TBR CH83

Kingfisher, your gem-like eyes reflect the corpses of the dead.

Your feathers, stained with blood, plummet straight down from the sky.

—Found in the trash bin of the C-21 District employee lounge, excerpted from crumpled draft paper.

—

The monster had thought that its recent coldness was something unforgivable, that no matter how gentle Isidor was, he would surely be angry. But in reality, it wasn’t like that at all. The researcher only shed tears briefly, his emerald eyes looking as if they’d been washed by water, and he quickly composed himself.

Even the awkwardness of not seeing each other for days didn’t last long. Soon, they were chatting and laughing as usual.

“The past few days…” Isidor deliberately downplayed what had happened. “The institute’s workload was overwhelming. The higher-ups dumped a ton of troublesome paperwork on me. Ugh, I was so busy, working late every night, barely having time for anything else before crashing.”

Of course, that wasn’t the truth. But he intentionally made it sound like he’d been swamped, pretending he hadn’t been particularly hurt by the monster’s absence. The monster, holding his hand and walking forward, picked up the conversation naturally.

“Sounds exhausting—want to take a nap here later?”

“It’s fine,” Isidor shook his head. “I need to re-register my ID card and check on the control room. While I was gone—” He suddenly stopped, as if unsure what to say, lowering his head to gaze at the seawater.

During his absence, this place had been left entirely to Hill. The young, somewhat spoiled teenager couldn’t keep track of all the data needed to maintain this vast artificial sea. The institute had given him a checklist of average values to adjust settings by, but the control room was filled with buttons, scattered like stars across every reachable surface. Hill inevitably made mistakes, missing some adjustments.

The monster wasn’t that fragile; a slight ecological shift wouldn’t affect it much, just cause minor discomfort.

For some reason, back then, it felt an abnormal fondness and desire for closeness toward the boy named Hill, so it suppressed its discomfort. Naturally, Hill never noticed.

Isidor walked across the seawater, soft as a cushion, with every corner of the sea etched into his memory like a detailed map after seven years. He carefully inspected the conditions underwater. There used to be a large patch of rose-red seaweed here, but for some reason, most of it had withered, and the clownfish that darted through it were nowhere to be seen.

The researcher’s gaze sharpened slightly as he crouched down to examine the faded color at the tips of the leaves. This was caused by an excess of a certain trace element in the ocean, where plants, instead of thriving in the enriched water, were gradually “drowned,” resulting in this state.

“Next time he comes,” Isidor said, unaware of the bitter and sour emotions in his voice, though his tone remained light, “I’ll teach him again. If anything feels off, you have to tell me right away.”

He casually lifted his eyes, then froze slightly. The monster had stopped walking and turned to face him. “It” was currently in human form, but more perfect than any human—every proportion beautiful and precise, with slight exaggerations only enhancing its harmonious effect.

Isidor was still a head shorter than the monster, though compared to its true form’s size, the difference was negligible.

The researcher’s breath hitched slightly. It was the instinctive reaction humans had when facing an indescribable, colossal entity, even if he was used to it. Sometimes, he still lost himself, especially when the monster adopted a serious expression, staring at him with those black eyes:

Like a weak prey being targeted by a cruel yet beautiful predator.

No matter what, the inhuman aura couldn’t be ignored—it was a kind of presence, tightly entwined with the monster. Those eyes evoked the slit pupils of a beast, yet carried a cold, tangible sensation, like pressing a hand to ice in the height of summer: a fleeting moment of pleasure followed by lingering numbness and pain.

“What’s wrong?” But Isidor quickly regained his composure, smiling at it with curved eyes.

“I don’t like him.”

The monster didn’t look away, its expression unexpectedly serious. “You’re my friend, so you don’t need to say things against your heart for someone who hasn’t been around long. I don’t want you to be upset over this. I’ll explain everything that happened before to you.”

Everything that happened before, of course, included that mysterious black book and the sensation of being controlled at the time. The monster didn’t care about revealing what should have been secret information to the human before it. If there was one being in the world worthy of trust, it was its only friend. Friends shouldn’t have lies between them.

Isidor opened his mouth, but only a faint, urgent breath passed his lips.

“Well,” he finally lowered his eyes, smiling a little sheepishly, “um… you don’t really need to explain so much. If you say it, I’ll believe you.”

Friends should trust each other. As the human who taught the monster these concepts, he knew this well.

Unknowingly, they started walking again. The monster’s tendrils could have taken Isidor to their destination faster, but they both chose to stroll leisurely through the sea, chatting about things like the new flavors at the bakery, Isidor’s work, and his increasingly troublesome boss. The monster loved hearing him talk about these mundane details of human life.

The artificial sea created by the institute for Project α was indeed vast. The distant ocean was a deep hue, while closer areas, thanks to their proximity, sometimes revealed colorful marine life beneath the water, along with the monster’s swaying tendrils, devoid of any hostility, as if idly drifting. Even schools of fish sometimes boldly approached these deadly tendrils, lightly pecking at them.

Then, as if by magic, a crooked little house appeared out of nowhere in the ocean before them.

Because Isidor was human, the monster had tried to make a house. It was a very oceanic dwelling, adorned with large scallop shells, its roof tiled with solidified seawater, like a flowing gem. The house was hidden deep in the ocean, impossible for outsiders to find.

When Isidor was tired, he could rest here. There was a bed, a chair, and a desk, with ink and paper on it. Initially, the hope was that the human might even do paperwork here. But Isidor probably preferred working outside. His work here wasn’t full-time; he only needed to stay through the morning. When things were slow outside, he’d linger longer.

The monster had tried all the furniture, even attempting to sleep on the bed in human form. But it didn’t succeed. It didn’t need much sleep, and for a monster, craving rest was a fatal weakness.

Isidor approached the room, taking a soft breath.

Thank goodness, he thought, his emerald eyes scanning the familiar surroundings, finally feeling the relief of reclaiming something unchanged. Then he noticed an unfamiliar book on the desk.

A black cover, seemingly a high-quality hardcover. The black book sat quietly before him.

The monster hadn’t entered yet. It precisely controlled its tendrils, only to realize the black book, which its tendrils had tightly wrapped earlier, was gone. This wasn’t surprising—it claimed to be the world’s consciousness, so it surely had some tricks. Still, the monster had planned to retrieve the book seeking its help and explain everything to Isidor—

“There’s a book here,” Isidor said, opening the door, holding the faintly familiar black-covered book, looking puzzled. “I don’t think I’ve seen it before.”

It was the same one. The familiar Book of the Heavenly Dao. 

The monster sighed inwardly, wondering if it shouldn’t have wrapped the book so tightly last time. Otherwise, why would it have eagerly broken free, only to linger in a convenient spot where it could be easily seen?

“With this book, things should be much easier,” it said, opening the book before Isidor and addressing it. “Isidor is my friend, and he can help us. So, please show him the prophecies you showed me.”

—

The world-saving team now had three members: the monster, Isidor, and the black book.

The world’s consciousness still felt the situation was an utter mess. It could no longer view the monster with its initial perspective. Seeing it stand with the emerald-eyed human, tilting its head to explain the prophecy’s contents, sent a chilling, scalp-tingling terror through it. Perhaps this was its third-person perspective, but—

At first glance, the scene seemed perfectly normal. A courteous, refined youth spoke gently and patiently with the human beside him, while the green-eyed researcher leaned in, clearly listening intently, completely unguarded.

The monster’s slender, pale fingers seemed ready to sprout needle-like spikes at any moment, piercing the other’s jugular.

Its shadow loomed behind it, a writhing mass of darkness, as if ferocious, lethal tendrils were about to burst forth, skewering the human’s chest like sharp spears.

Its voice was gentle, but the longer one listened, the more an eerie, bone-chilling strangeness crept in. It sounded like it was painstakingly mimicking human speech, but certain inflections carried an uncanny tone, impossible for human vocal cords to produce.

Most crucially, looking directly at it, even in human form, delivered a profound mental shock. It was as if countless ancient, alien thoughts flooded the observer’s mind, and in severe cases, the world around them lost focus, everything dissolving into stark black and white.

For the first time, the black book doubted what it was doing. If the system’s interference was altered, the monster before it could still easily lead the world to ruin. As the world’s consciousness, knowing that terrifying outcome, it couldn’t simply stand by.

Of course, the most pressing issue was dealing with the transmigrator.

But it had to…

Tap, tap. 

The monster’s bloodless knuckles gently rapped on the back cover of the black book. The world’s consciousness realized the monster had already explained every detail of the prophecy to Isidor. Now, its eyes, like they’d been washed in cold water, turned to the book, as if seeking its opinion. A few inked words appeared on the pages:

“No… no problem.”

“Good,” the monster said, a slight smile curving its lips. Even with a layer of terror filtered over it, the black book couldn’t deny that when it looked at it with that gentle, polite gaze, it couldn’t help but feel a sense of fondness. And, though somewhat inappropriate to say, its human form, while exuding an eerie aura, was undeniably beautiful.

A mysterious, perfect, vortex-like beauty that drew people in, utterly inhuman.

“Then let’s proceed with the first step,” it said. “Delay that human’s contact with me, and we can plan our next moves from there.”

“Alright,” Isidor nodded. “I’ll try to gather some information about him outside, and about the other monsters he’s interacted with.”

…Wait, the world’s consciousness thought, dazed. Had it missed something?

At the start of the world-saving plan, this team, with barely a single human, finally took its first step.