Foretold Terror - Part 3
Royal Road. In Minos, a city buried beneath eternal darkness, it was the sole place that glittered with a singular golden light—the headquarters of the Noah Group. Connected to Unhwa, Nago, and Cheongang in three distinct directions, its main passage strictly forbade entry to ordinary citizens. No one knew who lived there. No one knew how to gain residency. Nothing had ever been revealed. Royal Road remained Minos’s deepest shadow, a colossal enigma. People could only offer plausible guesses: earn an unimaginable fortune, or become famous enough for the entire city to recognize your name. Nothing was certain. Even the fact that the Noah Group’s headquarters stood within Royal Road had only recently come to light. And the existence of the seven families that ruled it had been uncovered even later.
Would anyone believe that all of it had been dragged into the open by a single Vitaloid who used to upload videos sniping villains?
Branch Director Park Seongtae remembered her clearly. The Vitaloid that fans had mockingly called “the bitch with no backing.”
D-1 UNTIL TERROR
“A.G.O!”
Blink. A.G.O, who had briefly blacked out from the sheer shock of what she had just heard, jerked her head up.
“Y-yes…!! What is it…!!”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Huh…? Wh-what did you say…?”
Chae Yuha let out a long, exasperated sigh. “I said, after we board the airship, you need to change your appearance to look like me and act in my place.”
“Ueh…?”
A.G.O nearly fainted all over again.
“Why me…?”
“To be completely honest, I’d prefer to leave all non-combat personnel somewhere safe and only take the fighters in. But there are too many restrictions for that.”
Chae Yuha pointed at Nadja. “First, my sister has to use nanomachines to fight, which makes identifying her way too easy.”
Next, she gestured at Seokho and Seolhwa.
“Uncle and Seolhwa are a packaged set. A recovery ability like hers has never appeared before, and there are plenty of strong Enhanced Humans out there. They won’t get caught.”
Then she pointed at herself.
“As for me, I don’t think that needs explaining.”
“This is seriously fucked,” Kim Seokho muttered.
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
And finally, A.G.O.
The round-faced Vitaloid turned deathly pale the moment Chae Yuha’s finger landed on her.
“That leaves only you, A.G.O.”
“U… ueh. Ueeeeh…”
“Confusing, right? Still, I need you to understand. It looks like an S-rank from next door is going to be deployed to stop this attack.”
“S-rank…!? Which S-rank!? Athena? Isis? Jupiter? Juno?”
“Athena. Have you heard of her?”
“A… Athe… Athena…”
A.G.O melted like wax and slid right off her chair onto the floor.
Athena. The S-rank Hero of Unhwa Special City. The only pure human among all registered heroes in Hero Corporation—not an Enhanced Human. She freely piloted her custom-made bipedal combat suit, the Sangseolteokgeom, and served as the model for Unhwa’s security force, the Secret Royal Inspectors. She was the perfect hero, possessing every quality Royal Roaders adored. Because she was human, she could cut down Origin, Non-Origin, and monsters alike without discrimination. And because she was human, she did not contradict the pure-blood ideology the Royal Roaders cherished.
“Ah, that girl? The one running around in a derivative of the suit I designed?” Nadja said, picking at her ear with clear disinterest.
“You know her too, sis?”
“Of course I know her. I usually don’t care how other cities operate, but her I know. I referenced a lot of her movements when building the suit I’m wearing now.”
Chae Yuha covered her mouth in genuine surprise. She had never expected Nadja to speak of anyone with such respect.
“Then what are our chances of winning in a head-on fight?”
“Hmm… at best?” Nadja held up both hands, forming the numbers three and four. “This much.”
“…You mean thirty-four percent?” Kim Seokho asked.
Nadja nodded.
“I’m the one who makes them, not the one who uses them. There probably isn’t anyone in Minos who handles a suit better than her.”
When even Nadja—the most reliable member of Maker—said that, shadows fell across every face. Kim Seokho, who had personally witnessed Nadja’s one-sided massacre aboard the train, looked especially grim.
“We really should avoid a frontal battle…”
Yet among them, only Chae Yuha was calmly searching for a solution.
“After talking it through, I’m even more certain. A.G.O, you really are the one who should transform into me.”
“Ueh… I thought you were just glossing over it…”
“Everyone else, remember this. We are not going to fight fair. We’re villains. We have to use underhanded, cowardly tactics…”
At that moment, Chae Yuha suddenly began poking at the empty air as if she were seeing something invisible.
“…Yes. Cowardly tactics.”
The rest of the team exchanged puzzled glances at her bizarre behavior, but once again they chose to stay silent.
Meanwhile, inside a mansion somewhere in Royal Road.
“My lady, weren’t you supposed to retire early tonight?”
Vrrrr. The person called “my lady” shook her head on the bed.
Mary Nacin Rothschild. In the original story she had been known as Meneros—the paralyzed, half-crippled Enhanced Human.
Mary stared fixedly at the pad in her hands from the center of her wide, luxurious bed, waiting. Chae Yuha’s Instagram account. For some reason, uploads had become infrequent lately. Until recently, Mary had been able to excuse it as aftereffects from the train accident. But not anymore. Hadn’t enough time passed for her to have recovered? In the past, when posts stopped appearing, Mary had hired people to send death threats and force new content. Lately even that had stopped working, so this time she had bribed one of Instagram’s subsidiaries and sent a direct message herself.
It had been one of the wisest decisions of her life.
Thanks to it, she would be able to see Chae Yuha in the flesh tomorrow.
There could be no greater luxury in the world.
“My lady, it really is time to sleep.”
Mary shot her butler, Alfred, a sharp glare. He was perfect in every way except for how he always had one extra thing to say. Still, he did his job well. It was too early to replace him.
—Ding.
The moment the alarm sounded, Mary’s eyes flew to the pad. There it was—Chae Yuha’s Instagram, newly updated.
Squeeze… She pressed the tablet, nearly the size of her chest, hard against her body, replenishing her daily nutrients.
Butler Alfred watched his lady’s manic behavior and let out a worried sigh.
It hadn’t always been like this.
A sudden incurable disease. Dialysis with survival serum. An incomplete transformation into an Enhanced Human. And the family’s silent disownment. All those misfortunes had combined to create the current Mary.
To a Royal Roader, anything less than pure blood was unacceptable. The same rule had applied to Mary, once a promising talent.
After becoming an Enhanced Human, Mary could find no acceptance anywhere in Royal Road. Not only her blood relatives, but even the servants had begun to scorn and ignore her. Whenever that happened, she relieved her stress by grinding those servants into paste. But it was pointless. Solving immediate stress did nothing to fix the root cause.
Paralyzed. Family disgrace. Impure hybrid. Enhanced Human. Those labels defined her.
Then one day, light had fallen into her devastated heart.
That day, as usual, Mary had been analyzing social issues brought by Alfred, the resulting changes in Minos, and future trends.
Cheongang Department Store kidnapping incident—skip.
Followers of the Crescent Moon concealment—skip.
Completion of the Seventh Orbit Elevator—skip.
Fall of the Red Witch—skip.
Two headlines caught her eye.
Every word was fascinating.
Mary immediately scraped every related article and devoured them. This story would undoubtedly bring massive upheaval to Minos, whether positively or negatively.
While gathering information, she discovered the video in question.
The woman in the footage had a beautiful, smiling face. The moment she entered, the solemn atmosphere of the courtroom completely changed; even through a screen, the shift was palpable. At first she calmly defended the First Generation who had saved her. Then, as if overcome by emotion, her smiling mask cracked. She lowered her head and began to cry.
Mary could not remember ever concentrating on a video so intensely in her life. Every plea, every passionate gesture, every expression felt as though the woman were mourning Mary’s own misfortune. Wasn’t sadness supposed to be reserved for oneself? Was it possible to shed tears for another?
That was when Mary’s manic stalking had begun.
“Haa…”
Letting out a heated sigh, Mary pulled the pad away from her chest. Even though she could no longer speak, the message had been delivered. The dark, sinister emotions she harbored. Her voice.
Cry more tears for me.