19. Collision (5)

• Alice. Can you hear me? If you can, answer me.

• If you can’t speak, at least share your vision.

“…Damn it.”

A long, straight hallway, a silent space devoid of people.

The words I spat out in the silence didn’t reach the other party, becoming mere soliloquies that scattered into the air.

After listening to Juha’s words and running aimlessly towards Sector 3 for ten minutes, there still wasn’t a trace of anyone, not even a single strand of hair.

While searching every corner of the hallway for Rei and Alice without giving up, ominous thoughts kept running wild in my head.

Pessimistic thoughts always leave behind only unpleasant emotions, but is it an unavoidable fate for those cornered to always imagine the worst-case scenario, even knowing that fact well?

I’m searching as hard as I can, but the possibility that they’ve already been captured by the enemy can’t be ignored.

Alice may be a Great Demon in terms of rank, but her combat ability is close to zero. If Cyan decides to use Rei as a hostage or resort to other unethical means, Alice wouldn’t have a way to win.

“Should I have moved with them from the start…? No, what’s the point of regretting it now.”

Finding even the smallest trace was the top priority.

Thinking that, I turned the corner of the hallway and ran out, and at that moment, I heard something heavy falling behind me with a thud.

Kuuung!

I was startled by the sudden roar that broke the silence and almost groaned, but I quickly composed myself and immediately crouched down against the wall.

Let’s be rational, be rational.

I have the Shadow Bracelet that Juha gave me and the Critical Shield, so even if I encounter an enemy, I can hold out for a few seconds and then run away.

‘Let’s check what it is first… Huh?’

Peeking my head slightly over the corner, I saw a person with familiar hair color collapsed on the floor.

Their limbs weren’t moving at all, as if they had completely lost consciousness.

I cautiously approached, looking at the body that was stiff as a board, almost unsettlingly so.

When I put my finger near their nose, I was relieved to feel a faint breath. It was Rei.

They didn’t seem to have any particular injuries on the surface… Maybe someone with a weak mental state suffered a major emotional shock and fainted for a moment.

I decided that moving any further from here was impossible.

If I left the unconscious Rei and went to find Alice, the enemy might find them. At least until Juha brings Ryushin here, I need to hold out while preparing for an attack.

But… where is Alice then?

Judging from the sound of the fall earlier, it seemed like she used Shadow Movement in a hurry without even setting the coordinates properly. But it’s still too quiet around here to be an urgent situation where a battle is taking place.

Betrayal was out of the question.

She’s the target of the Complete Hypnosis Ticket, which can even destroy the major premise that ‘Demons cannot be hypnotized,’ and we’ve even made a solid master-servant contract.

Even if a third party tries to break the contract, they won’t be able to undo the hypnosis and will eventually give up.

• Jihoo-ya, I’m heading there with Ryushin now. Just wait a little longer…!

“I found Rei for now. I think we’ll have to look for Alice after we meet up.”

• Okay, it probably won’t take more than 5 minutes.

It seems like fate hasn’t completely abandoned me yet.

I still have questions about Alice’s whereabouts, but I’ve found Rei, and according to Juha, Ryushin seems to be fine.

According to Cyan’s warning, the enemies would start their activities soon.

Even if I meet Ryushin, I won’t have time to give complex explanations about how the plan went wrong.

I need to find Alice quickly and get out of here without looking back as soon as I achieve my goal.

“I need to carry him on my back. So I can move right away when I meet Juha.”

Every second is urgent.

I couldn’t wait until Juha arrived to prepare to move, so I firmly carried Rei, who was slowly regaining consciousness, on my back and waited for Juha’s signal.

Now, I didn’t care about the success of the operation.

Getting out of here safely together, that was enough.

But for some reason… I had a feeling that even that simple and certain goal wouldn’t be achieved properly.

58, 59, 60.

Green eyes, staring at the ticking hands of the clock, quietly closed.

After a long wait, the time to finally realize her revenge had come.

“It’s 3 o’clock. I’ll be going.”

“Yes! I’ll be waiting!”

Passing by the demon who bowed respectfully, Cyan stepped out into the hallway, where pitch-black darkness greeted her.

The dark hallway, where she couldn’t see an inch ahead, was enough to remind her of the terrible memories of her childhood.

She couldn’t remember exactly when it started.

Only the endless process of losing consciousness and regaining it in the darkness was deeply ingrained in her mind. When she tried to recall the memories before that, she only felt a stuffy feeling as if something was blocking her.

‘From now on, you are officially a Black Agent, Cyan.’

‘P, please save me… It’s dark… It’s too dark, I think I’m going crazy…’

‘Think of it as dark adaptation. If you can’t endure even that, you’re not qualified.’

A Black who isn’t qualified naturally melts into the darkness and scatters.

That wasn’t just about their life as an agent.

One day, the child next to her, whose face she couldn’t even remember anymore, suddenly disappeared after declaring that they couldn’t endure the terrible repetition of darkness.

Cyan instinctively realized the struggle to survive.

Kill, explode.

She didn’t care if she was covered in blood.

Black doesn’t leave bloodstains.

The girl’s heart was thickly mixed with various colors and settled down.

The slight sense of guilt she felt every time she burst someone’s head and was covered in brain fluid became a sticky tar that dyed her heart black.

Her heart, which had become worse than dead,

Uuung-.

“…Ah, I almost lost control again.”

I must have put in too much power without realizing it while swimming in the sea of memories.

Cyan quickly collected the surging waves of magic that seemed about to explode at any moment, and decided to think about something else this time so she wouldn’t sink too deep.

Yeah, what about what happened just now?

A suspicious yet familiar presence she met in the black hallway.

Cyan slowly stroked her dark gray hair, recalling the encounter a moment ago.

A silver-haired woman who uses shadows.

After belonging to Pantagruel and developing the ability to identify demons, she was quite surprised by the bizarre feeling she felt when she first encountered the silver-haired girl.

‘She was just as twisted as me…’

At first, she thought she might be the same kind of test subject.

She was relatively familiar with those who were half-fused with humans and demons, becoming neither one nor the other.

But Cyan soon noticed a faint, unfamiliar emotion in her eyes.

A small emotion that was somehow holding onto eyes that were so twisted that they seemed about to collapse at any moment.

It wasn’t so much an emotion as something closer to absolute certainty.

“Love… Huh. Heh, what love is there for monsters like us…?”

Cyan could never understand.

The fact that someone who realized their existence and was in so much pain that they wanted to die could risk themselves for others and be here with them.

She had always believed that a heart that doesn’t expect anything in return only leads to destruction.

The way she was desperately rolling her eyes to find an opportunity, even as her face hardened at the pointed words… It seemed like a way of thinking that she was never allowed to have.

Therefore, she decided to give them a little grace period.

20 minutes. How much they would struggle in the limited time, or if they would bravely prepare their ranks and wait for a battle with her.

She wanted to see with her own eyes how terrible the result that emotion called love could create.

And finally, the time had come.

“Rei, just wait a little longer.”

The superior demon’s body quickly emits high-concentration magic power to the limbs just by lightly drawing up magic power.

As she partially replaced the magic power that made up her body and wrapped it around her entire body, Cyan’s form began to flicker as if heat haze was rising.

“Sister… is going to kill you soon.”

A cyan flash sped through the hallway.