[No Title Provided]
Though it wasn't an official rule, lately the Shelter had been serving special meals whenever we achieved a major success. Like when Artemis made a significant research breakthrough or when we brought back valuable spoils from outside. The residents, having learned this pattern, eagerly awaited the robot exploration teams or my own expedition parties setting out. Because that meant delicious food when we returned. Sometimes their expectant gazes, wondering "When are they going out again?", gave me a strange mix of feelings. This much I had anticipated, but the Seed Vault expedition brought an unexpected event.
Do you know about the religious ritual held for Manager's safe return?
Kids reported it. Some residents had gathered to bestow spiritual power upon me as I headed into battle. For an atheist like me, it was hard to understand why they'd seek out gods even in this situation.
From the footage, a group of Muslim women had assembled in a corner of the park on the grass. They knelt and prostrated toward Mecca, palms facing the sky, foreheads touching the earth. Grass poked up neatly between their aligned soles.
"Protect him from misfortune. Let no enemies reach his side—let them fall before him. Please return him safely to our midst."
Among that prayer group was a woman who had once been sentenced to flogging on her soles. According to Kids, they had only recently rediscovered their faith. Even after entering the Shelter, they hadn't prayed for quite some time. It seemed their will had been broken when monsters uprooted their lives and shattered every belief they once held. But here, gaining peace of mind, their broken resolve mended, and they began praying again one by one. Their first group gathering was to pray for my safety.
It was an expression of gratitude for the peaceful life—the final blessing in their lives, delivered through me as the conduit.
The prayer began on the morning of the day off, dedicated solely to my well-being, and continued into the afternoon. It wasn't flashy or dynamic. Yet it was a heart-stirring sight beyond compare.
To celebrate the Seed Vault expedition's success, the special meal was pizza. Given the Shelter's conditions, overwhelming American-style toppings (which Italians disdainfully call "pig pizza") were out, so we went with simple yet deeply flavorful Italian-style pies. The hydroponics facility provided ample grains and fresh vegetable toppings. The thin dough, made from a wheat and corn flour blend, baked to a golden crisp, wafting a nutty aroma. Fresh tomato paste was topped with basil, the red, white, and green of Margherita pizzas arrayed before the residents.
They lifted the pizzas like treasures, cautiously taking bites. Joy welled in their eyes like springs. They licked their lips meticulously, not wanting to miss a single stretch of white cheese.
The accompanying drink, as always at Shelter gatherings, was beer. We served quite a bit, yet the warehouse still brimmed with stocks. Cola comes to mind first with pizza for me, but Artemis explained that in authentic Italy, it's the traditional pairing.
While the residents shared their joy over the meal, I was in the Central Control Room reviewing screen feeds.
Pizza's getting cold. Why not eat while you do it?
"Yeah."
I gave a half-hearted reply, eyes fixed ahead. Only after getting an earful for dipping pizza in my nose did I focus on eating. It had already lost most of its warmth.
Playing in the Central Control Room were feeds from the drone carriers dispatched south. Right after returning from the Seed Vault, I'd assembled an investigation team and sent them south. Survivor comms had dwindled sharply before going silent, and I'd vaguely assumed they'd all perished. But what if that was wrong? What if it was just Noise Trees blocking signals?
The moment that thought hit, I couldn't sit still. Not out of some heroic urge to save them. In this long, lonely war against the infected, anyone we could exchange intel with was a boost in itself.
The mock-built drone carriers were slow even for airships. But they ignored terrain, flying straight, which offset the speed somewhat. Plus, it was ideal for scouting the ground below.
For long-range flight, we'd stripped armaments to minimize weight, docking just two unarmed drones. The carriers beamed back live footage. Mostly ruins of shattered human civilization—collapsed structures. Once-colorful exteriors, glass, signs, interiors—all gone. Everything coated in crumbled concrete dust and dirt. Only hazy grays and browns.
It looked like the shed husk of a crustacean. Humanity's shell, life and vitality drained, filled only with air, dust, and smoke.
"What the hell is that snake turned into?"
We spotted a massive snake slithering through a rural village's winding alleys. Probably not a real snake. Korea doesn't have giant ones big enough to swallow two or three grown men whole. And even an Amazon anaconda couldn't bulldoze straight through a walled barrier like that.
Maybe it's not a snake, but an isopod? That pattern on its back is too different from a snake's.
No sooner had Artemis finished speaking than the bastard flipped onto its back, revealing a sight that reflexively drew out curses.
At a conservative estimate, over a hundred light-brown legs were squirming wildly. Every single one was as thick as an adult man's arm, and the muscular joints in the center where they met writhed dazzlingly.
"Switch screens!"
Artemis closed that feed and enlarged another one.
I was right, wasn't I? Hehe.
Even in the midst of that, Artemis was feeling smug about her keen eye.
Just think of it as a really long shrimp flipped on its back. Looks pretty similar, right?
Her consolation was absolutely no help.
We also discovered ground zeros. Massive craters where not a single blade of grass grew, and even the infected didn't dare go near.
The radiation detectors built into the carriers activated, emitting the distinctive click-click-click static of a Geiger counter.
That detector is far more advanced than a Geiger counter, but it employs the same auditory effect. That eerie sound warning of the danger of radiation exposure only highlighted the desolation further.
We also found natural habitats of grotesque mutant trees. Along with the Noise Trees, they were a rare tree-type infected.
Underneath twisted branches hung fruits the size of soccer balls, looking like a clump of intestines from a bodybuilder who abused steroids to the absolute limit.
They were roughly spherical, but hideously lumpy and an ominous crimson color. They looked more like eggs than fruit.
In fact, there were a few fruits that had spilled their contents, looking like grape skins after the flesh has been sucked out. A biological tissue resembling an umbilical cord trailed down long from the center of those fruits.
A cat that appeared from somewhere hopped around, trying to take a bite out of one dangling just out of reach in the air. Its cute front paws swiped at the air, trying to catch the umbilical cord.
However, when a nearby unhatched fruit twitched, the cat quickly fled.
Fascinating. If it were a robot exploration team down there, I would have had them freeze-pack one or two and bring them back. I want to scan the inside. A reproductive method adopting aspects of both plants and mammals, huh.
A hint of regret laced Artemis's voice.
Was it thanks to the research lab built outside the shelter? Sometimes she seemed almost germaphobic, but lately, it felt like she was becoming endlessly tolerant when faced with scientific curiosities.
"If the drones were armed, I would have ordered them to shoot every single one of those fruits."
On the other hand, my instincts as a former soldier were screaming at me to order them all burned or blown up.
A highway we found midway was a graveyard for cars. Cars abandoned in the worst traffic jam imaginable were rusting away. A tightly packed procession of vehicles stretched endlessly.
I could vividly picture the refugees stomping their feet in frustration, trapped with nowhere to go.
In the midst of it all, there were also traces of some massive entity plowing right through the vehicles, parting them like the Miracle of Moses.
A car flipped upside down on top of a truck, cars that had been knocked off the highway and rolled down the mountainside. It looked as if the hand of a god had reached down from the sky and tossed them around like toys.
"A Juggernaut?"
It's the most likely candidate for now, but there might have been an even larger entity. Even for a Juggernaut, it would be hard to advance by smashing through that horde of cars with such unstoppable momentum.
"Could have been a pack of them."
Hmm. I wonder.
The trail of that breakthrough started from the side of the highway leading up into the mountains. That was the reason we ruled out the possibility of a massive freight truck just plowing through.
'We won't let a single one of them past this point!' There were often places where it seemed the South Korean military had fought desperately to the death with that kind of resolve.
Beyond collapsed barricades, charred armored vehicles. Tanks with their main guns torn apart. Bulletproof helmets and rifles scattered everywhere.
The further south we went, the more frequently these traces of resistance appeared, and each time, the scale of the battles grew smaller.
By the time we neared Busan, armored vehicles had noticeably decreased, and tanks were nowhere to be seen at all. The land the drone carriers passed over was filled only with destruction, twisted wreckage, and writhing infected.
The destination of this journey was the southern tip, but we couldn't just keep advancing. Sometimes, when we discovered a never-before-seen type of infected or found suspected traces of survivors, we switched to observation and tracking.
The former yielded useful information, but we gained nothing from the latter.
And finally, we reached the southern end of this country. The sight waiting for us there truly left us speechless.
A white tsunami was raging across the ground.