TBR CH102.2

In truth, Asta wasn’t entirely unaware of this attack.

Even if it wanted to avoid Isidor’s messages, the black book faithfully delivered the human’s painstakingly gathered intel to the monster. Isidor didn’t include any personal words, and the monster didn’t act willfully in this context. It reviewed the data Isidor had worked so hard to obtain but still felt a lack of information.

No specific methods, no timeline.

The Institute is a vast, shadowy machine with strict logic and control chains. No matter how hard Isidor tried, he couldn’t access this from his isolated position. So he stopped dwelling on it, instead polishing his long-dormant weapons, waiting for the breakthrough.

All Asta could do was prepare.

The Dawn Project’s intel looked identical to every other attack the Institute had planned. The only difference was Hill’s involvement. Asta reviewed every interaction with Hill, finding only the memories before the black book’s arrival to be chaotic—those were the only times something could have gone wrong.

It still doesn’t understand why Isidor is so tense about this.

Nevertheless, Asta takes it to heart—not out of anything else, but out of trust in Isidor’s judgment. Strange, after all this chaos, it sees one thing clearly: everything the human does is rooted in protecting it, even if this secrecy disgusts it.

Born with immense comprehension and learning ability, Asta, like other monsters, possesses keen reflexes.

When it lowers its head and sees the ominous glint on the water’s surface, it already anticipates what’s coming. In that instant, the seawater swiftly forms a thin protective layer over its drenched skin, and only then does the light truly hit.

The light takes two seconds to break through its defenses.

A fierce, prolonged pain sweeps over it—sharp as knives, capable of tearing every inch of its skin, making its tentacles sizzle and melt. Asta stumbles through the blinding daylight, trying to escape, but quickly realizes the light clings to its shadow, an inescapable trap.

Sunlight. That’s its weakness, the one the Institute discovered.

Indeed, it’s clever. From its instinctive avoidance of sunlight, they crafted this deadly trap. But Asta feels itself connected to the entire sea, every nerve in its tentacles twitching neurotically from the pain, yet this brings a strange sense of relief, like a stone sinking into water.

They haven’t found its true vital point—the location of its heart.

That’s a secret only it and Isidor know.

It closes its eyes, knowing movement won’t solve anything, and curls up to minimize exposure to the light. The tentacles across the sea thrash aimlessly in excruciating pain, attacking everything in sight until it slightly reins in its mind.

All its tentacles gather, wrapping it layer by layer. The outer ones quickly char and fall into the sea under the searing light, but more take their place. Each tendril is part of its body, glinting in the unbearable glare.

Time—it thinks. It needs time to heal.

Its tendrils can be soft, sharp as blades, or laced with deadly venom. They weave through the air, gradually forming a massive “cocoon.” Asta, born tens of thousands of years ago, has mastered every facet of its power, including defense.

If this cocoon is fully woven, it will enter dormancy inside, and the layered tendrils will transform, becoming hundreds of times tougher, designed solely to withstand attacks.

Amid the whistling agony in its ears, it senses the presence of humans.

The scent of blood, heavy with killing intent. They eagerly fire special bullets to pierce its vulnerable body, their blades fine as silk, peeling away parts of it. These humans wield power similar to what Isidor once displayed—they’re unlike anyone it’s encountered before.

In the piercing pain, like long needles through its body, Asta forces itself to think calmly.

Because it was prepared, the first, most painful strike didn’t land directly. This is why it can still maintain its sanity, giving it a strong chance to enter dormancy.

They haven’t grasped the truly fatal part.

This thought brings relief. It resolves to enter dormancy at all costs, even if its body and power are severely damaged in the process. The searing pain will still reach its nerve endings through every charred tendril, but since this has only just begun, it must act to prevent worse outcomes.

Isidor.

The name flashes through its mind. Before it can question why, it hears his voice.

“No one gets near it,” Isidor says. It can almost picture those emerald-green eyes.

The human is here.

He lied to it again. He never said he’d come.

It can’t help but reach out. At its will, tendrils surge frantically toward him, even diverting some from its defensive cocoon. Asta doesn’t know what it’s feeling, but its heart pounds fiercely, emotions clashing within the thin shell of its heart, ringing with crisp echoes.

But the last emotion feels like an unquenchable fire, making its entire body burn with rage.

It recalls the will Isidor wrote in the black book, the moment he shot a monster, the elite team beyond the layers of tendrils. It wants to demand what he was thinking—because no matter how strong Isidor is now, he can’t possibly withstand an onslaught from so many “weapons” that surpass human strength.

Yet, its tendrils don’t feel the expected pain.

On the contrary, the scorching sunlight reflected by the mirrors suddenly vanishes. The oppressive heat and intensity that filled the space disappear in an instant, leaving only the faint saltiness of the sea.

Isidor’s speed is staggering. Ignoring the attacks landing on him, he charges into this familiar sea with relentless precision. He knows the layout a hundred times better than Hill. With one glance, he realizes which setting triggered the trap.

And he’s ready to destroy it.

Isidor adjusts the control room’s equipment, even sparing a smile for the special forces members chasing up the stairs—a smile that sends an inexplicable chill through them.

Then, the glass windows shatter like ice.

This is specially designed protective glass, capable of withstanding high-powered bullets. It’s not Isidor who breaks them, but a fierce explosion in the control room, its firelight rivaling the reflected sunlight. Isidor leaps down, riding the blast’s shockwave.

At the same time, the control room’s destruction finally affects the system. Parameters go haywire, but Isidor’s pre-set emergency protocols kick in, resetting them to standard values. The mirrors in the sky tremble like living things, no longer precisely tracking the monster’s shadow.

Only then does Isidor let out a breath of relief.

He stumbles a step or two, his body adjusting to the pain of the close-range explosion, momentarily lowering his weapons. Then, in an instant, he straightens and positions himself between Asta and the special forces.

“You’re insane,” John says, staring into his eyes.

“I’m not you,” Isidor replies, his gaze like the Kingfisher’s of old, calm and steady. “I know what I’m doing.”

Behind him, the monster is halfway into dormancy. Once the cocooning process begins, it’s nearly irreversible. Asta’s core is shielded within the cocoon, heavily wounded but not fatally. No matter what, Asta wants to stop Isidor, but its remaining tendrils can’t manage it now.

John quickly assesses the situation. Though the trap has been destroyed, they’ve half-achieved their goal. The monster’s defenses aren’t fully formed—while they can’t kill it now, the chance to severely injure it remains.

They just need to deal with Isidor.

…In the end, it comes to a showdown with his teacher.

At the moment the door seals shut, Isidor sways and collapses to the ground. He leans against the metal door, its icy surface pressed against his skin. Blood continues to trickle from his body, staining the door. How much blood can a person lose? Isidor doesn’t know, but he’s certain he can’t hold on much longer.

Black Hawk, at this point, has no time to care about the powerless Kingfisher. He rushes to the door, frantically swiping his highest-clearance ID card to open it, but it’s useless—the door doesn’t budge.

John frowns, stepping heavily to Isidor’s side and taking the researcher’s ID card from his unresisting form. It doesn’t work either. No card can open this door.

“Remember that explosion?” Isidor says softly. “It completely destroyed this room’s control system.”

“Impossible,” John retorts instinctively. “Every system in the Institute has a backup in the master program. We just need to access that data…”

“Ah,” Isidor gasps, as if from exhaustion, or perhaps finding it faintly amusing. “But there’s a flaw in your program. It was caused by the death of someone high up, and failing to patch it in time causes problems.”

“Did you do this, Teacher?”

John drops the honorific.

“Mm.” Isidor feels his body grow colder. He raises a hand. “This door was created to protect it. You know better than anyone how impossible it is to force open.”

“It’s just a matter of time.”

“Indeed,” Isidor says. “Then I wish you still have time.”

John’s face darkens terribly. Standing over his former teacher, he looks down at the blood-soaked man, unsure whether to kill him or save his life. Isidor’s condition is dire—left unchecked, it will claim him. But even this can’t undo what’s already happened.

John steps away, his chest aching sharply. Today’s plan, meticulously prepared by the Institute, has ended in failure, and everyone will bear the blame. Yet the greatest culprit still gazes with those emerald-green eyes, smiling silently.

He’s dying, yet he’s still smiling.

John rarely feels powerless, but saving Isidor in this moment seems absurdly out of place. His subordinates have already taken the Kingfisher’s gun and rapier; he has no strength left to resist.

He orders someone to notify the Institute’s higher-ups, unsure of what response will come.

Isidor hugs himself as if cold, his back against the titanium-white security door, behind which lies the treasure he’s fought to protect from the beginning. Has it nearly fallen into slumber now? He wonders, a quiet joy bubbling up, making him smile.

The mechanical door remains tightly shut, its inner world untouched by the chaos outside.

Isidor lies there, abandoned, while John, a few meters away, furrows his brow, awaiting the Institute’s orders—an order he doesn’t yet know but Isidor has long anticipated.

Someone approaches John—a man who always carries an umbrella. He speaks: “The higher-ups are surprised by how the plan turned out, but the responsibility isn’t entirely yours. I bring their orders on how to handle ‘Kingfisher.’ They also said you must obey, no matter what.”

“Mm.” John glances back at Isidor, who can hear.

“It’s…”

The messenger suddenly falls silent, his eyes widening in shock, as if witnessing something bizarre and unbelievable. A massive grinding sound follows. Everyone instinctively turns toward the metal door, even the quickest to react unprepared for the scene unfolding.

A ferocious, enormous tentacle pries open the metal door Isidor leans against, while a slimmer tendril coils around the human’s ankle, swiftly dragging the battered man inside.

It all happens in a flash—

John instinctively rushes toward the door, but the tendril releases its grip, and the door slams shut with a dull thud, shaking the ground. John’s hand freezes midair.

All that remains is a pool of blood.

Asta feels, for the first time, an emotion so intense it threatens to tear it apart.

It shatters the half-formed cocoon, its hardened tendrils breaking off into the seawater, but it has no time to care. The sea is unexpectedly quiet now, littered with the tattered wreckage of the explosion, a fractured sky, and human blood staining the beach in mottled patches. The sea continues to lap gently, washing over everything.

The titanium-white metal door seals tightly, an impassable barrier.

The exhaustion from forcibly halting its dormancy washes over it in waves, its wounds throbbing anew, but Asta feels nothing. It steps onto the beach, unable to maintain a complete human form, dragged along by its tendrils, standing on this side of the door.

It hears Isidor’s breathing.

Heavy, laced with the scent of blood, as if it’s choking his throat. He coughs intermittently, yet sounds strangely happy. Isidor doesn’t know it stands just on the other side, its hand pressed against the door—the closest they’ve been in days.

Like standing on opposite sides of a bookshelf in the archive, unable to see each other, forever unable to see each other.

Anger alone can describe the monster’s mood. For the first time, it feels such rage—when it was trapped in the cocoon meant to protect it, when it saw Isidor but couldn’t speak to him, when it realized the human, despite his grave injuries, kept pushing forward, and at the moment the door closed.

How can he still smile?

Asta thinks, almost wanting to seize the human with its tendrils, to grip him with enough force to tear him apart. He’s already so reckless with himself, breaking himself to pieces.

It would rather pin him somewhere, so he can’t run around like a madman, deludedly protecting it.

He even wrote a will.

What kind of will is that? Pure, self-indulgent devotion. If it forgot him entirely, would he think it needed his reminder to “forget”? If Isidor died, it would forget him immediately. It’s lived alone for so long—seven years is but a fleeting moment in its life.

Asta feels an irrational fire roaring in its heart. It, too, is weak, propped up by its own tendrils, staring unblinkingly at the door as if it could see through it. But it clearly hears their conversation.

How dare he anticipate everything?

How dare he prepare in advance?

How dare he smile at a time like this?

Like sparks merging into a sea of fire, Asta breaks the cocoon trapping it and tears open the impossible door. It doesn’t care what lies outside—it only stares at Isidor, not missing the fleeting panic and shock in his eyes.

—He knows what his reckless actions look like to it.

With a hint of vindictiveness, it yanks him inside in an instant.

This time, the tendrils aren’t gentle as they coil around Isidor’s ankle, rough and sharp, binding him tightly, leaving red, swollen marks on his skin. But in his state, a few more marks make little difference. He’s dragged directly before Asta, the fine sand of the beach sparing him further harm.

But Isidor still bites his pale lips from the pain.

He’s now a critical casualty, his body barely intact, wounds reopening as he’s dragged, leaving a winding trail of fresh blood.

Asta stands before him—or rather, is propped up by a mass of tendrils, looming over him.

It’s furious with the human, but Isidor only stares back, dazed and uneasy, as if caught in a dream, unable to distinguish reality from illusion. His expression betrays a desperate longing, like a man dying of thirst in a desert, spotting an oasis. Knowing it’s likely a mirage, he still stakes all his hope on it.

He doesn’t speak.

Neither does it, but that’s because of anger.

Anger is one thing, but it’s powerless to do anything to the man before it. He’s like a tattered rag doll, so fragile that any force might shatter him. Asta can only switch to softer tendrils, carefully peeling away the clothes stuck to his wounds, avoiding the bitter, salty seawater that might sting him further.

The surroundings are silent, save for the soft rustle of waves lapping the shore.

The human suddenly whispers, “Asta?”

As if, after all this time, he’s still unsure it’s really it. Asta, using delicate tendrils to extract bullets from his wounds, startles at his voice. Its emotions unsteady, its grip slips slightly, and Isidor lets out a suppressed gasp.

Even his gasp is restrained, as if fearing a louder sound might shatter the illusion before him.

“No talking,” the monster says, struggling to keep its voice devoid of emotion, sounding colder and stiffer than it would with a stranger. Isidor obediently closes his mouth, but his emerald-green eyes keep staring, unblinking even as dry tears well up in them.

“You…” Asta, unable to bear his gaze, adds brusquely, “Close your eyes.”

Isidor’s injuries aren’t something simple treatment can fix, but before truly healing him, Asta must first address the immediate damage. It fights to stay alert, but the side effects of halting its dormancy show no sign of relenting. Noticing the discomfort flicker across its face, Isidor finally panics.

He seems to want to speak but recalls its command. Trembling, he lifts a hand, trying to touch it.

“Don’t look at me.”

Asta repeats, swatting his hand away, though gently.

The basic treatment involves removing the bullets. Asta has no other tools—its tendrils can’t exactly double as bandages. But as a being beyond human comprehension, it surveys its work, somewhat satisfied, and summons new tendrils to wrap Isidor layer by layer.

The human, forbidden to speak, obediently closes his eyes, his eyelids trembling faintly like a butterfly with pinned wings.

From head to toe, the tendrils pin the butterfly to the display board.

Asta doesn’t just have venom-laced tendrils; it also has ones with healing properties. They tightly encircle Isidor, and with a press of its fingers, it channels a portion of its power through the tendrils touching his bare skin, meticulously piecing together his broken parts.

Feeling the power flow into him, Isidor grows uneasy again. Defying the monster’s wishes, he silently opens his eyes, gazing at it with a pleading look in his emerald-green eyes.

“You don’t need to…” he says haltingly. “I… I’ll be fine if you just leave me. I can recover on my own from here.”

Asta ignores him, as if it didn’t hear, and sends another tendril to cover his mouth.

He freezes. The monster focuses on that tendril, its delicate nerves sensing the faint, warm breath between his lips. His body is no longer as cold as before; under the tendrils’ embrace, it’s nearly returned to a normal human temperature. But for some reason, his face flushes faintly, his ears tinged with a thin red.

Healing Isidor isn’t easy. Few humans could reduce themselves to such a state, shattered into pieces, held together only by an extraordinary healing ability.

But he’s not wrong.

His healing system is still functioning—a miracle, powered by who-knows-what strength.

Asta thinks briefly and realizes it can’t fix this all at once.

A heavy drowsiness pulls it toward the abyss of sleep. It knows its own condition isn’t much better, but it’s determined to deal with Isidor’s injuries first. With a hint of displeasure, it looks at him, its tendrils instinctively drawing closer. For the first time since their last parting, the human is this close.

“I’m going to sleep,” it says icily. “Don’t even think about running, leaving, or doing anything reckless.”

Without loosening its tendrils or giving Isidor a chance to respond, it collapses toward him. The tendrils prop it up, ensuring it doesn’t crush him. Isidor’s eyes widen in surprise, staring at Asta so close to him.

And with that, it closes its eyes, its consciousness fading.