Is the National Museum of Korea... Alive? (2)

Seventeen ability users were pouring in, and watching them swarm brought back the two women who had been guarding the skybridge between the Alliance hospital and the branch office.

They'd been wearing the same gear as this lot, hadn't they?

The enormous man at the head of the group spotted me standing near Mirror Pond and called over.

"Hm? What's a squirt like you doing planted here instead of running?"

...Squirt?

He looked to be in his fifties, white salted through his hair. Over a vest like a ballistic carrier he had protectors strapped to his arms and legs, a massive shield across his back, and an enormous gauntlet locked over his right arm.

He was about my height, but he had to weigh well over a hundred kilos. Muscle corded his arms, his legs, his chest — and then there was the potbelly, which made the whole arrangement look frankly ridiculous, right up until the gear went on and he became exactly what he resembled. A human tank.

At a glance he read as a physical reinforcement type. He wasn't. He was fire-attribute, and his Phase Power sat at 280,000, the highest of the seventeen. An elemental type, and he'd bulked himself up like that? And the thing on his right arm, that gauntlet the size of my torso — that was a Knuckle Buster, wasn't it?

"I was just leaving. I only stayed this long to report it to the Alliance."

His eyes went wide. He looked me over, and the look turned impressed.

"Well now. An Aberrant might be loose in there, and you just stood your ground without so much as flinching? Hah! Guts spilling clean out of your belly, squirt! Kahahaha!"

"Captain. Orders."

Captain? Well, 280,000 put him at the peak of D-Class, right around Deputy Director Kang Woohyuk's level. It tracked.

The man, still laughing in that rough, booming voice, turned toward the woman who had spoken from behind him. I looked too.

The boyish woman at the captain's back wore the same black jacket and black trousers as the rest, protectors included. Knives were sheathed all over her arms, legs, and torso, and she even had a submachine gun slung across her back, so I had her pegged as an elemental type. Wrong. She was a recovery ability user, Phase Power 150,000.

A phase pattern of spots clustered through the torso — a close-range recovery type? Either way, the soldierly woman pressed the man she had called captain, and the big guy went "Hmm?" and swept a look around the grounds.

The other fifteen were a fair mix of elemental users and physical reinforcement types. He started jabbing a finger at them, posting them one by one.

"Till more bodies get here, we set the cordon first! You, you! You! And you three, take the museum's left. The rest of you, spread out to the right from here!"

"Yes, sir!"

At the captain's order the fifteen of them rushed out at intervals and began closing a semicircle on the museum. The police, and soldiers who had arrived before anyone quite noticed, started throwing up barricades along the road so civilians couldn't cross over to this side.

"Squirt! You clear out too! Stay here and you'll get hurt!"

"Hmm. Seems you don't need any more information, then. Well, I'll be going."

Squirt this, squirt that, from the moment he'd opened his mouth. I didn't want to linger near something that unpleasant a second longer either, so I turned to leave—

A heavy hand clamped down on my shoulder.

—or tried to. The big man had grabbed me.

"Hold on. Information? Don't tell me you're an ability user too."

At that, the boyish woman and the two physical reinforcement users flanking him all looked my way. They had some sense, at least. I wished they'd also sense how sick I was of being called squirt.

"I am. Detection-type."

"Hoh? For real? Now that you mention it, those eyes of yours..."

At the big man's words the boyish woman stepped in and stared straight through my face.

"Euihan High School. Third year. Male. Blue irises. Detection-type. That matches."

"It's that kid, yeah?"

"Yes. He is Blue Genius."

...What genius? Ugh, c-cringe, goosebumps! W-wait! I graduated from my edgelord phase the day I started high school!

She delivered it with a perfectly blank face, and my composure started coming apart at the seams.

"Heh."

"Uhahaha! Most of 'em make exactly that face when they hear their own alias! Kahahaha!"

Nngh. The boyish woman must have caught my twisted expression, because she let out a soft snort, and the captain roared. Even Franc had turned her back on me, fighting to keep a straight face.

"Well then! Would the esteemed Blue Genius kindly grace us with whatever information he has uncovered?"

"My name is Jung Seoha. And you, Gramps? Ma'am?"

I'd been hearing things that stung since they arrived, and my mood had soured enough that I took it out on the boyish woman too. Her eyebrow twitched at ma'am. The big man's twitched at Gramps.

Judging by looks alone — mid-twenties, mid-fifties — how was I supposed to know if she was a ma'am or a miss, if he was a mister or a grandpa? I knew. I was just too spiteful to swallow it.

At length the big man opened his mouth, chuckling low.

"Keh keh keh. Feisty, just like the rumors. I'm Hwa Joong-kang. And this ma'am here is Yoo Chae-rin."

Even with me needling him, Mr. Hwa Joong-kang only laughed his keh-keh laugh, and the woman raised a faint vein at her temple before sighing the irritation away almost at once. I'd picked the fight on purpose, and getting that kind of grown-up response just took the wind out of me.

I sighed, called up what I'd meant to tell them, and spoke.

"There are about twenty-seven people inside the building. Six of them are students from my school."

Yoo Chae-rin's face hardened. Mr. Hwa Joong-kang watched students heading off along the road by car and taxi, frowned slightly, and said,

"Hm. You lot came for — what was it. Studying? Then how is it most of you got out in one piece?"

"I dodged it and pulled everyone out with me. The ones left behind were stuck in the bathrooms and couldn't get clear in time. Anyway, the people in there have gone zombie-like. They're gathering toward a single spot underground."

Having heard that, Mr. Hwa Joong-kang shut his mouth and stared at me. Yoo Chae-rin, beside him, asked in his place.

"I was told you can sense Phase Power. Did you pick up anything?"

"No."

That was the truth. Something like a strange box was drawing the people around it in. From the lid, cracked slightly open, came only an unpleasant red light, and I couldn't feel any Phase Power at all.

"You don't know why they ended up like that?"

"If I knew that, it'd be omniscience, not detection."

The red straw-like things jammed into their heads, and the way they moved, gave me a rough guess — but I couldn't explain anything past what was already public knowledge. I felt bad for the people caught in it. My own safety mattered more.

This man and this woman looked plenty capable. Surely they could put down one nasty little box without breaking a sweat?

"If you saw how this situation began, I would appreciate an explanation."

Yoo Chae-rin's voice was nothing like Cha Soyoung's, and yet the atmosphere was somehow the same. I found myself liking her.

"Not even a few minutes after we ran out, a huge sound rolled through the place. A deep groan. Then everyone inside the building collapsed. They got back up and started gathering underground only a little while ago."

Yoo Chae-rin's expression went grave. She activated her Certifier, checked several things, then covered her mouth and began whispering in the captain's ear. Franc drifted closer, eavesdropped, and relayed the exchange into my head.

Soul-type? What was that? I had Spatial Perception. She didn't need to spell it out for me like that. Well — it was cute. I'd let it go.

"Hey, prodigy boy. Any way to tell what state those people are in?"

I just blinked at Mr. Hwa Joong-kang. He gave a bitter smile and patted my head with a hand like a pot lid.

"Right. Thanks for waiting around to tell us. Without your information, we might've walked into something ugly."

"Thank you, Jung Seoha."

...Hm. Was advice at this level really worth that much gratitude?

Watching the two of them thank me so plainly, I felt petty for no good reason. And it wasn't as if I disliked them. Honestly, they seemed like decent people.

I wanted them to get through this unhurt, so I decided to offer a little more.

"Chae-rin. Do you have a map of the museum?"

"Uh — hm? I do. One moment."

I'd dropped the ma'am. The softer address — closer to what you'd use for an older sister — threw her for a beat, but she recovered at once, worked the Certifier, and brought up a three-dimensional map from the first basement level through the third floor, turning the hologram toward me.

"Two people are trapped in stalls in the third-floor restroom. Three in the second-floor restroom, four in the second-floor library, and the remaining sixteen are slowly converging here, at the center of the first basement level. Moving along these paths."

I marked where the victims were, then jabbed a finger at the box radiating that unpleasant red light — the box, the casket? the thing they were calling a casket — and traced the three routes leading to it. The man and the woman stared at me, impressed.

"The museum is nearly four hundred meters from here. A remarkable detection ability. No wonder the Alliance and the government have their eyes on you, and no wonder they hung the name Blue Genius on you."

I clicked my tongue.

"Was that helpful enough, ma'am?"

Demoted from older sister back to ma'am, Yoo Chae-rin's eyebrow twitched. Then she smiled, thin and sharp.

"More than sufficient. Thank you for sharing the intelligence. Blue boy genius."

I clicked my tongue again, harder, and left Mr. Hwa Joong-kang and Yoo Chae-rin to their grave debate over how far my information could be trusted. Out by the road, Han Go-eun and her crew came running.

"Seoha!"

Once I was over the barricade, the girls crowded in, fussing that they'd been worried.

"You okay? Nothing happened?"

"Nothing. I'm not even a combat-type. All I did was tell the guy and the lady who showed up what I'd found, and come back."

"Hey, that's actually impressive. If it weren't for you, this could've gone really bad. Thanks a ton!"

"Thank you!"

Kim Chang-hyun grinned at the sight of me walking out in one piece and bumped my shoulder. Cho Min-ho stared up at me with bright, sparkling eyes.

I hadn't done much of anything, so the thanks were embarrassing. Franc was smiling sweetly beside me, which only made it worse.

I stood there taking greetings from Han Go-eun's crew and the other kids for a while, until my homeroom teacher ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠found me, told me I'd done well, clapped me on the shoulder, and looked around.

"All right, everyone? Shall we head for Achasan? The others have already gone, so we ought to follow."

Huh? Hadn't the field trip been called off?

I'd been planning to stick around and see how the museum ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠situation played out. I'd just have to invent an excuse and stay.

Right — my case officer had been switched to Hwayeon and the Madam, so I should call Hwayeon. Except Hwayeon was in the Phase World right now. Then who was I supposed to call?

A few names came to mind, and the Madam was among them. Thinking of her made something itch. Better to slap together a decent excuse and slip away.

In the meantime a trailer had arrived, and twenty more ability users — the same uniform as Yoo Chae-rin, different weapons — poured out of it and rushed toward Mirror Pond. A quick sense of that side told me they were organizing an entry team.

They'd be going in soon. I needed to speak up.

"Teacher. I think I have to sit out the field trip."

"Hm? Oh — do you still have something left to do?"

I pointed toward the museum and explained to the flustered teacher.

"No. I'm a minor, so I'm prohibited from anything related to the Phase World, right? I think I need to report this to my case officer first."

"The school will handle that. Don't worry, and let's get moving."

Huh? Was that how it worked? Even so, it would be someone else's fight, not mine. Just then Han Go-eun glanced at me and spoke to the teacher.

"Time River is right nearby, and Seoha clearly has reasons he can't spell out, so please let him go on your discretion. It's not like he's ditching to go mess around."

"Uh — um?"

The teacher grew even more flustered, and Kang So-ra backed Han Go-eun up, her voice dragging out in that lazy drawl.

"If his case officer hasn't even called~ doesn't that mean something's wrong~? Seoha's a Time River member, y'knooow~ and Time River's right nearby, so maybe he ought to go look~?"

"I-is that so?"

Why are you asking me?

"Yeouido's right next door, so I was thinking of heading over."

Somehow I'd talked myself into a trip to the Time River Building, but if I wanted to see how this got handled, there was no helping it.

"Then... do that, and if anything comes up, call your teacher. Understood?"

"Yes."

I watched Han Go-eun's crew leave in the teacher's car, then quickened my own steps until the museum sat just barely on the edge of my Spatial Perception.

A Moonbucks happened to be nearby, so I went in, ordered a steamed milk and a slice of fresh-cream cake, and took a corner where no one's eyes would land.

Franc, seated demurely across from me, leaned forward.

"Yeah. I want to use this chance to see what other ability users are actually like. Mr. Hwa Joong-kang looked like he was expecting a fight, so if I wait, I might get to see one."

I set my smartphone on the table as if I were on a call, so it wouldn't look strange to anyone watching, and waited. The teams must have finished forming, because the Alliance's ability users began their entry into the museum.

With a C-Class physical reinforcement user whose name I didn't know at the point, twenty of them — armed with submachine guns and every kind of weapon — took a fan-shaped formation, then split into groups of fifteen and five and entered separately.

Mr. Hwa Joong-kang and Yoo Chae-rin were with the fifteen. They headed underground, while the other five began circling the first floor, apparently off to subdue the enthralled civilians whose positions I had marked.

Those five swapped magazines as they moved, and the replacements were packed with rubber rounds. Not for killing, then. For suppression. I put them out of my mind and turned my attention to Mr. Hwa Joong-kang's team going down.

On the wide landing of the stairs into the basement, he raised a hand. The members halted and watched every direction. Then he beckoned the ability user whose phase pattern was a Möbius strip, and pointed inward.

"Jeon Il-tae. What do you see."

"Hmm. Just as Blue Genius said. Sixteen people around a casket giving off red light... Ghk?!"

In that instant all fifteen clutched their heads and groaned as one. I understood a second later. The casket enshrined at the heart of the Phase World special exhibition was easing open, and the wider the gap, the more heat-haze spilled from the crack.

He roared the order and wrapped his skin in a watery gleam of phase-light, and the fourteen who saw it did the same. The film ran a little thinner than the Topological Resist ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Hwayeon used.

And in that same moment, the Phase Power sleeping inside the casket began to climb.

At Jeon Il-tae's cry, Mr. Hwa Joong-kang began giving orders with a perfectly steady voice.

"Park Gi-tae! Hwang Il-woo! Choi Jin-young! You three, pinpoint the casket! Gunners, shoot the possessed and neutralize them! Everyone else, watch every direction!"

The order dropped, and everyone except Yoo Chae-rin and Jeon Il-tae vaulted down the stairs at once. The ones with submachine guns leveled their muzzles and poured deep blue-green, bead-like rubber rounds into the people shambling around the casket.

The dark rounds struck the ones with red lines running up into their heads and burst. Something like white gum exploded outward in spiderweb strands and bound whoever they hit.

"Graaaaaah—"

"Urrghhh..."

Sixteen people, suppressed and bound in an instant, stuck to the floor and thrashed, eyes rolled to the whites, letting out grotesque cries. Between them, the casket's lid began to open further.

Dyed in gray, black, and red, worked over in gold and silver, the box was a casket large enough for a child to climb inside — and what rose from it now was no longer heat-haze. Something like flame roared up in a fury.

Flash.

A pulse of ominous red light burst from the casket, but this time the ability users didn't clutch their heads. Instead, the taxidermied Aberrants on display around them began to vibrate with an ill omen.

"Fire!"

At Yoo Chae-rin's shout, seven elemental rounds of fire, wind, and earth flew at the casket — but an instant before impact, the energy pouring out of it intensified and vaporized every one of them. Then the taxidermied Aberrants twitched, and slowly began to move.

"The mounts are moving!"

I knew some of them. A Buddy Chicken. A Silver White Wolf. A Two-Tailed Fox. Others I had never seen — a lion, a rhinoceros, and a crow the size of a person. Every claw, every beak, every horn was bigger, thicker, and sharper than any living animal's. Sharp enough to split a person open in a single stroke.

"Smash them all!"

"Oh, dear."

Elemental rounds flew in a wild scatter and struck the Aberrants, but the red heat-haze flowing over the mounts' hides stopped them cold. They did almost nothing. The insides were packed with sawdust and cotton, and the red haze filling that stuffing seemed to grant the rounds a peculiar resistance.

Worse, each mount had become a Low-Rank Variant with a Phase Power of 70. When a dozen-odd of them howled at once, the museum shuddered, and cement dust poured from the ceiling and the walls.

Mr. Hwa Joong-kang stepped forward and slammed his Knuckle Buster into the floor. Sparks leapt, and a visibly searing crimson flame roared up.

"Hraaaah!!"

With the shout came a brutal left straight. The blast of fire-wind that flew from the end of it burned a Buddy Chicken mount to ash — and red light spilled from the glass-bead eyes of the taxidermied Aberrants as they set themselves to charge.

The ability users sprayed elemental rounds at the sight, but an ironclad rhinoceros pushed to the front and shook its head. Rounds bounced off a horn the size of a grown man set on its snout, and even the ones that struck its body burst feebly against the iron plating wrapped over its head and upper body.

Taking that as the signal, the rhinoceros smashed through every structure and marble tile in its path and charged the squad. Every Aberrant broke into a run behind it. All fourteen, Mr. Hwa Joong-kang included, struck the lead beast with weapons and abilities alike — but aside from his attacks, the red haze blocked nearly everything.

"The red energy covering the mounts is stopping our attacks!"

"Captain! What do we do about the casket!"

"Kim Jin-ah! Bury it in earth!"

The captain's shout cracked through them. The woman with the long straight hair, standing at the center of the fan, touched the ground and poured half her TP into the floor. The floor undulated like a wave and rushed toward the casket spewing its dreadful red light — then earth thrust up all at once, swallowing the casket whole and heaping it into a burial mound.

The moment the red light was veiled by the soil, the haze flowing over the mounts' hides thinned as well.

In that gap, five upper-tier E-Class physical reinforcement users met the charging mounts at close range, flung their submachine guns aside, and swung their weapons at the ironclad rhinoceros. Steel met horn and threw huge sparks. The impact halted the charge, and the other taxidermied Aberrants running with it either crashed into it and stopped or scattered left and right.

"Now!"

Elemental attacks poured onto the scattered mounts, and rounds of fire, water, and earth smashed them apart in moments.

The ironclad ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rhinoceros, though, was tearing through the five reinforcement users unmatched. Its plating seemed to carry a high resistance to physical attacks. No matter how they swung, they only raised light scratches. Nothing fatal.

Unable to watch any longer, Mr. Hwa Joong-kang stepped in.

"Fall back!"

He thrust out the gauntlet on his right arm, spread his fingers wide, aimed at the ironclad rhinoceros, and began gathering TP.

A beam a lot like my Mana Laser, only far thicker, lanced out of his palm. The ironclad rhinoceros it struck was bored through in a straight line from snout to asshole, and what remained of it went up in a rush of flame.

Boom.

The taxidermied Aberrants were annihilated — and in the same instant the earthen mound exploded, revealing the casket once more, spraying an ominous red. The light it threw now was fiercer than before, but it had no particular effect on the ability users whose skin was sheathed in watery Phase Power.

Instead, the flames on the rhinoceros's remains, exposed to that red light, died down at speed, and red energy began to settle again into the shattered fragments of the mounts. They had been broken too thoroughly to rise. They only twitched.

"Maeng Jin-ho!"

"Yes!"

At the shout, a sharp-featured man stepped forward. He wore knuckles over both fists and steel Bledsoe knee braces on both legs. As he moved up, Yoo Chae-rin lightly touched his back.

The watery Phase Power gathered in her hand transferred into him, thickening and hardening the membrane already wrapped around his body.

"Hah!"

Wrapped more strongly in watery Phase Power from head to toe, he crossed to the casket in a single stamp of his foot, spun once, and drove his heel down onto the top of it, forcing the open casket shut. Then he rotated a half-turn and kicked upward, launching the entire pedestal and flinging the casket high into the air.

"Now! Penetrating volley!"

At Mr. Hwa Joong-kang's shout, lasers and awl-shaped elemental rounds of every color streaked tails of light and struck the casket. An explosion large enough to shake the museum building erupted.