Age of Chaos
Several days had passed since the killer group’s attack.
All the mopping up and recovery work had fallen to Assemblyman Lim Tae-oh.
If he failed to perform properly as the overall chairman preparing for Dark Cover, this seat would shake loose in no time.
I fought hard to get this position. I’m not handing it over to those other pigs.
Fourteen lawmakers, including Lim, were seated in the conference room.
Every one of them had a solid, imposing build that made it hard to believe they were politicians at all.
And that made sense.
A body that had received Body Enhancement Level 1 ended up with an overall ideal physique.
But what of it?
...We couldn’t do a damn thing.
That was the shared thought of everyone present.
All the lawmakers who had gained confidence through bodily enhancement had failed to contribute anything meaningful in battle.
Just how strong are Infectors supposed to be?
The sight of the Varlug horde rolling in like a black tide still wouldn’t leave his mind.
And Blood Rain had stood against it.
Blood Rain had resisted that mass of Infectors.
Quantum, their ally, had come in with support, and in the end they had won the battle.
What’s more, the greatest credit for all of it belonged to none other than...
Meteor Party.
Lim Tae-oh rested his clasped hands on the desk as he began.
“Everything we’ve survived up to now was thanks to that small elite party.”
The veteran sniper had picked off targets from a distance, while the Infector carrying him had used its breath to annihilate the Varlug swarm.
Was that all? The one who had eliminated most of the killer group suspected of assassinating more than a dozen deputy directors had been Meteor.
Just two core members of Meteor Party had handled most of the enemy force.
They had only endured.
The bureaucrats gathered here had only trembled in fear.
Unable to stomach that fact, Lim clenched his teeth.
“One hundred eighty-seven dead. Ninety-five severely injured. Seventy-seven lightly injured. Three hundred fifty-nine in total. Those are the numbers of the heroes who died or were wounded while trying to defend the bunker.”
Lim’s bloodshot eyes swept across the room.
Then his gaze dropped to his own hands, which were trembling faintly.
“All this time, we did nothing. Nothing! Even if you pile up the heads of the people supposedly leading this country, they still couldn’t help a damn thing!”
“Assemblyman Lim...”
“I don’t need comfort or encouragement, Assemblyman Jang. Not from me, and not from any of you. We’re all the same. So we need to do what we actually can.”
Lim Tae-oh tapped the papers he had handed out to everyone.
“We need to do the work that falls within our reach. This place and the world that used to be. Across both, we have to save as many talented people as we can.”
Saving them wasn’t as simple as that.
The D-Virus could invade through the blood of an Infector carrying the virus, through saliva, even through the tiny wounds left behind by an Infector.
Even so, they had to try.
They needed to bring people in from the outside, even if only to keep them like delicate flowers in a greenhouse, and help prepare them.
They had to give out Invitations and raise them into users who could receive Body Enhancement.
This was the process for that.
It was the only way the bureaucrats could be of any use to the bunker.
At first I only wanted power from a high seat, but not anymore.
Looking back on his past, Lim Tae-oh let out a hollow smile.
In the short time he had spent here, while directing bureaucrats and overseeing talented people, he had learned something.
This power and position he had seized were not simply a place for comfort and luxury.
Choi Hyun-seok chose me to be the one who would lead the people and the bunker’s development.
Living among the bunker’s members had made it clear to him.
Only now had he finally understood what he was supposed to do.
Assemblyman Lim Tae-oh realized that the word responsibility had already been driven deep into his heart.
Everyone had a role.
Blood Rain had carried out the role of “protecting,” so now it was their turn to step forward.
“Then let’s get fully underway with the national reconstruction project.”
Lim’s voice carried a natural authority, the kind born of temperament and charisma.
At the unprecedented pressure that began to rise like a slow tide, the bureaucrats seated around the table broke into cold sweat and kept nodding.
And then they heard the next words out of Lim Tae-oh’s mouth.
“Ah, and from now on, we’ll be participating in position aptitude tests and combat training too, so keep that in mind.”
Every face in the room went gray.
***
She had reunited with the father she had longed for, and she had met that obnoxious, prickly man she never wanted to see again.
But she still hadn’t met her mother.
Apparently she was very sick and being treated somewhere.
So Ryong-i made up his mind.
Kkyung-kkyung!
Sickness gets better if you eat something delicious.
Recalling that absolute truth, he set about preparing to help his mother recover.
Ryong-i returned to the island he had taken over and kept eating the marine Infectors that had come ashore, swallowing them one after another.
Kkyuaeek!
He forced himself to keep going even when he felt like vomiting from eating far too much, all for the sake of helping his mother.
With his now lengthened limbs moving busily, he devoured everything he could catch.
Ah, how satisfying. He’d swallowed them all. Now came the processing time.
Kkyuuut!
Ryong-i strained with all his might.
Not downward, of course, but upward.
The moment he thought Now!, something burst out of his mouth like a cat coughing up a hairball.
A glossy, appetizing dark-red orb rolled across the floor.
Kkyuhihing.
Ryong-i let out a laugh, unable to contain his pride, and picked it up.
What should he call this?
Right! Ryong-i flicked out his sharp claws.
Kkyuak-ku.
He would call this an Infector dumpling.
And with his own power added in... Ryong-i Special Dumplings!
Thinking it was a pretty good name, Ryong-i smiled brightly.
He picked up the dumpling and flapped his wings.
It was time to go back.
By the time he arrived, Father said Mother would be there.
Kkyuu?
Filled with swelling anticipation, he returned to the bunker, only to find it packed with humans.
They were moving things around in a flurry, bustling back and forth.
Wondering why everyone was running around so frantically, he approached, and the humans, startled, began to panic.
“Eek!”
“Don’t freeze up, run! Hurry!”
The humans who had been staying here to protect him after following Father screamed and fled in alarm.
Hiiing. Ryong-i felt a little hurt, and his steps grew more subdued than before.
Thud. Thud. With every movement, the faint shaking of his body sent everyone into a frenzy.
Still, Ryong-i was fine.
Beyond the humans scattering like the Red Sea parting, he could see Father and Mother!
Krarararak!
Whether he knew his joyful roar was making the chaos worse or not, as Ryong-i’s huge voice boomed out, Yoo Sung-hwan and Jeyca both stepped forward, waving their arms.
As an extra bonus, they even bounced up and down so he could see them.
“Ryong-i! Shh! If you shout like that, you’ll scare everyone.”
“Right. I know you’re happy, but you have to be careful here.”
Despite the warning, both of them were grinning from ear to ear.
Especially Jeyca.
It was already such a relief that we survived that huge threat, and now I get to see Ryong-i too. Haa... How am I supposed to ever repay Sung-jun for this?
Not only had Yoo Sung-jun completely cured her incurable illness, he had also prepared a temporary residence for her parents at Gimpo Airport in reality.
Because of that, she no longer had to worry about being separated from her parents when Dark Cover came.
Jeyca steadied her excited heart and hugged Ryong-i’s foot tightly.
If she had her way, she’d hug his head instead, but the size difference was absurd.
As she was feeling the rough texture of his scales, something came up beside her.
It was Ryong-i, his bright eyes shining.
Kkyu!
He thrust his head toward her as if asking to be petted right away.
A wave of tender emotion washed over her, and she smiled faintly, shifting her target from Ryong-i’s foot to his head.
Even a full armful wouldn’t be enough.
So when she stroked the scales, they felt smooth this time.
She loved the sensation. The warmth rising through those scales, the joy of reunion, all of it made her heart feel soft and warm.
Yoo Sung-hwan’s feelings as he joined in the stroking weren’t all that different.
How long had it been like this? The two of them looked down at the dumplings Ryong-i had brought and asked,
“We were worried when you suddenly disappeared. Was this what you went to get?”
Kkyuu!
Ryong-i nodded quickly and shoved the dumplings in front of Jeyca with his head, urging her to eat them right away.
Given the effort he had put into bringing them, it would have been rude not to try them, but the smell was frankly awful.
Jeyca pointed at the dumplings with a grimace.
“These... you made them out of Infectors, Ryong-i?”
Kkyung-kkyung.Kkyuu, kkyuaeek!Kkyukkyu.
Ryong-i used gestures, flaps of his limbs, and nods of his head to explain how he had made the dumplings.
Moved by his effort, Jeyca resolved to at least pretend to eat them, and with a determined expression, she took a handful.
“Thanks, Ryong-i. I’ll eat them well. This is enough for Mother, so do you want to have the rest?”
Kkyukkyuing.
He wished she could eat all of it, but considering Mother’s size, that would be impossible.
If he left it alone, it would spoil before long anyway, so it was better to eat it now.
Having made up his mind, Ryong-i turned to the remaining dumplings and opened his mouth.
And so Jeyca pretended to eat, while Ryong-i happily swallowed his own share of the dumplings.
Kkyuhihing.
Watching his mother swallow the dumplings deliciously, Ryong-i decided he’d make her more next time too.
“But where is Ryong-i supposed to live now? He’s too big to come into the bunker. And it takes time to travel back and forth from the island.”
At Yoo Sung-hwan’s words, Jeyca fell into thought as well.
It was a problem she had been worrying about for a while.
Ryong-i had grown too large to live together with them.
If they set up a place nearby, the users would be frightened out of their minds.
People still had the stubborn idea that Infectors were things that needed to be eliminated, and breaking that mindset would take time.
It’s too much trouble to spend time explaining to everyone that Ryong-i is a good Infector.
Defeating the killer group wasn’t the end of it.
The bigger mountain still remained: the suppression of Jungji.
And there were less than two weeks left until then.
So the two of them had been focusing on training so they could join the suppression force.
There’s no time to find a house for Ryong-i, in any case...
As the two of them worried over it, Ryong-i was wrestling with the very same problem.
He looked up toward the bunker entrance visible beyond them.
That was their house. A house too small for Ryong-i to enter. So they couldn’t live together. Not in his current size, anyway.
Kkuuu...
Ryong-i thought about it. He wanted to live with them, and he hoped there was a way to make that happen.
Unexpectedly, the answer to that worry came quite easily.
Kkyung!
He just had to make himself smaller!
The moment that answer came to him, Ryong-i instinctively knew what he had to do.
First, he focused on the core inside himself. Then he poured his strength into it, wishing with all his heart for the body he had had when he was small.
Earnest wishes sometimes become miracles.
Ryong-i knew this was the kind of miracle that could come true.
Kkudeudeuk! Udeuk!
At the sound of something enormous twisting and compressing, Yoo Sung-hwan and Jeyca both shot their eyes wide open.
“R-Ryong-i?”
“W-What is happening right now?”
The two of them could only blink again and again at the sight unfolding before their eyes.
***
“I’ve been thinking about it. A great threat. Does that really have to be something directly tied to death?”
Tap. Tap-tap. Yoo Sung-jun drummed a steady rhythm on the desk as he went on.
Seated beside him in the Omega Suit were Choi Hyun-seok and Jack Kalt.
“I went back over the situation and reviewed it. And no, that wasn’t it. A great threat doesn’t just mean death. It includes the greatest loss one can feel... even the pain of disappearance or erasure.”
“Meteor-nim. What exactly is it you want to say?”
He had asked Jack Kalt to keep his identity hidden.
That was why Choi Hyun-seok addressed him respectfully as Meteor.
At the question, Yoo Sung-jun looked at Jack Kalt.
His face was still expressionless, worn down by exhaustion.
Then Jack Kalt met Yoo Sung-jun’s relentless stare and gave a slight smile.
“You seem to have a great many questions for me.”
“Why wouldn’t I? The location of the Quantum Clan’s hideout. It’s in a place where the fallout from Kalaqua awakening won’t reach, isn’t it?”
“You figured that out?”
“With the information you gave me, it wasn’t hard. It’s a boundary point that Jungji must not cross. Based on that, Kalaqua is sleeping about 580 kilometers from there.”
“As expected, even without Analysis, you already know a great deal, Meteor-nim.”
“I didn’t get first place by playing slap-match.”
He shrugged, then stopped tapping the desk.
A strange silence settled heavily over the three of them.
“Tell me. If Kalaqua wakes up, is there anything there that would make someone feel a massive sense of loss or disappearance?”
“Would you believe me if I said he’s about to lose a lot of our citizens?”
“Would I believe that?”
He’d only tossed out a bare-bones guideline for national reconstruction.
It was obvious he treated the United States as nothing more than the minimum necessary component, no more and no less.
So they had to clear up this question.
“I’ll keep my promise and help. But if you’re asking whether I can give it everything I have, I don’t think I can.”
Yoo Sung-jun deliberately revealed his trump card for a moment.
Cell Degenerator. The moment Jack Kalt saw the glass bottle containing it, a crack appeared in his otherwise expressionless face.
He let out a long breath, then his eyes lit with sharp intensity.
With an expression that said he had made up his mind, he spoke.
“Project Armageddon. Are you familiar with it?”