The Espers Who Regretted Losing Me Chapter 110

Now that I knew the basilisk was in here, all I had to do was catch it.

The moment I carefully opened the door, I immediately reached into my pocket and pulled out the mirror.

Then I stepped into the archive, tightening both hands with all my strength.

Maybe because the blackout curtains worked so well, the inside was pitch dark.

The first things my sharpened sense of smell picked up were the dusty air and the scent of old paper. Right after that came the fishy smell unique to reptiles.

There was just one problem.

‘I don’t know exactly where it is.’

The presence I had felt outside the door was spread evenly throughout the archive, making it hard to tell its exact location.

‘Where is it hiding?’

It was so dark inside that I could barely make out anything in the shadows or deeper inside.

No matter how much my eyesight had improved, it was still difficult to see in a place with no light at all.

The one bit of good news was that the room wasn’t nearly as messy as I had expected.

If it had been wrecked like the other rooms, I would have had to lure the basilisk outside.

I carefully looked around, doing my best not to make a sound.

It happened when I reached the middle of the archive.

Just as I felt a tiny movement from inside my bag, I heard a sharp whoosh from above.

“…!”

The instant I ducked on instinct, something struck the exact spot where my head had been.

A thin piece of flesh with a split end.

A snake’s tongue.

The moment I instinctively looked up, I caught sight of a faint gleam in the darkness. I hurriedly looked away and moved to the side.

‘It was stuck to the ceiling!’

I had assumed it was curled up somewhere, so the thought that it might be clinging to the ceiling had never even crossed my mind.

‘Did the baby snakes in my bag start moving because they sensed their mother?’

That guess quickly became certainty.

The baby basilisks, which had briefly gone quiet, started thrashing around again.

Feeling an even stronger sense of danger, I rolled aside, and once again the tongue stabbed into the place where my head had just been.

After rolling this way and that several times, my irritation reached its limit.

‘Seriously, is this some kind of whack-a-mole game?!’

The pressure of not being allowed to make eye contact made this much harder than fighting an ordinary monster.

I held back because I was worried that making noise would provoke it even more, but I wanted to yell.

‘If this keeps up, I’ll run out of stamina first.’

I was barely dodging as it was. The moment my movements slowed, I’d be finished.

Rolling once more, I threw off my backpack, steadied myself, kicked off the wall, and leaped upward.

The ceiling was incredibly high, making it a close call, but somehow I managed to latch onto the basilisk’s neck.

But in that brief instant, our eyes met. Maybe because I was so close, my body started to stiffen even though I was wearing protective goggles.

The director had warned me that if our eyes ever met, I should never stay still and keep my whole body moving.

I wrapped my arms around the basilisk’s neck and struggled with my entire body while hanging in the air.

“Kiiiiik…!”

Maybe because I was using all my strength and my weight kept dragging it down, the basilisk began to struggle too.

‘Fall already… hurry!’

I had been ready in case it attacked with its tail, but instead the basilisk simply fell to the floor without much resistance.

In that moment, I quickly regained my balance and climbed onto the basilisk’s back in one motion.

The impact of hitting the floor sent dust flying everywhere, and my goggles shifted out of place.

The hair tie I had loosely tied earlier snapped as well, leaving my hair a complete mess.

Before I could even think about fixing my goggles, my body moved on its own.

Keeping one eye shut, I desperately pressed the mirror I was gripping against the basilisk’s eye.

“Kiiik! Kiiiiii!”

The method the director had taught me for defeating a basilisk was simple.

Reflect its petrification with a mirror.

Just like in the old legends, it really worked.

The only problem was that basilisks had some resistance to petrification, so it wouldn’t work from a distance.

I had to get close somehow.

That’s why I had charged in with a do-or-die attitude.

‘Thank goodness it’s weaker than I expected.’

It was even smaller than I had imagined.

Maybe this environment didn’t suit the basilisk, or maybe it still hadn’t recovered from injuries it had suffered fighting other monsters.

Either way, it worked in my favor.

The basilisk could barely resist. It only opened and closed its mouth as it cried out.

Not long after, the eye touching the mirror and half of its head turned to stone.

“Ki… ii… iik…!”

Its cries became strange, and it finally seemed to realize it was in danger.

When I moved the mirror to its other eye, its body lurched.

I pressed down on its head with all my weight and growled threateningly.

“Stay still, you brat!”

Kiiik, kiik, kyek, kek.

Its agonized screams mixed with the sound of air escaping.

Before long, I didn’t exactly feel the life fading away beneath my hands…

But I could tell its body was becoming hard, probably because it was turning to stone.

One minute, two minutes, three minutes passed.

After roughly five to seven minutes…

“Haa…”

The basilisk had completely turned to stone.

Only after knocking on its hardened head at least ten times did I finally relax.

My arms and legs ached from the effort of straining them so hard.

My hair was sticking to me, making me feel hot too.

Slowly getting to my feet, I looked over the basilisk’s body.

I was thinking how creepy it was that even its scales had turned to stone when something around the middle caught my eye.

‘A crack?’

That was strange.

It had only just turned to stone, but there was already a large crack across its body.

…Wait.

Don’t tell me it’s going to break free starting from there?

I hurriedly backed away, picked up the collapsible baton I had dropped while subduing the basilisk, and watched the crack carefully.

But even after some time, nothing happened.

In the end, I lightly tapped the crack with the tip of my baton. Pieces broke off with a clatter, and I clicked my tongue.

‘So that’s why it couldn’t fight back properly…’

What came out from inside the basilisk’s body were spiders.

All of them had turned to stone too, probably because of the petrification.

Whether the spiders had crawled inside on their own or the basilisk had eaten them, I didn’t know.

But most spider-type monsters carried deadly venom.

Along with the poor environment and its injuries, the poison had definitely kept it from moving properly.

‘At least it’s not coming back to life.’

I let out a sigh and picked up the bag I had left behind.

Then I took out the waterproof bundle I had carefully packed away.

The moment I looked inside, I froze.

‘They’re all stone.’

All twelve baby basilisks that had been wriggling around had turned to stone, just like their mother.

Maybe they hadn’t actually been babies.

Maybe they had been the basilisk’s clones… or something like that.

The ecology of monsters was so varied that something like that wouldn’t be surprising.

Pushing the image of those round-faced little snakes looking up at me out of my mind, I spread the bundle over the basilisk’s body.

But as the long stone figures tumbled out and shattered, I heard a strange little sound.

“Kkyuk…”

Looking down, I saw that one baby basilisk was still alive, panting weakly.

Then it looked up at me with an incredibly pitiful…

No, a truly heartbreaking expression.

“…”

A moment ago it had looked cute and fragile.

Now it only made me uneasy.

‘I forgot that some monsters pretend to be pitiful to lure people in.’

If it wasn’t something that could be raised from scratch but was actually one of the basilisk’s clones, taking it with me would only bring trouble.

If I let it go out of pity, there was every chance it would come back for revenge later.

So I decided to deal with it right here.

I quickly stepped on the snake’s tail and held the collapsible baton straight up.

The baby basilisk flicked its tongue and struggled in panic, but it had become so small that it couldn’t escape.

Just as I aimed at its head and was about to bring the baton down to finish it in one strike—

“Shaaaak!”

As if making one final desperate attempt, the baby basilisk let out a hiss with tears welling in its eyes.

At the same time, my body froze.