Chapter 60: IF-017-1 Part 13

Kang Hana lay pitifully on the ground.

And surrounding her, sitting with sulky expressions, were the self-proclaimed descendants, looking up at me.

‘Ancestor…’

‘How strange.’

‘Why do they all look like that?’

It’s not like I said I wouldn’t go.

And this isn’t even their lake—it’s mine…

Wondering why they looked so down, I sent out a thought-communication.

In response—glare.

Nessho and the plump snake, Tongtong, gave me a very suspicious, almost dangerous look.

At that glare, Kwangcheol, who was at my feet, tugged on the hem of my clothes and tried to stop me.

‘Ancestor… Please don’t say things like that…’

‘Hmm.’

‘I don’t know why, but it feels like they’re sulking.’

I was going to walk, but—well.

Might as well fly for a change of pace.

“Alright, everyone. Get on top of Kang Hana.”

‘Kang Hana?’

“You mean this human is Kang Hana?”

“What?”

When the descendants asked, I nodded.

Only then did they finally climb on top of Kang Hana.

I’m not sure whether Kang Hana didn’t introduce herself, or if the descendants just didn’t understand.

As Nessho approached, Kang Hana, still sprawled on the ground, instinctively stretched out her arms.

It was a reaction as if she was born to hug.

The descendants stacked themselves up one by one.

Nessho on top of Kang Hana, Kwangcheol on top of Nessho, and Tongtong the snake on top of Kwangcheol.

Hehe. It’s like the Dabotap Pagoda.

I don’t recall ever seeing it in person when I was on land, but I heard about it a lot from Sim Cheong.

Now all that’s left is to carry them carefully.

It shouldn’t be dangerous, but I told them to hold on tight just in case.

As Kang Hana was in the middle of petting Kwangcheol, I slipped both hands under her body and lifted her up.

“Huh…?”

Kang Hana looked at me in confusion, and soon after, her thoughts were transmitted.

‘Lug just picked me up like a princess…! This feels backwards, but kind of electrifying…!’

‘What is she even saying?’

She still doesn’t realize that she’s sending her inner thoughts directly through thought-communication.

Clicking my tongue at Kang Hana’s behavior, I spread my wings and began running.

The wind brushed past us.

Soon, our bodies started to lift into the air.

“Wha—whaaat…!”

With Kang Hana flailing her legs in surprise, we shot upward in a single burst.

-BOOM.

A sonic boom echoed as we soared into the sky.

Higher than the clouds.

The ground became a distant blur, and the surroundings fell into silence.

“Uh… Uh…? Uwaah…?! Hic.”

As the situation gradually dawned on her, Kang Hana’s face paled in stages.

Her heartbeat matched the change—thump-thump, faster and faster.

‘Huh.’

‘Could it be that heartbeat × heartbeat equals even more heartbeat?’

‘Not bad, actually.’

I might bring Kang Hana up here more often.

Hehe.

Just as I was feeling satisfied, I received a nervous thought-message from Nessho and Tongtong the snake, both trembling on Kang Hana’s body.

‘We’re gonna fall! We’re gonna fall!’

‘You said we were walking! You said we were walking!!’

Their hysterics killed my mood.

‘What the heck’.

I flew up here just to cheer them up.

‘Now they want to walk again?’

“Gyaoo.”

***

Near FPL Research Facility 4.

A man in a sleek black suit was grumbling at someone.

“Is the intel reliable? I’ll say it again—if we go in and that dragon spouts something like ‘I’ve caught you…’, I’ll blow your head off before I die.”

Peering through a telescope into the facility, the other man retorted.

“I’m going in with you, you know. Why are you making such a fuss? We’re a team. Ever heard of unity? Or are four-character idioms not a thing in the States?”

“My American citizenship was revoked a long time ago.”

-Creak, creak.

As they spoke, the man continued to measure the anti-entropy levels with a device resembling a radio.

The device, marked with a logo in gold and blue, looked like it was over ten years old.

Even as the suited man pressured him, the other kept joking around.

“It’s reliable, I’m telling you. You know how those alphabet guys can’t lie. That’s been proven by ten thousand years of human history.”

“Sure, they can’t lie. But in other words, they do everything else. You really trust the whispers of devils? Ever heard of the Monkey’s Paw?”

“I brought this for just this situation, so stop worrying, bro.”

As he spoke, the man pulled out a device from his coat. It looked crude and clunky.

At least to him, it had been extremely hard to obtain.

So hard, in fact, that he’d stolen it—despite it being strictly forbidden to even touch.

“C’mon, just think positive. The Foundation gets back their stolen specimen from FPL, and I get a department head title. It’s win-win. We’re all risking our lives anyway, right?”

“FPL only got pushed down the priority list because they’re in a panic. Your company is still technically an enemy faction.”

The suited man grimaced, but the other man just grinned.

“Exactly. The common enemy is those damned FPL guys. If the anti-entropy levels are stabilized, then let’s get moving.”

“So it begins.”

Following the man who started walking, the suited man also made his way toward Facility 4.

Then, he paused.

“Did something just fly overhead?”

“What now?”

He frowned and pointed at the sky.

It looked like something had flown by, but it was so high and fast he couldn’t see clearly.

“No, it wasn’t a bird. Just… a shadow.”

He brushed it off and resumed walking.

While he did, the other man had already moved closer to the facility’s outer wall and began scanning.

“I think we can breach it here.”

“You mean right there?”

“No, a little to the side. Yeah. There.”

***

After backing away, the suited man took out what looked like a tiny toy ring from his pocket.

He spun it a few times and, five seconds later—

The compressed ring decompressed and unfolded into a futuristic, high-tech shape in midair.

Without saying a word, he raised his hand, and the ring-shaped devices followed his gestures, attaching themselves to the wall.

-Bzzzzt.

“It’ll cleanly disintegrate in a few minutes.”

Watching the process, the other man clapped.

“Controlled with brainwaves, right? Damn, the Foundation’s on another level. Our company’s too busy playing with money to catch up.”

Moments later.

A clean hole opened up in the research lab’s outer wall—large enough for both of them to walk through comfortably.

The ring devices returned to him.

With that, the two entered FPL Research Facility 4.

***

Step, step.

With every step, they heard the crunch of gravel underfoot.

The suited man stayed alert, watching their surroundings.

“No one’s here. Strangely… no one at all.”

Everything was rusted, broken down—it looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic film.

Just days ago, the place had been bustling.

“You mean me?”

The suited man nodded at the question.

“There was that double explosion during the typhoon the other day. They seemed busy dealing with that. But… everything’s decayed. Like it’s been dead for years.”

As he scanned the area, a chill ran down the back of his neck.

He had seen countless horrors—more brutal, more grotesque.

But something about this place still gave him the creeps.

And in these kinds of situations, instincts were everything.

He considered retreating—reporting back to the Foundation before it was too late.

However. “The anti-entropy level…”

No matter how important intuition might be, it still couldn’t be trusted more than the anti-entropy levels.

“It’s not showing up. Let’s keep moving.”

He continued forward with the man.

The further they went, the more eerie the surroundings became.

‘Could it really be normal for such fear to arise from just an old-looking landscape?’

That was the thought running through his mind when they stopped.

They had arrived at their target.

Seeing something slither behind the containment chamber glass, he spoke.

It was a cryptid he was familiar with.

“IF-289, ‘Devil’s Footprints’… Yeah, that’s the Jersey Devil. This should do.”

An unidentified phenomenon confirmed by the Foundation under the name “Jersey Devil.”

The man muttered, gazing at the living corpse with a flaming goat skull.

“More than enough. Looks like it’s got a thousand legs—this one’s top-grade.”

Despite not liking it, he expanded the ring.

That was the deal, after all.

The ring flew and latched onto the containment chamber’s glass.

Soon, the chamber began to disassemble, and the Jersey Devil responded, growling.

It truly looked like a monster capable of tearing a person apart—chilling to behold.

He tensed and warned, “Get ready. It’ll be released soon.”

But no reply came.

Puzzled, he began to notice a damp sensation seeping into his shoes.

‘Did he actually pee himself?’

He frowned and turned around.

And—

The man was dead.

The device he had so confidently shown off hadn’t even been pulled out.

“…What the hell?”

His eyes were pitch black, convulsing, vomiting up water.

An impossible amount of water soaked the floor around them.

A phenomenon even the Foundation had never recorded.

He backed away, avoiding the writhing minnows and water bugs.

“What the hell is this…”

That’s when—

Suddenly, he realized.

He was deep underwater.

…?!

A lake.

Darkness surrounded him, but he was certain—it was a lake.

An unmistakable anomaly.

Spatial displacement.

Having experienced such events before, he stayed calm and reached into his coat.

‘The transmitter…’

-!!!!!!

He froze at the sound of a cry rising from the bottom of the lake.

It was coming closer.

An unprecedented being swimming up from the depths.

A primordial terror dwelling in the lakebed’s shadows.

Something that smiled, content in the absence of light.

It was the lake itself.

‘Why was I teleported to a place like this?’

He despaired.

After years with the Overseer Foundation, he knew full well that there were beings humanity could never hope to confront.

This one was clearly among them—no, it was worse.

The days he’d been shocked by creatures that could withstand hydrogen bombs now felt laughable.

He was certain—

Even a hydrogen bomb wouldn’t make this thing flinch.

Suddenly dropped in front of such a being, he was terrified beyond reason.

The icy cold of the deep water pierced to his bones, but he couldn’t swim up.

If he opened his eyes and happened to look down, who knew what might happen?

The lake was rising.

The thing beneath the surface was coming up.

He’d long passed the point of resisting by willpower alone—

Water rushed into his lungs.

It burned like fire but froze like ice. In that excruciating pain, his eyes forced themselves open.

And—

He made eye contact.

It was massive—so massive that no human eye could comprehend it all.

He looked into a scaled eye.

There was no light.

No beacon.

Its gaping maw looked capable of swallowing even a thousand suns.

And in that final moment—

He was no longer himself.

He forgot he was even underwater.

All that escaped his mouth was a final gasp:

“g…”

***

[A few minutes later]

The containment chamber had fully disassembled.

The ring, now without an owner, detached and clattered to the floor.

The Jersey Devil paused briefly, sensing the outside.

The dragon of rage that had once rampaged was gone.

So was the fear it had scattered.

The Jersey Devil slowly—

—Crawled out through the opening with its thousand-legged body.

The Jersey Devil was now free.

It looked down at the two humans who had released it.

Both were collapsed, endlessly vomiting water.

Disgusting.

To the eternally burning Jersey Devil, water was repulsive enough on its own.

But this was something deeper—something more instinctively revolting.

They had already been eaten.

And once something’s been eaten, it couldn’t be eaten again.

So instead—

The Jersey Devil extended its thousand legs to find new prey.

Tak tak tak tak tak tak tak.

With a cascade of countless hoofsteps, a straight line of footprints appeared.

The Jersey Devil had found its next prey.

Just moments ago, the place had been filled with humans.

But now, it wasn’t clear why only two remained.

Unconcerned, the Jersey Devil moved slowly toward the heart of the building.

There were humans in there—prey.

One of them wasn’t ideal.

The red-haired one had something on his arm—something ominous.

Whoever wore it didn’t seem like an ordinary human, either.

There was another—

A different human.

Something strange seemed to emanate from this one’s heart, but it was fading.

As if the source of that energy was slowly drifting away.

The Jersey Devil was a master predator.

It waited for the perfect moment—

The instant that faint flame would finally die.

A line of long, straight footprints trailed after it.

Tak, tak.

***

[After the Jersey Devil left]

Something fell from the corpse still vomiting water.

Tick, tick-tick.

What remained at the scene—

Was the stolen device tucked inside the corpse’s coat.