[433] A Chance for Revenge (5)
The ice of Niflheim trembled.
From above it would have looked like ripples radiating outward in concentric circles—a choreography of ice molecules spreading out.
Gaold stood at the center of that wave.
He stood, and nothing else existed.
"Krrrgh!"
Gaold ground his teeth like a demon.
Veins climbed his neck to his temples and writhed like annelids.
The guide knelt on the ice, staring, dumbstruck, at the spot where the Grim Reapers had been annihilated.
"T-this... this can't be."
The ice could not bear the shock and split into thick fissures that raced outward.
One jagged crack arced as if it had a will of its own and surged toward the guide.
"Eeeek!"
Kangnan grabbed the guide's collar and flung him away; a four‑meter‑wide fissure ripped across the exact place they had stood.
When the crack stopped, the area was utterly devastated.
It was Gaold's imprint on Niflheim.
Wshooooooo!
The Grim Reapers that had clung to the ice ascended, disgorging the life‑streams they had accumulated over their lives into the air.
"Uh? Uh?"
The guide's eyes flickered with shock.
Never in his life had he seen ten Black Elixirs soar into the sky at once.
The rush of pleasure alone made his head swim as if his heart might stop.
Hearing the elixirs clink and roll across the ice, he lunged like a madman, swinging his arms.
He didn't even notice the cold lacerating his palms as he scooped the elixirs up in a trance.
They felt heavy cupped in both hands.
Heavy enough—but it felt like holding the heaviest thing on earth.
"If only... if all of this were mine..."
Greed clouded the guide's eyes.
But the moment he met Kangnan's cold face, he snapped back and words tumbled out before he could stop them.
"Ah, no—well, half of them should be mine..."
"Pick them up. All of them."
Kangnan watched the guide hastily gather the elixirs, then turned toward Gaold.
"What an idiot!"
Ten‑thousand‑fold pain.
An experience an ordinary human could not begin to imagine. But to Gaold, it was mundane reality.
After all, pain is nothing more than a special kind of neural signal sent to the brain.
That's all it is.
Humans forced to live their whole lives bearing inescapable, unbearable pain—unable to refuse it, unable to flee it.
That was the curse placed on Gaold.
"You all right?"
Gaold, returned to something like his usual self, pinched the bridge of his nose with a mischievous look.
"Heh. If you're not, what—want me to kiss you?"
Kangnan snorted.
If that somehow happened, how would Gaold take it? As agonizing hypersensation—or the most exhilarating thrill of his life?
"Sorry, no interest in that with old geezers."
"You're odd. When we first met you were so shy you couldn't even lift your head."
There was absolutely no chance of that now.
Still, Kangnan's expression softened as he remembered that earlier time.
'Did I... really do that?'
Seeing Gaold show boldness had been reassuring, but the more relaxed he seemed, the more a fire rose within Kangnan.
Gaold's already heightened senses surged a hundredfold in an instant.
To put it in perspective: if an ordinary person's fingertip cut were amplified a hundred times, they'd scream and writhe on the floor. Gaold, however, had a baseline amplification of a thousandfold. Now, with that sudden hundredfold spike, his sensation reached a hundred‑thousand‑fold level.
You didn't need to peer inside him to know he couldn't possibly be fine.
"Listen. From now on, when you raise your pain threshold—"
"Finally some clarity. Let's go."
Gaold cut Kangnan off and turned to the guide.
The guide's face, having faced reality, was pale with terror.
At the start of the journey he had thought he might make a tidy profit.
But seeing the force that had wiped out forty Grim Reapers in an instant, he finally understood what he'd been dragged into.
This wasn't about betrayal or a backstab.
In Niflheim, where nothing alive lurked but specters, Gaold was little less than a god holding his life in his palm.
'He'll kill me. He definitely will.'
The condition had been fifty percent of the harvested elixirs.
As a share that sounded generous; if there were only two Black Elixirs, taking half meant taking one. That had been the arithmetic so far.
But as the number of elixirs swelled, that fifty percent began to feel enormous.
Why would anyone leave him breathing when they had to hand over such a massive haul?
"How many did you collect?"
The guide flinched and opened his pouch.
"Well, um..."
He'd had twenty‑four before; this time he'd gotten fourteen.
Realizing he had a staggering thirty‑eight Black Elixirs felt unreal, like a dream.
"As you can see, thirty‑eight."
The guide hurriedly added, "I‑I'm not that greedy... so please..."
"Go back."
"Huh?"
The guide, about to beg for his life, looked up, dumbfounded.
"Leave half and take half, then go back. You're not fit to guide us any further."
If forty Grim Reapers could appear at once, there was no guarantee that even worse things wouldn't show up deeper in what was essentially hell.
Giving up greed now was the sensible move, and the math showed that the value of that fifty percent cut only grew as the haul increased.
"Go back? You're serious?"
Most likely they were.
Those strong enough to kill him whenever they wished had no reason to stab him cheaply in the back.
With the greatest fear resolved, the guide's mind began to whirl.
Return to the mainland with nineteen Black Elixirs.
He could live as he pleased for thirty‑eight years.
'Or—spend ten Black Elixirs to build a community. Then I'd have underlings and could live off them forever.'
But his heart didn't follow his head easily.
If he built a community with ten Black Elixirs, he'd be left with nine.
And human desire is strange: he'd feel as if he'd lost ten of the nineteen that should have been his.
Nine also felt unsatisfying as a lifetime stash.
"Damn, if only one more. Ten should be ten; what's nine? It leaves a bad taste."
The feeling that a single Black Elixir could buy the world vanished when larger greed took hold after he'd already imagined having it.
'Alright, just one more. Even if I go back now, it's still dangerous anyway.'
He'd memorized routes with fewer Grim Reaper spawns, but the data wasn't one hundred percent reliable.
"What if you suddenly break our contract? You can't back down now. Guide us all the way to Hell if you have to."
Gaold stared at the guide.
It was the look of someone clutching at a last chance in life.
"Heh. Right. If you're a man, you make one big play. Lead the way."
"Of course, sir."
The guide sprang up and stepped forward, patting the sack full of Black Elixirs and recalling his parents' childhood advice:
Row while the tide's in.
#4. Bio Shock
"It's over. You can get up."
Shirone and Plu removed the machine‑like devices—similar to glasses—and rose from the bed.
They had been isolated for seven days, receiving physical exams once a day, and today's test had been an EEG.
"In my opinion, there's nothing abnormal. I'll lift the isolation order effective now, so you may return to your accommodations."
Shirone breathed a sigh of relief.
Seven days under airtight surveillance, hardly able to use the bathroom, were finally coming to an end.
Shirone and Plu left the exam room and walked back to their quarters side by side.
Shirone, who had been cautious with her words up to now, finally spoke.
"No matter how I look at it, it's strange, isn't it? Why are they inspecting us so obsessively?"
She suspected the unexplained pathogen infection had been only a pretext.
She had kept her thoughts hidden because she didn't want to lose the chance to counterattack while her hands were tied.
"I wonder too. The promised rebel unification has stalled. Now that isolation's lifted, something might change. While you focus on external affairs, I'll quietly look into it."
"Is that really necessary? It might have nothing to do with us."
Shirone's team's top priority was unifying the rebels.
Even if Reysis had secrets, if they were internal to command there was no need to poke and make trouble.
'No. There's definitely something.'
Though their external information was cut off during isolation, small changes Shirone noticed when coming and going to the test room left her uneasy.
'I'll probe where it's safe to do so.'
A Nor walking the corridor glanced at Plu as they passed.
* * *
Reysis entered the Second Command's secret laboratory.
As always she wore a red cloak, her face flushed with excitement.
"You sent the specimen Yamang requested?"
"Yes. We're disassembling it now. Please confirm."
On the workbench, a gray, mucus‑slick hide draped over a chunk of flesh thick with fat.
On the opposite table lay the portion corresponding to the creature's face.
Reysis shuddered at the sight of the long, drooping snout and the circular mouth studded with sawlike teeth.
"It's confirmed. Finally we obtained it."
Parasitic species Izeremong.
A Rank‑A creature in the purgatory hunt tier, it possesses an antithesis ability that binds all targets except its own kin.
In other words, a Law that rejects Law—a unique mechanism likely native to the Izeremong's home planet.
"You underestimated Yamang. Izeremong—faster to procure than I expected."
"I was surprised too. Even the command's elite units were at a loss against the antithesis."
"They must have found a hunting method or hired someone exceptional. Maybe both. Anyway, start it. Activate the Fusix Machine."
Reysis turned to a device centered on a four‑meter‑tall glass cylinder, with huge glass spheres set at each vertex of an octagon.
The Fusix Machine—the biological fusion device.
It combined two or more species to create a new organism with composite traits.
'I have to strengthen the Izeremong somehow.'
The parasitic Izeremong was formidable on its own, but combining traits that amplified its antithesis could make it a perfect weapon.
'An antithesis powerful enough to suppress angels. If it can't reach that level, it's useless in war.'
They dissolved various elixirs in perfect proportions, added water, then Black Elixirs; a black, viscous liquid flowed through hoses into a barrel.
It was the plasm used in Ilhwa's Liquor.
Plasm reacts only with organic matter, dissolving organisms and absorbing their genetic information.
Mix plasm from different organisms and apply an electrical stimulus, and a new organism synthesized from both parents' traits is born—the same mechanism as Ilhwa's Liquor.
Only, because the materials weren't limited to humans, the more species involved, the higher the chance of failure.
One reason Reysis had been eyeing Shirone was to use a Nephilim's formidable mind to control the variables of interspecies fusion.
"Commander, the Izeremong's plasm is ready."
Reysis's eyes flashed with ecstasy at the sight of the plasm sloshing in the barrel.
Though the stench made one want to hold one's nose, to her it was the sweetest scent in the world.
'I will evolve without end.'
It was the water of life that would guide her to a god's throne.