Hell and Heaven, One Grate Apart
Knock. Knock.
"Come in."
A man spoke at last from a room so antique and elegant it was hard to believe this was the bleakest, most ruthless prison in the Republic of Korea.
The door opened, and a well-built man in a crisp prison-guard uniform stepped inside.
"Sir! I've come to deliver a report."
"This isn't the military. No need for that stiff salute. Or are you hoping someone overhears and gets the wrong idea?"
"M-my apologies. I was merely—"
"Discipline and courtesy aren't bad things. I don't think poorly of formality myself. But that's for the outside world. In here, it's unnecessary. Now — the report?"
The guard operated the smart panel on his wrist and projected a holographic file into the center of the room.
It was a perfectly ordinary sight in an age when you could transmit data directly or use holographic technology to generate three-dimensional images anyone could see.
"Reporting, sir. The total number of inmates who applied for Special Duty today is 8,312. Of those, fifty-seven were absent for personal reasons and have been assessed the corresponding penalties."
"Special Duty participation is down from last month. I recall we were holding steady above ten thousand then."
"Across both the above-ground and underground cellblocks, the death-row inmates' Special Duty participation rates haven't changed much from last month, excluding those processed as deceased. However, regular inmates' participation has been trending downward."
"Reason?"
"A considerable number of the regular inmates are petty criminals with short sentences, and they can earn enough through General Duty. So they tend to avoid applying for Special Duty. Additionally, through our informants in the above-ground cellblocks, we've confirmed that unpleasant rumors about 'that place' have been circulating among the regular inmates."
Unpleasant rumors.
Warden Park Minhwan, who had been delicately tending to a rare orchid that could never be cultivated outside these walls, set down his bonsai tools.
"Information about that place is largely classified, is it not? I was also informed that the death-row inmates — who can never be released — had been steered toward not sharing information with the regular prisoners."
"That's true, sir. However, it appears some of the greenhorn inmates who've experienced Special Duty once or twice have been selling bits of information through prison brokers. Things like: it's extremely dangerous, people can't be trusted, all manner of bizarre and grotesque things exist down there, and so on. It's all fragmentary and abstract, but that's precisely why it seems to be amplifying the regular inmates' anxiety."
"Keeping a lid on it will be difficult, I take it."
"Yes, sir. The information has already spread in dribs and drabs, and there are simply too many inmates who participate in Special Duty briefly before returning to General Duty…"
Warden Park Minhwan slowly stroked his rough, wrinkled chin.
The prison operating policy designated by the government and mega-corp consortium wasn't wrong in itself. They suppressed and controlled the inmates with extreme force wherever necessary to keep them from crossing the line — while simultaneously introducing a unique economic system within the prison designed to increase Special Duty participation rates.
The result was a system in which inmates, so long as they had money, could satisfy a certain degree of their desires inside the prison. From the small things — decent food, essential medicine, modest entertainment — to the large: sexual needs, or even genuine adult indulgences like alcohol and tobacco.
But above all else, the priority was extending the Human Rights Guarantee Period — the only way to serve out a sentence in one piece. It was precisely because of that, he'd believed, that any inmate who was truly desperate would have no choice but to participate in Special Duty consistently.
So they really are just spineless maggots after all.
He'd even turned a blind eye to inmates bribing guards for favors, and if they chose not to participate in Special Duty, he'd treated that as a matter of individual free will and hadn't forced them. But if the inmates were going to use the independent economic system introduced into this prison to try to climb up over his head — then it was time to tighten the screws.
Not that he even needed to do it himself. The government and mega-corp consortium would step in. If the enormous volume of "cargo" pouring in from Special Duty every day dropped off noticeably, the pan-national profit-seeking collective that had built this hell wouldn't sit idle.
"Reduce the General Duty applicant pool a bit further. And add a separate bonus structure for Special Duty participation. That'll squeeze the money and goods circulating among the inmates, and people will have no choice but to flood into Special Duty. For the same reason, temporarily cut the connections between the guards and the inmates."
"A-are you sure that's wise, sir? Adjusting the General Duty and Special Duty pools is a reasonable measure, but if we cut the connections between the guards and certain inmates, it'll become much harder for us to keep tabs on the information and atmosphere circulating among the prisoners."
"We can compensate for that to some degree by using the security AI that manages the entire prison for wiretapping and surveillance. The bigger issue is that the inmates are getting cocky, trying to crawl up over our heads. We cannot end up in a position of clinging to them. They should be the ones clinging to us."
It's not that we desperately want the "cargo" you retrieve from Special Duty. It's that you should desperately want the rewards we give you for performing it.
"I'll see it done as ordered, sir."
"Good. Anything else of note?"
"As for unusual matters… now that you mention it, I did receive one peculiar report from the Special Duty application officer. A new death-row inmate, only two days in, not only applied for Special Duty without forming a team, but also requested that the prison's standard-issue equipment loadout be customized to his own specifications before being issued."
"That inmate's name — no, his prisoner number?"
"Precisely 77777. I remembered it because it was such a striking number."
"77777…"
Warden Park Minhwan used the Smartlink attached to his temple to immediately access the prison's internal database. The moment he searched that prisoner number, an identity file populated in the blink of an eye.
"Interesting."
As the man who managed this unique prison in the Republic of Korea, he had access even to Class-1 classified information regarding inmates' crimes. And yet, astonishingly, this Han Seungho fellow's charges were classified as Top Secret.
Only three people in the entire country could view this information. The President, the Director of the National Intelligence Service, and the Chief Presidential Secretary.
A young death-row inmate was sitting on a secret that not even cabinet ministers, members of the National Assembly, or the highest authorities in the military and judiciary could access. It went beyond mere interest. It was almost awe-inspiring.
No wonder the Chief Justice mentioned a troublesome piece of cargo was about to roll in.
To think it was this guy.
Park Minhwan dismissed the information without a second thought. If he didn't have viewing privileges, there was no need to dig deeper. The only ways to stay close to power were to share secrets with those who held it — or to never, ever dig into their secrets.
He chose the latter without hesitation. He meant to live long, and living long meant staying out of the way.
"If Prisoner 77777 returns from Special Duty, investigate whether he sustained injuries, what equipment he used, and how much profit he generated, then report back. And don't forget to assign a dedicated surveillance detail after he returns."
"Yes, sir!"
"Good. That'll be all."
After dismissing the guard, Warden Park Minhwan picked up his bonsai tools once more.
This was a world without a future, without hope, wasn't it? Other people liked to put on airs about planting one more apple tree come the end of the world. For him, this single small orchid was enough.
"Hah! Hah! Guy wasn't all talk — tougher than cheap jerky."
Clatter.
I gasped for breath and dropped the utility knife, its blade notched to hell.
Back when I was playing the game, I'd used a single knife to troll people on purpose, or gone into breathless one-on-one duels against every kind of primordial. But swinging a knife in reality wasn't nearly as impressive as I'd imagined. For one thing, the durability was garbage. And putting someone down in a single hit took a serious amount of work.
Stabbing was more effective than slashing.
Actual human bone, muscle, and fat were tougher and stickier than you'd think. A single slash was enough to dull the blade considerably. Which meant I'd had to pour every ounce of concentration into a close-quarters brawl against opponents with better gear than mine. Dodging the Growler had actually felt easier by comparison.
Still. I won. That's what counts.
I gave the blood on my body a light shake-off and rummaged through their belongings, looting anything useful. First, I swapped my medium backpack for a large one. In place of the notched utility knife, I grabbed a still-intact machete and a few throwing daggers. After transferring every item I'd been carrying in my own pack, there was nothing left to do.
The Darkzone takes care of the corpses of people who die inside it. I don't know exactly how. Circumstantially, either the primordials that come sniffing after the blood handle it themselves, or the Darkzone absorbs them wholesale.
"Wait. Smell?"
I hurried out of the building, which was slowly filling with fumes all the way to the top floor. I'd already swapped the gas-mask filter once, so I still had some margin — but that wasn't the issue.
Just now I made enough noise to wake the entire Darkzone, and on top of that I spread a whole lot of alien scent around. I need to get out of here, fast.
In the Darkzone, every living thing with senses is essentially an enemy. Among them, plenty have especially keen smell and hearing. The ones accustomed to driving hunts and group cleanups tend to be drawn to new sensations they've never encountered before.
Faster. Faster!
I moved at a jog, careful not to suddenly collapse from exhaustion or dehydration, shoving bottled water and preserved rations through the gas mask's dedicated intake port. The preserved food and water both came in tube-shaped bottles, so you just connected the nozzle at the end of the bottle to the mask's intake and sucked it down. This minimized contact with potential contaminants and made consumption easy, so I could replenish my stamina quickly and conveniently.
I headed in the opposite direction from the entrance I'd come in through, making my way toward a hole I'd have to half-crawl through, shuffling along on my belly.
Unlike insertion points, extraction points usually have complicated surrounding routes, or a lot of obstacles along the way.
On top of that, Darkzone insertion and extraction points are generally situated a bit away from the danger zones where primordials spawn. The EFD developers knew that running into a pack of primordials the moment you dropped in — or right before you extracted — would turn the whole thing into a genuine RNG-screwed-you game.
So if I backtrack in a different direction from where I was inserted, and from where those guys who ambushed me came from… yeah. Here's the extraction point.
The moment I crawled out of a passage so small I had to duck, I spotted what looked like another construction site in the distance. Unusually, even though it was right in the middle of the Darkzone, safety lights glowed softly, and a small generator installed outside hummed quietly. Around it, piles of sandbags someone had presumably stacked, and heavy machinery with the engines off, sat abandoned haphazardly.
From a normal perspective, there was nothing that looked like an extraction point. But if you looked closely, a large cylindrical ventilation shaft hung down over the head of one of the machines. Peer inside the vent and you'd probably find a ladder or a rope.
Not an extraction point that can handle a lot of people at once.
In the Darkzone, you occasionally find extraction points with unusual conditions — some that encourage solo extraction, others that encourage group extraction. But I was alone right now, so this kind of exit actually worked in my favor. Some extraction points have occupancy limits, or automatically seal after a certain amount of time.
The instant I confirmed there was nobody around and was about to leap onto the heavy machinery — figures who'd been hiding in the dark stepped out into the light.
"Yo, check this asshole out. Look at all that shit he's hauling."
"Gotta share the good stuff, pal. Eat it all yourself and you'll get a stomachache~."
"Looks like he just came from a brawl, though. That's a hell of a lot of blood on him."
"Tougher than he looks, maybe. Or a coward who let his whole team die and ran for it alone."
The four-man squad that had walked out to surround me snickered, tossing cheap jokes back and forth. Looking at their gear, it was obvious they'd dumped everything into combat equipment from the start. All their backpacks were small ones.
In other words, they hadn't given a damn about farming. Their whole purpose was to sit here Exit Camping in the Darkzone, waiting to stab people in the back.
They hadn't been running around sweating, burning stamina, and they hadn't been fighting anyone, so of course they could hide here without agitating the primordials in the Darkzone.
The fact that they were doing this boring shit even though failing at Exit Camping meant going home empty-handed… that meant they'd been making pretty decent money off this racket for a while. It was a new type I hadn't seen in the game, but I didn't think their method was wrong. They'd simply decided that ambushing other people for high returns was better than risking their lives exploring the Darkzone the hard way.
As long as they weren't the kind of cheaters who deliberately griefed their own teammates, I basically respected every playstyle. And if the other guy was an enemy, backstabbing wasn't particularly a bad thing to begin with, was it?
"So that means I haven't done anything wrong either, right?"
"The hell?"
"The hell is this guy saying? He dragged himself all the way here and now he's about to get stripped down to his underwear, so he's lost his mind?"
"Hey, check if this asshole pissed himself."
"Fuck off, you moron!"
They clearly had no idea what kind of situation they were actually in.
"If you've got a brain in that skull, try using it, you idiots. The blood stink and exhaust fumes soaked into my body just walked into this clean zone. What do you think happens next?"
"……?"
"Wait. Hold on. You don't mean—"
KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!
As if on cue, a throat-ripping shriek echoed from far away, and everyone froze in shock. Everyone except me.
I knew what that was.
"And if you're going to surround someone, you shut your mouths and put them down first, you morons."
Ting.
The instant I secretly dropped a flashbang I'd been saving among the guys surrounding me, I threw everything I had into leaping onto the heavy machinery.
"Hey! Grab that bastard!"
"Wait—!"
BOOOOM!
The flashbang detonated while they were still panicking, and their vision would have been painted white in an instant.
"Aaaagh!"
"I can't see a damn thing! Shit!"
If you paid extra later, you could modify the gas-mask goggles with ballistic protection and flash-suppression, but there was no way these guys had added those features. With my eardrums ringing, I opened the eyes I'd squeezed shut and scrambled up the machinery.
It was a cheap flashbang issued to inmates, so the effect wouldn't last long. And just as I'd expected, inside the ventilation shaft there was a steel ladder leading up.
Thudududududududu!
The rumble of a grand army on the charge — faint through my ringing eardrums, and probably far louder and more magnificent if I'd heard it for real — whipped my exhausted body onward. Get on that ladder and get the hell out of this hell, now. Hesitate even a second and you'll get swept up with those guys.
"Urgh! W-wait! Don't leave us! We—"
"Over capacity, dipshit."
I kicked the manual extraction-point seal button next to the ladder as hard as I could. The iron grate connecting the outside and inside of the ventilation shaft slammed shut with a heavy clang.
"No! Don't—!"
Kiiiiiiik!
Something that had been waiting below the vent lunged at the howling man and, a moment later, swallowed the vicious exit camper whole. The horrific shrieks and screams from below, the wet sounds of flesh being torn and bones being crushed, rang out in all their naked glory.
But I didn't bother looking down. I just kept climbing.
As I said before — hell and heaven were separated by nothing more than a single iron grate.