The Age of Chaos
Now he understood why a killer faction could be a threat to the party.
Even after a week, Jeyca showed no sign of waking up.
He learned the reason from Loki.
The neural treatment is taking longer than originally scheduled. Her nature depends heavily on the midbrain, so the damage there turned out to be more severe than expected.
"You’re not even the one treating her, and you know all that?"
That’s only thanks to all the information provided by her supporter, Mackludie.
Why was she sounding so smug when it was all something that guy had told her?
As he narrowed his eyes, another voice cut in.
So the treatment’s probably going to take at least twice as long as planned.
“Twice as long”? Why was she talking like that?
No, more importantly—
"Can you talk to other users now?"
Yes, if I’m authorized to. Honestly, I didn’t want to connect you at all, uwaah...! But Mackludie begged and pleaded, so I connected you, Yoo Sung-jun.
She put strange emphasis on his full name at the end.
Maybe it was just his imagination, but it felt as if every word had sharp edges.
Yoo Sung-jun stared at Jeyca, still motionless inside the modified capsule.
"Once another week passes, she’ll wake up fine, right?"
Yep. That’s right. Which is why I’m worried.
They had to hold back the killers without Jeyca.
The people who had made murder their trade long before the world turned upside down.
If Choi Hyun-seok’s plan works perfectly, that’d be ideal.
On paper, it was a flawless strategy.
And if they could drag Jack Kalt into it as well, then they could at least keep casualties to a minimum during this assault.
Yoo Sung-jun gently brushed the glass at the front of the capsule.
"Take good care of my teammate. I’ll do everything I can to stop the threat with Sung-hwan."
Understood. Ah, and one more thing! Jeyca seems frustrated, so I’m passing along a message—!
The signal from Mackludie cut out before he could say more.
Yoo Sung-jun stood there with a blank expression until Loki’s voice slipped in.
Oh my goodness. It looks like something came up and they had to focus on the surgery. They just cut the communication off in a hurry from their side, didn’t they?
"Really? Well, the surgery matters more than talking to me."
What had Jeyca wanted to say in her frustration?
Hmmm... I feel like a misunderstanding’s piling up here, but I can’t exactly ask the person involved.
In the end, Yoo Sung-jun returned home with a nagging sense of unease.
The living room of the house he came back to had changed quite a bit.
Smoke had gathered in soft, hazy clumps near the ceiling.
And the experimental tools beneath it were just as impressive.
Along the winding glass tubes of strange shape, dark red smoke moved back and forth.
The smoke that had been filtered again and again finally reached the beaker containing the core of Undomination.
The Cell Degenerator is coming along smoothly too.
The mineral particles made by crushing minerals to a fine powder held the powerful poison of the Doug Spider Queen.
And the hormone of Death Spoil was what drew only the poison out of the mineral.
Once vaporized, the hormone carried only the mineral’s toxicity as it moved.
The refined essence, holding only the core of the two extracted substances, came into contact with Undomination’s core.
The core, which endlessly longed for life, did not stop its life activity even after being reduced to nothing but a nucleus and continued to absorb the smoke.
It didn’t explode or anything.
It simply became a terrifying toxic substance that would melt living things the instant it sensed them.
That was what Yoo Sung-jun was after.
The desire for life and a poison that killed life were incompatible.
That repulsive force would be forced directly into Kalakwa’s body, where cells could freely proliferate and contract.
Undomination’s core will try to halt and assimilate with it, and that trait will be absorbed by the cells of Halt as well.
Then even Halt’s cells would resist the poison.
A resistance doomed to collapse in the end.
The cells would be poisoned, unable to proliferate or contract, and would contaminate his own body from within.
It was the beginning and the end of corruption.
And once he severed his link to Kalakwa with that, it would be over.
Loki. The Cell Degenerator counts as equipment, right?
He had already asked the same thing over and over while preparing it, but he asked again to be certain.
...Yes. A crafting method that undergoes purification through Enter Room equipment and stabilizes it perfectly. We judged this method to be so flawless that it could be formally registered as equipment without issue. However, since all copyright belongs to Yoo Sung-jun, we couldn’t touch it carelessly.
"You said there was a material problem too."
Parts from a high-level Infector are materials we can’t secure on our own.
It was a consumable made from a Master-level, level 10 nature.
Apparently it really was so perfect they had no choice but to acknowledge it.
Its one flaw is that it can’t be mass-produced.
He had briefly wondered if he should register the recipe for sale, but he gave up on the idea.
It might have brought in points, but only pocket change.
Keeping it for himself and thoroughly preparing before one day hunting down Kalakwa would be a hundred, a thousand times more profitable.
So in the end, this consumable can still only be produced by me.
That was the part he liked best.
Once the crafting was done, he would carry it on his person at all times.
Maybe it’s time to get ready to meet Jack Kalt too.
As planned, the man had prepared one million points for him.
Today, he intended to meet him, take the points, and also ask him to join the operation.
He hadn’t expected him to accept without pay in the first place.
Jack Kalt might even counter with an offer for Yoo Sung-jun to come to the Quantum Clan’s prepared refuge instead.
I don’t want that.
That was his honest feeling.
Blood Rain, which had fought tooth and nail for its bunker, now boasted a power that wouldn’t be easily looked down on anywhere.
And they even followed him—surprisingly, even his younger brother.
Gaining that kind of recognition and cohesion took more than just reputation attached to a name.
Did they expect him to go to Quantum and build all of that again? Sure, Jack Kalt might urge everyone to follow Meteor.
But that would be nothing more than an empty shell.
The bond Yoo Sung-jun wanted wasn’t that sort of thing.
Besides, in a world where every structure would collapse anyway, such relationships were bound to crumble like sand castles.
The right thing is to carry forward what we’ve already built and make it stronger.
"What are you thinking about so intently?"
Yoo Sung-jun broke out of his thoughts at the question from Jack Kalt, whom he had met again.
Behind him, a small stack of boxes had been piled up.
"Equipment worth about one million points. You brought it all neatly."
"Would you mind trying to sell it now, just in case?"
They were in Jack Kalt’s Enter Room.
His Enter Room was fairly bare.
It was similar to Yoo Sung-jun’s.
Only the essentials were there, and there wasn’t a single piece of furniture meant for comfort anywhere to be found.
Are all the people whose nature option is Analysis just absolutely rigid and simple-minded?
As he thought that while selling the equipment, one more thing about the threat came to mind as he looked at Jack Kalt.
Evolve.
A cult-like organization occupying the middle ground between a user and an Infector who had accepted the mutated D-Virus and achieved evolution.
He knew there was a high-level Infector backing them.
If I thought about it a little, they were never a threat right away.
Yoo Sung-jun suspected it might be because he had destroyed the dirt tower they’d built before.
He had cut down the factory where they mass-produced followers in advance.
If this result had already been decided, then just how many moves ahead was the Higher Being looking when it told Jeyca that?
So that’s what it is because it’s a being on a higher dimension. Something ordinary human understanding can’t possibly grasp.
Either way, Evolve still had to be eliminated before Dark Cover.
The extermination of the killers and the suppression of Halt were only the beginning; now there was another task added on top.
Yoo Sung-jun nodded.
It came out exactly to one million points.
"You prepared it properly. Not a single point off."
"There shouldn’t be any margin for error when it comes to investment."
He wondered if giving a little extra would’ve hurt, but from a clan leader’s perspective, that attitude was correct.
Yoo Sung-jun looked at the roughly 2.5 million points accumulated in his possession and smiled faintly.
Thanks to his visor, Jack Kalt couldn’t see it.
With this, body enhancement goes to level 4. If I swap out my equipment, it’ll fit perfectly.
The nanotech gear he was using was certainly good, but it was time for a replacement.
Halt wasn’t some pathetic level-7 evolution like Spoiled.
It was, in fact, a nearly perfect level-6.
"It seems Meteor-san does a lot of thinking."
"So Analysis is your nature, huh? Were you spying on me? That’s kind of disgusting."
"Haha, I must have heard that from Choi Hyun-seok. Sorry. It doesn’t seem to be a nature that can be controlled so easily. Just as body enhancement or the Omega Suit require a sufficient acclimation process at each stage before the next upgrade, a rapid growth in nature seems to come with side effects as well."
At Jack Kalt’s light, almost joking tone, Yoo Sung-jun couldn’t agree.
I don’t need to go through that kind of acclimation process.
That was another advantage of his high assimilation rate.
Other people, and even his younger brother, apparently needed time to adapt, but it didn’t really resonate with Yoo Sung-jun.
"I don’t think you met me just to get one million points. Am I right?"
Come to think of it, though he was using English, he still kept his speech consistently respectful.
He either respects me, admires me, or fears me. Probably one of the three.
With a shrug, Yoo Sung-jun got straight to the point.
"Just as your biggest threat is Halt, a major threat is heading for me too. So I’m thinking of borrowing your strength. How about it? Can you lend it to me?"
At Yoo Sung-jun’s question, Jack Kalt scratched the back of his head.
"I understand why you’re saying that. If the Higher Being said it, then it must be true."
"So you’ll accept?"
"May I hear the conditions first before deciding?"
So this was how he was going to play it.
Yoo Sung-jun had brought a bullet of his own.
More valuable than points, and irreplaceable: information.
"A way to grow Analysis. Interested?"
Jack Kalt wore a dazed expression for a moment.
Then he burst out laughing.
"Hahahaha! Right. You’re the user who grew Analysis to level 10, Meteor. Yes, that was a thing, wasn’t it?"
"Don’t laugh. Answer me. Interested or not?"
He wiped his face dry.
But the expression that emerged beyond his hand was no longer smiling; it had turned utterly serious.
"I’m interested."
"Then start by telling me the growth methods you already know. I’ll point out only the ones you don’t."
Jack Kalt recited them without another word.
Yoo Sung-jun already knew them all anyway, so it wasn’t much of a secret.
"...That makes nine methods."
"You only knew four?"
"How many do you know, Meteor-san?"
"Me?"
Yoo Sung-jun thought for a moment, then answered.
"About eight?"
A brief silence settled over the room.
Then Jack Kalt looked at him with pleading eyes.
"If you tell me two, I’ll support you immediately."
"No. For each one, add another team leader-level person including yourself. Also hand over one of your questions through the Higher Being."
His eyes rolled around restlessly.
Having finished his calculations, he trembled slightly and held up two fingers.
"Then two. No more than that. We don’t have enough team leaders to command the clan members, and we’re short on questions too..."
At the outset, there had been no substitute conditions that could even count as a compromise or negotiation.
It was, in every sense, a condition that let him seize the initiative completely.
With a winner’s smile, Yoo Sung-jun accepted the compromise.
"Fine. Then bring me two good team leaders. I’ll collect the question rights later."
Now it was time to strengthen his forces with the newly acquired points.
And, while he was at it, he would consume Death Spoil’s brain too.
That’s going to bring up a ridiculous amount of bitter fluid again.
Yoo Sung-jun stuck out his tongue and headed back home.
***
-Static. Hey, idiot. Hey!
Victor opened his eyes.
It was because the in-ear communicator he always wore like a wireless earbud was crackling.
"So today’s the day already."
As planned, he had thoroughly mapped out the bunker’s terrain, weapon stockpiles, and the movements of its key defenders, then passed all of it on.
More than a week had probably passed since then.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he got up, he heard Rose’s familiar voice continue over the line.
-We’re starting the infiltration now. Like you said, we’re hitting the places with fewer guards, so keep that in mind. You know exactly what you have to do, right?
"Of course."
Victor stood and recalled his objective.
Now was the right time, with no team leader-grade elite units or Meteor’s party present.
-You’re sure? The ones led by Igrato are out on a cooperative mission, right?
"I’m sure. I even scouted the whole bunker with insects two hours ago."
-Good. Then move as planned.
"Understood."
Victor answered Rose and left the room.
Now it was time to carry out the things Boss had asked for.