Chapter 20
For quite a few years, the Korean City Federation made no effort to reclaim the territory it had ceded to magical beasts.
The Sephira known as the “Invisibility Cloak,” which hides humans from magical beasts, isn’t vast enough to cover the entire world.
Barriers that physically hold magical beasts back are easy to expand, but their cost is astronomical.
The people running each city have always been calculating.
In a way, it was only natural that they chose to maintain the status quo rather than reclaim territory.
And for some people, this situation became an opportunity.
Several criminal organizations had been secretly working to expand their businesses at every opportunity.
Changro, Korea’s second-largest criminal organization, was one of them.
“Shit. The deal’s just around the corner, and now this…! Why the hell didn’t we install cameras over there?”
“The records say it was to cut costs.”
“Cut costs?!”
“The former branch chief in charge of construction left this comment: ‘The herons nest right above us. No lunatic’s going to tunnel down through there.’”
“?”
“…That’s what the former branch chief in charge of construction wrote in his report.”
“Fuck.”
The important deal was only three hours away.
While countless people slept and the world was quiet, a massive sum of dirty money was about to change hands underground.
Suddenly, the ceiling of the transaction area collapsed.
There was no doubt an intruder had entered the underground base.
“Boss! We’ve got a problem!”
“What now?!”
“We’ve lost contact with the eastern antiaircraft gun!!”
“Fuck. Why there?!”
“Following procedure, the patrol team was dispatched just now, one minute after contact was lost… They’ll confirm what happened soon—”
“Oh, so we’re just supposed to wait until then? If whatever’s over there comes charging this way, our heads are gonna explode in no time. Right?”
“Ah. Yes.”
“Don’t just say ‘yes,’ you idiot! Don’t we have footage from over there?! There should be internal cameras! We can watch it too!!”
“Y-yes. I’ll put it up right away!”
Why were there so few competent people among his subordinates?
The fifth-ranking member of Changro, who was also the branch chief in charge of this underground base, kept swinging his fists in frustration and disbelief.
It wasn’t as if punching an underling in the face would make him feel any better.
The only thing that could satisfy him was forcing every intruder to their knees, then proudly reporting it to the chairman when he arrived three hours later.
“The footage is ready, Boss!”
“Don’t tell me. Play it.”
Beep.
The footage played on the central holographic interface in the command room.
The branch chief jabbed impatiently at the screen.
After skipping ahead a few seconds at a time, he finally reached the moment the antiaircraft gun exploded.
“…What’s this?”
It was an explosion, but not one caused by gunpowder.
The solid steel burst like a balloon, and a black-haired girl walked out of it.
The girl was clearly the cause of the explosion, but… a girl?
How was that possible?
‘No way….’
When he resumed the paused footage, he saw the organization’s antiaircraft crew attacking the girl all at once.
Rat-a-tat-tat!
The bullets didn’t pierce the girl. They were simply absorbed into her.
At the same time, the men firing the guns collapsed.
No matter how he looked at it, this wasn’t something that could happen under ordinary circumstances.
‘An anomaly…!’
But why would an anomaly…?
Why had it suddenly come to this base?
There wasn’t much time.
The branch chief hurriedly switched to the camera showing the antiaircraft gun’s point of view, rather than the camera inside the gun emplacement.
‘How did something like that end up here?’
The footage showed a flock of herons.
The flock, surrounding something in a spherical formation, flew toward the base. Then the antiaircraft gun fired, and the birds dropped from the sky in droves.
After the gun had knocked down the herons a few times, it exploded.
“Can’t you zoom in any further?”
“This is as far as it goes.”
“Ah, damn it….”
In the end, time passed without them figuring out what had been among the flock of herons.
The branch chief was watching the footage again when ten seconds had passed.
“Aaaah!”
“Run!!”
The clamor of gunfire and screams echoed through the long, narrow corridor.
“Patrol team! Patrol team!”
“We can’t reach them.”
“F-first, protect the branch chief!”
Remembering what had happened inside the antiaircraft emplacement, the branch chief shouted.
“Wait! Stop! Everyone lower your guns!!”
It sounded like an absurd order, but the branch chief had once been a fixer.
He’d experienced several anomalous phenomena and knew full well that attacking an anomaly without thinking was suicide.
He also had a Sephira that gave him a decent chance of surviving an anomalous phenomenon.
That was why they had to stay calm for now.
His idiot subordinates had already made the mistake of opening fire twice. If they did it again, the same thing would happen all over again.
To hell with the deal three hours from now.
Wouldn’t the chairman find them all unconscious?
He could already picture himself becoming a snack for underwater magical beasts in the cold sea, courtesy of the chairman.
“Don’t fire until I give the order. Understood?”
“Yes!”
“If anyone looks like they’re about to shoot, the person next to them, take them down. If you fire, we all die. Got it?!”
“Yes, sir!” “Yes!!”
A few more seconds passed.
Clop, clop.
A few footsteps, like bare feet walking across a metal floor.
Something black slipped out between the heavy doors blocking passage from one corridor to another.
It was hair.
Each strand moved in a way that should have been physically impossible.
It was as if every strand had a mind of its own, all of them squabbling with one another.
“What is that…?”
“I-it’s an anomaly.”
“An anomaly?!”
“Is it trying to get through…?”
“Come on, that door weighs several tons….”
The newly arrived members of the organization had barely finished muttering fearfully when—
Crrrk.
Krrrraaaack.
“Aaaah.”
“Th-this is insane.”
“Shit…!”
The thick iron door groaned in a way it never should have as it slowly buckled.
The door crumpled like a cardboard box, and the reinforced concrete supporting it crumbled like a cookie.
The door soon fell away as a heap of scrap metal, and through the opening stepped someone with a light gait.
“…A kid?”
“……?”
A girl.
By all appearances, she was an ordinary girl.
Her long bangs hung down, hiding her eyes completely.
But no one looked down on her.
Of course they didn’t.
A girl was walking through the middle of a criminal organization’s secret base, after all.
A thin dress, bare feet, and writhing hair.
There wasn’t a single thing about her that seemed normal.
Everyone stared at the girl tensely, then turned to look at the branch chief in unison.
There were several fixers here, but they hoped the branch chief was the only one who had ever faced an anomaly of this magnitude firsthand.
“…I’ll handle her.”
The branch chief sighed and cautiously stepped forward.
Whether now or in the past, a criminal organization couldn’t function properly unless its higher-ups had overwhelming power.
“Hey. Can you hear me?”
The girl replied.
“I can hear you just fine~.”
“…Glad we can understand each other. Why did you come here?”
“I was attacked~.”
“Attacked… Oh.”
So that was what had happened.
‘The chairman’s prized defense system is causing us trouble at a time like this….’
The herons had been chasing Baek San-a because they’d detected an anomaly wave.
At first, when they’d flown over from the outskirts of Seoul, they’d only thought she was prey.
But after she started flying, they’d sensed her anomaly wave and kept pursuing her.
And the people assigned to guard this base’s antiaircraft guns had one rule they absolutely had to follow.
They were supposed to shoot down anything being chased by a flock of herons.
It was a perfectly sensible defensive protocol, but it had provoked a dangerous anomaly.
‘…Wait.’
But the more he thought about it, the stranger something seemed.
The defense system protecting this underground base took advantage of the magical beasts’ basic nature.
It exploited the herons’ tendency to gobble up any anomaly wave they sensed that was weaker than their own.
These herons had clearly pursued an anomaly wave that was ‘weaker’ than theirs.
But did the anomaly standing before him look weak?
Not at all.
‘It tore apart an antiaircraft gun and knocked out our men in an instant… Something doesn’t add up here….’
The branch chief asked cautiously.
He did his best to sound authoritative so no one would suspect he was scared.
“Um… why were the herons chasing you…?”
“You should know that better than I do~.”
“W-well, yes. But as far as we know, they have no reason to attack you.”
“Hmm…….”
The girl tilted her head as if thinking, then grinned.
He couldn’t see her eyes, and all she did was stretch her mouth into a broad smile, but several members of the organization seemed startled and pointed their guns at her.
“I said lower your guns, you idiots!”
“S-sorry…!”
“U-ugh….”
Right after the branch chief shouted at his men, the girl spoke.
“If they had no reason to attack me, why did humans attack me~?”
“……”
“It hurt so much~. Hundreds of bullets got stuck in my bodyyy~.”
The girl began to grow larger.
It wasn’t as if she merely seemed to be growing. She was physically getting bigger.
Her human-colored skin gradually darkened toward black, and her hair, which had been swaying sluggishly, began whipping around and striking everything nearby.
“Tell me, why did you attack me~?”
The wall panels buckled beneath her growing body.
Destroyed monitors, pipes, and all sorts of equipment were flattened beneath her.
Crrrk. Crrrraaaack. Krrrk.
At this rate, the entire facility was in danger of bursting apart with a bang.
What would happen if the facility opened up toward the sky?
The flock of herons would come flying in, thinking, ‘Well, what a feast!’
‘No… Today’s deal is important…!’
The first rule of fixer survival was to avoid antagonizing anomalies whenever possible.
But in a situation like this, there was only one way to protect the underground base.
The branch chief reluctantly pulled a Sephira from his belt.
He charged at the girl, holding an object shaped like a cube.
“Why did you attack meee~?”
The girl, who had been growing larger, made no attempt to resist as she touched the black cube.
One second later, she had vanished completely.
“…Whoa.”
“She disappeared.”
“Just as expected of you, Branch Chief!”
The branch chief had disappeared too.
Both he and the anomalous girl had been pulled into the cube.
Crack!!
“Eek!”
“Holy shit.”
As if it contained a gigantic monster inside,
the cube, smaller than a fist, fell and sank about a meter into the floor.
The members of the organization gathered around the small crater.
The man who served as the branch chief’s secretary muttered,
“Everyone, stay calm. Let’s wait until the branch chief comes out.”
* * *
I’d planned to threaten the bad guys at the underground base and encourage them to surrender.
But seeing how scared they were was so entertaining that I messed with them a little—and ended up getting pulled into a strange room.
It was obvious I’d entered an anomaly’s territory.
It was safe to assume that sudden shifts in space like this were always connected to anomalies.
I was the only one who’d been brought here.
The room had a simple, cube-shaped layout of about ten square meters, but there was one unusual thing about it.
A large iron door occupying one wall.
And a message inside a framed picture hanging above it.
[A Room You Can Leave Only by ■■]