The Age of Adaptation
Compared to the enormous passage they had already left behind, this one was small.
Six people could walk shoulder to shoulder and fill it nearly wall to wall.
The place was flooded with a greenish liquid.
It soaked up to his ankles and clung to him with a sticky, unpleasant pull.
It was cultivation fluid, the kind used to accelerate an Infector's growth.
Probably something the Level 3 Infector, Grow, had spread around.
Choi Hyun-seok, walking behind Yoo Sung-jun, asked, "Isn't it about time you told me?"
"Told you what?"
"The reason I need to drag out Mueaz."
There was a way to defeat Mueaz easily.
He had profited from that knowledge.
It would have been one thing if he were alone, but now he had drawn Choi Hyun-seok into the method as well.
So yes, it was time to explain.
After all, Choi Hyun-seok had climbed onto the same boat as him for the operation to lure Mueaz.
"I saw your user profile. Your innate talent is wave detection, isn't it?"
"Is that why you picked me?"
Wave detection. It was an innate talent based on touch among the five senses.
An ability that sensed energy as it rippled outward in all directions.
Even waves ordinary people couldn't feel, he could detect.
He sensed them through his skin.
"You'll need to use that talent to the fullest. Otherwise, you'll only make yourself tired."
"Then if I hadn't been here, your Mueaz lure operation would have run into serious trouble."
"Not to that extent, so let's skip the melodrama."
"You knew exactly what I was about to say, didn't you?"
"You were going to bring up operational priority and the point distribution ratio, weren't you?"
"······."
Had he hit the mark?
Shrugging, Yoo Sung-jun went on, "That was a condition I secured because I agreed to take the core role."
"Can't argue with that."
"Then let that go and use your talent when I give the signal."
"On Mueaz?"
"Yes. You'll feel something. Just tell me where it is."
"That won't be difficult."
Choi Hyun-seok matched his pace.
Shoulder to shoulder with Yoo Sung-jun, he kept walking.
"Sung-jun. Do you still distrust me?"
"Why do you ask?"
"You're hiding the fine details of this operation, and it feels like you're trying to hide a lot more besides."
Of course he was.
Whatever relationship they had was bound only by mutual profit.
Cruiser had offered kindness first, and that had grown into a good connection.
Jeyca was someone he had fought alongside in a relationship built on mutual support, and trust had grown between them mission by mission.
But Choi Hyun-seok was different.
"You and I are tied together only by what we can gain from each other. Of course I’m going to be cautious."
"I understand what you're worried about. You think I'll turn on you after this raid, don't you?"
"For someone who's also a high-ranker in Another Earth, you understand this pretty well."
Choi Hyun-seok swept his hair back.
"Do you know why I'm so obsessed with this raid and rebuilding the country, Sung-jun?"
"Well, I mean···."
To Yoo Sung-jun, Another Earth was a place where everyone survived on their own.
Talking about rebuilding a nation in a world like that made him want to snort.
Wanting a clan for the sake of personal safety, or the stability that came from belonging to a group, made sense. But wanting anything beyond that? Honestly, it felt greedy.
He had assumed Choi Hyun-seok was just using whatever means he could to fatten his own belly.
So when he looked at him with a faintly sour expression, Choi Hyun-seok raised his eyes slightly.
His eyes were narrow to begin with.
Maybe that was why the glimpse of sharpness in them seemed all the more cutting.
"In the game, only users and clans existed. But in reality··· there are nations. And there are citizens who still don't understand the situation."
"Worrying about them is overreach."
"Is it? After hearing everything from the supporter, I started thinking about the future. A world that has become a lawless zone. The freedom of spatial movement through missions. Distance will stop mattering. So what does that mean?"
It was a problem he had never really thought about.
For Yoo Sung-jun, missions were nothing more than a source of points, a way to improve his own survival and his younger brother's. Nothing more, nothing less.
"After Dark Cover, the nations that survive will try to restore their systems. They'll split into two groups. They'll use missions to cross space and approach survivors scattered across each region. After that, they’ll either offer a relatively peaceful merger or try to absorb them by force. And the fate of the survivors who joined that way will be grim, no doubt about it."
At Choi Hyun-seok's words, Yoo Sung-jun stopped walking.
He looked at him with a slightly stunned expression.
So this was all for the greater good?
He had thought of Choi Hyun-seok as an unforgivably pragmatic opportunist.
But that wasn't it.
He was someone who genuinely refused to let the nation perish.
It didn't matter if, in the end, that also served his own safety.
He was still moving for the sake of the many in the face of a foretold collapse.
"An individual alone can't be strong enough. We need to build the power to resist as a clan, and as a nation."
In matters tied directly to survival, how rotten was humanity at its core?
He was someone who always imagined the worst, and yet he still gave a small nod.
"If Korea gets absorbed by a clan or another country, I'll leave the rest to your imagination."
In the worst case, they would be used as human shields, or as a source of points, worked like slaves.
Now Choi Hyun-seok's purpose in entering this raid was clear.
What would I have done?
Just as the weak had their own ways of surviving, the strong had theirs too.
If it had been him, he would have used the advantage of being an individual to slip away.
The strength he had steadily built over time would have made that possible.
But if he were weak?
There'd definitely be a situation where Sung-hwan and Jeyca would be in danger.
Choi Hyun-seok had undoubtedly devised this plan for the sake of his own safety.
But in the end, that had transformed into a fence meant for the many, for each other.
Yoo Sung-jun nodded.
Seeing that reaction, Choi Hyun-seok smiled faintly.
"I hope that eases some of your caution toward me."
"···I'm twenty-six."
"Huh?"
"How old are you?"
He asked the question back, but when Yoo Sung-jun repeated it, Choi Hyun-seok started putting on his Omega Suit.
Once he had finished, he answered, "Same age."
"Then let's drop the honorifics."
"Haha, sure."
He didn't think the long conversation they had just had was the decisive moment.
The information from the Higher Being was, after all, only the method for finishing the raid with the entire party alive.
So not yet.
Yes, not yet.
Still, it had been a useful time. He now understood Choi Hyun-seok more clearly than before.
For now, he needed to focus on the operation.
Yoo Sung-jun looked at the sign dangling pathetically from the ceiling at the end of the passage.
Main Hall. That was what it said.
They had arrived at the right place.
The nano-particle response he had glanced at was still beyond the corridor.
Are there no infectors guarding it?
Maybe they had all been deployed to wipe out users.
He approached the door, which was open only a narrow crack where an umbrella's ribs might barely fit through.
He pressed himself flat against one side and peered inside.
Nothing was visible beyond it.
I won't know for sure until I go in.
Nano-particles didn't indicate the exact location.
I'm going in.
He mouthed the words and activated the Omega Suit.
He slid his hand into the gap in the door and shoved.
Groooooooooan!
His superhuman body poured power into the motion.
The door, blocking the passage with a heavy grinding sound, opened roughly.
He threw his body through the gap.
His superhuman senses immediately transmitted information about the surroundings.
A gigantic cylindrical space, as befitted a central hall.
Countless passageways opened in every direction.
Everything was crushed and torn apart.
The place was a wreck, cluttered with supplies scattered everywhere in complete disorder.
There.
The nano-particle response was beyond a bunk bed that had been knocked over in the back.
A chill crept over him.
Mueaz wasn't small enough to be hidden by a bunk bed.
And why was it so quiet?
He swallowed dryly and climbed onto the bed.
Then he saw it.
"···Fuck."
Part of a severed, shriveled tentacle.
They were right in front of him.
What that meant was simple.
That bastard knows about the nano-particles.
Which meant it had also anticipated their infiltration and prepared for it.
"I'm sensing multiple waves from all directions. And—!"
"And what?"
"Up there!"
Rumble! Thud!
A heavy vibration rolled in from every direction except the passage they had entered through.
A thick gust struck his head like a hammer.
The ceiling.
Yoo Sung-jun and Choi Hyun-seok both snapped their heads up.
Their eyes widened at the massive shadow crashing down on them.
They weren't the only ones who had set a trap.
Mueaz had set one too.
And now it was opening it right here.
So it really did come chasing after that bizarre bullet. The queen was telling the truth!
A ringing voice thundered inside his skull.
It was Mueaz's voice as the creature fell, its body unfolding thousands of tentacles.
Wait. The queen?
A single guess surfaced in his mind.
He had one idea of what that might mean, but for now he shoved it aside and shouted, "Choi Hyun-seok, the wave!"
Understanding his meaning, Choi Hyun-seok glared at Mueaz.
"The lower-right corner of its body!"
The reason Mueaz could speak like a human.
It was because it possessed an organ that handled reason.
The location of that organ differed from one individual to another, and when it spoke, it vibrated and sent waves outward.
At Choi Hyun-seok's shouted confirmation, Yoo Sung-jun nodded.
If they destroyed it, the creature would lose its reason.
It would rush mindlessly to kill and devour humans.
That was the core of the plan to drag Mueaz out beyond the nest.
But the situation was bad for carrying it out.
BOOOOOM!
The monster crushed the spot he had just barely kicked off from.
Fragments of shattered debris flew everywhere from the impact.
Dust billowed up and filled the central hall.
Blocking the front with his greatsword, Yoo Sung-jun sharpened his other senses in place of sight.
Craaaack!
Keck! Kehehe!
Powerful presences surged through every passageway.
They were the hidden leader-class infectors.
He knew the location of the organ.
But there was no way he could ignore the level 4 and 5 infectors just to break it open.
A variable had appeared simply because Mueaz knew the function of nano-particles.
"Sung-jun."
Choi Hyun-seok spoke to him.
In that brief instant, a moment in which a decision had to be made, Yoo Sung-jun felt it instinctively.
This was the decisive moment the Higher Being had mentioned.
A gap in thought, slow to be recognized.
And then Choi Hyun-seok spoke quickly.
"Go back to the cargo warehouse."
He couldn't go back.
"Set the trap there."
He couldn't set one there.
"The part where the wave was felt. If I break that, you can lure it, right? So wait in the cargo warehouse. I'll lure Mueaz."
Yoo Sung-jun had to be the one to break it.
Finally··· Choi Hyun-seok couldn't lure the thing.
If he interpreted things the other way around, it was obvious he would die right here.
He couldn't understand why a man who had gone to the trouble of preparing for this raid just so he could survive safely was suddenly willing to throw himself away.
Still, if this was the moment the Higher Being had spoken of, if this was the path to the entire party's survival—
Then I'll accept it gladly.
"Don't order me around. You do it."
Yoo Sung-jun grabbed Choi Hyun-seok by the nape of the neck.
With brutal force, he hurled him away.
"Whoa!"
He flew through the air and crashed into the passage they had just entered through.
And then the entrance, which had only barely opened in the first place, slammed shut from the force of the impact.
How pathetic. Human camaraderie. I will chew up and swallow every human you brought with you, beginning with you.
The creature—Mueaz, in its enormous spherical form—raised itself using its tentacles.
Every one of the tentacles attached to the five-meter sphere turned toward him.
It thrust forward its eyes that sowed confusion and the blades it had honed to a razor edge.
At the same time, more than ten leader-class infectors were charging in from all directions.
"···Ha-hah."
It was the first time.
The first time he had stepped willingly into danger this absurdly unreal.
Maybe because of Breathing, a dry laugh escaped him.
Crack!
He bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.
The sharp pain cleared his mind for a fleeting instant.
Through his intermittently visible vision, he brought the nano-tech firearm, the NU-101, to bear.
Did you decide to die alone? How amusing.
"Shut up, you candy-eyed bastard."
The same words he had once spat at it before killing it burst from his mouth again.
At the same instant, Yoo Sung-jun's muzzle spat fire.