The Otherworld Was Way Too Brutal – After I Healed the Mutilated Girl, She Turned Into a Completely Obsessed Yandere Guard Dog - Chapter 29

Chapter 29

There was this purple crystal sitting on the table.

It was sucking in the light from the rundown shack’s lamp, pulsing with this creepy thump-thump, thump-thump like it had a heartbeat.

We were all sitting around it in a circle.

This super heavy silence was just hanging over everything.

“…No doubt about it.”

Cattleya was the one who finally broke the quiet.

She’d taken off her helmet, and her face looked dead serious as she glared at the crystal.

“This is what they call a 魔核 core seed. It’s the end result of that secret artificial magic power amplification device the Sumeragi family was developing.”

“Artificial… magic power amplification?”

When I repeated it back, Cattleya gave a heavy nod.

“Apparently, twenty years ago when the Fire Dragon attacked, the previous head of the family felt how powerless humans really were and started this plan. Forcing way too much magic power into a person’s body, changing their flesh, trying to create soldiers that could even surpass magic beasts… they called it the Chimera Project.”

Chimera Project.

Just hearing the name sent a cold shiver down my spine.

“But I thought that plan got frozen. The test subjects kept going berserk and couldn’t even keep a human shape anymore… I never imagined the master actually restarted it.”

Cattleya bit her lip hard, looking frustrated.

For someone as proud as her—a knight—this must’ve felt like the ultimate humiliation, finding out her own lord’s house was messing with something so inhuman.

“That mutated one-horned rabbit we saw in the forest… you’re saying that was one of the failed experiments?”

Ray growled low, arms crossed.

The fingers on his right hand were tapping tap-tap-tap on his bicep like he was trying to shake off the irritation.

“Most likely. Either they threw it away for some reason, or it escaped from the facility. Either way, letting monsters like that loose in the forest is completely insane.”

I reached my hand out toward the crystal.

Thump. I swear it jumped a little when I got close.

“Jin, that’s dangerous.”

“It’s okay. There’s something I wanna check.”

I cut off Tsugumi’s worried voice and touched the crystal.

It felt warm. Kinda gross warm.

Like touching a heart that had just been ripped out.

I focused hard.

Activated Healing Magic <Repair Evolve>.

Normally this magic returns things to how they’re supposed to be.

So what would it do to this twisted lump of magic power?

“…!?”

The second I touched it, this insane static exploded inside my head.

――It hurts, it’s hot, mixing, melting, breaking――

Countless screams.

A disgusting flood of thoughts, like beast roars and human death cries all mashed together.

I yanked my hand back on reflex.

Cold sweat poured down my whole body.

“Jin!?”

Tsugumi caught my back before I could fall.

“Haa… haa… this thing is messed up…”

I wiped the sweat off with a shaking hand.

“How was it?”

“…It’s broken. No—more like it was forcibly glued together. Different factors that should never mix, stuck together with magic power like some kind of glue…”

This was the total opposite of healing.

It was a core made for defiling the laws of life, for creating patchwork monsters.

Genzou Sumeragi.

Was just getting younger not enough for that guy?

He’s playing with life itself now, stepping into territory that belongs to gods.

“…I can’t forgive this.”

Tsugumi muttered it low.

Her eyes were filled with this freezing cold rage.

“They’re treating lives like toys. That kind of thing… we can’t let it slide.”

She herself had her body torn apart by magic beasts once and wandered right on the edge of despair.

So of course she’d be extra sensitive to anything that disrespects life.

“Yeah. If we leave this alone, the whole city might get swallowed up.”

I wrapped the crystal in a cloth and tucked it inside my clothes.

“I get how this crystal is structured now. With my skill… maybe I can stop this rampage. Something like breaking a curse might be possible.”

“Seriously?”

“No guarantee. But it’s worth a shot.”

Right then—

BOOOOOOM!!

A huge explosion roared somewhere far off.

The whole shack rattled, dust raining down from the ceiling.

“What the hell!?”

Ray grabbed his greatsword, jumped up, and threw the window open.

“Hey, look! It’s coming from the slum direction! There’s smoke!”

We all rushed to the window too.

In the evening darkness settling over the city, deep in the slum area, black smoke and red flames were rising.

“That’s… the abandoned district, right?”

“No, that’s where people actually live! Is it a fire?”

Cattleya narrowed her eyes.

Then her face froze solid in an instant.

“…Black Knights. The Sumeragi family’s private soldiers are moving.”

In the glow of the flames, I could see a group in black armor on the move.

They weren’t putting out the fire.

It looked more like they were surrounding people who were trying to run.

“No way…”

A really bad feeling hit me.

The mutants we saw in the forest.

The Sumeragi family experiments.

And now this mess in the slum.

“Covering up evidence… or cleaning up failed test subjects…?”

“Let’s go!”

I shouted.

My body moved before my brain even finished thinking it through.

My own place is pretty close to the slum.

Guy’s there, that family I helped before, and a ton of my patients too.

“Jin, I’m coming too!”

“Yeah, don’t get separated, Tsugumi!”

We grabbed our weapons and ran straight toward the burning slum.

The scene when we got there was straight-up hell.

Collapsed houses.

Roaring flames.

And the screams of people running everywhere.

“Don’t let a single one escape! Not even one!”

“Purify the contaminated zone!”

The Black Knights had swords drawn and were building barricades.

Inside the ring, hundreds of slum residents were trapped.

“Stop it! We didn’t do anything!”

“There are kids here! Let us through!”

The residents’ begging didn’t do a thing. The Black Knights just kept pointing swords at them, cold as ice.

“Get out of the way!!”

Ray, who was running in front, charged straight into one corner of the encirclement.

One swing from that massive arm sent a Black Knight flying—barricade wood and all.

“Wh-what the—!?”

“What do you people think you’re doing?!”

Ray stood tall like a king, glaring down the Black Knights.

Right behind him, me, Cattleya, and Tsugumi arrived.

“C-Cattleya Captain!? Why are you here?!”

One of the Black Knights spotted her and panicked.

Cattleya looked down at them with eyes like frozen steel.

“Explain the situation. Why are you surrounding citizens? Why are your swords drawn against them?”

“Th-this is a direct order from the master! An outbreak occurred in this district, so we were told to purify it for quarantine purposes…”

“An outbreak?”

“Y-yes. Suddenly residents started going mad, their bodies mutating…”

Right when he said that, a blood-curdling scream came from inside the encirclement.

“Uwaaaaaaaaah!!”

A man was clutching his head, thrashing on the ground.

His back bulged and swelled weirdly, ripping his clothes.

Purple crystals pushed out through the skin, and the skin itself turned gray.

Exactly the same thing we saw with that one-horned rabbit in the forest.

“Kill me… please kill meeee…!”

The guy screamed and cried while his body twisted into something inhuman right in front of us.

His arms swelled huge, fingers turning into sharp claws.

Eyes popped out, mouth tore open, and the light of reason disappeared completely.

“Grrrrrr… AaaAAaA!!”

The fully transformed ex-human lunged toward a nearby woman.

“No you don’t!!”

It was Tsugumi who jumped in.

She dashed like the wind, slipping right between the monster and the woman.

The monster’s claw came swinging down.

Tsugumi parried it with her dagger, then stepped right into its guard herself.

Zash!

One clean slash.

Her short dagger sliced straight through the monster’s throat.

Fresh blood sprayed.

“Ga…?”

The monster looked shocked, clutching its neck, then collapsed with a heavy thud.

Tsugumi stood there covered in the spray, staring down at the corpse with cold eyes.

“…You’re free now, right?”

Seeing her like that, both the residents around us and the Black Knights went completely silent.

“Jin! More over here!”

Ray’s shout.

Looking over, several more mutants were coming out from behind the flames.

Every single one of them had those purple crystals growing out, no longer human at all.

“Damn it… how many are there…!”

This wasn’t some gentle disease.

This was man-made terror.

The Sumeragi family—was using slum people as lab rats? Or maybe this was their dumping ground for failures?

“Cattleya! Take command of the Black Knights and get the residents evacuated! Don’t let the damage spread any further!”

“Got it! —Everyone listen up! Starting now, Cattleya Sumeragi is taking command! Top priority is guiding residents to safety! We’ll hold back the mutants!”

Cattleya’s sharp shout snapped the confused Black Knights back to their senses.

Deep down, none of them probably wanted to slaughter citizens either.

Now that they had their captain’s legitimate order, they all started moving at once.

“Ray, Tsugumi! We’re holding the mutants! I won’t say don’t kill them! If they come at you, take them down first!”

I made the bitter call.

They used to be people.

But right now I don’t have any way to turn them back.

So the least I can do… is make sure they don’t hurt anyone else.

“Got it!”

“Understood!”

Ray readied his greatsword, Tsugumi flipped her dagger into a reverse grip.

I pulled my knife too and started gathering magic power.

Right in front of us—more than ten mutants.

Monsters that might’ve been our neighbors once, now drooling and closing in.