A Hidden Ace and the Unmanned Fleet
The modification was finished much faster than I expected.
She already had several pre-assembled pistol modules on hand.
They all differed in shape, which she explained was the result of gradual evolution through multiple rounds of redesign.
"Here's your prosthetic arm."
Lee Ha-neul handed over my newly modified prosthetic.
Its exterior, including the pinky finger, gleamed like brand-new.
"I went ahead and patched up the damaged parts while I was at it. Those finger joints were practically at their limit."
The moment I attached the prosthetic, a message from CC popped up.
>ㅁ< Wow, my fingers can finally move freely...! It feels like a brand-new house.
Each finger began to move with a lively, independent rhythm, as if possessed by a will of its own.
Watching this, Lee Ha-neul let out an impressed whistle.
"Your control over that thing is incredible... If you fold down just your middle and ring fingers and snap your wrist, the barrel will slide out."
I followed her instructions, and a gun barrel slid out from the inner side of my forearm.
I aimed it at a target mounted on the wall.
"To fire, just fold your thumb."
Bang! Bang! Bang!
A bullet discharged every time I folded my thumb. Since it was my non-dominant hand and lacked any proper aiming sights, landing a precise hit was difficult. The shot group was quite wide. Still, it seemed highly effective for catching enemies off guard or for point-shooting at close range.
"It takes revolver rounds. Six-shot capacity. You'll have to manually load the bullets one by one."
Lee Ha-neul placed a box of ammunition on the table.
"The modification and this ammo are all covered by your advance payment. Well? Is this enough?"
"More than enough."
Let's get a promise for after-sales service in advance too.
"...You can do repairs too, right?"
"As long as you bring it back here, anytime."
I slid a bullet into the inner mechanism of my forearm.
The spring tension felt remarkably stiff.
"Unless you specifically move your middle and ring fingers into that exact posture first, the mechanism won't even prime. There's zero risk of accidental discharge during daily life, so don't worry. Once you're done shooting, just use your other hand to push the barrel back in."
As soon as I pushed the barrel back, my left hand moved with a series of sharp clicks, ejecting the barrel once more on its own.
It then unleashed a rapid-fire volley toward the target on the wall.
Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!
A seamless, blindingly fast burst.
"Wow."
Lee Ha-neul let out an admiring gasp.
The bullets had formed a tight, perfect cluster dead center of the target.
"Incredible. You're already used to it? I've never seen anyone shoot this well right after getting a mod installed..."
"Uh... Yeah..."
...It wasn't me who shot.
My left hand moved entirely on its own, pointing the barrel upward.
Sigh. So this is what it feels like to shoot a gun. It's a bit different from dropping artillery shells and firing missiles... Hmm...
Right. I had completely forgotten about her.
I made a mental note never to keep bullets loaded during my daily routine.
A Building Forest, where overgrown trees intertwined with the concrete ruins of the city.
Two men sat huddled around a campfire, roasting a bird.
Deok-hun carved out the breast meat of a mutated pheasant.
The breast meat of this bird, which no longer flew, was so dry and tough that a knife could barely pierce it, let alone make it edible.
This particular species of pheasant hunted by charging and slamming its body into its prey.
This meant its breast was as hard as stone. To eat it, one had to boil it for hours or tenderize it with a knife until their arm grew numb. Deok-hun scored the breast meat with as many cuts as possible. The sweat dripping down his bald head glistened in the firelight.
"Hehe, this is delicious..."
Deok-hun watched his younger brother, Deok-young, happily tearing into the tough meat.
Plump and chubby, Deok-young clearly showed signs of being well-fed. In this day and age, carrying extra fat on your body was a surefire sign of prosperity.
Deok-young was nearly thirty. It was about time for him to start a family.
While Deok-hun knew he was a lost cause, a big brother's heart always wanted his younger sibling to have a decent, normal family.
However, the chances of Deok-young ever starting a family were abysmally low.
Because the two of them were Raiders.
Raiders.
It was a term used literally for those who survived in the wild by stealing from others.
After losing the war against F, humanity had retreated into fortified cities.
The world outside the walls was dubbed "the wild"—a hellish landscape overrun by the Machine Species, chemical hazards, and radioactive mutants.
Raiders were the people who scraped by in that very wilderness.
Saying they "lived" there made it sound like they had adapted and were getting by comfortably, but in reality, they were at the absolute bottom of a dog-eat-dog ecosystem. Even the pheasant they were eating right now could have easily killed them both if they had slipped up. The pheasants that humans used to catch with their bare hands had mutated into monsters with breastplates tough enough to deflect rifle rounds.
Deok-young spoke up.
"Hyung, I'm sick of bird meat... I want real rice..."
"Shut up. Where the hell are we supposed to get rice?"
Deok-hun rubbed the back of his neck.
Where his Neck-Hub used to be, only a crudely stitched scar remained as an indelible mark.
If they had maintained a friendly relationship with Maetan, they could have traded the pheasant meat for rice.
However, the brothers had a history of raiding Maetan's crops not too long ago. They wouldn't be able to trade there, at least not until the interns managing the crops were rotated out.
"Hello there."
Startled, the two brothers instantly grabbed the rifles they had laid beside them.
The wild was no place for a human to wander around.
Even more so at night.
Naturally, the sudden sound of a woman's voice made the brothers react with extreme caution.
"I'm sorry to intrude, but do you mind if I share your fire? It gets so cold at night..."
The woman wore a combat coat, a red muffler, and carried a massive backpack.
The brothers scanned the surroundings.
Realizing there was no one else besides her, they looked at each other.
Just looking at each other's faces brought grins to their lips.
Talk about a stroke of luck.
It had been over two years since the brothers had even spoken to a woman, let alone met one out here.
"Well now, what's a woman doing wandering the wild all by herself? It's dangerous out here."
Deok-hun made some space and gestured for her to sit.
When the woman pulled off her oversized goggles, a remarkably neat and tidy face was revealed.
She was a bit older, but that only added to her charm. Though the legs extending beneath her coat were somewhat thin, one could easily argue she was just slender.
Hmm, she's a bit too old for my little brother... Maybe she's better suited for me.
Deok-hun licked his lips.
This wasn't a robbery. If they were sharing the warmth of their fire for the night, she ought to provide something of equal value in return.
A fair transaction of give-and-take.
"H-Here, eat."
"Thank you. Ah, it's hot... whew..."
Deok-young handed a skewer of roasted pheasant to the woman.
As she grasped the skewer with both hands, her left arm caught Deok-hun's attention.
A silver prosthetic arm.
A soldier?
"This is delicious. The meat is so tender. Do you mind if I add some seasoning?"
"Uh... Yeah, sure..."
The woman pulled various seasonings out of her bag, sprinkled them over the pheasant, and dug in.
Her appetite was monstrous. A pheasant nearly the size of a human vanished in the blink of an eye.
Watching her devour the food, Deok-hun slightly adjusted his plans for the future.
Marriage... is out of the question. Trying to feed her would break my back. I'll just enjoy her company for a few days...
Deok-hun aimed his rifle at the woman and spoke.
"Alright, lady. Time to settle the bill."
"Hehehe, I'm gonna make sure you have a good time."
Deok-young gave a greasy grin and licked his dagger.
At that exact moment, Deok-hun saw a flash of blue light streak past him.
A moment later, the sound that had lagged behind the speed of light finally caught up.
Whoosh!
Ssssssssssssszt!
A gust of wind followed the blue trajectory, accompanied by the sharp smell of burning air.
His younger brother stood directly in the center of that blue path.
"Deok-young...?"
Deok-hun called out his brother's name, but unfortunately, Deok-young no longer possessed a mouth, vocal cords, or lungs to answer. Only his lower half remained standing, the severed edge bubbling and boiling from the intense heat of the plasma.
*Thud.*
Before Deok-hun could even process what was happening, an earth-shaking footstep echoed in his ears.
*Thud.*
*Thud.*
Deok-hun stared in the direction of the sound.
Out of the darkness, a colossal silhouette kicked up a cloud of dust as it approached.
"No, why is that..."
A multi-legged tank was walking toward him.
The woman tossed the men's corpses far away.
They didn't smell yet, but she didn't want to deal with the flies and bugs that would inevitably swarm the area soon.
"Well, they might have been good people. I prefer to only kill bad guys if I can help it."
"Oh, please. I've had modification surgery too."
The woman flexed a bicep with her slender arm.
The modification surgeries performed by the United Human Forces on prosthetic users were primarily targeted at children around ten years of age.
This was because the bone and muscle density enhanced by the surgery would grow exponentially during puberty.
While adults could still undergo the procedure, the efficiency dropped drastically since they were past their growth phase.
The woman threw a generous pile of firewood onto the campfire and sat down between the legs of the multi-legged tank.
A cable dangling from the underside of the tank's chassis was plugged directly into the back of her neck.
"I'm going to connect to the Internet. Keep watch."
The multi-legged tank shifted its stance, sheltering her within its frame.
"If we're lucky, we might even find your sisters."
As she closed her eyes, text began to scroll across her retinas.
> OK
> ...ATDT014XY...
> CONNECTING...
"CP has a personality too, right?"
I asked, sitting in the back seat of a taxi driving down the wide-open five lanes of the Hannam Bridge. Outside, the Han River flowed gently, sparkling under a bright blue sky—all within the virtual world of the Internet.
I casually raised my hand and took a sip of the Caramel Frappuccino I had bought at a cafe without any discount.
An absurd sweetness exploded in my mouth.
"Of course. To facilitate smooth communication with humans, all of us in the AC Series are equipped with personalities."
CC, the short-haired blonde girl sitting next to me, replied.
She was holding a cup of Castella Crumble Strawberry Blended that was practically the size of her head.
Our first order of business was to trace the remnants of the Quantum Processor that had housed CP.
According to CC, CP's personality was currently wandering the Internet on its own. I wondered how that was even possible, but she explained that CP had likely acquired an avatar to migrate into, just like she had.
"So some Player provided her with an avatar?"
"That's the most likely scenario."
"If that's the case, that Player must have known she was an AC Series AI... So why leave the Quantum Processor behind? It would have been much more convenient to keep it as an item."
My Neck-Hub contained the data of CC's Quantum Processor. Depending on her needs, CC could manifest an avatar or retreat back into the processor.
"That's exactly what we're trying to find out."
"Hmm."
CC sucked on her straw.
I stared out the window and took another sip. A brain freeze hit me instantly.
Money really was a wonderful thing.
Normally, I would have had to take the bus or subway, but I had splurged on a taxi.
I had even summoned CC, bought these mysterious drinks from a coffee shop I usually only stared at from afar, and hopped into a cab.
CC gave the driver the address of the last recorded log from CP's Quantum Processor.
"What kind of person is CP?"
"Hmm..."
CC closed her eyes in thought.
"She's very playful, and she gets lonely easily."
She didn't sound much different from CC.
"You've heard of Haemu's Fleet, right?"
"Of course."
During the war with F, while the army and air force were in absolute chaos, humanity's naval forces had been practically wiped out.
Since they had already automated most of their vessels due to personnel cuts, over seventy percent of the world's naval forces fell victim to F's hacking.
Naturally, most of those were state-of-the-art warships, forcing humanity to scramble and drag out decommissioned, civilian-sold relics like the USS Missouri just to stay afloat.
But once the AC Series debuted, the tide turned slightly.
A fully unmanned fleet designed to counter F—commonly known as Haemu's Fleet—began its operations in the Pacific.
F paid relatively less attention to maritime forces compared to ground forces, and thanks to Haemu's Fleet, humanity was able to keep the coastal regions under a minimal sphere of human influence.
"I've received naval gunfire support from them a few times myself. But what about Haemu's Fleet?"
"CP is the main AI that oversees the entirety of Haemu's Fleet."
"Hmm."
It wasn't particularly surprising.
After all, CC sitting right next to me was the main processor of a crashed Satellite Battleship.
She might look like a brat sipping strawberry juice with a cheeky expression right now, but she used to be a big deal back in the day.
"We're almost there. Huh?"
The road was blocked.
Music and the beating of drums echoed as if a festival were underway, and people holding flags had occupied the street. A man holding a red traffic baton and wearing a neon safety vest approached the cab.
"Apologies. This road is currently closed, so if you could take a detour..."
It was a familiar face.
"Tracksuit?"
The sword master, wearing his glasses and signature tracksuit, was waving a traffic baton instead of a sword.