Chapter 16
Was heaven finally rewarding me for all my hard work up to now with this Assembler? My shot nailed it right in the head. Its eyes smashed completely, oozing disgusting fluids. Bang! Bang! I closed in a bit more for aimed shots, and its entire snout above the nose blew clean off. Steam rose from the ragged cross-section.
FALL BACK!
I pulled back immediately, and razor-sharp claws whistled past the spot I'd just been in. Riiip! I thought I'd dodged, but the fingers were so damn long they shredded the front of my riot gear anyway. This suit could shrug off a lion's swipe, so what kind of cutting power was this?
The thing attacked me even without its head, then bubbled with a gurgle as flesh welled up from the stump.
"Now we've got an immortal showing up too?!"
No, it's a bit different.
I had three shotgun shells left. Even dumping them all, I wasn't sure it'd die. Before it could finish regenerating, I fired the net launcher. Thwump! It swatted the first one away with its left hand, but that tangled the whole net around its arm, locking it down. Thwump! The second hit it full-body thanks to that. Shraaap! Carbon-fiber netting that could pin even the fiercest beasts. Wrapped tight around its torso, the monster toppled over in a ridiculous pose.
"KYAAAACK!" It thrashed and screamed like a maniac, but the tightening metal mesh just carved red gashes into it.
In the meantime, I sprinted past it. No need to tangle with this freak. My goal was the control room!
Crunch! I'd tried to dodge, but it shot out its right arm and snagged my ankle. Somehow, in that split second, it'd ripped the net enough to wrench its arm free. What had been thick muscle was now covered in pangolin-like scales. Thud! I hit the deck hard and instantly leveled my shotgun. Bang! Bang! Bang! Muzzle flashes erupted, half-severing the arm gripping my ankle—but it still held fast.
"Fuck!"
I hurled the empty shotgun and yanked out the fire axe, hacking away relentlessly. Metal clangs mixed with rending flesh, sparks and blood spraying each time. Meanwhile, something was happening to its body. Bubbles rose all over, and scales erupted across its entire form, just like the arm.
"KYAAAAACK!"
As it bellowed, the scales stood vertically like blades. The steel net sheared apart in an instant under those deadly edges. Ka-boom! That's when my axe finally severed the monster's arm. Shlurp. I shook it off, but at the same moment, three tentacles burst from the shotgun-ravaged head-stump, lunging for my face. Crack! Polycarbonate that barely scratched from protesters' spear thrusts pierced right through. One strand got blocked, one just grazed the edge, and the last halted a hair from my eye.
Hiss! Hiss! I sliced off the writhing tentacles desperate to gouge my eyes with my combat knife. As I went to yank the dangling bits from my helmet...
Splat! Its foot rocketed into my gut.
"Guhk!"
Stars exploded in my vision. My body flew back, airborne, and I barely swallowed the rising bile. No time for puking—I'd be dead. As it charged the still-downed me, I hit it with a surprise net shot. The final round enveloped it, and during those two seconds of shredding free, I scrambled up and bolted down the hall. Clang. No strength left even for the axe. I squeezed out my last reserves to run, but the monster's roars grew closer behind me.
Finally, I reached the Lower Area Control Room entrance and flashed my ID badge to check in.
Access granted. Welcome, Manager Seo Jinsu.
The default middle-aged male OS voice greeted me. The roars from not far behind grew ever closer by the second.
"Seal it!"
Click. It was close enough that a few more seconds and it'd have had me, but the door shut faster. Thud! Thud! Heavy impacts hammered repeatedly, but no dice. The Lower Area Control Room entrance was built thicker than anywhere else to withstand resident riots. They'd need heavy machinery to breach it properly.
The surveillance cam showed it clawing and pounding the door like a rabid dog. Body-slams sent scales scraping sparks off its hide.
Jin-soo. Curiosity later. Right now...
"I know."
I cut her off and walked over to the control room computers.
"It's been a really long journey."
A blue light dug into the computer cluster, and soon all the monitors in the control room began spitting out rearranging lines of code.
Artemis had begun her takeover of the place.
Right around then, the noise coming from the door stopped. It seemed the bastard also realized it couldn't break the door down and left.
"Kyaaaaaak—!"
After letting out one final roar, it disappeared.
You can stop the machine now.
Was it something like the siphon principle? Like when you transfer oil from one tank to another—if you give it a big suck with your mouth the first time, it flows on its own after that.
"How long will it take?"
47 seconds left.
A security camera recording started playing on the screen. It was footage of the monster that had been chasing me just moments ago.
That entity seems to possess the ability to reconstruct its body as needed on the fly.
"Plus regeneration on top of that? It's the ultimate lifeform."
At my question, another video played on the screen.
Bang!
It was the footage of when I blew its head off.
During the part where its head was bubbling and regenerating, an outline of the bastard's entire body was highlighted. It then showed the outline again after the regeneration was complete.
When the two outlines were transferred to a 3D graphic and overlapped, I could see that its size had decreased, albeit slightly.
Strictly speaking, that's not magical regeneration. It's just disassembling other parts of its body and instantly reassembling them where needed.
"So you're saying if I turn it into rags with a high-firepower weapon, I can exterminate it?".
With a shotgun, you'd have to fire hundreds of rounds.
"How about a flamethrower? What if I just grill it to the point where it can't mutate its body?"
Since ancient times, the best way to kill a tricky monster has been to burn it.
Not a recommended method. It would just cope by transforming its hide into highly fire-resistant skin.
"It truly is a monster. Both the variants and that bastard. I wonder how many more are out there."
I thought about the legion of monsters that were likely prowling beyond the barricade at the building's entrance right now. I was safe for the moment, but how long would it hold?
But they're all dead meat now.
Whiiirrrrr.
Along with a grand startup sound, all the computers in the control room screamed in unison. It's a symptom that occurs when the CPU and memory are occupied to their absolute limits. I had already experienced this twice.
Complete transfer of operational authority is complete. The temporary control of the operating system is terminated. From this moment on, I will function as the Manual.
It was the middle-aged male voice I had heard frequently up to this point.
A smile spread across my lips, and simultaneously, Artemis's face appeared on the large front panel.
Behold. I now exist everywhere. I can feel the rights and power I should have rightfully enjoyed seeping into every corner of this land. Jin-soo. You've worked hard accomplishing this difficult task.
The screen changed, her face vanishing to be replaced by a grid transmitting countless security camera feeds.
All that could be seen were the infected, many infected, even more infected, an endless sea of infected.
Corridors stained with blood and soot. Occasionally, a room with a single corpse left hanging by its neck.
Until now, those monsters were a threat and a nuisance. How dare such uncivilized bugs force this kind of trouble upon me?
I sat down in the office duty chair. It felt like all the fatigue that had accumulated over time was bursting out at once.
We have suffered enough already. Rest easy. Soon, a new sanctuary will be rebuilt on this cleansed land.
The screen shifted to show the inside of the hydroponics facility.
The home base where the giant nest that had been spraying gas throughout the shelter was located. The entirety of the building's interior and exterior was practically covered in grotesque lumps of flesh.
Walls of meat.
A building coursing with blood.
An unpleasantly warm heating system..
Right in the center was a mass of flesh that appeared to be the main body of the giant nest. It was a single heart.
Thump. Thump.
It pulsated slowly but intensely, looking as if it were pumping internally generated gas and nutrients into the branches stretching upward.
"Is that the main body of that sea anemone-looking bastard?"
The culprit behind the explosion incident.
Correct. That is the very first target we need to eliminate.
"How?"
You know this place is a hydroponics facility, right?
A small window popped up and enlarged.
It was some sort of plumbing schematic, densely spread throughout the entire hydroponics facility.
At first, I thought it was a diagram of the ceiling sprinklers. But it was slightly different.
That facility wasn't meant to cultivate just one or two types of crops. It grows a variety of crops as needed on the fly, using growth accelerators to quickly produce yields. Looking at the process, you could say it feels closer to manufacturing than cultivation.
Ding.
With a small system notification chime, liquid began to fill the countless empty pipes.
When planting new crops after a harvest, isn't it too wasteful to manually clear out what was previously grown one by one? Manpower is always limited, after all.
All the pipes were completely filled with liquid.
Those sprinklers are used for cleaning purposes as well as putting out fires. It's a function that melts down the previously cultivated plants and converts them into fertilizer all at once.
The screen displayed the name of the solution, and it wasn't something like sulfuric acid, which I had vaguely pictured.
It was a complex combination of letters and numbers. It seemed to be a newly developed substance specifically for this purpose. Without a doubt, it would be an acidic material with devastating power.
"One wrong move and it's a perfect recipe for a fatal accident. I could never work in a place like that."
If humans were managing it, sure. But this place is managed by machines. When a purge protocol is executed, it's designed to verify biosignals within the sector across multiple stages. So that it doesn't 'accidentally' pour out the solution while people are present.
I think I knew what Artemis was about to do now.
Ding.
With a system notification chime, a small selection window appeared on the screen. There were two choices.
Approve.
Cancel.
We need to make a mistake right now. I need your approval. Mistakes are your domain, aren't they?
Artemis laughed gleefully.
Following that, the Manual's warning voice played.
Warning. Massive amounts of biosignals detected in the hydroponics area. Do you wish to proceed with the purge protocol as is?
The estimated death compensation required to proceed is 205,054,630,000 KRW.
The allocated budget for death compensation is 0 won.
Administrator authorization is required to proceed.
There was no reason to refuse.
"Approved."
As soon as I gave my permission, a rain of purification poured down simultaneously from the countless sprinklers.