046. Survivor (1)
046. Survivor (1)
Late at night.
Rinne appeared in my room.
Then, to me standing there blankly, she said:
"Oppa, Alicia said to bring you to the command center for a bit."
"Right this moment?"
"Yeah."
Rinne nodded.
Alicia handled administrative work well, but that was strictly during working hours.
The fact that Alicia had called both Rinne and me out at night—
that alone told me it was no ordinary matter. And indeed, it wasn't.
"I have secured detailed information on the hive you requested."
As soon as I entered the command center, Alicia skipped the greeting and came straight out with it.
I was astonished. There was only one hive I had recently asked her to obtain data on.
The Cradle of Silence.
Alicia was telling me she had acquired data related to the Cradle of Silence.
At first glance, it might not sound like anything special.
After all, securing and reviewing relevant data before assaulting each hive was basic procedure.
But the Cradle of Silence was different. For some reason, access to its information was locked so that no one except the commander of the base with jurisdiction could obtain it.
In fact, every request I'd submitted to higher-ups for information access had been denied, and I was just starting to contemplate whether I should conduct reconnaissance operations independently—
"Did it get authorized?"
"No. Authorization was not granted."
Then?
To my bewilderment, Alicia added flatly:
"Instead of requesting it from higher command, I sent a cooperation request to the jurisdiction base."
"And they provided it?"
"Yes. Presumably, that base's commander didn't know just how much of a stubborn bastard Han Si-hu is."
In other words, she'd resorted to a trick.
I couldn't decide whether to praise her competence or chew her out for pulling something like this without asking.
I skipped both and moved on to the conclusion.
"So what does it say?"
"First, I'll skip the explanation of the hive's structure and the scale of enemy forces. It's not data you need immediately."
I nodded.
Information about the enemy situation was secondary at this point. We didn't even have the fundamentals yet: how the Cradle of Silence was structured, or what lurked within it in the first place.
Everything we knew was extremely fragmentary and uncertain.
That there was a special biodroid there called Eve, who supposedly granted salvation to all existence.
That a dream-filled writing biodroid had written a light novel based on those ambiguous words.
That a number of readers captivated by that novel had set out for the Cradle of Silence, and most hadn't returned alive.
That was all.
To assault the Cradle of Silence, we first needed to grasp the outline of what had happened at this hive.
So.
"Good. Tell me."
"...When you ask me that seriously, it makes this harder to say."
Alicia grumbled, oblivious to the mood.
Yet the very next moment, Alicia dropped a shocking statement.
"To start with the conclusion, Eve really exists."
"Exists?"
"Yes. More specifically..."
Alicia brought up a data screen and continued.
According to the data, the Cradle of Silence was originally established as a research lab under a biodroid manufacturer called 'Genesis Industry.'
At the time, it was the very earliest days of biodroid development.
Aside from the female brain and core, even the definition of standard components hadn't yet been established, and many manufacturers put forward their own theories of biodroids and warfare.
Among them, most manufacturers agreed on the approach of 'mass-producing biodroids to subjugate the Legions.'
The one that rebelled against this was Genesis Company.
"It seems Genesis attempted not the mass production of biodroids, but rather 'turning Legions into allies.'"
In other words, they wondered whether they could capture Legions with a specific skill and make them serve humanity like biodroids.
"The idea isn't bad, but does such a skill exist?"
"It seems it did exist, at least at the time."
Alicia changed the screen.
What came up was an explanation of some skill module.
But there was no need to read the explanation at length. It was a skill I knew well.
Narrative Granting.
"...They intended to turn Legions into allies with this?"
"Yes."
"No, extreme reality distortion to that degree is..."
"Of course not."
Alicia said.
When Rinne set her skill level to 10 in the simulation and granted a fairly elaborate narrative, even then it only raised certain stats by a few dozen percent.
Likewise, when the Narrative Granting skill module was mounted on a single biodroid, it couldn't cause extreme reality distortion like turning Legions into allies.
So Genesis Company came up with one trick.
"Do you happen to know about computer-type biodroids?"
"Computer-type..."
I knew them.
Biodroids built with bodies literally shaped like computers, with the brain and core inserted inside.
In other words, they didn't have a humanoid body like Alicia's.
The advantage of this structure was that each biodroid could be connected in parallel to maximize computational power.
The moment I recognized that, I could guess what method Genesis Company had attempted.
"You don't mean..."
"Yes. Just as you guessed, Genesis Company tried to link dozens of biodroids into a single computer and build, so to speak, a massive narrative machine."
That was the salvation Genesis Company pursued.
Brainwashing all approaching enemies into allies.
"So? Did the development succeed?"
"No. Before that could happen, the Legions carried out a large-scale re-invasion, and the entire research lab fell into their hands."
"Which means..."
"Yes."
Alicia said.
"Eve became 'Corrupted.'"
Corrupted.
In a word, it referred to a biodroid whose mind had been seized and controlled by the Legions.
Humanoid biodroids possessed considerable resistance to the mental attacks that caused this Corruption.
However, in the case of computer-type biodroids, the disharmony between mind and body was extremely high, making them easily Corrupted by even the slightest mental attack.
For this reason, computer-type biodroids were phased out despite being very efficient in terms of computational ability.
However, when Genesis Company developed Eve, it was still years before this infection vulnerability would be identified.
The large-scale computing biodroid Genesis Company had carelessly created fell easily into the Legions' hands.
And that was when the real problem began.
"The Legions began to utilize the Eve they had secured in this way, tailoring her to their convenience."
From brainwashing Legions to humanity's side.
To brainwashing biodroids to the Legions' side.
Increasing the Corrupted, incorporating them into Eve's vast artificial neural network, and using them as additional computational devices.
With that increased computational power, causing mental contamination in more powerful biodroids... an endless loop.
"Well, that only meant this became possible. Early in the incident, they hadn't actually secured any biodroids yet."
That was because the military, having grasped the situation, halted all operations near the Cradle of Silence.
In other words, early in the infection, Eve could only spread the infection and had no physical agents.
Therefore, rather than act immediately, Eve had no choice but to hole up in the lab, while the military simply left the Cradle of Silence alone for the time being.
They were probably thinking they could send in a large force and retake it all at once once the surrounding area was secured.
They never imagined Eve would spread 'bait' on the internet.
"...Bait, you say."
"Yes. It's that bizarre document Rinne came across."
There was something mysterious in the Cradle of Silence.
Simply approaching it would grant salvation.
Eve spread that suspicious information.
Of course, it drew no real response at first. It was just one more piece of false information in an internet already flooded with it.
The problem arose when an aspiring novelist wrote a novel based on that fragment of text.
This novel, the Beyond the Cradle series, became an unprecedented hit, and many readers came to harbor fantasies about the Cradle of Silence.
Then, just before the series finale, a number of military biodroids headed for the Cradle of Silence—
"The military seems to have only started proper information control at that point."
It was a troublesome story in more ways than one.
But among them, the most troublesome part was this.
"So Rinne's readers didn't go missing, they..."
"Yes. They are currently Corrupted, serving as part of Eve for the Legions."
With that, Alicia's report ended.
From there, it was up to me, the commander, and the field agents to decide how the operation would proceed.
In that sense, I turned to look at Rinne, who had been quietly listening to the story beside me the entire time.
"What do you want to do?"
If Rinne simply aimed to 'destroy' the Cradle of Silence, the story would become very simple. It would be enough to crush her brainwashed readers and destroy Eve's server.
But I didn't think Rinne would ever accept such an ending.
Because her goal was to atone to the readers who had suffered terrible things because of her.
Simply smashing those readers would provide no answer whatsoever.
A resolution worse than doing nothing at all.
For the ending to be one Rinne could accept, there was only one way.
"...Would it be possible to return my readers to normal?"
Rinne asked me.
Instead of answering immediately, I sank into thought for a moment.
Ordinarily, curing a Corrupted was nearly impossible. The influence of the skill that caused the mental contamination had to be eradicated, but it became tangled like a cipher and refused to release the biodroid.
But this case was somewhat special.
Because we also had Narrative Granting—the very skill that had caused the Corruption—on our side.
"In summary, you intend to overwrite the existing mental contamination with a narrative written by Rinne."
"Right."
Since it was a skill of the same lineage, direct interference would be possible.
In other words, in theory, it was possible for Rinne to heal them.
Alicia offered a skeptical response to my idea.
"So it really is only theoretical. No matter how hard Rinne writes a narrative, Eve's parallel-connected narrative will overwhelm hers."
"If you simply compare numbers, that would be the case."
Thinking about it mathematically, it seemed impossible for one person, Rinne, to match the computational power of Eve, which was composed of multiple brains.
But an interesting and plausible story was never a mathematical concept to begin with.
When it came to a specific narrative, Rinne could handle multiple writers at once.
For example, a salvation narrative.
A salvation narrative where all of them, through some process, broke free from Legion control and were saved.
"Can you write the story for that 'process'?"
Alicia asked.
"Even if a salvation narrative is your specialty, to suppress Eve's narrative, which outstrips yours in quantity, you'll need detailed information matching each of those biodroids. It would have to be information related to their mental worlds, rather than simply what model they are or what their primary specialty is.
"But at this point, years after the incident occurred, how and from whom could you obtain such personal information?"
That point, at least, I couldn't refute.
Apparently, Rinne could.
A moment later, Rinne shook her head and answered.
"There is a way to get that information too."
"How?"
I asked on behalf of Alicia.
Rinne answered, biting her lower lip tightly.
"By asking the sole survivor."