episode_0023

“Usher.”

The last glimpse of her plaintive golden light before coming here flashed in his mind. The girl who let him go despite her desperate worry, heavy with unspoken words of ‘Don’t go.’ If he were to be eaten alive by these things and never leave the cave, what would become of Belka? What would happen to her? The thought made Usher unafraid of the strange fish. Because there was something he feared even more. He swung his arms with all his might, shaking off the hands reaching for him. Their touch felt like being dragged in, but they bounced off his hands futilely. Still, that was only some of them. Many were already close, and several bit into him.

“Kkeuaak!”

Usher screamed as the sharp sensation of teeth piercing his flesh. The feeling reminded him of the traps the villagers sometimes set in the forest when they went hunting. Traps left on the ground, with only sharp steel teeth to be found, unable to sate hunger, yet clinging to whoever or whatever got caught. He’d never been caught in one himself, but would it feel like this if he had? Their teeth were so sharp and rough that it felt like being caught in countless traps at once. He could even feel their tongues, like hands, gripping his flesh from inside their mouths.

“Get off me!”

-Keureureuk.

Fortunately, each of them was weaker than the adults in the village, let alone a monster. Not to say their strength was negligible, but they weren’t strong enough to immobilize him. He’d panicked because of their horrifying appearance, but thinking coldly, it was difficult for them to attack all at once. Even if they attacked together, their size limited them to six at most. As long as he wasn’t lying down, he wouldn’t be helplessly overwhelmed. It wasn’t as hopeless as he’d thought, and he couldn’t understand why he’d been so powerless until now.

“I have to get to Belka.”

Once he shook off his fear and helplessness, all that remained was a near-obsessive desire to escape this cave and meet the girl waiting for him. The sharp teeth digging into his flesh were painful. An overwhelming pain as if the flesh they were biting would tear off. He only had his top on, but he didn’t have time to gather his other clothes. One of them must have spat them out while trying to eat them, so they were probably buried among them.

It was fortunate that he was able to grab his mask. Usher felt his mind racing faster than ever as he scanned the cave among them. The moonlight from the ceiling didn’t reach the walls of the cave, but he could vaguely distinguish between the walls and the spaces that weren’t walls.

“Icicles?”

Then he found a space lined with things like icicles that hung from the eaves on cold winter days. He focused and listened to see if the passage led there, and he could clearly hear the sound of water flowing into this space and draining away. He didn’t know if that was really the way to the exit, but he didn’t have time to be picky.

“Haa!!”

-Keureuk!

He kicked the thing trying to bite him at his feet without hesitation, and it stumbled and fell. But his foot wasn’t entirely okay either. Perhaps because he kicked without thinking. A tingling pain, as if bone had hit bone, and blood was flowing. But that had cleared the way a little. Their tongues kept grabbing his ankles, and those biting him still held on tight releasing a stream of blood, but he didn’t care about the fishy smell of iron now.

They were slower in the water, perhaps because they had to crawl on leg-like fins even though they were fish. Thanks to that, they couldn’t catch up with Usher, except for the three biting him. Still, it was clear they would catch up with him if he had time, so Usher threw himself into the tunnel of the cave, which he thought would lead to the exit, wanting to escape this dangerous cave as soon as possible. Then, with a splash, Usher knew he was in the water.

His submerged ears were picking up the sound of flowing water even though he was underwater, and when he tried to open his eyes, he tightly closed them shut because of the intruding water. It was a similar situation to when he was first swept away, but he had already taken a deep enough breath, so he could hold out longer. He entrusted himself to the flowing water, hoping that the current would take him closer to the exit.

“Ugh!”

But he ended up spewing bubbles due to the sudden impact he felt. Was the current getting stronger again, or was he starting to hit something? But it was different from the feeling of being hit when he was first swept away. It felt like hitting small pillars. Fortunately, the pillars were thin, so they broke with the impact and didn’t stop him from drifting away. But there were too many of them to hit. Some seemed to hit the things biting him instead of him, and it hurt as if the flesh where they were biting would fall off. After being hit here and there in the water like that, Usher could feel the water becoming shallow again.

“Kkeueung, what am I hitting?”

Fortunately, unlike the first time, this passage wasn’t very long, so he was able to get out of the water in a precarious situation, but his body was more of a mess than before. His top was dyed red with blood flowing from his wounds, and blood was still seeping from the wounds. Most of the things that had been biting him had fallen off, probably due to the impact of hitting those pillars earlier. Nevertheless, he was horrified by the sight of their teeth still stuck in the places where they had been biting him.

“How long are these going to stay stuck?”

And there was still one biting him, as if it had been lucky enough not to hit those pillars. He couldn’t tear off the one biting him and the teeth because it felt like he would tear off the flesh. Blood kept flowing, and his leg was injured, so as he slowly waded through the shallow water, he felt grains of sand scattering between his toes. Was this a sign that the exit was near? He couldn’t be sure even as he hoped. With a sigh, he walked slowly and realized that the cave wasn’t as dark as he thought.

“This is…”

And what he found was strange plants that emitted light on their own. He had seen insects emit light, but Usher was drawn to the shining plants as if hypnotized by the mysterious sight of plants emitting light and illuminating the dark cave.

-Kkeuk! Keureuk!

Then he felt the thing that had been stubbornly biting him finally fall off. It felt refreshing now that the thing that had been acting like it would never let go until just now had fallen off. He didn’t know why it had fallen off, but he guessed that the plants might have something that it hated.

-Keureuk! Kkeureureuk! Kkeuk…!!

The sound of it moving so quickly that it sounded like splashing suddenly disappeared with a cry like a death rattle. Only then did he sense something was wrong. This was a cave where such monsters lived. But could he be sure that there was only one type of monster? He took his mind off the light-emitting plants and lifted his injured leg, wanting to get out of here as quickly as possible on one leg, out of the anxiety that there might be something more here.

“Eupeup?!”

With a splash, he fell into the water as if he was being sucked into it. He instinctively closed his eyes and floundered, but there was nothing for his hands to grab. Thinking that he would fall into the water without being able to do anything, he endured the stinging sensation of water entering his eyes and opened them, and what he saw was a deep, deep abyss. He realized what the identity of the shining plants was too late. It was not simply a light-emitting plant, but an aquatic plant that crawled out of the still abyss and extended to the surface of the water. He had fallen into such deep water because he had approached it without knowing that.

Although he didn’t feel the current, the still water with no flow was more terrifying than he thought. He tried to move his arms and legs somehow to swim, but it was useless for him, who didn’t know how to swim properly, to move his arms and legs. After floundering, he somehow managed to look back where he came from, but there he saw the endless cliff and the monster that had been biting him until just now, floundering because it couldn’t swim even though it was a fish. Thanks to that, he knew that he was sinking further and further down, but that didn’t help at all. Rather, he felt a vivid sense of despair as if it were touching his skin directly.

‘Belka.’

He had to go back, but he couldn’t. As he thought of the girl in his fading vision and his increasingly blocked air passage. He thought he saw the figure of a woman.

[Poor thing.]

He heard a voice that he didn’t know who it belonged to. An unfamiliar and unique, kind voice that seemed to be speaking directly into his head, one that could not be defined by anything. Even though he was afraid of this situation filled with darkness and unable to see an inch ahead, it was a comforting voice that erased his fear. But even in that darkness, there was something that was strangely clear. Large wings, long, sharp claws, long neck and tail. He knew a creature like this. There was no way he couldn’t know.

[You ended up leading out what you should have cherished the most.]

It was something called the king of monsters or a dragon. But it looked a little different from what he knew. As if the hard scales that covered its body were not enough, it was covered from head to tail in layers of plain armor that looked like iron. Even the helmet covering his head didn’t have holes for his eyes, so it was questionable whether it could even see. However, the majesty felt in that figure did not diminish at all. Nevertheless, what should he say about the comforting feeling that gave him a sense of relief?

[Your thread is not yet finished here, so we can meet now. Now, go back. Pitiful omnipotent.]

At the same time as the voice ended, Usher was released from the darkness.

“Cough! Cough! Waeek!”

He coughed reflexively, suffocated by the foreign object blocking his throat and nose, and felt water coming out. Nevertheless, he turned his lying body over and vomited, still with the fishy smell of water that seemed to remain.

“He’s awake!”

It was when he heard a woman’s voice.

“Ugh! Who are you, ugh!”

Come to think of it, he was now out of the water. The last thing he remembered was being in deep water where he couldn’t even see the bottom, but he heard a person’s voice, so it seemed she had saved him. Usher, who had barely vomited all the water, reluctantly endured the nauseous sensation and lifted his head to say thank you, but was surprised.

“Wh, who are you?!”

Because the figure of a naked woman came into his eyes. A beautiful woman with skin so white it was almost pale, a torso exposing luscious, fruit-like breasts without any cover, soft water-colored white hair, and transparent red eyes, was kneeling at the same height as him, looking at him with curiosity. Feeling an uncontrollable desire rising in him, he hurriedly covered the spot and blushed with embarrassment as he asked, and the woman smiled sullenly.

“Euhheung, I wasn’t wrong. You’re a male after all.”

“Ma, male, you say.”

He felt a strange sense of humiliation as the word used for animals was put into the woman’s mouth and pointed at him, but he couldn’t stop his rising desire because his eyes were drawn to her breasts.

“Then are you a female?”

Perhaps because he answered awkwardly without thinking, she asked him as if he were strange.

“That’s! Not, but.”

“Right!? Right!?”

Usher had a lot to say, but he held it back. He couldn’t get the words out properly because the woman’s naked body kept catching his eye. The woman’s voluptuous breasts made her body draw a different curve than a girl’s body. He wanted to put his hand on those luscious, fruit-like breasts, and his fingertips kept twitching, but he barely took his eyes off her body.

“Excuse me, did you save me?”

The woman’s tone and actions had a childlike innocence, so she felt young, but even so, the woman looked older than him, so he naturally used honorifics.

“Yeah! Yeah! I saved you when you were sinking in the water. You really can’t swim.”

“Ugh! I never had a chance to swim!”

Above all, he had never seen water deep enough to need to swim. At best, it was the valley behind the zelkova tree where he used to bathe with the girl, but even that wasn’t very deep. Then the woman put on an interesting expression.

“Heueung, so you’re from outside? Is there really no water outside?”

“Uh, that’s right outside this cave. Do you live here by any chance?”

Usher asked in wonder, feeling as if she was living in this cave from her words. The woman laughed.

“Yeah, I’ve lived here ever since I was born.”

“Here?”

Looking around, the shining aquatic plants that he had seen just before falling into the deep water were sticking their heads out above the surface of the water and emitting a blue light on all sides. He had mistakenly thought that the place where he woke up was land, but embarrassingly, the place he was in was made of those aquatic plants intertwined. At that, Usher despaired. He thought he had gotten closer to the exit of the cave, but now he saw that the location was not much different from before. Rather, all sides were deep water, so this place was like an escape-proof prison for him, who didn’t know how to swim.

“How do you even live in a place like this…”

But Usher couldn’t continue speaking. Because after seeing all that scenery, the woman’s lower body, which he saw again, came into his eyes. Just like her upper body, her lower body was not wearing anything. She shouldn’t have been, but her lower body was covered with soft, water-colored white scales of the same color as her hair. Not only that. The woman’s legs were connected as one, not two, and at the end, there was a thin but very wide fin of the same color as her hair and scales fluttering in the wind.

After seeing that figure, he began to see things in her that would not be visible to ordinary people, from the woman he had simply thought of as beautiful. Between her slender fingers, there was a membrane filling the gaps, occupying them widely to the ends of her fingers, and there were also small fins sticking out on her elbows. Her ears, which had been hidden by her beautiful-colored hair, also looked more like the fins of a fish than human ears. However, the scales surrounding her body were not as tough and hard as those of a dragon, but rather like soft and beautiful silk ornaments. At the sight, Usher had a word come to mind.

“Mermaid?”

“Heh, so that’s what you call us outside?”

However, the woman sulked, as if she didn’t like the word he had muttered in surprise, and tapped her lips with her hand.

“I’m Pohatih, Pohatih.”

“Is that your name?”

“Yeah! What about you? Aren’t you going to tell me?”

There was no time to be surprised by her because of the chatty woman.

“I’m Usher.”

“Usher! So you’re Usher!”

The woman, after hearing his name, called out his name several times, as if it were a candy she was rolling around in her mouth, finding it interesting.

“Usher, Usher!”

Suddenly, seeing her savoring his name, he was reminded of the girl calling his name. That’s right, he couldn’t waste any more time here. So he called out to the woman who kept saying his name.

“Hey, Pohatih?”

“Yeah? Why?”

Surprised by the woman’s answer, which seemed to have been waiting for him, Usher asked calmly.

“Do you know where the exit is?”

At the same time, the woman, who had been excited as if she was having fun, stopped abruptly. As if telling him her mood, the beautiful tail fin that had been fluttering also stopped, and the ripples it had been drawing on the calm water surface disappeared. As the woman began to stare at him with a blank face and transparent red eyes that felt eerie, an unknown chill swept over his wet body. Just as Usher was about to wonder if he had made some kind of mistake.

“Heueeung, why the exit? Are you trying to leave?”

“That’s, yes.”

She asked, quickly relaxing her expression, and he answered with a little relief.

“I know where it is.”

“You know?!”

“Euh! You’re noisy!”

“Ah, I’m sorry.”

The woman, who was frowning while pretending to cover her ears because he had shouted in excitement, relaxed her expression as he apologized.

“I can take you there if you want.”

“Really?!”

“Euh! I said you’re noisy.”

Just as he was about to apologize again, the woman continued to speak.

“Because you can’t swim.”

“But if I just practice!”

“But you don’t have fins, do you?”

As she said as if confirming the obvious fact, Usher couldn’t say anything. His pride was hurt, but it was true that he couldn’t swim.

“Anyway, you can take me to the exit, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then right now…!”

However, she put her hand over not his mouth, but the woman’s mouth, who was asking the woman with a heart excited at the thought of being able to leave the cave?

“But there’s a condition.”

The words the woman whispered, bringing her mouth close to his ear, were.

“You have to mate with me.”

It was as lewd as it was spine-chilling.