Chương 13: Chapter 3 : The Price of Becoming a Witch(Part 4)

The countdown reached zero. The Three-Eyed creature dropped.

"Sei!" The decomposition rod sliced downward. There was almost no resistance. The weapon passed cleanly through what I assumed was the creature's head, leaving a single vertical crack behind. The lack of impact nearly threw me off balance. I stumbled forward, barely avoiding collision with the monster itself. For a human, the wound would have been fatal. For a monster? Who knew. I quickly pulled out my smartphone and snapped several photographs. Evidence mattered.

Nobody outside would believe a word of this otherwise. After that, I recorded a short video while keeping my distance. The creature never moved. Never screamed. Never retaliated. Instead, its body gradually dissolved into particles of darkness. When the process finished, only two objects remained. A dark crystal shaped like an elongated octahedron. And a spear. The headache in my skull intensified. Still, both items were too valuable to leave behind. I stored them. Instant regret followed.

"Agh... damn it." My mind felt cluttered. Images of every stored object floated through my consciousness in chaotic fragments. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. The pain wasn't unbearable. Just constant. Annoying. I lit a cigarette and took a long drag. The nicotine didn't actually help. Or maybe it did. At that point, I couldn't tell anymore. According to Soutsu, I was currently on Floor One. The exit lay somewhere beyond Floor Five.

Ordinarily, I would have continued downward. But there was a problem. Time. I checked my watch. 6: 30 PM. My transformation would begin at midnight. Technically, Soutsu had granted me one final day in my original body. Realistically, that meant I had less than six hours. The remaining floors could be enormous. Exploring them blindly would be suicide. Especially when another crisis was already approaching. Ten days. That was all humanity had before the overflow event. I needed allies. Information. Preparation.

None of that could happen if I died inside a dungeon. Which left only one sensible choice. The escape item. Besides, there was something else. Something personal.

"This is the last time I'll talk to Rina like this." My wife. The woman who had spent two decades beside me. The woman who would wake up tomorrow and discover her husband had become a girl. That conversation deserved to happen face-to-face.

"Yeah," I muttered.

"Decision made." I stored the baton and imagined the evacuation device. A crystal sphere roughly the size of a golf ball appeared in my palm. Simple. Elegant. Probably expensive. I closed my fingers around it and imagined the outside world. The future wasn't clear. But my priorities were. Gather allies. Warn people. Find the overflow Gate. Stop whatever came out. Light enveloped my body. A sensation similar to riding an elevator downward swept through me. Then— The stone walls vanished. Reality returned.

I was standing outside the Gate. Police vehicles. Fire engines. Ambulances. Emergency lights painted the area in red and blue. Apparently, people had noticed the giant impossible hole in reality. Imagine that. The crystal remained in my hand. I quickly stored it inside the ring. The resulting headache nearly dropped me to my knees. Too much. Way too much. I sank onto one knee and looked around. Someone spotted me immediately.

"Someone's out!"

"Get medical over here!" Several responders rushed toward me. Fair enough. From their perspective, I was the first confirmed survivor of an unknown phenomenon.

"Can you hear me?" one of them asked.

"Can you speak?"

"Headache," I answered.

"Bad one. Let me lie down. Questions later." The paramedics wasted no time. Within minutes, I was loaded into an ambulance and connected to enough monitoring equipment to launch a small satellite. Name. Birth date. Address. The usual questions followed. I answered all of them. Eventually, I arrived at a nearby hospital. The examinations took hours. Blood work. Scans. Neurological tests. The works. Nothing abnormal appeared. No injuries. No signs of illness. No explanation for the headache.

Eventually, they transferred me into a private room. I checked the clock. A little after ten at night. Not good. Midnight was approaching. Fast. I called over a nurse.

"Is my wife here?" She blinked.

"The woman listed as your emergency contact?"

"Yeah. Her."

"I don't know if she's still waiting. Visiting hours are over."

"Please check." I hesitated. Then added:"And tell the doctor something. At midnight, something important is going to happen. Either have him present or get a camera ready." The nurse gave me a look that suggested she'd heard stranger things today. Which, considering the giant reality-breaking Gate outside, was entirely possible.

"I'll pass the message along." She left. The moment the door closed, I started unloading items from the ring. The storage box. The medicine. The resource catalog. Everything went into the closet. The spear was too long, so I slid it beneath the bed. Almost immediately, the headache eased. Thank God. At least that problem had a solution. Now there was only one thing left to do. Wait for midnight. Wait for the transformation. A knock came at the door.

"Come in." The door opened. A doctor stepped inside. Behind him stood a woman. My wife. Rina. Her eyes were red. Swollen. She'd been crying. Of course she had. I'd disappeared into a supernatural death trap for half a day. Seeing her like that hurt more than any headache. The doctor remained silent. Rina stared at me. I stared back. There was a lot to explain. An impossible Gate. Monsters. Immortality. A future as a Witch.

And the rather important detail that, in less than two hours, her husband was going to become a completely different person. Honestly? I had no idea where to start.