novelraw Chapter 62 : Human Farm (1)
Chapter 62 : Human Farm (1)
Chapter 62: Human Farm (1)
“Reina… Blaze? Hmm. I’ve never heard that name before.”
Park Juhee tilted her head slightly.
“That’s strange. I was certain you’d know who she was.”
“Me? Why would I?”
“It might just be a misunderstanding, but could I ask you a few questions?”
“Well… sure, I guess. But is it that urgent? If that Manager Song guy catches us chatting out here, he’s going to chew us out.”
“It’ll be quick, don’t worry.”
If it truly was a misunderstanding, then he would apologize.
But there were just too many suspicious things.
“First, how did you immediately know Sambok was my summoned creature when you saw him at Chungnam National University Hospital?”
Sambok, who had hatched from the Egg of Darkness, was something only those affiliated with the Requiem Cult—or those who had obtained their information—could possibly recognize.
In fact, when the other members first saw Sambok, they had been too busy wondering whether he was a monster or not.
Everyone except for one person. Park Juhee.
“Well… all the monsters in the hospital were of the undead type, but that dog looked a bit different. I thought it might be a spirit beast or a divine beast. Something like that.”
That explanation could make sense.
It wasn’t completely far-fetched.
However, that wasn’t the only suspicious thing.
“I remember your bowstring snapped during battle, didn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Then later, you were supporting us from the rear on the fifth floor of the main building, firing arrows with a perfectly repaired bow.”
“……”
Park Juhee pressed her lips tightly together—
as if she already knew what he was about to ask next.
Yeah.
This was what he truly wanted to know.
“That broken bowstring—mind if I check what you used to replace it?”
Reina Blaze handled spiders.
Spiders capable of producing exceptionally strong and durable threads.
Of course, any archer could have learned a repair skill for emergencies,
but it would be easy enough to confirm whether that was really the case.
Then—
“Haa. Guess I should’ve just left the string broken. I thought you’d toss it if it wasn’t usable, so I fixed it on purpose… but I guess that only came back to bite me.”
Park Juhee—or rather, Reina Blaze—admitted it without resistance.
“I didn’t realize you were Korean.”
Was she some kind of foreigner with black hair?
“It’s a disguise. I didn’t feel like showing my real face.”
So that was it.
No wonder she’d looked so different from before.
Now that he thought about it, even her old appearance might’ve been a disguise.
“So, our first meeting wasn’t a coincidence either?”
“Correct. I was curious who had accepted the request about me.”
Seriously—how did the Hestia side even handle their requests?
He’d barely completed his first one,
and yet it felt like even the neighbor’s dog and the lady from the corner store already knew about it.
Srrrk—
Reina drew a long needle that glowed faintly green from her subspace.
Before he knew it, small white spiders had begun appearing one by one around them.
“I have no intention of being dragged off to the Empire, so don’t get any funny ideas, alright? You know what happens when you kidnap a lady—you get smitten by divine punishment.”
“If possible, I’d rather take you in willingly. But if you resist, I don’t have much choice.”
One bite of the fruit Elizabeth had so painstakingly cultivated,
and she’d follow him anywhere—Empire or hell.
Of course, getting her to take that bite wouldn’t be easy.
“Is that so? Then I suppose this is where our conversation ends.”
Pa-pat!
White spiders leapt toward him from all directions.
Yohan drew out the Resentment of the Black Abyss and spun his body a full 180 degrees.
Ka-ga-gak!
His sword sliced cleanly through the spiders’ outer shells.
But that was a trap.
The real ones were camouflaged in pitch-black darkness.
Sasa-sak—
A faint scraping sound brushed the ground as spiders—
their fangs glistening with paralytic venom—darted toward his neck, wrists, and thighs.
Yohan grabbed the plush rabbit dolls displayed for promotional purposes.
Puk! Pu-pupuk!
The spiders’ fangs sank into the soft cotton stuffing.
And almost at the same instant—
Paa-ang!
Reina lunged low to his right flank, driving the glowing green needle straight toward him.
[Reina Blaze has activated Lv2 ‘Poison Sting’!]
0.7-second paralysis effect skill.
Kang Yohan dodged the ambush in the square by the width of a single sheet of paper.
“Magic types are so damn quick, seriously!”
Reina’s voice was full of irritation.
“That’s exactly what I wanted to say. A spider-sorcerer—are you serious about your positioning?”
The orthodox play was to hang back and pick a shot while remaining concealed, but she had thrown that idea to the dogs.
Kang Yohan reached his hand toward where Reina stood.
[‘Blood Bind’ activated!]
A hand made of blood shot out.
A grab.
Once it hooked, it was over.
“Tch.”
But Reina had keyed every one of Yohan’s tiny motions with equal focus.
An ambush and a counter. A stealth attack and a binding.
There was almost no noise, yet the terrible exchange had happened dozens of times.
Then, at that moment.
Thud.
Footsteps sounded from far away.
“Manager Song probably misheard. I warned them—what lunatic would be wandering around after that?”
“N-no, I definitely heard it….”
“Be careful; it could be a monster.”
There were three of them.
The patrol sentries had come near.
Thud. Thud-thud!
As if by agreement, Kang Yohan and Reina leapt over the escalator and sprinted downward.
“You’re supposed to be directionally challenged, huh. Must be pretty bad. The furniture store is up, not down.”
“Huh? Did you actually believe that? Of course that was a lie. I’m great with directions.”
Reina shrugged her shoulders.
He really wanted to give her a hard flick on the head.
He should have landed that predicted grab earlier.
“So why are you creeping around at this hour?”
“Probably the same reason as you. Weren’t you looking for what those bastards occupying this mart had hidden away? Isn’t that what you’re after?”
Tsk.
No wonder—top-class operatives sniffed out the Pure Blood already.
“Since it came to this, how about a temporary alliance until we find the Pure Blood? We can decide who gets it later.”
Hmm. A temporary alliance.
He felt like an actor being offered a part in a movie with a painfully obvious ending.
Still, keeping a dangerous creature nearby and watching it was better than letting it loose.
At least then he could read its thoughts and prepare countermeasures.
“Fine. Let’s do that.”
Kang Yohan accepted the proposal.
＊＊＊
Redmoon Corporation.
A leading company with a market capitalization reaching 2,500 trillion, its influence extended across the world.
‘A perfect empire of blood, indeed.’
Its owners were none other than high-ranking vampires.
Vampires who combined divinely blessed physical specs with modern capitalism…
In short, they were among the top predators in this world.
When they descended to B1 via the escalator, the space had changed completely.
Instead of an ordinary parking lot or storage area, a gigantic ice cavern appeared.
The temperature dropped sharply.
The interior was so cold that breath fogged in their mouths.
“Ugh… uuugh….”
“Kill… me. I can’t take it anymore.”
Glug-glug!
Blood was being sucked from bodies through long pipes.
Those hung like meat at a butcher’s trembled intermittently.
This was the filthy secret Redmoon Corporation had been hiding.
“They said they were extracting blood—and they really were.”
Reina blew a large pink bubble with the chewing gum she had been chewing.
Her appearance had already changed considerably.
Bright sky-blue hair and teal-green eyes.
She wore a snapback tilted at an angle—an unmistakable hipster look.
“Is that your usual look?”
“Mm. Pretty cool, right?”
“Yeah. Well….”
Her habit of disguising herself made sense.
She would stand out too much wandering around like that.
He only hoped she wouldn’t wave a wand or spray something everywhere.
Just then.
Bright flashlight beams preceded a group of men and women as they approached.
It was Yoo Gimyung and the group following him.
They must not be discovered here.
At the very least, if they cut off the lines of communication between Yoo Gimyung and the upper vampires before making any move, this affair would not be exposed.
But there was nowhere suitable to hide.
“Ugh…”
Reina was beside him, and he saw her weave a spiderweb onto the long pole where people were hanging.
When she slipped a breathing tube suitably between the napes of a neck, another convincing beast was added to the lot.
“Give me one too.”
“Why would I…? — well, that face makes me think you’ll rip my head off if I don’t.”
“Wow. Good intuition. Truly a top-class field agent.”
Kang Yohan grinned. Reina shook her head and handed over the webbing.
Soon after, another group of people came closer.
“Numbers one through five are at their limit. Prepare them for disposal. Bring five decent ones from the furniture store.”
“Understood.”
Of course. There was a reason they fed and sheltered those who approached the mart.
‘We were excluded because we were too aggressive.’
Having brought two from the Viking clan, they had inevitably been eliminated from the list of ideal prey.
The group with flashlights moved away along the ice cave.
Thud.
Thump.
Kang Yohan and Reina landed on the ground.
It would take a while for the others to come back the other way. Now was the perfect time to move.
But then.
“P-please take us with you.”
“Hi, hic. Please. I beg you like this… If we stay hung here any longer… w-we’ll really… die.”
Several of them reached out pleadingly.
Many were unconscious, but not all.
“Leave them. Carrying a bunch of dying people will only slow us down.”
Reina drew a hard line.
It was unfortunate, but this time those words were correct.
It would be more rational to finish the job quickly and then rescue them.
“Wait! We know where they’re keeping the blood. And where that red jewel is!”
Someone shouted desperately.
Pureblood.
A crystalline substance filtered from the purest collected blood.
It was the pinnacle of Redmoon Corporation’s technology and, at the same time, the magical source that granted vampires tremendous power.
‘So they’d already completed it.’
Kang Yohan clenched his fist.
This was far more important than most items or skill manuals.
Shick!
When the blade cut the line, three men and women fell.
Thud!
Plop!
“Ugh. Ugh. We’re alive. We’re alive.”
“Th-thank you.”
They breathed sighs of relief and celebrated their survival.
“Playing the role of a champion of justice? I was going to catch them and hand them over alive to the Empire.”
Reina blew a pink bubble of gum and voiced her displeasure.
“For the sake of efficiency. And is a criminal the same as an innocent citizen who was kidnapped?”
In laboratories like this, the places where valuables were hidden changed each run.
There were three candidate locations in total, and searching each one would take considerable time.
Being able to confirm one location with certainty made the little trouble worth bearing.
“My name is An Seungchang.”
“I’m Lee Danbi.”
“Jo Jeongmu.”
Three companions joined them.
They had become a group after getting trapped in Daejeon. Except for An Seungchang of the Red Ghost guild, the other two belonged to the Church of the Moon as priests.
“I trusted those bastards and almost died. If I get out, I’ll report them to the order and make justice prevail.”
Lee Danbi, with short hair, muttered with eyes full of life.
Revenge and justice…
Between the deceiver and the deceived in the apocalypse, whose sin was heavier?
When each person’s sense of justice clashed, which side was the righteous one?
Even after a thousand iterations, he still did not know the answer to that question.
What was certain, though, was that those who abandoned humanity and moved solely for their own gain survived.
That was the reality they wanted to turn away from.
It was a tragedy they had to accept.
How far had they gone?
The relatively narrow passage ended, and a wide space opened up.
Bubbling!
Pools of sulfur and crimson liquid boiled all around.
And then—
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Something enormous was roaming through the smoke.
It wasn’t human.
A person could never make such sounds.
Cave Trolls that inhabited the three-star region of January.
They were mid-level monsters dragging along massive icicles as they searched for prey.
At a glance, there were more than ten of them.
Judging by the rough, white manes covering their bodies, they were all ravenous males.
He had known that some kind of foul play was happening underground, but never imagined the scale would be this vast.
Besides, weren’t cave trolls the kind that even raid parties tended to avoid?
Unless it was absolutely unavoidable, taking a detour was the standard approach.
However—
“The place where the blood is stored… is inside there.”
An Seungchang, who had taken on the role of guide, pointed precisely toward the far end of the area where the trolls were roaming.
“You’re telling us to go straight in there? Have you lost your mind from blood loss or something? Huh?”
“I-I’m just guiding the way, that’s all.”
“Unbelievable. Ha. What a crappy situation.”
Reina popped her bubble gum irritably.
Hmm.
Even if they fought the trolls from this distance, it probably wouldn’t alert Yoo Gimyung right away—but with over ten of them, this wouldn’t be easy.
Moreover, he had a feeling that what was hidden here wasn’t limited to just this.
He was lost in thought for a moment when a familiar voice whispered into Kang Yohan’s ear.
—We’ve got a problem.
It was Priscilla.