How to Survive as an Extra

Chapter 108

Go Minhwa’s voice trembled with a wistful fragility.

“Will you take me outside the village?”

The arms wrapped around my waist were loose, yet warm.

What kind of reaction was I supposed to give to someone of the opposite sex who appealed this aggressively?

I turned it over in my head for a moment, but the effort proved ridiculous when a sneer slipped from the corner of my mouth.

“Hah.”

Because Go Minhwa’s acting was laughable.

“So this is how you lured Hunters in. Your hobby is rather vicious, is it not?”

“W-what are you suddenly talking about?”

Go Minhwa took a step back.

Then, drawing that characteristic smile across her face, she continued.

“Did you suddenly have some other idea?”

“There is no way I would. I am just thinking that watching your performance, you are not much different from a Demonic Being.”

“……”

“You plant infatuation in a softhearted man, then trample that emotion and its thrill, and finally devour him as if to show it off. That is the truth behind the missing persons cases in this village.”

I studied Go Minhwa’s expression.

The corners of her lips struggled to maintain the smile, but her eyes were already guarding against me.

“You probably never intended to approach me from the start. The fact that you told me you ‘accidentally overheard’ what the village chief said is proof. Because you were not close enough to overhear me and the chief.”

“……”

“In other words, it means you have a connection that lets you hear the chief even from far away. For example, the relationship between a Demonic Being and a Ghoul.”

It was highly likely that Go Minhwa’s first target had been Monica.

Among the awakened beings visiting this village, she was the one exuding the most vast mana.

But seducing Monica, who was distracted by her games, would have been difficult, so she must have shifted her interest to me, Monica’s companion.

Of course, I was assimilating with environmental mana, but that only meant I possessed abnormally faint mana compared to my companion, which would have drawn Go Minhwa’s curiosity.

The fact that I had been openly behaving suspiciously must have helped as well.

“M-might you be misunderstanding something? I was nearby, you know. And a Demonic Being…”

“Well, even if I said I could not sense your mana back then, there is no way to prove it. Then how about this? The reason a dispatched blacksmith does not reside in a village this close to the barrier.”

“That is only because, given the village’s sentiments, it would have been burdensome to have an outsider live here.”

“Burdensome? In a village that makes its living from lodging? No, it is because you did not want the blacksmith to discover the village’s secret. Even deceiving a new blacksmith dispatched each month would have been trouble.”

By now, Go Minhwa had pressed her lips tightly together.

Her eyes narrowed sharply.

“Not only that. The wild strawberry candy containing toxins that encourage drunkenness, the residents who, for some reason, do not come out under sunlight like ghouls, and the blue flame you conjured a moment ago… Every single one of those clues reveals that you are not human. Or rather, shall I call you a gumiho.”

“……”

A gumiho, the familiar monster that inevitably appeared in fantasy settings.

In this world, a fox-shaped beast-type monster that repeatedly drank human blood gained intelligence like a higher species.

In the case of the monster calling itself Go Minhwa…

“It looks like you have not devoured a thousand humans yet. I can tell just by your tails. You have only managed to show eight.”

The condition for a gumiho to fully reveal nine tails was to drink human blood a thousand times.

Yet the tails of mana visible only through the Demonic Eye seemed to be approaching a ninth tail.

Go Minhwa stared at me without a word.

Her expression carried a peculiar, eerie quality one only saw in Eastern culture.

If she had been wearing a white funeral shroud, it would not have felt strange at all if she tore out my heart on the spot.

Without showing it, I continued in a low voice.

“Targeting the mana stones of Hunters who returned after hunting beyond the barrier was your way of preventing suspicion from piling up, I presume. The mana in mana stones can satisfy monsters quite well. Am I wrong?”

“…I did think you were not ordinary.”

Go Minhwa’s voice split sharply.

It sounded as though a human voice and a beast’s howl had been mixed together.

Then, the tails that had been visible only through the Demonic Eye materialized behind her like a peacock’s fan.

At the same time, her face twisted grotesquely as a fox’s snout thrust out. When she lunged to swallow me with that maw, I reflexively widened the distance.

“Tch!”

I avoided the attack easily enough, but because I moved so abruptly, the hood that had been hiding my face slipped off.

“The Demonic Eye… So you are that rumored Special Affairs Division probationary investigator. Then the woman who came with you must be Special Affairs as well.”

“Thank you for recognizing me, but since things have come to this, how about you surrender quietly?”

“You mean you think you can defeat me? Hah, after so long I have finally found proper prey, so there is no way I will let you have your way. I will chew your heart into pieces and lick every inch of your skin. Then I will chew up that arrogant bitch as well.”

Perhaps because of her voice, the threat was especially savage.

But I did not think I would lose to a gumiho that did not even have nine tails.

More than anything, according to the settings, her primary attribute was darkness.

As long as I held the advantage in attributes, she was neither more nor less than an opponent worth testing my skill against.

“How considerate of you. Unfortunately, there is only one thing I can do for you… make you pay the price for taking the blood of hundreds.”

With the Mist-Clearing Sword in my hand, I released mana and let it erode the surroundings.

Seizing that opening, she surged at me with speed, and I raised my sword and charged to meet her.

In the instant we collided without either yielding, the gumiho wrapped her entire body in blue flames.

“…!”

But I had already predicted her movement. I smoothly redirected the attack, slipped past her side, and carved deeply into her shoulder.

“Ghk!”

For a normal awakened being, the moment they touched a fox’s flames, a vicious scar would remain, but for me, it left nothing more than a faint heat with no effect at all.

That was the gap in attributes.

The gumiho groaned as she sealed the wound with flame.

“What are you?”

“It seems we are past the time for introductions.”

“This—!”

“Oh, and no matter how much you try to recover, it is useless. This sword is Platium.”

“What?”

“Do not worry. I will not kill you until I cut off your tails one by one.”

The mana she had accumulated was enormous.

I could even feel, through the Demonic Eye, the resentment of the people she had killed.

Even if monsters like this consumed tremendous mana, they often could not use it properly, or they failed to control their strength and destroyed themselves.

A gumiho with only eight tails, in particular, was an incomplete existence that could not balance her power.

So rather than cutting off her breath at once, the stable approach was to sever her tails, the source of her strength.

“Kuuuwaaar!”

With a shriek, the gumiho charged.

The flames enveloping her swelled as if they would burn the entire temple down, and by the time she reached me, they had bloated so enormous it felt like a colossal meteor bearing down.

Flames this dense would not end as mere heat, but since I had no penalty against the fire attribute, it would not be a problem.

FWOOM!

At the instant the flames struck, I returned the Mist-Clearing Sword to my inventory, and at the same time, cut my shadow.

Shadow Severance—my previous ability.

Her charge passed through me meaninglessly.

The flames clung to me for a moment, but there was no time to suffer from the heat.

Because I had perfectly taken her rear, and eight tails were exposed in full.

“…!”

I grasped the Mist-Clearing Sword again.

Then I swung it swiftly, severing four tails in succession.

“GRAAAAH!”

A grotesque moan, and a vast quantity of mana evaporated.

Writhing in pain, the gumiho fled on all fours.

It was a ridiculous sight, considering how boldly she had boasted just moments ago.

Well, she was a monster rather than a higher species, so it was only natural that she was faithful to survival.

“Where do you think you are going!”

I caught up to her in an instant and cut off another tail.

“Ghk!”

Yet she kept running.

This time, I predicted where her foot would land and pressed the ground there down with shadow, as if the earth itself were collapsing, and it sank into a deep depression.

As expected, the gumiho stepped into the sinking ground and lost her balance.

I aimed for that opening and swung my sword, but instead of a tail, I slashed her back.

“So you are a monster that is nimble, are you!”

She ran with all her might and soon reached a downward slope.

This direction led straight into the village.

What was she thinking, running toward the village?

No matter how much she controlled the residents with her mana, Hunters were staying in the village.

The moment her form was exposed to free mercenaries who could not stand monsters, she would be exterminated…

Preparing for the worst, I kicked off the ground even harder.

But at that moment, I could not withstand the strain on my muscles, and I toppled over in an ugly sprawl.

My already wretched stamina had finally hit its limit.

The one fortunate thing was that the gumiho did not even look back as she bolted away.

…No, perhaps it would have been better if she had attacked me instead.

“Damn it…!”

As the gumiho reached the village’s edge, she leapt with all her strength.

By the time I shoved the Mist-Clearing Sword away and entered the village belatedly, she had already smashed the golden whale statue and slipped inside it.

“So that was what you were aiming for.”

The golden whale statue, the village’s symbol, was not a simple sculpture made of pure gold.

Unseen, its inner surface had been warded against magic, and inside were stored mana stones and items stolen from Hunters.

Unless one had an ability to detect mana, like the Hunter Bruno or Cha Yeri, it was nearly impossible to notice the golden whale statue’s secret.

Even I, using the Demonic Eye, could only tell that mana was being concealed within the statue.

Because of the warding effect, it was like looking through frosted glass.

Of course, even if the gumiho absorbed the mana from the mana stones and items inside, it should not make much of a difference…

“…It should not have made any difference.”

Mocking my expectation, an overwhelming quantity of mana erupted from within the statue.

That mana rapidly swelled, and then, taking on a distinct form, it manifested.

A massive gumiho with nine tails.

Kuuuwaaaar—!

What in the world had been hidden in there?

Were those not simply items gathered to be sold?

If it had been described in the original work, I might have at least guessed…

“Is this another one of the reader’s spiteful whims!”

There was no time to think.

The gumiho began tearing through the village in all directions in search of me.

Worse still, the villagers who obeyed the gumiho turned violent and attacked the Hunters.

“Damn it! What kind of chaos is this!”

“What is that monster now? No—are these bastards under some kind of curse!”

“Hah, leave it to me! Back in my day, I hunted enough ghouls to circle the globe!”

“Hey, Kim! Shut up and pick up your weapon!”

The Hunters moved frantically to fight back against the villagers.

Yet in the chaos, the most striking sight was Monica, standing where the golden whale statue had been, wearing a stunned expression.

“T-the statue…! My golden whale…!”

Had she still not let go of that absurd dream?

Either way, when I saw Monica’s anger, I could relax a little.

Because mana no less intense than the gumiho’s was gathering around Monica.

That mana soon began to shine with bright light.

The light of light-attribute magic, visible to the naked eye of any awakened being.

The radiance spreading from her expanded in an instant until it was enough to overwhelm even the gumiho, and a dazzling brilliance, as though a sun had risen, covered the village.

As I pierced that light with the Demonic Eye, I understood instinctively.

“Not even one percent pity—full force…”

The light shaped itself into a golem.

Its form was unmistakably the highest-tier entity among the golems summoned by a summoner.

A weapon made purely for opposing darkness, one that only a caster who possessed nothing but the light attribute—without interference from any other attribute—could summon.

A holy knight holding a cross-shaped sword: a Knight Golem.

KUUUUNG—!

Had the Ancient Golem that the Sword Saint had cut down been that large?

Regardless of its exact size, the same was true: even that enormous nine-tailed gumiho looked crude in comparison.

When the Knight Golem, now fully manifested, swung its cross-sword through the air, a wind so powerful it made the buildings sway rose up.

A thick cloud of dust spread across the village.

Monica did not care in the slightest. Staring straight at the gumiho, she ground out the words,

“That fox bitch… smash her.”