Chapter 257 – Reunion
While having a useless conversation with Gemanic, I once again glanced at the open sky that was not covered by leaves. If we delay here longer than this, the sun will set before we can get out of the forest.
I was full of desire to return as soon as possible, so I approached the girl who was still weeping while holding the corpse in her arms.
“Can I take a look at your father’s body?”
The girl looked at me with her red, swollen eyes.
“Sniff…”
“I’ll find the guy who made your father like this. So could you step aside for a moment?”
At my words, the girl seemed to think for a moment, then she moved away.
“Hey Natalie. Roin. Please check once.”
At my request, Natalia, Roin, and even others flocked to me.
It seems that everyone was curious about it.
As I watched Natalia and Roin examine the corpse, I heard the conversation between Trisian and Gemanic.
“You guys must have found the body first. What was the situation?”
“It is said that this is the place where the girl’s father usually gathers, so while she was on her way with the girl, she found the girl’s skinny father in this clearing. As soon as she found her father she screamed and before long you arrived.”
“Hmm…”
It becomes a story that the information we have is the same as the genetic one.
“Roin, how are you?”
“Hmm… Here, can you see this?”
Roin pointed at Namseo’s thigh.
There was a round hole in her thigh, wide enough for a finger to pass through easily.
“Hole… ?”
“Look at the thigh on the other side.”
“Hmm…”
There are identical marks on both thighs.
This time Natalya pointed at her abdomen.
“I have the same marks on my stomach.”
“What kind of mark is this?”
“It must have something to do with the corpse being parched. At least it seems it turns out that it wasn’t done by humans.”
She nodded at Roin’s words.
The fact that the girl’s father became such a withered mummy less than a few days after his disappearance is at least not something done by humans. Okay,
There’s no way people can do this.
“Isn’t Natalya picking something up?”
“Because there are not just one or two types of monsters… I’m fine too… Looking at the holes in its body and its skinny condition, it seems like a blood-sucking monster.”
“Hmm… Wouldn’t it be nice to bring Elena-san?”
Since she is knowledgeable about monsters, she must have figured out which monster did it just by looking at this corpse.
However, she cannot bring her because she has work to do with Thermia regarding the Spider Queen.
Even if you feel sorry for someone who doesn’t have it, there’s nothing you can do about it.
“Uh… Are these footprints?”
“Huh?”
Roin tilted her head and pointed to the floor.
On the floor, I could see traces of something round the size of a basketball dragged on the floor and dots along the sides.
The marks from the corpse’s thighs and abdomen led to the middle-aged pharmacist at the edge of the clearing.
He opened his eyes round, as if embarrassed, as his gaze focused on him.
“Why, why?”
“Move aside.”
“Ah yes. Aigoo, why is my throat so thirsty all of a sudden…”
The pharmacist stepped aside and gulped down the water that was in his waistband.
I looked at the marks under his feet. The trail leading to the bush disappeared without a trace in front of the tree.
“It disappeared in front of a tree.”
I couldn’t understand what the hell this trail was or why it had disappeared in front of the tree.
Just then, a voice full of tension was heard from one of the security guards.
“Hey, hey, pharmacist. On your back that… ?”
“Yes? What’s on my back… ?”
All the party’s eyes turned to the pharmacist’s back.
A large red oval orb was wriggling on his back.
“Eww… Ugh… ?”
The pharmacist gave a moan, then closed his eyes and fell to the floor. I could see his cheeks and eyes sunk in an instant.
“It’s a fucking giant bedbug!”
One of the guards cursed and struck a giant bedbug on the pharmacist’s back with the spear he was holding.
He seemed to have driven his snout quite deep into the pharmacist’s back, and he showed no sign of letting go.
“W-Where’s that big one… ?”
The body is large and the legs are small. Its movement is also slow, so it doesn’t seem easy to climb on a human body.
Then…
The traces on the floor are because the floor is dirt. If that were the case, there would be no way to leave marks on anything other than the dirt floor. The meaning of the disappearance in front of the tree was very obvious.
I looked up at the tree.
“This fuck.”
“Ugh.”
At the top of the tree, among the green leafy branches, clusters of red balls hung.
Seeing those red bedbugs, the old man made a disgusted impression.
Trissian stretched out his arm and pulled his men behind him back to the center of the clearing, where it was safe and free of bed bugs.
“Step back!”
“You fucking bugs!”
The guard brandished a spear to get rid of bedbugs on the pharmacist’s back, spitting out disgust.
When a person has just collapsed, it is natural to take off the bugs on his back to save him.
It was very likely that he didn’t listen to Trician’s instructions because he was so excited to see a person fall in front of him.
He probably didn’t even know that his head was infested with bed bugs.
The sharp blade of the spear he wielded sucked the pharmacist’s blood and ripped open the stomach of the bedbug.
The blood that filled the gaps like that splattered like a fountain and soaked the body and floor of the guard.
The pressure must have been quite strong, so the guard dropped his spear and grabbed his face.
“Ah! My eyes!!”
“That fool!”
“No!”
I caught Trissian as he was about to jump forward to fetch the guards. As soon as she grabbed her, her bedbugs, which had been hanging from her tree, fell and clung to the body of the guard.
Perhaps if he hadn’t caught Trician, she would have clung to her as well.
Perhaps the gripping force of the bed bugs was quite strong, but the security guard shook his body with dozens of giant bed bugs attached to his body, but not a single one fell off.
“Aaah!! What!! What power! Away!”
Their snouts, sharp like needles, burrowed into the body of the guard. The guard’s body shrank in an instant.
The movement of the guy hanging from his abdomen was strange. Something like a sharp awl glittered at the tip of the guy’s stomach.
The sharp awl pierced the guard’s stomach.
And the guy moved his body as if he was injecting something.
“Huge! Kuck!”
A white liquid poured out of the guard’s mouth, which was drying up and twisting his blood.
Everyone looked at the scene in silence.
The guard immediately rolled his eyes and fell to the floor just like the pharmacist.
The giant bed bugs, apparently sucking all the blood, fell from the corpse and dragged their chubby stomachs toward the trees.
He must be thinking of hanging from a tree like before.
Natalia’s steel skeletons moved towards the bed bugs.
No matter how much these disgusting bugs cling to a person’s body and suck blood, they are speechless in front of a skeleton that has nothing to suck on because it has only bones.
Skeletons strode closer and stabbed the slowly crawling bed bugs with their knives.
Red blood was splattered all over the floor.
“Ugh, the smell of blood.”
The fishy smell of iron seemed to numb my nose.
“I-I’ll let you go now…”
“Ah…”
Trisian’s voice suddenly brought me to my senses. As she tried to run away, she grabbed her as hard as she could, and her body was wrapped tightly around her waist from behind.
As soon as Trissian was released from her mine, she looked at the body of the guard and she sighed heavily.
“Ha…”
“What are you going to do? The pharmacist is dead, and time is running out.”
“Um… These bed bugs have nothing to do with disappearances… To be honest, we haven’t even found a clue to the current disappearance. Trouble…”
A girl’s stunned voice came from behind.
“Ah, these bugs… Killed my father… ?”
“I have nothing to say…”
My mother shook her head and patted her on the shoulder as she sat looking at the dead body of bed bugs.
“Originally, are casualties caused by giant bedbugs frequent in this forest?”
It was Gemanic who asked that question. Trissian shook her head at that question.
“It is not, um… I honestly don’t know. There are so many missing persons around the Westway.”
“Are there many disappearances?”
“It’s about a criminal organization. It was all settled a while ago.”
The criminal organization that Trisian is talking about is the Black Moon of a while ago.
In the case of a missing person near the Westway, the security team is not dispatched. Most of it was the work of the Black Moon.
No one knows how many accidents were actually caused by monsters among the numerous disappearance cases.
It is a story that it is difficult to know whether the disappearance case that is taking place near the southwest forest is a case that has been happening from the beginning or a new case.