Chapter 27 - Ghostbuster (11)

At first, when something began killing the rampaging ghouls, the farm employees thought Kim Miryeo, the workshop’s owner, had done something.

They soon realized their mistake. The situation had become so horrific that the ghouls’ rebellion could not even compare.

Their faces deathly pale, the terrified employees aimed their smuggled semiautomatic pistols down the corridor.

“Group up! Everyone, group up and get ready to fire!”

Clinging to their sanity, they prepared overlapping fields of fire. It was an ordinary passage, with nothing visible in it. But something was there.

“W-wait! I’m still! H-help me! Somebodyyy!”

An employee who had fallen screamed as something dragged him into a side passage.

CRACK—CRUNCH!

Horrible noises rang out, and red blood flowed from the side passage.

“—?!”

The employees could bear it no longer. There was only one way to shake off their fear. The moment that thing came out...

“Fiiire!”

BANG! BANG—BANG-BANG!

They fired at the invisible something that had killed their coworkers one after another.

“Huh?”

But something was wrong. The bullets flew straight down the corridor. And then...

“Haaa...”

“Huh?!”

One employee’s body was hauled upward. Every eye turned toward the ceiling.

... The ceiling. It had approached them clinging to the corridor ceiling.

“Aaaah—”

Before the employee could finish screaming, his body began to be ground apart.

CRUNCH!

Was this what it would look like if a person were fed headfirst into a transparent grinder?

Red blood and shredded flesh scattered in every direction. In an instant, the body lost all human shape.

One employee screamed in terror and rage.

“Aaaagh!”

He pulled the trigger at the transparent monster on the ceiling. ... But...

BANG! BANG—CLATTER.

Unable to pierce the transparent monster’s body, the bullets bounced off and fell to the floor.

“... Grrrr.”

An unnerving growl echoed through the silence.

THUD.

The grinding stopped, and a corpse consisting of a lower body with some entrails still attached dropped into the corridor.

Then the head of the employee who had fired burst apart and vanished.

He understood. That thing had not come along the ceiling because it feared guns, or because getting shot would endanger it.

It had simply wanted to avoid being hit.

Perhaps it had even been... a kind of game.

“... Haha.”

“Aaaaaagh!”

A hollow laugh escaped the employee who had understood, while cries of terror erupted from those who did not even know what was hunting them.

They tried to run, but there was no escape. Flesh burst and blood sprayed as they died in an instant.

They could not see it, but it was definitely there.

Was it beside them now? Behind them? In front, to the left, to the right? Above or below?

“Gaaa...”

Ah... It was in front.

CRUNCH!

Grizzly, the Invisible Vampire, bit the last employee in that area to death, then shook itself, stung by the little stinging pellets the humans had fired.

“Gyaaa~.”

It tilted its head, checking which direction to go next.

It located the employees fleeing toward the exit. Even without their uniforms, it could identify the people its master had meant—the ones who worked here.

The smell of a slaughterhouse.

“Haaa...”

Grizzly moved swiftly in search of prey that smelled of livestock and human blood.

Not one would leave the basement.

* * *

In an underground corridor strewn with the bodies of ghouls and employees, Yohan was doing push-ups and squats.

It wasn’t that he had suddenly felt like exercising. Sion might not care, but wouldn’t it look a little strange if he met her again without a drop of sweat on him, his breathing perfectly steady?

“Whew...”

Once I had worked up a reasonable sweat, I stopped exercising and moved on at a walk.

Naturally, the corpses were disgusting, and I didn’t want to linger. I wasn’t a corpse enthusiast or a psychopath. Looking at them gave me a headache.

Just as I thought that, I spotted an employee’s face right in the middle of the passage. His upper and lower body had been separated, and he had died wearing an expression of terror and aggrieved disbelief.

“...”

Grizzly had killed these guys on my orders to slaughter every last one, but apart from finding them disgusting, I didn’t feel much of anything.

They’d been slaughtering people under Kim Miryeo in the first place.

I considered that fortunate. Even I would feel uneasy killing decent people who had nothing to do with any of this. I hoped I’d only get mixed up with bad guys from now on.

An absurd smile tugged at my lips.

... Well, it wasn’t as if I’d killed these guys because they were bad. I was killing them to secure an alibi and keep myself safe.

Even if they’d been good people with no involvement, I would have killed them all just the same.

This was a bit out of nowhere, but there was Mencius’s theory that human nature is good.

It was always mentioned alongside Xunzi’s theory that human nature is evil, like a burger-and-fries combo. The idea that people were inherently good sounded soft and kindly, but you could read it another way.

Mencius said this:

Without benevolence, one is not human.

Without compassion—the heart that pities others—one is not human.

People are inherently good. So if you’re evil, you’re not a fucking human. That was what it meant.

Mencius was, after all, a man who openly brought up overthrowing a dynasty right in front of a king.

‘People are supposed to be good... so why is he acting like such a fucking scumbag? ... How strange. Is he not even a fucking human?’

‘We should overthrow the dynasty, beat him to death, and make a real human who pities the people king, shouldn’t we?’

I wondered whether the theory of innate goodness had been invented to gaslight the all-powerful kings of that era into being good people.

Xunzi’s theory of innate evil, which said even those black-haired beasts could become good through education, was actually the gentler one.

Well, in short, it came down to this.

I walked along the blood-soaked passage littered with corpses.

In Mencius’s eyes, neither these guys nor I would count as... human, probably.

Still, let’s not get too depressed. You had to stay positive in life.

Disqualified as a human? No, qualified as a beast.

Qualified as a magician.

I passed the corpse with the aggrieved face lying in the middle of the corridor and moved on.

If beasts’ territories overlapped and they clashed with a bang, the ones that died, died.

The ones that lived, lived.

This line of work, should I call it? I hadn’t been part of the magician’s world for long, but even I knew.

Once you stepped into it, willingly or not, you couldn’t do things halfway.

Halfway got you killed.

And so this, too, was my desperate struggle to survive that government organization.

I clenched my fists, bent my knees, and kicked off the ground into a run. Pumping my arms and legs, I breathed hard.

“Hah, hah.”

Using the underground map I’d seen in Kim Miryeo’s room—the central control room—I ran toward the exit.

As I approached the passage leading to the exit...

“Yohan!”

Had she gotten the couples out and come back to find me? I had thought it was about time the government agents came in.

Up ahead, Sion spotted me running and called out.

“—!”

Good. This was the decisive moment.

If I really had any talent—

“R-run!”

Now! Let my talent explode!

I shouted at Sion at the top of my lungs.

“Ruuuun!”

“What?”

KABOOOOOOM!!

The corridor wall shattered with a deafening crash.

“Gaaaaaaa!”

Grizzly, of course. After killing all the employees and ghouls, it had waited, then burst through the wall on the signal I’d given it.

It put on an exaggerated chase, deliberately smashing everything around it.

BOOM—CRASH! CRASH-CRASH!

Sion, who had been coming toward me, immediately turned around. Running beside me, she said,

“Yohan! Follow me. I’ll lead you to the exit! Keep going!”

“Okay!”

I’d gained quite a few things from this underground workshop, but I’d had enough.

So let’s wrap this up.

Which meant...

The scene no monster horror movie could do without. The climax.

“Gaaaaaa!”

The monster chase!

Directed by Kim Yohan. Starring Kim Yohan and Grizzly. Special appearance by Shin Sion.

We ran and ran and ran toward the exit.

“Go up the stairs!”

Sion sent Yohan ahead toward the exit stairs and drew her pistol to buy time.

Seeing that, I grabbed her wrist and went up the stairs with her.

“It won’t work!”

“—?!”

Seriously, this woman was pulling a gun during a rigged game of tag. What a scary woman.

Where on my Grizzly did she think she could possibly shoot?

Sion finally made a quick decision.

“Excuse me!”

Suddenly, I was scooped up into Sion’s arms. Using her breathing technique, she bounded up the stairs in one go and kicked open the basement door.

At last, we were out of that godforsaken underground place.

Sion and I burst out onto the sunlit grass. And now, in classic fashion, the monster that had emerged from underground...

“Gya... gyagya... gyagyagyagyagya!”

Dissolved in the sunlight.

Of course, it had simply returned to the grimoire. Sunlight didn’t actually do it much harm, but since it was an Invisible Vampire, I figured it would be useful to make those government agents think it was weak to sunlight.

... More importantly, Grizzly was a terrible actor.

Anyway, panting and looking shocked, I stared at the basement entrance, at the spot where Grizzly had been just moments ago, and spoke slowly, cautiously, in a trembling voice.

“... The one that appeared at the u-university.”

Sion’s eyes twitched at those words, and she turned to look at me.

“What?”

Tsk. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Was it too contrived?

You know those movie lines that plant a clue way too blatantly? ... That ad-lib was a flop.

Apparently, I had no talent for directing.