Chapter 505
Chapter 505
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 23
Chapter Title: Gedroits's Heir, Deul (20)
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“What a shame. I was hoping to use your steadfast personality—neither overly good nor evil—as a moral banner for the humanity of the coming future.”
“Let’s not talk nonsense. Using a child soldier with permanent PTSD mental trauma as the benchmark for morality? Most people would call that a dystopia.”
“....Anyway, I’m counting on you regarding the Raptor Society. Thank you for coming all this way despite your busy schedule and responding so peacefully to our conversation. You’re free to go now. I can’t see you off in this state.”
“Yeah, sure. Let’s each go our own way. If our paths cross again... well, let’s try to resolve it with talk like this time.”
“I hope so. Oh, there’s movement from Thousand Stream Emperor at the entrance. He seems to have woken up, so check on him on your way out.”
“Alright, I’m off. Let’s not see each other again anytime soon. Neither you, W, nor you, Collector.”
“....I’m truly sorry it ended like this. Professor.”
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Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
“The Artists’ Union. A monstrous group with coercive human protection ideology...”
In the end, after our conversation concluded as a deal, the Collector let me leave without incident.
I would take the position they wanted in this war, and in exchange, they would provide me with a method to suppress mutations.
On the surface, it was a decent trade, but considering everything we discussed, I couldn’t help feeling a lingering regret apart from achieving all my original goals.
“Should I have just grabbed the Collector by the throat and forced her to spill everything she knew? Even if she held out, that W guy who dotes on her would’ve sung like a bird.”
Among the baits they dangled at first, the most compelling was undoubtedly that loaded statement: ‘This is a war the Raptors are destined to win anyway.’
They had figured out what Gedroits, now the Raptor leader, was preparing, and promised to share it all if I joined their side.
In other words, after the Raptors devoured the central generator of Dome in Sector 38 whole, they’d been hiding and scurrying about to prepare for Gedroits’s dangerous plan. The Dome launching an offensive—despite being advantageous for defense in equipment and tactics—was born from ‘We don’t know what scheme those mad militarists are cooking up, so let’s cut it off before they’re ready!’ Essentially, in terms of the Dome’s goal of ‘neutralizing unknown threats,’ no information could be more crucial than what they held.
From our perspective, it was information worth its weight in gold, so it was only natural to feel regret at letting it slip through our fingers.
“What does Gedroits want? In this vast laboratory called the wasteland—against the test subjects of Dome—what is he seeking to obtain by wielding the control variable of the Raptors...”
At least one silver lining: unlike before coming here, where I had zero clues to speculate on, now I at least had something to go on.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
The path stretching through artifacts from ancient times to the modern era felt like a symbol piercing through the ages.
Amid the crunching of claws that had somehow grown through my combat boots scraping the stone floor, I pondered the life of the scientist who orchestrated all this.
“Gedroits. Great scientist. Knowledge leaps and bounds ahead of his era. He spent his life inventing to use that knowledge for humanity, but most were misused against his intentions. It’s only natural he’d start thinking about some massive control force transcending nations.”
Recalling the video Gedroits left during the 3 Worlds progression, the first thing that came to mind was his story about that organic molding tech called ‘Faji Meat.’
He developed a technique to turn any organic matter into meat to solve famine in the poorest countries, and indeed, the organic synthesizer in my old personal shelter in Sector 47 was based on it—clearly, his knowledge saved countless lives.
But it was also true that ‘Faji Meat’ tech killed far more people. Thanks to its simple structure anyone could learn and use, it became the go-to for everyone from broke terrorists to state-level skirmishes: ‘biochemical bombs that sprout cancer lesions on skin with the slightest touch.’ In the end, Gedroits had to work himself to the bone trying to contain his own tech that had already spread across the world.
“Compared to the pure enthusiasm in his early videos, he’d clearly changed after repeated failures.”
What I knew. What I’d analyzed. And the new knowledge I’d just gained—all meshing together to paint a picture in my mind of ‘Andrey Gedroits,’ who’d felt like a ghost until now.
He was tenacious.
A future already doomed to ruin. To avert it, more advanced tech was needed, but it got abused the moment it was developed. Even the mutant virus for the Adapter Project showed signs of that, so after facing the reality that the faint hope he held in humanity’s inner goodness was twisted and broken at times, he began dreaming of a different future.
‘A world adjusted into a controllable environment. And leaders with the most perfect personalities and abilities, selected by him.’
That must’ve been the start of GG’s Completer Project. Unlike the loathsome current leaders who abused his tech, he sought a rare few heroes who retained their humanity through any adversity. At least fifteen out of billions, he believed—his faith in humanity’s inner goodness shrunk to the idea that a tiny fraction still held some.
And betrayed again. GG’s success, the data souls collected through it, the tens of thousands of years of simulations and countless worlds using those data souls. Nowhere did his longed-for ‘perfect savior’ exist.
The imagined Gedroits despairs, saying:
‘Ah, not a single one among humanity can embrace humanity.’
With billions gone and even faith in the rare good ones vanished, in his heart, humanity morphed into something irredeemably evil.
Chasing what didn’t exist, he turned the world into a hellfire with his own hands and discarded everything he had. The scientist despaired. It was all his fault. His misjudgment led to 90% of humanity’s extinction, and the rest withered slowly on radiation-infested land. Even suicide was denied him by the noose of crushing responsibility around his neck.
Thus, the current Gedroits was born. As Raptor Society leader, with another plan, disappointed in all humanity.
If I were in his shoes, would I still try to save humanity? Or would the exact opposite thought take hold? It wouldn’t be unreasonable.
.
.
.
.
My endless musings halted here. In the end, I could only speculate he was brimming with malice, but no concrete grasp on his scheme.
“....No, the Collector did let one thing slip.”
That all his movements now revolved around me. After the discarded Completer Project yielded a single result—Professor Park—and vanished, his activity ramped up. According to the Collector, I was the center of it all. His final plan somehow revolved around using me.
“The center. The center, huh. Me as the core and key to this world’s destruction...”
Lost in thought, a hollow laugh escaped me. Unconsciously, I’d been pondering the specifics of ‘this world’s’ downfall and its solution. As if I’d transitioned to yet another world inside GG.
“After this is over, I should see a real psychiatrist instead of that quack Woojin old man.”
I shook my head with that inner thought. Hell, in about nine months my kid’s due—having thoughts like ‘Oh, a newbie’ then would be a problem, right?
“You’re late.”
Thousand Stream Emperor’s voice reached me as I floundered in such scattered thoughts.
Disheveled uniform. Even messier hair. Bloodshot eyes. Faintly trembling hands. Slumped amid the entrance junk pile.
“....Thousand Stream Emperor? Or what used to be?”
“It’s Thousand Stream Emperor. For now.”
Thousand Stream Emperor brushed back his messy hair with shaking hands and arduously stood.
“For the first time since birth, I fought a friend. It’s a profoundly strange feeling.”
“Uh.... Yeah.”
Personally, I question calling it ‘fighting a friend’ when living blood vessels erupted from a thigh-integrated sword to take over the surroundings, but his face looked immensely relieved, so let it slide.
“So. Who won?”
At my question, Thousand Stream Emperor silently turned and pointed to the passage corner.
What his fingertip indicated: that sword he always carried like part of his body. The one cracked and writhing with tentacle-like things was now jammed in the junk, twitching.
It looked like what a real ‘mimic’ monster might: grotesque. But more shocking were the wounds on Thousand Stream Emperor’s turned back.
The thigh where the scabbard attached, pelvic skin and flesh deeply gouged. Not stopping there, it climbed upward, flesh split like tree roots along the spine toward his head.
And at the wound’s end—following the spine to his head—a hole the size of two coins punched in the back of his skull.
A sight anyone would believe was live dissection.
“Hey, that....”
“It’s fine. Seems cleanly severed without muscle damage.”
Even his right arm, hidden by his back when facing me, was empty from the elbow down—yet Thousand Stream Emperor regulated his weary breaths with the calmest face I’d ever seen.
“Some kind of parasite, I suspect.”
“Parasite? Type 3 mutant?”
“No idea if Type 3 or mutant. Just speculating it came from an experiment back home.”
Crack. Crack. Clank!
Thousand Stream Emperor lifted it from the junk.
The sword-shaped main body, grotesque blood vessels extending from it. Synthetic muscle molded like a spine replica, a pointed tentacle matching the hole in his head, brain-fold-like tip, and the part that served as his right arm.
“Looks like that day, I used Seoho to create something absurd.”
“Created....”
“This. Worship and envy, stubbornness and inferiority complex—all unresolved before losing that object—despair forged into a phantom like Han Seoho.”
Thousand Stream Emperor examined the blade like a craftsman, ignoring its appendages, and sheathed it in the fallen scabbard.
“Looking back, memories after dull-bladed beheading of Seoho’s neck that day are hazy. Now I think from then, I created the illusion of ‘the Han Seoho I admired’ and lived gazing at it.”
The sheathed sword. Shifting gaze from the parasite body extending from its tip to his empty right arm, Thousand Stream Emperor spoke with eyes holding void and relief.
“Lost consciousness and dreamed. I was back in Brazil’s Cracolândia, Han Seoho sitting on the sewer pipe floor facing me.”
“Even in a dream, seeing your friend after so long... glad?”
“....Ridiculous. So tall I had to bend to meet eyes, shoulders so broad he waddled. Han Seoho, lifelong desk-bound reporter with thick glasses, deep dark circles, gaunt cheeks protruding—had to be someone mimicking him. Yet seeing that bizarre figure, I instantly recognized ‘my friend Han Seoho.’ I’d already replaced his real form with the swollen illusion inside me.”
A kind of self-abasement. He refined himself to stand equal, but the more he improved, ‘unreachable Han Seoho’ grew vastly superior to his inner self in his mind.
“That parasite kept injecting those thoughts?”
“Likely. Born from my fixation on that moment, refusal to accept losing my sole friend, it wanted to trap me there. The mounting anxiety squeezing me, relentless headaches, obsession with Seoho—all probably from it ceaselessly stimulating my brain.”
“....Or it was truly part of Han Seoho clinging to my body, and I repeated that moment myself. No way to know the truth. What matters: Seoho and I both bound to it, stuck in that day’s memory—like stagnant water rotting, our memories inside had long rotted. More real than the friend I so admired. I had no intent to insult Seoho further.
So, I severed it.”
In the dream, Thousand Stream Emperor split in two the bloated Han Seoho he’d willed, and something slithered off his body, strength draining.
“If my senses came from Gedroits’s gift, my physical prowess was granted by this thing parasitizing me from that day.”
“Mutant parasite boosting athletic ability. Can’t advise on much else, but that I can a bit.”
Recalling long ago when only my left arm mutated from Hide’s encroachment, Thousand Stream Emperor got it and smiled faintly.
“....Anyway, doesn’t feel bad. No needless anxiety, no blade-sharp tension. This peace... only from a few hometown memories.”
“That so? I’m bummed our elite ace ‘human weapon Thousand Stream Emperor’ got downgraded to ‘one-armed swordsman with sharp senses.’ No more exosuit-slicing, military truck-chopping for you.”
“Probably. Excess super strength rooted in that parasite.”
“Tsk. Hoard till it’s waste—they decommissioned our tactical weapon I cherished at BDSM HQ. What a shame.”
“If needed, I’ll pay for lodging and gear use. Didn’t care for wealth, but not broke.”
“Forget it, keep hammering metal there. Fix the kids’ blades. Bash the ones thinking guns solve all.”
“Hm.”
“Above all, as the first clinical case healed mid-mutation among mutant virus infectees, visit Dome often for checkups.”
“Hm....”
“That thing. Seemed like precious friend’s remains-ish. Leaving it?”
“Hm. Better that way now.”
As I supported him looping my arm around his left, he stared at the sword. Tempered in the fire of Han Seoho’s remains, mutated in process, infected his body with mutant virus, whipped him till now.
Grip.
Thousand Stream Emperor propped it between an old bike and CRT TV, then turned away without regret.
“This place gathers era-defining art. Though closer to self-consolation, what I hammered across my life... not among inner masters, but fitting among entrance relics.”
Thousand Stream Emperor last glanced at his friend’s remnant trace, refused my support, and headed for the exit.
“....Unintentionally fulfilled my wish. Yours resolved well?”
“Yeah. About half-half. Long climb, I’ll explain on the way.”
“Then summarize briefly.”
“?”
Clang-!
The doors parting left-right behind him answered for Thousand Stream Emperor.
“Elevator. Remember suggesting we take it up.”
“Oh, that. Found it?”
“Nothing else to do waiting. Hop in. Pilot’s waiting above.”
Junk-buried elevator. As dilapidated as a nuke bunker, but cold fluorescent light piercing dim piles felt welcoming.
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Rumble, clunk!
Whirr-
[-B40....-B39....-B37....]
The worn but sturdy elevator shot toward the surface.
Whirr-
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‘Thousand Stream Emperor. Your brain’s visible from the back of your head.’
‘....Should wrap it at least in bandages.’
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Below, a camera captured their receding forms.
Their image sat among countless screens. The owner, Collector, eyed them with lingering regret.
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Splash! Splash!
Splat, crunch! Drip!
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Opposite the elevator feed, blood and flesh flew in another.
The labor-like engrossed figure sensed the camera shift, paused his axe, turned, and spoke.
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‘Ahh, oops. Watching? Showed you this mess.’
‘Had time, so exercising.’
‘Personally prefer trim mustached leader in uniform over potbellied bald one. Soldiers do too? Inches of gut irrelevant to military prowess! Hahaha!’
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『More like... not fitting for a Raptor leader.』
Collector found the man—white tank top, uniform pants, hearty laugh like his working soldiers—repugnant, but replied calmly without showing it.
『Father.』
Father. The sole being faintly matching that title for her, Andrey Gedroits dominating Gustav al-Harb Raptor’s personality, finished his workout with a final axe swing chopping a hefty corpse chunk.
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‘Ahh, cold voice, my daughter.’
‘Cut me slack. Overlaying one personality on another ain’t comfy tech? More like dominant fusion than replacement.... You know Raptor had quirky tastes. I get influenced inevitably. Quite intriguing, actually! Intuitive stress relief, convenient too.’
‘Ask Turner if clueless. He’d explain my state in de-tail. Isn’t his other half me? Hahaha!’
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Andrey Gedroits—no, now Raptor—wiped bloodied hair and body with a towel from his adjutant.
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‘Seeing you contact me, looks like that friend didn’t pan out, huh?’
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At the insinuating tone like he knew from the start, Collector gritted her teeth.
『....He resists his death more than expected.』
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‘Foolish. Of course. He ain’t Mother Teresa. Not helping from agape love. Undervaluing my sole Completer? Quite displeased. Hmm, mood soured more.’
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Bang! Bang! Bang!
At ‘displeased,’ the adjutant handed a pistol; three hooded kneeling prisoners in the corner died without screams.
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‘Misunderstand not. Just stress relief for clear mind. Gustav’s body likes this method best.’
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『No misunderstanding. Knew your nature from my original’s live brain and spine extraction.』
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‘Good. Then no need for trivial talk since you know me well.’
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Tossing the bloody running shirt, he meticulously wiped his half-metal cyborg body.
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‘Gave you your chance, heard Completer’s no. Now your turn to answer my question.’
‘Will you cooperate with my coercive, violent, immoral plan—achieving my goal and your pesky monster group’s petty life purpose at once?’
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To Raptor’s soft question, blood freshly cleaned yet reeking more—
『....If you break promises, I’ll wreck your insane plan anytime.』
Collector reluctantly agreed.
Professor rejected her proposal.
For the Artists’ Union.... no other path.
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‘Good. My daughter indeed. Not total fool, relief.’
‘Fine. Your plan bases on my goal too, no? Even if world’s unpredictable, impressive you ditched buggy GG, dug old research, plotted another human survival scheme.’
‘No worry. My goal achieved, yours naturally follows.’
‘Wish to chat more, but now total commander phase—eyebrows fluttering busy.’
‘Stay healthy, holed in that dim bunker. My daughter.’
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Bang!
Raptor’s screen died with muzzle to lens.
Collector gazed at the blackened screen, then at Thousand Stream Emperor and Professor’s elevator nearing surface.
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[-B23....-B19....-B15....]
‘Antidote, huh.’
‘Yeah! Feels scammed honestly. Gedroits started this mess, Gedroits to clean it. In this grand social experiment world, mutant virus as control variable pressuring humanity, rallying survivors to a focal point—so if his goal’s human survival, he prepped an antidote.’
‘All answers there, server room—antidote ampules ready. Plus terraforming for radiation and pollution, gene banks for extinct flora/fauna, mutant cure—everything world needs. Prepped for Completer, natural. Got coords, access—go jab in arm, done.’
‘Anticlimactic.’
‘Tell me. Anyway our destination, saves a trip.’
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The two, tension eased, discussed antidote, server room, world’s truth.
Sad, but their envisioned future won’t come.
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[-B10....-B7....-B4....]
‘What? Hold on, too many comms now.... No, why not answer! Kilometers underground—how’s signal reach?!’
‘....What? Wait. No way...?!’
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Nearing surface, external contact hit; Professor’s voice urgent, face twisting live on camera.
『....Truly, truly regret it ends like this. Completer.』
Another camera captured outside bunker sky.
Dim sky, beyond dust clouds—high heavens.
Not true celestial light from billions light-years, but vast night sky filled with artificial stars humanity greedily launched for decades.
Collector’s screen held that beautiful artificial starfield.
Celestial bodies slowly deviating, realigning.
Elevator screen figures gaped at the same sky.
They had to.
No mere war could stop it—like a god’s act.
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