/
‘Seriously, his personality is a mess.’
Faced with no choice, I continued to awkwardly cling to him. Woo Ragi descended while holding my silent body.
We were inevitably driven downstairs because the iron-mace-wielding-cat-statue was upstairs. However, due to the mansion’s old and dreary atmosphere, we felt an ominous foreboding as we traveled downstairs.
‘What is this smell…’
Furthermore, the lower we went, the more I smelled something unpleasant. It felt like we were passing by a rotten pond or a swamp. The air was also damp with humidity; the wallpaper on the walls was peeling.
As I observed the walls, I noticed, as the swordsman said, my portraits hanging everywhere…
‘Did I really create this space…?’
Honestly, I felt really strange.
My masterfully painted face hung on the walls at regular intervals; the portraits represented my image from all ages–very young to relatively recent. Of course, although I knew that none of this was ‘real’, I couldn’t help but stop and gawk at every portrait.
‘But why…are all the paintings with Seo Dawon like that…’
Was only Seo Dawon’s painted face blacked out?
The paintings seemed to largely depict me doing something. Judging from the artistic composition, rather than a painting it looked somewhat like a photo. Like…someone stalked me and took a picture whenever something memorable happened.
The ‘me’ inside of the portraits carried Lackey around my neck and was an elementary student looking out the car window from the back of my mother’s car. The chronological order was all mixed up; next to the picture of me on a tricycle was the picture of an injury I received in army service. Next to the portrait depicting my transformation into a User were portraits of the formation of my servant contracts.
But…
‘If this space was created from my memories… then why has Seo Dawon’s face been blotted out?’
Maybe I was being too sensitive about this detail because it was rather creepy. I gave Seo Dawon’s tarnished painting a sidelong glance–anxiety welled within me.
At that moment, Woo Ragi, who had been striding forward, suddenly stopped. Then, he looked straight ahead.
[Useless…]
At first, I had no idea what the swordsman was looking at. However, the swordsman’s echo blades began to fan behind his back, as if he were spreading his wings. It seemed like he noticed something within slowly ambling out in the deep, dark shadow in front of us.
“Can you…see what it is?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“It’s something dangerous, right?”
“I think it’s Chairwoman Shin.”
“What?”
I was surprised by Woo Ragi’s placid answer and focused on the amorphous black lumps in front of me. Chairwoman Shin….That was Koo Hui-seo’s…
[What a disappointment…]
However, no matter how I focused, the thing in front of us didn’t appear to be human. Of course, I expected that to some extent. After all, the way Chairwoman Shin died…
‘Koo Hui-seo snapped her neck…’
My face paled from that traumatic memory.
However, the approaching black shadow wasn’t someone with a broken neck. Rather… it looked like a multi-legged monster–large enough to fill the whole height of the corridor.
I continued to observe the area in front of us; soon, I was able to gauge the black blob’s appearance.
I finally understood why Woo Ragi thought it might be ‘Chairwoman Shin’. The approaching monster had several blue-crab feet embedded into its body. The body itself was made of a mass of black tentacles–like a thick bundle of intertwined thread–like those I’d seen before.
And, Chairwoman Shin’s head was embedded into the center of that body. Just like the last time I saw her, her eyes were all black pupils without the white of the sclera.
Simultaneously, she began incessantly babbling; at a surface glance, it seemed like she was severely rebuking someone.
[You lacking fool… I already said it once before… Why can’t you understand the first time I say things!]
I was stunned by her enormous size and horrifying appearance, but the swordsman calmly positioned the two largest echo blades in front.
“Let’s… Let’s run away,” I said.
“There are monsters to the back too.”
“What?” No matter how I thought about it, that wasn’t an opponent we should fight. I carefully suggested we slip away, but Woo Ragi informed me of another monster’s presence.
Startled, I looked back and found a spider-shaped tentacle monster crawling up above us in the middle of the ceiling. As soon as I looked at it, that ‘thing’ halted in its tracks and observed me with its dozens of eyes.
I whispered to the swordsman, “Since when have they been following us…?”
“Just hug my neck.”
“Okay…”
Of course, Woo Ragi had never docilely answered me. I clung onto his neck with both arms; simultaneously, the spiders creeping up behind us sped up and rushed to our location.
At that moment, Chairwoman Shin began scratching hysterically at her face.
[I’ve had enough of your foolishness!]
“[Maestro].” Woo Ragi controlled his two gigantic echo blades without physically wielding them. One flew at the spiders behind us, and the other flew straight at Chairwoman Shin’s face.
That wasn’t all.
“A-Ack!” I shouted.
Woo Ragi held me in his arms and spun around midair to avoid the chairwoman’s whip-like black tentacles.
Earlier, it had seemed like he couldn’t change position midair, but, looking closer, there were short echo blades underneath his feet, like the steps on a staircase.  Using his blade as a stepping stone, Woo Ragi began leaping through the air.
[You’re not my child…]
However, the swordsman’s attacks did not seem to have much effect. Though his echo blade tunneled into Chairwoman Shin’s right eye, she didn’t seem too hurt.
Like a madman, Chairwoman Shin kept muttering with one sword stuck in her eye sockets.
[Where is my son? Hui-seo-yah. My child, my lovely son–you’re not him. My son! Where is he?! You detestable fool; your dirty blood! Someone dull-witted and foolish like you isn’t my son. Die! Die! I incited anger from others…to give birth to you. I was foretold that I would die in misery. However…no–it can’t be. You were special ever since you were in my womb. My clever, intelligent son… My sin, my sacrifice, my last bloodline…]
As she spoke, some of her intertwined and wriggling tentacles split and opened their ‘mouths’ whenever she began another sentence; it was as if her words contained power within them.
Eyelids formed at the ends of tentacles that didn’t split open. They opened their ‘eyes’ at the same time; before long, it seemed like we had stepped into a den of tangled snakes.
“I should have ripped apart her mouth, not her eyes.” Woo Ragi murmured regretfully at that terrible scene. I was grounded by the sound of his voice and was able to endure the urge to faint.
[Kyaaaaaaak!]
Despite the ensuing attacks from the serpents, Woo Ragi was not flustered nor shaken. The snakes were all connected to one torso; heads fanning out with no tails, just like the Medusa from greek mythos. The serpents could only use their heads to bite at their opponents.
As if he found all this monotonous, Woo Ragi avoided each attack with minimal movement; at each opportunity, he manipulated the echo blades behind him to pierce through the serpent heads, one by one. The snakes disappeared when the blade touched them, as if they were burning into ashes. The issue, though, was that the heads reappeared not long afterwards.
‘Woo Ragi isn’t being pushed back, but…’
Nothing good could come from a long-term endurance fight. Though Woo Ragi wouldn’t die, as he was a servant, his skills had cooldown times…
The swordsman must have shared my thoughts; rather than attacking blindly, he began conserving energy and looking for gaps.
The same was true of the spiders rushing from behind. With each slash of the echo blades, the monsters were torn apart, leaving nothing but empty space behind. But, after a few seconds, more spiders continued to push in, and we were surrounded on both sides.
I looked around to try and search for an escape route. Then, I saw a small opening behind a portrait on the wall.