NOVEL WEB Chapter 179
Blanca’s condition, seen up close, was even more tragic and miserable than from afar.
The skeleton, which appeared to be haphazardly held together by black slime, still had some flesh attached in rare spots, and her hands and eyes were unnaturally trembling.
The grace and aura I usually felt from her were nowhere to be found, and above all, she looked mentally unstable.
“Finally… reinforcements have arrived, Boss! Boss! Wake up, the reinforcements are here! We don’t have to hold on anymore, right, Justitia?”
Just from her words, mentioning ‘us two’ and talking about Justitia, it was clear she was seeing hallucinations.
After all, there was nothing next to her.
Not even a clumsy slime that resembled a human. Blanca was just speaking to the empty air.
But whether she was conversing with her hallucinations or not, she continued to speak unilaterally.
If you listened carefully, parts of her speech seemed connected, almost as if she was genuinely having a conversation, but upon closer inspection, none of it made sense.
She was saying things like the glass got stuck, startling the bicycle, or telling the already dead Boss that everything was going well.
In a situation where we were clearly stepping on slime, she wasn’t even attacking us but was engrossed in talking to her own delusions.
Her condition was absolutely not normal.
The kids seemed to sense Blanca’s state to some extent, covering their mouths or mumbling in disbelief, each expressing their horror in different ways.
“C-Changwon. Wait, for a moment, just let me go a little…! Ah, no matter how crazy Blanca is, there’s no way she wouldn’t recognize me!”
But unlike the rest, Lapiz hadn’t lost faith in her yet, flailing around in the air, hoping that her memory would be revived if she saw him.
“Maha. I really think we shouldn’t let her go. But that’s just my opinion. What do you guys think?”
Changwon asked for our opinions while also clearly stating his own.
Honestly, I agreed. I thought Blanca might be in poor condition, but I never dreamed it would be this bad.
I couldn’t even imagine she would fall into such a miserable state. That Blanca…
For now, I suggested we temporarily leave her be and split up to explore the area.
However, I cautiously suggested giving her a chance since if we held Lapiz any longer, she might truly exert her power and release him to rush to Blanca.
While the others weren’t wholeheartedly on board, they seemed to share similar thoughts, so we decided to let Lapiz do as he wished for now.
“So that’s your opinion. In that case… I’ll let her go. However, if I sense anything ominous, I’m snatching her right back, so keep that in mind.”
“Got it, so let me down…!”
As soon as Lapiz was set down to the ground, she immediately dashed through the thick slime toward Blanca.
“Blanc…a? Blanca, it’s me! Lapiz…! Blan…”
Even in her frantic state, it seemed Lapiz hesitated to get too close to Blanca, preferring to keep some distance while trying to appeal to her actively.
“Who are you?”
But that solitary response from Blanca made Lapiz freeze instantly.
“I’m not acquainted with the Rescuer. Um, hey guys, what were you doing over there? No, more importantly, when did you get here? Ah, right. Rescue! W-We gotta go, Boss!”
It seemed that during that moment, Blanca’s sanity returned as she recognized us, but her gaze was directed at the wrong place.
Lapiz could only stare at her in shock, with a face like the sky was falling.
“This can’t be… this is impossible, Blanca! You’re not joking, are you? Blanca…”
Lapiz, seemingly in shock that Blanca didn’t recognize him, stood up unsteadily and staggered toward her.
Just when she was about to grab hold of the corpse Blanca was cradling, a chilling premonition crawled up my spine.
And almost simultaneously, I yanked her away from Blanca just in time.
Right after that, dozens of blades made of slime crossed where Lapiz had been standing.
No matter how you looked at it, if she had been standing there, she would have turned into a shish kebab!
“How dare you… how dare you touch her…!”
Blanca muttered with a savage look at Lapiz before gathering up more slime.
“Lapiz, snap out of it! Right now, Blanca isn’t the Blanca you knew!”
“But…”
Lapiz couldn’t seem to accept that Blanca had gone mad, still clinging to her memory.
But now it was clear. Blanca had gone insane. I wasn’t even sure if she could come back to her senses.
“Guys, restrain her!”
From nearby buildings, the ground, and her very essence, spikes of slime shot out, solely targeting Lapiz.
If she were sane, she would have blocked my path or poisoned me, but dodging those aimless attacks from her was quite manageable.
Moreover, since she had completely given up on defense, restraining her was not that hard.
However, what we didn’t expect was how fragile human bones are compared to our imagination and that Blanca had an unreasonably strong attachment to those bones.
While dodging the slime tentacles, I was suddenly pierced by a soul-piercing scream.
“Aaaah, aaah…!! No, no…!!! Boss, please wake up, no, no, no, please, please…!”
It turned out it was because the bone that Blanca had been cradling so tenderly had broken.
Blanca stopped everything she was doing and flailed her limbs, desperately trying to gather the bone pieces.
It was obvious why she wasn’t using the slime. Her right arm, made of slime, was losing its shape and melting away.
It seemed that she had suffered such a shock that she could no longer control the slime.
Since she referred to that skeleton as ‘Boss,’ was that skeleton perhaps her superior in her delusions?
Or was that skeleton the remains of that superior? Either way, it didn’t seem likely we’d get a reliable answer.
Blanca, who presumably knew everything, howled like a beast, just trying to gather the bone fragments.
“I don’t think we need to use any more force. Tera, Yukihana. I’m counting on you.”
Changwon, unable to endure watching Blanca any longer, turned his head and delegated the task to those two.
“Wouldn’t it be cold if I did it?”
Seolhwa pretended to be as indifferent as possible while creating an Ice Prison, but she was clearly trembling.
“Lapiz, if it’s too painful, you don’t have to do it.”
Though Changwon had asked Lapiz, it wasn’t because he thought she had to do it; he just knew she could construct it.
Changwon wasn’t that careless person from the beginning of the first semester anymore.
Thus, without any resistance, Blanca was confined inside the Ice Prison.
Still, Blanca was solely focused on piecing together the bone fragments.
But the more she tried, the more the slime disintegrated the bones.
In just a few minutes, the spot where she had been flailing around was left with only black slime.
“Ah…”
Desperately searching for the bone fragments, Blanca collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut once she could no longer find any pieces.
“B-Blanca? Are you okay…?”
Yeonhwa cautiously spoke to Blanca, but the one who hadn’t responded to Lapiz wasn’t about to now.
Lapiz still clung to Blanca as if not wanting to give in, but all Blanca could do was mumble.
“It’s… done now…”
At least Lapiz had something resembling a response, unlike Yeonhwa.
But that response didn’t seem like the answer she wanted or anything positive at all.
No matter how much I tried to interpret it positively, it just sounded like she didn’t care anymore.
“…At this rate, interrogation is impossible.”
“It can’t be helped… the suspect is in this state. The only silver lining is that the slimes aren’t actively attacking us.”
While it was a relief that the slimes were not hostile, their presence alone was misfortune for us.
These slimes seemed to dissolve practically any organic matter, just like they had with the bone fragments.
We could hardly dream of identifying the corpse and revealing its identity.
…And finding documents in a city where we didn’t even know where to start would be a real struggle.
Maybe the papers had already been digested, leaving us with almost no information to find.
“For now, we’ve secured Blanca. Let’s split up and search for information. Lapiz and Yeonhwa, you two keep an eye on Blanca.”
But this task had been included in the contract, so we might as well pretend to look for something.
“Uh, okay.”
We decided to let Blanca be for a moment, at least until she calmed down enough to talk to us.