The Age of Adaptation
The worker Defoil swarm surged forward.
They came at Yoo Sung-jun with a mix of ranged and close-quarters attacks, each one trying to pin him down from a different angle.
Fwoosh!
Thick green acid laced the air.
Yoo Sung-jun breathed. The new application of One Point Focus revealed the gaps between the attacks, sharpening the flaws in the advancing Defoils.
"Jeyca!"
"I know!"
He left support to her, the one handling the helper position.
Ignoring the gunfire cracking from behind him, he raised the Agantic Sword.
This bizarre greatsword, shaped like a sharp triangle, could stretch or shrink to match the consciousness of the synchronized wielder, its blade layered with no fewer than fifteen overlapping sections.
Before he knew it, the weapon in Yoo Sung-jun’s hands had become a four-meter bar of iron.
He swung it upward.
A silver arc flashed in a half-moon and sliced the Defoil swarm cleanly in two.
"Wow..."
Jeyca, who had been sniping only the dangerous targets she identified with her Appraisal Eye from the rear, gasped before she could stop herself.
So that was Body Strengthening Level 2. The power of a Transcendent beginner.
Carapaces flew apart. Slick innards splashed across the floor.
Yoo Sung-jun charged straight through the middle of it and thrust the greatsword again.
Perfect rotation. How can he use swordsmanship that clean?
Among bladed weapons, greatswords relied on centrifugal force more than any other.
Jeyca knew that well enough from watching the extermination footage of Meteor.
Firmly planted legs became the support; then the waist, shoulders, and arms drove the blade toward the point of impact.
It wasn’t just swinging. The force had to travel in a line so exact that it became perfectly vertical.
It was a brutally simple style, as blunt as it sounded, but Jeyca knew exactly how difficult it was.
Even famous users who said they were good with greatswords on Another Earth tried it and gave up.
What’s more, the greatsword he wielded was long. Insanely long.
It would have been one thing if he’d gripped it near the middle and swung from there, but to hold it by the end and cut down without even a tremor...
What is he? Was Sung-jun a top-ranker in 1.0 too?
As far as she knew, he was the only greatsword master among the high-rankers in the top hundred.
The one and only solo player who had been the first to bring down a Level 10 Infector.
Meteor...
She still didn’t know whether Yoo Sung-jun truly was him.
What was certain was that he used a greatsword style strikingly similar to that legend’s.
"Good work, Jeyca."
"Huh? Ah... I just had to swing a few times, and that was it."
"It’s a weapon I used a lot in the game. It performs brilliantly against a crowd like this."
He spoke while steadying the greatsword, which had already returned to its original size.
Behind Yoo Sung-jun lay a field of Defoil corpses.
"You kept picking off the dangerous ones in the middle, didn’t you?"
"That’s the helper’s job."
She shrugged, answering with a slightly sour expression.
"We were almost in real trouble. If we hadn’t dealt with the red ones, your body would’ve been melting under that acid, Sung-jun."
"Exactly."
Yoo Sung-jun smiled faintly and traded the greatsword for a gun.
Then it was time to move again.
Which was why Jeyca never got to ask.
She wanted to grab his shoulder right then and ask, You were Meteor in 1.0, weren’t you?! But...
He said he didn’t want to talk about personal matters during an operation.
So she focused on her role.
Jeyca followed behind Yoo Sung-jun as he retraced the path the workers had taken.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Death Spoil.
Just as Queen Defoil was called the queen of maggots, this creature was called the child of flies.
A life-form superior to maggots.
And the Defoil that evolved into it was strong enough to reach 38 ma once fully grown.
That was the real purpose of this mission.
Destroy it if you can. Scan it if you can do even better.
If they scanned it, they would be able to confirm the existence of the egg.
If destruction proved too difficult, the mission would probably be designed to lure them back later, once they were stronger, so they could finish the job.
Of course, Yoo Sung-jun wasn’t aiming to scan it.
If I can break it, I’ll break it.
The mission objective said they could return after scanning, but destroying it would almost certainly count as clear completion too.
Right, Loki?
[I am sometimes amazed by Yoo Sung-jun's deductions.]
Cut the flattery. So I’m right, then?
[I have no mouth, but that deduction is certain.]
What a useless joke.
Good enough, though. Yoo Sung-jun looked around the corridor.
They had come deep inside through a subtle downhill slope.
There was a definite sign here in this reeking, wet mess.
The workers left traces of Queen Defoil everywhere, almost as if they were trying to emphasize them.
Nutrition tumor.
Queen Defoil’s excrement.
The pink mass the workers had sorted, reprocessed, and built from it became a useful marker for Yoo Sung-jun.
Jeyca frowned hard when she saw it.
"Ugh, is that thing alive?"
"It transfers nutrients through the slime spread across the floor. The contraction and expansion are caused by the surviving cells of Queen Defoil."
"You know a lot about this."
"I used to go in and out of this place like it was my own house in the game."
It had been a source of points for dealing with 38 ma.
That was why Yoo Sung-jun was already thoroughly sick of this environment.
"If we just keep following these nutrition tumors, we should find the Death Spoil egg."
"So we’re close to our target?"
"Yes. And there it is. The hatching room."
Yoo Sung-jun pointed to a spot far down one side of the corridor where the nutrition tumors were especially dense.
It was certain. The target was in there.
He wasn’t basing that certainty on a single nutrition tumor.
The entrance with the faint white tint.
That meant Queen Defoil had carefully built it using its own secretions.
A thick smile settled on Jioka’s lips.
"Let’s hurry. But don’t let your guard down. There’ll still be workers left inside."
"I’ll shoot them dead from behind, so Sung-jun, you just handle whatever comes charging at us."
"Haha, sure."
Looks like he’d found a good teammate.
Yoo Sung-jun approached the hatching room.
He pressed himself against the wall and peered through the entrance.
"Hm?"
Something was odd.
The room, the most important one among their kind and supposedly built by Queen Defoil, was silent.
No way to tell by smell either.
His mask was filtering everything out, blocking the stench completely.
With his olfactory enhancement through breathing, he couldn’t pull much information from the air at all.
If they were lying in ambush, entering now would be a disaster.
So instead of waiting, he relied on Jeyca’s ability.
He gave her a hand signal, and she reacted at once.
One shoulder tap. Green. Safe.
That only made the place feel more wrong.
Why aren’t there any Defoil here?
They didn’t even need many. At least one should have been guarding it.
They entered the room.
When the scene was fully revealed, Yoo Sung-jun scowled.
"What is it? Did something happen?"
"...Yes. Something’s gone wrong, I think."
Yoo Sung-jun stared at the dense cluster of nutrition tumors.
It should have been there.
If the creature behaved exactly like it did in the game, then it had to be there.
But it’s not.
The Death Spoil egg was gone.
Could it have hatched early? That thought had crossed his mind too.
But if it had broken out of the shell, the black fragments would be scattered all around.
So it hadn’t hatched.
"Someone already took the egg."
"...What? Took it, not scanned it? Wait, hold on. My support still says there are ten participants. Huh? Huh? Then...?"
Though the room was hot and damp, a chill seemed to wrap around them in an instant.
He wasn’t surprised.
Yoo Sung-jun had never trusted other people to begin with.
"Looks like there’s some bastard in the alliance with his own agenda. Maybe a few bastards."
"By own agenda, you mean something bad?"
"Yeah. Something bad."
As if on cue, the radio that had been silent until now crackled to life.
It was Edgar.
-Kghh... Rotem. Haaah. Hah... can you hear me?
"I can hear you. What happened? We came to where the egg should be, and someone took the Death Spoil egg."
-Just as I thought... it was the ones who ambushed us.
"The ones... Hinawa’s party?"
-They came after us from behind while we were dealing with the worker Defoil swarm. They were ruthlessly watching for any opening—whenever we were weakened or our force was scattered... *cough!* Damn it.
He panted as if his breath might fail at any second.
Still, Edgar managed to finish.
-We’re already too late... take care of your teammate. They seemed to be after the achievement...
In the end, it was a shared objective. This was a mission where if even one person succeeded, everyone got 200,000 points for free.
And yet they’d stabbed their allies in the back. That made it obvious.
They got blinded by the points from the achievement.
There were always bastards like that.
People blinded by greed, willing to do anything and everything irreparable.
Yoo Sung-jun switched off the radio.
This was no time to stand around.
They had attacked the moment Edgar’s party became vulnerable.
Or maybe Edgar and Hinawa were in on it together, planning to kill them all.
Either way.
"Let’s go back."
"What? Hinawa’s party turned hostile? Over an achievement?"
"It’s not just any achievement. If it’s a D-rank mission, even a low-grade achievement can easily be worth at least 300 points. If it’s high-grade, it’s free money worth 3,000 or more."
That meant they could snatch rewards equivalent to what they’d get from a decent E-rank mission completed in half a day, all at once.
It made sense that they’d flip.
The Dark Cover could come at any moment.
Who knew what people wouldn’t do in order to prepare for it and improve their chances of survival?
Still, they’d gone too far for their own good. Too far, and too stupidly.
They had crossed the line in a mission that Yoo Sung-jun—Meteor—was part of.
You should’ve chosen your target a little better before making a move.
For now, they had to get out of here.
"Let’s hurry. We need to get to the hut."
Sung-hwan was in danger.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
"Kgh! Hkhkhk... Agh, damn it. I thought if it was close-quarters combat, I could just kill him. What the hell? Who the hell taught you hand-to-hand?"
He couldn’t even tear that obnoxious mouth apart.
Agony surged from his side, and he almost let out a groan.
Forcing it down, Yoo Sung-hwan twisted his lips into a smile.
Rather than whimpering, he told the truth.
"Meteor."
"Crazy bastard. We’ve watched that guy’s extermination footage hundreds of times too."
It wasn’t footage. It had really been his brother teaching him.
There was no point insisting on that now.
The two bastards in front of him were no better than trash.
"Kgh!"
Yoo Sung-hwan pressed harder on his side, where blood kept seeping out in pulses.
Even now, the world spun at the edges of his vision. That was how unfamiliar and intense the pain was.
When had a modern person ever suffered a wound like this?
What the fuck. Who the hell just tears someone’s side open like that?
Still, he hadn’t simply stood there and taken it.
He’d forced both enemies into a fight on roughly even footing.
He’d shattered that bitch Hinawa’s gun and stabbed her in the abdomen with a dagger.
The helper backing her up, Hatsumoto, had been subdued in a similar way.
And so it had come to this.
They were desperate to kill each other, but instead they were leaning against the hut wall and trading meaningless talk.
The difference was that they were healing each other’s wounds, while he couldn’t do that.
"Just wait a little longer. Once my injuries recover, I’ll kill you as painfully as I can."
"You achievement-obsessed bitch."
"Huh? You knew? It’s pretty sweet. If you dump the corpses into a Defoil swarm, disposal is easy, and since this is a D-rank mission, one achievement can match an E-rank reward. If there’s time-efficient bait this good, why wouldn’t you do it?"
"I’d rather not become a human worse than a bastard dog."
"Still pretending you’re moral to the end, huh? Keep waiting. Once I recover, I’ll kill you, then send those two lovers off together, nice and happy."
After that, they could set up the bait again.
If things looked dangerous, they’d just have a hidden teammate they’d left behind scan the Death Spoil egg and run.
Heh. Even I have to admit it’s a perfect plan.
Hinawa grinned nonstop.
Her wounds would be healed any second now.
Yoo Sung-hwan. His combat power had been more than she expected, but in the end, she would be the winner.
So why was that bastard still smirking like that?
"You’re about to die, and you’re smiling?"
"Heh... not for that reason."
Yoo Sung-hwan laughed lightly.
They were leaning against the wall with their backs to the hut entrance, so they didn’t know.
Unlike them, he was facing the entrance, pressed against the wall.
That was why he could see it.
His brother charging toward them at incredible speed.
"I just thought it was funny how smug you were. You bastards are the ones who’ll die first."
"You fucking—!"
She spat out a curse and rose to her feet.
But neither of them could continue their next move.
They felt it.
The sweep of a massive greatsword, steeped in killing intent, closing in from arm’s length away.
BOOOOM!
The immense physical force Yoo Sung-jun had shown against the Defoil swarm exploded through the hut and sent it flying apart in an instant.