EP11. Stripped of the Five Senses (9)
A beacon tower is a structure built for one purpose: raising signal fires.
A bell-shaped mound of stacked stone, roughly three meters tall. In its center sits a single furnace for burning wood and smoke. And beneath that furnace, the ground opens up completely, connecting straight down into the Ant Nest.
That was the spawning ground of the Execution Ants—and at the same time, the central core where this zone's heart lay.
I descended on the wire.
Dropping down a vertical shaft with no stairs and no ladder, I felt a fresh wave of vertigo. Climbing back up was not going to be easy. Please don't let this place become my grave…….
When I swept the searchlight across the area, a long burrow revealed itself. The ceiling was high enough that we didn't need to crawl.
"Deputy Head, what happened to the bird?"
To Kwon Mu-seop's question, Yoon Woo-jeong answered. The Crow had thrown a fit inside the Warehouse Mart and then vanished without a trace—and just like then, the moment we entered the Ant Nest, it had gone off somewhere again.
I felt thoroughly played, but there was no turning back now. We were already in. All we could do was push forward.
Kwon Mu-seop and I started walking into the burrow together.
We hadn't gone far when—
I stopped short.
"What is it?"
"……There are ant eggs."
I muttered, staring at the massive mass. Roughly two meters high, two arm-spans around. An ivory oval object sat squat and heavy at one end of the burrow.
"They're not eggs, they're pupae. The moment the active ant count drops below half, the colony immediately prepares the next generation."
Then isn't that an even bigger problem? If those cocoons hatch, the monster ants come crawling out of them, didn't he say? The three Ants outside right now weren't going to conveniently die of natural causes, were they?
Yoon Woo-jeong spoke gravely, apparently running through the same mental picture I was. And true to her warning, we had very little time. The next Ant in the rotation would be coming this way soon, and it would attack us. That meant we had no choice but to take it down—and catching Number 3 and Number 4 was still acceptable.
But if we ran into the last Ant, Number 5, here—well, I couldn't predict when that might happen—if we caught that Ant here, every single ant egg in this place would hatch at once and swarm us. And then this really would become our grave.
Time allocation was everything. We had to finish exploring the Ant Nest before Number 5 arrived, get outside, and renew our brands.
So what am I supposed to do now?
I had come all this way following that bird's intent. But what came next? Was I just supposed to wander around hoping to stumble across some item? What was I supposed to do with a hint that cut off halfway? If this were an actual game, I would have demanded a refund on the spot.
Already? I haven't found so much as a thread to pull on……
"Team Leader, when Number 3 gets here, I'd like to try using Baek Sa-ra's ring."
"All right. Let's see what it does."
It felt like we'd be stuck between heaven and earth at this rate, so I made the proposal. If the Ants feared that ring too, we could buy ourselves time. Kwon Mu-seop nodded without objection, and we waited for Ant Number 3 in that posture.
That was when news arrived that made me doubt my own ears.
Alpha? Why was that name coming up now of all times?
"……!"
What on earth—?! Alpha, which had been observed on the Island Where Blood Rains, hadn't just crossed over to this zone—it had attacked an Ant?
A Mercenary Entity assaulting a Hazard Entity from a different Special Management Zone. I had never seen a record of it, never even heard a rumor. So what was this exception? Don't tell me it was after us?
My guess had been right. Alpha was trying to exterminate the current generation of Execution Ants.
"No. We're going on to the core."
"If we go out now, we die."
The radio fell silent.
"Even if we leave the burrow, we'll only be hunted by the Ants all over again—and in our current state we can't deal with Alpha at all. Better to head for the core and destroy it."
He means to reset this entire zone? He was right, in a way. Right now, that was the only way we survived. But if that happened……
"Deputy Head, what's Team 1's status?"
At Yoon Woo-jeong's report, Kwon Mu-seop set his stalled feet moving again. He walked like a man who could see perfectly well and spoke to me.
"Do-woon, you heard that, right? Alpha was fighting our elites, then broke off and came this way. What do you think that means?"
"Does it mean we caught them off guard?"
"It means your survival matters most. So run."
Kwon Mu-seop drove a wedge through my hesitation and picked up the pace. I emptied my mind and simply followed behind him.
Damn it. It felt like a blade pressed to my heart.
At Yoon Woo-jeong's shout, Kwon Mu-seop stopped short.
"A fork?"
"Then left first."
Kwon Mu-seop chose without a moment's hesitation.
We ran for another few minutes like that.
The Ants had been wiped out.
"Do-woon, give me the rifle!"
Kwon Mu-seop took back the rifle he'd entrusted to me.
"Keep the pistol and stick to my back. The Ant String won't spray properly for a while, so ignore it."
With that rapid-fire instruction, he started running again. I ran alongside him, pulling the glove off my left hand, then wrapped both hands around the pistol Kwon had handed me.
Skrrritch—
The pupae lining the passage had begun to move.
Skrrritch— squelch—
The sound of something tearing at its casing followed, but Kwon Mu-seop ignored it and kept running.
Crack!
At last a pupa split open, and an Execution Ant poked its head out.
Hissssssss—!
Kwon Mu-seop, as if he'd been waiting for exactly that, opened up on the spot. The newborn ant died without even managing to fully free itself from its hard cocoon. After that, every time he heard the sound of a cocoon tearing, he shot it dead without exception.
How long had we been running?
"Team Leader, dead end!"
"Back the way we came."
Kwon Mu-seop swapped magazines and turned swiftly. Retracing our route meant we were bound to run into what had hatched behind us—the Ants at our backs.
Hissssss—!
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Kwon Mu-seop blazed away indiscriminately while I picked off the ones charging straight at us. And so we kept pushing forward.
Alpha had reached us at last.
Damn it, the final boss has arrived. We had to smash the core before it got its hands on us.
We kept running toward the fork, toppling Ants as we went. Yoon Woo-jeong could no longer tell us anything about Alpha's movements. Naturally—there were no surveillance cameras inside this burrow. From here on, we had no way of knowing where Alpha was or what it was doing.
Then, without warning, Kwon Mu-seop shouted.
"Do-woon, mask on!"
A mask? I was still wondering what had gotten into him when I felt a stinging in my throat and my eyes. My sense of smell had gone numb, so I hadn't noticed a thing. Alpha had evidently pulled something.
We hastily pulled on our masks. By then the burrow was thick with smoke.
Damn it, did it set a fire? Even as our vision blurred rapidly, the Ants kept coming without end.
Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen……
I counted every single Ant we took down. If only one remained, maybe the ring could handle it somehow. Or if we exterminated them quickly as we were, we might buy enough time until the next generation hatched.
Racking my brain in a daze, I killed the Ants and killed them again. But our true threat was no longer the Ants.
Stop—!
When we were nearly at the fork, Kwon Mu-seop raised a hand and halted. The total number of Ants we'd caught was twenty-five. Then the attacks abruptly stopped. I had no idea where the remaining three were—whether they hadn't shed their pupal skins yet, or were off napping somewhere.
And so a breathless silence descended. In that eerie stillness, Kwon Mu-seop guarded the front as though he'd sensed something. I searched alongside him too, but the churning smoke hid everything.
Then it happened.
Hissssssss—!
Something came hurtling through the smoke. Kwon Mu-seop raked the massive shadow with automatic fire.
Thud! Thudthudthud!—Shlaaap!
What dropped under the gunfire was an Ant……'s head? For some reason, the Ant head lying on the ground had no body attached. It simply lay there, salivary gland ruptured, dribbling nothing but Ant String.
What in the world……
Shk—!
While our eyes were on the Ant head, something came charging at Kwon Mu-seop. It had dropped low and sprung from the flank—a short-haired Cha Si-eon.
Alpha.
"Ugh……!"
I tried to put a bullet in that insufferable face, then changed my mind and yanked Kwon Mu-seop back by the collar instead. It was a reflexive act at the crossroads of life and death—and it was the right call. Alpha was far too fast for me to aim and hit. What's more, the knife it swung was aimed precisely at Kwon Mu-seop's vitals.
Crash!
Alpha's knife went wide and tangled with Kwon Mu-seop's rifle. Having pinned down Alpha's position, Kwon re-centered himself and pulled the trigger.
Clack—!
Alpha kicked Kwon Mu-seop's rifle and kicked the magazine clean out of it. Ping! Click, click—! The rifle became an empty toy, and Alpha swung its knife again.
Crack, crack—!
Kwon Mu-seop blocked the blade with the rifle's body. But even for a man like Kwon Mu-seop, facing Alpha blind was asking too much. Alpha's knife struck Kwon's body again and again. Even if I tried to cover him with the pistol, there was no opening to slip in.
Just as I resigned myself to throwing my body into it—
Bam!
Adding insult to injury, an Execution Ant came barreling in.
But then……
Crunch!
The Ant sank its mandibles into Alpha's side and tore.
What? Don't tell me this is the replacement for the Ant it killed?
Whatever the case, an opening had appeared.
Bang!
My bullet buried itself in Alpha's shoulder.
Bang!
The next round went into its torso. The shock staggered it, its body lurching. The Ant's mandibles were lodged in its flank—it could neither resist nor counterattack. A once-in-a-lifetime chance.
I took aim at its head for the final shot.
Bang!
Crunch—!
The instant my finger pulled the trigger—maybe a heartbeat faster than that—Alpha wrenched the Ant's neck.
Shlaaaaaap!
And the Execution Ant's salivary gland burst. The raw concentrate of Ant String erupted in every direction, engulfing everything that stood there.