Transmigration Labyrinth (1)
It wasn’t without reluctance. Still, something stronger than reluctance stirred inside him—the soldier who had always measured outcomes in terms of efficiency. Even if he could only reproduce fifty percent of Sera’s combat ability, most threats would cease to be threats at all. They had years of breathing in sync. They had time spent living together. Because of that, words were rarely necessary between them. Detailed tactics or meal plans, perhaps, but in battle they had reached the realm where each instinctively covered the other’s blind spots.
Sera’s help was indispensable for finding the rest of the party. That didn’t mean there were no problems. He had no way of knowing exactly which point in his memories this version of her had been pulled from—whether it was after her death or before that incident. And if it was before, how was she interpreting their current situation?
He had been too afraid to ask. If the truth shattered her mind, if she rejected reality and came at him… could he bring himself to kill her? Even if he knew she was fake, he doubted it. He wanted to live. Preferably in a way that let him enjoy each day. And that desire wasn’t limited to the physical. The mind mattered just as much. It was why he tried to avoid regret, why he sidestepped anything that felt wrong, why he acted according to his own convictions.
That same deep-seated instinct told him that killing Sera here would leave a wound too large to ignore.
He was on the verge of sighing when she spoke.
“Jinwoo.”
Sera called his name with her rifle shouldered. He immediately spread his micro-current.
Something was there.
An alien shape. It walked on two legs, yet its body was a grotesque mosaic of flesh, scales, muscle, and jutting bone. It defied easy description. What was unmistakable, however, was the enormous maw and the arms that resembled insect appendages. Whatever it was, it clearly wasn’t friendly or neutral. The malice rolling off the thudding figure was unmistakable.
He met Sera’s eyes. In the same instant they rounded the corner, raised their weapons, and opened fire while moving. The sharp clack of bolts, the acrid bite of gunpowder, the bullets slicing through the air. They hammered the creature with single shots, yet it refused to fall. The rounds simply ricocheted.
Impossible toughness. The mosaic exterior—or perhaps the dense muscle beneath—had completely absorbed the impact.
That wasn’t the worst of it.
Its maw gaped wide. Flame began to condense inside.
Familiar.
Without a single word, he and Sera split apart. He rolled behind an office desk while she took cover behind a wall. A torrent of fire roared out, incinerating everything it touched. This wasn’t the condensed, controlled flame Vertea wielded. This was something that could steal every molecule of oxygen on contact. Closer to a flamethrower. The memory of Russia’s biological weapon Plamya flashed through his mind. The shape was different, though. A collision of memories, perhaps.
There was no time to analyze it. He kept running, reading the ceaseless stream of fire through his micro-current. Explosions rocked the room—burning desks were hurled aside, superheated air skimmed the floor then erupted upward. He sprinted through the chaos. His mind worked slowly, but that was precisely why he could dodge. One misstep, however, and he would die.
He could transform into lightning, but doing so against this thing here would leave him with no reserves. He thought of the ampoule in his pocket even as he kept running, finally diving toward the wall where Sera waited.
She caught him as he tumbled. Hidden behind the wall with her Russian rifle, she felt the scorching air and smiled.
“This is fun. How should we take it down?”
They were not ordinary humans. The modifications performed on them had naturally included brain alterations that encouraged violence. He and Sera were no exceptions. The difference was that Sera had always taken pleasure in it. Like now.
Well, there was nothing strange about someone who felt excitement at the sight of darkness or unfamiliar ruins.
He let out a dry laugh and pressed his back to the wall. Fortunately the break-room wall behind them was sturdy. It wouldn’t hold forever, though.
“Exterior’s too hard for bullets,” he said.
“Then the inside must be soft. Heat resistance seems excellent, at least.”
“Right.”
Sera understood his intention without further explanation. She took the rifle he offered. He planted his feet wide and clenched both fists.
It was coming. One fiery step at a time.
Sera’s body turned transparent. He kicked the wall with everything he had.
The wall exploded outward like buckshot. The monster flinched. He charged straight in. It tried to bathe him in flame, but he leaned sharply, changed direction, and wove between the office desks. The fire chased him, scorching desks in its path, yet as long as he never stopped it could not catch up.
The creature swung its head to track his trajectory. He kept running. Just before he lost balance, he seized the underside of an unburned desk and hurled it—partition and all.
Above the crash of burning furniture, his micro-current told him the now-invisible Sera had positioned herself behind the monster.
Now.
He jumped, closing the distance in the brief moment its vision was blocked. Ten meters. Five. Three. Two. Point-blank.
The monster raised its foreleg in panic, but he was faster.
His rising kick slammed into its chin with a sickening crack. The impact felt like striking an armored vehicle’s hull. He grimaced for only a split second before seizing both forelegs in his hands. Sera was already on the creature’s back.
Even carrying two super-soldiers, the monster stood firm. Flame began condensing in its maw at point-blank range. Sera was faster. She shoved the rifle barrel straight into its mouth and pulled the trigger on full auto.
Muzzle flash lit the inside of its throat. A revolting sound followed—the wet crunch of flesh being pulverized, the burst of tissue. Every time the monster convulsed, the forelegs he gripped tried to wrench free. He held on with raw strength.
The magazine emptied with a metallic clack. Sera immediately backflipped away, kicking the embedded rifle deeper into the skull before twisting gracefully through the air like a gymnast and landing. The blood-soaked rifle slid from the ruined mouth. The monster’s gaping maw turned toward him.
Obvious. Its flame organ was ruined, so it would bite instead. The instinctive attack was blindingly fast.
But fast was all it was.
He inhaled, drove forward the leg he had braced behind him. His knee rocketed upward and snapped the monster’s head backward. The blessing’s effect. He could feel how much stronger his body had become—not only in power and reflexes, but in coordination as well. The force of the strike had risen dramatically. So had the output of his electricity.
He poured lightning through the forelegs he still gripped.
The monster convulsed violently, paralyzed. Its body locked rigid. He sensed the internal bleeding, the damaged ignition organ, the heat building inside. It collapsed.
Yet even in its death throes a monster like this could still kill. He released its forelegs and clenched his fist. With a sharp breath he drove the punch forward. The impact rang out like a cannon shot. The power was on another level—far beyond what any human could withstand.
He did not stop. Using his waist as the axis, he rained blow after blow into the creature’s torso. Right fist, left, right again, each punch loaded with everything he had. The massive body shuddered, caved inward, and staggered back with every strike. Flesh tore. Hide and muscle turned to pulp. Amid the deafening roar he worked without pause—faster, harder.
A left hook twisted into where the liver should be. He withdrew it and slammed a right straight into the chin. He kept hammering until the monster finally collapsed and lay still.
When he wiped the blood from his face, the creature was already dead. Its heart had stopped. His knuckles were covered in scratches from its carapace-like skin, but he was far better off than the corpse.
“Good work,” Sera said, approaching. She drew a machine pistol and put two rounds into the open maw to make sure. He offered no reply.
Instead he stared at the fallen monster. A bizarre life-form where eerie familiarity and utter alienness coexisted. Insect-like appendages, a bipedal humanoid stance, yet built like one of Russia’s old biological weapons. The distinctive flame-projection organ of the one called Plamya in particular convinced him.
This was the result of memories colliding. Not only his own, but those of his companions as well. He didn’t know whose memory had mixed in, but the moment he recalled the existence of a species called the Chungin, it all made sense.
“Let’s go.”
Under Sera’s quiet gaze he moved quickly, worried the rest of the party might be in danger. The endless rows of offices stretched on forever. Beyond the windows lay only empty void. The break rooms they occasionally discovered contained different food each time. As they moved they encountered more hybrid monsters born from clashing memories.
His ammunition was spent. Shotgun shells were useless here. In the end he drew his sword, and found it far easier to kill with. Maybe he should have started with it. He had felt some reluctance toward the blade, but if Mari saw him she would probably scold him. She was strangely serious about swords.
Even super-soldiers needed rest and food after consecutive battles. He and Sera found another break room, piled desks against the entrance, and sat down to eat. Canned ham, triangle kimbap, string cheese, boxed lunches—whatever they had gathered.
It had been twenty years. Twenty years since he last shared a meal with his wife. Twenty years since he had sat shoulder to shoulder with her, using body heat as an excuse to lean against each other and fall asleep.
Her lower body temperature, the faint scent that still somehow felt familiar—it ached in his chest. The presence of her that his micro-current touched, her skin, her muscles, even the beat of her heart. He knew them all. He knew they were there.
Afraid it might shatter, he moved slowly and brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers. Smooth skin. Because they did not age, he could even feel the fine down. A hollow laugh escaped him before he realized it.
Sera, still leaning against him, opened her eyes and looked up. Blue-gray irises. Even in the dim light, meeting her gaze felt good. It was hard to believe those eyes had once been cold. Now they had melted into something soft.
She chuckled quietly. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“…Because I like it.”
“I like you too.”
Her whisper was sweet. His heart ached. His eyes felt hot. When he held it back, she simply entrusted herself to his hand. He brushed her hair aside. She watched him with a gentle smile. Their fingers had somehow become tightly interlaced.
The ghost. The sniper once feared across the world. She showed him an expression only he knew and poured her affection into him. His chest tightened. Afraid he might cry, he closed his mouth for a moment before speaking.
“Sera.”
“Mm, I’m listening.”
“If… hypothetically.”
“Mm.”
“If you died first and I was left alone… what do you think that would be like?”
The question was sudden, yet it had been building inside him for a while. Sera’s smile faded. Not in rejection, but in thought. He felt her thumb press firmly against his palm.
“It would be sad.”
“I thought so.”
“You get lonely easily, Jinwoo.”
Her whispering voice, the way she gripped his hand tightly—everything was so familiar it hurt.
“Just thinking about you missing me all alone makes me sad.”
Emotion surged. The way she acted, the things she said—they felt like a dream. The illusion that he had grown used to loss cracked apart. Before he could stop himself, the rest spilled out.
“If you died first… and after living alone for twenty years I met you again. If I realized the you I met was fake… what would you do?”
He would rather be hurt. He hoped she would rage, try to kill him, reveal her true nature so he wouldn’t be deceived.
Sera stared quietly into his eyes.
“What do you think the real Jinwoo would do?”
She turned the question back on him. He thought for a moment. A fake version of himself—elaborately crafted, yet not the real Ha Jinwoo. What would that version say if asked such a question?
He knew exactly what he would answer. And perhaps Sera knew too.
His wife silently wrapped her arms around the back of his neck and pulled him close. From their seated position he felt her cooler body temperature, the soft yet solid weight of her. The slender frame pressed against his own.
“As expected, right?” she whispered.
He slowly wrapped his arms around her in return. Feeling the contact, the heavy beat of her heart, he closed his eyes for a moment.
As expected, Sera knew him far too well.