Ch.67Artificial

Gu Seo-ryong picked up a struggling insect with the tip of her nail and put it in her mouth with a reluctant expression.

“Are you eating that?”

“I’m not eating it because I want to. I’m eating it to analyze it with my ability.”

“Analyze?”

“Venom Alchemist. I can analyze any substance in detail with this tongue.”

After chewing and spitting out what she had in her mouth, Gu Seo-ryong pointed at Sa Gu-gu with interest.

“Gugu? Could you get rid of all the remaining ones?”

“Meow!”

“And bring me just one of those.”

With a swoosh, Sa Gu-gu, who had been playing while chasing the insect monsters, erased the space where the corpses were.

Sa Gu-gu froze the remaining insects with an icy mist, dropping them, and brought one monster corpse in her mouth.

Gu Seo-ryong stroked Sa Gu-gu’s head and took the ice chunk.

“That’s right, good girl.”

“Purrrr…”

“Yes, yes, go back and continue playing.”

“Meooow!”

Sa Gu-gu, in the form of a black panther, had been rubbing against Gu Seo-ryong’s body, and as soon as she got permission, started chasing the insects again.

Frowning, Gu Seo-ryong bit into the palm-sized insect trapped in ice, chewed it, and then spat it out with a “ptui.”

From the mud-like lump of an unpleasant color, a snow-white thread-like worm crawled out weakly.

“As I thought… these are strange.”

Gu Seo-ryong dissolved the mud-like substance with acidic venom, then took out a flat metal bottle from her jacket pocket.

She rinsed her mouth with strong alcohol and habitually wiggled her fingers.

“These large beetles are definitely monsters. They have cores, though very small. They’re a cluster of monsters below Homicide-rank, too weak to trigger alarms—common for insect-type monsters, right?”

The alarm detects waves from monster cores of Homicide-rank or higher. Monsters below Homicide-rank, weak enough for ordinary humans to resist, aren’t detected.

When enough insect monsters gather in a cluster, they might be detected, but this insect cluster wasn’t that numerous.

“And these thread-like worms have the same bodily fluids as monsters but no cores.”

“Monster fluids? Are you saying this worm is a monster?”

I thought it was strange that worms were crawling out of human bodies, but monster fluids?

However, without a core, it’s not a monster.

Even my senses don’t detect these tiny thread worms as monsters.

“Well… should we call this a monster? I’m not sure either. How is it alive without a core? How does it have monster fluids without a core…?”

“Could the core be too small to detect?”

“No, that’s not it. That’s why I chewed it, right? This worm definitely has no core. They’re neither worms nor monsters. I wonder where these things came from? Oh my!”

Something neither monster nor worm… Just then, Sa Gu-gu landed in front of Gu Seo-ryong with a beetle in her mouth.

Seeing this, Gu Seo-ryong hit Sa Gu-gu’s head in alarm.

“Meow!”

“Didn’t I tell you not to eat that? Spit it out, spit it out.”

“Meow…”

“Ah, do it, ah~”

Ptui, Sa Gu-gu spat out the beetle monster’s corpse, and Gu Seo-ryong grabbed Sa Gu-gu’s mouth, opened it, and crushed each thread worm she pulled out.

Surprisingly, in that short time, the thread worms had already burrowed into the Despair-rank monster’s mucous membrane.

“Fascinating.”

“Right? A parasite on a Despair-rank monster—it’s absurd.”

“Parasite?”

“What, you don’t know what a parasite is? It’s a worm that burrows into another organism’s body and lives there.”

Shrugging and sighing, Gu Seo-ryong sat on Sa Gu-gu’s back and said:

“This is driving me crazy. I came out to do some pest control so Sa Gu-gu wouldn’t get parasites, and humans are committing suicide calling ‘Black Cat, Black Cat.’ So strange… The Three Principles Church I knew didn’t aim to die by monsters; they just comforted themselves with nonsense about it being God’s will if they died by monsters. Why have they become even crazier?”

“They called me God’s apostle and begged me for salvation.”

“They’re asking you to kill them, right? And those corpses are infested with parasites, and after a while, beetles come down to eat them… Don’t you find this strange?”

I nodded at Gu Seo-ryong’s words.

Humans carrying thread worms, beetles descending in numbers just below alarm threshold, thread worms burrowing into beetles to escape.

The beetles completely devour the suicide victims’ corpses, and after eating, they don’t attack other humans but flee into the sky.

Humans, parasites, and insect monsters—all interlocking like machine parts.

“Their goal seems to be getting eaten by you, right?”

“It seems so.”

“So they’re trying to plant these parasites in your body… Who could it be?”

This structure is too artificial.

It’s hard to see it as movement based on monster instinct.

Something, or someone, is controlling the insect monsters.

To feed me humans containing thread worms.

“Coming down in numbers just below the alarm threshold is too obvious, right? These insects couldn’t possibly know about the alarm system… Something is definitely controlling these monsters. It must be related to someone high up in the Three Principles Church? The leader? The church leader should be human, so how could they control monsters? Even if they’re below Homicide-rank, they’re still monsters.”

“Maybe they’re controlling them through the parasites?”

“But those parasites are also monster-like, right? That makes it even stranger. How could they control something with not even a speck of intelligence?”

Gu Seo-ryong picked up a piece of a dead human’s corpse and chewed it.

Spitting out the meat piece again, she wiped her mouth and said:

“I really don’t know. There’s no trace of brainwashing substances in the blood left in the corpse… but they’re definitely being controlled by impulses.”

After hearing the explanation, I asked Gu Seo-ryong about something that suddenly occurred to me.

“Are the people committing suicide being controlled too?”

“I think so. Humans have suicidal impulses, right? Seeing how they controlled Sa Gu-gu’s impulses, controlling humans must be simple.”

“Is there a way to remove parasites from humans?”

“No. Unlike Sa Gu-gu, they can’t continuously regenerate. Do you know how hard I worked to remove each parasite from her body? I had to anesthetize her completely, inject fluorescent material, tear open wounds to dig into her body and catch the escaping parasites… Only I can do that, and only monsters with strong regenerative abilities can withstand it.”

“Meow…”

Hearing the explanation of the parasite removal process, Sa Gu-gu trembled in fear.

So these humans appear human… but are actually no longer human—moving nests for parasites.

Things that aren’t human that I can’t distinguish.

“Sigh~ I guess Sa Gu-gu and I will have to help humans for a while.”

“Help humans?”

“I hate having these things in my territory. I’ll have to quietly go out and do some pest control for a while. Humans infected with parasites, insects… Gugu, come here.”

“Bye, big brother!”

With those meaningful words, Gu Seo-ryong stood up and pointed at her shadow. Sa Gu-gu sank into Gu Seo-ryong’s shadow.

Cautious of Sa Gu-gu, Gu Seo-ryong approached the corpses the beetles couldn’t devour and spat acidic venom on them.

“I’m telling you this for your own good—from now on, it’s best to kill these things thoroughly whenever you see them.”

With a hissing sound through the unpleasant smoke, Gu Seo-ryong left a warning.

“These things seem much trickier than the Bad Cats could handle.”

#

After the night I met Sa Gu-gu and Gu Seo-ryong in front of a suicide victim’s corpse.

While eliminating monsters roaming underground, I also began watching the skies.

Sitting on high rooftops catching beetle monsters, I sometimes sense Sa Gu-gu’s space manipulation in the distance.

But like non-monster insects, the insect monsters seemed endless no matter how many I caught.

Unlike underground monsters that don’t reappear in the same place for a while after cleaning, the flying beetles were replaced by more flying in from far away.

Where beetles gathered, Three Principles Church members would appear, and upon seeing me, they would take their lives begging me to eat them.

When I saw suicide corpses, I burned them before the beetles could bite them, destroying the parasites.

But no matter how many I burned, Three Principles Church members and beetles kept appearing endlessly.

After repeating this several times, I began to understand the meaning of Gu Seo-ryong’s warning.

“Oh… Lord Black Cat…!”

“Lord Black Cat! Please!”

A W City citizen who had hung his citizen ID around his neck after heroes kept asking if he was from W City whenever people called me “Lord Black Cat.”

He climbed onto the rooftop and took his life.

From his gradually cooling body, snow-white threads were crawling out.