The Cracks in the Sanctuary
The gunshot had come from Maetan's service gate, which was located close to my house.
Aside from the main gate, Maetan had several service gates along its perimeter wall. They were mostly used by people who had business outside, like farmhands or hunters.
In front of that very gate, a family carrying backpacks was huddled on the ground.
Guards holding rifles stood over them, their faces pale with shock.
In the center of the family, a man who appeared to be the father lay face down, bleeding heavily.
His body was trembling violently from shock.
One of the guards spoke.
"I told you... you can't leave... I said I'd shoot if you tried... I told you... Why did you..."
The guard was trembling, his face contorted as if he were on the verge of tears.
His finger was still hooked around the trigger.
A fellow guard stepped up beside him, gently patting his shoulder and slowly pulling the trembling finger away from the trigger.
The woman, likely the mother, wailed.
"Why did you shoot him?! We just wanted to leave! We were giving up on living here! You didn't have to shoot him!"
"Daddy... Daddy, Daddy..."
"Check his neck-hub."
"Yes, sir."
Ignoring the wails of the woman and child, the guards focused on their task.
A guard equipped with a firewall interface plugged cables into the dying man and then the woman.
The child was still too young to have a neck-hub.
"Nothing. They're clean."
"Good. Hey! Get a stretcher! Transport him to the hospital!"
"Captain."
"What?"
"He's dead..."
The child and the woman wailed even louder, their cries filled with raw misery.
"Whew... pant... They were trying to l-leave. All exits to the outside are supposed to be completely b-blocked right now..."
Choi Soyeong, who had run over at some point, gasped for breath beside me.
"A lockdown? Why?"
While Maetan strictly prohibited non-employees from entering, actual employees could leave relatively freely depending on their duties or objectives. They just had to pass a slightly tedious security screening.
"T-To stop F from escaping outside Maetan..."
"Ah, I see..."
Maetan had not yet had its location discovered by the Machine Species.
Honestly, I thought that was nonsense.
There was no way those machines didn't know the location of a city as massive as Maetan.
But Maetan's official stance was this:
We are hiding to avoid detection by the Machine Species.
Therefore, they were terrified of anyone infected with F leaving the city.
The moment an infected person stepped outside and encountered the Machine Species, it would be equivalent to handing Maetan's coordinates directly to them.
If that happened, this city was finished.
The Machine Species never spared any human who connected to the network.
So, Maetan's decision to lock down the city until they found the person infected by F was entirely logical.
The guards were just about to move the corpse.
Boom!
An explosion.
Boom! Crash! Boom!
A series of explosions erupted from the southern sector of Maetan.
Unrest rippled through the gathered crowd, and someone muttered:
"The AI..."
"I-It's an AI attack!"
"It's a terror attack! It's hijacking human bodies to commit terrorism!"
The onlookers screamed and scattered.
Windows that had been open to watch the tragedy slammed shut, and curtains were drawn. The sounds of doors being bolted echoed through the streets.
In an instant, the crowd vanished, leaving only us and the guards defending the service gate.
Choi Soyeong asked:
"Do you think it's really F's terror attack?"
"No. That's in the direction of the Recycling Factory. Something must have gone wrong there. Unless F is an idiot, it wouldn't do something so conspicuous."
During the last AI intrusion into Maetan, a sudden power outage had caused a major issue at the Recycling Factory.
Because of that, the wife of my senior colleague, the Longsword Goblin Senior, had been infected with toxic chemicals.
A similar situation had likely occurred this time as well.
You'd think they would have installed safety measures after experiencing it once, but apparently, human lives were just cheaper.
CC's corrupted message floated before my eyes.
When is she going to be fixed? Can she even be fixed?
I asked Choi Soyeong.
"Do you have the list of the last connected users?"
"Pardon?"
"The list of people who remained connected in Maetan. Didn't you say there were about eighty of them?"
"I don't have it on me, but if I use my grandfather's name, I can get it. But why do you need... Ah!"
Choi Soyeong looked back and forth between me and the collapsed family.
She covered her mouth, swallowing the tears that threatened to spill over.
After blinking a few times while looking up at the sky, she put on a bright smile and said:
"I'll go get it! Please wait here for a moment!"
Choi Soyeong scurried off toward the guards watching the service gate.
Why are you looking for the user list?
CC displayed a proper message.
"You're finally back."
I rushed to restore my language module first. It was so frustrating not being able to communicate... I never imagined I'd end up diving into a place like that.
"Thanks to that, you cooled down quickly."
Mister, if you were dying of thirst, would you scoop water out of the toilet to drink?
Better than dying, isn't it?
A status window showing CC's condition popped up in front of me.
Among the recovery progress, damage logs, and countless other items, one line stood out: Recovery Rate: 24%.
My current performance is only at twenty-four percent of normal.
It'll take a few days to fully recover.
I won't be able to use the multi-legged tank for a while. The computational load of materializing the tank and hacking it at the same time is just too high.
Because the multi-legged tank had an inherently complex structure, materializing it required an immense amount of processing power.
Furthermore, since the materialized tank possessed the Machine Species' AI, it would automatically call for reinforcements the moment it was summoned.
To prevent this, she had to maintain a continuous connection and perform real-time hacking simultaneously with the materialization.
The instant she let go, the multi-legged tank would turn into an enemy.
Though the computational burden was high and the risk was great, its performance was undeniable. It had brought down the strongest S-class player and allowed us to fight on equal footing with F.
It was an opponent that had made my skin crawl when it was an enemy, but now that it was on our side, nothing was more reassuring.
F's data was heavily damaged. That final shot you fired under its chin scrambled its brain pretty badly. It won't be able to perform at its normal level. Though, to begin with, it wasn't at peak performance from the moment it connected to Intra-Maetan.
"That wasn't its peak performance?"
Right after F entered, the connection between Intra-Maetan and the Internet was severed. The F we fought... was in a similar situation to me before you rescued my quantum processor. In other words, it was just a clone. It wouldn't even compare to the main body.
"...We barely won against a mere clone?"
Hearing my murmur, CC typed out her words letter by letter on the message window.
It seemed I had pricked her pride.
...Just so you know, I'm not performing at my peak either. Your prosthetic arm is far too cramped for me to run at maximum efficiency. There's not enough power, and I can't manage the heat... Normally, for a processor of my caliber to reach peak performance, it would require the power output of a nuclear power plant, a cooling system the size of a house, and massive computational coprocessors...
"Can you tell whose neck-hub F entered at the very end?"
Unfortunately, no. I logged out at the exact same time you did. I witnessed F's data beginning to transfer out of Intra-Maetan, but I couldn't trace where it went.
Lines of code cascaded endlessly down a black window in the corner of my vision.
CC was repairing herself.
As a result, a steady stream of warmth radiated from my prosthetic arm.
"We need to find F before the guards do."
Why? Is there a reason?
"It knows about you."
Near the end of the fight, when CC copied the environmental manipulation ability F had used, it had mentioned the AC series, calling it a calculation impossible for a human.
It did. But what about it?
"The guards might find out about your existence."
Ah.
"Maetan won't just destroy the neck-hub containing F. They'll try to extract information from it in an isolated environment. If they do, Maetan might catch wind of your existence. They'll be able to see the battle logs between F and me."
I had utilized CC's abilities to their absolute limit to face Kang Sihyeon and F. If I were questioned about the source of that power, CC's existence would inevitably be exposed.
Boom!
Another explosion thundered from the south.
Almost at the exact same moment, Choi Soyeong returned, panting heavily.
"Pant, pant... H-Here..."
Choi Soyeong handed me a crumpled sheet of recycled paper.
Printed on it were the names, addresses, and photos of several individuals.
"Maetan must be in a real hurry. They actually printed it out. Normally, they would distribute this kind of data directly to neck-hubs."
Paper and ink were precious commodities in Maetan.
This was because there were no production facilities for them.
Thus, most administrative work was conducted within Intra-Maetan, which consumed no physical resources.
The list included the names of the top-ranked player, Kang Sihyeon, Go Yongwan—who could transform into a dragon—and Wan Dalho. There were other familiar S-class players on the list as well. Their names had been crossed out with a red pen.
"I excluded the security team members who were connected until the very end. And it looks like the extraction team has already paid visits to the people marked in red. Five S-classes..."
There were barely over ten S-class players in all of Maetan. This would be a devastating loss of military power for the city.
"I'm going to track down F now. You should head back. It's dangerous to be out alone."
"Can I come with... No, I guess not. I might be useful on the Internet, but I'm completely useless in reality..."
Choi Soyeong hung her head, looking utterly dejected.
I shook the list she had given me and said:
"You've already done more than enough."
She waved her hand and vanished into the dark streets.
I waited until she was completely out of sight before calling CC.
"CC, did you memorize the people on the list?"
Yep. What's the plan?
"We'll use Maetan's CCTV network."
But the power is out. Will the CCTVs even work?
"Maetan is trying to find F too. They wouldn't cut the power to their surveillance systems."
I grabbed the cable of a CCTV camera mounted on a nearby utility pole with my prosthetic arm.
Soon, various CCTV feeds from different locations flickered into my field of vision.
...You're right. The CCTVs are active.
"Find the people on the list."
The CCTV feeds cycled rapidly.
The cameras were capturing various corners of Maetan.
Among them was a feed of the burning Recycling Factory, and the situation was far worse than I had anticipated.
Perhaps because they couldn't use electricity, people were carrying buckets to a stream quite a distance away to fetch water by hand.
Moreover, there were very few of them. Everyone had barricaded themselves inside their homes due to the threat of F.
Even in the brief moments the camera lingered, the flames were spreading in all directions, riding the chemical spills on the floor.
A few people were carrying burn victims on their backs, hurriedly fleeing the scene.
It looks like it's going to spread in the blink of an eye...
"If we find F quickly, they can turn the power back on and use the firefighting systems. So focus."
The speed of the cycling feeds accelerated.
A thief looting a shop under the cover of darkness.
A burglar breaking into a house while the streets were deserted.
A man nailing his window frames shut to prevent them from being opened.
A group of people surrounding a single individual and beating them mercilessly.
Only a single person had been infected by F, yet Maetan's ugly underbelly was already being laid bare.
Even Maetan's sole corporate hospital seemed to have had its power cut, shrouded in deep darkness.
Finally, one of the screens froze.
The camera was tracking a young man moving swiftly through the alleys.
He had his hood pulled low over his face and was carrying a large backpack.
Found him. Choi Kihun. He's on the list.
A red arrow materialized in my vision.
Without hesitation, I sprinted toward the arrow.
With almost no one roaming the streets, it was easy to move.
After navigating a few alleys, the back of Choi Kihun, walking briskly with his large backpack, came into view.
There was no reason to give him any breathing room.
I accelerated further, charging straight at him in a beeline.
"...!"
The moment our eyes met, Choi Kihun's face instantly hardened.
He immediately threw his backpack aside and thrust his hand inside his coat.
A black pistol was clutched in his hand.