Chapter 148
Fortunately, the woman answered Ian's question readily. It was an answer mixed with the stench peculiar to someone who hadn't bathed and the smell of ammonia, but it was still quite helpful. Ian personally laid a highway across the back of her head and stepped out into the ruined street.
“This is Incheon......”
Incheon, a city in the northwest of South Korea. A city with plenty to talk about and all kinds of incidents, but also a place that was almost like his hometown, where Ian was born and raised. That place was now so badly destroyed that its former appearance was barely recognizable.
It was hard to find a building that was still intact. The wreckage of a crashed plane was driven vertically into a half-collapsed building. There had been no fire, but traces of one remained.
Bodies were strewn along the roadside. Judging by the occasional bite marks that looked as if they'd been torn by a long maw, the reptilians must have used them as substitute food. Whoever said they weren't omnivorous—they had eaten very thoroughly.
“......No need to bother looking for survivors. They aren't residents of the real world anyway.”
He forcibly got his stiff, sluggish brain turning. It was a way to oil the gears of a brain that could even talk to itself instead of just thinking. Muttering to himself was much easier for sorting his thoughts than simply thinking.
Honestly, he wanted nothing more than to duck into a nearby building and get some rest right away, but he still hadn't found the other two, so he couldn't.
“If only they'd show themselves first...... it would make things easier for me, too. But there's still been no response. Did I land in Incheon by myself?”
It was a fairly reasonable inference. Even if Korea was a little smaller than other countries, its actual landmass wasn't that narrow. It took a full four hours to drive from Seoul to Busan... so if the two of them were in Busan, there was no way to confirm anything with the naked eye no matter how much of a racket they made.
“I don't think they'd be that far away, but just in case. Let's just keep it in mind.”
The roads were in terrible shape. Breaks and gaps here and there were nothing unusual, and some stretches had melted down so badly they were hard to recognize. Traveling by car would probably be difficult.
In the first place, there was almost no chance of finding an intact car. This was a city where bombs had gone off one after another—why would a car still be in one piece? If this were a place where Mysteries existed, then maybe, but the only Mystery here was the reptilians.
“Subterranean dwellers, lunar Nazis, Arctic alien penguins, Martians...... if that kind of stuff existed all at once, Earth's state would have been quite a sight.”
None of them were all that strong individually, but if they all came together to dominate Earth, it would have been quite a spectacle. Ian snickered as he imagined the lunar Nazis fighting the man-eating Arctic penguins.
That was when he heard footsteps coming from ahead.
The sound was too heavy to be human, yet it carried the rhythm unique to bipedal walking rather than a beast's. Ian stopped walking and quietly stared at the group approaching from across the way. The ones scanning the area also spotted Ian standing there alone and stopped.
[Everyone, stop.]
One of them said in a hissing, air-leaking voice. A long tongue flicked quickly out from between its snout and slipped back in. Ian tilted his head slightly and summoned the grimoire.
An elongated snout. Vertically slit reptilian pupils. A thin tail tapping the ground and green-tinged scales.
There was nothing more to see.
Reptilians.
[I didn't think there'd still be any humans left.]
The leader of the group.
A lizard with an eyepatch over one eye spat.
Its voice was extremely unusual. It sounded like a hoarse man and woman speaking at the same time. Individual tastes may differ, but honestly, it wasn't a voice anyone would want to listen to.
Ian clicked his tongue.
“Lizard. First learn how to speak properly. Who are you imitating with that tone and voice?”
[......What?]
At Ian's insolent attitude, the reptilian's face crumpled.
[How dare a mere human call me a lizard? A monkey brat, of all things?]
“Don't use such strong words. You'll just look weak.”
Ian, using a tone he'd seen somewhere before, flipped over the grimoire's cover. The ominous black cover rustled as it turned, revealing the pure white pages beneath. The angle kept its contents hidden from the reptilians, but they immediately realized the book in Ian's hands was something special.
[......Setting aside how stupid that sounds, you do seem to be something special. Where did you get that book?]
“I picked it up in a library.”
[You think we're idiots. Do you really think you're anything special just because you're talking to us like this?]
BANG!
The reptilian leader talking with Ian lifted a foot and drove it straight down. With a tremendous boom, the asphalt road caved in, and the ground trembled briefly. The wind bursting from the shockwave sent Ian's hair and coat fluttering.
[Hand over that book. Then I'll cleanly chop off your head and kill you.]
“What if I don't?”
[I'll cut off your limbs and throw you to the soldiers as a plaything. We can impregnate men and women alike.]
“That's fucking disgusting.”
Ian, who hadn't expected to hear about reptilian reproduction here, twisted his face in disgust. He immediately pulled out a marker and scribbled a magic circle on the ground. The reptilian flicked its tongue, openly ignoring him.
[Seems words won't do. I'll have to cut off one of your arms before you'll listen properly.]
THUD, THUD!
The reptilian stomped toward Ian with its heavy bulk, trampling the ground. The group followed after it.
[Squad leader, if we're going to use him as a plaything, please let me use him first.]
[Shut up. He wouldn't even be usable unless we put him through training. First, we need to slit open his belly, pull out his innards, and insert the eggs.]
[Tch, understood......]
As they drew nearer and nearer to Ian while exchanging those disgusting remarks, he finished drawing the magic circle before they could reach him. He casually tossed the flesh of the aberration he'd prepared in advance onto the circle, straightened up, and began the incantation.
“You who circle endlessly. You who crawl through eternity.”
A being he had already summoned once before. A hound of the Outer Sea with gray skin and exposed veins. An eternal creature that repeated death and rebirth.
“As that being's proxy and consort, I command you.”
[What the hell is that bastard saying?]
[Don't know. Just ignore him and grab—]
“I have prepared a banquet for you, so come here.”
Thud.
The moment the spell ended, a drop of red blood fell from the grimoire. The reptilians grimaced at the odor, where the thick smell of iron mingled with the fishy stench peculiar to the sea. As the drop struck the ground, it spread in all directions, forming a low blood mist.
And within that mist.
[...Grrr.]
An enormous arm burst out.
An arm whose joints stood out with the unmistakable structure of a quadruped. Sharp ash-gray claws, black seawater flowing between them. Red blood vessels crawling over gray skin. Pulsing arteries. Veins.
Before they could even register what they were seeing, the mist cleared and the arm's owner emerged.
A hound as bulky as an ordinary bus, dripping saliva, blood, and seawater, stood right beside Ian and exhaled.
[...Huh?]
[...What the fuck is that.]
[....]
Also known as the Circulator (巡還者).
The creature he'd once summoned in the village where the moon had settled manifested on Earth in the same evolved form as before.
“Been well?”
Ian grinned and stroked the Circulator's skin. Like a puppy accepting its master's touch, the Circulator leaned its head toward Ian. It was a visual that was disgusting beyond words, but Ian accepted the Circulator's affection without hesitation.
“I told you I'd summon you again, didn't I?”
[Grrr!]
“This is the moment.”
Ian scratched the Circulator under the chin and turned to look at the stiffened reptilians. The reptilians who met his gaze twitched.
“Eat whatever you want, however much you want. Just avoid the two people in my memory, Eunha and Yuna. Understood?”
[Grrr!]
The Circulator nodded. It dripped saliva as it turned to the reptilians. Though it had no eyes, it could still sense them, and as it bared its sharp teeth, it lowered its body.
It was a hunting stance. Blatant killing intent seeped out of its body, and the reptilians bared their claws and talons as they settled into fighting stances.
[Everyone, don't panic! Earth's got beasts this big too! We can definitely handle—]
KWAAAANG!!
The leader's words were buried under the huge boom and disappeared. Where he had been standing, only his lower half remained. His upper half had already been inside the Circulator's jaws, where its teeth crushed and tore it beyond recognition.
[Damn it, kill it!]
The group's deputy leader shouted. At the same time, he was ripped apart by the Circulator's claws and split into five pieces.
Blue blood, organs, and bones splattered down. Before they even hit the ground, the Circulator opened its maw wide and bit the heads off the remaining reptilians one by one.
It took three seconds to get this far. The headless lizard bodies went limp, and the Circulator chewed and swallowed the heads it had bitten off while hungrily tearing into the corpses on the ground. Ian quietly watched it eat, then closed the grimoire.
“You caught the scent, right? Let's move by tracking them. Oh, and as I said, it's fine to smash anything you see. If you smell the two people I mentioned, report it to me immediately.”
[Grrr? Grrr!]
“The scent? There's probably some on me right now, so have him sniff it and check.”
[Grrr...... sniff sniff...... Grrr! Grrr-r-r!]
“Yeah, glad you understood. Finish eating and come after me. I'll head out first.”
[Grrr!]
The Circulator nodded and buried its head back in the corpses. Ian tapped its head with the grimoire and walked down the clear road.
And as he did, he ran into the fanatics he'd met earlier once more. Seeing Ian strolling through the ruined city in perfect shape, they started muttering to each other.
He wasn't particularly interested in the conversation they were having.
In the first place, he hadn't even had a chance to ask. The moment they approached Ian while nursing incomprehensible thoughts, the Circulator, having finished its meal, came charging straight over and body-checked the cultists. They didn't even have time to make a sound before exploding and scattering their flesh everywhere.
“Oh wow, that was incredibly effective!”
Ian blurted out the thought that popped into his head without passing it through any filter.
[Grrr!]
Taking his exclamation as praise, the Circulator leapt into the air and tore the one remaining intact building in half.
The building bent at the waist like a bow.