Hoarding In Hell [EN]: Chapter 342

Side Story 4.

From Beast to Human (4)

The girl raised her fingertip and pointed to the ‘Gonggi stones’ [small, smooth stones used in a traditional Korean game of skill].

It was hardly appropriate to call them Gonggi stones anymore. Since starting the game with Maria, their forms had collapsed, and now they were just piles of corpses.

And the girl spoke honestly.

“Corpse.”

“Yes. That’s a corpse.”

Maria chuckled and muttered. The girl had little knowledge, but thankfully, she learned quickly.

Maria didn’t mind that one of the first words she learned was the grim word ‘corpse.’

The girl’s fingertip turned towards Maria.

“Not corpse.”

“Yes. Not a corpse yet. But ‘person’ is better. Person. Peeerrr-son.”

“Peeerrr-son.”

The girl chuckled and pointed back at the pile of corpses.

“Not peerrr-son.”

“Yes, yes.”

Maria nodded. ‘She understands more than I thought,’ Maria mused, impressed by how easily the girl grasped the concept.

Aside from her bizarre power, the girl was at least more obedient than other children. At least she seemed nicer than her nephew.

Maria hated children and wanted to keep them as far away as possible, but she liked their easy manipulability. It didn’t matter that the girl could break her entire body in an instant.

‘No, it does matter.’

If this girl didn’t have such power, Maria would see her as just another common war orphan.

But anyway, the world wasn’t fair. Even as an orphan, one could be worshiped as a god or ignored like a grain of sand in the desert.

Or treated like a monster and killed.

Maria watched the girl quickly learn the new letters and slowly organized her thoughts.

The girl was now almost at the level of a human. But she couldn’t become a complete human like this.

‘That’s an uncontrollable power. Even if it can be controlled, it’s too dangerous to give to anyone! It must be eliminated!’

Samuel’s voice seemed to echo in her ears.

He was right. A being with such power shouldn’t grow into an adult with a complete and independent ego.

A god can only be affirmed when useful as a tool.

Maria slowly turned around.

She knew that Victor and Samuel were watching her. But she was looking at the bearded man hidden in a more discreet place.

The Saudi Arabian tycoon who was the sponsor of this armed guerrilla organization. From the moment Maria set foot here, he had never stopped watching her.

‘He’s planning to take her away as soon as she’s tamed.’

Or he’ll try to introduce a similar method.

Once the girl is tamed, nothing else matters. Maria, already seriously injured, wouldn’t even be able to resist.

It was questionable whether she could even expect the girl to protect her.

In the first place, it would be difficult to convey meaning until the crisis directly affected her.

The girl was still just a beast.

‘I need to put a leash on her before that happens.’

Maria began to prepare to take the next step.

***

What is right, what is wrong?

In paradise, humans could not know the difference. Only God could clearly draw that distinction.

Therefore, right and wrong, good and evil, were determined only by God.

The fruit of good and evil signifies wisdom, and the serpent signifies curiosity. By eating the fruit of good and evil, humans came to know what is right and wrong, what to be ashamed of, and what to be proud of.

Thus, the livestock of paradise became human.

***

Samuel was still waiting for Maria.

It had been over three days since Maria had been with the girl without food or treatment. There were offerings on the altar dedicated to the girl, but they were slowly running out.

Above all, Maria needed treatment urgently.

“When will she come out?”

“Professor Maria probably won’t come out until she’s satisfied. But anyway, the fact that she’s still alive means something is happening, doesn’t it?”

“Then she needs to take care of her body even more thoroughly.”

“If you’re so worried, Doctor, you could go in… No, we should worry about our own bodies first.”

Victor stood up with a tense expression. Samuel noticed Mohammed entering the cave they were in. Five armed men followed behind Mohammed.

It was difficult to read his emotions because of his beard, but it was clear that he was feeling impatient.

Mohammed shouted something at Samuel. Samuel’s face turned pale.

“What is he saying?”

Victor sensed that the situation was unusual from Samuel’s expression.

Before Samuel could translate, the armed guerrillas grabbed his arm and began to drag him away.

Victor almost pulled out his hidden weapon.

All the weapons that were taken away when they first met were for disguise. There were plenty of hidden weapons besides that. Including the firearms that the CIA had hidden in this cave.

But then he changed his mind when he saw Samuel hurrying away on his own feet instead of being dragged away.

Victor pretended to be dragged along and followed behind Samuel.

“What’s going on?”

“Maria… Professor Maria is dead, he says. Killed by that girl.”

***

Victor and Samuel soon arrived inside the canyon. They stopped outside the line that the girl wouldn’t cross and assessed the situation.

Maria was lying not far from the girl.

She was mixed in with the pile of corpses in a terrible state, with almost all of her limbs broken.

But to be honest, Maria had been close to a wreck for days, so it was hard to be sure if she was really dead or not.

“Dr. Samuel, are you sure she’s dead? She certainly looks bad, but…”

Then Victor spotted the girl. The girl was playing with the dumplings she had made with Maria, throwing them while humming a song.

The target was the pile of corpses Maria was lying on. The carefully made dumplings were hitting the corpses and getting crushed.

“…It seems she’s lost interest in Maria.”

Samuel groaned.

It was a life-threatening job from the start. But seeing Maria sprawled out like trash made him feel an unknown revulsion.

Victor tried to suppress his personal feelings and whispered.

“Dr. Samuel. Be careful.”

Victor slowly reached for his waist.

If Maria was dead, what he had to do was clear. Destroy the girl and this place, protect Samuel, and escape.

But before Victor could act, Mohammed shouted something at Samuel.

“He’s asking why Maria was supposed to be an expert. I guess he believes that an expert should be able to handle even a monster like that…”

“Isn’t it impossible for anyone to tame a monster, not just Maria?”

If there was any hope, it was that the girl might be human, not a monster. Then at least it would be easier to kill her.

Mohammed shouted something at the guerrillas. Instantly, one of the guerrillas pushed Samuel across the ‘line.’

In a moment that seemed to freeze time, Victor pulled out the single-shot gun hidden inside his belt.

A gunshot rang out.

The moment Samuel’s foot touched the ground, Victor drew his greatsword and stabbed another guerrilla next to him in the neck, and by the time Samuel was rolling on the ground, he had already subdued four men and was shooting the last one to death with the stolen automatic rifle.

Mohammed, whose subordinates were killed in an instant, shouted something with a pale face.

But Victor hissed and quickly rushed at Mohammed, grabbing him by the collar.

The guerrillas who were about to snipe Victor from the top of the canyon had no choice but to take their fingers off the trigger.

“Get lost, you camel-fucking bastards!”

Although the pronunciation wasn’t perfect, an angry roar poured out from the top of the canyon.

Samuel, who was sitting on his butt, was staring at Victor with a dumbfounded expression.

“You knew this language?”

“If you’re going to fight a war in that country, you need to know at least the swear words of that country.”

Samuel initially thought it was humility, but it seemed that Victor really couldn’t understand anything other than swear words.

Mohammed was constantly pouring out words to Victor, but Victor didn’t respond at all.

Samuel cautiously turned around. The girl’s gaze was already directed this way.

But she wasn’t doing anything.

It was impossible to know whether she was watching because of the commotion or because Samuel had entered.

Samuel hesitated and tried to get out of the line, but Victor’s thoughts were different.

Victor blocked Samuel from leaving.

“Mr. Victor?”

Victor hugged Mohammed tightly and was wondering how to get through this situation.

There was a monster behind him, and armed guerrillas were swarming in front of him.

There weren’t many options.

‘No, there’s only one.’

Victor soon dragged Mohammed inside the ‘line.’ Mohammed, who had stepped inside the line, began to struggle wildly.

But after Victor punched him once, he had no choice but to be dragged in helplessly. Samuel was flustered when he saw Victor also entering the line.

“What are you thinking?”

“If Professor Maria didn’t waste three days, this will be the safest place.”

“What does that…”

Before Samuel could finish speaking, an explosion erupted.

The explosion shook the entire canyon, and stones rained down. The panicked guerrillas popped out from here and there and began to run away.

The explosion didn’t end with just one and destroyed various parts of the canyon.

“We were lucky. It’s a matter of heavenly luck to have air support come on time. It seems that you, Doctor, are my lucky charm.”

Suddenly, a huge explosion shook the canyon.

An enormous amount of dust poured out with flames from the entrance of the cave made by digging into the canyon. And the guerrillas who had been hiding like cockroaches in the cave poured out.

The guerrillas, who couldn’t distinguish between front and back because of the dust, ran past the ‘line.’

In an instant, Victor and Samuel were mixed in with the guerrillas.

The bomber, which was pouring firepower from the distant sky, did not miss its target even in the dust cloud.

Victor, watching the firepower pouring down right in front of him, cursed and ran away. Samuel hurriedly followed behind him, shouting.

“You said it was safe!”

“I’m supposed to send the signal only when I get out of the canyon!”

However, there was no way to convey the message to the bomber.

Victor and Samuel had no choice but to run towards the girl. It was impossible to know which way was better to preserve the corpses, but there were still not many options.

“Noisy.”

It was then.

A familiar voice was heard from beyond the faint dust cloud.

It was a dying voice, but he could recognize it right away.

Victor shouted happily.

“Maria! You’re still not dead?”

“Seriously… You impatient things… The education isn’t even finished yet…”

Maria was crawling on the floor with her elbows.

It was hard to find a place on her body that was intact, but her consciousness seemed surprisingly clear. It was questionable whether she had even slept for three days.

Then Victor discovered strange traces around Maria. It was the corpses of guerrillas pressed tightly against the floor like Egyptian murals.

There was no need to wonder what or how this had happened. Victor realized that the explosions had stopped at some point.

Once an operation starts, it usually continues until it is completely devastated, so it couldn’t have stopped already.

“Now, child.”

Maria had a dying, tired expression, but she raised the corners of her mouth and whispered.

“It’s time to review what you’ve learned.”

As soon as Victor looked up, he realized why the explosions had stopped.

Hundreds of shells poured out by the bomber were captured and stopped in the air.

The shells were being newly captured in real time. The girl hummed the lyrics Maria had taught her and held a dumpling in her hand.

Then, splat, she threw a blood-stained mud dumpling at the face of Mohammed, whom Victor had dragged along.

Thud.

Mohammed’s head disappeared with a light noise.

But Victor, who was right next to him, was not hurt at all.

The sound of life disappearing so lightly almost made Samuel collapse.

Soon, the shells that the girl was holding were all fired towards the cliff.

A roar like nature’s scream echoed. The canyon could not withstand the sudden impact and collapsed.

Just before an enormous cloud of dust and debris rushed in, Samuel could see Maria.

Maria was smiling.

Only then did Samuel realize the ‘education’ Maria was doing at the end.

Maria was teaching the girl how to distinguish ‘targets.’

“Gain wisdom, know discernment and reason. Beast.”

What is good to kill, what is good to save. Who is on our side and who is the bad guy. What is good and what is evil.

“You will be a watchdog guarding the flock.”

Maria was the girl’s reference point.

***

6 months later.

The creaking sound of a wheelchair echoed loudly in the hallway.

Victor silently pulled the wheelchair Maria was riding in. This bunker, built in a secret facility 300 meters underground, housed only the most dangerous weapons among the weapons secretly researched by the United States.

That’s how it should have been originally.

But now it was only being used as a cage to confine an existence that could not be handled, and even the weapons had long been moved to other secret locations.

After a long silence, Victor opened his mouth.

“…No one has been able to tame her. Professor.”

“…”

“It’s rare for anyone to even survive, let alone have simple games or conversations. She doesn’t harm people who bring her food, but if they do anything more than that, she immediately harms them. It’s hard to believe that you were the one who brought her here in the first place.”

“Of course.”

Victor stopped for a moment at Maria’s scoffing answer.

“What exactly did you teach her?”

Instead of answering, Maria stared intently at Victor. Victor gripped the wheelchair tightly for a moment and then pulled it again.

Blaming himself for asking a stupid question.

“Dr. Samuel insists to the end that she should be killed.”

“I’m sure he does. That cowardly bastard.”

“There are many people in the upper echelons who think so too. Langley [referring to the CIA headquarters] has already given up. Some people even want to drop her on Moscow like a nuclear weapon. There would be no radiation leaks, and we could pretend it wasn’t our responsibility.”

“They’re talking nonsense.”

“They’re probably half-joking. Because there’s no way to recover her.”

Victor soon stopped in front of a huge iron door.

When he pressed the complicated password and opened the door, a huge space with a musty smell appeared.

Because the interior could not be cleaned, the room was full of rotting corpses and blood.

And in the middle of it, there was the girl.

“You couldn’t bear to kill her, could you?”

“…If that came out of the dungeon.”

Victor muttered quietly.

“Someday, something may appear in the dungeon that can only be dealt with by that. Isn’t that what you’ve been constantly arguing for?”

Maria smiled brightly. Victor didn’t like that smile.

“The existence of a 4-star dungeon has already been confirmed. And it has also been confirmed that the dungeon cannot be cleared with the current level of humanity.”

As the dungeon’s grade increases, monsters that cannot be handled appear. The current human race has difficulty clearing even a 2-star dungeon.

“But if you can tame that girl with a leash, and if you can prepare for a possible emergency…”

The papers and reports Maria wrote to meet the girl again were closer to threats than objective.

Mainly with the future of humanity as collateral.

The contents, which were close to a cosmic horror novel, elicited a hollow laugh, but those who knew about the existence of the ‘girl’ found in Afghanistan could not laugh.

In the end, they had no choice but to let Maria, who was the only one who had tamed the girl, in.

Creak.

Maria pulled the wheelchair into the room without hesitation.

Victor silently watched her back. As Maria approached, making the sound of the wheelchair, the girl watched with curiosity.

Maria slowly but steadily approached and took something out of her arms.

“‘Apple.’ This is.”

“App-le.”

“Good try.”

The girl bit into the apple. The sweetness seemed to please her quite a bit.

Maria muttered, watching the girl crunch on the apple.

“I thought of your name.”

“Name.”

“I will give you wisdom. I will tell you what is right and wrong.”

The girl didn’t seem to know what Maria was saying. But it didn’t matter.

The words to the girl were also words Maria was saying to herself.

Maria reached out to the girl and hugged her. Then she whispered to the girl in a snake-like voice.

“With this, you are now banished from the paradise called ignorance.”

The girl stopped eating the apple and handed the apple back to Maria.

As if to say, try a bite.

Maria stared blankly at the apple and then opened her mouth.

“Your name is the flaw of paradise… Adam Fault.”

Crunch.

The sound of biting into the apple was sweet.