The Age of Confusion
Kkyung! Kkyuung!
Ryong-i was confused.
He killed monsters. That was how he protected Dad and Mom, and his uncle, who was a little annoying—okay, more than a little annoying—but still not so awful that he wanted to hate him too much.
That was all there was to it. So what was this situation?
"Aaaagh!"
"They're coming this way! Teams with room, move west!"
People were fighting people.
The very things that should never kill and eat each other were swinging their weapons at one another.
It was hard. Ryong-i felt his head start to ache, but he quickly sorted his thoughts into something clear.
Kkyuing!
"Ryong, the one with red eyes is the enemy, got it? Burn anything you see without hesitation."
Krarararak!
All he had to do was follow Dad's orders. No need to think too deeply.
Right. He just had to burn everything, then?
Ryong-i let out a magnificent roar and plunged between the three-sided clash of Infector, humans, and humans with red eyes.
Thud. Standing tall at the center of the battlefield, the red dragon's presence was so overwhelming that for a moment, silence fell over the entire field.
But only for a moment.
Soon enough, they were hurling not only screams but all manner of weapons and abilities at one another.
And Ryong-i, in particular, gifted the humans with red eyes an utterly merciless wave of fire.
Kwa-hwa-hwa-hwa-wak!
His breath was strong enough to melt the ground in an instant.
Caught in it, two Evolve cultists did not merely char—they melted.
Ryong-i had been swallowing far more Infector than before, and his level was rising by the day.
This was the result.
To think he could kill cultists, who even elite players at team-leader level struggled to handle, in one go.
Ryong-i really has gotten strong.
He’d had a faint sense of it while clearing Korna, but seeing the sheer force he wielded against the cultists made it undeniable.
He should be around Level 5 by now.
As Sung-hwan nodded to himself, something appeared before his eyes.
It wasn’t only in front of him.
"Huh?"
"No, what the hell! Why’d the mission change all of a sudden?"
"W-wait. Rank A? You’re saying the changed mission just skipped an entire tier of difficulty?"
Alarm and shock burst from everyone’s mouths.
Of course, the cultists didn’t just stand around because everyone was thrown into chaos.
From their vantage point as users, they couldn’t even see the changed mission.
"Die!"
"Accept Evolve's blessing!"
They closed the distance in an instant and drew on the weapons and instincts each of them possessed.
In the middle of battle, cultists who could also wield an Infector’s ability would occasionally appear, and dealing with them was Sung-hwan’s job.
And now one more had been added.
Shrrk!
A cultist who had approached under camouflage that blended into the ground lunged at Sung-hwan.
What stopped him was a chain that burst from the air.
"Ghk! W-what is this...?"
The nanomaterial chain, almost alive, wrapped around the cultist and squeezed.
At the same time, the end of the chain slowly rose, taking aim at the cultist's head.
Thwack!
In an instant, it crushed his skull.
"You should check your blind spots before you snipe, Yoo Sung-hwan."
Sung-hwan turned at the voice behind him.
It was a familiar voice, and sure enough, it belonged to Jack Kalt, the leader of the Quantum Clan, who was approaching with a smile on his face.
"I came because I was told Jack Kalt would be here. You really are."
"Was that Meteor's order?"
"Yes. Let's clear this area first. How many Infector are still left?"
"Three in total. Even those are nearly finished. Ah, one more just went down."
In the direction Jack Kalt pointed, a massive Infector toppled over.
It had been taken on by the team formed from the clan members he had brought.
So this is the No. 1 clan, huh? Even with the cultists interfering, they’re still managing to clear them out...
As Sung-hwan admired them quietly to himself, Jack Kalt, standing with one hand on Ryong-i's leg, tilted his chin.
"What else? We keep clearing them out, of course. The changed mission will be blocked perfectly by Meteor, won’t it?"
"Yes. There are no Infector left here to stop us, so let's focus on exterminating the cultists."
Kkyung!
Just as he was reloading his sniper rifle, Ryong-i shook his leg violently.
Was he bothered by someone else touching his body?
Ryong-i shot Jack Kalt, who had touched his leg, a look like he was staring at a bug, then turned away.
Kkyang!
He even snorted through his nose. Then, as Ryong-i took to the air, Jack Kalt’s voice came through the in-ear device.
-Haha, he’s got quite the temper for an Infector. Then let’s move right away.
Sung-hwan began supporting his allies from the air.
He caught the cultists’ movements at a glance through the Trajectory Eye and sniped them down.
Dodging Sung-hwan’s shots was, in the first place, nearly impossible.
His predictive shooting had already reached the level of anticipating the enemy's path in advance and firing before they even got there.
Truly flawless sniping. On top of that, Ryong-i’s breath restricted the enemies’ routes, so there were almost no variables in Sung-hwan’s predictions.
-They're retreating!
-Pursue them! That’s the clan leader’s order! Kill every last one of them!
Sung-hwan completely agreed with Jack Kalt’s order.
What if even one slipped through and the core strategic information about Quantum and Blood Rain leaked into Evolve’s hands?
That would be a tremendous loss, of course.
If that happened, they’d know our strength and prepare for us, while we wouldn’t be prepared at all—we’d just have to crash into them and hope for the best.
That was why information superiority mattered.
So exposing their strength before they’d even fought in earnest was not an option.
"Ryong. Get ahead of them and turn the bottom of the ravine into a sea of fire. You can do that, right?"
Kkyung!
The answer sounded like, Leave it to me.
Smiling faintly, Sung-hwan stroked the back of Ryong-i's neck as they moved forward.
They reached the path ahead of the cultists in no time.
Now all they had to do was fill the bottom of this ravine with breath.
But before that, his in-ear device crackled.
-Sung-hwan! Where are you right now?
It was Jeyca’s voice, breathless and urgent.
***
Back at the entrance to the laboratory.
Sung-hwan looked at Jeyca, who was carrying Yoon Choi, and at the team members, whose number had clearly dwindled.
"What happened? You’re not saying hyung is the only one in there, are you?"
"Sung-jun told us to take Yoon Choi and leave first. There was a powerful cultist in there, one who’d turned into something like an Infector, and he said he’d hold him off... Still, Choi Hyun-seok went to back him up, so let’s trust him. It’s Sung-jun we're talking about, not just anybody."
Sung-hwan swallowed the worry rising in his chest and nodded.
"If hyung told you to get Yoon Choi out, then he must’ve had a reason."
"Yeah. That’s why I came out without saying much."
Here. Jeyca handed over Yoon Choi, who was still unconscious.
Move Yoon Choi to the safest place possible.
Remembering that objective with a slightly reluctant look, Sung-hwan dumped her onto Ryong-i's back like a sack of luggage.
He ignored Ryong-i’s clearly displeased snort.
I don't know what the circumstances were that made her leave her post and go into that lab, but I don't like it.
Even if it hadn't been her own reckless decision, something would have happened eventually.
Those guys would have targeted the laboratory anyway, and if they'd been left alone, something even worse would have come out of it.
And after that, what, the mission changes like just now, and then we fight Evolve...
Even so, Sung-hwan couldn’t accept Yoon Choi’s unilateral action.
What on earth had made her invite trouble like this?
If she'd only told us beforehand, we never would've ended up in a situation where a valuable asset like a Tool Master couldn't be used properly.
But what was done was done.
Sung-hwan climbed back onto Ryong-i and looked at Jeyca and the rest of the team.
"I'll go on ahead. Please head to the area I mentioned and support Jack Kalt."
"Okay. And if you find a cliff above the ravine or even a narrow gap, just—"
With her brow tightly furrowed as though she was holding back anger, Jeyca said,
"—stuff her into some rough, uneven place."
Jeyca's pissed off too, just like me.
At her words, Sung-hwan nodded.
Now it was truly time to go.
Everyone was exhausted, but the battle was not over. The operation was not over.
As long as there were Infector, and as long as even one member of the new hostile force called Evolve remained, they couldn’t afford to let their guard down.
Sung-hwan glanced once at the laboratory entrance where his brother would be, then set off.
Just as Jeyca had asked, he meant to shove Yoon Choi into some miserable patch of ground out of sheer spite.
Everyone did their best from their own positions.
But some people—
"Yeah, no, this isn't going to work."
—sometimes chose a different path for the sake of their own beliefs.
After telling the teammates she had been with to go on ahead, Jeyca turned back.
Her steady steps led straight toward the laboratory.
***
"Ah, shit."
The exclamation tore out of him reflexively.
Staring blankly at the entity visible beyond the dead Karon in front of him, Sung-jun swallowed a curse.
He had given it everything he had.
In the end, he had beaten Karon by an overwhelming margin, but he had failed to deal with the entity itself.
It was the aftereffect of combining adrenaline with hyperventilation and compressed breathing.
"Ha... damn. This is insane, seriously..."
Sprawled out flat on his back, Sung-jun tried to move his fingers.
But the loss brought on by the excessive hormonal surge left him with a thick, heavy weakness.
He absolutely did not want to move a single finger.
Even if he overcame that feeling, the backlash from his innate talent was refusing to let his body move.
It was a kind of defense mechanism.
His body was telling him that if he forced himself any further, the result would be irreversible.
The Omega Suit still had plenty of power charged, but in this state, it seemed like he wouldn’t even be able to use it.
I heard the mind governs the body, but that was complete bullshit.
With only his head, Sung-jun managed to turn it from side to side, looking back and forth between the entity's foot and the entrance on the opposite side.
I wish Hyun-seok would get here soon.
When he had first charged into this place, he had crushed the entity's foot. Now, somewhere nearby, he could hear the faint beat of its heart—or rather, the pulsation of the Infector core.
He watched. He listened. He waited.
He had told Hyun-seok clearly that he’d finish everything and then wait.
That waiting had originally meant waiting for the purpose of finishing off the entity.
Still, I already took down the strongest cult bastard. Or was that bishop-level? Yeah, I’ve done enough. Now when Hyun-seok gets here, I can just tell him to crush the core.
If it was Hyun-seok, he was willing to brag a little.
He’d swagger and tell him that he had faced something far stronger than the thing Hyun-seok had fought.
Just imagining it, he could picture his own face and found it a little funny.
Was the effect of Breathing still lingering?
Sung-jun let out a meaningless chuckle, then froze at a faint presence.
"Who is it?"
Even if he tried to hide, he couldn’t actually hide in his condition.
So he called out toward the entrance, and when the answer came back, he smiled.
"You said you'd been waiting, but did you mean you'd be lying around like it was your own living room?"
"There’s a deep and moving reason for everything here, you punk."
Sung-jun met Hyun-seok, who looked as worn as he felt but was walking just fine.
At last, the friend who could get rid of the entity had arrived.
Hyun-seok crouched in front of Sung-jun and looked at the entity in admiration.
"Whoa, the changed mission was right? It really is a giant."
"'Guardian,' my ass. What a ridiculous name."
"Yeah, seriously. Who the hell was the scientist who gave it a name before it was even finished, just because it was some half-baked prototype? If I ever meet him, I want to beat him to death."
Hyun-seok rose, bracing himself on one knee, and brought the gun he had slung behind him to the front.
"So, did you find its weakness and then come lie around?"
"I already found it, and I took out one ridiculously strong cultist too."
"Stronger than the guy I fought? The one who split into dozens of copies and swung dozens of scythes each... man, don't even get me started."
Watching the man brag and joke, Sung-jun snorted.
"At most, he was around a Level 5 or 6 Infector. The one I fought was Level 7."
"What? Level 7?"
"Yeah. He was throwing telekinesis and lightning around too, and I fought him until I ended up like this."
"Still, if you look at the matchup, I think mine was harder..."
"No, mine was harder. So hurry up and finish it. I want to smash the core and rest with a clear conscience."
Hyun-seok clicked his tongue at Sung-jun’s unexpectedly childish side.
So even the strongest guy in the world was still in his twenties, huh...
Nodding, Hyun-seok stepped in front of the entity.
Then, after glancing around its massive body for a moment, he pointed at the giant.
"But how the hell do I climb this thing?"
"You have to climb it like rock climbing. Grab a handful of flesh and haul yourself up. The Infector core is near the heart."
Hyun-seok stood there for a moment and looked up.
The grotesque thing between its legs was the first thing that caught his eye.
Hyun-seok's face twisted hard.
That pointless detail made him feel very... disgusted.
This bastard... is definitely male.
Shaking his head to clear the thought, Hyun-seok planted his foot against the giant's shin and prepared to climb.
It was time to finish this mission.
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