Chapter 166
Chapter 166
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 10
Chapter Title: Lead and Silver Coins (20)
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“Excellent choice! A judgment and decisiveness worthy of Sector 47! Truly the right decision for the future of humanity!”
The man was making such a huge fuss that it could furrow brows, even though I’d quietly suggested we work together.
“....Does the Administration really have no talent? Why you again?”
“Because I’m the Administration’s external activities handler?”
His face lit up like he’d grabbed a lifeline at the edge of a cliff.
Administration spokesperson Karel Belmont kept showering us with nonstop praise.
“As you know, most of the Administration consists of former researchers and technicians. They’re all a bit.... introverted types, so they lack talent for diplomatic activities like this. They all strongly recommended me, and that’s how I ended up as the external activities handler.”
“Hmm.... You’re a researcher too, right?”
“Yup!”
“Any achievements like papers published or fame gained before the Great War?”
“I was pretty young back then....”
“Then, any successful research projects after the war?”
“Well.... I was diligently working on them when I got recommended for external activities....”
‘As expected. Incompetent enough to get booted out.’
I’d thought he was just dim, but he seemed like someone not even welcomed inside the Administration.
A classic case of ‘backing the wrong horse.’ He had some education, but nothing compared to the star-studded lineup in the Dome’s Administration, so he ended up shuffled around doing odd jobs. If he’d gone to Enforcement or Inspection instead, he might’ve at least been treated like a regular member....
“....Good luck.”
“Huh?”
Looking at that dim face of his, his future seemed pitch black.
The people sending this guy out as their external activities handler—our only potential ally—and it was frustrating to the point of suffocation, but there was no helping it. In this completely insane situation, the Administration was the closest thing we had to allies.
Inspection Bureau? They were in bed with the Raptor Society, and could turn on us anytime—disqualified.
Enforcement Bureau? Hmm.... Tempting, sure. But they’d teamed up with those zealots we looted together. And the box that fell into their hands had ended up with the Artist Alliance?
The group currently suspected of connecting to our main target. Disqualified.
‘If they could just scrounge up 40 skilled soldiers, that’d be perfect. But with the Administration having basically zero combat power, it’s our only option....’
Well, what could we do? We’d have to make the most of it.
In game terms, we had to infiltrate the enemy base soon, but instead of combat mercs, we’d gotten research and admin types.
Fortunately, the Administration that had become our ally wasn’t completely useless.
“Let’s see.... Ah, here it is. The research records on that incomplete mutation device!”
Since we’d decided to intervene before the Artist Alliance’s movements got out of hand, we couldn’t waste even a single second. We’d unwittingly become the first response team, and charging out without info in this kind of emergency would just lead to wandering lost somewhere and timing out.
The ultimate goal of this operation was ‘suppressing the mutation device,’ so it was impossible that its original owners—the top technical personnel who’d researched it for five whole years—had zero information.
I practically snatched the documents Karel handed over and skimmed through them frantically.
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[Level 1 Secret]
[Non-Peaceful War Termination Project No.9]
[Wide-Area Brainwave Interference Device, Orpheus Project]
[Researcher James.15’s Records]
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“Wide-area.... brainwave interference device? Orpheus? Karel, this is it?”
“I told you. It’s unrealizable, but it has political influence as a technology. Isn’t a project for a new type of strategic weapon from the old era worth at least that much?”
Flip, flip.
My hands flipping the pages sped up. The text that entered my eyes was imprinted directly into my mind by Hyde and organized there. The more I read, the more curses welled up in my throat.
The guy who made this was insane.
[Science, science will destroy the world....]
A 20-page classified document—a summary of the diary from a researcher using the pseudonym James.15.
This ‘Orpheus’ device was, in a word, a suicide-induction device.
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....Now, with Andrey Gedroits and his colleagues opening the possibility of datafying human consciousness. Academia is seriously researching technologies that directly interfere with the human mind. What we focused on was one thing. If we can digitize and copy all of a person’s memories, then conversely, can we send digitized memories back into a person’s consciousness? Even if those memories are completely different from the originals?
The faces of my grandfather, who suffered from dementia in his final years, and my grandmother, who grieved that he no longer even remembered her, came to mind. If we could extract memories like data and reinject them, maybe....
....The research was going smoothly. Gedroits Company’s First Research Team gladly cooperated. As leaders in learning AI research, they could handle our lacking psychological approaches. These people are geniuses. Geniuses calling us geniuses. Embarrassing.
....It was astonishing that we’d found a clue. Is this really possible? It wasn’t full memory, just a tiny node, but we succeeded in creating something like déjà vu. I’d lived my whole life as an atheist, but lately, I’ve felt like visiting a church. Will You forgive me, Lord?
....Soldiers increased around the lab. It’d been nearly two months with no outside news for secrecy, but the atmosphere was suspicious. A military official suggested trying a ‘different direction’ with our memory injection device. That memories didn’t need to be delicate. Overload human capacity? What the hell are these madmen talking about? Absolutely unacceptable. Our research is for people with Alzheimer’s! Never, not before dirt’s in my eyes!
....Adam. Jamie. Friends too good to die like that. The rumors were true. Exploding lab, me surviving dragged by soldiers’ hands. The vehicle my colleague was in exploding right before my eyes. People who wanted to leave their names in history vanished without a single piece of corpse. Thrown like trash into a military truck, soldiers urging retaliatory bombings on major cities via radio. Orders to burn flat cities everyone knew—no one opposed. The world, the soldiers. Everyone went mad. Maybe me too. In my head, the faces of colleagues I’d never see again and the overload device design alternated.
....Another failure. Just one more step and it would’ve been complete. We’d even succeeded in human trials! But with headphones, and only after 10+ hours of prolonged exposure? This is.... just a torture device. Not the mass slaughter weapon I wanted, Orpheus! No matter what, I can’t output enough to access human memories! Where the hell, how did it go wrong!
....My legs give out. Blood flowing from my side soaked my pants, too heavy. I read my own notes from all this time. My diary, with every fact that must never leave, written without omission. Maybe I wanted to confess. Maybe I wanted to make excuses to the colleagues I’d meet in death for tainting our brightest moments. That’s all over now. Union army gunfire approaching right up to the lab. I have a gun too. A small pistol with exactly one bullet in the chamber. So kind of them.
My revenge ends incomplete.
Disappointing, and fortunate.
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Zeus, Agni, Horus, Moses, and now Orpheus.
Scientists seemed childish sometimes. Or maybe it was natural to give a fancy name to their life’s work?
[Guys making stuff like that aren’t just scientists—they’re ‘mad’ scientists. Mad ones tend to be sentimental.]
‘Reasonable deduction.’
Anyway, this mass slaughter weapon that ended up incomplete for whatever reason—and whose name never saw the light of day—was the identity of the [Box].
Yes, a mass slaughter weapon. Not a mutation device—just a somewhat unique type of weapon.
“....It wasn’t made aiming for mutation from the start.”
“There was almost nothing known about the mutant virus’s mechanism in the early war. The military back then seemed to want something like mind-control devices from comics or weapons that fired sonic waves and made heads explode like watermelons, but that was realistically impossible. What this scientist known as ‘James.15’ chose was a method of implanting a ‘glitch’ in the brain via brainwave stimulation to destabilize the mind and drive them mad.”
“‘Glitch’.... An error? Did I get that right?”
“To explain it more accessibly, it’s artificially induced delirium. Since it started from Alzheimer’s treatment research, there’d be a lot of overlap.”
Delirium. Delirium.
A type of geriatric disorder causing hallucinations, delusions, rage, etc., in short bursts. However, the device ended incomplete, and the developer’s records mentioned low output, limited range, and glacially slow effect times.
Sss—
At that moment, a sluggishly surfacing memory.
[The boy who went outside the shield collapsed, convulsed wildly while twisting his body, and turned into a mutant.]
A range vast enough to cover the entire Dome, and extremely immediate—overcoming Orpheus’s flaws.
[A disappearance site with almost no bloodstains. Traces of violent combat.]
Traces proving only destruction, no actual physical injuries.
What if that wasn’t from combat, but traces of the mutants rampaging alone due to lingering mania even after transforming?
Inconsistent traces matching the ambiguous Type 3 mutants from the video. Traces left by those unique, roughly Type 2.5 mutants?
All the facts pointed to one thing.
‘It’s complete. Someone completed that old-era slaughter weapon. And in the most infuriating way possible!’
The Professor recalled the skin mask safely tucked in his pocket.
A marvel of old-era technology that even the intellectual elite of the Dome, called the progeny of that age, had failed to uncover the principles or production method for.
A group that succeeded in something close to symbiosis, beyond merely processing mutants. The ones claiming all humans must die except for newly born children.
The group that raided the Dome from the start and ultimately took the Box.
Happy-Blind.
“One of them has it. The one who stole the Box, completed it, and is maintaining it.”
The one who’d perfected the [Box] that W was enthusiastically performance-testing was inside Happy-Blind.
The fuzzy target was sharpening, focus tightening bit by bit.
With our combat power utterly lacking right now. One shot. One operation targeting the objective—that’d be our best.
‘Of course, that doesn’t mean I plan to hog it all solo like some hero.’
He thought about where the Administration could be useful. Accurate info on the key target. Knowledge. Technical personnel. Research....
Snap!
“Technician! How could I forget!”
The Professor, muttering while sitting in the Administration lobby, slapped his knee and jumped to his feet.
“Inspection Bureau! They were looking for a technician! They’re struggling because they cluelessly messed with the radio tower!”
“Technician.... Ah! If the Administration sends a technician to the Inspection Bureau, perfect! Enemies or not, they won’t turn down free help! If we connect comms, we can inform Sector 47 of the situation and request support....”
“No! Think about it, Ezel. The ones who cut comms to block the vote—they gonna release it before things are fully resolved? Already struggling managing with some useless civilian tech, they’ll snatch ours and work ’em to death with glee.”
“Hearing that, yeah. So what then?”
What do you mean what? Can’t you see it? Even after spelling it out this far?
“Still don’t get it? Ian, Bex! I told you everything!”
Ian and Bex shrugged at the Professor’s gesture, as if asking why they didn’t know.
“I can’t even follow the conversation....”
“Don’t drag it out—just say it. You’re killing me here.”
“I’m the one dying inside! Argh, seriously! They’ll [grab and] work ’em! If we send a ‘technician,’ they won’t touch a hair, nicely escort inside the radio tower, and guide safely right to the core control device at the center of this wide-area jamming!”
“W-wait a sec. Inside?”
“Yeah, man! What’s the point of fully fixing it? We just need to send one message to Sector 47! The radio tower’s the one knocking out everything from Sector 38 onward to nearby sectors—surely we can slip one message through the jamming waves? Quick in—send something like ‘if you don’t come, we all die, humanity’s doomed’—then bolt! If it was just us, no, but Sector 47’s mechanized combat unit can smash Happy-Blind easy!”
The Professor spoke like it was nothing, like just going out to buy a hot dog on the street.
Ezel stared at him, wondering if the stress had finally driven him mad.
Enter smack in the middle of enemy territory, use a facility fully under their control, and escape.
If that’s easy, then what’s hard? Block an orbital strike with bare hands?
Ezel planned to give the Professor spouting nonsense a stern talking-to.
“Easy to say, but the Inspection Bureau aren’t idiots—they won’t notice? Moment they do, hunted like rats in the radio tower. Right, guys?”
Even though the Professor had appointed himself commander, he respected the group’s opinions. Ezel turned to seek agreement—and sure enough, the other two were nodding.
“Ahh, yeah. That’s a good idea. Old-era building’s sturdy, so no worry about total collapse even if we blow it.”
“....Huh?”
“Building full of blind spots and narrow halls, enemy’s just trained soldiers—human soldiers at that! Heh, happy! Honestly.... I’ve been worried deep down that I’m obsolete, that once we leave the 40s sectors, I’m done. A mission like this? No need to ask twice! I’m in!”
“Crack up! Finally some proper work! Frankly, ever since crossing into 40+, my guts were twisting. Sneak around quietly, avoid fights, watch who’s enemy.... That ain’t our way! Brakes worn to nothing!”
Ezel had meant it as a death sentence, but Ian grinned like it was great news and bolted outside.
“Grab the car from the dorm—think about your personal loadouts!”
Ezel forgot what he was going to say at the sight of him looking so blissfully happy. The Professor sidled up, threw an arm around his shoulders, and said,
“Freedom and democracy’s guardian, Agent Ezel Leyden. 3:1, majority approves the op. Super~ dangerous place like you said, so more the better, right? You’re not planning to ditch your friends and spectate safely from afar, are you?”
“Damn it.... I always say it, but if I die here, you, Professor....”
“Aa, okay okay. I’ll accept the curse, put in your will that you died because of me, and carve huge on your tombstone [Professor bastard killed me]. Happy?”
Instead of answering, Ezel buried his face in his hands. Seeing his resigned look, the Professor beamed.
“Here! Bring an Administration research suit, tools, and a radio tower map! And a technician who knows how to handle the tower’s comms gear!”
“Infiltration.... You planning to disguise as researchers?”
Karel’s face said ‘no way,’ but the Professor nodded vigorously.
“Just one of us. Me, Ian, Bex—our faces are too known to go in bold. But we’ve got one guy who’s not that famous yet.”
Flinch!
Ezel, who’d been burying his face in his hands and muttering something, froze—then started shaking violently.
Oh, my longtime buddy Soy Sauce Gaybar. I do have good taste in friends.
“....Me?”
His face drained to clay color as he pointed at himself, so I gave him a bright smile and a nod.
“Yeah, you. You were holed up running radar in the car when we came in, and aside from that Professor fogey in Inspection, nobody knows your face. Old-era building looks tough to breach casually. You go in and open the door for us.”
I winked with an ‘our buddy~,’ but grabbed the flustered guy as he shot to his feet. If you like it, just say so.
“I’m gonna die. Gonna die! Gonna die right here!!!"
“Yeah, yeah. Even Admiral Yi Sun-sin said those who seek death shall live. Love the burning resolve already, Ezel.”
With the Professor showing zero sign of letting go, the last flicker of hope in Ezel’s heart was dying out.
Why the hell did I come to this guy’s shelter that day?
Ezel relived the regret he’d repeated hundreds of times on the way here, swallowed tears, and began committing the map the researcher had brought to memory.
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