Chapter 108: Report (3)
Chapter 108: Report (3)
Gray Dust swirls.
It is the vector of a plague that has claimed countless lives and continues to cause suffering for hundreds of thousands.
Naturally, opening the door didn't mean the Gray Dust came billowing out. The swirling dust remained strictly behind the transparent reinforced walls.
The place we had entered was merely the entrance.
The three of us fell silent at the overwhelming sight and quietly stepped into the interlocking airtight chamber.
"Un-ho."
"Yes, Ha-ram?"
"Are you immune to that disease?"
"Yes."
"Then there shouldn't be a problem."
It was a fact I should have confirmed a long time ago, but I was only asking him now.
If I had walked in confidently only for Un-ho to get infected, I would have had nothing to do but laugh at the absurdity.
"Then endure this for a moment."
"Huh? What do you mean by—"
Un-ho couldn't finish his sentence.
Instead, a choking, gasping sound escaped him, as if something were blocking his throat.
Un-ho’s sudden distress wasn't due to a magical attack, the plague, a trap, or any other special reason.
It was simply because there was no air.
To ensure not even a microscopic speck of dust escaped and to prevent any external influence from affecting the interior, this was a simple, brute-force total vacuum decompression chamber designed to sever all connection with the outside world.
Of course, the speed at which the air was evacuated was so immense that an ordinary person might have fainted, but since the only ones permitted entry were Heroes or nurses, it wasn't a major issue.
Un-ho was thrashing about, clutching his throat, but since he was practically invincible, it didn't really matter.
After a few silent minutes passed, and by the time Un-ho—who had fallen off my shoulder and was throwing a fit on the floor—had calmed down, a red light flickered.
The red light emanating from the small lamp above the door blinked a few more times at a somber pace.
Thump.
With a vibration, the door to the Terminal Plague Special Zone began to open.
Even though it was only a slight crack, a massive amount of Gray Dust began to be sucked into the gap.
It wasn't enough to completely obscure our vision, but it was enough to say that the place had been submerged in gray.
"I thought I was going to die! You could have told me in advance!"
"Let's go."
"Yes, sir."
Air had finally returned, and with it, voices could be heard.
Leaving Un-ho behind to grumble on the floor, we walked into the gray smog.
As the two of us exited the decompression chamber, the red light that had been flashing a warning through the smog began to slow its pace.
"...If you don't come out quickly, you're going to experience decompression one more time."
"I don't want thaaaaaaat!"
Un-ho’s scream echoed through the Special Zone.
In this place, Un-ho was likely the only one who wasn't being serious.
This place was so gloomy it could make even the most lighthearted person solemn.
With every step, I felt nothing but stickiness against the soles of my shoes.
This, too, wasn't anything horrific like a strange substance, bodily fluids leaking from people, or the byproducts of the dead.
It was simply clumped dust.
Strictly speaking, it might be a bit different. Simple dust wouldn't be sticky on its own.
Bodily fluids, plastic coatings, remnants of nurses, bits of oxidized metal—all of it had gathered, stagnated in the air, and then settled on the ground.
Even now, nurses were diligently mopping the floor, but the stickiness persisted because there was simply that much dust.
Of course, it wasn't just the floor that was sticky. Even the air I breathed was utterly unpleasant.
The air, which hadn't been ventilated once in over ten years, wrapped around my body as if it possessed a will of its own.
I had only walked a short distance, yet the air was so dreadfully murky and viscous that I already regretted coming here.
The coarse particles of Gray Dust triggered a hypersensitive reaction in my nose just by breathing them in, and my throat felt as if a fishbone were stuck in it, making me want to gag.
Because of this horribly foul air, I found myself envious of the Gas Mask Oxymoron was wearing.
But this was only the beginning.
The true malice of this ward hadn't even started yet.
Thud.
...I felt something catch against my leg as I walked.
The reason I hadn't sensed it in advance was likely because the gray smog had blocked my line of sight.
I had a rough idea of what my foot had touched, but I looked down to confirm anyway.
It was a clump of Gray Dust.
Though I had kicked it, it had only crumbled slightly; maintaining its original shape, it was quietly beating.
In a rhythm similar to my own heartbeat.
Truly, quietly. It throbbed.
"...Oxymoron. There's a heart rolling around here. Deal with it."
"I'll call a nurse."
I fixed my body completely in mid-air to ensure the shape of the dust clump didn't deteriorate any further. Once the form was destroyed, it was irreversible.
Fortunately, that bizarre pantomime didn't last long.
A nurse arrived quickly, stabilized the dust's shape using a heart-shaped transparent container, and disappeared somewhere with it.
They handled it skillfully, as if such occurrences were common.
Well, they were common.
If one strengthened their five senses to pierce through the fog, nurses performing similar tasks could be seen everywhere.
This time, I just happened to be the one to find it first.
This was that kind of place.
A place where, not knowing how to deal with the Gray Dust passed down from the past, people had shoved it away like children trying to hide something out of sight.
That was why it smelled musty and somber, like an ancient library or a tomb.
The difference was that the dust absorbed all the moisture, and everyone here was still alive.
That’s right.
These clumps of dust were all people.
People who didn't die due to the influence of the operating rooms, yet couldn't maintain their original forms either.
Those who were supposed to be in a state of suspended animation to prevent the disease from progressing, but whose condition suddenly advanced.
Those whose symptoms were severe from the start but barely made it under the influence of the operating rooms.
This was a place where such desperate individuals were gathered.
If left alone in a general ward, their bodies would crumble and spread the disease; furthermore, since some had already become little more than clumps of dust, they would scatter in the wind and vanish if not for this intensive management.
And yet, they were alive.
Just as that heart made of dust had been beating, every speck of this dust was someone's body, their organs, their brain.
That was why this place was created.
To find the owner of each speck of dust, to reconstruct them, and to help them maintain a human form.
An endless, repetitive task. A light finally glimpsed.
Even so, they broke.
Dust is dust.
The forms would crumble at the slightest impact and roll around the room again.
The actions that had consumed countless hours would vanish meaninglessly.
Time. Like dust.
Nevertheless, we maintain this place and continue to pile up the meaningless dust.
It is such a tomb.
A tomb that could not have been built without the infinite labor of Oxymoron’s nurses.
This is the end of the Terminal Plague.
The Terminal Plague Special Zone.
* * *
Squish. Squish.
In the Central Management Center located at the heart of the Special Zone, a sticky sound echoed in our ears.
Squeak. Squeak.
Following that was the unpleasant sound of something being drawn.
It wasn't a strange phenomenon.
No matter how hellish the location, the Central Management Center, which oversaw the entire area, wasn't a total mess.
Though no one else was here right now, as a place where scientists and medical professionals researching the disease stayed, it was tens of thousands of times cleaner than the outside.
Of course, it wasn't entirely free of dust.
An air purifier connected to the outside was running in the corner of the room with a tremendous roar, but it seemed impossible to filter all the dust, as a significant amount still floated in the air.
Still, the fact that it wasn't uncomfortable to breathe was enough to understand that this place was relatively clean.
Squish.
Hearing a squelching sound nearby, I turned my head to see a nurse standing there holding something like a pack.
"Ah. Thanks. I'll enjoy it."
"Thanks, girls."
What the nurse handed to Oxymoron and me was a brown liquid inside a transparent plastic pack.
Perhaps to minimize dust intake, it even had a transparent tube attached.
I think I heard that astronauts eat food like this.
I bit the end of the tube and sucked hard, and a bitter yet sweet taste rushed down my throat.
A mild sweetness that moistened my throat, which had been irritated by the dust until moments ago.
Is it coffee?
Squish. Squish.
Hearing the sticky sound again, I turned my head back to where I had been looking.
A whiteboard stood on one side of the office.
In front of the whiteboard, a particularly unique nurse was holding a marker and writing something.
Compared to the other nurses, this one looked more human, had hair dyed black, and even wore metal accessories.
That must be the management-level Head Nurse Oxymoron mentioned.
As if the claim that it could write wasn't a lie, it was writing down the things it wanted to convey to us on the whiteboard.
『Please focus.』
Even if you tell me to focus...
What on earth does "Establishing Identification of Infinitely Preserved Entities via Mana Injection" even mean?
And what is "The Correlation Between Consciousness Extraction via Mental Magic Formulas and Umhwa"?
For that matter, what is Umhwa?
I only came here to write a report on the current situation, but somehow, that wasn't properly communicated, and I ended up sitting through a technical lecture.
Oxymoron seemed deeply interested, nodding and focusing on the whiteboard, but to me, it was a story from another world.
The white is the whiteboard, and the black is the marker lines.
I can understand the characters, but I can't understand the words or the sentences. Come to think of it, can I sleep in the Central Management Center? I'm supposed to go into a capsule to sleep, but it's a hassle to go back and forth; should I just announce that I'm sleeping here? Oh, right, I have to do an inspection too? A fact I only learned after coming here.
Thanks to the writing on the whiteboard, useless thoughts dominated my mind, and using those thoughts as soil, the feeling of relief that Oxymoron had come along grew rapidly.
If I had come alone, I would have had to squeeze information for the report out of that technical content.
『The number of incoming patients is on a downward trend.』
I mean the vast task of finding sentences I can actually understand, like that one.
Since an understandable sentence happened to catch my eye, I stopped my escapism and scanned the whiteboard.
What was being written now were various graphs and statistical data.
And complex formulas to interpret them.
There's no way I could understand that—
...Wait.
I had only glanced over the whiteboard once, but the content began to organize itself in my head.
The number of patients is decreasing, but it is dangerous; currently, there are few patients whose symptoms are worsening, but there is a possibility of an explosive increase due to a single specific stimulus.
The proportion of such patients is 0.5% of those hospitalized. It seems small, but given the total number of patients, it could lead to a secondary infection. Urgent action required.
It wasn't even written in sentences for me to easily understand.
On the whiteboard were simple statistical data and the formulas to support them.
And yet, through a process of thought I didn't recognize, I reached that conclusion.
Why?
Why can I interpret that?
I have never learned such things. Because I was working as an Awakened, I didn't even finish my formal education, so there's no way I could have learned professional statistics.
I do have professional knowledge in various fields, but that was merely imprinted on my brain through the power of magic.
Since it's like a dictionary and not my own innate knowledge, I can't use it flexibly.
Fluently listening to and speaking foreign languages, as well as bits of scientific or professional knowledge—all of it feels as uncomfortable as wearing clothes that don't fit, making them difficult to use.
Then how was I able to naturally expand my thoughts upon seeing the statistics? How did the draft of the report I need to write spring to mind in an instant?
As I delved into the thought, I soon found the source of that ability.
Gray memories with no stimulation.
Memories I had cast aside, thinking they were unnecessary.
A 40-year-old office worker. From his life, I was dredging up that ability.