Weapon-Eating Bastard [EN]: Chapter 92

Weapon-Devouring Bastard – Chapter 92

KWA-KWANG!

Something plummeted like a meteor, creating a crater in the ground.

The surrounding trees were shattered, and clods of earth that had shot into the sky fell back down one by one.

A moment of silence.

The remaining Wraiths and Slime stopped moving and stared at the crater in the ground.

Crack!

Then, someone emerged with a confident stride, brushing away the lingering magical energy and dust that swirled like mist.

“The one and only has arrived.”

It was Valerie.

I couldn’t help but be puzzled.

How on earth did she know to come here?

Valerie elegantly tossed her hair back, wearing a confident smile.

I gritted my teeth at the sight.

“Valerie….”

“Lee Chul! I came to help! Are you hurt?”

“…Aside from almost being killed by you just now, I’m fine.”

Could this crazy woman have come a little more quietly?

I really thought a meteor had fallen.

I could have been seriously injured.

“Hey, don’t be like that. Wasn’t it cool? Introducing, Hero Lan….”

“Couldn’t you have landed a little more gently?”

“I was worried about you, so I came to help, and this is how you treat me?”

“Weren’t you trying to assassinate me?”

“But you’re not hurt, so what’s the problem?”

This crazy….

Ah, Aunt, I’m sorry.

To compare my aunt to this crazy woman.

The more I experienced, the more I missed my aunt.

“Never mind that. More importantly….”

Valerie’s eyes glowed purple.

“What are those things?”

Valerie, with her lips pursed, turned her gaze to the monsters.

A 9th-grade monster, Slime.

A 7th-grade monster, Wraith.

Why were these things here?

“They’re the enemy.”

“I can see that much.”

“Those things used to be human.”

Valerie chuckled.

“What nonsense are you spouting? Are you hallucinating?”

“I’m telling you, they were human until just now.”

At my words, Valerie frowned deeply.

“So, what kind of ridiculous nonsense is that!”

At that moment, the Wraith’s scream echoed.

-Kieeeeeee!

“Ugh, what is this?”

Valerie covered her ears and felt her magical system shake.

“A variant?”

Even as she said it, Valerie shook her head, knowing it was absurd.

No matter how much of a variant it was, there was no way a mere 7th-grade monster could use such special abilities.

Then, Lee Chul, who was next to her, lit up as if things were going well.

“Let’s talk later, Valerie. Perfect timing. Can you capture that thing alive?”

Wraiths weren’t exactly living monsters, so the expression ‘capture alive’ was a bit odd, but Valerie seemed to understand and nodded.

“I can. But why?”

“I need to catch those two. Give me a signal, and then grab it.”

“No, but why….”

Before I could answer Valerie, I kicked off the ground.

The Lizardman, Wraith, and Slime’s coordination was annoying, but facing them one-on-one wasn’t difficult at all.

Auror Skill, Yama.

I used the Auror Skill to bind the Wraith’s body as it tried to escape.

Auror can capture spiritual entities as well.

-Kyak!

Leaving the screaming, struggling Wraith behind, I shouted.

“Now!”

Valerie stretched out her water spout into the air and unleashed her magic.

“Tch!”

Whoosh!

6th Circle Sealing Magic, Hundredfold Barrier.

Dozens of strands of magical energy appeared above the Wraith’s head, instantly forming geometric lines, binding the Wraith.

-Kieeeeeee!

This was just binding.

Valerie took out a talisman [a piece of paper inscribed with magical symbols] from her pocket.

“After all, for ghost play, a spell is the best. Hurry, hurry, like the law!”

As she chanted the spell with clumsy pronunciation, red cinnabar [a bright red mineral, used to make pigment] spread in the air, and the Wraith disappeared as if being sucked into the talisman.

Valerie, who had pulled the fluttering talisman towards her with magic, looked back at Lee Chul.

Lee Chul, with Mujin wrapped around his hand, was thrusting his fist into the Slime’s mouth.

‘No matter how special your abilities, a Slime is still a Slime!’

The Slime’s core was caught at his fingertips.

He pulled it out.

Popping!

With a sound like tearing leather, the acidic Slime’s mucus splattered everywhere.

Having anticipated this, I surrounded my body with Auror to deflect it and took the Slime’s core to Valerie.

“Please keep this safe.”

Sizzle!

The wriggling Slime’s liquid was shaped disgustingly like a human organ.

Unable to bring myself to touch it directly, Valerie finished by surrounding the core with telekinetic magic.

“Ugh….”

Wriggle! Wriggle!

Even with only the core remaining, the still-living Slime moved grotesquely.

Valerie, looking at it with complicated eyes, frowned.

“Why are you taking this?”

“I thought you might be able to analyze it, Valerie.”

Analyze? Analyze what again?

Valerie sighed deeply.

“I think we need to have a little chat.”

* * *

Valerie was the first to start the story.

She spoke about the gate that had opened in Gyeongju and the unidentified energies detected by the detectors.

“A gate in Gyeongju, you say?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”

Valerie grumbled, crossing her arms.

“It was an artificial gate. But, it was definitely a gate, but not a gate.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, if I had to put it into words, it’s like the concept of a quantum tunnel. It’s like magic particle information in the quantum world….”

“Wait.”

I cut her off before the story got too long.

“Please explain it in a way that even a non-expert can understand. Don’t make it long again.”

“Hey, even high school students learn this theory, you know?”

“What kind of high school student learns quantum mechanics and magic theory? Besides, I’m only 15 years old.”

“…You never give an inch, do you?”

Valerie grumbled and continued.

The following explanation was simple and clear.

The five gates that appeared in Gyeongju were artificially created passages.

But unlike ordinary gates, they didn’t spew out space monsters, and someone crossed over to this side through those gates.

I tilted my head.

“Then isn’t that just a teleportation circle?”

“No. Teleportation circles require both point A and point B to be prepared. It’s like, imagine reaching out from both sides and shaking hands.”

Valerie reached out her small hand and grabbed mine.

“But this time, someone teleported arbitrarily from point A without any preparation at point B. And it wasn’t just anything, but through a ‘gate’.”

Valerie let go of my hand and narrowed her eyes.

“With current human technology… no, it’s just impossible. The principle of the gate itself has been revealed, but using it is impossible.”

If Valerie said this much, then it was definitely impossible.

But.

“There are countless forces in this world that cannot be explained by logic.”

Valerie drooped like a deflated leather bag and nodded.

“That’s true.”

Spells, the source of magic, Blueholes, and the transcendent powers of legendary artifacts.

There was still much that humanity didn’t know.

‘Even with Valerie’s analysis, not knowing the exact theory is a bit shocking.’

Then Valerie blew out a puff of cigarette smoke and finished her story.

“Anyway, after confirming the gate and returning to the workshop to rest, something strange was detected. Thirty-one unidentified magical energies. I came straight back here.”

So that’s why Valerie was able to appear so suddenly.

I glanced at the Lizardman’s corpse lying on the ground.

“Those things probably came through that gate.”

“So what is this? I think it’s your turn to tell me a story.”

I nodded and began to speak.

I briefly explained, leaving out the story about the tomb.

A group of about thirty unidentified individuals suddenly appeared.

They had the aura of humans but contained the distorted energy of monsters within them.

Some had parts of their bodies transformed like monsters, and some were wearing monster skins.

Moreover.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Exactly what I said. As I mentioned earlier, humans turned into monsters.”

Valerie frowned.

“Hey, that doesn’t make sense. Do you even know what a genetic sequence is? I could understand if they had been transplanted with something… weren’t you under some kind of illusion magic?”

“Do you think my eyes are so bad that I couldn’t tell?”

At my words, Valerie’s expression twisted strangely.

“So you wanted Valerie to look at the things you caught earlier. If possible, I’d like you to take this Lizardman’s corpse and check it out too.”

“Is he really under some kind of hallucination magic….”

Valerie narrowed her forehead and turned her head towards the Lizardman’s corpse.

Whoosh!

Purple energy flowed from Valerie’s eyes.

Soon, Valerie, who had analyzed the Lizardman, tilted her head.

“This is just a monster? A slightly unusual one. No, if you only look at the abilities, it’s very unusual. But still, it’s just a monster.”

Valerie carefully walked over and rummaged through the Lizardman’s corpse.

She pushed magic into it, and even deployed strange magic circles to examine it.

“I’m sure. It’s just a monster.”

“But….”

I tried to argue but shut my mouth.

Sensing something in my expression, Valerie hesitated for a moment and muttered.

“It’s not that there aren’t monsters that can turn into human form, but this one can’t. It’s a Lizardman. The magic system is strange, it’s big, and it even has special abilities… but anyway, it’s a Lizardman.”

I clicked my tongue and looked at the Lizardman’s corpse.

What on earth did they do to hide it even from Valerie?

But I couldn’t just let it go.

“There were also guys who had monsters mixed in while still being human. Let’s go that way.”

“Okay, I understand.”

Valerie was also curious about this matter.

Above all, unidentified magical entities were clearly detected, but there were only monsters here.

Gates, unidentified magical entities, and even monsters.

‘Ah, my head hurts.’

It felt like a few puzzle pieces were missing and scattered everywhere.

“This way, Valerie.”

I led Valerie up the mountain.

In addition to the beheaded Lizardman and the captured Wraith and Slime, there were twenty-seven corpses of strange beings throughout this mountain.

They died as humans, not monsters.

Some of them had parts of their bodies that had changed heterogeneously like monsters, which would be enough to support my words.

I headed to the location where I had shot them down with arrows and cleared away the bushes, but.

“…….”

I couldn’t help but doubt my eyes as I looked at the fallen corpse.

Valerie frowned and said.

“Hey, this is just a Goblin.”

One of the strange beings who had fled during the last battle.

It was definitely human until I shot it down with an arrow.

After that, I searched the mountain like crazy, looking for the corpses of the strange beings.

‘What is this….’

The man who was wearing the Orc’s skin, the woman who had the compound eyes of an Insectoid.

There were no beings with human forms.

Clearly, all the strange beings I had shot down had fallen in the form of monsters.

Valerie analyzed the monsters’ corpses one by one with her magic eye and even performed simple magic tests.

She examined all thirty monsters, but the results were the same.

But.

“What is this?”

Valerie discovered something strange while examining the monster’s corpse.

It was a shoe that had been torn as if it had burst from the inside. The logo of a famous sports brand was engraved on the side.

“Why is something like this on a monster’s foot….”

That’s right.

The traces weren’t just the corpses.

Valerie began to examine the monster’s corpse again.

Footprints that had moved as humans, and the clothes they were wearing.

There were no belongings, but there were clearly traces of them as humans.

Valerie, who hadn’t believed it, had a subtle expression.

‘Could it be… is it real?’

Had humans turned into monsters?

Or had monsters been in human form?

The next thought followed.

‘Unidentified magical reaction.’

What if that was really true?

It was a situation that didn’t fit the logic.

But wasn’t the gate an abnormal phenomenon in the first place?

Valerie silently stood up from her seat.

“I need to investigate this a bit. I’ve collected enough samples, so I’ll look into it personally.”

Valerie took samples from a few monsters and stored them in a subspace artifact.

“Do you believe it?”

“There are strange pieces of evidence. And all these monsters are somehow… strange.”

Valerie blew out cigarette smoke.

Since she had already collected all the evidence, I decided to burn all the monster corpses with Valerie’s help.

Monster corpses caused problems in many ways.

“That makes thirty… oof.”

Valerie burned all thirty monsters with flames that didn’t spread to the surroundings.

Then she glanced at me and asked.

“So now there’s only one left?”

“What? Thirty was the end.”

“The magic reaction was thirty-one, though?”

Thirty-one?

When I heard that, I recalled the bizarre flute sound I had heard during the battle.

One more, someone was in this place.

And that one person must be the one who used these strange beings.