The Age of Adaptation
The Higher Being’s proposed method for keeping the entire party alive.
Yoo Sung-jun had gathered a great deal of information, enough to devise five separate strategies in response.
I need to choose which one suits those two best.
As for himself, he could carry out every one of those plans.
He was confident in that because no one understood him better than he understood himself.
That was why this one-off mission, “The Agony of Child-Rearing,” mattered.
It was a mission to determine which strategy would suit the two of them.
There were three things Yoo Sung-jun intended to focus on.
Split-second judgment, decisiveness, and emotional control.
He planned to judge them against those three criteria with unforgiving rigor.
Then he’d choose the strategy that matched the average of those scores.
So what he had to do in this mission was simple.
“This time, I’m staying quiet. I won’t interfere.”
“What? So you mean Jeyca and I are supposed to handle it by ourselves?”
“Yeah. I’ll only step in at the crucial moment, so the two of you figure it out yourselves. Still, since this is probably your first time doing a mission like this, I’ll give you three chances to ask questions.”
“Three each?”
“No, three total. Use them carefully. I’m only going to watch unless it gets extremely dangerous or it’s time for me to act.”
“...This is because of the Resonant Entity mission in the underground bunker, isn’t it? Is this, like, a test to prepare for that or something?”
“Oh, so you’ve already used one of your questions?”
“You really do act like the Higher Being.”
Yoo Sung-jun turned on his heel and watched his younger brother walk away, smiling wryly.
Jeyca hesitated for a moment, then moved to stand beside his brother.
Still, if it was something Meteor had said, she seemed ready to follow it for now.
She accepted it without much resistance?
That was a relief.
It meant they trusted him that much.
Yoo Sung-jun rolled one shoulder and looked around.
The mission area was a wasteland.
A desolate place near a national park.
The ash-gray ground sank beneath the feet like powdery soot rather than snow.
The dull, overcast sky made the whole place feel even more hopeless.
In the early days of the D-Virus outbreak, nations with overwhelming military power had fought Infector swarms with firearms like this.
The result was their own self-destruction.
Half-collapsed buildings stood everywhere, and the city was a monstrous tangle of exposed rebar and broken concrete, suffocatingly silent.
There are still quite a few Infectors around.
With his body strengthened to Level 2 and his senses sharpened by the Omega Suit, he could tell.
They probably hadn’t noticed, but the Infectors lurking in this ruin were fairly strong.
The weakest among them was around mid-Level 2.
Still, there was no need to worry.
Having watched them during the fight with Jangsanbeom before, he knew both his brother and Jeyca had grown.
I should watch how they handle this.
This was a mission that demanded they be prepared for a long haul.
Yoo Sung-jun quietly followed behind them, studying their actions.
For some reason, it felt as though he’d become the cameraman on some extreme survival show, trailing after a pair of rookie adventurers.
***
It was after they had wiped out twenty Infectors in the first battle.
His younger brother looked at Jeyca with a serious expression.
“First, we need to secure a temporary base. Jeyca, could you point out the buildings marked mostly in yellow?”
“Yellow? Not green?”
“Yes. A place that’s safe now is only safe for the moment. It’s better to take over the nest of an Infector strong enough to threaten us.”
His brother nudged one of the Infector corpses with his foot.
“Things like this won’t come near it, not with the smell and all the other traces.”
Understanding, Jeyca nodded.
Her wide eyes were full of surprise.
“I was only thinking about immediate safety. Sung-hwan, you were already thinking beyond that?”
“Well, I figured this mission would drag on. If it were going to end quickly, then yeah, your idea of using a green building as a base would be right.”
He turned to Yoo Sung-jun with a look that practically asked, Isn’t that right, hyung?
Yoo Sung-jun jerked his chin, telling him to hurry up and secure a temporary base.
“Tch. Can’t the examiner even talk to the test-taker?”
Grumbling under his breath, his brother headed for the yellow building Appraisal Eye had indicated.
B-7’s silenced shots wiped out the Infectors with perfect precision.
Jeyca’s varied support gear filled in for Yoo Sung-jun’s absence.
The two of them worked together surprisingly well.
To keep the Infectors from approaching, they hid the stinking corpses so they wouldn’t be visible from nearby.
They made the middle floor of the building their temporary base.
It was a position chosen to guard against any airborne Infectors that might show up.
That had been Jeyca’s suggestion.
They’re both doing a fine job.
And so the first night in the mission area arrived.
The two of them ate dinner and discussed what to do tomorrow.
“We’ve secured a base, so we’ll work from here like this.”
Gathering the ash on the floor, his brother drew a circle.
Then he set a pebble in the center and continued.
“We’ll start searching within a two-kilometer radius. We need to find the key evolutionary specimen.”
“But how are we supposed to know what that is? We don’t know anything about it.”
His brother turned his head.
At the same time, Jeyca also looked over.
Meeting their two pairs of eyes, Yoo Sung-jun pushed himself away from the column reduced to little more than a skeleton.
“A question?”
The man and woman both nodded.
***
“...This is the key evolutionary specimen?”
“Doesn’t it look like that thing?”
Sniffling, Jeyca brushed the dust from her nose and pointed.
There was an egg there.
A grotesque egg, all slick with layers of muscle and fat as though it had been slathered in flesh.
It had a hideous shape.
The top, split open in a cross, flexed and writhed nonstop as if hungering for something.
“It does look a bit like an alien egg.”
“Right? If you go near it, won’t the mouth part open?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
She said that while approaching, but his brother’s movements were stiff.
It probably meant he was nervous.
Yoo Sung-jun let out a faint snort and suppressed his senses.
He focused only on hearing.
No Infectors nearby. And this one... it’s still in its growth stage.
Yoo Sung-jun knew exactly what that egg was.
Craving Egg. Or, taken literally, the Egg of Hunger.
Who laid it, or what kind of Infector had transformed into that form, remained a mystery even now.
It had been a strange Infector that just existed there in the game, and back then he’d researched it out of curiosity from every angle he could.
For Yoo Sung-jun, Infectors had always been creatures he had to kill or be killed by.
So it was only natural that he’d be curious when one appeared that could be safely approached.
In the end, he had learned what it was.
For a specimen to evolve, it had to devour a high-level Infector, but this one was an exception.
At first, he thought the Infectors had all gone insane together.
But once he figured out the method, he managed to hatch it, and after raising it for a few days, Infectors began gathering from all directions.
Their goal was the Infector born from the egg.
They didn’t even hesitate to wage a slaughterfest, killing one another just to eat it.
In the end, the strongest one was the one that reached it.
Only for Yoo Sung-jun to slice it into hundreds of pieces.
Thanks to that, he’d earned a very nice pile of points.
And I killed the one that came out of the egg after that, too.
The next specimen he found he raised half-heartedly and fed to another Infector.
That one achieved evolutionary growth.
Then it charged at Yoo Sung-jun and died.
That was all there was to it. The Craving Egg was like a potent elixir for Infectors.
“Hek!”
“Ahaha! He’s scared. Sung-hwan, you’re the type to get startled by this kind of thing, huh?”
“Look at it! If an Infector suddenly jumped out and clung to your respiratory tract, it wouldn’t even be weird!”
He approached the two of them as they traded banter.
The Craving Egg had its mouth wide open like a chick begging to be fed.
The teeth packed tightly inside were chilling.
The two of them were grimacing, while Yoo Sung-jun remained calm.
“Are you going to use a question? About how to hatch this thing.”
“Ah, no. We’ll figure it out ourselves. Hyung, just keep watching like before.”
His brother wasn’t sulking or angry to begin with.
He was just enthusiastically taking the chance to act on his own.
So Yoo Sung-jun stepped back.
He smiled faintly, because the process of their analysis felt strangely similar to his own.
“You don’t like this one either? Then what about this?”
“Jeyca. No matter how much of an Infector it is, do you really think it’ll eat powdered detergent?”
“I thought it might like chemicals.”
“Let’s just keep it simple. Like this.”
His brother cut his palm with a dagger.
His face was twisted in discomfort, but his expression was full of certainty.
Jeyca seemed to understand what he was doing.
“Infectors want human blood and flesh the most...”
He clenched the hand he’d placed on top of the egg so the blood would come more freely.
Blood dripped down in beads.
It was hard to believe this was the same egg that had just vomited up every miscellaneous thing it had been fed.
Gulp. Gulp.
It greedily swallowed his brother’s blood, then soon closed its mouth.
“Oh, looks like it’s full. How cute, the way it closes its mouth.”
“Seems we found the answer, then. Should we move our temporary base here and keep observing it?”
“Sounds good. Though, Sung-hwan, I think you’d be good at leading a party if you ever made one. You’ve got that leader’s aura, you know?”
“Come on. I’m just listing the things that need to be done.”
He headed off to do what he was supposed to do, embarrassed by Jeyca’s praise.
Meanwhile, Yoo Sung-jun took a different path from theirs.
The mission’s final objective was beast hunting.
What was it again? The Infector called a beast.
He estimated the possibilities in his head as he kicked off the ground.
For now, he intended to confirm the beast’s existence.
It was fine to step away for a little while.
He had already confirmed there were no Infectors in the area that could threaten his brother or Jeyca.
***
Grrrraaaagh!
Armedan, a Level 4 Infector, roared.
Compared to the Jangsanbeom he had fought before, a creature that had only half-achieved species evolution, this one was stronger in raw force.
The creature glared at the insolent enemy standing before it, the one who had dared challenge it.
Rrrr...
It answered that gaze with a low, threatening growl.
A six-meter-tall body. A massive upper torso to match. A small lower body in contrast.
Its thick upper arms were like pillars, more than enough to support its frame.
Dense brown fur covered it like heavy protective gear, and its sharp claws and teeth gleamed ominously.
Its face was a grotesque thing, as if someone had set a deer skull atop a gaunt, fleshless head.
Red eyes turned that strangeness into terror.
Grrrgh! Grrrk!
But Armedan did not back down.
Poison dripped from the scale-like hide covering its body.
It pushed itself upright on hind legs several times sturdier than its opponent’s.
Keerrraaagh!
It was ready. This marked the start of battle.
Come on, then. The moment you close in, I’ll melt your hide with poison-soaked fangs and claws.
I’ll melt your muscles down nice and easy, turn you into a meal!
.
.
That was only a few seconds ago.
Armedan exhaled in ragged gasps.
Keurk? Grrrk?
Was its body always this far gone?
Desperately trying to close the distance, it snapped its jaws again and again.
Then a shadow fell over its head.
It rolled only its eyes to look at the source.
It was him.
Gehk!
Crack. A tearing sound of flesh, mockingly unfit for any cry filled with desperate pleading.
The “beast” carefully wiped his hand, the one that had finished the creature off in a single blow, as though polishing a trophy.
He gnawed through Armedan’s head and seized the corpse.
Then he dragged it back toward his nest.
So that was the beast?
After watching the whole scene, Yoo Sung-jun nodded.
Sasquatch. That troublesome Infector has been added to the list of targets.
The creature was a Level 5 Infector.
A specimen that stood at about the middle of Level 5 even among Level 5 Infectors.
It seemed, as expected, that things were starting to appear around the D-rank level.
Among users, only a handful could even hope to exterminate one.
He had seen with his own eyes how strong this thing was in reality.
It had killed Armedan in one blow, when even Yoo Sung-jun would have found that opponent a bit of a burden.
I’ll need to prepare.
Yoo Sung-jun stepped back.
It wasn’t time yet.
When the Craving Egg hatched.
When the moment came that creature began drawing Infectors in.
That would be the time to hunt the beast.
So then.
That’s the decisive moment.
The hunter’s eyes, lit by moonlight, flashed coldly.
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