22
Chapter 22
The scenery of the harbor city blurred past the speeding truck.
The short buildings wore coats of old, peeling paint, sleeping with eyes turned off. With no one to wake them, the entire city seemed to slumber in silence.
It was the landscape of a decaying port city.
The only thing out of place was the single truck racing down a road where no other cars were to be found.
Vroom!
Ignoring the red lights, the truck jolted violently up and down as it hit a speed bump.
Lee Yeon-woo, sitting in the passenger seat, had his head toss helplessly from side to side, thumping against the window and the headrest. Despite the pain, Yeon-woo held a piece of paper in one hand and read its contents.
Because what was written there was far more dangerous than reckless driving.
'Risk Level 4? Doomists? So, this means...'
Having quickly processed the information, Lee Yeon-woo dropped the paper onto his lap and looked at the man in the driver's seat.
"So, to put it in a metaphor, you're saying we have nuclear bomb materials in the back, and some crazies who want the world to end are coming to hijack them?"
"You understood correctly."
"No. No way."
Faced with the calm reply, Lee Yeon-woo picked up the paper and read it again. The first page featured a photo.
It was the foreigner and the door he had caught a glimpse of. To be precise, the foreigner was embedded as if passing through the door.
[Stuck Man]
- Hostility Level: Orange
- Risk Level: 1
- Importance Grade: B
- Details: A humanoid Anomaly whose position overlaps with doors, walls, or objects.
'If I stop reading here, it's fine.'
It felt like those bugged characters you occasionally see in games. The problem was what followed.
- Error NPC: A series of Anomaly Entities that defy the laws of physics. As Error NPCs gather, the error expands into reality and the Risk Level increases. If two gather, it's 2; if three, it's 3.
- The company has currently discovered five Error NPCs, and considering the undiscovered ones, the potential risk could rise to 6 or 7.
The man in the driver's seat spoke.
"The Doomists stole three NPCs that Headquarters was strictly managing, and the company is secretly transporting the remaining two to another location. One of them is the Stuck Man in the back."
"What do you mean by 'hijack'?"
"We've been spotted."
"...Excuse me?"
Lee Yeon-woo moved the document away from his face and looked at the man with a bewildered expression. The man's eyes moved incessantly, scanning the surroundings, as he licked his dry lips.
"The Doomists discovered the transport operation and have invaded Cheonghae Port. That's why there is no security here. Security 1st Company and the Strike Company are currently fighting them off."
No sooner had he finished speaking.
Boom! Crash!
Explosions echoed from the direction of the port. A series of sounds that seemed to wake the slumbering harbor city.
Lee Yeon-woo quickly turned his head to look out the window, but he saw nothing unusual. Instead, he saw people emerging onto the streets one by one, startled by the blasts. A middle-aged woman with wide eyes pulling out her mobile phone, and an old man rushing back into a building.
'I want to get out of this car too. ...Can't I get out? I think I could if I just word it right.'
Yeon-woo muttered softly, gauging the man's reaction.
"Seriously, why did you even call me... You don't need an Investigator..."
"Originally, we planned to disguise this as Investigator activity. I apologize, but since things have turned out like this, you must help us."
"Help you do what, exactly?"
Yeon-woo lifted his cast-covered arm and raised the hand holding the documents as if surrendering.
"I don't have any weapons, and even if I did, I can't fight. Look at this hand. I can't even do any heavy lifting."
"We don't need your hands. You are an Investigator. You're experienced in detecting and identifying Anomalies, so please quickly identify and notify us of any signs of attacks or ambushes."
"But..."
As Yeon-woo tried to speak, the man in the driver's seat turned and locked eyes with him. His gaze was serious and desperate.
"I'm begging you. We don't know how many Doomists there are or what kind of Anomalies they've brought. One wrong move, and something akin to a nuclear bomb dropping on our country will happen."
The desperate plea didn't reach Yeon-woo.
If a nuclear bomb drops, you run away from Ground Zero; how is one person supposed to stop that?
"Listen, I've only done investigation work once—"
He tried to persuade the man, desperate to get out of the vehicle.
As he was raising his voice, Yeon-woo's eyes suddenly widened. A voice more desperate than the man's erupted.
"Front! In front! The car!"
A sedan came racing from the opposite lane. It was speeding slightly, but it looked like an ordinary car. It wasn't even driving the wrong way.
However, beyond the wide, transparent windshield, there was no one.
Vroom!
In the next instant, the sedan crossed the center line, drove head-on, and slammed into the front of the truck.
KABOOM!
***
A parking lot at Cheonghae Port.
The parking lot, where the sound of crashing waves could be heard, was stained red. Blood-soaked corpses lay scattered everywhere. Security Guards in suits and Strike Team Members in combat suits were strewn across the ground like trash.
All around them were skid marks on the asphalt and cars scattered in disorder. Some cars were crushed, while others were engulfed in flames from explosions.
And two peculiar people stood in the center of the mayhem.
Click-clack! Press!
A boy leaned against a car, eyes closed as if asleep. Wearing a baseball cap pulled low, the boy moved a game controller frantically with his fingers. In the next instant, he snapped his eyes open and thrust both hands high into the air.
"Oh yeah! I stopped it by ramming it!"
"What's the location?"
A man holding a blue glowing toy gun asked abruptly, and the boy blinked.
"I don't know? I'm not even from this country, how should I know? But I do know the roads."
"Then we'll have to take a car you're driving."
"Alright! There are no cars on the road here, so it's fun to go fast."
"Drive safely when you're transporting us."
"That sounds boring."
The boy stood up by bracing himself against the car and suddenly waved the controller again.
"By the way, it looks like the company guy with the NPC isn't dead yet. Wouldn't it be better to just crush them with cars like the others?"
"No. If the NPC gets caught in it and dies, they'll respawn somewhere on Earth, and it'll be a pain to find them again."
"Boring. ...Then should I block the road with another car? So they can't go anywhere?"
"That's acceptable."
The boy sat back down and gripped the game controller with both hands. Eyes closed, his consciousness detached from his body. Like playing a VR game, he controlled a car in the distance using the controller.
The man looked down at the boy while holding the toy gun.
There was someone watching the two of them.
A Strike Team Member whose lower body had been crushed.
"...."
The soldier swallowed a burgeoning scream and the surge of blood rising in his throat. He couldn't make a sound. With a hand trembling from pain, he gripped a grenade.
Click-clack—
Hiding the sound behind the clicking of the boy's controller, he removed the safety clip and pulled the pin. The middle-aged man didn't notice. With a gesture as light as pushing a feather, the soldier pushed the round grenade.
Roll, roll—
The grenade rolled silently across the blood-soaked road. As the soldier watched through his cracked helmet, unable to even blink.
His eyes met the man's. The man's response was instantaneous.
In a flash.
Click-clack—
He shot the grenade with the blue toy gun and then shot toward the distant sea. Nothing was fired. Instead, a blue hole tore open where the muzzle had pointed.
The grenade rolled into the blue hole and fell into the sea. Immediately after, a high plume of spray erupted from the distant waters. A muffled explosion echoed from afar.
Failure. The soldier knew it instantly from the sound. Coughing up blood, the Strike Team Member spoke in a faint voice.
"The Seizer... and the Driver... I've reported to superiors... Your Dedicated Task Force will come..."
Watching the spray subside, the Seizer slowly lowered his gaze toward the soldier. Then, with only a flick of his wrist, he shot the sky and lowered the muzzle to aim at the soldier.
"That task force isn't here."
A dry mutter. Then came the trigger pull.
A blue hole opened in the ground where the soldier lay, and the soldier fell from a hole in the sky. The landing point was a sedan in the parking lot. Crash—he plummeted, crushing the roof. The car body bent and the windows shattered.
"...Still, I can't let my guard down."
The Seizer moved each corpse toward the sea, checking if any survivors remained.
Click—click—click—
How many times did he pull the trigger? Only red blood and the ruined parking lot remained.
The boy, the Driver, leaped up with a puzzled expression.
"They're all stopped! ...Wait, why are you cleaning up for once?"
"It's not cleaning; it's confirming the kills."
"Really? Then, shall we leave?"
"Let's go."
The two climbed into a car with an unlocked door. The Driver lay comfortably in the back seat and gripped the controller again. Sitting in the passenger seat, the Seizer buckled his seatbelt and spoke.
"I'll support you."
"Oh. Then I'm not hitting the brakes, okay?"
"Do that. We might have less time than we think."
"Here I go!"
Eyes half-closed and consciousness distant. He manipulated the buttons as if only his fingers were awake. Simultaneously, the car, without its engine even starting, accelerated. Toward the street-side trees in front.
Vroom!
The Seizer in the passenger seat shot the trees approaching them and a point on the parking lot exit road in rapid succession.
The violently speeding car passed through the blue holes and burst onto the road, racing forward without slowing down.
The man thought.
'The goal of this attack is seizure; if impossible, kill the NPCs, and if even that is impossible...'
'I don't think we'll ever get to the third option.'
Click-clack—
Even while thinking, he incessantly bored blue holes into space. He shortened the distance on straight roads and occasionally cleared obstacles blocking the path. Sending them into the sky.
In this way, the two Red-grade fugitives rapidly approached the company truck. On the road they passed, the obstacles flung into the sky rained back down as a storm of steel and flesh.