Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 8 Chapter 3 Part 7

The metal stake floated in the air, jerking the chain like a mad dog about to lunge forward.
“It’ll all be over soon.”
Chuuya was holding the chain back while it tugged in the opposite direction as if this were a game of tug-of-war. Loosening his grip only a little would send the chain flying forward like a rocket. The sharp tip of the metal stake was pointing right at N, who couldn’t move because another stake had already stapled his clothing to the wall.
“Do it, Chuuya,” urged Verlaine, crossing his arms. He sounded giddy, almost ready to start whistling a little tune. “With that much gravity, you’re not going to simply pierce his body. It’s going to blow him apart. He’ll die instantly. Isn’t that right, N?”
“Chuuya, wait! You’re going to regret this tomorrow! I guarantee it!”
“I don’t give a shit about tomorrow.” Chuuya’s eyes narrowed with ferocity. “I’ve always done what I’ve wanted. I protected those I wanted to protect and knocked down anyone who got in my way. This is no different.”
“Wait! You can’t!”
“There it is! The panic room!” shouted Dazai the moment he turned the corner. When I followed his gaze, I saw a door at the end of the hall with a few guards collapsed by its side.
“Pardon me—I’m going on ahead!”
I leaped past Dazai and straight over the pile of fallen guards before landing in front of the door. After promptly touching the door’s port, I searched for the code to unlock it. It took me 1.22 seconds to find the correct number and unlock the door.
“Master Chuuya! You must not kill him!”
I rushed into the panic room, unable to wait for the aggravatingly slow automatic door to fully open. My eyes widened in shock.

The room was empty.

Not only was it empty, but there were no signs that anyone had been

there, either. When I scanned the floor, I discovered a faint buildup of dust but no footprints. It was as if the room had not been used in years.
This was not the right location. Master Chuuya was in a different panic room.
And there was no way we were going to make it in time now.
“I don’t give a shit about tomorrow.” Chuuya’s eyes narrowed with ferocity. “I’ve always done what I’ve wanted. I protected those I wanted to protect and knocked down anyone who got in my way. This is no different.”
The chain was swelling with tension like an arrow pulled taut. And then it was loosed like one.
“Wait! You can’t!” screamed N with his hands in the air. There was nothing else he could do.
Chuuya released the chain with enough power to easily run straight through an entire building.
A roar shook the room. It was emitted by the shock wave from the chain breaking the sound barrier. The speeding metal bundle soared through the air before piercing its target without even a second of hesitation. The enemy’s chest was impaled with perfect precision.
Verlaine’s chest. “Gwah…?”
Blood spurted out of the wound.
Verlaine froze. He had slowed down the attack by manipulating its gravity, yet the stake still dug its way deep into his torso.
Chuuya had twisted his upper body and was facing Verlaine. He’d turned around the moment he released the chain, dramatically changing its trajectory.
“Don’t act like you’re the good guy here, Verlaine. Yeah, this researcher’s a piece of shit, but you’re the one who killed my friends.” Chuuya smacked himself in the chest. “I can feel their lives burning right here inside me, and till those flames die down, I can’t just do whatever I want. I’m gonna do what I need to do. That’s who I am.”
“Chuuya…!”

Verlaine grabbed the metal stake and tried to pull it out of his chest. But before he could, Chuuya sprinted to the back of the room and pulled the lever connected to the chain. The peak output current snaked through the glittering chain like a dragon before crashing into Verlaine.
“Gaaaaaah?!”
Electricity coursed through his body. Even Verlaine, who was strong against physical strikes and bullets, was no match for electric shocks—just like Chuuya.
“What you “need to do’?” Verlaine’s flesh blistered; he grabbed the chain while he went into convulsions. “Why don’t you get it? There isn’t anything you need to do! Live how you want to live! Destroy what you want to destroy! Because there’s only one thing we needed to do, and that was to not be born!”
Verlaine’s trembling fingers tightened around the chain as he slowly pulled it out.
“Just shut up.” Chuuya’s eyes burned with fierce determination. “Maybe that’s what you wanna do, but don’t shove your beliefs down my throat. ’Cause that ain’t how I feel at all.”
Several shadows ran through the light in his eyes:
His friends in the Sheep.
His friends in the Port Mafia.
The light in his eyes was determination. It was the powerful brilliance of humankind, something gained only through encounters and partings with other people.
“You’ve been completely wrong from the very start,” Chuuya spat in disgust. “”Being born was a mistake’? Sounds like the kind of garbage Dazai would spew, and no way in hell am I ever gonna think the way he does!”
Verlaine pulled out the chain, then tossed it to the ground. But Chuuya simultaneously charged at him.
“Chuuyaaaaa!” “Verlaaaaaaine!”
Verlaine threw a punch while Chuuya threw one of his own just as quickly. As their fists collided, a flash of black light exploded, filling the room.
“The facility’s automatic disposal system is in progress. Sixty-eight percent of the facilities are now dysfunctional. We have to find Master Chuuya before the rest of the operations are shut down.”
I set the room’s communications device to a preferred connection and tried to hack into the facility’s main system. There was only one thing left we could do after losing sight of Master Chuuya. I had to hack into the security system through the computer in the panic room and pinpoint where a battle was taking place.
The panic room had an established connection to the facility’s security system in order for the evacuated VIP to give orders from inside. However, being a secret military connection, the line was highly secure. Furthermore, the facility’s functions were gradually shutting down, so the rooms’ ports were rapidly disconnecting from the central hub. It was like wanting to cross a wooden suspension bridge, but the planks were gradually falling off. “You should probably check the fuel supply system first,” suggested Dazai while spinning in a swivel chair with his hands behind his head. “All the documents in here, plus the facility itself, are gonna be burned so that there’s no evidence left. Only after the workers get out, though. That’s why the fuel supply system needs to stay put until the end, so you should still be
able to hack into it.” “Very well.”
The fuel supply system was comparatively easier to hack than the others (the life-support, security, and main memory systems). After that, I was able to send commands to other facilities through the processor I was operating, thus expanding the scope of my control.
“I wonder if we can do it,” I said as I struggled with the system. “Do what?”
“Defeat Verlaine. Even if we do find Master Chuuya, we still have to defeat Verlaine. Will we really be able to defeat him?”

“Beats me,” replied Dazai almost indifferently. “Of course, I’ll try to come up with a way to take him down, but it doesn’t really matter if we lose. We’ll just die. There’s only one thing I can say for sure about Verlaine.”
Dazai lowered his arms and looked at me, his eyes even colder and more robotic than a machine’s.
“There isn’t a single human in this world who can defeat Verlaine in hand-to-hand combat alone.”
A storm shook the small room. Two fists clashed, producing miniature suns that disappeared almost instantly. The collision of two forces of gravity tightly compressed the space before it returned to normal. The shock wave alone ravaged the room, knocking over tables and sending electronic devices smashing into the wall.
“Is that all you’ve got, Chuuya?!” shouted Verlaine.
The plaster cracked like a piece of candy and crumbled onto the floor, simply from being in close proximity to Verlaine’s punch.
Chuuya continued to dodge the flurry of meteorite-like strikes. A single one would be enough to kill him. Right as he threw a low kick, Verlaine increased the gravity of his guard, but Chuuya suddenly switched to a middle kick.
Verlaine groaned when Chuuya’s leg struck his torso. However, Chuuya was the one who turned pale.
Verlaine had grabbed Chuuya’s face. Before Chuuya could even counter, Verlaine swiftly lifted him up and slammed him into the wall, leaving a radial crack upon impact.
Chuuya screamed in agony, but still reached out for Verlaine’s wrist to pull off his hand, though all he grabbed was air. Verlaine’s arm was no longer there; by the time Chuuya realized this, Verlaine had buried a front kick deep in his torso.
Chuuya slammed into the wall as if he had been hit by a semitruck, demolishing it and coughing up blood. The attack left him badly wounded since he was unable to leap back and weaken the impact.

He shot through the demolished wall and into another room, then crashed through two more walls as well. Chuuya was covered in dust and rubble; he couldn’t even see Verlaine anymore.
Verlaine lowered his leg, then checked his injuries. Blood was pouring out of the wound in his chest, soiling his suit. It was deep.
“Why don’t you get it, Chuuya?” Verlaine scowled at the blood staining his hand. “There’s no reason for us to fight.”
His eyes then locked onto an iron slab on the floor. It was the gray top of a broken desk. Verlaine placed his toes under it, tossed it into the air, and kicked it. The slab pierced the wall right in front of N as he tried to escape.
“Eek!”
“Did you really think I’d let you get away?”
After grabbing N by the neck, Verlaine effortlessly lifted him up and pressed him against the wall.
“You have zero chance of getting out of here alive.” His eyes shone with a light that hadn’t been there before: Rage. “I can see something sinister inside you. A darkness far deeper than any evil.”
N tensely smirked and replied hoarsely, “Is that really something…an assassin should be saying?”
“Sometimes creating is far more sinister than killing.”
Verlaine’s grip tightened around N’s neck. The gravity being emitted from his hand warped the space around it.
“W-wait…! Just listen to what I have to say!” “No,” replied Verlaine as his fingers tightened.
However, right before the supergravity could snap N’s neck clean off his shoulders, he screamed:
“If I die, your secrets die with me!” Verlaine stopped squeezing.
Time passed: one second, then two. Nobody said a word. Nobody moved. Nobody even blinked.
“…What?” muttered Verlaine in a deep, slightly cracked voice after five silent seconds went by.
“I’m not lying. You’ll lose everything, even what you want to know most of all: The Secret of the Gentle Forest.”
Next came the sound of a brief intake of air. It was Verlaine. “You…!”

A fist roared. It was Verlaine’s free hand hitting the wall and causing the room to shake. He had punched right by N’s face, leaving cobweb-shaped cracks as rubble fell to the ground.
“You’d better be careful if you’re trying to outsmart me.” Verlaine’s voice was so low that it sounded as if it were coming from the pits of hell. “If I even get the feeling that you’re lying, I will peel every bone off your body while you’re still alive.”
I finished hacking into eighteen out of twenty ports and took control of the facility’s second and third computing cores. I then used their computing powers to attack the fourth and fifth cores. Everything was going smoothly. I would likely be able to obtain the necessary security systems to search for Master Chuuya at this rate.
However, the real issue would come afterward.
“Not a single human in this world can defeat Verlaine in hand-to-hand combat…” I ruminated over what Dazai said. “Does that mean there is no way to defeat him?” I asked.
When I looked over at Dazai, he replied, “Exactly.” His gaze appeared all-knowing. “I was buying time to figure that out.”
He then took a notebook out of his breast pocket. It was the leather- bound notebook from earlier—Rimbaud’s memoirs.
“Not only can he manipulate gravity with his skill, but he has experience as a spy as well. It’s insanely unfair how powerful he is. He essentially doesn’t have any weaknesses. But…there is something he fears.”
“”Something he fears’?”
“Himself.” Dazai smiled cryptically. “Just like how Arahabaki is for Chuuya, Verlaine contains a singularity that’s beyond his control. And if it does lose control, it’ll destroy everything in sight, including him. It’d be the nightmare of Suribachi City all over again.”
The nightmare of Suribachi City.
I searched my database. Dazai was most likely referring to the explosion that happened nine years ago when Master Chuuya lost control of Arahabaki. The blast created a mile-diameter crater and left no trace of the city that was once there. That was the true power of a singularity. It was the manifestation of something that should not exist in this world.
And slumbering inside Verlaine was a beast capable of such a catastrophe…
“”The Secret of the Gentle Forest.’” Verlaine’s voice contained a hoarse, dry anger. “How do you know about that?”
“Artificial skill user, Paul Verlaine,” N began gently, trying to avoid the question. “The darkness sleeping inside you—that’s the other Arahabaki. Unlike the Arahabaki created in the lab, the demon within you was created by a single skill user. And you killed them. With your own two hands. That’s why you lost the chance of ever knowing about the beast that sleeps inside you. You fear its manifestation.”
“And?” replied Verlaine, clearly irritated. “Are you saying you know what this thing inside me is?”
“That’s a good question. If anything, I’m the only one who’d know the answer.”
While speaking, N slowly moved his arm behind Verlaine’s arm in his blind spot. He moved as carefully as a snail while bringing his fingers closer to his pocket.
“We were able to create Arahabaki because the military secret service managed to obtain data on you from one of their connections in German intelligence. I got chills when I read the files. The man who created you was a demon. No decent human being could come up with a thing like that.”
N’s fingers grabbed onto a remote in his pocket. It was the same remote that he handed Chuuya in front of the black cylindrical tank.
“About the only evil I can do is this.”
He pressed a button, and the ceiling collapsed. Rubble rained down onto Verlaine—along with something else.
Bluish-black liquid.
Verlaine promptly raised his hands into the air and used gravity to protect himself, but something slipped between the rubble and liquid.

That something kicked Verlaine backward.
He was instantly sent slamming into the wall. Both agony and surprise simultaneously colored his expression; not a single person was capable of penetrating his gravity-manipulating guard like this.
“Did you really think those chains and a little electricity was the ace I was keeping up my sleeve?”
N smiled. The one who kicked Verlaine landed by his side. At N’s side was a set of bleached-white bones.
Hanging from its body were bundles of infusion tubes and cords used to measure vitals. All it wore was a plastic lab garment.
It was the skeleton of the boy who died in Chuuya’s arms before the flesh melted off his bones. The original Chuuya.
Verlaine’s face darkened with rage the instant he realized who it was. “You…!”
“We aren’t copying what they did in Europe. This is our own unique technology. It destroys what I order it to. Have a look.”
The skeleton leaped forward, the wind whistling in its wake. It sped up using gravity instead of muscle power to collide into Verlaine.
Verlaine grabbed its shoulders and stopped it, but he wasn’t able to completely halt the momentum. His heels dug into the floorboards.
Verlaine’s and the skeleton’s gravity counteracted each other, which produced a small vortex of gravity in the center of the room. The skeleton opened its jaw and tried to bite Verlaine with a click of its fleshless mandible.
“Are you in pain?” Verlaine’s eyes narrowed. His voice faintly trembled with emotion. “I’m sorry…but you should no longer be in this world.”
Verlaine increased his skill’s output. The skeleton fell to its knees with an audible creak and was pinned to the floor.
“I’ll take you back to the surface with me later and find you a place to sleep where you can see the stars. But for now, I need you to stay still and wait.”
He reversed gravity, causing the skeleton to float in the air. The nearby rubble floated as well.