Age of Chaos
The enormous corridor Yoo Sung-jun was moving through felt utterly hollow, as if emptiness itself had been sealed inside it.
He led the ten people crossing it, and his brows knit together.
So Evolve’s already been welcomed here in style.
Broken shards and gaping holes littered every visible surface.
Probably the remains of the defensive systems that had activated when the laboratory entrance opened.
Which means this place is also drawing power from an Infector core...
Just from that alone, he could tell there was an Infector core somewhere in the lab.
But Jack Kalt had called it not a “core,” but an “individual.”
Something that was no longer merely a core, but already a complete living being.
That must be the great threat Jack Kalt was meant to face.
Once it had been identified as a threat, it had to be eliminated, whatever it was.
Evolve might also have come here knowing, as Jack Kalt did, that the core here was different from the others.
Maybe they even knew how to control an individual at will.
They had to hurry. The others might already have awakened it, or killed Yoon Choi.
“Hyun-seok. Feel anything?”
“No. It’s quiet. Looks like they’ve already reached the place with the core.”
“Even so, if there were any forces around to watch their backs, they’d have guards posted here and there. What is this?”
“Maybe they’re planning to concentrate all their firepower at the end.”
“Sung-jun oppa, I can’t detect anything even with close-range sensing.”
Jeyca let out a breath she’d been holding and backed up Choi Hyun-seok’s opinion.
If neither of their detection abilities picked up anything, then there really was nothing there.
Yoo Sung-jun rolled one shoulder and flicked the Untouch Shooter with his finger.
We’re about halfway there. If no one’s here either, are they all really gathered in the main lab?
That was when it happened.
Swish.
A barely audible sound tickled his ear.
It came from a hole in the wall.
Everyone else seemed to dismiss something that small.
So Yoo Sung-jun pointed at the ceiling.
“Shoot.”
Roger!
The order to designate a target was absolute.
Because there was no right to refuse it, Loki fired straight toward the direction he’d indicated.
BOOM!
“W-why did you fire all of a sudden?”
At a time like this, they should have been moving stealthily, not advertising their position.
Even as Choi Hyun-seok hunched his shoulders and barked the question, Yoo Sung-jun didn’t so much as change expression.
“Infector types are easy to deal with. They just run wild by relying on brute force. Users are the annoying ones.”
BOOMBOOMBOOM!
Even while Yoo Sung-jun muttered under his breath, the shooting didn’t stop.
It was relentless, one-sided fire with no commands behind it.
The walls to the left and right, and even the ceiling, were torn to pieces.
“Anti-Sense and invisibility. That’s a pretty good Omega Suit ability, isn’t it?”
“Khihk. I’ll kill you!”
It was an ability made for killing, all right—killing someone without them even realizing how they died.
A perfect stealth technique that slipped beyond every form of detection.
Spot!
Yoo Sung-jun suddenly leaned back as a scythe flashed up from below and brushed beneath his chin.
Shindo was experienced.
“I’ll kill you later!”
After one ambush failed, he vanished again.
Seugh!
A chilling sound burst from the user who had been standing beside him a moment ago.
“Ck—khek. Khekh!”
The user from Jack Kalt’s clan clutched his throat and collapsed.
The Omega Suit’s protection was useless against an attack sharpened like a reaper’s scythe.
It looked as though the carotid artery had been sliced, because the blood showed no sign of stopping.
Yoo Sung-jun wanted to order the shooter to return, but of course he couldn’t.
D-Virus detected nearby. Return unavailable.
An alert sounded—the one that appeared when an Infector or the virus was within a 15-meter radius.
In other words, the bastard who had just killed his teammate was an Infector.
Evolve.
A being who had accepted the modified virus and given up being human.
Yoo Sung-jun ground his teeth, a glacial light in his eyes.
Unlike anyone else, he knew how to break that Anti-Sense.
If he couldn’t detect them through an ability, then he would simply rely on his own senses.
Having convenient hands didn’t mean you could only use your hands.
Sometimes you had to know how to bring someone down with a different weapon.
Just as he was about to throw a punch, Choi Hyun-seok’s gun suddenly erupted with red light.
Veeeeeen.
It was a superheated laser.
It wrapped around the entire corridor, flooding the air with intense heat.
Yoo Sung-jun looked at the comrades who had retreated with him.
Jeyca and the three team members who had followed him.
He then looked across the corridor, where the passage had been cut clean through and melted apart.
Four team members stood by Choi Hyun-seok’s side.
One of them met his eyes—Choi Hyun-seok, who had severed the corridor itself.
Yoo Sung-jun could have jumped over that ruined gap and rejoined the fight, but...
Choi Hyun-seok shook his head.
“Go. We can’t let them tie us down here.”
He was right.
That assassin’s power was exactly the kind that could drag a battle into a long, exhausting war of attrition.
Judging from it, the assassin seemed to be picking off users with middling abilities first. If they charged in blindly without a proper plan, team members would only keep dying.
At this rate, Jeyca might get caught too.
So here, it was right to listen to Choi Hyun-seok.
Yoo Sung-jun decided to trust him.
“Handle it. I’ll have everything finished on my end.”
“That would be nice. Don’t die. Not that I think you could.”
With that, Yoo Sung-jun sprinted down the corridor.
At Choi Hyun-seok’s motion, the other users who had attached themselves to Yoo Sung-jun, along with Jeyca, hurried after him.
“Now then, what’ll you do? Going to follow them? But I can’t just let that happen.”
Though still invisible, Choi Hyun-seok taunted the presence he expected to be ahead of him.
Before long, a laugh like metal being scraped over metal drifted out.
“Kheh! Kihit! Doesn’t matter. I’m going to kill you. Following after that won’t be too late.”
“Sounds like you’ll be late. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Your little lackeys don’t seem to think the same way you do.”
Front, back, left, right. Suddenly the same voice sounded from all around him, followed by the same slicing sound.
“Look at this. Lazy little things, lying down and taking a nap.”
Choi Hyun-seok’s expression hardened at the sight of his team members collapsing without even a death cry.
A faint ripple surfaced.
Beyond the Anti-Sense, which had flickered open for a split second, a flood of information poured in.
And that information pointed to only one answer.
“Splitting?”
“Correct! I’ll kill you as your reward!”
A pale cluster approached.
One, yet many. The “one” that had swollen into dozens was now simultaneously swinging scythes in every direction.
Dozens of slashes came flying at the startled Choi Hyun-seok.
***
Amyah, the auxiliary bishop, loved the new life Evolve had granted her.
To her, the meaning of life was killing something and living on.
Now that she could enjoy that to her heart’s content, how could she not be happy?
She could even commit murder to her heart’s content, the greatest pleasure of all.
Now she had stepped outside the standards that defined the human race.
All that remained was the law of the jungle, and the joy of murder disguised as salvation.
This is so fun! It’s always thrilling!
Her Omega Suit’s ability, Anti-Sense, could no longer be strengthened, but she had no complaints.
There were already more than enough idiots dying because they couldn’t handle even this level of Anti-Sense.
Besides, her natural talent, which she had assumed would be useless, had combined with the Infector’s ability to create a tremendous synergy.
I have to deal with twenty-two of me, and he’s still holding up?
Amyah stared at the man who was enduring her barrage of slashes with his arms crossed, her eyes full of curiosity.
So his companions had just been extras after all.
Amyah flicked her fingers as she looked at the four corpses.
With the corridor occupied, the remaining twenty-one versions of “Amyah” moved their fingers in exactly the same way.
Her natural talent was Mimicry.
But she lacked so much talent that all she had ever managed was to make a few simple killing techniques her own.
Then she obtained the Infector ability called “Splitting,” and her natural talent sprouted wings.
Splitting, which she had thought merely meant increased regeneration, turned out, once absorbed, to be no different from creating another self.
Well, the process was disgustingly painful. And troublesome.
To split, she had to cut her own body apart, and if she cut in the wrong way, only a hideous mass of flesh would divide instead.
So she tried slicing herself from every possible angle.
At last, she figured out how to split herself perfectly.
And this was the result.
Amyah gave orders to the dozens of selves she had hidden with Anti-Sense.
All right, numbers one through twenty-one. Cut that bastard apart until he dies!
His main ability seemed to be detection, but he had chosen the wrong opponent.
If you could evade detection with Anti-Sense and then use the invisibility added to the suit to hide your body completely, how could anyone possibly stand against that?
Now I just get to sit back and watch. When he’s only barely breathing, I’ll step in and finish him. Kihit. This’ll be over before the golden time runs out, right?
The golden time Amyah had set.
It meant the amount of time she could still control the selves created by her splitting.
They were nothing more than puppets, wielding the killing techniques Amyah had implanted through Mimicry.
Yes—obedient little puppets.
But even that only lasted five minutes.
Once five minutes passed, the selves that shared her consciousness began to push back.
And the headache that crashed down on her at that moment was a bonus.
She didn’t know what happened after that.
Because she killed the duplicates before she ever found out what came after.
Still, the answer wasn’t hard to guess.
She would lose control. The duplicates who were acting out her own life would gain independent wills and try to kill her.
I’ll never let that happen.
Even that thrilled Amyah.
A power that would devour her if five minutes passed. Herself, the one who wielded it.
The act of murder, which brought such intense pleasure, would be carried out upon her through duplicates that looked exactly like her...
Amyah felt an extreme rush.
So exciting! It’s fun enough to make me want to kill everything!
Laughing gleefully, Amyah paused.
Wait. How many minutes had passed now?
Her stiff gaze moved toward the storm of slashes that still raged on.
Her duplicates swung their scythes, leaving only pale afterimages behind.
And at the center of them all, in the eye of the storm, he was still standing.
Between the chaotically scattering afterimages, his cold, sunken gaze flashed into view for a moment...
and met hers.
Whatever. Must be a coincidence.
Amyah didn’t care.
What caught her attention instead was the strange behavior he was showing.
Even though he looked as if he were just standing there, his hand was moving.
A hand holding something other than a firearm.
That’s...
She remembered. Before becoming an Infector, Amyah had been a user who enjoyed Another Earth.
That meant she knew clan information inside and out.
A dagger. Only one user would carry that kind of weapon to fight Infectors.
The Blood Rain Clan, ranked fifth in the world.
Their clan leader.
Igrato. Choi Hyun-seok.
In the world rankings, he stood at seventy-second place despite his guild rank.
Amyah was sixty-eighth.
There had been a time when she’d felt intoxicated by the superiority of standing above people like him.
Now that she knew who he was, she was ready to mock him to death the moment he was on the brink.
Do rank and strength really go hand in hand, in games and in reality?
With that one new fact tucked away, Amyah slipped her hand into her coat.
The holy relic bestowed by Lord Evolve touched her fingers.
Watching Choi Hyun-seok hold out for so long made the urge gnaw at her more and more.
Should I use it now?
That question was followed by a shake of the head.
No, not here.
She had to save it for the man who had just pinpointed her position so precisely.
For when she dealt with him, after he had gone to the place where Charon was.
To Amyah, he seemed like the strongest user here.
He had a greatsword. A ranked user who handles a greatsword...? There were a few, but could it be Meteor?
The thought flickered through her mind, but Amyah snorted.
Meteor was a lone wolf.
For someone who had always pursued solo play with absolute devotion to be moving as part of a group?
Having seen his videos several times, Amyah just couldn’t make herself believe it was him.
I’ll know once I face him directly. Kihihit!
So it was time to finish this.
Amyah moved behind Choi Hyun-seok, who refused to give her even the smallest opening.
This was a variation she herself was performing, not one of her duplicates—one that used killing techniques as if they were a fixed formula.
I’ll pierce right through you in one blow!
She shouted inwardly and swung her scythe. No, she had just begun to swing it when...
“...Got it.”
A low murmur.
Fwoop.
A weak sound drilled into her ears.
Amyah lowered her gaze, feeling suddenly short of breath.
...?
Before she knew it, two holes the size of a pinprick had been punched into her chest.
A searing pain crashed through her.