Shabelle's Storm

Net-Runners.

Those who jacked a network cable into the socket at the back of their skull and shoved their consciousness out into the blue expanse of the grid. Those who bored through the seams of locked servers and scraped out whatever signals had been left behind in electronic devices.

That was what people called them—divers who hurled their ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠minds into the unknown deep of the Net and swam toward their destination with no guarantee they would ever surface again.

Unsurprisingly, in fields like bypassing security, harvesting intelligence, espionage, restoring records, and seizing surveillance networks, they left ordinary hackers far behind.

The only trouble was that because they used their own bodies as computing hardware, their core temperature spiked like a fever out of hell every time they dove. So Net-Runners worked with their bodies sunk in ice water. While their consciousness crawled through the grid, their flesh cooled in the freezing bath right up to the brink of death.

"Carvel. This woman here—is she the Net-Runner you said we'd be working with?"

"She is."

Carvel set down his glass. "She's also the creditor of that Raden Beck you dragged in."

Amy waved a hand from where she was sprawled across the sofa. "Nice to meet you. Heard plenty about you—didn't expect you'd actually be this good."

"You could've saved the compliments until after you paid me."

"Already did. Through Carvel."

Amy smirked. A payment-complete notification had popped up on Kang Do-seok's terminal. He tapped it away, and there was Amy's business card, displayed in his recent contacts list.

A short silence passed. Kang Do-seok spoke.

"Your card-making skills leave something to be desired."

Amy's eyebrow rose a fraction. "…And how exactly should it be made, then?"

"Creatively. Something that grabs you at a glance."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"I used plenty of hearts."

"Too much noise. Doesn't work."

"…You're unbelievable. For the record, I don't actually go around using cheap dime-store cards like yours. I just threw that together on the spot—to mess with you."

"Cheap?"

"Honestly, your card design is garbage. Back me up here, Carvel?"

Carvel looked quietly between the two of them. "It does sting the eyes a bit."

Kang Do-seok's gaze cut back to Carvel. Carvel raised his glass, arching an eyebrow. "Don't make that face."

"What face?"

"You were glaring at me like you wanted me dead just now."

"No, I wasn't."

"Ah, enough! Kang Do-seok! You handled the job so cleanly, so I'll give you a gift."

Amy wagged a finger. Blue letters flickered up above her pupils and vanished just as fast.

"What gift?"

"Information. I want to stay on your good side."

"Why?"

"I need a man like you. Some jobs have to be settled with a blade out here beyond the Net. Like today."

Perching on the sofa's armrest, Amy went on. "A while back, a post went up on the Net hunting for information on you. Specifically: the operating radius of an unaffiliated player named Kang Do-seok—his residence, his business contacts, his recent contract history. Things like that. I'll hand you everything on the bastard who wrote it. Give me a second."

Blue circuits flickered rapidly inside Amy's eyes. Fragments of light surfacing in her pupils streamed down along her fingertips—letters, numbers, and shattered images blinking in and out of existence.

Seconds later, Amy smiled. "Found him."

Kang Do-seok's terminal chimed again.

Bzzt.

A photograph surfaced on the screen. A gaunt-faced man. Tangled hair, deeply sunken eyes, dried blood caked on his cheek.

In his hands was an anti-materiel sniper rifle—the kind of weapon that could blow a human head apart with one lazy shot.

"Name's Kim Han-rim. Unaffiliated player. He's registered as a sniper, but the way he actually works, he's closer to an explosives dealer."

The screen flipped. A few more photos popped up—among them, shots of him bracing a rocket launcher against his shoulder.

Amy added, "His record isn't clean. A lot of it's been scrubbed. But one thing's for certain—this bastard blows people apart for money."

Kang Do-seok stared at the rifle on the screen.

He remembered. The corpse collection zone. The sniper round that came screaming in the instant he moved to seize Morte. The rocket launcher that had followed it. No doubt about it.

"So that's him."

Carvel looked over at Kang Do-seok. "You know him?"

"Yeah. He took a shot at me."

"My, my. Then the only thing left in store for you is getting killed, isn't it?" Carvel chuckled, and Kang Do-seok turned to Amy.

"Why would this guy be digging for information on me?"

"Beats me. Players kill each other to eat each other's Stars, don't they? Presumably he's confident he can take you."

Amy added with a grin, "Skill Stars, huh. Honestly fascinating. Those never existed in this world before, you know. Makes you wonder when somebody's going to start bagging players and dissecting them."

"Line up just the players the corporate labs have already cut open, and they'd fill every back alley in F-Sector," Kang Do-seok said. "And they still haven't figured out a damn thing."

"Really?" Blue circuits pulsed briefly inside Amy's eyes. "What a shame. If they'd turned something up, they might've managed to replicate that mysterious power artificially."

Amy rose from her seat. "Anyway. Gift delivered. You'll remember me, won't you, Kang Do-seok? Time for me to go."

With that she strode straight over to Raden Beck—then lifted her foot and kicked him full in the face.

CRACK!

"Khhk—!"

"On your feet and walk, you miserable loser!"

"A-Amy. Please. I still—"

"Walk."

Raden Beck pushed himself up off the floor, wobbling. His legs had gone to water—he nearly pitched over half a dozen times—but Amy didn't wait for him. She clamped a hand around the back of his neck and hauled him toward the door.

At the door, she turned only her head. "Kang Do-seok."

"What."

"Next time there's something that needs handling outside the Net, I'll be in touch."

"Are you a junkie?"

"No."

"Then come find me with money in hand. You're welcome anytime."

"I like you."

Amy grinned, and the door swung shut.

Raden Beck's small, crushed screams dwindled away down the corridor, and quiet settled back over the office.

Carvel lifted his glass and took a slow sip. "Didn't expect you to wrap this up so fast, Kang Do-seok."

"The money has to be worth it."

"So what now? Shall I line up the next contract?"

"No. I've got somewhere to be today."

"Where? Doing what?"

Kang Do-seok didn't answer. A beat of silence passed, and Carvel tried again. "Don't tell me you're off to sell new business cards?"

"…I'm not doing that."

"Then I can sleep at night."

Carvel couldn't hold in his laughter. Kang Do-seok gave no further reply; he simply opened the door.

Click.

Just before it closed, Carvel's voice chased after him. "Whatever you change about the design, don't put hearts on it. They wouldn't suit you."

SLAM.

The door shut.

Kang Do-seok's sedan cut across the road. He parked and rode up the elevator—the one that led to his home, the penthouse.

The doors sealed shut, and the signboards spilling their garish light began to sink rapidly away below. Beyond the glass wall hung Netron City's leaden sky. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rain had stopped, but the heavens still sat low and heavy, and black clouds were massing toward the city's outskirts.

News was rolling on the screen inside the elevator. Kang Do-seok looked up.

The screen showed the eastern outskirts of Netron City: unauthorized settlements and derelict factory districts, and beyond them the contaminated lands and the colossal barrier dividing them from the city—all the way out to the storm's track, driving dead center through it. A red line traced the route past the city's edge.

Kang Do-seok looked away from the screen. Just then the elevator doors opened, and stepping into the living room, he muttered, "Shabelle's Storm already, huh. Time really does fly."

Everyone who needed to know, already knew.

Storms rolling in off the contaminated zone were nothing rare in Netron City. Once or twice a year, one would graze past the outskirts—acid rain would fall, the communications grid would go dark, a few outlying residential zones would be swept away. That was all it ever amounted to.

But this storm was different.

Shabelle's Storm.

A major event bound tightly to the main storyline of Chrome Blade Saga.

Back in the real world, Chrome Blade Saga had been running for twenty years. It launched on January 1st, 2000, in South Korea—and when the service first went live, the in-game calendar read Chrome Era 68.

Then came January 1st, 2020. The day the players were dumped into this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠world. By all rights, the in-game year should have been Chrome Era 88.

But the era they fell into was Chrome Era 68.

Which meant the players stranded here knew, more or less, what the twenty years after their arrival had in store. Which corporation would crumble. What policies the city government would enact, what calamities would arrive—and what rewards would be unlocked behind each one.

Shabelle's Storm was one of those calamities. The only difference was that this one flung open the first battlefield of Chrome Blade Saga—the event that cracked the door on everything still to come out of the outer contaminated zone.

The wall screen in the living room carried the anchor's voice on.

Without taking off his coat, Kang Do-seok walked to the window. Black clouds were smothering the city's outskirts.

When that storm passed, the earth of the Eastern Contaminated Zone would be turned inside out. And with it, research laboratories belonging to corporations dead for hundreds of years would claw their way back into the light. And out of those labs would come new Stars.

The players were never going to sit still for that. The corporations and the city government, either.

The screen showed a column of armored vehicles—corporate soldiers who might as well have belonged to an actual army. The corporate logo had been mosaicked over, but not a soul in the city couldn't name the company. It was one of the megacorporations that held Netron City's strings.

Kang Do-seok smirked at the screen. "Crawling out already, are they."

The citizens would flee the storm. The corporations and the city government would aim for whatever it left behind. And the players already had a fair idea of how all of them would move.

Which meant that before long, this would be a madhouse.

Bzzt.

His terminal rang.

Kang Do-seok approached the window. Beyond the glass, a small cargo drone hung in the air, a gray metal case dangling beneath it.

The moment he touched the panel beside the window, the lock released. Hiss. A section of glass slid open, and the damp night air poured in.

He raised his terminal to the drone's sensor.

Clack.

The cargo case slid in along the interior rail. The drone wheeled around at once and vanished into the dark.

Kang Do-seok shut the window and set the case on the table. The lid popped open the moment he disengaged the lock.

Inside were three things: Fischer Tiger Tech contaminant filtration masks, replacement filters, and a high-concentration neutralizer.

He drew out one of the masks. Full-face and jet black, built to seal completely over mouth and nose, with filter slots mounted on both sides. He opened the filter box and counted the cartridges. Plenty. Last of all, he lifted the bottle of neutralizer up to the light, watching the clear liquid sway inside.

"Goods received, all in order."

This much was the bare minimum for setting foot in the contaminated zone. The air there scorched your lungs with a single breath. The rainwater dissolved skin, and prolonged exposure warped the very cells of your body. With bad luck, you died. And with worse luck, you became a mutant.

Fischer Tiger Tech's purification masks ran 500 million Relic apiece. An insane price for a single mask—yet cheap, standing at the threshold of the contaminated zone. Take one wrong breath there and lose your life, and money stops meaning anything at all.

Any player worth the name would have stocked up already. Once Shabelle's Storm passed, the ones crawling into the Eastern Contaminated Zone would not be few.

Kang Do-seok laid the filters out neatly beside the mask and closed the case.

The very instant the lock clicked shut—

A flash.

Something had caught his eye. Kang Do-seok turned his head toward the window. The rooftop of the building across the way: between the sheets of rain, one tiny point of light glinted. A lens—no, a glass surface like a scope's, flaring for an instant as it caught the neon.

Someone was watching from over there. Only one man surfaced in his mind. If it was someone who would pick out a firing position and try to put a bullet in him…

"…Came to me on his own two feet, did he."

Kang Do-seok's hand drifted slowly toward the hilt at his hip.

"Impatient son of a bitch, aren't you."

The next instant—

KRA-BOOOM!

The window burst apart into a spray of glass, and Kang Do-seok swung his blade in the same breath.

KAANG!

The incoming round struck the steel and broke. The gunshot chased in a heartbeat late.

TAAANG!

And the bullet kicked off the blade tore back through the sheets of rain.

Toward the man who had just fired it at him.

One of Kang Do-seok's skills—Ricochet Reflection.

SHREEEAM!

The round shrieked across the open air, and Kang Do-seok never once took his eyes off it. Distance, roughly four hundred meters. A blurred figure dug in on the rooftop across the way.

SPURT!

Blood burst from the shoulder of the marksman who had aimed his rifle at Kang Do-seok.

— End of Chapter 9 —