Have They Finally Sent a Proper One?
"Stubborn. Still, we punched through to about the tenth floor, right?"
Iron melted by lava dripped in sticky ropes from the hole. Pele had been boring a path, grown tired of it, and simply cut herself a shortcut.
"What the hell kind of lab is this big? They drove a whole building straight into the ground. This deep, it's bored all the way under the glacier, isn't it?"
"It might actually be. Think about that later. For now, let's head down."
"Fine."
Pele hopped through without a shred of caution.
"You're supposed to go together. Such a temper."
The rest of them dropped through the hole after her. There was a brief hang in the air, and beneath the wind of the fall three keen senses turned at once—Na Wangrang, Hwang Seokgu, and Elder Wildflower, each looking a different way.
Before any of them could shout a warning, dozens of human silhouettes appeared on every floor.
In an instant shorter than a second, their forms registered. Not a thread of clothing. And yet the things a living body needs—genitals, hair, nails, nipples—were all sealed over with skin. Had they lacked faces, they might have been mistaken for mannequins. Emotionless, inorganic gazes struck them, eyes that looked at a person the way one looks at a block of wood.
Instinct supplied the name. Scientist's human replicas. Combat models.
"Hm."
Hong Yumin formed a hand seal, and a transparent membrane wrapped us in a sphere. The moment it settled, the attacks poured in—futuristic bullets, a wild spray of every kind of superpower, even replicas charging in with nothing but their bodies.
"These rotten—"
Had nature's sense warned him of something? Even ringed by hundreds, what rose in Dan Chuyeon was not fear. It was anger.
"Too late."
They hit the floor, and the surroundings were already scorched to nothing. Ash drifted on the air. Pele wore the face of someone who had stepped in shit, and she kicked the blameless ground, thump after thump.
"They were up there too. Disgusting."
The air around Pele melted. Lava surged—a god's lava. She jabbed a finger upward, and it geysered as if to plug the hole in the ceiling.
"......!!!"
The replicas plunging down to seize us were swallowed by the lava, every last one. Whether they had never possessed vocal cords to begin with, they could not even scream. Pele clenched her fist. The lava set, and became granite.
"Malice really doesn't have an end, does it."
A god's grumbling caught in my ear. I felt ashamed to be human.
"Just now, those were..."
"You know something?"
Alexei caught the groan Dan Miryong had let slip without thinking. Dan Miryong stroked his own arm and spoke, his body trembling faintly.
"Those were replicas of heroes and villains."
"Heroes and villains?"
"Yeah. He collected the biological data of heroes and villains with real combat ability and cloned them. It should still have been research when I left. To think he'd already be fielding them as soldiers..."
◈ H — Clone Hero Series (HERO)
◈ B — Clone Villain Series (BADDY)
"Anything we should watch for?"
"...What we saw were mass-produced models. He hasn't even brought out his real strength. Scientist collected biological data from the entire world. You think you aren't in there?"
"Not just you."
"I was a test subject in this place. So were the werewolves who cooperated, and the Dan clan. So is the dragon they say is captured."
And—
"The strongest man in this world will be here too."
Every mind summoned the same man. A veteran of the First and Second World Wars, and the origin of heroes. A man who did not age, who had fought for peace down to this very day.
Captain Earth.
Earth's strongest was here. And there was no guarantee he was only one.
"Hnn..."
Pele let out a thin, thoughtful hum.
"Is he one of the ones walking over from that way?"
Heads turned where she pointed. The lights flickered. Darkness vanished and came back, came back and vanished, and with every blink the number of people grew. Ten in all. Fewer than the hundreds, but the danger was of another order entirely.
"What are you just standing there looking at?"
Pele's divine flame roared across the front and swallowed the force that had held us by the throat.
"We didn't come here to sightsee."
Minds soaked through with tension cleared. Pele snorted, raised her fist, and a shadow that had been coming for her from below was slammed into the floor. It was a replica of a villain famed for assassination.
"The stages are climbing. Watch yourselves."
They reset their stances and set their backs together, so none of them would drift far. Crackle. Crackle. The divine flame died. A god's fire was put out against her will.
A footstep, in the passage where the flames had gone. Ten heroes stood there, and the man at their center drew the eye. He did not wear the costume he was known for, the one with the Earth set into the chest. His clothes were soaked black. Blond hair, dead and black, streamed behind him, and where that cheerful laugh should have been there was only killing intent, flat and without feeling.
Captain Earth. The strongest on Earth. He had brought his team with him.
The hero team, Earth Family. Even Captain Kid, who was on standby in the sky, stood among them.
And those teams numbered—
Five.
Identical faces, there before anyone had seen them arrive, sealed both sides of the corridor. Mass-produced models filled in behind them. Here and there, clothed ones were mixed in as well.
With a deep, grinding rumble, the laboratory walls sank. The lines between floors blurred, and the divided levels merged into one—all but the ceiling still barred above them. Ten floors became a single floor. A vast hollow opened, and people packed the wide space to the brim.
"Whoa."
With that short breath of mine, hundreds of shadows covered the view.
⊳ Integration complete. Deployment of the H and B series is underway.
⊳ Attrition is rapid. Dozens vaporize with a single blow.
⊳ Three FE (Fake Earth) units are driving Dan Miryu back. The remaining two are engaged with Sword.
⊳ Earth Family units are separating Hwang Seokgu and Elder Wildflower. Distance: thirty meters.
Scientist took the reports in through his ears and sent his orders out through his mouth.
"Spread the forces. Do not, under any circumstances, latch onto the brat who handles fire."
"Move the two units on Sword over to Dan Miryu. The Stone of Resurrection must not come near our troops."
"Of the Earth Family, have Captain Kid and Analyst analyze the red-haired woman."
His pupils rolled without rest, and spit never dried from his tongue. The brain staged its moves and hypothesized, hypothesized, hypothesized. It prepared for the worst variable, and prepared, and prepared.
Approximately 100 troops annihilated at once.
Combat-ineffective from injury: approximately 150.
"Tsk."
Scientist clicked his tongue before he knew he had.
Everything else sits inside the expected range. But what in the world is that brat?
He had meant to crush them with numbers and split the party behind a wall of bodies, a human sea. Every time, that brat cut the wall down with uncanny precision. Large-scale attacks, spent as easily as breath. Combat experience and judgment that did not match the look of her—both first-rate.
Scientist studied the brat more closely.
Not even a sign of tiring.
Beyond that.
She isn't feeling any real danger at all.
The level was different. No. The species was wrong.
Executives of his own rank flickered through Scientist's mind.
"M, A, MA, W. Deployment standby."
"Standing by!"
"Dose them with the D-series. And—"
"If we aren't careful..."
"Shut up. A."
The warning died in A's mouth.
"Are your eyes decoration? Does that look like we have the advantage?"
The enemy was few. His side was many. And the many could not pressure the few at all. Some of that few were only defending, at their leisure, busy guarding the high schoolers. By Scientist's calculation, in one hour it would end in the minority's victory.
He had brought out the Earth Family and sent the Fake Earth units besides, and still they were inferior goods that could not draw even ten percent of the original's power. Only the M, MA, A, and W series—the ones he had personally fussed over—would make it a fight.
"Drag the odds of success up by even a scrap. Even if you have to blow this entire laboratory away."
To face a monster, one needed a monster of the same kind. Scientist hoped the monster would stop at him. The true monster below was far too much to handle.
"Deployment ready."
A reported that the preparations were done.
"Deploy."
The word had barely fallen before the air of the battlefield began to change.
Under the protection of Hong Yumin and Shrine Priest Tsukumi, the two high schoolers with their whole lives ahead of them were, unexpectedly, fighting well. Dan Chuyeon made no effort to hide the fury blazing in him, and he charged headlong. Na Wangrang made no effort to hide his wildness.
Chunks of ice fell. Winds like blades whirled. The replicas that kept crowding in were crushed flat or burst into sprays of blood. The Wolf King's claws harvested incomplete lives, and a wolf soaked in blood ranged the battlefield at will.
"Should we not stop them?"
"No need."
Hong Yumin sent a talisman flying. A hero who had been aiming at her disciple's back toppled over backward.
"Worse than this shall come. They are not children who will suffer for a smear of a doll's blood—and it is not even a person's blood."
Even so, the warning the phantom thief had pressed upon her disciple, again and again, snagged at her.
Do not kill...
Depending on the view, killing a replica might also be murder. Then was her disciple, at this very moment, becoming not merely a killer but a slaughterer?
If that were so, the phantom thief would have stopped him.
He would not even have brought the boy.
I never know what he is thinking, anyway.
A sharp zip—the sound of air tearing. Hong Yumin opened her palm. An arrow aimed dead at her eye writhed and shivered in midair, and stopped with a thud.
Her skin prickled. From every side, ten-odd ominous waves rolled in. Under a pressure that sat on the breath, the clamorous battlefield tipped into tumult, and beings wreathed in black energy and red looked down upon them.
"Troublesome."
Hong Yumin's brow tightened. Each one of them. Every single one. Transcendents, at the least—beings who had left humanity behind.
One mistake, and I will be clearing corpses.
Hong Yumin shook out her hands.
The sleeping immortal slowly opened her eyes.