252. Shin Do-hwa (1)
252. Shin Do-hwa (1)
The chimeras created by the Shin family had been notoriously annoying enemies since the game days.
─ Guys, I just entered Guangdong, wtf are these Shin family chimera bastards? Why are they so fast?
─ No, their attack isn't even weak, but how do you deal with these fucks swarming you like a pack of dogs. Ah shit. Seriously, are they zombies or what.
─ Sudden apocalypse zombie survival game lol
─ Their vitality is tenacious too, so even if one gets cut off or broken they keep clinging like lunatics, it's so damn annoying....
─ Even our Gukbap's reliable Taunt barely holds their feet for a moment, what the hell do I do for real!!!
Bastards that moved quickly and boasted powerful strength in each strike thanks to transplanted monster bodies.
To Velvetsra newbies, the Shin family's chimeras were truly the very embodiment of terror.
'But that doesn't mean they have no weaknesses.'
First of all, fire.
"Shin Se-hee."
"Yes, saturation fire!!"
When I called Shin Se-hee, she nodded and kindled vivid red flames in the sky.
Whooosh─
Dozens of fireballs blazed above in the sky.
KABOOM! KABOOM! KABOOM! KABOOM! KABOOM!
The fireballs rained down onto the ground one after another like a meteor shower.
However, Shin Se-hee's fire couldn't directly damage the chimeras.
In the first place, Shin Se-hee's magic wasn't exactly fast in attack speed,
and right now we didn't even have Ga-eul sunbae's acceleration.
But I hadn't intended to use Shin Se-hee's fire for attacking from the start.
KABOOM! KABOOM! KABOOM! KABOOM! KABOOM!
The fireballs kept falling.
By the time Shin Se-hee's magic stopped, a large circle made of fire had formed in the middle of the flat ground.
That's right. Shin Se-hee's fire served to limit their radius of activity.
"Kang Do-hee."
I turned my head and called Kang Do-hee.
At that moment.
Dash—
Dash—
Kang Do-hee kicked off the ground immediately.
I kicked off the ground at the same time as her, too.
But instead of the same direction, we sprinted in opposite directions.
Kang Do-hee and I circled wide around the fire Shin Se-hee had set,
pushing the ones that were outside into the circle.
WHAM!
WHAM!
WHAM!
I sent the chimera bastards flying by swinging my sword without even drawing it, sheath and all.
"Kreeeek!"
The ones flung into the circle immediately shrieked and tried to charge at me,
but with the fire blazing right in front of their eyes, they couldn't approach.
WHAM!
"Kerrrrk!!!"
And after making that wide half-circuit, I met up with Kang Do-hee again.
"Did you get them all in?"
"Yeah."
And so, hundreds of chimeras were trapped inside the circle of fire.
Normally the bastards would have waited until the fire went out, but
this circle had exactly one place with a hole in it.
RUMBLE-RUMBLE-RUMBLE!!
"Kyaaaaaah!!!"
"Kreeeeeeeh!!"
"Kyak!!"
That was exactly the spot where Lee Yu-ri was waiting with her shield raised.
"Lee Yu-ri. Now."
When I gave the order,
Lee Yu-ri drew a dagger from her holster and struck her shield.
CLAAAAANG—
In an instant, the Mana of the Taunt spread among the chimeras.
Freeze.
Lee Yu-ri's Taunt was only enough to bind the chimeras' feet for a moment,
but my goal from the start had been to buy that single moment.
I looked up at the sky and nodded.
"Sofia. Fire for me. It's been a while."
Overhead, where the zombies were teeming,
Sofia, riding atop Ichika's shadow, was aiming her bow toward the sky.
Twang─
When she lightly plucked the string,
WHIZZ—
The arrow shot into the dark night sky, drawing a golden tail behind it.
This was Sofia's ultimate skill, one we hadn't used since the Midterm Evaluation.
Wide-area, broad-range healing.
Healing Rain.
Over the heads of the chimeras whose feet were momentarily bound by Lee Yu-ri's Taunt.
Pat, pat─
A few drops of rain fell,
and soon, a radiant golden shower began to pour down.
SHHHHHHH—
At that, one chimera that had been blankly looking up at the sky and getting rained on
"Kreuk──!?"
began to writhe as if in agony.
Crrrack─
"Kreeeeek!!!!!????"
Along with the horrifying sound of tearing flesh, the bastard opened its mouth wide and let out a scream.
The monster flesh forcibly grafted onto a human body.
Those seams had started to swell up like balloons!
The heterogeneous cells regenerated individually, causing mutual rejection,
and the bodies that had barely maintained their form began collapsing at a rapid pace.
Finally.
BOOM─!!
Splatter─
One burst, scattering crimson gore everywhere.
And starting with that one.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
The bodies of the hundreds of other teeming chimeras also bloated and began exploding in chains.
BOOM!!
Splatter, splatter!
A scene of bones and flesh flying everywhere.
It was truly a spectacle.
Traditionally, a Healer's cure is the most direct way to take down zombies, after all.
I looked at the sight before my eyes and pulled up the corner of my mouth into a grin.
"Art is an explosion."
*
"Did you see it? Did you see it!? H-how about that! This is the power of our Utopia!!"
After cleaning up all the chimeras like that, the Utopia Party regrouped in front of the jeep truck.
For some reason, Ga-eul sunbae, who had been resting in the car the whole time without even joining the battle, was sticking out her chest in front of Shasha Pong and strutting with all her might. Honestly, I wish she'd spent that time diligently charging up instead.
"......"
Gulp.
Shasha Pong was staring with her mouth wide open, as if the art before her eyes had left her speechless.
"Urrp─"
"......Nauseating."
"My stomach's feeling upset."
"Hoooh...... I thought I had quite a tolerance for this sort of thing, but even so, this is......"
"Hmm. Is that all?"
Everyone except Ichika—who tilted her head with a nonchalant expression—wore a frown.
"Huh? What are you gonna do if you're already like this?"
I looked at them with a dumbfounded expression.
"......Eh?"
"This is just the beginning."
"What? This is just the beginning......?"
Sofia asked back with a face begging me to say it was a lie,
but I nodded.
"Yeah, common sense says there's no way chimeras are only here, right? Where would you find a method that handles things this easily and simply? For the ones we run into from now on, we have to keep cleaning them up this way while we move."
At that, everyone's faces turned sour as if they'd eaten something bad.
"......Please say that's a lie."
'Hmm, wasn't it refreshing watching them explode pop pop?'
It's totally refreshing for enemies to explode in one go without having to deal with them one by one.
'Even on the Velvetsra community, chimera mass explosion GIFs were always archived as concept posts.'
I felt considerable regret toward my dull-witted party members who couldn't grasp this artistic sensibility.
* * *
Guangdong Province underground.
The Shin family laboratory.
"Save me......"
"Please...... Let me out......"
"I beg you. Please......"
Inside a space painted pristine white like a germophobe's room, dozens of people were imprisoned.
And in their midst.
A large glass cylinder filled with green liquid.
Inside it, a naked man was trapped.
Blub, blub─
The man trapped in the cylinder was glaring outward with eyes seething with hatred.
And standing in front of him, a woman in a pure white gown examining a chart.
Long, glossy black hair and a pale white face.
A woman who looked exactly like Shin Se-hee, except for her two crimson eyes.
Shin Do-hwa.
She was Shin Se-hee's biological mother.
"Hmm......"
Shin Do-hwa, who had been studying the chart, raised her head and looked at the man in the cylinder.
Her head tilted to the side.
"Strange...... Where did I go wrong?"
By her calculations, the synchronization should have been finished long ago.
But the fact that he was still showing such a rebellious attitude was unexpected.
Though she had spoken in an indifferent voice,
this was a considerably big problem.
Because this experiment was the final stage for the Shin family's ascent.
Because of that, she had now completely forgotten even about her own daughters, Shin Su-yeon and Shin Se-hee.
Artificially turning ordinary civilians into hunters was already a failed experiment.
Artificial hunters that simply had increased destructive power couldn't be controlled, and they'd been proven to be qualitatively weaker compared to real hunters.
It was only right to scrap an experiment where even mass production wasn't easy.
So this time, they had captured a human who was originally a hunter, remodeled him to further grow the power he possessed,
and placed the purpose of the experiment on controlling him.
But the test subject absolutely refused to listen to her words.
Beep─
When she pressed the red button connected to the chamber,
the man's voice flowed out from inside.
"Let me out!!!"
"......Hmm, why does he resist this much?"
"Tell me right now what you've done with Shasha!!!"
"Is that all you know how to say?"
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
The man pounded the glass cylinder with his fist from the inside.
Even though the power was suppressed to the maximum, the cylinder shook as if it might break.
'The remodeling itself was clearly a success, though...... Something went wrong.'
"Researcher."
She turned her head and called to a Shin family researcher standing beside her.
At that, a man wearing a white protective suit approached.
"Try setting the brainwashing grade to maximum."
"......If you do that, his brain could truly be damaged. Wasn't your aim to preserve combat decision-making ability?"
The man answered as if troubled.
"Just do it if I tell you to. Getting data takes priority over anything else. If this test subject fails, we'll scrap him and just start a new─"
That was when it happened.
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP─
Suddenly the pure white laboratory began flashing red, and an ear-piercing siren blared.
At that, Shin Do-hwa's face hardened stiffly.
"Huh, intruders......? In here?"
Apparently, some uninvited humans had set foot in her domain.