Savage Forest - Chapter 63
The sound of thunder echoed through the air, and the rain began to pour down as if there was a hole in the sky.
Amidst the downpour, he reached the house where his mother would be. The thought of her trembling alone in the place where all the rain was leaking made his heart feel like it would fall off again.
He hastily approached the pile of stones where she lay, grappling with the familiar sensations of shame and sadness.
However, something was strange.
It was because his mother’s legs, which should have peeked out, weren’t visible.
His mother was nowhere to be seen. In addition, traces of something being dragged along the rain-soaked path caught his attention, sending an eerie feeling he had never experienced running up his spine.
Without a second thought, Tarhan turned away and sprinted along the muddy trail.
‘Sh*t! Sh*t…!’
Curses flowed from his mouth as he ran away.
Instinctively, his legs as he ran towards the river trembled mercilessly. Why didn’t he move to another place from the beginning? Why didn’t he move his mother’s immobile body from the day the hippi was discovered?
Even though his legs were clearly moving forward, it felt like he was running in place.
There was no strength in his toes.
As he heard signs of something chasing him the next moment, he turned his back and looked back to see the girl from before was still following him.
‘She was still following me…?’
He was so surprised that he couldn’t speak. Picking up a small stone, Tarhan screamed desperately.
“Don’t come…! Get lost…! Don’t come for real this time!”
This time, he struck the girl directly. He repeated the motion a few more times, each throw finding its mark on the child’s small forehead and cheek.
Eventually, the child stopped.
After Tarhan warned the girl several times, he started running again.
He was out of breath.
Obviously, his legs were extending with each step but it was as if they barely grazed the ground. Moreover, he couldn’t tell whether the moisture on his cheeks was tears or rainwater, but he was certain of its continuous stream.
Images of his mother’s vacant gaze haunted his thoughts, as did the memory of her tear-streaked cheek that never seemed to dry.
The missing blanket.
He actually knew. The imprints etched in the mud weren’t signs of being dragged by a monster but rather resembled the imprints left by someone dragging a body with arms that could barely support the weight.
He couldn’t fathom what had crossed his mother’s mind when she came back to her senses for the first time in a while as she guided herself to the riverside on this rainy day.
“Haaah… haaah…”
As expected, his mother was by the river when he arrived.
Seeing her, a breath that was unknown whether it was of relief or not, poured out of his lungs. He was exhausted.
In front of him, his mother was spreading her arms towards the water in the middle of the river.
Tarhan stared at her upright body and rubbed his eyes as if he had seen it wrong.
She stood on the water as if Aquilea’s chariot had never crushed her back, as if three or four soldiers had never held her limbs down, as if her son had never had to watch it to the end while being chained in front of her.
She stood on the water as she was when she was sane and beautiful.
It felt like going back to the past.
As he captured the image of his mother in his eyes, he slowly approached her, unable to close his gaping mouth. Even though she turned her back, there was no emotion on the woman’s expression as she looked at her son.
Barely opened his mouth, a cracked voice leaked out.
“…Come here. Please come this way… come home with me.”
The mother smiled at her son.
Tarhan began taking steps towards his mother, who spread her arms as if to ask him to come over.
“Come on, mom… Come on… okay?”
Although he begged several times in a crying voice, his mother did not answer. She didn’t even flinch as she only wore that gentle smile.
He took a few more steps.
As the river’s gentle currents moistened his ankles, his mother gestured as if to encourage him.
With resolve, he leaped into his mother’s embrace.
Deep down, he had realized the truth the instant his foot touched the water. The figure before him was no longer the mother he once knew. His childhood had irrevocably slipped away, and the world he’d cherished lay shattered.
Still, he wanted to jump in.
He wanted to give up everything and leave his body in the infinitely dark river and close his eyes comfortably. He wanted to stop being in pain.
However, in that very moment, something seized his ankle, and a scream pierced the air.
“Aaahhh! Aaaaahhk!”
He was awakened by a terrible sound.
The girl was screaming something, hugging his half-disappearing torso.
Despite the fact that he couldn’t hear a single thing, his mind went wide awake. Soon, he noticed that his body was being half-sucked into the giant mouth. He was stepping into the mouth of the hippi’s with its black dripping saliva.
Tarhan instinctively struggled to get out of there though his body was pulled in an instant.
The pain was transmitted to the waist as the tentacled hippi’s tail slammed down on his back. At the same time, the child’s harrowing scream was heard. He could immediately figure out what had happened.
Another tentacle from the hippi’s torso had penetrated the child’s left foot.
The child’s body, which had been holding on to his legs, suddenly drooped.
The moment he saw that scene, he felt an indescribable sense of helplessness and a trembling sensation in his flesh rising from inside him.
He was embarrassed by himself.
He couldn’t be so surprised that he had more feelings left to boil over.
Tarhan jumped at the hippi’s legs, listening to the groan as its throat was slit. As he grabbed a dagger smaller than the palm of his hand that he always carried around, he mercilessly started cutting down the body of the monster that had wrapped itself around him and the child.
Waving his arms frantically, he didn’t think he had ever harbored such an intent to kill since he was born.
‘This time… This time…!’
He didn’t want to lose this time… no, he couldn’t lose.
It was as if his whole body had turned into a boiling, flowing ball of fire as if the gruesome corpse of his dead sister was in front of his eyes.
When he struggled and missed the child, he jumped into the middle of the river and tore off the last blood vessel of the monster. Truthfully, he didn’t know how he was able to do that even though he had been starving for almost two days.
It seemed as if an unknown force rose from his toes and burst through his entire body.
Before long, the monster’s body, which had become a corpse, came up into the river. The hippi’s limp corpse, almost three times his length, lay bare in the pouring rain. Tarhan found the body of the girl and his mother while gasping like a breathless monster just before being slaughtered.
“N, no…”
He reached out his hand and pulled their cold bodies into his back. With his mother on his back and the child in his arms, he frantically drifted ashore.
As the two of them lay on the ground where the rain did not flow, a cough came from the child’s side.
Tarhan quickly turned over his mother’s body.
It was a very fleeting time, but she, like that child, vomited water out, and he hoped that she would be able to come to her senses.
But as he watched the black river flow from her mouth, he had to realize how vain his hopes were.
His mother’s swollen body, which had begun to drain, was shrinking like the intestines of a pig where the blood was drained out. The bait that had been filled with the hippi’s ooze and saliva was already oxidizing.
All that was left was the intact shell of the host, where the contents had already been sucked up.
He couldn’t even sigh at the shocking appearance of his mother, with no longer any traces of her soul. He just couldn’t believe the sight in front of his eyes.
“Aahh… ah…”
When he felt his mother’s skin with his trembling fingertips, there was a slimy liquid was on it. It felt like he was going to lose his mind at the trembling touch.
He just wanted to spare her from a humble and shabby death.
He wanted to take care of his mother until the end. He didn’t even want that whole look to be damaged.
At least not like this…
The limp skin had begun to melt, and it made it difficult to even move the body. All he had to do was put flowers on the corpse and close her eyes.
Should it be like this?
Should his mother’s death have to be like this?
Until the girl’s coughing had subsided, Tarhan looked down in disbelief at his mother’s corpse. His body didn’t budge until he felt the child approaching.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t touch my mother…!”
Tarhan raised himself up in a fit and barked like a wild dog at the child who reached for his mother’s corpse. Even the tears couldn’t come out. It was just a meaningless howl and anger vented by a sick dog. Even knowing that, he couldn’t do anything else.
He couldn’t forgive himself if he didn’t do that.
He was a hopeless failure.
He was a hopeless child.
Again… he lost his family like this again. He lost another loved one right in front of his eyes.
As he struggled in the rush of self-deprecation and loathing, he felt the girl reach out again to his mother’s fading gaze.
“…You have to end her breath. She must be suffering.”
He didn’t even realize it was the first time he heard that child’s voice. He couldn’t let go of his hand, despite her words.
He couldn’t even raise his head.
He noticed that the hippie’s saliva was entirely made up of anesthetic fluid. The reason for creating a host was to draw out the vitality as much as possible after lowering the temperature barely enough to sustain a person’s life and to keep it alive until the end.
So, when the egg hatched, it could taste fresh meat and took the host for the first time.
In a distraught state, he grabbed the dagger that seemed to have stuck to his palm before gently bringing it to his mother’s temple, which was starting to get messy. Indeed, like his mother were alive, he could see the veins in her forehead twitching.
Tang.
The knife fell as Tarhan collapsed.
He just couldn’t do it. There was no way that a coward like him could have stabbed his mother with his own hands, which he couldn’t protect again.
He collapsed miserably in front of her. How could he go any lower than this?
At that moment, he felt a tiny hand wiggle and touch his hand. They were equally full of scratches, but compared to his thick skin-like hands, they were really thin and white. Even at the moment when that hand patted the back of his hand lightly, Tarhan kept his head down.
The girl snatched the dagger from his hand. Then, slowly and very carefully, she brought it to his mother’s temple.
“I’ll do it.”
Tarhan watched as the child directly stabbed the temple of his dying mother, who he was unable to protect until the very end and became the host of the monster. The blade in her small hand pierced his mother’s head without hesitation.
The name of the rain and blood-soaked enemy who killed his mother was Enya.
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