Boy Monster Chapter 86

The assistant threw off his fedora and looked around. The side of his head and forehead, revealed after taking off the hat, were sunken in.

Had there been an ambush or a terrorist attack while I was out of my mind!

However, there was no scent of blood at all. He was someone well-acquainted with the smell of blood. Furthermore, when he checked the breathing of the Doctor, who was lying facedown, it was as stable as if he were sleeping. If it was a terrorist attack targeting the military ministers, why was everyone fallen into a deep sleep? What on earth was happening. Am I dreaming? Have I come to the afterlife?

Clearly, in my memory, we dissected the only psychic in Joseon and even opened his head… and now only the funeral remained.

The assistant, peering here and there through the darkness, crawled across the floor toward the experimental table. However, the corpse atop the table was clean without a single scalpel mark, other than the fact that all the fingers and toes had been cut off.

No, it wasn’t even a corpse! Seeing the chest rise and fall as it inhaled and exhaled, the assistant tumbled back in shock. The elderly man with his fingertips and toes cut off was alive.

Have I truly gone mad! It is too vivid to be a dream! He hurriedly pulled open the man’s shirt. There was no sign of the flesh having been cut at all. When he checked the pulse, it too was stable. To think he wouldn’t wake even with this much shaking; he was either injected with drugs or in a vegetative state, it was one of the two.

Then, did someone put everyone to sleep with drugs…? To capture them alive? Who… who knew about this site and attacked, administering sleeping pills to the people? And why wasn’t it administered to me?

It was beyond the assistant’s ability to figure out the circumstances. For now, he had to wake Doctor Gallia and get out of here. Hiding in a safe place was the priority. He shook the Doctor violently. However, he did not wake from his sleep even when his cheeks were slapped or his collar was shaken.

Left with no choice but to think of escaping alone, the assistant hunched his body tightly and crawled across the floor. While crawling along the stone path past the sprawled-out soldiers, he discovered three luggage bags placed outside Injeongmun Gate. Fortuitously, there were anesthesia restoratives inside the bags. He quickly gathered the bags and ran back to the Doctor. Upon administering the injection, Doctor Gallia opened his eyes with a start.

“Doctor. We must flee. It seems a terrorist attack has occurred here.”

“What? Ugh… I knew something would happen!”

The Doctor looked around, set aside his doubts, and prioritized taking refuge. Approaching the Doctor who was fleeing in a flurry, the assistant spoke.

“But it’s strange. We performed the dissection, but the corpse is clean. Could an intruder have made off with the psychic’s body?”

“…Why are you only saying that now!”

The Doctor hurriedly turned back and ascended the Woldae terrace. Based on the judgment formed from the fake memories injected by Jae Eunho, the man sleeping on the experimental table was not the psychic they had dissected. If that was the case…! If they fled while knowing of these suspicious circumstances, they could be misunderstood as having been complicit in this matter.

“You stupid brat. Why should we run away by ourselves and get framed! I will interrogate this man and find out what those bastards are after, so you wake the Excellencies instead!”

The man lying on the experimental table had his hands and feet all bound by iron chains. With trembling hands, the Doctor plunged a syringe into the man’s neck. After a short moment while the liquid circulated through the veins and took effect, the man lying on the experimental table opened his eyes.

Everything that followed happened in an instant. An unknown force strangled the breath out of Doctor Gallia and the assistant.

The assistant, who had been climbing the stone steps of Injeongjeon Hall, collapsed on the spot. Their faces, strangled by psychokinesis, swelled up black and red. The iron chains that had bound the man’s hands and feet were all broken. The man, sitting on the edge of the experimental table, looked around at the situation atop the Woldae and spoke.

“Anesthetic. A medicine that can replace the pill.”

The former head of the family, who had opened his eyes at the threshold of death, followed an instinct faster than judgment. I must find Jae Eunho. The one who possesses Jae Eunho’s ability wins. Think about the rest after that.

The terrified Doctor pointed to the syringe inside the luggage bag. The old general plunged the needle into the Doctor’s neck without delay. The assistant, who was rushing in while pulling out a gun, was slammed down by an invisible force and tumbled below the Woldae. After confirming that the Doctor’s body and mind were going limp, the former head lifted the syringe with psychokinesis and put it in his pocket.

As the man who had been sitting on the experimental table vanished in an instant, the spot became empty.

He was one who possessed the abilities of Poong Hwelju and Ji Hwelju, and the 1st-rank ability of Ji Hwelju was teleportation.

In the dark palace, a man wearing a blood-stained suit appeared and disappeared suddenly. The man who appeared abruptly inside the pavilion vanished again without a trace. The man moved deep into the palace in that manner. Bloodstains soaked the palace gates and the courtyards. Only a deserted darkness circulated the palace….

Inside the locked doors of Gyujanggak, it was pitch black. One could not have noticed even if someone with severed toes appeared by teleporting while floating above the floor. A heavy impact struck the head of Jae Eunho, who was sitting cross-legged in the darkness.

Blood flowed from the back of Jae Eunho’s head as he fainted without even a chance to look back. Among the methods to counter Jae Eunho’s ability, the foremost was to make him lose consciousness.

The former head of the family broke a white porcelain jar that was in the room. Crawling on his knees toward the Manshin, he lifted a sharp shard. The moment the Manshin, whose arm was deeply cut, opened her eyes, blood burst from her nose and scattered high. A scream escaped her from the strong force pressing her head down with a knee inside her removed gokkal hat. The former head threatened in a brutal voice.

“Transfer the talisman on my back to Sa Yeonri. Quickly. Right now!”

At the time Jae Eunho’s resonance was at the telephone office, Jang Hwonwoo, who was flying low in the darkness and looking down over the wall of Injeongjeon Hall, discovered the empty experimental table.

A coffin that fell from the sky was slammed down next to the experimental table.

The two men who were dawdling around Injeongjeon holding syringes looked back at the Woldae, startled by the loud noise. The Doctor and the assistant looked up at the silhouette blocking the moonlight. Without delay, bullets were lodged exactly in the center of the two men’s foreheads.

There were six bullets in total that accurately hit the foreheads. Doctor Gallia and the assistant had their heads pierced by three gunshots each. The two men, who were blown across the Woldae by powerful psychokinesis, struck a stone brazier and met their deaths as they lay there.

After the shadow flying through the night sky disappeared like an arrow in the direction of Gyujanggak, a torch fell over the Doctor’s corpse.

The guests of Injeongjeon woke up one by one. Prince Euichin, who had regained consciousness, saw the coffin rolling beside the empty experimental table.

Something has gone wrong… This is not the time for people to be waking up. While the King agonized over how to deal with this, the flames that burned Doctor Gallia’s corpse were spreading to the luggage bags.

As flames surged with a flash beside the Irworobongdo screen, the Empress screamed and was driven out of her wits. The military ministers, having come to their senses, raised their voices and called in the troops.

A few purple butterflies took flight from atop the roof of Seonwonjeon.

Jae Eunho called for Jang Hwonwoo. The sky where the butterflies were sent was a darkness without a moon, trees, or palace eaves. He saw a hallucination of blood pouring from the back of his head, forming a river. Eunho opened his eyes in the darkness where blood was everywhere.

Jae Eunho was being dragged along by psychokinesis while collapsed on the floor. He could not properly steady his body due to the strong effect of the pill. Even though he tried to move both feet, his body would not listen.

“I’m going to go and pin all the treasonous conspiracy acts on Jang Hwonwoo. In the meantime, Eunho, don’t even think about escaping and just play the role of a hostage quietly.”

Feeling a void in his leg, he lowered his head. Soon, at the sight that entered his eyes, Jae Eunho fell into a shock as if his breath were being sucked into a single point. The leg below his left knee was gone.

Blood pouring from the ghastly, torn-away spot was whipping through the air, mixing with the soil. The head of the family was flying the blood-stained soil far away to erase the traces. Not a trace could be found of the burst flesh, muscle, or shattered bone fragments. Pain arrived late, like an obligation. Jae Eunho’s pale lips began to tremble.

“You know that psychokinesis isn’t just for moving objects here and there, right, Eunho. Exploding a single leg is nothing. When I want to kill someone, breaking the ribs does the trick quickly…”

“…My name… don’t call it.”

Jae Eunho grit his teeth with a body that was trembling uncontrollably.

“A traitorous murderer has no right to call my name.”

“In my opinion, you have no need for not only your leg but also that flamboyant tongue. Nor that head that devises treacherous schemes.”

The former head, who was heading toward the rear garden over the Seonwonjeon wall, came to a stop. He lifted Jae Eunho’s chin with the top of his foot. Psychokinesis forced Eunho’s mouth wide open.

“You try to kill me? Me? Plotting with that Jang Hwonwoo fellow…! You two must have engaged in sodomy. If you’ve joined your bellies, it wouldn’t have been just once or twice. To think you’ve been eye-to-eye and joining your private parts in that house, it makes me nauseous. Jang Hwonwoo, that foolish idiot. To be bewitched by a guy trying to seek revenge and volunteer for the path to the yellow springs…. At any rate, a man without judgment is ruined because of his crotch. Blinded by a moment’s lust…!”

Just as a sharp porcelain shard that flew from afar was about to touch the tip of Eunho’s tongue, the former head’s glaring pupils froze.

Inside his chest, with a crack, crunch, bones shattered. The shattered and shriveled collarbone stabbed his lungs and heart one after another.

…How did he find me?

The former head, who had intended to neutralize Jang Hwonwoo by using Jae Eunho as bait, stopped breathing in excruciating pain. Losing his ability in an instant and collapsing on the floor, he gasped for breath, his mouth flickering.

In the black sky that entered his vision, butterflies were fluttering about.

Butterflies…?

Military boots thudded onto the courtyard. Jang Hwonwoo’s eyes landed on Jae Eunho’s overcoat, which was soaked bright red. Upon discovering the left leg, only half of which remained beneath the hem of the clothes, Jang Hwonwoo’s complexion turned as pale as if he had seen a ghost.

He turned toward the former head, who was vomiting up masses of blood. Jang Hwonwoo’s two eyes were not those of a human, just like the appearance that had briefly passed by at dawn.