“Inoue! Not yet!!”
Saito shouted out and Inoue turned to face Manager Yamashita again, but it was too late. Branches of shiny, black, amphibian like flesh wriggled out from the manager’s severed arm and neck, twisting together and thickening like logs before charging at Inoue with frightening speed.
“Gahh-!!”
Inoue was blown away and sent rolling to cell C20.
“I think you understand now, but that’s not a human. It’s a function. It’s powerful as well. Don’t be fooled by its appearance.”
“Ye-Yes…”
Manager Yamashita was starting to regain his human form.
“You help Inoue back to the car and bring over some weapons.”
“What will work?”
“I don’t know! Hurry!”
I carried Inoue outside while keeping an eye on Manager Yamashita.
###########
“Now then, what do we do?”
Saito thought as he stood in front of Manager Yamashita.
Processing IMPORTRANGE was a big job. Saito always turned it into the Marshmallow Man. He was used to that. Even if other people thought of something else, the pattern was usually fixed. Usually they would think of giant spiders, snakes, winged reptile monsters, or clowns with knives. Dealing with them wasn’t easy, but they were what they looked like.
The old man called Yamashita was a lot harder to deal with. First of all, it felt too human. Takahashi and Inoue were merciless, and to be honest, Saito could feel the madness of the youngsters. He himself didn’t feel comfortable hitting this pathetic, dirty looking guy who wasn’t that much older than himself.
And yet, it could move like a monster. It was totally unpredictable. Normally, the behaviour of a difficult function could be predicted by its appearance. If it had a big mouth and sharp fangs, you would have to watch out for biting. If it had wings, it would probably fly. It was easy to see that a ROW possessed by ARRAYFORMULA would have supernatural powers based on its appearance. As for this old man, Saito had no idea. Although it clearly looked like a human, it didn’t seem to have any intelligence at all, and the things it used to attack were its necktie and injuries. Its arms and legs were useless decorations.
“Well, there’s no point thinking about it.”
Saito gripped his survival knife.
“I’ve been in the care of Takahashi and Inoue. My name is Saito. Hey, Yamashita-san, let’s have a fair, middle-aged men, fight.”
Manager Yamashita responded by placing his hands on his knees and bowing at a 45 degree angle.
“What, I didn’t think you would know what business etiquette was.”
As Saito grinned, the manager’s head jumped towards him without his body moving in the slightest. Saito dodged it by jumping to the side, but the manager’s head chased after him, his neck stretching even further as his mouth opened wide, revealing a black void.
“I retract my previous statement. How about you learn to break the ice before getting to the main topic?”
Saito turned around and cut off the manager’s head at the neck with his knife. Manager Yamashita’s head melted and lost its shape. The next moment, Saito’s vision was flipped upside down. The manager’s black arm had reached out and grabbed Saito’s legs, hanging him in the air. After his head was cut off, flesh grew out from the inside of the manager’s neck forming another head as it bared its teeth at Saito.
Without getting too upset, Saito pulled the pin from a grenade as he threw it a Manager Yamashita’s body.
BOOOOOOOM-!!
Black flesh splattered everywhere. The hand that had been lifting Saito up lost its strength and collapsed. Saito squinted at the smoke as he landed. Only the lower half of Manager Yamashita’s body was left, everything was missing from the waist up.
“Is that the core?”
Several, black, fleshy arms wriggled out from the manager’s waist. Without even forming the shape of a human body, they extended towards Saito. Saito was unfortunately unable to gauge the size of the IMPORTRANGE reference range. If it had been a small range of references, it would have run out of steam by now. It was probably more than six digits of cells. Saito kept hacking away at the black arms coming at him, but there was no end in sight. While he had his hands full, the main body of the function was slowly regaining the shape of Manager Yamashita. Except for the fact that he had several black arms protruding from his fat belly.
“There’s no end to it.”
As Saito said that, Manager Yamashita’s body was engulfed in flames.
Behind Manager Yamashita, who was being destroyed by fire, was Takahashi, armed with insecticide spray and a lighter.