Chapter 220 : Chapter 220
Chapter 220: Monster (2)
Of course, even at such a coercive question, even in a situation where I was clearly the disadvantaged party.
I…….
“No.”
I did not, at least, lie.
It wasn't as if I couldn't tell a white lie, but this was a lie that would give a greater wound later just to feel good for a moment.
Unfortunately, I had only come to use Charlotte, and I knew I couldn't feel any sense of closeness until she had a change of heart and took her hands off this business.
How bad of an act it was to give room for affection to an awkward opponent.
Of course, that was just my personal opinion.
Charlotte erased the smiling expression she had until just now and put on a straight face.
She lifted her chin from the flower-cup she had made with her hands and pouted her lips.
“That's not very nice. Don't people normally say that, even just as a courtesy?”
“I have something to ask.”
“Ah, you did say this isn't your main job, right?”
She asked, looking indifferent, propping her chin on one hand.
Of course, she wasn't really sulking, but it was her own way of appealing that her feelings were somewhat hurt.
“Then, is it related to Gates? Or related to biological weapons?”
“Gates and monsters.”
Charlotte forgot she was even pretending to sulk and grinned.
It could be seen that I had come to exactly the right place.
“That's my specialty. When it comes to that side, I'm much more knowledgeable than most national intelligence agencies. But before that, first.”
She briefly sized up my face.
“It's even nicer to meet you with your mask off.”
She had seen my bare face in the last incident.
But that was just a level of showing my face for a moment right before I left, after everything was over, and at this point, several months later, the face in her memory had faded a lot.
But today was different.
As I was showing my bare face as if there was nothing to hide.
To be honest, she wanted to moderately push and pull to lead the conversation, but seeing that face now, she didn't really feel like doing so.
“Is that so.”
I lightly rubbed my face with my hand.
“Well, even if you say you're simply curious about something, as a merchant by name, I can't just give it to you for free.”
Charlotte chuckled and wiggled her other hand.
“We'll have to make a deal, right?”
“A deal.”
My hand, which had been rubbing my face as if in thought, moved to my chin.
I drummed my fingers, rubbing my chin with my index and middle fingers spread, calculating this and that.
“What is it you want?”
“Pre-payment.”
“Jeez.”
It wasn't that I was out of money.
Just the money I had earned recently while acting as a villain was an astronomical amount that an individual couldn't imagine.
But that, too, was relative.
Charlotte was a giant corporation that did business not just with one country, but with the entire world.
There was talk that the scale of the money she operated with was on the level of a national budget.
A deal wouldn't work with simple money.
I intended to exchange it for information of similar value.
Wouldn't the peculiar evolution case of a Type 2 Erosion Dungeon Core be enough?
Just as I was about to say that.
“With me…….”
Charlotte stood up, leaning on the desk, and stuck her body far forward.
“Have a meal with me. Then I'll tell you.”
In fact, she had hinted at an invitation to me last time, too.
But at that time, I didn't even show my face under the mask.
An invitation to a meal, there was no way it was possible.
But now was different.
“You have to keep the promise you couldn't keep last time, right?”
“A promise?”
“We agreed to have a toast if you brought down Black Oskopf back then. But you just rushed off because it was over.”
“Ah.”
“You can't run away this time.”
She laughed lowly.
A moment later, the restaurant I arrived at with Charlotte.
I looked around the interior and put on a slightly surprised expression.
“It's a more normal restaurant than I thought.”
The acting president of [The Top], no less; I thought we would go to a high-class restaurant where you'd have to take out a wad of cash for one meal.
But it was just an ordinary pasta place.
Charlotte ordered without even looking at the menu.
Even my menu.
“It's delicious here. You don't need anything else. This Pasta B Set, garlic bread on the side, and a drink size-up is the best.”
“Well. If it's the recommended menu.”
I lightly swiped the bottom of the water glass in front of me.
“But the neighborhood atmosphere is a bit strange.”
Honestly, if it were up to me, I'd want to dig for information right away, but I wasn't so tactless or mannerless.
“It doesn't seem like public order isn't being maintained.”
It was only my second visit to the Battlefield.
But even so, the atmosphere was stiff enough to be clearly noticeable.
Of course, it wasn't at a level of being openly chaotic, but the atmosphere itself was quite grim.
In particular, the number of armed androids that served to maintain public order had clearly decreased.
“It is, right?”
Charlotte let out a bitter laugh.
“After Black Oskopf fell, the Battlefield has been shaking a lot, too.”
“That's unexpected.”
Of course, since one of the 5 major corporations had fallen, some degree of confusion was inevitable.
But the remaining corporations weren't fools, and didn't they have more than enough desire and ability to handle that much?
“Because Black Oskopf didn't just simply fall.”
The fall of Black Oskopf, behind it was the existence of a monster with mind-control abilities.
Although I had handled it cleanly, an investigation team formed by several corporations had accidentally discovered a record related to that monster.
And the Battlefield fell into great chaos.
A Hunter is someone who catches and kills monsters.
But to think they were living as slaves to a monster, on the contrary?
Moreover, those slaves were in charge of one pillar of a giant corporation.
Of course, it was a unique ability of that monster, but now that a precedent had been set, no one could be at ease.
It was a situation where even Hunters couldn't trust the person right next to them, so apart from public order, the atmosphere was bound to become serious.
The remaining giant corporations, including [The Top], which had now become one of the 4 major corporations, could not be free from those suspicious gazes.
But the only way to prove their innocence was to open all their facilities and information, and that was an even crazier act.
In truth, it only ended with this grim atmosphere because the Battlefield was a completely closed environment; if the same thing had happened outside, it was a serious matter to the extent that society would have completely stopped.
Charlotte let out a hollow laugh.
“We're all about to be ruined. Thanks to someone.”
Of course, that 'someone', me, also had something to say.
“You're an accomplice, too.”
“I suppose I am.”
She burst into a small laugh.
As we were talking about this and that, the pasta and garlic bread we had ordered came out.
“Now it's my side's turn to get what I need.”
“You're in such a hurry.”
She was probably worried that I would hear everything I needed to hear and storm out of my seat before I even finished the pasta.
I was trying to move the story along that quickly.
“But you know you have to eat everything and even have coffee after the meal, right?”
“I don't think that was the deal. Well, fine. Let's wrap the coffee into the deal, too.”
I lightly tapped the table with my fingertips.
“The giant whale monster that appeared in Africa. I need information about that. The entity itself, of course, related phenomena or abilities. Even the Gate it came from.”
Charlotte narrowed her brows.
She had a few expected questions, but this question was completely different from them.
Misunderstanding her reaction, I asked, as if worried.
“Is it too long ago, so you don't know either?”
“No. That's not it.”
Of course, she knew well.
It was a story from decades ago, but it was a major incident that anyone in the Hunter-related industry couldn't not know about.
It was the strongest monster since the concept of the Gate phenomenon and monsters emerged, and it was a more realistic catalyst for human extinction than a meteorite impact or an ice age.
Of course, how much more detailed information one knew about it—from this point on, it depended on the individual's capabilities and intelligence, as it was treated as classified even overseas.
In fact, even if I hadn't split with the Hero Association, it would have been difficult to obtain information about this.
Because, in reality, even the Association didn't know.
In that sense, coming to find Charlotte was the best answer.
“Just a moment. Some of it is a little hazy.”
Charlotte organized the information for a moment.
“The monster's individual name was Behemoth. A 220m-class, whale-shaped monster.”
Besides that, she laid out various other pieces of information about the giant monster, Behemoth.
I, who had been listening silently, asked the thing I was most curious about.
“Did it have a resurrection ability?”
“I'm not sure about that, but in the subjugation team's records, there was an evaluation that it just wouldn't die because its regeneration ability was too overwhelming.”
“Is that so?”
The subjugation team had probably killed that monster several times.
But since it moved again, they must have just mistaken it for regeneration, recovery.
It was resurrection.
“So how did the subjugation team catch it?”
“They couldn't. In the first place, they survived because Behemoth just wandered around without any interest in the subjugation team. If it had been determined to kill them, they probably all would have been turned to pulp.”
“Then?”
There was a subjugation team, and it's a monster that isn't active now.
I'd assumed the subjugation team caught it, of course?
The catalyst for humanity's technology advancing by leaps and bounds was the discovery of new types of minerals and materials through Gate exploration.
At that time, there were almost no such discoveries, so old-generation technology, weapons, etc., remained in abundance.
And the prime example of that…….
“With nuclear bombs.”
Charlotte wriggled her five fingers and made a Tututudu— sound with her mouth.
“They gave it a shower. So that the speed of dying became faster than its regeneration.”
“Tsk.”
I clicked my tongue.
I wondered how they caught it.
It was information that wasn't helpful at all.
That Giant monster was outstanding in intelligence or cognitive ability.
There was no way it would obediently take a nuclear bomb.
More than anything, if they put a nuke inside the Gate and saturated it with radiation, what if that radiation came out of the Gate?
Who's going to handle the aftermath?
I'd rather not ruin an entire country just to catch one monster.
“I wondered why they called Africa the Dark Continent; it seems it wasn't just because it was all encroached by the Gate.”
Currently, the area of the African continent is called the Dark Continent.
Only a faint shape of it exists on the world map, and the situation there cannot be observed by artificial satellites or any other observation method.
The Gate that Behemoth monster came out of was an Erosion-type, and it had swallowed most of the continent.
I had thought that they simply caught all the monsters, but couldn't handle the Gate because they couldn't find the core.
But if it's soaked in that kind of radiation, it's meaningless even if the Gate disappears.
“But. There's an even bigger problem.”
At Charlotte's following words, I let out a hollow laugh.
“They're not even sure if it's dead.”
“What?”
“There are some opinions that it might still be regenerating even now.”
“If it resurrects?”
“It's a real disaster. Never mind not dying to radiation or nukes, it's now become a monster that emits radiation greater than a nuke itself.”
A 220m giant body floating in the sky scattering radiation?
This was a catastrophe on a level where we'd be thankful if only one continent was ruined.
There were this many horrific dangers on this planet that I hadn't been aware of.
“Still, is melting it with heat the best way?”
At least I felt like I had found a direction for neutralization.
Then a heat-related Trait and…… I wonder if a radiation Trait exists.
I agonized like that and twirled the fork, gathering the pasta noodles.
This was a restaurant highly praised by Charlotte, who must have eaten all sorts of delicacies.
Feeling expectant, just as I was about to take the first bite.
“You finally show yourself! Die!”
Suddenly, three men burst through the restaurant door and rushed toward me.
No, precisely, toward Charlotte.
Just as they, each gripping a weapon, were about to genuinely kill Charlotte.
“Sheesh.”
I put down the fork with a sigh.
Ppeoeok— Ppak—! Kwajik—!
With three punches, the three men were embedded in the ceiling, floor, and wall respectively, leaving huge holes.
“Even if you have business, you have to keep in order. Get in line, line. Or pull a number ticket.”
Anyway, you have to acknowledge how mannerless the Battlefield bastards are.
“I tried to cover my face, but the information must have leaked from somewhere again.”
Charlotte, likewise, didn't seem very surprised by the murderous assault.
“So what are these things?”
“Probably.”
Just as Charlotte was about to answer my question.
The man who was embedded in the wall right next to us retched and spat out something the size of a fist from his mouth.
Round and reddish, it was pulsating on its own, as if alive, “Huh? Ah, ah! No! Not that!”
Charlotte shouted, flustered for a change.
“Die!”
The man threw it.
No, he tried to throw it.
But before that, I reached out and firmly grabbed the back of his hand.
The man couldn't open his palm, so the piece of flesh just remained held in his hand.
I looked at the piece of flesh the man was gripping and asked.
“What is this?”
It wasn't just anyone; seeing Charlotte freak out like that, it was obvious it was no ordinary danger.
Blocking or dodging it was laughable.
I just had to stop him from throwing it from the start.
The piece of flesh, still reeking of an ominous aura, looked truly dangerous and suspicious.
“Ah, this, don't tell me……”
A memory faintly grazed my mind.
“Isn't this that monster flesh from back then?”
This repulsive smell.
It was definitely that.