Chapter 510
Chapter 510
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 510
Chapter Title: Chapter 23. Gedroits's Heir, Deul (20)
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“What a shame. I was hoping to use your sturdy personality—neither overly good nor evil—as a moral banner for the humanity of the future.”
“Let’s not talk nonsense. Using a child soldier with permanent PTSD mental trauma as the benchmark for morality? Most people 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 talk. You’re free to go now. I can’t see you off in this state, unfortunately.”
“Yeah, sure. Let’s each go our own way. If our paths cross again... well, let’s try to resolve it with words 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. Not you, W, nor you, Collector.”
“...I truly regret that things ended this way. Professor.”
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Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
“The Artists’ Union. A monstrous group with coercive human protection ideology...”
In the end, Collector let me leave without incident after our conversation concluded in a deal.
In this war, I’d take the position they wanted, and in exchange, they’d provide me with a method to suppress mutations.
On the surface, it wasn’t a bad trade, but considering our exchange, I couldn’t help feeling a lingering regret separate from achieving my original goals.
“Maybe I should’ve grabbed Collector by the throat and forced her to spill everything she knew? Even if Collector wouldn’t crack, that W guy who dotes on her would’ve sung like a bird.”
The strongest bait they’d dangled at first was that loaded line: “A war the Raptors are destined to win anyway.”
They’d figured out what Gedroits, now the Raptor leader, was preparing, and promised to share it all if I joined them.
In other words, the Raptors had seized the central generator of Dome in Sector 38 wholesale, then vanished to scurry about in preparation for Gedroits’s dangerous scheme.
Dome launching an offensive—despite being defensively superior in gear and tactics—was born from “We don’t know what that crazy paramilitary’s plotting, so let’s cut it off before they’re ready!”
In terms of Dome’s goal of “neutralizing unknown threats,” no intel was more crucial than what they held.
From our side, it was information worth its weight in gold, so letting it slip away right in front of me left a bitter taste.
“What does Gedroits want? In this vast wasteland laboratory, using the Raptors as a control variable against the test subjects in Dome—what is he aiming to achieve...?”
At least I’d salvaged one thing: before coming here, I had zero guesses; now, I at least had something to speculate on.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
The path stretching through artifacts from ancient to modern felt like a symbol piercing through eras.
Amid the crunching of claws that had somehow sprouted through my boots against the stone floor, I pondered the life of the scientist who’d orchestrated all this.
“Gedroits. Great scientist. Knowledge leaps ahead of his era. He spent his life inventing for humanity, but most were twisted from his intent. It’s only natural he’d start pondering some massive, nation-transcending control force.”
Recalling the video Gedroits left during the 3 Worlds phase, the first thing that came to mind was his tale of “flesh meat,” that organic sculpting tech.
He’d developed it to solve famine in the poorest nations—turning any organic matter into meat—and my old personal shelter’s organic synthesizer in Sector 47 was based on it, so his knowledge had undoubtedly saved countless lives.
But it had killed far more. The tech’s simplicity let anyone from penniless terrorists to state actors in local wars churn out “biochemical bombs that sprout cancerous lesions on skin with the slightest brush,” forcing Gedroits to bleed himself dry trying to contain his own invention after it spread.
“Compared to his pure early days in those videos, he’d clearly warped through repeated failures.”
What I knew. What I’d analyzed. And the fresh knowledge I’d just gained—all meshing to paint a picture in my mind of the man “Andrey Gedroits,” who’d felt like a ghost until now.
He was tenacious.
A future already doomed to ruin. Stopping it required advanced tech, but that tech got abused the moment it existed. Even the mutant virus for the Adapter Project showed signs of it. Clinging to faint hope in humanity’s inner goodness, only to face the twisted, broken moments within—after confronting that, he dreamed of another path.
“A world adjusted into a controllable environment. And leaders with the most perfect personalities and abilities, handpicked by him.”
That must’ve birthed GG’s Completer Project. Unlike the loathsome leaders who’d abused his tech, he sought a rare few heroes who kept their humanity through any adversity. At least fifteen out of billions, his faith in humanity’s inner goodness shrunk to believing a tiny fraction still held it.
Betrayed again. GG’s success, the soul data collected, the millions of years of simulations across countless worlds. Nowhere did his “perfect savior” exist.
The Gedroits in my imagination despairs, saying:
“Ah, not a single soul among humanity can embrace them all.”
Faith in even that rare goodness gone, humanity morphed in his heart into irredeemable evil.
Chasing the nonexistent, he’d turned the world into a hellfire with his own hands, sacrificing everything he had. A scientist in despair. It was all his fault. His misjudgment extincted 90% of humanity; the rest withered slowly on radiation-choked earth. He wanted to end it all, but crushing responsibility noosed his neck like a hangman’s rope, forcing him up.
Thus, the Gedroits of now: Raptor Society leader, bearer of another plan, scientist disillusioned with all humanity.
If I were him, would I still try saving humanity? Or would the opposite thought take root? Not unreasonable.
.
.
.
.
My endless musings halted here. I could only speculate he was brimming with malice, but his concrete scheme remained unknown.
“...No, Collector did let one thing slip.”
All his moves now revolved around me. After the discarded Completer Project yielded one sole result—Professor Park—and vanished, his activity ramped up. Per Collector, I was the center of it all. His final plan hinged on using me somehow.
“The center, huh. Me as the core and key to this world’s doom...”
The thought drew a hollow laugh. I’d unconsciously framed it as “this world’s” destruction specifics and solution—like I was still leaping GG worlds.
“After this is over, I should see a real shrink instead of that quack Woojin old man.”
Shaking my head inwardly. Hell, in nine months my kid’s due—having “Oh, newbie” pop into my head then would be a problem.
“You’re late.”
Thousand Stream Emperor’s voice hit as I wallowed in such stray thoughts.
Disheveled uniform. Even messier hair. Bloodshot eyes. Faintly trembling hands. Slumped amid entrance junk piles.
“...Thousand Stream Emperor? Or formerly that?”
“Thousand Stream Emperor. For now.”
He swept back his messy hair with shaking hands, struggling to rise.
“First time fighting a friend since birth. Feels profoundly strange.”
“Uh... yeah.”
Personally, calling a living vein bursting from his thigh-integrated sword to conquer surroundings “fighting a friend” seems off, but his face looked hugely relieved, so whatever.
“So. Who won?”
At my question, Thousand Stream Emperor silently turned, pointing to a passage corner.
What his finger indicated: that sword he always carried like an extension of himself. The one cracked and tentacled. Now discarded in junk, writhing.
If mimics existed, it’d look like that—grotesque. But more shocking: scars on his turned back.
The thigh holster spot—gouged flesh and skin. Not stopping there, it snaked upward, tree-root-like splits along his spine toward his head.
And at the end: along his spine to skull, a two-coin-sized hole in his occiput.
Looked like vivisection survivor.
“Hey, that...”
“It’s fine. Separated cleanly without muscle damage.”
Even his right arm—empty from elbow, hidden by his back when facing—yet his face was calmer than I’d ever seen, steadying weary breaths.
“Some kind of parasite, I suspect.”
“Parasite? Type-3 mutant?”
“Don’t know if Type-3 or mutant. Just guessing it came from an experiment back home.”
Crack. Crack. Clank!
He lifted it from the junk.
Sword-formed main body, sprouting horrific veins. Spinal mold atop, sharp tentacle matching his skull hole, brain-fold-like tip, and the part that’d been his right arm.
“Looks like I created something absurd using Seoho that day.”
“Created...”
“This. Worship, envy, obsession, inferiority—all unresolved, then losing that object birthed this phantom Han Seoho.”
Thousand Stream Emperor inspected the blade like a craftsman, ignoring appendages, then sheathed it in the dropped scabbard.
“Looking back, memories after dull-bladed beheading of Seoho’s neck that day are hazy. Now I think from then, I’d conjured the ‘Han Seoho I admired’ illusion and lived gazing at it.”
His gaze shifted from sheathed sword—and its parasitic tail—to his empty right arm, eyes holding void and relief.
“Lost consciousness, dreamed. Back in Brazil’s Cracolândia sewers, Han Seoho sat opposite me on the pipe floor.”
“Even in a dream, seeing your friend after ages... glad?”
“...Ridiculous. So tall he had to stoop to meet my eyes; shoulders so broad he waddled. Han Seoho, lifelong desk-bound journo with thick glasses, deep dark circles, gaunt cheekbones jutting—had to be an imitator. Yet I instantly recognized that grotesque shadow as ‘my friend Han Seoho.’ I’d already supplanted his real form with the bloated illusion inside me.”
A kind of self-abasement. He’d honed himself to stand equal, but the more he improved, the ‘unreachable Han Seoho’ loomed vaster in his psyche than his grown self.
“That parasite kept injecting those thoughts?”
“Likely. Born from my fixation on that moment—unable to accept losing my sole friend—it wanted me stuck there. The mounting anxiety squeezing me, ceaseless headaches, Seoho obsession—all probably its nonstop brain goads repeating it.”
“...Or it was truly part of Han Seoho clinging to me, and I looped that moment myself. No way to know truth. Key is we both—Seoho and I—were trapped in that day’s memory by it. Stagnant water rots; our pooled memories there had long rotted. More real than my idol’s true face, I felt the Han Seoho I’d made inside. I’d no intent to insult him further.
So, I severed it.”
In the dream, he bisected his self-willed bloated Han Seoho; something slithered off his body then, strength draining.
“If my senses came from Gedroits’s gift, then my physical prowess was bestowed by that thing parasitizing me from that day.”
“Mutant parasite boosting athletics. Can’t counsel on much else, but that I can.”
Recalling my old left arm mutation from Hyde’s erosion, he got it, chuckling faintly.
“...Anyway, doesn’t feel bad. No needless haste, no blade-edge tension. This peace... only from a few hometown memories.”
“That so? I’m bummed my elite ally ‘human weapon Thousand Stream Emperor’ got downgraded to ‘one-armed swordsman with sharp senses.’ No more exosuit-slicing, truck-slicing for you.”
“Probably. Excess strength rooted in that parasite.”
“Tch. Hoard till it’s waste—they scrap a prized BDSM HQ tactical weapon just like that. What a shame.”
“If needed, I’ll pay for lodging and gear use. Didn’t track finances, 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 cured mid-mutation among mutant virus infectees, drop by Dome often for checkups.”
“Hm...”
“That thing. Kinda like precious friend’s remains, no? Leaving it?”
“Hm. Better that way now.”
Supporting his left arm, he eyed the sword he held. Tempered in the pyre of Han Seoho’s remains, mutated in process, infected his body like him—whipping him till now.
Crunch.
He propped it between an old bike and CRT TV, turning away without regret.
“This place gathers era-defining art. Though self-consolation, what I hammered across my life... not gallery-core, but entrance relics suit it.”
Glancing once more at his friend’s remnant trace, he shrugged off my support, heading for exit.
“...Unexpectedly fulfilled my wish. Yours resolved well?”
“Eh. Halfway-ish. Long climb, I’ll explain en route.”
“Then, summarize briefly.”
“?”
Clang-!
His answer: doors behind parting left-right.
“Elevator. Remember suggesting we take it up?”
“Oh, that. Found it?”
“Nothing else to do waiting. Hop in. Pilot awaits above.”
Junk-buried elevator. Bunker-worn, but cold fluorescent glow amid gloom felt welcoming.
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Rumble, clunk!
Whirr—
[-B40....-B39....-B37....]
Old but sturdy elevator rocketed groundward.
Whirr—
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‘Thousand Stream Emperor. Your brain’s visible from behind.’
‘...Should wrap it at least in bandages.’
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Below, a camera captured their receding forms.
One of myriad screens. Its owner, Collector, eyed them with regret.
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Splash! Splash!
Splat, rip! Drip!
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Opposite the elevator feed: blood and flesh flying.
His labor-like focus broke at the camera shift; axe paused, he turned, speaking to it.
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‘Ah, damn. Watching? Showed you this mess.’
‘Had time, so exercising.’
‘Personally prefer trim mustachioed uniform leader over potbellied bald one. Troops do too? Inches of gut mean zilch militarily! Haha!’
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『More like... not fitting for a Raptor leader.』
Collector loathed the man—white tank, uniform pants, booming laugh like his soldiers—but kept calm.
『Father.』
Father. The sole fitting for her: Gustav al-Harb Raptor’s persona, dominated by Andrey Gedroits. He finished his workout swinging axe to lop a huge chunk from the foot-corpse.
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‘Ah, cold voice, my daughter.’
‘Cut me slack. Overlaying one persona on another ain’t seamless. More like dominant fusion than replacement. You know Raptor’s quirky tastes rubbed off. Quite intriguing, actually! Intuitive stress relief, convenient too.’
‘Ask Turner if clueless. He’d detail my state—his other half’s me, no? Haha!’
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Andrey Gedroits—no, now Raptor—wiped bloodied head and body with adjutant’s towel.
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‘Contact means your chat with that friend flopped, eh?’
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His knowing tone ground her teeth.
『...Stronger death-aversion than expected.』
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‘Foolish. Of course. He ain’t Mother Teresa. No agape love helping folk. Undervaluing my sole Completer? Infuriating. Ugh, mood sours more.’
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Bang! Bang! Bang!
Word out, adjutant handed pistol; three hooded kneeling prisoners died screamless in corner.
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‘No misunderstanding. Stress bad for clear mind; this easiest on Gustav’s body.’
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『Never did. Knew your nature from my original’s live brain-spinal extraction.』
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‘Good. No need for drivel then.’
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Ditching bloody tee, he meticulously cleaned his half-metalprosthetic body.
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‘Gave your chance, heard Completer’s no—now your turn to answer.’
‘Will you aid my coercive, violent, immoral plan? Achieves my goal and your pesky monster group’s petty life purpose.’
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To blood-wiped Raptor’s soft query, cleaner look reeking more:
『...If you break promises, I’ll wreck your insane plan anytime.』
Collector grudgingly agreed.
Professor rejected her offer.
Artists’ Union had... no other path.
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‘Good. My daughter after all. Not total fool, thankfully.’
‘No worries. Your plans build on mine, no? World full unpredictables, yet impressive: ditching buggy GG, seeking old research—you plotted another survival scheme.’
‘Fear not. My goal achieved naturally fulfills yours.’
‘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, muzzle to lens last.
Staring black, Collector watched Thousand Stream Emperor and Professor’s elevator near 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 societal experiment ‘world,’ mutant virus as control to pressure humanity, clump survivors— if survival’s goal, antidote exists.’
‘All answers there: server room stocked with antidote amps. Plus terraforming for radiation/pollution, gene banks for extinct flora/fauna, mutant cure—everything needed. Prepped for Completer, natural. Coords, access—grab amp, jab arm, done.’
‘Anticlimactic.’
‘Tell me. Saved a trip anyway.’
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Relaxed, they swapped on 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 ignore?! Kilometer-deep underground—signals don’t reach!’
‘...What? No way...?!’
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Nearing surface, external contact hit; Professor’s voice urgent, face twisting live on cam.
『...Truly regret it ending like this, Completer.』
Another cam showed bunker skies.
Murky heavens, dust clouds veiling high—true stars absent, greed-launched satellites lighting instead. Vast night beyond.
Collector’s screen held that gorgeous artificial starfield.
Celestials slowly deviating, realigning.
Elevator folk gaped at same sky.
Had to.
No mere war stops it—like divine act.
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