Age of Chaos
Victor needed a moment to understand what had just happened.
He worked backward through the last few seconds, trying to make sense of it.
The bastard had definitely been a sniper.
There was no way he should have lost to some long-range shooter at close quarters. So he’d closed the distance and cut off the sound as well.
That had given him two advantages.
A fully sealed space.
And if there were no witnesses, it was an assassination.
If no one even realized an assassination had taken place afterward, then it was the perfect one.
He had been about to drive his silver thread straight through the man’s forehead.
He’d even prepared the poisoned needles hidden in his coat, just in case the silver thread was blocked.
And then, just as he swung—
That was when it started.
Just as Victor had sensed the birds and insects in advance and dodged the shot by reading its angle, the other man had noticed it too.
The razor-thin approach of the silver thread.
Even though Victor had struck from a perfect blind spot, at the exact moment when the opening was there.
The aftermath of that interception and counterstrike ran down the bridge of his nose in a warm trail.
"Hiss."
Victor ignored the red streak blurring his vision.
He didn’t care about the blood seeping into his eye.
It didn’t matter if the whole world turned red.
The insects he’d linked with beforehand were feeding him information from every angle.
"You’re different from the usual sniper type."
After a brief exchange, they separated and stood off at a distance.
Victor, now wearing his Omega Suit, appraised the man from behind a pillar.
Normally, talking to a target was a waste of time.
Better not to do it at all.
But Victor knew how to use conversation as another tool for killing, when the situation called for it.
For him, dialogue was nothing more than a component of murder—no more, no less.
"Have you killed a lot of people like me?"
"Too many to count. The ones I wiped out while escorting him through disputes with the major organizations that ruled the shadows and through war zones, you mean."
"Talking like it’s something to brag about. In reality, you’re just a piece of crap who couldn’t even kill a minor."
"And you think you can live?"
"What?"
Victor flicked a finger.
At the same instant, Yoo Sung-hwan’s pistol fired.
Bang!
The bullet skimmed past the finger he’d just moved.
It punched through an unlucky iron table instead, sending up a curl of smoke.
"Pipe down. Shut that mouth of yours. I’m only holding back because I was about to kill you."
"You talk as though you have my life in your hands."
"Don’t I?"
Yoo Sung-hwan tilted his head and kept the pistol trained on him.
Camo-plasm. The pistol disguised as a pocket was impossible to identify. It was wrapped in nanites, making it hard to read.
Victor felt the slightest inconvenience.
The opponent was troublesome. He was leaking only a restrained killing intent, never showing his hand fully.
Minor?
What a ridiculous thing to say.
None of the snipers Victor had met had exuded that level of restraint.
Even the most exceptional ones had let emotion slip through the cracks when their minds were shaken.
This was fun. It had been a long time since his blood had started to boil like this.
It reminded him of the chase-and-be-chased struggle with the killer from Tentre Moden, the huge organization in LA.
Back then, too, it had been like this.
Trading meaningless conversation to search for each other’s openings, then wagering life and death on the outcome.
And the thrill of victory seized at the end of it all.
"Victor."
"Smirking?"
"Can you see that?"
"Even with the visor blacked out, it’s visible to me."
"I see..."
Yoo Sung-hwan felt a chill run down his spine.
The bastard, who’d been stone-still a moment ago, had leaned his face out from behind the pillar, and for an instant he looked almost alive—like a fish flopping in a net.
Can a person smile like that?
People often said someone’s mouth was stretched to their ears.
He’d always thought that was just an exaggeration.
It wasn’t.
There was a man standing in front of him smiling exactly like that.
As Victor took one step forward, letting out that strange, twisted grin, black mist burst from his Omega Suit.
Whoosh!
This son of a bitch!
His brother had told him before.
In short exchanges, the difference between victory and defeat came down to the motion of firing a single shot and the split second it took.
He’d kept that in mind and been measuring the opening carefully, but now Yoo Sung-hwan narrowed his eyes and stared at the chaotic traces smearing the air before him.
The mist wasn’t mist at all. It was a scatter of nanites.
Visual interference. That’s the Omega Suit’s ability. So where the hell is Victor?
When the sight in front of him was still swimming, vision was meaningless.
Yoo Sung-hwan closed his eyes.
He forced every other sense to its limit and felt the space around him.
His battles with Jangsanbeom and Muaz had taught him how to use those other senses, and had made it second nature.
So detecting presence wasn’t difficult.
Janggang. Fifty percent of power to senses.
[Output is being maintained at 30%. I’ll divert more power to your senses.]
Listening to his support, Janggang, Yoo Sung-hwan stepped backward.
A faint tearing sound brushed past the bottom of his ear.
It was so sharp that the visor at that point was sliced like paper, spraying blood.
I can see every move you make.
Victor smiled at that hair’s-breadth dodge.
The bastard hadn’t seen through the Omega Suit’s ability, Dark Cloud.
He was too busy scrambling away from Victor’s attacks to do anything else.
Yes...
Watching prey back itself into a corner of its own accord.
Watching it move confidently, not even knowing what had hit it.
Yes...!
It was exhilarating.
It was even better because it felt like a doll moving at the tug of his fingers.
You’re trapped, surrounded by my eyes.
The insects had covered every angle, feeding him Yoo Sung-hwan’s movements.
Where he’d move next, how he’d react—it was all crystal clear.
The nerve toxin mixed into the dark cloud would soon seep into the gaps between his Omega Suit’s nanites.
All Victor had to do now was wait for the man to grow weaker, little by little—
Thud!
The bastard suddenly kicked off the ground.
Whether he’d converted power into raw strength or not, his speed was astonishing.
Victor hurled a poisoned needle at Yoo Sung-hwan, who had briefly slipped out of the dark cloud.
If it hit, the blood would coagulate and steal his life.
It hit.
Victor was sure he’d landed the perfect strike.
But no.
The bastard moved his hand.
What flew out from there was a piece of the Omega Suit.
Pop-pop-pop!
The nanites knocked the poisoned needle aside.
But Victor didn’t panic.
The nerve toxin had already been invading the man’s body.
Look at that. His movements had already slowed.
I’ve won.
He swung his silver thread for the finishing blow.
The thread came surging in a graceful arc.
But contrary to expectation, it only grazed Yoo Sung-hwan’s neck.
Why!
Victor was shocked, but it was too soon to be surprised.
Yoo Sung-hwan’s hand moved fast.
The muzzle was aimed straight at Victor.
Gooseflesh rose in a violent wave down Victor’s spine.
Bang-bang-bang-bang!
It looked like indiscriminate fire, but every shot was aimed at a fatal point.
Victor scrambled aside, and the link fell apart in a shower of severed connections.
He swallowed a breath that wasn’t quite a breath.
His bloodshot eyes shifted backward.
Bullets lodged in the wall. One bloodstain clung to them.
A mosquito corpse, bloated from drinking blood, had been burst apart by the bullet. Victor saw it clearly.
More shots followed, and the insects dropped one after another.
No way. That can’t be.
At first, he dismissed it as a coincidence.
So he quickly shifted the dark cloud again, trying to throw the man off balance, but another barrage of pistol fire came right back at him.
Victor darted through the cafeteria area.
He used the kitchen beyond it as cover and flipped tables over for concealment.
Still the pistol kept firing.
Over the roar of gunfire, Yoo Sung-hwan’s voice slammed into his ears.
"It’s weird, you know. Usually, if an insect lands nearby or on your body, you can see it, right?"
He kept dodging bullets. Kept waiting for the nerve toxin to spread through his body.
And all the while, Yoo Sung-hwan kept speaking without once stopping his fire.
The link with the insects was fading, too...
"But that’s just you looking one-sidedly at me. You think an insect’s going to meet your eyes just because a person can see it? If it got hit, that’s just a coincidence. So, in other words."
Bang! The gunfire cut off.
At the same time, every insect that had been serving as Victor’s eyes vanished.
"Could you stop peeping at me through bugs already? You sick freak."
Yoo Sung-hwan, who had figured out everything, sneered.
Victor was simply confused.
Why isn’t the nerve toxin spreading? Why am I still fine? I definitely landed the opening strike. He should be unable to move.
Ah. Realizing something at last, Victor vaulted over a table.
Seeing Yoo Sung-hwan leaning against the wall, the guess hardened into certainty.
The poison’s already circulating!
A smile crept across his mouth.
As he took one step closer to the bastard, his grin deepened, and he shouted, "Just die already!"
"You die."
Yoo Sung-hwan’s flat reply stabbed back at him.
At the voice from his side, Victor turned his head.
Yoo Sung-hwan, wearing only half of the Omega Suit, squeezed the trigger.
Bang!
The particle round punched straight through Victor’s temple before he could even react.
Swishhh. The nanites that had been sustaining the dark cloud poured down like black rain, as though mourning their master’s death.
Yoo Sung-hwan let it strike him without flinching and stuck his tongue out in relief.
"Hoo... I thought I was dead for a second."
A small square chip lay on his tongue.
It was a neutralizer for the nerve toxin.
There were different kinds of poison, and the experiment he’d run on himself to identify the early symptoms had paid off.
It was definitely a nerve toxin.
After clearing out all the insects, swallowing the chip had done the rest.
He’d driven the poison out and used camo-plasm to shape half the Omega Suit into a decoy against the wall, while he hid behind the adjacent wall with the remaining half.
That had been the move that decided the fight.
A natural talent for linking eyes with insects? Even if the system recommends things based on your specialty, doesn’t that mean there are way too many kinds of talents?
If his brother had been here, he would have identified the talent and crushed the man in an instant, but Yoo Sung-hwan lacked that kind of experience, so it had been rough.
That must have been why he’d struggled so much.
"Damn it, this killer bastard..."
He’d dared kill the clan members.
And the two who had first recognized his username and shown him kindness.
He wanted to stomp the bastard into paste, but this wasn’t the time.
He had to warn everyone about the killer’s infiltration.
Just as he reached for the device to cut off every entrance to the cafeteria area—
Beeeep! Beeeeep!
The entire area flashed red, and the emergency siren started wailing like crazy.
At the same time, an urgent voice blasted across all channels.
Emergency! This is a real emergency! In the wetland to the northeast, thousands of Level 3 Infector, Valugl, are moving south! Everyone, arm yourselves and assume defensive positions! Once again, this is...
An Infector invasion instead of the killer’s attack?
Yoo Sung-hwan yanked the door open.
The instant it opened, he heard countless footsteps and shouting.
"Move it! Hurry! Faster!"
"Form up! What are the attackers doing? Why aren’t you on the guards’ side?"
These were the voices of deputy team leaders, not team leaders.
Yoo Sung-hwan knew why.
The core combat forces must have all been deployed to surround the killer group...
Which meant that only middling users were left in the bunker.
He couldn’t just stand there.
Yoo Sung-hwan shouted into the channel connected to the team leaders.
"It’s an emergency! Valugl are swarming in! Get back here fast! Qu—"
Screeeeeech!
"Ghk!"
Overwhelmed by a sudden burst of noise, Yoo Sung-hwan frowned.
The tearing static also howled through the speaker he’d been using to transmit.
Some force had interfered and jammed the communications.
Gear jammer.
It had even been modified and enhanced to affect only communication equipment.
And there was no way the Infector could have used that.
Yoo Sung-hwan grasped the situation faster than anyone.
The killer group brought the Infector here.
Maybe they’d already been brought in long ago.
His body moved before the thought had even finished.
Yoo Sung-hwan rushed out of the bunker.
He passed the users standing at the entrance with grim expressions and climbed the ladder leading up above the bunker.
Since it was the tallest structure around, he’d be able to see the enemy’s movements clearly.
Once he reached the top of the dome-shaped structure, Yoo Sung-hwan gripped his sniper rifle tight.
He looked straight ahead. At the black tide visible before his eyes.
"Ah."
A single cry slipped from his lips.
Then a heavy voice came from behind him.
"The smell of Victor’s blood."
The sensation of blood freezing in his veins.
Yoo Sung-hwan forced his stiff body around.
His hand trembled as he clutched the sniper rifle, shaken by fear that had surged up from pure instinct.
Unprecedented terror seized his body.
His teeth chattered and his dilated pupils caught the figure of the one who had approached without warning.
"Did you kill Victor?"
The figure in the black mask asked.
Yoo Sung-hwan couldn’t bring himself to answer.
No—he was just about to open his mouth, when another sound cut in.
Thunk! Thud-thunk! Thunk!
Metallic impacts, irregular at first, then steadily closer.
One silhouette sprang up from the ladder connected to another entrance.
The moon, finally visible, shone down on the figure.
The one standing against the moonlight shouted like a growl.
"Why the hell are you asking my little brother that when you’re about to die?"
A meteor fell through the night sky.