CH 4

“…to die like this? I’m just trying to live my life, like this?”

My inner feelings came out in a voice without knowing how desperate I was. But no matter what I said, there was silence in the hallway with no one to answer.

I wanted to live. There was no reason. If I had to find a reason, my mom and dad died in a car accident.

It must have been very sick and sad when they died. At least I don’t want to die in pain.

The pale fingers resting on her lap lazily bent into fists. It was such a small hand that I wondered who I could deal with.

But it’s okay.

The character Lemony had a thinner frame than the average woman, but she did not feel pain. This trait caused her to have an eccentric personality comparable to a psychopath, but it wasn’t bad for her survival.

At least it won’t hurt.

All right, let’s get up.

After a while, I got up and pulled the sword from my waist. I thought this would work, but it would be better to go down than sit down without any countermeasures.

I went down the stone steps carefully, but whenever the soles touched the floor, I heard the unpleasant sound of damp dust being crushed. I went down to the 6th floor like that, but the view was the same.

Torches lighted intermittently in the abyss-like hallway without windows. Most of the prisoners confined in Building B were beast-type monsters. It seemed that the window itself was not created because there was a possibility of escape from the window due to its excellent sense of smell or physical ability.

The hallway was clean. No, there was nothing in here other than useless lumps of dust and spiders crawling up the ceiling.

But the moment I turned my head to take a closer look, the whole hallway vibrated with a huge roar. At the same time, my whole body shook. I felt like my brain was shaking. At the same time, the fluff of my arm pouted, and my heart screamed like crazy.

It was time to pretend not to know my face was pale and hold the dagger with both hands. Once again, a faint roar echoed across the hall.

The roar continued for a certain amount of time. Something was strange. I realized that it was the sound of footsteps after facing a figure that popped out through the shadows.

“Senior Lemony! Help me!”

He was a man dressed as a prison officer. The light from the torch reflected the dense legs crawling across the ceiling above the man running so madly that the arms and legs could not be seen.

It was a giant centipede, like an airplane seen up close.

Thirty pairs of legs with black hair stuck like thorns moved like snakes. Its tail, made of glossy black shell, was making a thud, thump sound as if it could fall off the wall at any moment, as if it couldn’t withstand its own heavy weight.

The terrifying yet strange monster looked at me and hesitated for a moment.

It seemed that our eyes met.

The pupils, which had few whites, were reflected by the fire and shiny. Standing upside down like a bat and checking me, then came down to the floor as if it were going to fall and chased after us as if it were going to attack us.

It seemed that the prey had doubled and become more aggressive.

Unfortunately, my painlessness is not proportional to my fear.

Somehow, I ran away with my prison officer colleague, and bit my lower lip until it bled.

“Officer Lemony! Senior!”

My lungs were beating so fast that they burst like balloons when a vicious scream erupted from behind me.

“Se-Senoir!”

The prison officer was crying and limping. It was evident that his legs had lost strength.

In the movie, the person who helped the injured person dies first.

“…..run fast.”

This useless conscience. I thought about running away and leaving him for about half a second, but my heart weakened when I saw the man’s tears, so I hurriedly pulled his wrist.

The monster that followed us was characterized by its centipede-like appearance. I think I’ve read it in the novel.

“Third-class beast prisoner?”

When I asked just in case, he replied, who had followed me with difficulty.

“Huh, yes, yes…”

My prediction was correct.

It was a senafi. It was a demon who accidentally escaped from prison while climbing the ceiling as a third-class designated prisoner. At the beginning of the work, there were two extras that Deon killed, which were Senafi and me. According to the description in the novel, it seems that it was said to have ‘cast iron legs in the pupils of a centipede’.

“You have a sword, right? You have to poke both eyes of that monster with your sword.”

The man freaked out at my words.

“If I could, would I have run away? Anyway, Senior Lemony. Did you put the shackle on the first-class prisoner?”

This man had no intention of fighting. He’s a prison officer. How can he be so poor? I had no choice but to glance away, and a long thin thread was touching the heel of my boot. It was the antennae of a giant centipede.

I got goosebumps all over my body.

“If you can’t do it, run!”

“Aren’t you a senior? Please solve all of them, whether they’re first-class prisoners or a senafi!”

Looking at his height similar to Deon’s, he seemed to be a bit clumsy in size, but he seemed timider than me.

“Why are you doing this! Ah! Don’t stick to me!”

“Senior, why are you suddenly doing this to me when you speak formally inappropriately?”

He finally grabbed me by the shoulder and stuck to me. He seemed to think that he had a place to lean on because he was probably higher in rank.

The problem started here. After a push-and-stick fight, I tripped over his leg. With a shrieking scream, my vision plummeted to the floor. When I looked up, the man had already run away.

“Se- Senior Lemony! Hang in there somehow! I’ll find someone to help right away!”

“Huh.”

It was ridiculous, but it wasn’t the time to lament.

I held the sword with my trembling hand, and suddenly I got goosebumps from my back.

“….?”

Water dripped over the top of my head. When I touched my hair with a strange feeling, something muddy stretched like cheese and flowed through my fingers.

What’s this?

….Saliva?

A sudden roar hit my ear. Fear dominated the whole body. When I came to my senses, a huge shadow covered my palms and knees supporting the floor.

No way.

….No way.

[Emergency detected. Prison officers and all staff, please calm the prisoners and keep stay in your place. An emergency has been detected…]

In the midst of the silence, the emergency bell started ringing again.

It was a monster. Tears streamed down my cheeks from physiological fear as I realized that a giant centipede was behind my back. But I had to live. How did she survive until this point? It was too unfair to die because of monsters.

“Eyes, you have to attack the eyes…”

Ignoring my chattering teeth, I raised my head, and black pupils with no whites filled my field of vision.

“Queaeaek!”

I thrust my sword into the monster that opened its mouth. A painful moan flowed from the other side, as if it had been stabbed right into the throat. But there was no time.

It was because the monster’s crocodile-like jaw muscles were crushing the sword.

“Ah…”

Suddenly, I felt stupid when I tried to go downstairs with a sword.

You’re no match.

If you’re going to die like this with just one monster, how did you think of running to the first floor? So I’m going to die now? To die in an instant like this?

There was something hot around my eyes. Was it unfair? Afraid?

Or did I resent myself for being born as a weed and having only this much vitality?

“Queaeaek-!”

The roar was heard again, I eventually burst into tears. But I had to live. It was just as I, who closed one eye due to black bloodstains, managed to pull out the sword and try to pierce its eye again.

Something fast and huge attacked the monster and me. I fell on my back in disbelief, and at some point, I heard a strange sound like the wind escaping, and something heavy fell next to me.

Sharp fangs were lodged in the eyes of the monster.

The monster whose eyes were pierced was swung here and there by someone like a herbivore that had been hunted, and then fell somewhere.

It was a black panther.

I couldn’t capture the existence of a huge sense of pressure and weight in my view. But just by the eerie glow of blood-colored eyes in the dark, I could tell it was Deon.

As soon as I made eye contact with the divine beast, I felt an overwhelming thrill and fear at the same time. For a moment, I realized that I had invaded an area that I should not dare to enter.

The black shadow reflected on the torch came one step closer to me. As I shrugged in the wind, I unconsciously wrapped my hand around the whistle.

Deon’s steps stopped when he was about to approach me. But he walked again, squeezing me with a subtly tapered gaze, as if I had made a mistake.

He wasn’t trying to help me. He seemed a little uncomfortable about giving his prey to some Senafi or something.

I have to run away. I need to move my legs to do something.

From the moment I encountered the eyes of a clear beast, my whole body did not move. I felt like a deer caught in a trap.

Take it easy.

It was only then that I realized that I was holding a whistle.

“Stop right now, Deon.”

When I raised my intermittent trembling hand and blew the whistle, the sharp sound of a woman’s scream hit everywhere in the hallway.

The red afterimage, which was so intense that my neck stiffened, seemed to have instilled a magic I could not move.

“Anyway, Senior Lemony. Did you put the shackle on the first-class prisoner?”

However, people emit adrenaline when they feel death threats.

That’s what happened to me now.

The words of the runaway man quickly crossed my mind as I made eye contact with the divine beast. It was this. I searched around my jacket and felt something cold, metallic, in the back pocket of my trousers.

It was a large shackle made the size of a black panther’s front foot. It was the shackle that the man said.

In 『The Shackles on My Hands』, which is an R-19 romance, devices for making love in prison are placed here and there. The shackles must be the prop to elevate the charm of Deon, who is a prisoner. That must have been the original author’s intention.

But I had to put the shackles on that black panther in order to live. If you put the shackles on the black panther’s front foot, the hole in the shackles will be smaller and reduced to the size of Deon’s wrist as a human.

The shackle blocked the prisoner’s demonic energy. So, Deon will no longer be able to turn into a black panther.

Even Deon, who became a human, was terrifying as well, but a human was better than a beast.

“…Deon, think of it as a bracelet. Put it in. Sorry.”

I wasn’t in a position to be sorry. However, my apology involuntarily popped out at the blazing stare.