Chapter 28 - Ghostbuster (12)

Once the severity of the situation was reported, not only the personnel waiting outside the farm but other Special Response Section operatives gathered at Weekend Farm to rescue the kidnapped people still trapped inside.

“After the invisible uncanny entity vanished in the sunlight... no further movement was detected.”

“Still, it may be down there.”

Looking tense, Sion formed up with the other operatives.

“Operational Team One is going in. If we lose contact, do not send a rescue team. Wait until reinforcements arrive.”

She entered the magician’s underground workshop again.

Earlier, she had been too busy fleeing with Yohan to get a proper look at the basement.

“...”

Now she could see what had happened here.

Sion realized why Yohan had told her it was useless when she drew her pistol to stop the uncanny entity pursuing them. Her calm eyes wavered for an instant. Still holding her pistol, she gazed at a torn-off human arm and corpses for which “butchered” was quite literally the right word.

One operative’s face contorted, and the words slipped out unbidden.

“Hideous.”

The Special Response Section operatives tightened their grips on the shotguns they had brought from headquarters following Sion’s report—the equipment designated for “counter-uncanny response.”

The fundamental way to counter the uncanny was to exploit its rules—the rules of the supernatural. Most uncanny entities were vulnerable to fire, the element imbued with yang energy.

One might ask what wasn’t vulnerable to fire, but... No, perhaps that was precisely why the uncanny was vulnerable to it too.

In any case, from a supernatural standpoint, guns possessed the properties of both fire and iron, making them effective weapons against the uncanny.

Of course, “effective” was all they were. Against some things... they simply did not work.

There were various other cases, but usually it came down to insufficient firepower, or a type that could not be eliminated by ordinary means.

Sion looked at the flattened bullets scattered across the floor.

“... It seems a semiautomatic pistol doesn’t have enough firepower to penetrate it.”

The invisible uncanny entity that had roared as it chased her and Yohan.

[“GRAAAAAH!”]

Her face hardened as she recalled the invisible monster.

Various stories and legends surfaced in her mind as she tried to identify it. What immediately came to mind was... a demon recorded in <The Lesser Key of Solomon>, commonly known as <Lemegeton>, one of the most famous grimoires.

The twenty-fifth of Solomon’s seventy-two demons.

Glasya-Labolas, President of Slaughter.

It took the form of a dog or wolf with a bird’s wings, or a scholar with a beast’s teeth. A demon that used its power of invisibility to secretly kill anyone its summoner wanted dead, and encouraged its summoner to commit murder.

Of course, that was only a possibility.

Sion tried to concentrate on identifying the invisible monster.

“...”

But for some reason, Yohan’s reaction kept bothering her.

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

The words Yohan had uttered upon sensing the invisible monster’s presence kept nagging at her.

... Of course, it wasn’t terribly strange. Yohan had seen a professor beheaded in a lecture hall. There was nothing strange about recalling that incident upon seeing an invisible monster that had killed people.

Yes, it wasn’t strange. And yet it was.

Though it had been only a very short time, she had met Yohan and spoken to him herself. Unlike her, whose composed face merely concealed what she felt, he was genuinely calm.

And yet...

A man who had made rational decisions even while being chased by ghouls had chosen that particular moment to speak in a trembling voice—as though explaining to someone that he had seen it before?

Like a film director shoving a clue down the audience’s throat?

Sion’s calm eyes trembled for an instant.

... Then who was the audience?

Sion herself, who had been there with Yohan.

Just then, Team Leader Park spoke to her, bringing her back to her senses.

“According to the civilian collaborator, there’s a room that looks like a central control room?”

The civilian collaborator. Yohan, of course.

“Yes. He says he hid in a room through a broken doorway while fleeing the ghouls.”

“He found the kidnapped people’s belongings there, along with a woman’s corpse, in a wrecked room that looked far from ordinary.”

They had yet to rescue the kidnapped people, and the incident at the farm was still unresolved. Sion decided to focus on the case for now. She returned to guessing the invisible monster’s identity.

Various thoughts flitted through her mind... and another possibility occurred to her.

It was a familiar contained in a certain “grimoire” she had read about in the archived records.

‘Invisible Vampire.’

But if that was really what it was...

Tension settled over Sion’s face.

“...”

The invisible monster wasn’t the problem. The grimoire itself was a much greater one.

And when Sion and the Special Response Section operatives reached the central control room Yohan had deliberately told them about—Kim Miryeo’s private workshop—they saw it.

Inside the room, wrecked as though a monster had rampaged through it, lay a woman’s corpse with no head or arms. Resting on it was a strange book with a black iron cover.

Like a scene from a horror movie that had poured its entire budget into this one shot, the book’s eerie presence drew every eye in the room.

The operatives tensely kept watch over the room.

“... I’ll examine it.”

Sion carefully lifted the iron-covered book from the woman’s corpse and read its title.

<De Vermis Mysteriis>

... Mysteries of the Worm.

The grimoire containing the Invisible Vampire.

Why did bad premonitions always come true?

Sion’s face involuntarily hardened. Though less famous than the grimoires Necronomicon or Lemegeton, the danger it posed had earned it a place among the grimoires assigned the risk classification: National Disaster.

* * *

After safely rescuing the kidnapped people from the cells, the Special Response Section erected a tent at the farm as a temporary operations room and held a meeting to investigate the underground workshop and take stock of the situation.

Their original operation—to investigate the weekend farm and determine whether it was a magician’s workshop—had succeeded. But an extraordinary object had come along with it...

The operatives stared at the tabletop where <Mysteries of the Worm> had rested until moments ago.

... It had vanished without warning.

Yohan had decided things had progressed far enough and summoned it back. But the Special Response Section had no way of knowing that.

When they turned to Sion as usual, she spoke cautiously.

“Assuming Kim Miryeo was the grimoire’s master, I suspect it may have left because its master died.”

The leader of another team continued.

“We found Kim Miryeo’s fingerprints in the operating room. It seems she was indeed the magician who owned the workshop.”

“... However, the CCTV recording device in the central control room may have been broken during the monster’s rampage. I doubt we’ll be able to examine its contents.”

Before leaving the room, Yohan had ordered Grizzly to smash the device, just to be safe. He had also had the room thoroughly trashed to erase evidence of his brief stay there.

Team Leader Park folded his arms and frowned.

“The farm employees and the ghouls they were raising are all dead, too.”

“...”

Then one of the team leaders spoke.

“We found a ○○ University student ID in Kim Miryeo’s wallet.”

“That university... Isn’t that where the professor was killed in the university murder case?”

“Yes. Here’s how I see it.”

The situation had already been arranged to fit together reasonably well. As the team leaders talked, they filled in the missing pieces on their own.

One of them laid out the very scenario Yohan wanted.

Kim Miryeo, already a magician, had obtained <Mysteries of the Worm> but failed to properly control its familiar, the Invisible Vampire. That had led to the university murders. Today, the Invisible Vampire had escaped her control entirely and killed everyone in the underground workshop.

“The kidnapping victims were lucky enough to survive because they were in the cells.”

“And fortunately, Team Leader Sion found and rescued the civilian collaborator, Mr. Yohan, just before he could be attacked.”

Sion pressed her fist to her lips in thought, then spoke cautiously.

“... I think it may be a little early to draw a firm conclusion.”

It all fit together. ... Very well, in fact.

If that theory was correct, they could resolve both the university murders, which had been pushed aside by their workload, and the current farm fraud case in one stroke. Wasn’t that a little too good to be true?

For some reason, Yohan’s calm black eyes came to mind.

“...”

At her words, one of the exhausted team leaders snapped out a reply.

“Enthusiasm for your work is all well and good, but could you rein it in a little, young lady?”

Sion’s eyes twitched and briefly widened. Team Leader Park scowled.

“Hey!”

“Enough.”

A measured, intelligent voice rang out, neither high nor low. Team Leader Kim, the intellectual-looking man in his mid-thirties who wore glasses and always ate pork cutlet for lunch, intervened.

“This was never something we could settle in a meeting among ourselves. Let’s end the meeting for now.”

That settled the matter. Sion left the makeshift meeting tent.

The new female operative who had been standing by started to follow her, then cautiously approached Team Leader Park, the team leader she had spoken to the most.

“Team Leader Park... Why did that other team leader call Team Leader Sion ‘young lady’?”

Park glanced at her face and sighed.

“You didn’t know? Sion’s our section director’s daughter.”

“What?”

“How else would a twenty-one-year-old become a team leader, even with a good record?”

The new operative stared at Sion’s retreating back in shock.

‘She’s younger than me—!?’

Park raised an eyebrow.

“Just in case, don’t think being older means you can ignore rank.”

“N-no, no! I wouldn’t!”

Watching his reaction, the operative ventured another question.

“Then, um... Have you been looking after Team Leader Sion all this time because she’s the director’s daughter?”

Park nodded lightly.

“That’s right. She first learned the ropes under me, too. The director told me to take care of her, so that’s what I’m doing.”

The director had opposed Sion joining the Special Response Section in the first place. He was a bastard, but he worried fiercely about his child.

* * *

Yohan sipped cocoa, wrapped in a blanket provided by the secret government organization whose official name he had finally learned: the Special Response Section.

‘... This cocoa’s good.’

The retrieved <Mysteries of the Worm> was safely tucked away in his bag. Sitting here like this, he really felt that one whole case was over. He had obtained parchment in the end, so he had achieved his objective.

One job wrapped up safely!

... Of course, it wasn’t quite over yet.

I looked at Sion as she rose and approached me.

Yohan and Sion.

Their calm black eyes studied one another.

As Yohan approached Sion, he thought:

Yes, you’re suspicious, aren’t you? So what? Just close the case. Special Response Section or whatever, you’re civil servants in the end. Wrapping up the job is easier for you too.

I’ll behave myself now. ... As much as possible, anyway.

There are crazy magicians like Kim Miryeo in this world. I have to survive too, don’t I?

As Sion approached Yohan, she thought:

The reason hunters track down and kill a beast that has eaten a person... is that the beast has realized just how weak humans are.

Today, the Special Response Section had failed to catch Yohan.

No, was Yohan really the culprit? All she had was her own suspicion.

A fantasy built on what-ifs upon what-ifs.

They had failed to control even the grimoire—the decisive piece of evidence Yohan had openly left behind as a gamble.

The beast had realized that the band of hunters it had feared all this time was far less formidable than it had imagined.

Yohan and Sion stopped and faced one another. Grateful that her emotions rarely showed on her face, Sion spoke.

“Mr. Yohan, thank you very much for your cooperation today. Thanks to you, none of the kidnapping victims died.”

I answered her courtesy with a courteous expression of my own.

“Not at all. All I did was trust you and run. And I’m alive thanks to you, too. Thank you for carrying me up the stairs.”

Sion gave me a faint smile.

“You said you were an exorcist. If you don’t mind, could I have your contact information?”

“... Sometimes we need help from civilian collaborators.”

Refusing now would have looked strange, so I took out a Ghostbuster business card and handed it to her.

“Here you go. Call me whenever you need me.”

The card featured a comical cartoon of a startled evil spirit with long arms. Seeing the word “Ghostbuster” printed on it, Sion smiled without thinking.

“Thank you.”

She recalled the scene of slaughter she had witnessed in the basement today.

Ghostbuster?

... She could only hope he wouldn’t become a Humanbuster.