episode_0676
by admin
I first picked up the strange entity with the most unusual appearance.
It was a small, spherical object that looked like an eyeball and had a soft red light emitting from within.
It was natural to give Emily a glance before picking it up to make sure it was okay to touch it with her bare hands.
“… What is this used for?”
“You can find out by closing one eye and holding it over your eyelid.”
‘Oh my, is this a surprise?’
Emily, who only teaches how to use the abnormal object without giving any explanations that you might be curious about.
He was so excited that he could tell I was helping him destroy the Cathedral of Silence.
‘Well, I hope you wouldn’t tell me to use some weird anomaly if I said I’d help you.’
I shrugged and closed one eye as she said, holding the odd entity that looked somewhat like an eyeball to my eyelid.
Talk-
And the moment the object touches your eyelid.
My field of vision has been greatly expanded.
Hwaaak!
“This is…!”
“A-421, an abnormal entity called Hunter’s Eye. It can see through the darkness and distinguish hostile creatures from the user. Naturally, its eyesight is also enhanced.”
“This isn’t just about enhancing eyesight?”
As if using a tactile sense, the moment the hunter’s eye was placed over my eyelid, my field of vision expanded to 360 degrees.
It was as if I had become an animal with eyes on both sides of my head, beyond the human field of vision that can only see the front and sides.
And everything in that range appeared so clear, as if I were examining it with both eyes rather than one.
The other anomalies on the table, Emily standing across from him, and even the dust floating in the air were all very clear.
‘With this level of clarity, it seems more detailed than the impression.’
It was also good that, unlike the sense of touch that allows you to feel the shape or movement of an object, you could receive information in a visual form.
As its name suggests, the Hunter’s Eye is an extremely useful anomaly for exploration.
“This might help us find the core.”
“That’s the right way to give it.”
“But if you have something like this, shouldn’t you be using it?”
That was the thought that came to me as soon as I used the Hunter’s Eye.
If there was something like this, wouldn’t it have been better for ECHO to use it directly and explore the core of the Cathedral of Silence first?
“Is there a range restriction?”
The place we were in now was a closed room that was hardly spacious.
Even though Emily had a bunch of relatively safe anomalies lined up on the table, it was impossible to release them into the open air.
So my expanded field of vision was unable to go beyond this confined space.
“Oh, that’s not it. The range can be adjusted according to the user’s will. However, if you try to examine too wide a range, there are some limitations. Because of those, it’s a thing that’s hard for ordinary people to use properly.”
Stop –
“… Restrictions?”
“The maximum usage time for a normal person is 10 minutes. Excessive usage beyond that can permanently damage your eyesight. And if you remove the object from your eyes, it takes at least 1 hour to recover. If you concentrate, you can expand the observation range or see through walls, but this will drastically shorten the usage time.”
As soon as I heard her words, I tore the hunter’s eyes from my eyelids.
Maybe it was because I only used it for a short time, or maybe it was because my body is so strong, but fortunately, I didn’t feel any strain on my eyes at all.
“It could have been given the Nadir class because it doesn’t take effect until a person uses it directly, and it doesn’t require any special facilities or procedures for containment… but it was given the Aegis class because it could be harmful to the user. Some experimenters who tried using the Hunter’s Eye suffered damage to their eyesight because they couldn’t control their will properly.”
“… Not bad.”
I quickly looked away when I heard about the side effects, but most of what Emily said didn’t apply to me.
It seemed like there were no limits to the durability and resilience I had.
But I couldn’t help but feel a little more uneasy about its appearance, which resembled an eyeball somewhere.
I slowly lowered my hunter’s eyes and picked up another anomaly.
“Then what about this?”
“Ah, T-304. An abnormal entity called the Light of Exploration… … .”
.
.
.
Wheeingㅡ
As the airplane door opened, a cold wind blew past me, as if it were going to cut my face.
A strong wind that makes the engine noise of the noisy aircraft feel relatively quiet.
Now I was flying through the sky, heading straight into the Cathedral of Silence.
My inventory is filled with the strange objects I received from Emily.
“Now! Soon! We’ll arrive at the destination!”
A man in a jumpsuit spoke to me, his mouth moving widely under his helmet.
Even though the wind was noisy, I could hear everything even if I spoke quietly, but it seemed like it had become a habit to speak like that.
His hands were busy carefully checking the straps of the parachute harness fitted to me, but the sweat on his forehead did not hide his nervousness.
“I’m the only one falling, so why am I sweating so much?”
“… 30 seconds later! It’s a fall!”
I tried joking, but it didn’t work.
It must have been quite scary flying right over the Cathedral of Silence.
‘Actually, that’s a normal reaction.’
It was impossible to fully grasp the extent to which the Cathedral of Silence had an influence on the heavens.
As with past bombings, this flight is also being conducted using unmanned systems.
This was because if the flight crossed the area of the Cathedral of Silence in the middle of the flight, an accident could occur.
So the man next to me right now was the only one who volunteered to assist me and boarded the plane with me.
I didn’t really need this help, but ECHO can’t send me on a plane alone.
I just hoped I wouldn’t become a useless victim.
———!
At that moment, I felt the sound of the wind that had filled the surroundings disappear.
No, it wasn’t just the sound of the wind.
The sound of the plane’s engine, the rattling of equipment, even the voice of a man shouting next to me.
All sound disappeared.
There was no ringing in the ears or the sound of the heart pounding or the blood flowing, which is usually heard when in a quiet place.
Just complete silence.
It was the first time in my life that I had experienced such a quiet world.
It was so unrealistic to encounter such silence on a plane moving at such a fast speed.
‘You have entered the sphere of influence of the Cathedral of Silence.’
I looked to the side and saw that the man who had been moving busily with a tense expression on his face just a moment ago had stopped moving.
Considering the speed of the plane, it was obvious that it would soon leave this sphere of influence.
At most, a few more seconds?
However, just in case, I took out my healing rosary and treated her once.
Maybe it was because of his mood, but the man’s frozen face seemed to have relaxed a little.
“… … .”
‘Well then, I’m going now!’
He said that and jumped down.
Of course, no sound came out of my mouth.
As we began to free fall and passed through the clouds, we looked down upon a city that was completely covered in black.
A city encroached by the Cathedral of Silence.
There were quite a few buildings in the city, but not a single one of them seemed to have lights on.
Most of the people there would have died when the abnormal entity appeared.
It occurred to me that the danger posed by the Cathedral of Silence was less impressive than the ability of ECHO to hide the destruction of a city from ordinary civilians.
‘Well, it might not be an abnormality, but it could be something they covered up by saying it was an accident or something.’
Come to think of it, that was a more convenient disguise.
It would be more convenient to say that the city became a ghost town due to an accident rather than to make it into something that never existed before.
Instead, it will go down in history as a huge disaster like the real Chernobyl.
‘The cathedral is… over there.’
A majestic building standing alone in the middle of the darkened city came into view.
Contrary to its nickname of cathedral, it was a huge and splendid building like a royal palace.
However, its splendor was not easily revealed as it was completely covered in pitch-black colors.
I rode the wind and fell straight down towards the top of the cathedral.
And when I reached a suitable height, I took out a black lump of mineral from my inventory.
A-510, the jumping stone, one of the abnormal entities given by Emily.
It was an object that allowed short-distance teleportation by imagining a desired location while holding it in one’s hand.
Pot-!
The spire of the cathedral filled my view and I was already inside the cathedral just before it crashed into the building.
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