A Hero's True Colors
"...And that's what happened."
"Ah, I see. I see."
Ham Tae-ung, the commander of the Pyeongtaek Expedition, considered himself a highly capable man.
This wasn't because he possessed some extraordinary talent, but simply because he was highly experienced. He had served in the security team since before Maetan even became a proper city, dealing with countless raiders and bandits, and had even fought against the armies of the Machine Species.
Yet, he had never met anyone quite like the man currently slicing into a pork cutlet right in front of him—Yoon Juhyuk.
"So, this Yang Guk-tae... you're saying this military-trained raider is going to infiltrate the ruins to destroy the AI we're trying to salvage?"
"Yes, sir."
"And because you're also former military, he trusted you and asked you to secure the AI and map out an infiltration route."
"Yes, sir."
"And you're telling us all of this."
"Exactly. You hit the nail on the head. There are five raiders in total, and they've already seized the bus and its passengers."
Ham Tae-ung was utterly bewildered.
When the bus that was supposed to arrive failed to show up, he had chalked it up to bad luck.
It wasn't uncommon for a vehicle to cross paths with raiders or the Machine Species and vanish entirely.
When a man claiming to be a survivor stumbled out of the radioactive wasteland and collapsed at the entrance of the ruins around dusk, Tae-ung had been shocked, but he accepted it as a possibility.
Because the survivor was a former soldier.
These were men who had survived the most brutal, unprecedented warfare in human history. The strongest of humanity, who had fought bare-handed against unstoppable ninth-generation tanks and swarms of drones blotting out the sky.
If anyone could survive out there alone, it was them.
Especially if he belonged to the Shoeshine Unit—the legendary elite force that had fought on the absolute front lines until the very end of the war.
To Ham Tae-ung, who had desperately wanted to enlist but failed due to a chronic illness, soldiers were nothing short of heroes.
Yet here was this hero, selling out his comrade without a single shred of hesitation.
"Didn't you say he was your comrade?"
The question slipped out of Tae-ung's mouth before he could stop it.
Even in a ruined world where morality and humanity had been thoroughly discarded, everyone still harbored some idealized image of a hero deep in their hearts.
"Commander, the war is over."
Yoon Juhyuk said, staring down at his empty plate with a melancholy gaze.
"But people like me, who were dragged into the very heart of it, have never truly been able to end our own wars. We became so accustomed to the battlefield that we still wander around looking for the next fight. You could call it war addiction. Staff Sergeant Yang Guk-tae is no different."
Juhyuk picked up the knife he had been using to cut his pork cutlet. It wasn't a blade forged for combat, but a simple utensil meant for eating.
"Of course, my hatred for the Machine Species hasn't faded. But it's been seven years since the war ended, and humanity is finally clawing back some semblance of stability, however fragile."
Juhyuk mimicked the motion of cutting a non-existent pork cutlet with his fork and knife.
To Ham Tae-ung, the gesture looked like a poignant metaphor for a war addict chasing a phantom enemy that was no longer there.
"As a loser of the last war, if there's anything left for me to do, it's not starting another fight. It's protecting the peace we've barely managed to find."
He chooses to fight to protect, rather than to satisfy a petty grudge...!
Ham Tae-ung shouted.
"Bring this man another pork cutlet! No, make it three more!"
A nod.
Yoon Juhyuk nodded at the commander with a deeply satisfied expression.
Ham Tae-ung felt a swell of emotion in his chest, as if he had just shared a profound, soul-stirring moment with a true hero.
Liar.
It's called playing the room.
The state of the Pyeongtaek base was utterly disastrous.
Thanks to the nuclear strike it took during the early stages of the war, very little radiation remained, but having been abandoned and neglected for so long, its ruined state was preserved perfectly.
Twisted scrap metal and the charred, cold ruins of buildings were fused together in a tangled mess with glassy, crystallized material formed by the extreme heat.
It was, quite literally, a sight perfectly fitting for the opening chapter of humanity's record of defeat.
However, the true value of Pyeongtaek lay underground.
"Hey! There's preserved gasoline over here!!"
"Whoa!"
"There's alcohol over here! Whiskey, soju... crates of it!"
"Ohhhhh!"
"It's red pepper powder! Red pepper powder!"
"YEEEEAAAAAHHHH!!!"
"Holy crap... they just radioed from below! They found frozen salted shrimp...!!"
"WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
The members of the expedition were practically losing their minds.
The supplies hidden within Pyeongtaek were far beyond anything they had imagined.
It was rumored to have been built in secret, and indeed, it was packed to the brim with long-term preserved equipment and foodstuffs.
"When was this supply depot built?"
It was registered in the database in May 2049. But I believe actual operations began a bit earlier than that.
2049. That was almost right before the war ended.
A point in time when humanity had already given up on victory.
Perhaps that was why.
Rather than items needed for the battlefield, the stockpiled supplies looked more like...
"It looks like they stockpiled these to prepare for life after the war."
But why is everyone going so crazy over salted shrimp?
"Because you can't get it anymore."
Even in this harsh environment, Koreans had managed to cultivate chili peppers through sheer, stubborn willpower.
But there was absolutely no way to obtain salted seafood.
To reach the ocean, one had to brave the wilderness crawling with the Machine Species and raiders.
Maetan's researchers had proposed a method to make salted fish using freshwater species, but salt wasn't something easily obtained in this world either.
The taste of "real kimchi" as they once knew it could now only be experienced within Maetan's virtual reality.
Though whether the kimchi tasted in virtual reality was actually the real deal remained highly debatable.
Can't you just make kimchi without salted seafood?
"Is kimchi without salted seafood even real kimchi?"
He refused to recognize such a compromised, watered-down product as actual kimchi.
"Hahaha, this is insane! It's a literal treasure mountain! We won't even be able to carry all of this back!"
"What's the big deal?! We can just walk!"
"Do you think we can expect a fat bonus for this?"
The faces of the people who had volunteered for the meager sum of one million Maetan Points were now glowing with excitement.
They had come prepared to sell their lives for pocket change, but now they were set to return as heroes who had salvaged a massive haul of resources.
The corridors leading up to the surface were already piling up with retrieved supplies.
"They must be looking for you."
Probably, right?
While the official objective was Pyeongtaek's supplies, Juhyuk had leaked information regarding an artificial intelligence to Maetan.
To the rest of surviving humanity, artificial intelligence was merely the enemy that had brought about their extinction. However, a select few, including high-ranking military officials, knew of the AC Series—the AIs that had fought on humanity's side.
An AI with computational power rivaling the enemy's, yet allied with humanity—to an entity like Maetan, which operated a massive virtual reality network, such an asset would be irresistible.
Though it hadn't been made public, it was clear that Maetan's true objective for this expedition was the recovery of the AC Series.
My quantum processor is underground.
"We're already underground."
Way deeper than this.
A cross-sectional map of the facility appeared before his eyes, showing a complex network of stairs leading further down.
On the 21st basement floor, 105.7 meters directly below us, is the hardened dry dock.
"We'd better hurry."
The vanguard of the expedition was Maetan's security force.
Their protocol was for the security team to descend first, clear any threats, and secure the area before the regular employees went down to transport the supplies.
Not much time had passed since the exploration began, but he had already heard they had cleared down to around the 10th floor.
"We need to reach the bottom before the security team. We have to recover it before they do."
If Maetan's security team found the processor first, it was game over.
He could take it by force, but that would mean making an enemy of Maetan.
And Juhyuk had no intention of turning Maetan into an enemy...
What should we do?
"Show me where the elevator is."
The power is cut, so it's out of service.
"I don't need power."
Juhyuk headed toward the elevator, following CC's navigation.
He pried open the tightly shut doors with brute force, revealing a pitch-black shaft that seemed to plunge into infinity.
It looked like a gaping, dark maw. Even when he shone his issued flashlight down, the beam was swallowed by the darkness, revealing no bottom.
I can't see a thing... It's close in terms of straight-line distance, but this darkness is a bit... Eek!
Juhyuk leaped straight into the abyss.
Kyaaaaaah!
A cascade of CC's screaming text scrolled rapidly across the corner of his vision.
Juhyuk grabbed the maintenance ladder bolted to the shaft wall and slid down at breakneck speed.
We can't even see the floor!!!
"Shut up."
Juhyuk focused entirely on the floor numbers painted on the wall as they flashed past.
18… 19… 20… 21…!
Screeech! Sparks flew!
His prosthetic arm clamped down on the iron ladder, grinding against it and throwing off a shower of brilliant sparks.
The brackets holding the ladder groaned and snapped under the sudden, violent deceleration, threatening to break entirely, but he had successfully reached the 21st floor.
Are you insane?! What if there was a stalled elevator car in the middle of the shaft?!
"When you fall from a high place, you get this tingling, chilling sensation all over your body right before you hit the bottom. That's when you hit the brakes."
That is not a normal human sense...
Juhyuk ignored CC's grumbling and pried open the elevator doors of the 21st floor.
"It's huge."
The first thing that hit him was the smell of damp mold mixed with a faint, lingering scent of oil.
And then, the sheer scale of the space, yawning wide in every direction.
The 21st floor wasn't a typical basement divided into neat rooms.
It was a massive, open cavern filled with bizarre, unrecognizable machinery and industrial structures.
This is the hardened dry dock.
"A dry dock?"
A place where ships are built. It's designed to withstand a direct nuclear strike.
A ship?
In the middle of landlocked territory, nowhere near the ocean, they were building a ship?
Let's head to the center.
Juhyuk walked toward what seemed to be the center of the cavern, guided by CC's directions.
After walking for a while, a colossal, horribly mangled mass of metal came into view.
The metal structure, as large as a small building, was torn, scorched, and bore clear signs of a violent internal explosion.
Thick bundles of cables hung like vines from various parts of the wreckage.
"What is this?"
It's the bridge module of the Castor-class Satellite Battleship No. 3, belonging to the Human Coalition Forces.
"This is a satellite battleship?!"
You know about them?
"It's my first time seeing one in person, though."
A Satellite Battleship.
The ultimate strategic weapon that had served as humanity's flagship during the war against the Machine Species.
Normally, they hovered in the unreachable heights of the upper atmosphere, descending close to the surface only to deploy supplies, troops, and devastating firepower before vanishing back into the clouds.
Juhyuk had crossed paths with supplies and airborne troops dropped by them a few times, but he had never actually laid eyes on a battleship itself.
They were far too precious to be deployed directly to the front lines very often.
At most, if he saw a tiny glint of light in a clear sky, he would simply assume it was a satellite battleship passing by.
Please recover the quantum processor. It's inside.
Juhyuk climbed up the massive heap of metal, using the thick cables as handholds.
Surprisingly, despite the heavy scorching, the interior still retained the distinct shape of a command bridge.
He pried open the central console panel and pulled out several circuit boards, finally revealing the prize.
A small, black metal plate.
It looked identical to the one he had retrieved from the safe when he accessed the Internet.
Embossed in gold lettering on its surface was a designation:
Cerebrum Quanticum No.3 AC-C
*Drool.*
CC practically salivated at the sight of the quantum processor.
Juhyuk detached the processor from the bridge module.
"Where do I install this?"
There's a processor socket about two-thirds of the way down from the wrist of your prosthetic arm. Pry open the outer casing and plug it in there.
"Pry open the casing?"
If you wedge something solid into the elbow joint and use it as a lever, it'll pop right open.
Juhyuk did as she instructed, jamming the tip of his combat knife into the elbow joint of his prosthetic arm and applying leverage.
Click.
Surprisingly, a section of the prosthetic arm's outer casing popped open with ease.
"It was really this easy to open?"
It's basic field maintenance... Didn't they teach you this when you first received it?
"I woke up one day and it was already attached to me."
On the battlefield, prosthetic limbs were consumables.
Just like the soldiers who wore them.
And while a dead soldier was useless, the prosthetic arm they left behind could easily be salvaged and reused.
If his prosthetic broke, he would simply rip one off a fallen comrade and strap it on. He had never once thought about actually repairing it.
We'll have to download a manual later when we connect to the Net.
Just as he was about to detach the current processor from his arm, CC spoke up.
Oh, just so you know, the moment you disconnect the current processor, I will temporarily shut down.
And while the quantum processor is installing, optimizing, and migrating, you won't be able to use the prosthetic arm at all.
Mister, promise me you won't cry because you're lonely, okay?
"Shut up."
See you in a bit—
The moment Juhyuk pulled the processor, the chatter of text vanished instantly.
He slotted the new quantum processor into the empty socket.
A moment later, a deep blue screen flickered to life in the corner of his vision.
> Starting Installation Wizard...
> The CQ-AC-03-C Installation Wizard will configure your hardware to run CQ-AC-03-C.
> To learn more about the installer before proceeding, press F1.
> To install CQ-AC-03-C, press Enter.
> To exit without installing CQ-AC-03-C, press F3.
The white system messages flashed, prompting for input, but the process quickly automated itself.
> Installing... Please wait a moment for the process to complete.
> Copying files and applying required settings...
> 1%...
> 2%...
The numbers ticked up agonizingly slowly.
It was going to take much longer than he had anticipated.
"It really won't budge."
The fingers of his prosthetic arm hung limp and loose, dangling uselessly.
Without power, the dead weight of the prosthetic felt significantly heavier than usual.
"Is this working, CC?"
No answer.
"...It's been a while since it's been this quiet."
But the silence didn't last long.
Boom!
An explosion roared through the darkness, accompanied by a bright flash of fire.
It seemed the vanguard of the security force had already arrived.
Running into them here would be highly problematic.
Juhyuk quickly switched off his flashlight, kept his head low, and retraced his steps.
He managed to climb back up the 105.7-meter ladder without incident. He was just about to grab some random supplies to blend in and make his exit when—
"Employee Number DR0145, Yoon Juhyuk."
Ham Tae-ung, leading the security force, pointed his gun directly at Juhyuk and spoke.
"As of this moment, you are under arrest."
...Did they find out?
"Do not resist, and comply with our instructions."