A Horror Novel’s Supporting Character Wants to Live as a Human

Chapter 231

[Coming again! Coming again!]

[Coming this way, coming back!]

Every night, the forest that should have been quiet broke its silence with someone's breathing and footsteps.

The gray dwarfs, who didn't even have proper names yet, turned to stone during the day and arose with consciousness to act when the sun set.

They had the characteristic of playing malicious pranks on everything, including their own kind.

If they only played pranks and stopped there, it wouldn't matter,

But the dwarfs extremely hated showing others their pranking behavior.

So much so that they would brutally murder all witnesses who had seen their pranks too many times.

This was one of those cases.

Two of the dwarfs had been caught trying to play a prank. So they had left marks on the witnesses.As long as the marks remained on the witnesses, the dwarfs planned to attack immediately upon encountering them.

That was the instinct and habit of the gray dwarfs.

However, that plan was being twisted by the red-haired person.

[Coming! Coming!]

With the dwarf's warning, the group scattered in all directions.

A man was walking weakly across the field beyond.

The man's arms and legs were gouged so deeply that bone was visible.

His body was completely covered in blood, and his tattered skin looked horrific, but he paid no mind and stepped forward with his blood-stained feet.

The man held a fist-sized stone in one hand,

And in the other hand, a dwarf whose hard gray shell was broken, spilling pink bodily fluid and entrails.

He suddenly stopped and carelessly threw away the dwarf's corpse.

It was the gesture of disposing of useless waste.

Then he casually wiped his hands on his clothes stained with pink discharge, dirt, and plant juices, and looked around.

The gray dwarfs were hiding in the darkness, unknowingly shuddering at the sight and scratching trees with their sharp claws.

"Today... hmm. How many was it."

A youthful voice mixed with fatigue.

After counting on his empty fingers one by one, he soon turned around.

The only trace of the man who had vanished as suddenly as when he came was one miserable gray dwarf corpse.

After the man completely disappeared from sight, the hiding dwarfs came out of the shadows one by one.

This was hunting.

The dwarfs were being hunted.

Their kind were dying one by one every night to an unfamiliar life form that wasn't even strong.

The dwarfs had sharp claws, but the red-haired creature was persistent.

The captured dwarfs drove their claws into his forearms, piercing through muscle and scraping bone.

But despite the pain, the man regularly, indifferently, brought down stones toward the dwarf in his hands.

After confirming the dwarf's death, he limped back with his legs showing white bone and his blood-soaked arms.

But the next day, he would return with a perfectly healthy body as if nothing had happened and begin smashing another dwarf's head.

The dwarfs felt fear for the first time since their existence.

That thing couldn't be killed.

No, even if it could be killed, it would return soon.

The man's violence seemed to pose no problem to him at all.

Facing the greatest crisis of their species, the dwarfs racked their brains.

The dwarfs with minimal intelligence hit and beat each other with their hard hands and feet, seeking a solution.

How could they send that terrifying creature far away?

How could they play pranks again?

One of the dwarfs shouted.

[Protection! A being that will give me stronger claws! Call such a being!]

[How? We are stone, so how?]

[Let's call, call! Since we were born from that light in stone, let's call it from the light!]

[From the light?]

[From the light, from the cold eyes that watch us every night!]

The dwarfs pointed at the moon and cheered.

Though they had heads filled with evil and cruelty,

They instinctively remembered their origins.

The dwarfs began preparing to call upon a being that could protect them.

Using the moon and stone from which they were born as mediums, they intended to designate the forest where they lived and perform a ritual.

And a few days later,

A very large and wide altar made by the dwarfs was laid on soft moss.

However, the offerings placed on the altar they had worked hard to prepare were beyond modest—they were utterly meager.

Dirt-covered mushrooms, rotten fish bones, oddly shaped stones.

The dwarfs who saw this grew restless.

[Better stuff, bring out better stuff.]

[Better stuff, better stuff or it won't come down from the sky.]

[What to do? What to do? Need good stuff. Must give good stuff.]

The dwarfs thought of the most 'valuable thing' they possessed.

[Ah! There are marks. Ours. There are marks!]

[Ours! What we'll play with.]

[The most fun thing. So let's offer it here.]

[Offer it up! Put it on the very top where it can be seen well!]

The dwarfs, having reached a noisy agreement, went to retrieve their marked targets.

A bright full moon was floating high in the night sky.

*

Yesung left the house after taking care of Shan and Tika's bedtime as usual.

Since this had become quite a familiar routine, Shan and Tika would pretend to sleep first to deceive Yesung, then get up again.

That day too, when they heard the sound of Yesung closing the door, Tika got up first.

"I can't believe I can't sleep like this. This is really serious!"

"That's understandable. We haven't been able to go outside at all. If you sit around all day, you don't feel sleepy at night."

"Yesung told us not to go out, right? Since Anutara isn't here, I'm trying to listen to Yesung at least."

Tika grumbled and stretched.

Shan lay on his side diagonally and looked at her before asking.

"Should we take a walk? Just briefly going out on the path in front of the house?"

"Shan, did you happen to eat all worry, fear, and fright for breakfast this morning?"

"It's not that, I just said it because you seemed so frustrated. You've been inside the house the whole time from when the moon rose until it set."

"That's true."

Tika began to think seriously.

Indeed, Shan's words were very tempting.

But if they went out and got caught, Yesung might scold them terribly.

He hadn't seemed to be in a good mood lately anyway, and if she and Shan caused trouble on top of that, she didn't know what would happen.

As Tika groaned seriously, Shan threw out another suggestion.

"Or, it wouldn't be bad to just open the door slightly for ventilation. Strictly speaking, we'd still be staying inside the house."

"What if those things we saw before are outside? What if we open the door and they come inside?"

"...That's true too. Then it would be better to go out together when Yesung comes."

"Good."

But when would Yesung return?

Would he come before dawn again today?

When Tika had deflated and sprawled on the floor, there was a 'knock knock knock' sound at the door.

Hearing that sound, Shan's eyes grew wide and he whispered.

"...Is it Yesung?"

"He's back already? This is bad! Shouldn't we pretend to be sleeping?"

Tika whispered and lay down.

Shan also quickly lay down and pretended to sleep peacefully with his eyes closed.

However, no matter how long they waited, the door didn't open, and Tika opened just one eye and muttered.

"I guess it wasn't. What was that?"

"I don't know either. Well, there's no way Yesung would come now-"

-Knock knock knock.

The two closed their mouths.

This time it was definitely a knocking sound. So Yesung had really returned already.

But still the door didn't open, and no more sounds were heard.

Tika and Shan looked at each other. Both seemed bewildered.

"Shan..."

"We shouldn't open it."

"If it were Yesung, he would have just opened the door and come in. Right? You think so too, don't you?"

"Yeah. That's right. But..."

Shan was silent for a moment.

"...Can't we just take a quick look?"

"What? No! Shan, are you crazy? Why are you like this? Let's just wait until Yesung comes."

"It could be Yesung."

"Yesung doesn't knock on doors like that!"

"It could be Yesung who went out and got hurt."

"What?"

"We got hurt and then Yesung started going out every day. What if Yesung going out every night isn't for night bathing? What if he was going out to drive away the gray children for us?"

"If that were the case, he would have told us!"

"Tika, do you think Yesung is the type to tell us every little detail?"

"That's... not true, but."

"Yesung and Anutara are similar people. So it might have been a trivial matter to Yesung. He might have forgotten to mention it."

"So you're saying there's an injured Yesung outside right now?"

"I'm just talking about possibilities."

Tika recalled Yesung who had collapsed after the strange standoff with the pink insect.

His whole body soaked in cold sweat, his dry hands trembling as if he had fallen into some deep lake, and his wide-open pupils.

Even then, Yesung hadn't been able to get up properly.

If, as Shan said,

The knocking outside was a signal from Yesung who had collapsed and barely made it here.

"How do we confirm whether that's Yesung or not?"

"Then I'll go and see."

"Really?"

"I'll just open the door slightly and close it quickly. Then whatever those things are, they won't be able to get inside the house."

Shan got up and stealthily approached the door.

After putting his ear to it, he realized he no longer heard the 'knock knock knock' sound.

He carefully grasped the door handle and opened it little by little, slowly.

Tika had also gotten up and was sticking close behind Shan.

"What, what do you see? Is it really Yesung?"

"Wait a moment. It's too narrow, I can't see."

It was night, and the door crack was only open enough for two fingers to barely fit through, so he couldn't see well.

Shan frowned and opened the door just a little more.

It was just enough to look outside with one eye.

Shan pressed his face close to the gap and looked, but there was no one outside.

Only the faint sound of waves and cold, fresh air flowed through the narrow gap.

There was no sign of the red-haired man they often saw collapsed outside.

Then what was that sound earlier?

Had something blown in the wind and bumped into it?

Shan thought this and tried to close the door slightly.

[■■■.]

What? Laughing at a time like this?

"Tika, what's so funny?"

"What are you suddenly talking about?"

"You just laughed. Wasn't that you laughing?"

"I didn't laugh. What are you talking about, Shan?"

But he had definitely heard laughter just now.

The moment Shan turned to look at Tika, his ankle felt cold.

It was a gray hand.

A small hand with long nails curved like hooks was grasping his ankle through the slightly opened door.

Before Shan could meet Tika's terrified gaze,

An tremendous force suddenly pulled him outside.

"Aaaahhhhh!"

"Shan! Shan!"

[■■■, ■■■!]

[■■, ■■■! ■■■ ■■■!]

[■■■, ■■■!]

Along with Shan's screams, incomprehensible languages swarmed together and quickly faded away.

Tika immediately kicked open the door and went out.

"Shan!"

"Tika! Don't come!"

Shan shouted from far away in the darkness.

But even his tearing cry soon became faint, and only the path messed up from him being dragged away remained.

Looking at those traces, she stopped, paralyzed with fear.

Should she call Yesung? But she didn't know where Yesung was.

Was there a reason those gray children had dragged Shan away? Yesung had looked at the traces on Shan's and her bodies and said they 'might die.'

Surely those creatures would do bad things to Shan. Very bad things too.

If it wasn't Yesung, there would be no way to stop them.

Right now, even if she followed, there would be nothing she could do.

Even if she followed, she might get involved and cause more trouble for Yesung.

She knew this in her head.

But Shan, who had always been with her when leaving Shambhala,

Shan, who had gathered flowers with her as much as she wanted even while grumbling,

The hand that had held hers tightly without letting go when they encountered the pink insect and ran away,

The words of someone who worried that her adventure might end like this,

The red ears that had asked what number husband he could be.

These memories stirred her heart that had frozen cold with fear, and finally made her run.

"My, my-"

Small stones scattered from her running.

She was out of breath, but this much was nothing.

Tika put strength in her stomach and her shout cut through the night air, echoing loudly.

"My first husband-! Give him back-! You shorties!"