Chapter 11
Chapter 11
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 11
Chapter Title: Management Bureau (2)
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The desert heat didn't cool for even a moment.
The sun hung motionless in the sky's center, like a nail driven into the heavens.
Beneath it, she trudged across the sand, step after endless step.
By the manual, she should have scanned the surroundings and hunkered down to wait for a rescue signal.
But that wasn't an option now.
Forget rescue—she had to hope for a resolution.
Fortunately, she had a sturdy level 4 body.
1 hour.
A strange sense of wrongness soon crept in.
The heat searing her soles was too intense, and the air filling her lungs felt like flames licking deep inside.
Panting as she caught her breath, she thought:
"Weird. Just one hour... why am I this exhausted?"
And she kept walking.
3 hours.
For someone like Lee Sangwon, time sense was as precise as a clock.
Nearly no margin for error, accurate down to the minute.
She calculated rough time from heart rate, body temperature, and muscle fatigue buildup.
Yet now...
Even with certainty that 3 hours had passed, her body's state suggested she'd endured far longer—and was falling apart.
Her throat burned.
Her tongue clung to the roof of her mouth, and sweat trickling down her forehead mixed with sand, stinging sharply.
"No way. I shouldn't be this weak. It's not even that hot."
The usual her would have spotted this as a clear anomaly right away.
A mere level 4 physical specialist would have immediately sensed something off with her mind.
But she was a level 6 mental specialist.
The very idea that external factors could shake her psyche wasn't even on the table.
So she kept walking.
Convincing herself all this unease was just simple fatigue.
Her body grew heavier, her steps stumbling on their own.
12 hours.
The sun hadn't budged.
With no sunset, there was no telling how much real time had passed.
Still, her senses insisted the hours kept piling up.
She bit her lip.
It should have tasted like blood, but her mouth was too parched for any flavor.
One day.
She dropped to her knees in the sand.
Her fingertips trembled, muscles stiffening with numbness.
"Damn... what's wrong with this?"
Every breath felt like fire in her lungs, her mind fogging like a misty haze.
And...
Three days.
It felt exactly like three days had passed.
Walking was a struggle now.
Her consciousness flickered between blackout and awareness.
This was an environment she could endure for a week straight, no problem—yet here she was, staggering like an ordinary person dying in the desert.
"...Ah."
She lacked even the strength to speak.
The strained gasp lost power, barely escaping her cracked throat like sand-laced breath.
Gathering her last scraps of strength, she hauled herself upright.
Her knees slipped in the sand several times before she wobbled to her feet.
Her vision flashed white, then slowly regained color like ink spreading.
That's when something descended into the center of her sight.
A figure in white robes, bearing wings of red flame.
With each blink, its form sharpened bit by bit.
The sunlight, sand, scorching air—all seemed to part around its presence.
"Ahhh, an angel..."
From the blinding light piercing her crown, white robes fluttered slowly.
The pure fabric defied the sandstorm, taming the wind as it flowed.
Behind, flame wings blazed—not sunset, volcano, or explosion, but fire existing solely for "beauty."
The white-robed angel descending on wings of flame extended a hand toward her.
Every motion etched slowly, exaggeratedly, vividly into her brain.
Light poured from its fingertips, gently settling on her sunburnt skin.
It felt like salvation.
A lifelong atheist, she now seriously reconsidered divine beings.
"...I want to see."
To glimpse its face, she forced her crumbling neck upward.
No vow of repayment, no noble curiosity to behold the mysterious visage.
Just primal instinct, like a dying beast gazing at the sky one last time.
A subconscious worry crept up: would her fading vision even capture it?
Never one to resent her body before, now for the first time she felt betrayed by her superior flesh.
"Just this once... let me see clearly..."
But her fears seemed laughable—the world blurred and shook, yet its face alone stayed miraculously sharp.
The instant focus locked, her breath, her respiration, her heart stopped.
The eyes were clear.
Black—not pitch, not bright.
Yet they held depths like the universe compressed within.
Meeting that gaze, she wanted to discard every landscape, operation, battlefield she'd ever known.
"No, that was all just... a test to see this..."
The nose bridge fell smoothly, lips perfectly smooth without a single crack.
A mouth too tentative for a smile, too kind for blankness—that ambiguous curve rendered the desert's blistering heat utterly meaningless in a heartbeat.
His skin didn't redden under the desert sun.
Rather, every ray converged on him, reflecting softly to make his skin seem even more exquisite.
"...?"
Her chest thudded once, hugely.
Not dehydration or fatigue—the vivid thrill of her heart reacting purely because it "liked" him left her dumbfounded.
Her mind half-burned away, yet one fact burned crystal clear amid the haze.
"That's... not human. But that's okay. No, that's better."
Something inside her snapped.
The pillar of reason sustaining her as soldier, agent, superhuman crumbled at once.
Her head emptied, leaving one thought.
"Just a bit more... I want to see a bit more..."
The edges of her vision blackened like spreading ink.
Only the angel's face remained sharp to the end.
As if the world granted her one final perfect icon in her final moments.
The image searing into her brain coincided with consciousness fully winking out.
Her body collapsed limply forward onto the sand.
And Lee Sangwon's world faded to black with the white-robed angel's face.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ "What."
Crossing the sandstorm on my way down, I spotted a woman collapsed in the desert's heart.
White hair matted with sand, gear stamped with the Management Bureau logo half-buried.
Management Bureau agent... yeah.
Her outfit screamed it.
She slowly raised her head and looked at me.
Her eyes... were off.
Unfocused gaze.
Cracked lips trembled, rasping from her parched throat.
"...A... ah."
I couldn't make out the rest.
She staggered a few steps, reached toward me, then faceplanted into the sand.
I gazed down at her indifferently.
Probably my charm.
"Level 7 charm's still too much, huh..."
I stood straight, muttering softly.
Thanks to Eemo, I'd reinforced the Ugly Laurel Wreath's curse down to -5, and it was still like this.
Truth be told, fainting like this wasn't surprising anymore.
I didn't know her rank, but if even a Bureau agent couldn't handle facing me, strolling among normals was definitely out.
As expected—no disappointment.
I looked back down at the fallen woman.
"...But her condition's rough."
Only now did her state fully register.
Skin dried to paper-thin cracks under the sun.
Lips caked black-red with dried blood, fingers trembling with veins bulging from dehydration.
Clothes brittle and useless, gear discolored from heat everywhere.
Sand crusted her eyes, face beyond what any normal human could survive a day in.
...Yet.
Only 3 hours since I'd arrived here.
But she looked like...
Someone left in the desert for 72 hours straight.
"How'd she end up like this...?"
Bureau agents don't drop this easily.
In the game, they were closer to machines and monsters than humans.
They'd finish missions with a limb gone, push through half-drained blood with regen boosters, endure deserts, ice fields, toxic terrain for days as baseline.
They weren't those "expendable agent #1, guts everywhere" types from some settings who die to everything.
Especially field agents—their stamina, mentality, survival instincts outclassed any spec ops.
No matter how harsh, in this "peaceful" (?) desert, turning corpse-like after just 3 hours abandoned? Against regs, lore, common sense—impossible.
Wondering if I was being fooled, I peered closer with suspicion.
Her neck barely moved, chest still.
Even in wind, just faint tremors—no vital micro-movements of the living.
"Not even breathing...?"
A chill ran up my spine for a second.
I reached out, held my hand under her nose.
Just sand scent.
Body temp... gone.
Only cooling, rigid skin under my fingertips.
"Huh...?"
I narrowed my eyes, focusing every nerve on my fingers seriously.
Nothing came through.
No breath warmth, no exhale trace, no life signs.
"...She's dead?"