The second bullet burst from the barrel, ripping through the sea of flames and carving a north-south passageway straight through the overwhelming inferno.
The waves of fire surged abruptly, their scorching heat finally licking at Ode’s skin.
“Hiss…”
Ode had no idea what a normal person would do if their body caught fire—scream? Roll on the ground to smother the flames? All driven by basic survival instincts. But as the flames charred his flesh to blackened husks, his own survival instinct screamed something else entirely:
Eat them… Devour them all! To hell with the monsters… To hell with the new world. Wasn’t the old one messed up enough?!
His skin hissed and crackled. From deep in his chest, Ode let out a low, furious roar. Bullets poured out one after another, unrelenting as a gale-force storm, tearing open nearly a third of the blaze in the blink of an eye.
“—”
The Colours Out of Space, enraged by the ceaseless onslaught, whipped their fire-waves into a more savage, razor-sharp hurricane that swept viciously toward Ode, who had been flung back to the ground.
But Ode simply braced the gun stock against his chest, gripping the weapon with one hand as if the searing agony couldn’t touch him. His other hand shot out without hesitation, snatching at any enemy he could grasp and shoving it into his mouth without a glance.
His flesh hissed, shriveling and graying one moment, only to sprout fresh as spring buds the next.
Ode’s green eyes gleamed like those of a cruel, ravenous beast, fixed unblinkingly on his prey. He spared no thought for why he could endure such pain or where his marksmanship had come from. He just kept pumping bullets endlessly, heedless of whether they were draining his life force—because if he couldn’t wipe out the Colours Out of Space, he’d die here anyway.
The staccato crack of gunfire stitched a continuous line through the forest. Until at last, fear overtook the Colours’ fury. The unified fire-hurricane scattered in an instant, fleeing in all directions.
No.
He couldn’t let these things escape the woods.
How many people would die because of them? He had to—he must—exterminate every last one right here.
The Colours’ energy soothed his stomach, mending every nerve and patch of skin. Flecks of firefly-like glow danced in Ode’s eyes.
With no regard for his own escape, he flung aside his pistol. “Leaving already? Can’t you spare one last look?” His voice came out soft and enticing. “Why not take another peek… Come on, just one. Look at me…”
He hoped Faust was right about that line: “The stronger the entity, the greater the effect.” Otherwise, Ode had no other way to reel back these scattering Colours Out of Space.
Ode, whose lifetime best at seduction had been batting his eyes pitifully, now stared without blinking at the frozen Colours. After a few seconds, he deliberately raised his wrist—scratched bloody by branches in the fight—and locked eyes with the distant hues, slowly lowering his head in brazen challenge. He parted his pale lips, extending the tip of his tongue. The soft length trailed unhurriedly over his arm as it healed to pristine smoothness, upward until it gently lapped away the bead of blood clinging to the bulge of his wrist bone.
The dancing flames stilled in that instant. A few strands of the Colour even rolled involuntarily closer, toward the very direction they’d tried to flee.
Ode exhaled softly, letting his body relax. He half-closed his eyes; when he opened them again, a lazy glint shone from beneath his deep red lashes.
He licked the gunpowder from his fingertips with his damp tongue, then curved his lips silently toward the rainbow hues, mouthing the words:
‘Come on.’
Three seconds of silence followed.
Then the firelight answered the invitation.
Fifteen minutes later.
Ode leaned against the root of a lone oak stump, one leg bent as he steadied his breathing.
The clothes the Landlady had kindly given him were reduced to a few stubborn scraps of fabric. They served no purpose now beyond a touch of ragged fashion.
His lips were still swollen, the corner cracked and bleeding, but within a few breaths, those last indignities faded along with the Colours digesting in his gut.
‘Healing faster than after the Deep One.’
No joy lit Ode’s face. Doubt pooled in the depths of his deep green eyes. If not for his lingering rationality, he might have torn open the gash that had split to his ear just to hypnotize himself:
See? No spontaneous healing. I’m still human.
Expressionless, he slumped against the root. His left leg creaked audibly. The limb twisted unnaturally, like a grotesque braid of rope, slowly straightening into its long, straight form.
It hurt. Hurt like hell. So much that Ode wished for death right then.
But what gnawed at him more were the questions swirling in his mind:
‘Why can I devour things like this??’
‘It’s getting easier… Does that mean I’m one step closer to becoming a monster?’
‘Why am I getting used to this pain… Why have I never handled a shotgun before, yet I know its recoil so well, its sight alignment so instinctively?’
“Click.”
His inverted ankle snapped back into place. Every wound on his body had healed. Ode drew a deep breath, shoving aside all thoughts irrelevant to his immediate goal. He pushed off the root behind him and stood, surveying the battlefield.
The woods had been leveled. Only a ring of trees remained at the edge.
A vast carpet of black-and-white ash blanketed the ground. Moss, mushrooms, trees—all reduced to ghostly shapes. Ode kicked one; it crumbled like a sandcastle.
The Lady in the Black Fur Coat was dead. She lay shriveled atop a mound of earth, her once-tall frame withered like that of a woman in her seventies or eighties.
All the Children of the Dust were dead too. Their charred corpses huddled against the barrier at the woods’ edge, as if even in their final moments they’d desperately tried to flee the cage.
“Cavendish?” Ode didn’t see the one key figure. He scanned the now-barren woods again. “You still here?”
No reply.
The bastard had pried a promise of friendly coexistence out of him, then vanished without a trace.
Ode pressed his tongue against one cheek, reining in his temper as he turned and headed out of the woods.
The forest had been torched to oblivion, yet no sign of any people-eating monster had appeared. The thing must not have been here when the Colours erupted. No point sticking around.
As he walked, Ode drew from his pocket the one item the Colours hadn’t destroyed.
A sheet of paper. Found in that photographer’s camera bag earlier.
He’d hidden it while Cavendish wasn’t looking. When pressed later, he’d stonewalled, and Cavendish hadn’t noticed—further proof of his hunch:
Cavendish couldn’t sense not just him, but anything touching him, through sight, smell, or otherwise.
Weird. How does that even happen? Ode wondered idly, unfolding the paper that had survived the Colours’ onslaught. He glanced at it:
“…”
Great. Not a single word he could read.
A top student fluent in languages since childhood, aiming for the Foreign Ministry, now doubted his own expertise for the first time: What language even was this??
Ode narrowed his eyes and tried the first line: “Yog-Sothoth, vul… vulgt…”
Stuck on the second word, he folded the paper shut with a snap and stuffed it back into his pocket, face blank.
Whatever Yog-Sothoth, Vulgt-ma-something. Whatever. Better to focus on what came next.
Ode picked up the shotgun along the way and slung it over his back:
First off, the blaze that razed the town was definitely the Colours Out of Space.
The only question: In the previous loop, they hadn’t destroyed Dreamcatcher Town until June 2nd. Why had they gone berserk less than two days after his arrival this time?
Had he evaded the Undercover Agent, entering the woods early, triggered their frenzy? Like some pheromone or aphrodisiac?
Ode pondered in confusion, unconcerned at likening himself to hormones or lust inducers.
One more detail—the Colours’ prismatic glow matched the bullets in the pistol Faust had given him exactly. Likely made from the stuff.
In other words, when Faust arrested him, he’d already known the fire’s cause and that Ode wasn’t the arsonist. Deploying a full team anyway? Probably wondering, “Why could a living thing walk out of the Colours’ fire? Is he even human?”
That explained the restraints after capture, and Eva’s quip: “Still counts as human.”
No wonder those two suspected. Ode suspected himself now. He itched to rush back to GORCC, strap himself to Eva’s lab table, and beg her to classify his species.
But that was for later. Priority one: Keep tracking the monster, find the—
“…Secret Cult…”
The wind carried whispers from the fields that Ode never should have heard.
His ears twitched. He halted. The Colours had sharpened his senses greatly. Holding his breath and focusing, he caught a hushed exchange hundreds of meters away:
“…too much fanfare. The police are closing in on us.”
“So what? Weak humans, even with their firepokers—can they hurt us?”
“You’re the one addled by the fanatics in the cult! The ones with real power are the Deep Ones and their spawn. You and I? Just devotees of Dagon, human blood in our veins. You saying a cop’s bullet won’t kill you?! All these years… haven’t you wondered why the Dagon Cult is called a ‘secret’ cult?”
“You’re too timid, my friend. If we take a bullet for the sacred cause, the Deep Ones will reward our loyalty in—”
“They use humans as sacrifices!” The steadier voice snapped in anger at its companion’s denseness. “They use our own kind as sacrifices! You think they see much difference between us and the offerings?!”
The other person scoffed dismissively. “This has nothing to do with species. Let me put it this way: Would you have kids with a dog? Of course not. You’d only reproduce with your own kind. Those Deep Ones always pick the most stunning humans to breed with. Doesn’t that prove—”
“You really think that kidnapping you and forcing you counts as treating you like one of their own?” a steady voice replied with sarcasm. “That’s rich. The maids in the old days saw themselves the same way with their lords. —Don’t glare at me like that. I’m not betraying the church. I’m just reminding you: on missions where you’re out in the open, don’t stick your neck out, or the cops might gun you down and leave you for the crows.”
“Isn’t it better to stay clear-headed? We’re here for whatever scraps of power we can get from the Deep Ones. We should have the self-awareness to act like the vassals we are. Don’t kid yourself into thinking you’re their equals… Walk up to any Deep One in the outpost and say that to its face. See if it acknowledges you.”
The conversation fell silent after that, with nothing more to follow.
Ode gently stroked the cold barrel of his shotgun, drawing a sliver of calm from the touch as his mind rapidly analyzed the new intel:
“Too high-profile”? “Out in the open”? There hadn’t been anything in town that qualified as “high-profile”—
Ode paused abruptly, recalling the star selection ad he’d seen in Paul’s hands at Lola’s home, and the one plastered on the school entrance.
Add in the human sacrifices—always choosing exceptionally beautiful humans to breed with—star recruitment—Dagon Cult—
Suddenly, all the pieces clicked into place.
When Lola was snatched, she couldn’t have known the monster would drag her into the dense forest. So the “Mi” scrawled on her bookcase wasn’t a place name—it was intel she’d gleaned from eavesdropping: the Secret Cult!
Three nights ago, someone from the Dagon Cult must have snuck onto campus under cover of darkness and posted what looked like star auditions but were really calls for sacrificial victims.
For whatever reason, they’d slipped into the library too, only to be spotted by Lola, who was there secretly reading.
She’d overheard their talk and figured out who they were, but they caught her. As they dragged her away by force, she’d struggled to leave that clue, and it wasn’t until the next day that her roommates discovered her inexplicable disappearance.
Working backward from this theory, Ode could even match up other clues—
Like why the half-breeds under the Lady in Black Fur Coat looked so grotesque, yet their offspring were strikingly beautiful. Because they kidnapped prime human specimens to breed with!
Those hybrid young must display human traits in childhood, only transforming once they hit a certain threshold—just like the Undercover Agent who’d attacked him had said!
Ode’s breath hitched for a second in excitement over this breakthrough, but he quickly reined it in and steadied himself.
He quickened his pace, heading straight for the market:
Tracking a monster on the move in town would be a hassle, but finding a fixed spot for recruitment interviews? That was easy.
Ten minutes later, at the Azure Stone Square in the market’s heart.
Dressed in his hole-riddled rags, Ode clutched a blank application form he hadn’t bothered to fill out. He ignored the crowd’s oddly piercing stares as the person in charge of the interview site personally escorted him past the line of waiting applicants and into a private interview room.
“Please have a seat and wait here. The interviewer will be with you shortly,” the person said politely, gesturing for Ode to sit first. “And that shotgun of yours—”
Ode settled gracefully into the red velvet armchair, leaning back languidly and crossing his long right leg over his left. “What’s wrong with my gun?”
“…………” Trying not to spook the prey that had wandered right into their hands, the thin-blooded staffer stared at Ode’s physique peeking through the tatters. Even without bulging eyes, they looked ready to pop out. When they finally spoke again, they sounded utterly dazed: “Ah, sure, that’s fine, but… ow!”
The staffer wasn’t watching where they were going and smacked right into the doorframe on the way out.
Ode snickered from behind them. The poor sap bolted like their pants were on fire, face flushed beet red, and slammed the door shut with a bang.
The little room went quiet for two seconds.
Then Ode, sprawled in the chair with utter nonchalance, sprang to his feet.
Thanks to his mother’s tastes and career choice, Ode had grown up wrapped in shirts, vests, and suits—layer upon layer. Heading out like this was no different from streaking for him.
As he tugged at the shreds clinging to his body and pondered how to scrounge up proper clothes, his gaze drifted to the glass window. Across the way, at the cheap workers’ coffee stall, sat a familiar figure with their back to him.
“…” Ode edged closer to the wire-mesh window, clutching his rags. Wasn’t that Cavendish?
What was he doing here?
Ode thought for a moment, then propped open the window. He grabbed a loose brick from the sill and chucked it at Cavendish’s back.
“?” As if he had eyes in the back of his head, Cavendish snatched the incoming projectile with pinpoint accuracy. After a pause, he turned. “Ode?”
Ode draped his arm over the windowsill and whistled at Cavendish. “Over here.”
He lobbed another pebble, using the clatter to guide Cavendish right up to the window. Then he clapped his brick-dusted hand heavily onto Cavendish’s impeccably smooth suit shoulder, fingers clamping down like a vise. Lowering his voice, he asked word by word, softly but intensely:
“Who… allowed… you… to leave… my side?”
One look at Cavendish’s face said he wasn’t about to say anything pleasant.
Ode didn’t wait for an answer. “The Colour Out of Space in the woods—that was you, wasn’t it?”
“…” Cavendish fell into a silence that seemed at a loss for words. A moment later, he reached up and grasped Ode’s wrist, gently prying away the now spotless hand. He leaned in slightly, closing the distance, and murmured back in the same low tone, enunciating each word:
“I guarantee it. If I ever take you out, I’ll stay by your side until your very last breath fades away.”
