they were frightened. They might have thought we'd abandon them. Anxiety could put them on edge and make them lash out. They were nervous, and in a situation this extreme, sitting still wasn't easy. It made sense that they might follow us.

But what the couple did next—

The woman and man came close enough to see the ghouls digging into people.

"Ah—aaaaaah!"

They let out primal screams.

—was straight out of a horror-movie victim's playbook. The sort of behavior that made their deaths practically natural causes.

"Graaaagh!"

The ghouls' heads snapped around toward us.

... Right. Let's look on the bright side. I hadn't intended this, but it was an opportunity.

I made a quick judgment. Once I'd decided, I couldn't hesitate.

I spoke rapidly to Sion.

"You asked me to help with this case, right? I'll help."

"What? Yohan!"

I ran forward, catching the ghouls' attention and luring them away. At the sight of a mammal turning its back and fleeing, the ghouls instinctively gave chase.

"Graaah!"

Sion's dark eyes trembled as she watched Yohan run off, drawing six ghouls—half of those present—after him. She couldn't kill roughly twelve ghouls while protecting both Yohan and the couple.

... That made his decision rational. One person would risk death to lure away some of the ghouls, while Sion, who could fight, protected the other two, broke through the remaining ghouls, found an exit, and brought reinforcements.

But he hadn't hesitated at all.

Sion punched a lunging ghoul, shattering its jaw, then frowned at the terrified couple.

"Stay close to me!"

Had Yohan made that decision because he was used to uncanny incidents, or...?

He and the ghouls were already too far away to see.

"Graaagh!"

The ghouls eagerly pursued the fleeing human, his white coat fluttering behind him. Before they could catch up, the human turned a corner into a side corridor, and the ghouls followed him in.

Watching from the rear, the last ghoul thought it had better hurry before the others ate all of the human. Just then, sounds came from the corridor they had entered.

BOOM! CRUNCH! CRACK! CRUNCH!

Something was bursting, being crushed, and torn apart.

"...?"

The ghoul stopped instinctively. From the side corridor came calm footsteps.

TAP. TAP.

The human in the white coat walked out alone. In his hand was a strange book resembling a lump of steel, something the ghoul hadn't seen earlier.

CRUNCH!

That was the last thing the ghoul trailing behind the others ever saw.

"Gyaaah."

Grizzly brought its hand down on the last pursuing ghoul's head, killing it and finishing the job.

"Good work, Grizzly."

I asked Grizzly about what I hadn't been able to check with Sion around.

"Before you came to me, did you see a magician? Something different from an ordinary person? Or a room that looked special?"

I'd managed to separate from Sion, but that didn't solve everything. If the magician who owned this underground workshop was still here, that posed a danger.

"Gyaa?"

Grizzly pondered my question, then made a gagging noise and opened its mouth. It displayed something on its transparent tongue.

It was a human finger with a well-manicured nail.

"Hah..."

Damn it. It had gotten into trouble after all. No wonder it hadn't shown any interest in the ghoul corpses, even though it should have been hungry since I hadn't fed it.

I frowned at Grizzly.

"Grizzly, didn't I tell you not to eat people without permission?"

"Gyaah!?"

At my low voice, Grizzly shook its head vigorously, as if it had been falsely accused.

"Gyaa! Gyagyagya! Gyagya!"

"Hmm...?"

Was there something more to this? In any case...

First, the good news. Assuming Grizzly had understood me correctly, the insane magician behind the mass kidnappings had already died at its hands.

And the bad news: now I really had to destroy the evidence before the officials from the secret government agency arrived.

It was a race against time.

"Grizzly, take me to where you ate the owner of that finger."

... Its reaction bothered me too, so I intended to see for myself.

* * *

Kim Miryeo's room, its door smashed, served as both a central control room with multiple CCTV screens and a private office.

I narrowed my eyes at the corpse lying in a pool of blood from its severed neck and arms, then shifted my gaze to Grizzly, who was watching me warily.

"You did eat a person!"

"Gyaah!?"

Grizzly acted wronged again, making one of my eyebrows rise.

'... What's going on?'

Troubled, I looked around the room and spotted an unusual book with a dark red cover on the desk near the corpse.

'This is—'

The book was titled <Cultes des Goules>. This was a magician's workshop, so it probably wasn't an ordinary book with an unusual title.

I opened it and skimmed its contents, and realized why Grizzly felt wronged.

The magic recorded in this grimoire resembled ancient food-based sorcery. You know, the sort where people with poor vision ate the eyes of birds with good eyesight, and people with bad livers ate animal livers.

<Cultes des Goules> went a step further, seeking ageless longevity through cannibalism. But "ageless longevity" was just a nice way of putting it. The underlying principle was to eat people and become something inhuman—an uncanny being itself—to extend your lifespan.

Hmm... Could you even become a vampire if you had the aptitude and talent? The vampires mentioned here were probably the aristocratic sort, not monstrous vampires like Grizzly.

I looked down at the headless, armless corpse and smiled faintly. Grizzly had a reason to feel wronged. If this thing had trained according to the grimoire, it was no longer human.

Regardless, it wasn't to my taste. I wasn't suffering from an illness that would kill me any day now. I was healthy and had plenty of life ahead of me, so it wasn't particularly appealing.

And to me, I was the most important thing in the world.

... I didn't want to become some other thing.

I set down <Cultes des Goules> and looked at Grizzly.

"Gyaaah."

It cried as if asking whether I finally understood its grievance. As its master, I considered the situation.

The outcome was good, but this...

Oh, Grizzly realized this thing wasn't human and was a villain who had imprisoned its master, so it ate it. (×)

Oh... It happened to wake up hungry, and with me absent, it was off its leash and simply ate whatever it found. (○)

No matter how I looked at it, the latter was the answer.

'... You need a scolding, don't you?'

Calmly, I took the water container out of my bag and removed the holy-water sprinkler inside.

"Gyaah!"

At the sight of it, Grizzly huddled in a corner of the room and cried.

"Gyaaa..."

It was acting pitiful to avoid being scolded.

"Looking pitiful won't help!"

You had to be firm when disciplining it.

"I told you not to eat whatever you please. Bad! Bad!"

SMACK! SMACK!

I held my wrist near Grizzly's head and struck my own wrist with the holy-water sprinkler, making sharp slapping sounds.

"Gyaaah...!"

While I was scolding it, someone came through the broken doorway.

"M-Miss, we're in trouble! The ghouls—You!?"

A farm employee stepped inside, saw me and the woman's corpse, and stiffened in shock.

That was enough scolding. Time to destroy the evidence.

"Grizzly, eat."

Grizzly immediately rose at my words and tore into the employee's throat, killing him.

CRUNCH!

"I'm going to investigate a little. Behave yourself and eat that."

Listening to Grizzly eat the employee, I took a pair of gloves to prevent fingerprints from my coat's inner pocket.

Why did I carry something like that around? For situations like this, obviously.

Wondering whether there was anything else to learn, I carefully searched the headless, armless corpse.

'Doing this really makes me a criminal...'

A laugh escaped me.

'No, I am a criminal.'

But "criminal" was far too harsh a word. Let's put it a little more delicately and call it acting like a magician.

I found a wallet, opened it, and checked the corpse's ID.

Her name was Kim Miryeo.