A Flower That Eats Humans 101

## Chapter 101 – Black Root (7)

Even amidst the thickly laid darkness, the warning lights descending from the ceiling spread like fog on the floor,
creating an unpleasant, eerie atmosphere, and I move my feet beyond that red fog.
The presence of pursuers, felt due to my sharpened nerves, seems to be split and moving,
scattered throughout the building.

“I figured as much.”

The most efficient way to catch me.
Those chasing me according to the textbook method written in textbooks.
I am now standing above those humans’ heads.

“…”

Not an abstract expression, but literally above their heads.
Kneeling on one knee on the floor, I place my hand on the cold surface.
I feel the presence right beneath my feet, that is, on the floor directly below this floor where I am.
Closing my eyes, I quietly concentrate all my senses on my fingertips. Six people? Eight at most.

It feels like there are fewer people than the other pursuer team that is currently far away.
It seems like there is about one person less than the other team.
I don’t know why, but that’s a story that doesn’t matter to me.

Taking my hand off the floor, I stand up and twist my arms to loosen the joints that had been resting for a while.
It’s probably this way.

The person I’m looking for, not as much as Dr. Jung Ah-un, but still,
a human who has secured a certain position in this group.
If it’s a human sitting in that kind of position, wouldn’t they know about the information about being in Busan?
Since it’s possible for me to forcibly extract information from a human’s head with my current power.
I deliberately searched for the presence and wandered around for a long time before finally finding the person I was looking for.

How do I know? Because only this place has a subtly different presence.
Something different, a different danger, is felt from the presence that other humans emit.
There are far fewer people than other teams, but such a fierce energy is felt.
Of course, it’s not a danger that can be compared to Dr. Jung Ah-un, but,
since it’s a person who emits a presence similar to Jung Ah-un alone,
there’s no need to worry about striking out.

“…Alright, then…!”

I rotate my loosened joints one last time and take a stance.
I clench my fist with all my might and raise it high towards the sky.
My elbow is bent, my waist is twisting involuntarily, and finally, my fist comes crashing down.
As the twisted joint is released and the bent elbow is fully extended,
the moment my fist, which had risen higher than my head, touches the floor,
with a tremendous sound, the ground beneath my feet, made of concrete and rebar, collapsed in an instant.

As a result, my body was naturally sucked into the hole I had created.
I thought it was a perfect surprise attack, but,

‘It’s all sides!’

‘Block it!’

“Ugh?!”

As the hazy fog created by the finely broken concrete from my strike cleared to some extent,
gun barrels pointing at me from all directions were visible, and the moment the danger detection gave a warning,
red light burst out almost simultaneously from those numerous gun barrels.

Damn it, it’s not fully charged yet.

The greenish-yellow electricity crackling at my fingertips.
Not enough power has been gathered to deploy a magnetic field to block the bullets yet.
The red light bullets are already cutting through the air and flying towards me.

In that case…!

I call upon the unknown power that flows through my blood like blood again.
I feel my heart pounding like crazy, and
I send new blood and something new to replace the discharged power throughout my body.

The electricity swirling around my body turned into a mysterious power with a blue light,
and that mysterious life force creates new life in the empty air.
The red light bullets that were about to reach me were blocked by tree trunks emitting a blue light.

“…Shit! I almost died!”

The vision darkened again in an instant, I survived thanks to the trees surrounding me, but…
How did they know? I didn’t feel any presence monitoring me at all,
so someone couldn’t have taught them, and they couldn’t have felt my presence either.

…

If I think about it a little, I can quickly figure out who the cause is.
The man with the strange presence that I had been feeling since a while ago.
He seems to have a better sense than ordinary humans.
But it’s not something innate, it’s a sense learned through many experiences.

While thinking about that and glaring at the man’s presence beyond this wall of trunks,
several heavily armed soldiers continue to shoot at the tree surrounding me with their guns.

“…What should I do?”

I want to safely hide my body like this and attack with the blue power, but,
that doesn’t happen as I intended.

I tried to attack, but I ended up being attacked instead, and because I was flustered,
I used my power on the ’empty’ nothingness.
Virgillago’s power is the power to create life and control it.
The power of his power is so strong that it can create something from nothing,
but perhaps because I created a shield made of trunks from ‘nothing’ without anything, the amount of power consumed is enormous.
In this state, I can only attack one person even if I attack, what should I do…

“…”

It seems difficult to use Virgillago’s power as a means of attack.
But Lapus’s power, electricity, is very useful for attacking even with little power…

“…Ugh?!”

The moment I tried to gather electricity in my hand while maintaining the tree shield with blue power,
a sudden dizziness covered my head, and I almost accidentally removed the shield.

“…Can I only use one of these at a time?”

I can’t use two people’s worth of power at the same time, is that what it means?
Because I released some power, the protective wall started to collapse little by little.
I feel one of the men pouring a barrage of light bullets at me approaching.

“Then now I only have one chance.”

I organize the plan I was originally going to do in my head.
I only have one chance, let’s be careful and bold.

Finally, the man has almost approached the shield I deployed.
At the same time as estimating the position of the man’s neck to some extent,
I change the blue light to green and break the weakened tree trunk with my hand, and
I grab the neck of the man wearing thick protective clothing through the small hole I made.

The man was surprised and tried to scream, but I didn’t give him that short moment and gave him strength.
His neck, which crumbled easily like a reed, I threw the man’s body, which had lost its strength, to the floor, and
as expected, the other surprised soldiers started firing at the shield that had turned into ordinary pieces of wood.
I unfolded my crouching knees and floated my body into the air, piercing through the wooden ceiling, and
as expected of trained soldiers, they quickly moved their gun barrels towards my body floating in the air.

The moment they tried to aim the gun barrels at me, the target, and pull the trigger,
I started to concentrate all my strength on the tip of my index finger.

If I shoot the original shockwave, it’s possible to wipe them all out at once, but,
with the amount of power I’ve charged now, that level of attack is impossible.
In that case, if I gather as much power as possible in one place and shoot, the range will be disappointing, but,
as for the power, I can expect it to be more than a normal shockwave.

Turning my body in the air, I aim at the shining sphere created by the power gathered at my fingertips.
And the thin light emitted from that sphere pierces through the head of the man I first aimed at,
I move the power to the other hand and shoot the head of the man on the opposite side.

The sight of me turning around in the air and shooting light looks like a karaoke mirror ball for a moment,
when I put my feet back on the floor, everyone except one man was already lying on the floor.

“…!! It stings more when I shoot it gathered together…!!”

The situation has been sorted out to some extent, but I rub my hand because of the stinging feeling felt at my fingertips.
If it’s just a simple sting, I’d put up with it, but the degree is too severe…
If you think of it as feeling 2~3 times the pain of a cramp in the area where I forcibly shot electricity.

After rubbing my hands, the pain subsides to some extent.
I awkwardly readjust my posture, clear my throat, and slowly step over the men’s corpses.
I carefully move my steps and approach the man who is staring at me blankly.

The tallest and largest man I’ve ever met is looking down at me.
I swallow hard once because of the unknown pressure, and look up at the man.

“…You’re the highest-ranking person, right? I have a few things to ask you… Hello?”

“…”

The man is looking at me with an unknown expression.
The man doesn’t show any reaction to my words, as if he’s lost in thought looking at me.

“…”

Eyes that look like watching a lion trapped in a cage at the zoo.
It feels strangely unpleasant… Well, it doesn’t matter anyway.

I can forcibly see information.
It was the moment I reached out my hand towards the man standing blankly.

“…!!”

The man instantly grabbed the hand I reached out and floated my body into the air.
Riding on the man’s broad back, my body spun around once and slammed into the floor from the back.

“Keuh!!”

Oxygen instantly escaped from my lungs due to the shock of being thrown to the floor out of nowhere.
The moment I tried to inflate my chest to breathe in again, something shining in silver covered my vision, and
without even taking a breath, I grabbed that sharp thing with my hand to prevent it from digging into my eyes.

“…”

“…Keuek!!”

The man grabs the end of the blade with his other hand and pushes it in, putting his weight on it.
Blood dripping from my hand from the end of the blade I grabbed falls on my face.
Finally, after regaining my breath, I broke the blade I was holding, and
with the other hand, I clenched my fist and slammed it into the man’s chest.

“Ugh?!”

A dull sound filled the hallway, and my fist mark remained on the chest protector the man was wearing.
It seemed like the protector had absorbed almost all of the impact, but the man’s body was floated into the air as it was, and
without missing that short moment, I raised my body and kicked the man’s body falling again.
At the same time as falling in the air, my foot touched his abdomen, and the man was slammed into the wall as it was.

“…!!”

“Haa…! Haa…! Seriously, what’s with the sudden attack…!”

I must have forgotten to breathe because of the sudden attack.
I take a rough breath and put both hands on my knees to rest.
The man doesn’t say anything to my question, wipes the blood from his mouth, and gets up.

“…You look young, how old are you?”

“…Didn’t you know everything? I was sure that Jung Ah-un guy would know.”

“That guy doesn’t trust us, so he didn’t give us information about you.”

“…”

“Really.”

The man shrugs his shoulders, throwing the knife, which only has the handle left because I broke it, on the floor.
While doing so, the man takes out another knife from his shoulder and grabs it.

“Are you going to keep fighting? You might die, you know?”

“…Do you think of yourself as something innate? Or do you think you’ve earned it?”

“…Huh?”

The man, who is saying something incomprehensible, takes a stance.

“What you want to know, I can teach you as much as you want.
So I hope you can teach me what I want to know.”

“…It doesn’t matter to me, but is it okay to teach such things to anyone?”

“It doesn’t matter, this is my last time anyway.”

With those words, the man swings his knife towards me with fierce and flawless movements.
I don’t know what he’s asking me to teach while doing this, but first, I need to make him docile…!

———————————–

“…It hurts.”

“I’m sure it does, your ribs and legs are broken. A normal person wouldn’t be able to move.”

After ending a not short but long bloody battle, as expected, the one standing until the end is the male individual.
This man, who looks twice as young as me, wipes the sweat flowing from his chin,
and looks down at me.

“…”

My body, which has already become a wreck, can no longer be moved.
It was a fight in which I poured out everything I had. As evidence, the knife is stuck in his shoulder.
Blood gushes out from the shoulder of the young guy who slowly pulls it out and throws it on the floor.
But only for a moment, the blood stopped as if the wound had healed.

“…Amazing, you’re definitely not human. You were the most human-like of the things I’ve fought.”

“I don’t know if it’s a compliment or an insult, but now it’s my turn to take what I want.”

While saying that, I speak to the individual who is reaching out his hand to me once again.

“….Lastly, so how old did you say you were?”

“…I’m 20 years old.”

“…Damn it, my daughter is 18 years old.”

I laugh because I’m dumbfounded.
As expected, the director was right.
Overwhelming talent, sadly, that’s all there is to the world.

“…Okay, what are you curious about?”

“I want you to tell me about the other thing you guys have gathered in Busan…”

“…Ah, that thing, unfortunately, I don’t know either.”

“…”

“It’s not a lie.”

“…It seems like it’s true.”

I laugh heartily, seeing the man scratching the back of his head as if he’s annoyed.
I can’t hold back my laughter, I lost to a boy who is the same age as my daughter.
I lost to a monster who has the appearance of such a man.

“…Why are you doing that since a while ago?”

“…It’s just, there’s a story I heard from someone I knew before,
I wanted to prove that it was wrong. If that’s true, this world is too harsh.”

A world where talent is everything, and those who were born with talents that humans can never have.
Jung Ah-un, and the man in front of me. The humans of this world who have to live with these beings,
aren’t they too pitiful? To have to live without even noticing their own misfortune.

“…I don’t know what you’re talking about, but the world isn’t as harsh as you say.
Because there’s a separate world where those monsters live. In the first place, it’s a story from different worlds,
I don’t think you guys are particularly unhappy? I don’t know what reality is like…
But that’s what I think, I wasn’t that unhappy even when I didn’t have this power.”

“…You, how do you know what I’m thinking…”

“More than that, what else do you know about Busan? Nothing?”

“…I don’t know anything other than that the head of the Seoul branch we’re in right now went to Busan.”

The man is scratching his head again.
This man definitely said ‘until he got this power’.

“…Anyway, what I want to say is… if you stay far away,
if you don’t interfere in our world for no reason. Is there really a need to become dangerous?”

The small pupils visible beyond his mask.

“…I don’t really know.”

“Isn’t that how it usually is? I don’t even understand myself.
Why do you live so tired, caring so much about others when you’re busy trying to live yourself?”

“…Haha, just listening to you talk makes you sound like a 40-year-old old man.”

“…I hear that a lot.”

The man, who is dusting off the dust on his body, looks down at me one last time.

“Live normally, you can do that, right.”

“…What about you? Couldn’t you have lived normally too?”

“…I couldn’t live like that.”

After saying that, I watch the man hiding his body in the darkness until the end.
I finally take my eyes off the man who has completely disappeared into the darkness and look at the ceiling.

“…I don’t know either.”

Live normally, I’m sorry, but I can’t live like that either.
Talent or whatever, I got swept away by such nonsense, unlike myself…

“…”

…Let’s stop. I know very well that this isn’t something I should be doing.

“…Ouch…”