Chapter 135
Chapter 135
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 135
Chapter Title: 69. Message from Space (4)
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Another survivor.
Melon Mask learned of this fact right after killing the first zombie and securing the water module.
"There's a person in the work module?"
Melon Mask's face visibly twisted.
"No way. They're all dead. Everyone except me is dead!"
When asked if there might be a stowaway, Melon Mask vehemently denied it.
"Impossible. No matter how skilled a stowaway might be, they couldn't evade the eyes of six people for half a year in this sealed space."
Following one user's suggestion, Melon Mask sealed the shutters on the living module and water module.
As the shutters slowly descended, spreading the zombie's dark red fluids everywhere in spherical splatters, we stared piercingly at the circular window of the problematic work module. No one appeared at the window afterward.
But someone appearing at that window was reality.
However, Melon Mask's condition wasn't good.
The thrill of killing the zombie and the fear from the mysterious survivor had created a gap too overwhelming for his already weakened body to endure.
Melon Mask clung to the wall for a while, replenishing his strength with the newly acquired space rations.
Even though he looked utterly wrecked, his exhibitionist tendencies hadn't vanished. While eating the space food, he prattled on about how it was made, what process it used, and what it tasted like.
While he recovered, we Viva! Apocalypse! viewers unleashed a barrage of speculation in the chat about the identity of this mystery survivor.
The prevailing opinion was, of course, a stowaway.
As Melon Mask said, if all crew members were dead, there was no room for another living person to appear.
What skill could allow someone to breach Plus Ultra from hundreds of thousands of kilometers away in the vacuum of space at minus 270 degrees?
In response, Melon Mask countered that for the six months before the incident, all food, water, and supplies were strictly managed, and facial recognition tech was applied even to the CCTV feeds we were watching, with alarms set to notify him immediately of any unfamiliar faces.
"The facial recognition is straight from China. You know how they're the best in the world at that stuff, right?"
On the idea that the figure at the window was a zombie, Melon Mask replied that we'd just have to watch and see.
Replenishing strength and nutrients came first anyway.
And so, the cosmic mukbang broadcast continued for the time being.
Melon Mask's appetite was far better than I'd expected.
After busily working his jaw for quite a while and devouring the space rations, he patted his belly and stood up.
"Alright, time to identify the culprit."
Melon Mask operated the computer terminal and checked the camera footage of the suspicious figure's face.
"This...?"
Melon Mask recoiled in shock from the screen.
"Donald?!"
After stumbling back, Melon leaned in close to the screen, practically pressing his face against it to confirm the survivor again.
"No doubt about it. It's Donald. The Donald who said he couldn't work with me anymore and left for space."
Why that Donald was there, we couldn't answer.
We weren't there, didn't know their environment, and had no way to know how the outside connected.
That deduction was entirely up to Melon.
After pondering for a long time, Melon seemed to find a vague clue and nodded to himself, muttering.
"He cut the lifeline and bolted straight to the work module. From my view, it looked like he flew into space, but Plus Ultra's structure is doughnut-shaped. He headed not to the sun, but to another module in front, opened its hatch, and entered the work module."
The culprit's identity was revealed surprisingly anticlimactically. The real issue came next.
"Donald. Why would that guy do something like... Ah."
Melon Mask shuddered.
"He's planning to ride the rocket back to Earth alone!"
Board users asked if the Earth return rocket didn't require strict procedures to activate.
Melon Mask nodded.
"Yeah, it did. But before he went out into space, I handed him the master key. Why? To fix the comms gear. He actually did fix it, and that's how we're talking to you guys."
Melon still hadn't realized Donald had killed the other crew members.
He needed to know the truth.
That Donald guy didn't fail to kill Melon—he just hadn't yet.
I whispered to Defender via comms.
"Looking at the zombie's state, it's not a mutation thing. Looks like someone stabbed it from behind with a knife. Need to check the others, but except for one, they all seem like human work. So that Donald bastard killed them all."
Defender grumbled curtly after hearing me.
"Why tell me?"
"?"
"Chat it! Great idea! Weren't you the type who craved recognition, Skelton?"
"No, uh! Can't chat right now."
"Fine? Want me to?"
My opinion reached Melon via Defender's account.
"What? The zombie's condition looks like a human kill, not mutation?!"
Melon Mask was surprised, but not as shocked as when he first spotted Donald McGalli alive.
Instead, he soon wore a look of realization, muttering.
"Damn it. It was Donald from the start. The comms blackout, Bambi going wild... the engineers dying...!"
Melon clutched his head and curled up like a child.
"Damn it! Donald! That bastard orchestrated all this!"
Melon's face paled as he gnawed his thumbnail.
"He's coming to kill me soon!"
People asked why.
"Obviously. He can't launch the rocket and leave."
Melon Mask was incredibly meticulous.
The return rocket, the most vital thing on Plus Ultra, had multiple layers of security.
The master key was one.
He'd given it to Donald, but the master key alone couldn't launch the rocket.
"Probably, when Donald plugs in the master key and tries to fire it up, the screen he'll see says 'Initiating orbit calculation.' Sounds legit. Even in space, reaching a specific spot on Earth requires the right orbit and timing.
Bet when he first inserted it and tried to start the rocket, the countdown he saw was 7 days and 12 hours. That's how I set it."
Melon Mask gave a bitter smile and shook his head.
"But even after that time passes, it won't launch. Why? Because that rocket only moves if my survival is confirmed."
Melon Mask muttered.
"I accounted for betrayal and someone killing me. That's the safeguard. Even if they kill me, they can never return to Earth—doomed to drift in space forever as cosmic dust."
The problem? That countdown was almost up.
"...About 3 hours left."
In 3 hours, Donald McGalli would realize the trap Melon had set.
"He's coming to kill me. Might even torture me first."
Melon's face turned blue as he bit his nails.
"Heard rumors from his spec ops days that he did canoeing on Taliban. You know, putting dents in skulls with gunfire..."
Then everyone's eyes turned to the bottom left of the screen.
Among the six CCTV feeds, the one showing the work module entrance flickered with a shadow again.
Soon, the shadow took concrete form.
Donald McGalli.
The man who'd likely slaughtered all but one engineer pressed his face nearly against the window, rolling his merciless blue eyes side to side, as if searching for something.
Anyone could see the dissatisfaction, confusion, and irritation on his face.
As Melon said, he'd finally sensed something off.
Suspecting Melon had tampered with the rocket that would take him back to Earth.
That Donald didn't watch Viva! Apocalypse! was astronomical luck for us and Melon alike.
But Melon had little time left.
"How can I deal with that bastard? Any way to screw him over like with the zombie?"
Melon pleaded for help with far more urgency than during the zombie fight.
Objectively, the situation was grim.
The method to kill the zombie worked because it was a zombie.
Donald McGalli, however, was a living person—stronger than Melon and ex-military.
No gun? No problem for Donald.
He could easily subdue Melon, torture him for what he wanted, or just kill him for fun.
Sure, Donald might realize his mistake at the last second and rejoin Melon's crew, but in the infinite cosmos, even that slim probability might never happen.
3 hours remaining.
In these final precious hours, we Viva! Apocalypse! viewers racked our brains again for a way to save Melon.
But no good ideas emerged.
Each one was a reckless gamble or demanded too much from the frail Melon Mask.
The most feasible was detaching the work module and casting it adrift from Plus Ultra—but that would leave Melon Mask a permanent orphan in space.
His company might launch another rocket later to rescue him, but that's less likely than Melon beating Donald in hand-to-hand. Time ticked away anxiously.
1 hour passed, then 2.
The chat filled with user suggestions, but...
All of them lacked substance.
Melon Mask, drained of even the energy to refute, stared soullessly at the scrolling chat.
Wasn't there some way?
A way for the helpless Melon to subdue that murderer Donald?
I scanned the screens showing each module, face set.
I knew the battlefield environment well by now, but maybe something new...
Then, something caught my eye.
It was a massive brown furball clinging to the spine-like framework.
Bambi.
The mutation once pegged as the root of all evil.
Staring at the enormous beast, utterly still like a sloth, a sudden hypothesis flashed through my mind.
What if Bambi wasn't the bad guy?
What if Bambi was actually a good guy, Melon's friend?
Like my bond with Gold Pack, or Cat Mom and her luxury-brand-named cats?
Maybe salvation lay there.
But first, a problem to solve.
Tap tap tap
Tap tap tap
Tap tap tap
A video chat window popped up.
In it, against a dark office backdrop, a woman in a suit glared at me piercingly from backlight. No doubt about it.
This was the Viva! Apocalypse! part-timer who'd banned me.
She soon leaned forward and typed.
The woman on screen crossed her legs the other way.
Viva 014 leaned in, revealing her backlight-shadowed face.
She looked like an East-West mix, barely early 20s at best. Face was decent enough.
But the dominant emotion under that pretty face was contempt.
She was looking down on me.
I removed the 69,000-won black cap I'd worn backward during the beatbox demo and glared at my phone synced with Obelisk.
Tap tap tap
In response, Viva Bot 014 stared at me and spoke in slightly awkward Korean.
"You're a Hunter?"
<69. Message from Space (4)> End