Chapter 111
A bizarre creature called a Nazi ghoul had burst out, but what had to be done didn't change. Ian immediately raised the gun in his hand and fired at the ghoul.
Taaang!!
The gunshot rang out, trapped inside the isolated tunnel. The noise was like it was striking their eardrums directly, so the party each raised the weapons in their hands, and the bullet that flew out shattered the eyeball of the ghoul in the lead.
Kkrrzzzt!
With a horrific crack, the ghoul's eye burst apart. It let out a scream of pain and collapsed.
The remaining three bared their teeth and claws and charged. Even as Cecilia met the monsters' bloodshot eyes head-on, her expression didn't change at all as she drew the two huge pistols strapped to her thighs.
Aimed. Fired.
KWAAAANG!!
A roar far louder than the bullet Ian fired exploded through the tunnel. Thick silver rounds raced through the modified barrel and rifling, and the muzzle flashed as it shattered the ghouls' heads. Brain matter and blood splattered onto the floor.
“Two.”
She muttered in Italian as her mangled wrists recovered.
At the cost of overwhelming firepower, her wrists and arms were torn apart and broken. It was a hand cannon only someone with regeneration could use.
Its power was formidable. It was like firing a pistol-shaped shotgun in rapid succession.
Ian made a mental note that Vatican tech was quite impressive too, brushed away the drifting dust, and placed a hand on the floor. Then he lightly touched the grimoire tucked into the inner pocket of his coat.
“Be reborn.”
Crack.
As he murmured softly, the asphalt road beneath his hand warped and turned into a massive spear that shot out.
Whoooosh!
The hurled spear pierced one of the remaining ghouls and pinned it to the ceiling. It died without even getting the chance to resist.
The ghoul whose eye had been shattered was finished off by Bureau agents. They expertly hacked off the thrashing ghoul's limbs and crushed its chest with a massive hammer.
“……Hoo, damn it.”
Park Hoseok shoved the ballpoint pen in his hand into his pocket and wiped the blood from his face. Kim Seorin, standing beside him, shrank the hammer back down and hung it from her waist.
“Did these bastards hide out here…….”
“You didn't know? Or were you pretending not to?”
Kim Yul asked. She tilted her head as she stared expressionlessly at the Bureau agents. The blood had drained slightly from Park Hoseok's face.
“We are absolutely not pretending otherwise. As I said, the Bureau was also pursuing the Moon Nazis. We didn't know they were here. Please believe us.”
“…….”
“If need be, I'll even use a lie detector. It's something that makes your entire nervous system and blood vessels burn if you lie, and it should be possible to take it out for interrogation.”
“Yeah, then go back and use it.”
Kim Yul continued, the corners of her mouth twisting slightly.
“Let's focus for now, okay?”
“……Understood. Before that, may I give a quick report?”
“Newbie? What do you want to do?”
Her gaze turned to Ian. Ian gave a casual nod to signal her to go ahead and report, then checked the state of the ghoul collapsed on the floor.
‘Nazi officer uniform. Nothing especially strange, but the symbol is engraved quite prominently. Is he advertising that he's a Nazi?’
He clicked his tongue, drew a dagger, and slit open the ghoul's belly. Then he inspected the inside.
“……There's nothing here.”
Albert, standing beside Ian, murmured. He was right.
Inside the ghoul's belly, there were no organs that should have been there if it had originally been human. At most, there were only a heart and lungs. The esophagus had been severed midway, and the digestive organs had vanished entirely. The human flesh they had devoured was piled up like dust in the hollow space inside the abdomen.
“Are all ghouls normally like this?”
“No. They're monsters that feel both hunger and fullness. Of course they have digestive organs.”
Albert answered Ian's question. He stirred his hand through the empty ghoul's insides and carefully examined the blood that smeared onto it.
“The blood is quite thin. That's odd too. A ghoul's blood is usually extremely thick.”
“……I know that. It's used as medicine too.”
“Exactly. But these guys' blood is almost like water. And there's too little of it. The shape of the heart is odd too.”
He tore out the ghoul's heart as if it were nothing and showed it to Ian.
“Look. It's a perfect sphere, and it's quite small, isn't it?”
Ian frowned as he stared at the limp red mass.
As he said, the ghoul's heart was a perfect sphere.
It was small too. While a decent heart is usually about the size of a fist, this round lump of muscle was tiny enough to be finger-sized. It was hard to imagine it could even pump blood through the body.
“It's a heteromorph.”
Crack!
Albert crushed the heart in his hand and stood up.
“It's probably those damned fascist Nazi bastards. In any case, they're aberrations too.”
“…….”
“They died after clashing with vampires and became ghouls. But these bastards aren't human, so the mutation became warped, and this is the result. Think of it roughly like that.”
“It doesn't look like anything we need to be especially wary of.”
“Probably. But don't collect the blood. If you mess with it for no reason, you might get infected with fascism.”
At his joke, which wasn't really a joke, Ian gave a wry smile. He stood up, roughly shoved the ghoul's corpse aside, and stared at the village spread out beyond the tunnel.
‘What a mess.’
Corpses of Nazis and ghouls were strewn all along the straight road. Occasionally there were bodies that looked like ordinary humans, but the number was by no means large. Most were the corpses of aberrations.
Since this was the tunnel entrance, there didn't seem to be any living ones around. Once they started going deeper into the village, the aberrations would probably start running wild in earnest.
‘Originally, I planned to see through the mind-reading and then hunt down the vampire separately…….’
At this point, there was no choice but to wage a full-scale battle.
Ian let out a long sigh and tapped the grimoire tucked inside his coat.
Although he had used re-creation magic, the Bureau agents were all distracted by the Nazis, so it didn't seem like they'd noticed he had two grimoires. That was at least a relief.
“Phew......”
The party stood still, waiting until the Bureau agents finished their report.
A little later, Park Hoseok tucked away his phone and bowed his head toward the party.
“Thank you for waiting. First, we've contacted the Bureau, and we've been told that support will be sent in a few hours. It seems something has happened on the Seoul side too, so quick support will be difficult.”
“A few hours? Too late.”
Cecilia muttered with a frown. She clicked the pistols in both hands and cast her gaze beyond the tunnel.
“If we were going to wait for support, we wouldn't have come in the first place. We have to go in.”
“I agree as well. In any case, this mission isn't being led by the Bureau, so it's up to the one who gathered everyone, Sir Ian, to decide.”
Park Hoseok looked back at Ian.
“I will follow Sir Ian's wishes.”
“Then let's go in.”
Ian answered at once. He casually tossed the cigarette he'd been smoking into the ghoul's belly and rolled his stiff shoulders.
“Support is good, but that doesn't mean we can forget our objective. If we drag things out and one side's power grows stronger, that's a problem in its own right.”
Right now, the vampires and the Nazis were locked in a tug-of-war. This was the perfect time to jump in as a third force.
If one side completely took over the village, breaking through later wouldn't be easy. At that point, it would be little different from a full-scale war.
Fighting a full-scale war against Nazis was something Ian wanted no part of either. He summoned the Deep-Sea Logbook, drew out a pen, and jerked his chin toward the tunnel exit.
“Take your positions. We're going in.”
No one objected to his words. Everyone took the same positions they had when they first entered the tunnel.
Ian flipped through the pages of the grimoire, searching for a summon suited to the current situation.
‘A Producer or a Watcher wouldn't be a good fit. I should summon something of a lower rank.’
Even if the ghouls and Nazis were strong, they weren't strong enough to warrant bringing out a Watcher or a Producer.
Of course, it wasn't impossible to summon them, but if he brought them out for no reason and couldn't feed them, they'd end up getting eaten in return. Both of them needed a fairly large amount of food, so until he knew the exact number of enemies, it was awkward to summon them.
So something below that.
He turned the pages, looking for an appropriate creature stronger than a Messenger, but not one that could reach any higher.
[Twinkle Twinkle Little Star-]
It was then. The moment they stepped past the tunnel and into the village, a song began to drift faintly from somewhere.
Mozart's Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, a nursery rhyme and a masterpiece known to everyone in the world.
But blaring it openly in the countryside was a little strange. It seemed the Nazis had used some trick.
Mozart was born in Austria. And Austria was also Hitler's homeland. Since it had once been annexed by the Nazis, it wouldn't have been strange for them to blast it out as if it were their own country's song.
Still, he didn't know what effect it might have. Ian looked back at everyone and casually tossed out a warning.
“Be careful of the song. Don't listen too closely.”
“……Damn it, so I'm not the only one hearing it. Got it.”
Benjamin answered, breaking out in a cold sweat. The others were in a similar state. Only Ian had an expression that was completely unchanged.
That was proof that a mental attack was underway. Ian clicked his tongue and quickly turned the pages of the grimoire.
The farther they walked, and the more pages he turned, the louder the nursery rhyme drifting from inside the village became.
After a while, he found the proper creature and lifted his head.
“I'm going to use magic. Stop for a moment before we go on.”
At his words, Cecilia stopped walking with a slight frown. The others also halted in place.
The party's expressions were grim. All of them were breathing hard and clutching their heads as if suffering severe headaches. Cecilia looked the least affected, but the others were not.
“……”
Ian looked around the party with a sharp gaze and tapped the grimoire.
Unlike the others, Ian didn't feel even the slightest hint of a headache. His nose stung a little from the foul scent of corpses and blood, but that was all. His mind was crystal clear.
‘Probably because I'm immune to mental attacks.’
It wasn't anything new. He had already gone through it once in the Monkey Hand incident.
But just because he was fine didn't mean he could be careless. Ian quickly opened the pen cap and spoke to everyone.
“Take a step back. Don't get dragged into it for no reason.”
The party slowly retreated, following his instructions.
Ian found the least ruined patch of the blood-soaked floor and drew a magic circle on it. Since the road was asphalt, the lines were a bit crooked, but it was still fine enough to work.
He poured three pieces of aberrant flesh and his own blood onto the magic circle, then opened the grimoire and chanted the spell.
“You who circulate. You who crawl through eternity. As His proxy and consort, I command you. I have personally prepared a feast for you, so come here.”
Crimson blood dripped from the grimoire. The falling blood landed precisely in the center of the magic circle and spread like mist.
Thick crimson blood mist spread out, and a tiny creature emerged from within it.
An entity with an overall black body, smooth skin, and four arms stretched out like legs.
It was about the size of a human head and had no eyes or ears. Its nose was nothing but holes, and saliva dripped from the mouth that took up most of its head.
“……”
A creature known as a Circulator.
If one had to describe it, it resembled a lizard. It sensed Ian's presence and raised its forelegs high. The gesture looked almost like a friendly greeting, so Ian gave a faint smile and pointed a finger at the corpses strewn around them.
“They're corpses, but eat them anyway.”
[Pyaak!]
The Circulator answered with a thin cry and opened its maw wide. At that moment, the motionless corpses suddenly sprang up on their own and crawled into the Circulator's mouth. Surprisingly, the corpses shrank down to bite-sized pieces the moment they neared its mouth.
[Pyaak-pyaak!]
The Circulator chirped happily as it chewed the chunks of meat that had gone into its mouth.
The crunching of bones and muscle rang out clearly, and Ian stroked the creature's smooth head with a finger as he gave an order.
“Devour and kill any nonhuman you detect, including the ones you've already eaten. It's fine to eat them.”
[Pyaak!]
The Circulator nodded as if it understood.
Ian lightly patted its head and stood up. Then he looked over the party as he opened his mouth.
“Let's move again. Don't needlessly provoke this thing…….”
As he spoke, his voice gradually scattered and then vanished altogether. Ian didn't even manage to close the mouth he had opened, and his pupils trembled slightly as he stared at the party.
“…….”
“…….”
“…….”
At the upper edge of his field of vision.
A moon so huge that even a palm couldn't cover it, one that hadn't existed just moments before, poured blue moonlight over the world below.
And beneath it.
His companions were all staring at him with expressionless faces, their pale eyes gleaming.
“…….”
Goosebumps rose along his back.
[Twinkle Twinkle Little Star-]
[Beautifully,
Sizzle
, shining-]
The nursery rhyme's tune began to grow louder and louder.