Chapter 171
Chapter 171
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 171
Chapter Title: Frog Croaks
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“…Frog croaks.”
Lee Ha-yul shuddered.
She instinctively flexed and curled her fingers over and over. It was as if the slimy texture of the frog’s mucous membrane from moments ago was still squelching somewhere between her fingers.
“Th-the frog… it turned into a frog?”
Lee Ha-yul might look young, but she was a veteran who had explored countless voids alongside me. Even for a veteran like her, a human body transforming in just six seconds was enough to leave a severe trauma.
Squeeze.
I took Ha-yul’s hand in mine.
“Ah.”
Our body heat exchanged. The warmth of primates who had evolved to interlock fingers instead of freely swimming underwater.
“Your body’s cold. Circulate your aura and dry off the moisture first. It may look like ordinary water, but every single drop is void poison.”
“…Okay. Oppa.”
Lee Ha-yul’s hair was dyed golden with aura. Her soaked dark brown locks dried in an instant.
But the drying process was bizarre. It was less like ‘water droplets evaporating’ and more like ‘transparent bugs resembling water being burned away into vapor.’
Wriggle, wriggle, wriggle—
The bugs, endlessly twisting into raindrop shapes, were roasted by the golden aura.
The water bugs twisted their bodies desperately, crawling into the gaps between Lee Ha-yul’s dark brown strands to evade the aura, only to shrivel up and spew steam.
“Eugh…”
Lee Ha-yul shuddered. Even in Ha-yul’s eyes, who usually expressed emotions extremely minimally compared to others, disgust was vividly clear.
“The water… it’s bugs. The water feels like bugs. Is this kind of water crawling around inside my body too?”
“Don’t scratch your forearm. Scratch too hard and you’ll draw blood, then the bloody water will start looking like bugs. If your blood starts forming raindrop shapes, it’s over.”
“…You sound like you’ve been through this a lot.”
Of course I had. I’d been through it plenty of times.
Both Ha-yul and I, and everyone else, had witnessed people turning into frogs and rampaging around, or developing hydrophobia and phobias leading to self-inflicted exsanguination—about five times.
First round: Realizing that leaving the deluge unchecked would sink the Japanese archipelago or the Korean Peninsula, instead of diverting it to Busan.
Second round: Realizing that even diverting it to Busan, without preparing arks or rituals like Noah’s, we’d inevitably get swept away by the ‘tsunami’ and drown.
Even with arks prepared, realizing we’d still flood without ‘bailing out water’—another round.
And so on.
“While submerged in the water, turning into a frog… it felt strange.”
Lee Ha-yul murmured. Her hair was fully dry, but somehow her eyes still seemed shadowed by water.
“A nostalgic feeling. A happy feeling. Couldn’t breathe, but not through my nose or mouth—somewhere else. No. Through my whole body… Like breathing through my skin. Just breathing made my entire existence feel pierced through. Like I’d become one with the world—”
“Don’t dwell on it. It’ll ensnare you.”
I gripped her hand tighter.
Snap—reason returned to Lee Ha-yul’s eyes. I met her gaze head-on.
“Let’s go. We need to help the others.”
“……”
“See how that puppet thread is severed? Whenever you spot broken threads here and there, repair them as we move.”
Nod.
Lee Ha-yul’s chin moved slightly.
The corridor was flooded up to calf depth, hindering human movement. Splash, splash. With every kick of our feet, water droplet bugs scattered in all directions, fleeing.
Lee Ha-yul shook her head and gently stroked the puppet threads. Golden aura spread along the spiderwebs throughout the entire ark.
“How’s it feel, Ha-yul? Any signals from the puppet threads?”
“…Sector 15, no anomalies. Sectors 21, 37, all clear.”
Ding. Didi-ding. Ding, ding.
Didi-di, dii-di-di-diik, didi-di.
Moments after Lee Ha-yul sent out her aura, various colors of aura returned from all directions. Signals from the sector leaders.
The giant spiderwebs connected throughout the ship, transmitting Morse code, sounded just like the ark’s heartbeat.
Lee Ha-yul, linking those arteries and veins, raised her head.
“…Sectors 13, 17, 23, 25—no signals. Ah. 25 just sent an OK.”
“The rest?”
“Silence. No response.”
No matter how thoroughly we prepared, casualties were inevitable. I couldn’t be everywhere at once either—there were limits.
We headed straight for the affected sectors.
The moment we opened the hatch to Sector 13, some shadowy figure lunged at us like a zombie.
“Uwaaaaaaooo!”
“……!”
Lee Ha-yul flinched in surprise and reflexively scattered puppet threads. The figure’s limbs were instantly bound tight in spider silk and splashed down.
“Uwa— ua. Uaaa.”
The figure’s body was half-melted. Instead of blood flowing from the melted flesh, green skin sprouted. With every sprout, the flesh quivered and croaked—croak, croak.
“Uwaaa. Ua, uwaaa.”
The figure seemed to have lost all intelligence and reason. Its eye sockets were open, but the eyeballs and irises were entirely water, endlessly spewing droplets from the watery orbs.
“Oppa.”
After a moment captivated by the grotesque sight—
Lee Ha-yul pointed deeper into Sector 13 with her finger.
“Over there.”
The space was filled with water.
Even though I’d just opened the hatch, the water filling the room didn’t spill out.
As if an invisible, transparent glass door stood at the threshold, the water remained contained.
And there was no one in the water.
Despite each sector housing anywhere from 100 to 150 people.
All that floated in the water of Sector 13 were blue, yellow, and pitch-black shirts and pants.
Missing persons.
Humans devoured and vanished by the great void.
The ownerless clothes swam like tropical fish in an aquarium.
Croak, croak, croak. Only frog croaks echoed lowly through the water’s refraction.
I swallowed hard.
“…So, it really was impossible to prevent Sector 13 from flooding.”
Sectors 4 and 13.
They were prime examples of ill omens.
The command center where No Do-ha and the leadership gathered was none other than Sector 4. I’d entered the most dangerous fourth sector myself, and placed veterans in Sector 13.
Yet Sector 13 had still been completely wiped out.
The retort of ‘why not just leave the room empty?’ was meaningless. In that case, another room would be randomly selected as the ‘thirteenth.’
‘In the end, block 4 and 13 breaks through; block 13 and 4 breaks through. Looks like next round, even if it means pushing harder, I’ll have to shrink the sectors to 12 or fewer.’
Something to reinforce next round.
“Let’s go. To the next sector.”
“Okay. …What about this guy?”
“Too late. With mutations progressed that far, even A-ryeon’s healing can’t reverse it. That’s no longer human.”
“Then, kill it?”
“Yeah. Step back.”
“No.”
Ha-yul shook her head.
“I’ll do it.”
Lee Ha-yul spread her palm, then clenched it tight.
Shrrrip!
The victim’s body, coiled in puppet threads, shredded into hundreds, thousands of pieces. If you’ve seen the prologue of the first Cube movie, you can imagine it.
Unlike Cube, the thousands of flesh chunks didn’t just fall limply—instead, they instantly turned to transparent liquid and hopped away like frogs, splashing.
Splash. Croak. Splash. Croak—
The frog croaks faded in an instant.
With them, the water level in this side of the corridor dropped from shins to Achilles tendon height.
“……”
Ha-yul clenched her forearm.
Fortunately, the remaining sectors hadn’t suffered total annihilation like Sector 13. Rescue operations proceeded smoothly.
Sector 25 had 17 drowned or missing ‘existence-lost’ victims. 21 severe mutation cases. 2 injured from survivor infighting.
The severely mutated were all reverted to human thanks to prompt action. Thanks to SG Net relentlessly sharing ‘strategies’ and ‘precautions’ online and offline.
“…… ……”
However, one of the severely mutated took a bit longer to revert to human.
He was a holy knight from the Eastern Holy Kingdom who’d come to support alongside Sim A-ryeon. An awakener who armed himself with true faith atop false doctrines.
His fingers, toes, thighs, and nape had all turned to frog—not just for six seconds, but six full minutes in mutated state.
Humans are fragile. Six minutes is no short time. The brain suffers permanent damage after five minutes without proper respiration and blood flow during cardiac arrest.
Moreover, void poison afflicted not just the physical body, but consciousness, mind, and human memory itself.
“Parasites.”
Mumble. The holy knight muttered.
“People often say humans are bugs parasitizing nature. But isn’t there nature parasitizing humans too? Isn’t blood merely bugs living off me? All things are made of matter, nothing but matter—yet we draw borders around matter to raise and contain other matters. What is freedom? If a parasite breaks from its host, its flesh dies, but the will to break free exists if only for a fleeting instant. Thus, escape from flesh is death and freedom alike. The leap from matter is a miracle achieved in one moment. The only difference is whether it’s by one’s own resolve or forced by another……”
“Shut up!”
A survivor snapped.
“Someone, shut that bastard up!”
Not just one. People huddled under blankets watched the holy knight’s trance-like babble with consistently anxious eyes.
The eerie part was that the holy knight never raised his voice.
His soliloquy was genuinely quiet. Probably the same decibels as an old man coughing in the corner of the sector.
Yet every survivor in Sector 25 was leaning in to his monologue.
Even the most oblivious would sense that focus. Just as gazes have direction, so does hearing.
“O One, who is not merely God. Nay, beyond the word God.”
The holy knight murmured on, unperturbed.
“You who exist within me, yet I must step out to greet you. Flesh is prison, mind is escape. Now I understand why escape from flesh is called freedom. All matter is but bugs parasitizing other matter. O One, now I too return to that place……”
“Kill him!”
Thud. A survivor hurled a canned tin.
Objectively, it was violence against a patient quietly mumbling to himself.
Yet somehow, no one stopped the violence.
“That bastard’s a monster! A grotesque!”
“Fuckin’ loudmouth!”
“Kill him before we get infected too!”
Tuna cans. Water bottles. Every grabable object flew from dozens of survivors toward the holy knight.
Croak. Croak. Croak croak. Croak.
Frog croaks seeped between the holy knight’s monologue and the survivors’ shouts.
Yet no one acted like they heard the frogs, each raising their voices louder.
“Enough.”
I stomped down.
Boom—the vibration traveled through the ship’s floor into the sector. The survivors froze.
“You’re all poisoned by the void right now.”
“……”
“I know. The voices of the constellations who usually cared for your mental state are cut off. Awakener folks, your constant companion SG Net is gone. You’ll have to get used to the solitude for a while.”
“……”
“Different sectors may suffer varying existential contaminations, so leadership will maintain isolation. For communication between sectors or to command, use the puppet threads. Leadership personnel will patrol at least twice daily to check status.”
I glanced at the holy knight. He was still mumbling.
“I’ll escort this contaminated individual to the treatment room. Remember, he’s an awakener who came from Pyongyang to support Busan, a place he has no ties to.”
“……”
I didn’t reprimand them further. It wasn’t their fault.
As I hoisted the holy knight over my shoulder and exited the sector, Lee Ha-yul scurried after me.
Splash. Splash.
Walking the corridor, I checked outside the window.
Rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain.
A seascape as if we’d entered the ocean. The ark was still fully submerged.
According to Genesis, the ‘great deluge’ lasted forty days.
And.
This was only day one.