Tears streamed down the undercover agent’s face as he struggled. After Ode pulled the pistol back, he retched a few times before croaking out, his eyes bloodshot, “Faust is a mage. He modified his own gun. His gun resists magic. Otherwise, I could’ve stopped you downstairs with magic—I’m a mage too—”
Ode noticed that when the undercover agent called himself a mage, his gaze flicked toward him with a hungry longing, as if he were deliberately veering off-topic in hopes of getting stabbed in the throat again.
“…”
Too twisted. Ode shuddered, goosebumps rippling across his skin. Outwardly, though, he jammed the gun barrel under the man’s chin, leaning in close to whisper, “Be good, and you’ll get a reward. Understand?”
A bullet as your reward, Ode thought.
He didn’t care whether this humanoid undercover agent was handsome by worldly standards or considered passably attractive. The ashen-gray floating corpse from earlier had left too deep an impression. If he had to stuff something into that mouth—now that it looked pretty with its shapely lips—the only thing he wanted to force in was an explosive magazine’s worth of bullets.
Ode leaned close to the undercover agent’s ear and murmured, “I clearly hit you in the head just now. Why aren’t you dead? Was that monster just my hallucination?” He recalled the second attack, when the bullet had passed clean through the monster’s skull and embedded in the ceiling.
The undercover agent shivered and twisted his face toward Ode’s lips, but Ode dodged away. “…That was my summoned avatar.”
Ode used the gun barrel to shove the man’s face back into position. “Tell me everything.”
The undercover agent’s throat bobbed. Those pale, misty eyes, hazy as sea fog, fixed on Ode without blinking. “I’m a descendant of the Deep Ones… Their spawn can choose to transform after reaching adulthood, but I didn’t want to become hideous.”
“I wanted power, and I wanted to walk among humans, so I chose a compromise. Look at me—look at the fish scale necklace around my neck. A mage with Deep One blood can use it to summon a Deep One avatar. You only destroyed the avatar I called forth.”
“…What are the Deep Ones?” Ode rasped. “What are their weaknesses?”
He wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved that the real Deep Ones apparently couldn’t disguise themselves as humans, or chilled that his enemies had far more tricks up their sleeves than he’d imagined—not just brute-force monster brawls, but actual cunning.
This time, the monster had a human pulling the strings. Yet he’d instinctively assumed the thing was dumb and brutish because of its appearance, never considering tricks like playing dead or deception. But this new world upended so many of his old assumptions. Could he really slap storybook stereotypes onto these creatures?
What if they were just as intelligent as humans—or smarter?
His grip tightened. “Talk.”
“I…” The undercover agent’s dilated pupils suddenly contracted, as if something had stabbed him awake, yanking him back from his daze.
His expression turned ghastly as he recalled what he’d just spilled. “I’m not telling you. I swore an oath—”
The instant the man’s eyes darted downward, Ode reacted with lightning speed, yanking the fish scale necklace from around his neck. “No transforming for you!”
“No—!!” The undercover agent roared like a cornered beast. “Give it back!!”
Ode had wanted to dangle the fish scale necklace like bait, prying out more—like which eldritch god they worshipped, or what kept their secrets sealed. But the man’s stress tolerance was pathetic.
The moment the necklace snapped free, the undercover agent let out a mad howl, bit down hard on his tongue, and glared at Ode with a mouthful of blood. “Dagon, ya gnaiih r’luhhor, nafl’fhtagn r’luh ph’nglui ya gn’th’bthnk!”
Ode couldn’t fathom how someone with a nearly severed tongue could rasp out such bizarre words so quickly, sounding like a frog choking on phlegm. “Dagon” was the only familiar word in the whole incantation; the rest was gibberish.
That didn’t stop him from dragging his leaden arm up, aiming at the undercover agent’s snarling mouth, and pulling the trigger without hesitation. “Bang!”
At the brink of death, the man ducked sharply. The iridescent bullet grazed his—or rather, its—eyeball, burrowing into the floor. The fish-head monster, freshly transformed and already missing its left eye, bellowed like a war drum.
In the next second, it hurled Ode away. He flew upward weightless as a rag doll before slamming into the ceiling.
“Urgh.” Ode couldn’t stifle a grunt. His vision whited out, but he ignored it, emptying his pistol downward in a frantic hail of bullets, heedless of the spasms cramping his hand—
Boom.
It started with one explosion.
Then a second, third, fourth… The chain of blasts merged into a deafening roar that nearly shattered his eardrums. As he plummeted back down, a single thought spun in his mind:
Explosions mean hits.
This many bullets—the monster has to die.
It has to.
Please die!!
Thud!
He hit the ground.
The surface was soft, like landing in a massive, fluffy cake—except this cake reeked so foul it triggered his gag reflex.
He rolled off the monster’s belly onto the floor, tears of joy spilling from his eyes. He knew he’d succeeded.
Without the fish scale necklace to summon an avatar, the undercover agent’s only option had been full transformation.
This time, his bullets hadn’t struck a phantom—they’d hit the real body.
As his vision cleared, he ignored the agony in his back ribs, whether broken or not. He scrambled on hands and knees to the monster’s head—that grotesque thing more fish than bloated corpse—raised his pistol, and battered it savagely with the butt. One blow, two, three… He kept smashing until the cracks of shattering bone turned to the wet squelch of a club through meat paste. Only then did he slow, collapsing beside the corpse to gasp for air.
The blood splattered on him didn’t vanish. The monster didn’t vanish. This time, it was over for real.
Ode caught his breath, staring dazedly at the gun clutched in his hand.
His head spun—whether from the impact, exhaustion, or the crash of adrenaline. Hunger and pain twisted together, making his hands tremble faintly.
I need rest, he thought. A proper sleep.
Tomorrow loomed, with mysteries unsolved: Where was the Old Madman’s child? Who started the town fire? Who raised the barrier? Who reversed time? He’d pegged Mr. Floating Corpse Monster as a suspect at first, but now he could rule it out.
Bracing his knees, he staggered up, lurched to the door, locked it tight, and painstakingly piled every barricade he could muster against it—no more relatives dropping by from Mr. Floating Corpse Monster’s side of the family.
When he finally collapsed onto the bed, an owl’s cry echoed outside the window, answered by another.
He lay on his back, arm draped over his forehead. Shallow tears dampened his lashes, but he felt no self-pity—only calm.
A cold, quiet fire burned in his chest: his rage.
He was running a low fever. But he knew he’d survive the night. Come morning, he’d wake with the dawn.
Then he’d head downstairs for breakfast, stuff himself to make up for tonight’s missed meal, recharge fully—and smash to pieces whatever shitty fate dared end him.
The corpse of a mighty, unbeatable foe lay at the foot of his bed. Whatever came next, the next body cooling on the floor wouldn’t be his.
Never his.
Ode slowly closed his eyes, surrendering to the black veil of sleep…
He dreamed again.
In the dream, he lounged at a long banquet table in a gown studded with icicle-like gems, propping his chin lazily. The space around him brimmed with men and women in opulent, wildly varied finery.
He was in high spirits, shoveling food into his mouth: crispy-tender roast rabbit legs, thick stewed potatoes and vegetables, rich mushroom meat soup with delicate flavor, sweet finger biscuits that crunched like bones.
The ache in his legs faded. Hunger retreated. Suddenly, a body reeking of cigar smoke squeezed in beside him.
He turned to see Faust, hair disheveled and breathing hard, shoving aside the lady next to him before plopping down. “These people… do they not understand ‘no’? I said, ‘I don’t want to dance, I have a lover,’ and they nearly wrapped their legs around me!”
“You’ve never told me who your lover is.” Dream-Ode sipped blood-red wine, sighing in delight at its sweet richness. “Is it—”
“Eva?” Faust followed his pointed gaze to the dance floor’s center, where a Russian woman twirled with a mild-mannered man in glasses. His face twisted in disgust. “She’s not—look at her. See the bespectacled guy she’s dancing with? That’s her husband.”
“When I say ‘husband,’ I mean they got legally married back home, full inheritance rights and all. Ever wonder why Eva—that icy workaholic—bolts out the door the second the quitting bell rings, faster than anyone? Someone’s home with a hot meal waiting.”
Faust watched, aghast, as the taller woman slid her hand down her husband’s lean waist without a flicker of expression on her face. He grimaced like he’d spotted filth. “Someday I’m writing ‘no PDA in front of the boss’ into the employee handbook…”
Faust ranted on. Ode just kept devouring his feast.
Every dish at the banquet was exquisitely delicious. Ode had to admit this was the most enjoyable meal he had ever eaten. He even felt his parched stomach gradually unfolding under the nourishment of rich meat juices, while his body—inexplicably fatigued until now—grew light and buoyant.
The only troubling issue was that the roasted rabbit leg was simply too large, so big that he feared his jaw might dislocate from trying to bite into it. The potato and vegetable stew inexplicably kept dripping to the bottom of the bowl, despite his utmost care. The mushrooms in the meat soup were wonderfully fresh and flavorful, yet frustratingly prone to crumbling—he personally preferred them with a bit more chew. And then there were the finger biscuits…
Finger biscuits…
“Crunch. Crunch.”
The surrounding strains of melodious music fell abruptly silent. The sound of chewing rang out with startling clarity in his ears: “Crunch. Crunch.”
It was the sound of sharp teeth snapping through bone and grinding it to fragments.
“…”
Ode shuddered violently, jolted awake from his dream. His hands, chest, and cheeks felt coated in a sticky, wet film.
He lowered his head stiffly and saw that he had somehow moved to the foot of the bed. The spot where the monster’s corpse had lain was now empty, save for a few segments of pale, blood-smeared vertebrae.
Semi-congealed blood still dripped steadily from his chin and hands, splattering onto the pale skin of his feet and flying onto the calf where his bandages had come loose at some point.
His calf gleamed smooth and unmarred, as if it had never known injury.
