Black Badger - Chapter 57

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Natty

◈ Black Badger ◈

Chapter 57: Face-Off (2)

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A claw broke.

As its sharp claw broke, its body was slashed diagonally. Its blood was red. Clutching my left shoulder, which felt ready to fall off, I gasped for breath.

The attack had landed properly.

It collapsed to the floor. A body crumpling down and spilling blood. But it was still alive. I clenched my right hand and ran toward the fallen creature.

Its tendons!

Cut its tendons!

“Hyah!”

Thunk.

I drove my sword into its ankle.

Blood spattered, and I felt muscle tear.

Good. Now I needed to cut the tendon in its left foot too.

I pulled the sword from its right foot and shoved it into the left.

The sword sank into its left ankle.

Only after turning it into something like a specimen did I relax a little. Panting, I looked down at the creature by my feet.

It seemed nearly dead. Its unfocused eyes had gone blank.

It felt strange, watching something that looked like a person die.

Not that I regretted what I had done. If I had not charged in prepared to kill it, I would have died instead.

As the adrenaline faded, exhaustion swept over me.

I looked for a pillar to lean against. Then I noticed that the pillar beside the creature had collapsed under my sword strike. I had put far too much force into that attack.

Or had I? Maybe using so much force was why it had gone quiet all at once.

My mind was not clear enough to judge.

In any case, there was nowhere suitable to lean.

I simply dropped to the ground. Still clutching my left shoulder, I studied the creature lying beside me.

If it died, it could not be helped. If it regained consciousness while half-dead, I would ask it questions.

More questions about myself....

Thump.

A heartbeat.

It took me a moment to realize the sound was coming from the creature.

When I located the source, my mouth fell open.

I could not speak. I was too dumbfounded for words to come out.

I stared blankly as its wounds began to heal. Something like rippling dark waves made the gravel around it vibrate. Black waves rose from the body of the creature I had thought was dying.

Like the Level 10 creature I had seen in the video.

An inexplicable emotion churned inside me.

“What the...”

The words that barely slipped out of my mouth did not continue.

“What is this...?”

Crash!

Agonizing pain tore through me.

I only understood what had happened after the pain, bright enough to make my vision flash, began to fade.

Now I was the one on the ground. Reflexively, I was blocking the creature. It had shoved me over while I was sitting.

It moved too fast for my eyes to follow.

I drew in a breath as I looked at the creature above me.

Up close, it was grotesque. Its rolled-back eyes. Pitch-black sclera and barely visible golden irises.

What was this all of a sudden?

I tried to push away the creature pressing me down with its forearm.

Damn it!

“What kind of strength...!”

I was really going to die like this.

The broken edge of its claw came closer. The distance between that sharp edge and my throat narrowed. There was a limit to how long I could hold it back with my arms. My left arm no longer had any strength in it.

This was bad.

I clenched my teeth as I sensed death closing in. I had to tell the seniors about Jin Silver. That Jin had been alive, that Jin had stayed behind with the creature that had followed us.

So the strongest among you had to go save Jin....

“Urgh.”

The creature's claw pierced my forearm.

A groan burst out at the sharp pain.

At the same time, the ceiling broke open and a fist came through.

Huh?

“...A fist?”

Even through the agony, I stared stupidly at the ceiling.

Why was a fist sticking through the ceiling?

How had it punched through?

The ceiling in other places could break open, but did it make any sense for this ceiling to be broken through?

“This is a subway...”

Crash!

The ceiling collapsed.

The section of ceiling on the right, where the fist had emerged, caved in. I blankly watched it fall.

Light poured in. Not artificial light, nor the faint glow of mushrooms, but brilliant sunlight.

It was beautiful enough to make me forget the pain in my pierced arm.

Voices rode in on the outside wind.

“Hilde!”

Ami sounded almost on the verge of tears.

“Hilde!”

My senior flew straight through the broken ceiling.

The other seniors jumped down and landed on the tracks.

Squinting at the sudden brightness, I took in their faces. Richard Green. Jason Tvein. Aki. Lee Ho Chang.

William Walker landed heavily.

The creature was kicked away.

“Let's go.”

Ami shoved the creature off me, wrapped her arms around me, and held me close.

“I'm sorry I lost you.”

Her small body was trembling a little.

“I won't lose you next time. I'll never let you go again.”

“Ami.”

I smiled, feeling both sorry and grateful.

My voice did not come out as clearly as I wanted.

“Thank you for saving me.”

“What is that?”

Jason Tvein's voice rang through the subway.

“Isn't that a humanoid creature?”

“This is insane.”

“And it's still alive.”

“Ami, take the injured person outside!”

Richard turned and shouted beside Lee Ho and Aki, who were both staring in horror.

“The battle isn't over yet!”

Rat-a-tat-tat!

No sooner had he finished speaking than gunshots rang out.

Tvein and the other seniors began unloading on the creature as it tried to rise again.

Startled by the ear-splitting gunfire, I widened my eyes.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!

The seniors fired like they had lost their minds.

They kept their fingers on the triggers until they ran out of ammunition.

Tvein and Green fired the most fiercely.

The two seemed more tense than they had been when facing the building-sized creature at the Safe Point. Their eyes were fixed on the creature, now reduced to rags, and did not move.

By now, it was surely dead, but no one seemed willing to stop firing.

The humanoid creature said to have brought terror to humanity.

With black sclera and golden irises.

The one that had hesitated for a moment, giving Ye-hyeon a chance to attack....

Ah?

An emotion so dense it seemed to choke off my breathing engulfed me.

What was this?

I blinked.

Why did I suddenly feel as though I had fallen into an emotion and was about to drown?

Was it because I had realized that I was the same kind of being as them?

Was that why I felt alienated and afraid? Because I was not human? Because I felt like I would be treated the same way if they found out?

I stayed still and examined the heavy emotion whose cause I could not understand.

...That did not seem right.

What wrapped around me now was not fear.

It was more like....

Self-loathing?

And sadness?

Did I hate myself for betraying my own kind?

But if I was going to feel this way, then why had I betrayed my own kind in the first place...?

“Hilde.”

Ami's voice pulled me from my search for the source of those feelings.

She tightened the arm around me.

“Let's go.”

When I looked blankly down at my senior, her young face immediately crumpled as though she might cry.

“I'm sorry we came so late.”

I was about to say they had not been late at all, and that they had come at the most incredible possible moment.

If they had come too early, they would have discovered my identity. If they had come too late, I would have been stabbed to death by that thing.

But before I could open my mouth, Ami's boots burst into flame.

Held in Ami's arms, I shot up toward the surface.

*　　　*　　　*

The air wrapping around me changed in an instant.

The sunlight falling over my head was welcome. The sound of wind stirring my hair coolly struck my ears. The old city spread clearly beneath my feet.

I had finally come aboveground.

Dangling from Ami's arms, I watched the asphalt slowly approach.

We landed lightly on the ground.

Ami sat me against a car that looked as though it had not moved in a very long time.

“I'll heal you.”

Though she sniffled and cried, her hands moved quickly.

“This must hurt so much.”

“No....”

I did not think it hurt that much, but I had no strength.

So I let my body go limp and received Ami's treatment. There was an enormous hole in the ground nearby.

The exact place where Walker's fist had come through.

The seniors' sharp voices rose from the hole. But I did not have the energy to listen closely to what they were saying.

Gunshots sounded intermittently.

Once I realized it was truly over, all strength drained from me.

My head grew hazy. I lay still, looking at the deep blue sky and the pure white clouds floating in it. Too much had happened since I fell into that ravine and woke up.

The things I had experienced below the ravine slowly came rushing back into my mind.

Thoughts of my identity were swept away, replaced by other scenes.

The creature dying as the mold digested it. The fruiting bodies shooting upward. Jin shouting for me to come into the subway. The one who stopped the mold, led me into the subway, showed me lettuce, and gave me chicken soup. The one who said he had once been called the Badgers' Druid, and that he would tell me this story and that story....

‘Tell Joo I'm sorry.’

A voice, low from disuse, echoed in my ears.

Tears silently fell from my eyes.

“Does it hurt?”

Ami asked in alarm.

“Why are you crying? Hilde, does it hurt a lot? Are you hurt somewhere besides your arm?”

“Ami.”

I pulled my senior, who was peering into my face, closer.

Then, looking at her blinking eyes, I whispered.

“Ami. Jin Silver is at the previous station.”

Ami did not move for a while.

She only stared blankly up at me with wide eyes. Through my wavering vision, I looked down at my senior's round eyes.

When people receive a great shock, they cannot react right away.

Ami only opened her mouth after a long while.

“Jin is dead.”

“Jin was alive down there.”

“...Alive?”

“Jin deserted.”

I brushed the hair stuck to Ami's cheek aside.

“Jin said he had been on the run for ten years.”

Again, Ami did not react for a long while. Kneeling right in front of me, she only stared blankly up at me.

I did not blame her for being unable to react. Nor did I rush her. Instead, I tucked the black hair repeatedly striking her cheek behind her shoulder.

Such a young face, no matter when I saw it.

“Where?”

After a long while, she asked with an expressionless face.

“How?”

“It seems Jin had been living in the subway. Growing vegetables and raising chickens.”

“Vegetables?”

Ami's eyes went blank.

“Chickens?”

“Jin said he had once been called the Badgers' Druid...”

After saying that, I looked into my senior's unblinking eyes and added,

“Please find Jin Silver.”

Her round eyes blinked several times.