The Age of Adaptation
Dense tentacles spread out in every direction.
They were the same tentacles that had reached all the way from the central hall to the passage leading into the cargo warehouse.
Those long things seized the warehouse in an instant.
They punched clean through the walls.
They brought mountains of containers crashing down as if they weighed nothing at all.
"Aaah!"
"Kyaaaah! My leg! My leeeeg!"
Users perched atop the containers spilled to the floor in a cascading rain.
Those crushed beneath several tons of steel boxes screamed as well, one after another.
It was utter chaos. Dust billowed thickly through the air, blurring everything in sight.
Yoo Sung-hwan opened his eyes.
He had been unconscious for several dozen seconds.
"Uuugh···."
His whole body hurt.
Something heavy pressed against his back.
He forced it off, and a lump fell away.
Only then did he realize it was the torn torso of a user.
Sticky viscera spilled in a slow, glistening trail.
"Hurk!"
The nausea clawing up his throat vanished just as quickly.
The emotional control that came with bodily enhancement took over, steadying him.
Sung-hwan swept his gaze around with a cool head.
Dust still hung so thickly that he could barely see.
When he switched on his detection goggles, the outlines of objects and the movements of users came into view.
Fwoosh!
The tentacles that had been extended were drawn back in.
As they retreated, the containers they had been holding toppled and rolled free.
The screaming did not stop.
Secondary casualties were already piling up.
Yoo Sung-hwan, having narrowly escaped the worst of it, reached for his gun.
What about Sister Jeyca and hyung···?
Blood kept running down his face, maybe because his head had been hit.
He wiped away the blood before it could get into his eyes and looked around again.
Then someone placed a hand on his shoulder.
It was Jeyca.
"Haa··· Thank goodness."
Neither she nor Sung-hwan seemed to have suffered any serious injuries.
Thinking back, he remembered Jeyca shoving him out of the way.
"You saw it, didn't you, Sister?"
"Yeah. Everything turned red. I’m just glad I dragged you into the yellow zone···."
Sung-hwan looked past her shoulder.
At the sniper nest where he had originally been positioned.
There, a grotesquely crumpled container sat in his place.
Cold shivers ran down his spine at the blood still streaming across the floor.
"Thanks, Sister."
"Don’t mention it. Hurry and get your gear together. This doesn’t feel like it’s over yet."
Mhuaz was still going strong.
And those screams.
Another infector had broken into the fray.
Was his brother safe? He had seen hyung draw Mhuaz in, but that was all.
He looked exhausted···.
The situation was no good for joining up with him now.
They had to hold their position and work with the other users.
The trap had failed, but that didn’t mean they had to die by the thousands.
The subjugation has to continue.
He wiped the blood from his forehead, replacing the sweat with it.
Jeyca finished checking her gun and nodded.
Sung-hwan, too, loaded a fresh magazine with a metallic click and swapped out his scope for a new one.
Right then, a message crackled through his in-ear radio.
He had hoped it would be his brother, but it wasn’t.
"All units, listen up. Multiple boss-class entities, including Mhuaz, have entered the facility. Team leaders are to gather as many surviving members as possible and prioritize stopping the bosses."
"Kssht··· Then what about Mhuaz?"
Only team leaders were allowed to speak on the radio channel.
So this question must have come from one of them.
A moment later, Choi Hyun-seok’s answer came through.
"Let’s go, Sister. We need to head southeast."
"Yeah. Let’s hurry and help Brother Sung-jun."
The two of them ran toward their destination with brightened expressions.
For any other members who might not have heard, Choi Hyun-seok’s voice kept repeating through the in-ear.
"I repeat. Mhuaz has begun to be held in check by Meteor. What we need to do is keep this a clean one-on-one battle. So, all surviving members, take up your weapons. Focus on subjugating the boss-class entities."
***
His head was burning hot.
It felt as though some higher being had been jamming information straight into his brain.
The change brought about by chewing through Mhuaz’s brain.
It happened in the span of a single blink, a single breath.
It was a change born in an instant, yet the pain was immense.
Before, he would have blacked out. Now, he was clearer than ever.
"Nguuuh···!"
He held his breath and threw his eyes wide open.
The pain that even adrenaline had struggled to suppress finally passed.
With the overwhelming sense of release flooding through him, Yoo Sung-jun let a crooked smile spread across his face.
He stood tall in place, savoring the realization.
So this is the new application.
It was exactly what the Higher Being had told his brother.
An infector above level six.
The brain of an entity so rare and difficult to subjugate that he would almost never see one, and the feeling that one side of his own brain had been blown clean open.
Refreshing. It felt as though a cool breeze was sweeping through every part of him.
So now it was time to use it.
Five minutes. No, the adrenaline probably had less than five minutes left now.
Within that window, he had to bring Mhuaz down and secure their safety.
Ka-rraaah!
Mhuaz drew in its tentacles and swelled even larger.
The beast, stripped down to nothing but primal instinct, extended only four tentacles.
Two were thin. The other two were thick and shaded with gray.
Yoo Sung-jun knew that form.
Rage Mode, huh.
In other words, a state of fury.
The two thin ones moved at blinding speed.
The other two had hardened through muscle fortification, becoming tougher and sharper.
They would be slower, but their mass would be on a different level.
At this point, Mhuaz was basically wielding a devastating whip, a sword, and a shield all at once.
So what?
"An infector that’s lost its reason is no different from a low-level infector."
A rough laugh slipped out of him.
The link between breathing and adrenaline really did turn people into lunatics.
Still, the boost to his physical ability was undeniable.
Haaah···.
Yoo Sung-jun breathed.
He applied the new method, sensing the expansion and contraction of his lungs and controlling it.
Kararara.
The breathing continued without pause.
Even as Mhuaz came closer, waving its tentacles limply, even as it drew near with a keening cry.
He kept inhaling, relentless as a tide, as if he meant to swallow every breath of air around him.
Karararak!
At the end of that repeated breathing, repeated again and again, Mhuaz roared, deciding it had reached the proper distance.
The thin tentacle came from the right. The thick one from the left.
They crossed diagonally, above and below, lunging in to tear him apart.
Just a brush would be enough to sever his body in two.
But Yoo Sung-jun met them head-on.
He had already drawn his greatsword and tilted it forward.
He took the impact without pressing back with force of his own.
The first clash was fierce, yet it passed in perfect silence.
Sshaaark!
A thin slicing sound brushed his ear.
He exhaled slowly, drawing his greatsword around in his grip.
Half a beat later, the thick tentacle that came in afterward was cut down in turn.
With the bare minimum of movement, two tentacles dropped away.
That didn’t mean Mhuaz had taken any decisive damage, though.
Kararack!
It retracted the severed tentacles.
Then, whipping its still-intact tentacles through the air, it unleashed two new ones.
Again, one thin and one thick.
This was the limit of a beast in Rage Mode.
The four tentacles it could carve out at its optimal peak with its own enhanced physicality.
That was the ceiling. It could never grow beyond that.
It had become stronger, yes.
But he had become stronger in equal measure.
He kicked off the ground and circled around it.
Much faster than before, he slipped past its strikes, and Mhuaz’s tentacles kept hammering uselessly into the floor.
Thunk-kakakakak!
He fired the NU-101 in rapid succession.
With the body size it now had, his hit rate was a clean one hundred percent.
But it was still too weak.
This nanotech weapon couldn’t pierce Mhuaz’s body now that it had unleashed all of its strength.
The tentacles were the same.
The thin ones were hard to hit, and the thick ones were sturdier than the body itself, so they didn’t sink in at all.
It really is far stronger than in the game.
Whether it had already evolved or was standing right on the edge of evolution, there was no other way to explain Mhuaz’s level. It was far beyond anything he had expected.
That was why the trap had failed.
So it really won’t work.
At this rate, it would only become dead weight.
Yoo Sung-jun hurled the NU-101 behind him.
He would recover it later. For now, he gripped the greatsword with his far lighter frame.
Shweeeek!
A cutting wind sound. From the right.
He twisted his body. Hiss—he exhaled sharply and stepped forward.
A thin tentacle grazed past his side.
It dug into the floor as if splitting a head open, then sprang back up.
He swung his greatsword, and it was cut off with the force it had carried, whirling away through the air.
I need an opening.
He parried slashes, dodged them, cut them down.
He evaded thrusts, stepped over them, blocked them with the blade’s broad face.
It was a relentless war of attrition.
In the three minutes of tense exchanges that followed, Yoo Sung-jun made his decision.
This won’t do.
Explosions, shrieks, and battle cries all mixed together from every direction.
The in-ear was noisy with team leaders’ shouts.
Their efforts were buying him the time he needed to face Mhuaz alone.
He decided.
If creating an opening was impossible, then he would simply force one open.
Shrrk!
The greatsword drew a half moon from low to high.
He cleanly sliced through an incoming tentacle and regulated his breathing.
He lifted the sword into a two-handed stance.
He stepped out with his right foot and steadied his breath.
Haaah!
It was called hyperventilation.
The phenomenon that occurred when the lungs expelled more carbon dioxide than the body produced.
Usually it came from emotional instability or a physical disorder, but Yoo Sung-jun was different.
It was a new application of his innate nature.
Through it, he controlled hyperventilation.
And by applying it, he magnified his physical ability in an instant.
Oxygen. More oxygen than oxygen itself. His physical abilities surged.
He amplified that state and drove even harder.
Crack. Crack-crack!
His enhanced body pushed Yoo Sung-jun to the edge of oxygen poisoning.
The tips of his hair turned white, as though they were being singed by a wick.
Rapid aging, caused by the overproduction of reactive oxygen species.
A faint, wrinkled smile curved Yoo Sung-jun’s eyes and mouth.
Loki. Route all power into the sword.
The greatsword of supersonic vibration activated.
He poured his will into it, forcing it to grow in size.
Every nanoscopic particle of the Omega Suit was sucked into the greatsword in an instant.
It had grown even larger than when he split Goran in two.
Everything was ready.
Yoo Sung-jun, now stripped bare, swung the enlarged greatsword.
No—just as he was about to swing it down, in that exact instant.
Karararak!
Mhuaz retracted its tentacles.
The front of its body convulsed wildly.
Then a tremendous mass of tentacles erupted forward.
Hundreds of blade-like tentacles came charging at him.
Looking at them, Yoo Sung-jun considered his next move.
Was this the beast’s last desperate struggle, understanding that the decisive moment had arrived?
Should I block it?
If he used up this moment, the Omega Suit would have no more power left.
The strength to wield the NWA greatsword would vanish.
His hesitation was brief.
He answered with force.
If he stood here and blocked them, he really would have no weapon left to subjugate the thing with.
He had to do it himself.
No matter what injuries he took, he had to split Mhuaz open now.
So he brought down the greatsword he had raised toward the surging tentacles, toward Mhuaz beyond them.
He swung with everything he had.
"Graaaah!"
The giant attacks unleashed by both sides tore through the air and rushed together.
Half of the tentacles were shredded apart by the greatsword.
The other half split away, targeting Yoo Sung-jun from every direction.
Then an all-too-familiar shout rang out from beside him.
"Shoot in the order I told you!"
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!
Even in rapid fire, it was clean.
The bullets flew in a pale-white line and struck the tentacles dead on.
The tentacles had been fired in Rage Mode, so they were comparatively soft now that the state had been dropped.
The flow of force reversed, and the tentacle mass began flailing to the right instead.
The threat was gone.
But the greatsword threatening Mhuaz remained.
Kararararar···!
Krudak!
The beast’s death cry was cut short by the merciless black greatsword.
The high-elasticity skin, muscle, and bone that had held its body together were split in two and scattered in every direction.
"Hah··· Hah···."
Yoo Sung-jun quietly drew back the arm he had extended.
He pressed the greatsword, now losing power and shrinking by the second, against his smartwatch.
The greatsword broke down into nanoscopic particles and vanished into the watch.
"Huu··· I’m going to pass out in the Enter Room again."
There was no strength left in his body.
He was only still standing because the adrenaline was holding. Once the effect wore off, it was obvious he’d collapse immediately.
"Are you okay, hyung?"
"Brother Sung-jun, are you hurt anywhere?"
So it had been the two of them supporting him.
Yoo Sung-jun looked at his younger brother and Jeyca approaching him, and a faint smile touched his lips.
But the two of them couldn’t smile back when they saw him.
They sucked in sharp breaths or clamped their hands over their mouths.
"Hyung, your hair···."
"Why is your skin··· all wrinkled like that?"
His hair had turned patchy and white.
When he touched his face, he could feel the wrinkles.
But it was fine. He hadn’t actually aged at a rapid pace.
"It’s just an outward change caused by excess reactive oxygen species. I can get rid of it in the Enter Room."
"Oh, really? I thought you’d suffered some side effect from your innate nature or something···."
"Strictly speaking, it is a side effect. Ah, Sung-hwan, lend me your gun for a second. I want to finish that bastard off."
Yoo Sung-jun pointed at Mhuaz, which was still twitching in two torn halves.
His brother handed over the gun without a hint of protest.
"Then wait here."
It was time to put an end to this disgusting, endless raid.
He staggered to his feet and stood before Mhuaz.
He aimed the gun and laid a finger on the trigger.
He only had to pull it now, but one of Mhuaz’s rolled-back eyes suddenly flashed.
Its pupil shifted, locking directly onto Yoo Sung-jun.
Was it you? The one who broke my toy?
It wasn’t Mhuaz’s voice.
A sweet, girlish voice echoed inside Yoo Sung-jun’s head in the form of telepathy.
This voice···.
You do know my voice, don’t you?
How could he not know it?
How could he ever forget? Countless clans had challenged the raid and failed again and again while listening to that girlish laughter.
So you’re the queen of this monster bastard?
I did let you call me queen, even though you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Now the existence of the queen was clear.
Hearing the voice brought it back in an instant.
Rupal···.
Yoo Sung-jun swallowed hard.
One of the five tyrants of the ruined Earth.
One of the Five Calamities had cast its gaze through Mhuaz’s eye and looked directly into Yoo Sung-jun’s face.