Chapter 70
The status window was gone.
Ian didn’t bother searching for it and walked down the open corridor toward the stairs.
He no longer used the elevator. He’d used it just now because the situation had been urgent, but there was no reason to choose to isolate himself in an enclosed space now. Stairs were better.
Ian moved forward along the path slick with blood.
The entrance to the stairs was completely blocked. The doorknob must have been crushed from the inside, because it wouldn’t turn at all.
Bang-!
Without hesitation, he blasted it apart. He roughly tore off the doorknob, which hung loose after being shattered by the bullet, and stepped through the door as it creaked open.
The moment he went in, the fishy stench unique to seafood hit him in a rush.
It wasn’t unbearable, but it was still a thoroughly disgusting stench. Maybe because it mixed with the blood scent filling the area, it made his head throb for no good reason.
‘So this was proof that the Mystery had started to move in earnest.’
Ian rubbed his nose to dull the smell and climbed the stairs.
‘Normally, it’s the kind of thing that grows stronger as time passes, but with things like this, even it can’t just sit still.’
Mysteries are made of malice toward humans and inexplicable supernatural phenomena, but that doesn’t mean they’re free of the fear of death. Even the ghosts that had occupied the officetel had bolted in a panic when they thought they might be exorcised, hadn’t they?
The cruise ship wouldn’t be any different. Now that two mages had begun moving openly, it couldn’t afford to stay relaxed either.
Whatever the case, there was no need to worry about it too much.
Either way, whether it moved or not, the thing he had to do had been clear from the start.
Strategies and that sort of thing didn’t matter. If he had a way to kill it directly, there was no reason to take the long road.
Click.
Ian opened the cylinder and reloaded the rounds. The cold Magnum cartridges filled the cylinder, and the muzzle, still carrying heat, passed a faint warmth through the barrel.
Magic was fine, but guns were still much more convenient for now. Even if he used magic as his main weapon when dealing with groups, in a one-on-one fight it seemed better to pull the trigger and leave magic as support.
‘A gun is the fireball of modern magic.’
If a murder weapon can kill someone with the click of a trigger, what else could it be but magic?
“…….”
While thinking those pointless thoughts, he climbed one more floor.
4th floor.
Perhaps because it was the floor marked with an ominous number, the door leading to the 4th floor was completely blown apart. The dented steel plate rolling on the floor was left as it was, and writhing scraps of flesh were pinned like specimens to the broken wall and floor.
On closer inspection, they seemed to be sailors struck by a shell. Unusually, they were wearing marine uniforms, and even with half their bodies blown away, they were still twitching their fingertips and toes as if they could move the tendons and nerves. Of course, the ones whose arms and legs had been blown off couldn’t do that.
“Hmm.”
Aside from the sprawled sailors, there was nothing else unusual. Ian held the grimoire in one hand and idly flicked his revolver with the other as he approached the twitching sailor—the one whose entire left side of the head had been blown away.
“……Haa, haa…….”
Surprisingly, he was still breathing.
Half his brain was gone, and yet he could still breathe.
He’d expected they weren’t normal humans, but he hadn’t thought they’d have this kind of vitality.
If a sailor was this tough, then the captain would surely have even more tenacious life.
It wasn’t certain, but just confirming the possibility wasn’t bad. Ian pressed the muzzle deep into the thing’s crushed eye socket.
Squish…….
Sticky fluid and blood clung all over the muzzle. The sailor convulsed at the sensation of a lump of metal burrowing through his eye socket, but Ian paid it no mind.
“Where is the captain?”
At his clear voice, the sailor realized that what had attacked him was a human, not some aberration, and his mouth twitched.
“...You’re human. But you’re not an ordinary human.”
“I’m not especially fond of going off topic. I’d appreciate it if you’d answer the question I asked.”
Crunch.
As he pushed the muzzle in farther, the hard-yet-soft feel of brain matter traveled along the barrel and reached Ian. Even as the sailor trembled violently from pain that seemed to scorch his nerves, he wore a faintly vile smile.
“He has already come under the Great One’s gaze. Someone like you can’t do anything to him.”
“…….”
“The flowing blood will soak the earth, and all people will acclaim His name! We are but weak creatures, frail beings! Thus, we gladly accept His grace!”
Ian frowned when he spotted something faintly glinting inside the praising sailor’s tongue. He pulled the trigger and blasted the sailor’s brain to bits, then yanked the slack tongue straight out. It came free without any resistance.
Sluuurp.
Blood flowed from the torn end of the ripped-out tongue.
There was far too much blood for it to be simple bleeding. No matter how many blood vessels there were in the tongue, it made no sense for blood to pour out like an artery had been severed.
Apparently, this tongue itself was the medium that granted power to the sailor and the cultists.
Ian didn’t bother shaking the blood from his hand and examined the pattern drawn on the tip of the tongue.
“...A pattern.”
A grotesque pattern of a long tongue thrust like a spear into a gaping maw.
It looked like the cult’s symbol in all but name.
It was so disgustingly drawn, as if to make sure no one would mistake them for a cult serving an Outer God. Ian clicked his tongue and casually tossed the chunk of flesh he’d been holding onto the floor.
Then the tongue began wriggling, starting to move like a living creature.
Seeing that, Ian let a faint smile form on his lips.
“Was it an aberration?”
He’d thought the pattern itself was the source of power, but it seemed the tongue itself was the body. Without hesitation, Ian picked the tongue up again, transformed its shape with recreation magic, and tucked it into his bag.
Now that he’d confirmed it was an aberration, there was no need to hesitate.
This was Ian, after all. Even in the urgent chaos of the hospital, he had carefully harvested materials. It was no different now.
And so Ian explored the floor, plucking the tongues from the sprawled sailors and converting them into materials as he walked.
The sailors had been alive and breathing until their tongues were pulled out, but the moment that slick piece of flesh broke down, they convulsed and died. Thanks to that, Ian realized their weakness was the tongue.
Still, their weakness wasn’t much of an issue for him. After all, once he could touch them, weak point or not, he could kill them anyway.
Still, it wasn’t a bad thing to know.
Ian grabbed the head of the sailor who’d just been convulsing, yanked out his lower jaw so he couldn’t close his mouth, then pulled out his tongue. Afterward, he tied it with a string lying nearby and tossed it to the floor.
The reason he wasn’t converting this tongue into material was simple. All the tongues he’d pulled out so far had been wriggling as if they wanted to go somewhere.
He’d already secured plenty of material, so now it was time to get some guidance.
He wasn’t sure where it led, but there was definitely something there that was the core of the Mystery. It might even be heading to the captain, but whatever it was, there was no loss in following it.
Ian took hold of the string tied to the tongue like a leash and put a cigarette in his mouth.
“Now, lead the way.”
[Kyuing.]
The tongue shed blood like tears and moved forward with a slap-slap hopping motion.
*
Along the way, he encountered the evil spirits Seo-ah controlled. The ghosts that had been leaping at him like mad dogs bowed politely when they saw Ian, then went down the stairs.
[Kyaaaah!!]
The ghosts that went down let out shrill screams. It looked like Seo-ah had requested reinforcements and was moving as well; apparently she had started fighting too.
Ian was also very curious about how a necromancer fought, but he had no room to look elsewhere right now. He walked on with the tongue’s leash in hand and pulled the trigger with a click.
Bang! Bang-!
The muzzle spat fire and launched a lead slug. A giant worm struck by the bullet toppled over, and Ian hurled a mirror at it.
Thud!
The mirror, piercing the blue flesh, glowed and turned the worm’s body into glass shards. With a sharp crash, its body shattered and fell apart. Ian stepped on the shards and gave the leash a slight tug.
“This is the right way, isn’t it? Looking at you now, it doesn’t seem like you’re moving by thought—you’re just going by instinct.”
[Kyuing!]
The tongue gave a shrill cry and crossed over the glass shards. The sharp fragments tore and sliced its flesh, but the tiny tongue didn’t care and kept hopping along.
From what he’d observed so far, this thing didn’t seem to have any intelligence at all. It didn’t seem to have intelligence in the first place.
Even its noises were closer to a clumsy imitation of vocal organs, and they were absolutely not pleasant to hear.
If anything, the cry was close to the cute onomatopoeia “kyuing,” but objectively, it was anything but cute. Its voice was harsh and sharp, like the cries of dozens of old men, and listening to it made his head throb.
The fact that his vision was slightly skewing meant it was also continuously launching mental attacks. He was fine thanks to the grimoire, but that only made it all the more obnoxious. Ian stopped the tongue for a moment and lightly stepped on it.
[Kyuing! Kyuhiiing!]
The tongue screamed.
From its point of view, it probably felt like a bizarre event where a string suddenly appeared out of nowhere, bound it, and even stepped on it. Since the magic on the coat made Ian impossible to see, that was only natural.
Of course, he had no intention of breaking the magic.
Who knew what would happen if he showed himself—why would he do something that careless?
There was no reason to take an unnecessary loss. The right move was to first see where this tongue was headed, then take some other action.
Thinking that, Ian lifted his foot.
Once the weight pressing it down disappeared, the tongue hurried forward as if fleeing a predator. He followed behind with the leash in his hand.
After fighting and sneaking his way across the floors, the place he reached was the wheelhouse.
A place also commonly called the bridge.
It was where the captain and the other sailors controlled the ship’s direction and speed. Apparently, there was something in here related to the cult.
It was more or less a place he had expected. Ian let go of the leash he was holding and loosened his stiff wrists and shoulders before entering the wheelhouse. He also reloaded the cylinder and slipped the knife hilt partway out of his coat pocket so he could react at any moment.
While he was doing that, the tongue slipped neatly under the wheelhouse door.
He didn’t bother chasing after it in a hurry. He had no further business with it now.
Ian calmly checked himself one last time, and after confirming that nothing was wrong, placed his hand on the door.
“Be reborn.”
Krrrk!
The thick iron door shrank, turning sharp like a spear. Ian grabbed it tightly and stuck his head into the wheelhouse.
“…….”
The inside of the wheelhouse was fairly clean. There was a splash of water on the floor, but there were no corpses or blood-soaked areas.
However... the space was rather large. No, much larger. It was huge, several times the size of a normal wheelhouse.
A space completely unlike what he’d seen from outside. Ian planted the spear into the floor, opened the grimoire, and slowly moved forward.
“Phew…….”
Just then, faint cigarette smoke rose from a corner of the wheelhouse. Ian immediately turned his head to check the owner who had exhaled the smoke.
“Welcome.”
The first thing that caught his eye was a snow-white beard. Tongues clung among its tangled strands.
He was one-eyed, and blue worms were pouring out of his ears. Through the parted lips, tiny bits of tongue-flesh packed as densely as teeth were clearly visible.
A disgusting sight. But Ian didn’t take his eyes off him.
Apparently pleased by that, the fellow wearing the captain’s hat smiled and flicked his pipe.
“Mage who has received the Great One’s grace.”
Above the human head embedded in his chest, a nameplate reading “Captain” shone faintly.