Tonight's Dinner Menu

It was over.

The lives of the bastards who had tried to interrupt my happy little farming run, who had tried to put a leash on my golden age in the Darkzone, who had ultimately tried to dump a bucket of shit all over my survival story — those lives were well and truly finished now.

"Pathetic bastards."

I tossed the remark down at the corpses whose heads had been caved in, whose bodies were bristling with arrows, whose throats had been opened by a military combat knife and a machete. It felt a little late to be noticing, but I didn't feel so much as a flicker of guilt.

It wasn't as if I had suddenly awakened some hidden second personality — the psychopathic serial-killer variety. These guys had simply died because they had it coming. That I had been the one with every reason to kill them was just a bonus.

The situation I'm in is way too serious to start lecturing myself about some cheap leftover morality or conscience leftover from a modern man who used to live in the 2020s.

I still didn't know whether I had actually transmigrated into the game itself or into a world built on the same concept — but I knew this much: I was standing in a fictional, dystopian 2040s Republic of Korea. When ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the blade of death came screaming for your throat just for the crime of breathing, I had no interest in giving myself a headache over a pack of vicious criminals. And that went double when, until a few minutes ago, those same criminals had been hunting me.

"It appears we are roughly finished. There still seem to be a few remaining in the rear, however. Shall I dispose of them as well?"

Lucy flicked the blood and brain matter from her hammer as if she were shaking rain off an umbrella, her expression unchanging. I shook my head. It was time to get out of here.

"The ones still back there will make excellent meat shields while we grab the loot. We just take what we need and leave in the meantime."

The smoke was starting to thin, but the prisoners who had set out a beat later than the pack we had just finished were still floundering inside it, unable to break free. They were probably the ones with the weaker combat ratings, stuck with rear-guard duty — not that it made any difference either way. The Native Species had already spotted the idiots thrashing around in the fading smoke and were charging in for another round.

"H-hiiik! Get away!"

"Leader?! Where the hell is the leader?!"

"Somebody help me! These son of a bitches— AAAAAAAGH!"

Would you look at that.

Instead of punching through the smoke, blowing past us while we were in a lull, and making a break for it, they couldn't even handle a handful of Native Species and were pulling every scrap of aggro on the map. The first one hit flailed his machete around like a man swatting flies, and the moment he got lucky enough to bury the blade in a Spore's shoulder, his fate was sealed. A Spore doesn't go down unless you pop the head in a single hit. He couldn't even wrench the uselessly buried blade free before the thing counterattacked.

"Kh-gurk… uurk!"

The Spore lunged, ripped the forearm clean off the prisoner who had planted a blade in its shoulder, shoved him onto his back, and buried its mouth in his throat. The ones standing around watching it happen were, of course, booked for the same all-you-can-scream buffet. There wasn't a shred of that heartwarming "we've got each ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠other's backs" energy anywhere in sight. The one who bolted first to save his own skin didn't even make it a few steps before a worm that had leapt onto his back seized him by the back of the skull.

Crunch.

"Grrrrrk……?"

A Native Species that drove a stinger through a human skull, laid its eggs inside, and hijacked ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the nervous system so it could puppet the body at will. Truly vicious. In EFD, that thing had been infamous for dealing near-instant-kill damage despite being a trash mob.

As long as you don't leave the back of your head wide open, it's just an ordinary Worm-type proto-species. Easy enough to deal with.

Thud.

I swallowed the lecture back down my throat even as I stripped gear and equipment off the fallen corpses. I had neither the loyalty nor the inclination to play kindly Darkzone masterclass instructor for those idiots, and besides — I was busy collecting my rightful compensation. I had a starving backpack that needed to be normalized on the double. Where was I supposed to find the bandwidth to worry about them?

"Leader. GoPros and body cams keep turning up on these ones as well. Shall I take them all?"

"Take them. Those count as decent side income, if you think about it."

Last time I had pawned the prisoners' gear off on Vladimir just to test the waters, but this time we were going to get a much better price. The fresh GoPros and body cams I had just pulled off these corpses would have every second vividly recorded from the moment they dropped into the Darkzone right up until they picked a fight with us. I didn't need to spell out how much a farm-to-table hardcore survival slasher flick would fetch on the black market.

The footage we sold last time didn't seem to be circulating among the other prisoners, either.

Which meant that even if our trade secrets happened to be sitting on those recordings, I didn't have to worry about them leaking to other inmates. Vladimir was a born entertainer and a hell of a merchant — security on that front was airtight.

"Time to go."

I stood up with a load that had to weigh close to several hundred kilograms on my back. Growing into an SSS-rank grinding-field ace thanks to the strength amplification from the Modular Exo-Suit and the Beta Fluid was, I had to admit, pretty satisfying. Being able to haul more weight meant I could kill more enemies and farm more items. The road ahead of me was a flower path — no. A glittering, gold-paved money road, stretching on forever.

I started toward the train platform, then felt a small pang at having to leave those two pistols behind.

Weapons I can just buy again anyway.

Vladimir had known that when he issued us the surplus gear in the first place. No point getting attached. Behind us, shouts of "Don't leave us!" and "Please, take us with you!" had been ringing out for a while now. We didn't so much as turn our heads.

The moment we stepped inside the train, the doors hissed shut. A prisoner soaked in blood had just managed to stagger down onto the platform and was sprinting toward us in a blind panic — but the train, with exquisite cruelty, refused to open. Because this train did not have a kindly Conductor.

Counting the cars further back, the train could have evacuated hundreds of people in a single run — but that was only possible while the escape sequence was still spooling up. Why did I think I had kept those bastards pinned down until the preparation timer was hanging by a thread?

"This is the sight I wanted to see."

Just one pane of glass. And yet it was a dimensional boundary that could never be crossed. With that between us, the nameless prisoner and I were about to walk completely different roads.

I stepped up to the man pounding on the window from outside, howling for someone to please open the door, and breathed a long hooo across the glass.

It was an ending technique from a tender, bittersweet romance movie that had once been hugely popular in Korea. A man and a woman who have no choice but to part stand with a single train window between them, and only at the very last moment do they leave behind, in writing that will vanish, all the things they could never say out loud. A moving little cliché. I took my inspiration from that, and in a single flourish I scrawled my own shameful true feelings across the fogged glass.

"YOU SON OF A BIIIIITCH!!!"

Gulp.

Everyone gathered in that room now understood, with perfect clarity, that the sound of a human being swallowing could echo this loudly.

"So this is the infamous 'it'?"

"Yes. Of the contaminants the Super Rookie brought back from this expedition, it is the only one that was not put through quarantine."

A research team lead dispatched from a certain corporation's laboratory asked the question, and a prison guard answered. They were far from the only people in that white room staring at the same thing, which said everything that needed saying about how extraordinary "it" actually was.

"That is… a biological sample, then? A living one?"

"That's right."

The same hollow question, asked again. This time a man older than the rest answered in the team lead's place. The air in the room seemed to vibrate. Someone's thrill, someone's bewilderment, someone's raw astonishment rolled through the white space and filled it to the walls.

"Is that even possible? There have been countless attempts to collect a living biological sample, but those monsters—"

"They have a scientific name. Native Species."

"Yes. The Native Species. Every attempt to capture them alive, or to bring them out sealed in specialized containment vessels, has failed, has it not?"

"Until now, yes."

He stepped one pace ahead of the others and studied the wondrous thing in front of him more closely.

"But now even that realm of impossibility has been conquered."

A twitch.

Inside the fluid of the sample containment vessel, something egg-shaped was stirring with a faint, feeble movement.

According to every prisoner who had ever been shoved into a Darkzone expedition against their will, the things they called "monsters" had never once left an isolation chamber alive. For reasons no one understood, most of them died before they could even cross the unidentified boundary that divided the isolation rooms from the Darkzone — or else they evaporated without a trace. And even the biological tissue that did make it out had, in most cases, been dead for a long time already. The freshness was too poor to support any extended research, and they had also learned that DNA suffered catastrophic damage in the process of crossing that boundary.

So they had paid the prisoners no small amount of money, buying up every biological sample the moment one appeared, just to keep the research crawling forward. And today, at last, a product for the ages had arrived.

Competitors… three, give or take.

The government and the military had officially contracted to give corporations first priority on valuable research materials, so they were out of this particular race. That left the greatest rivals as the agents sent by the so-called Mega Corps — the colossal conglomerates.

On one side, Technica, the pioneer of cutting-edge science, which researched and collected every latest technology it could get its hands on. On another, Medician, the immortality-chasing corporation that shoved its head in first the instant anything involving biotechnology, bio-industry, or medical devices hit the table. Then AAA, the merchants of death who built multipurpose military hardware so that everyone, in every situation, could use nothing but the very best. And last, the company he himself belonged to — Control, whose founding ideology held that all technology must be governed by human hands.

Every name on that list was a heavyweight. In a certain sense, they had already outgrown the scale of mere corporations. They were giants more than capable of steering a nation.

Once the atmosphere had more or less settled, the prison guard cleared his throat softly and took over the proceedings himself.

"Then, before we proceed to the direct contract with the prisoner, I will briefly explain the rules. First: in order to prevent a massive influx of outside wealth to an inmate of Seoul Southern Prison, money may not be used in this direct-contract contest."

"If we can't put money on the table as a condition of the direct contract, that means we have to offer goods in kind, or intangible benefits — is that it?"

"Correct. Even if an enormous sum were paid to a prisoner, he would not be able to spend it as he pleased — and an inflow of outside wealth on that scale would risk throwing the prison into serious disorder."

The agents nodded.

The method currently used to work the inmates of this prison was the stimulation of a rational reward instinct. The prisoners were shoved into the Darkzone whether they liked it or not — but they were paid a fair price for what they brought back, and so long as they did not cause ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠any major problems, they were left more or less free to do as they wished. That unspoken rule had taken root. Only if the rule held could the prisoners and the guards understand each other's positions and carry out the duties of their respective places. That the government and the corporations continued to get what they wanted was a bonus.

In a climate like that, slamming down a brick of cash the moment a prisoner hauled in something remarkable would produce side effects of an entirely different kind. Which was why, this time, the prison itself had stepped in to mediate.

"Accordingly, you will now draw lots, and in the order determined, each corporation's representative agent will enter the room beyond. There, across a blinded pane of glass, you may attempt a direct contract with the prisoner already waiting."

"If the glass is blinded, we won't be able to show the prisoner what we can offer him, will we?"

"Should the prisoner request information, it will be provided remotely at once. What matters is you agents' appeal."

Appeal. Frankly, agents of their pedigree had never once in their careers been in a position so desperate that they had to sell themselves to someone. And yet the situation felt uncomfortably like being thrown back to their first year in the workforce, and their competitive fire began, slowly, to catch.

Competition and struggle were, after all, the most fundamental instincts of the social animal called man. Proof arrived a moment later, when one man who could no longer stand it snapped at the guard.

"Stop yapping and declare the start of the duel already, guard!"

"…It is a drawing of lots."

And so began the lottery of the century.