Chapter 15. Emergency Situation (3)
From the gloomy sky, rain finally began to fall—one drop, then two. Kang-jun turned his palm upward and looked at the sky. The way it kept threatening to pour without quite committing was the work of a true master of push-and-pull.
Jang Hwa-young gave a small nod that said they should pick up the pace. Deputy leader Jack waved his hand at the people trailing behind him like a line of chicks. Their footsteps quickened.
Kang-jun lit up his phone screen. It was nearly three in the afternoon. With both the weather and the hour this ambiguous, they would probably camp somewhere near the survey zone tonight. No pushing deeper.
The various teams began scattering toward their assigned sectors. Team 1 kept going straight. The raindrops grew steadily heavier.
"Just a little farther. Walk faster!"
Their pace climbed to something close to a light jog. The thickening drops began spattering the gray cement with big dark blotches, and then the sky simply opened. Jang Hwa-young smashed straight through the locked glass front doors of the nearest building and led them inside. The dark, silent interior felt exactly like something out of a zombie movie.
"Everyone put on your rain gear."
The team members pulled raincoats from their packs and shrugged into them. The packs themselves were waterproof, so wearing them over the coats was no problem.
Outside, the rain was coming down in sheets—like a midsummer monsoon. Still, at least it cut the steamy heat.
The already deserted city had been eerie enough; the rain made it worse. Even though it was still afternoon and the sun should have been blazing, the thick black clouds turned everything as dark as night. Every flash of lightning was followed by a rolling crack of thunder that chased after them like aftershocks.
They walked a little farther and ducked into another building. Once again the front doors shattered under Jang Hwa-young's kick. This one was a wide shopping mall. Kang-jun scanned the shuttered storefront signs in a long line.
Jang Hwa-young spoke to the team members standing in a neat row.
"We decide after we see the situation. Until then, drop your packs and rest. Don't go anywhere except the bathrooms. And stick with your partners."
The team members shrugged off their packs with little groans and collapsed onto the floor. It wasn't physical exhaustion so much as a mental weariness that seemed to settle over them.
Jack set a bright lamp on the floor with a solid thunk. People gathered around it in a loose cluster.
Lexy rummaged in her jacket, pulled out two chocolate bars, and shyly held one out to Kang-jun. He glanced down at it for a second, then looked back up at her. She fidgeted, bashful.
"Sorry about earlier… You were pretty mad, right? …When I get scared I do weird stuff. Sorrry…"
She gave him an anxious little smile, watching his face. He took the bar without protest, peeled it, and put it in his mouth. Hehe. Lexy grinned that same dumb grin again.
Sitting still was boring, so Kang-jun opened his mouth.
"That Ken guy, or whatever his name was?"
"Oh, Ken? He's on Team 2!"
"That so? …Seemed like he likes you."
At the sudden confession Lexy's eyes went a little wide.
"…Whaaat? No wayyy. We're just friends. We're pretty close, so maybe it looked like that."
Oblivious Lexy clearly had no idea about the quiet interest Ken kept showing her. …But what kind of taste did a guy have to like a girl like this? Some kind of self-harm fetish?
"Then who do you like?"
"…Me? Meee? I, I…"
For once Lexy looked flustered. She ducked her head and fidgeted with her fingers. Pretending not to notice was getting tiresome.
"Keep your voices down."
Jack's single line dropped the chatter of the D-rank members to a hush at once. It gave Lexy a perfect excuse to dodge the question. She still snuck a sidelong glance at Kang-jun with a meaningful look.
The conversation died awkwardly right there. Kang-jun didn't feel like forcing it further either.
The rain showed no sign of stopping. It was already nearly five in the afternoon. Jang Hwa-young had no choice but to call off the survey for the day.
"We stay here tonight. Line up the way you were, pitch tents, get ready for bed. We leave early tomorrow morning."
The team members pitched their tents in the same order as before. Lexy set hers up right next to Kang-jun's. The tents had passed through many hands—worn and a little smelly—but not so bad you couldn't sleep in them.
Night watch ran from nine p.m. to three a.m., six one-hour shifts. With two C-ranks and ten D-ranks, pairing them two to a shift worked out perfectly.
Kang-jun drew a five in the lottery. One a.m. to two a.m. Damn. Not a great slot.
After dinner Lexy yawned wide from the full stomach. She decided to turn in early and crawled into her tent around seven. Plenty of others were already sprawled inside their own tents.
Before going into his, Kang-jun glanced toward Jang Hwa-young. Their eyes met by chance. She hurriedly looked away. …Cute. The crazy gods were already screaming at him to go fuck her.
He crawled into the tent, flopped onto the pad, and turned on his phone. Several messages were waiting—from various women. Hye-mi, Zixu, Hana, and even Belita.
This damn popularity. If being good-looking was a crime, I'd be on death row…. Roll.
Getting treated like the same species as a cum tank…!
"Yes, of course I'm a sperm tank, hyungs. Aigoo! Taste-hyungniiim! Fifty coupons! Boing-boing! Thank you!"
…Life. Fuck. So empty.
The next morning at dawn the rain had stopped cold. After the earlier downpour the heated ground had cooled a little; the air felt genuinely chilly. Lexy was happy she didn't have to put on the damp raincoat.
"Move out."
Jang Hwa-young and Jack took the lead, the rest of the team following in two tight lines. Only the sound of heavy breathing filled the silence.
The lightless city had grown even more unnerving. Now and then some unidentifiable howl drifted from far away. Every time it did, Lexy opened her big eyes wide and scanned ahead, uneasy. Of course she wasn't the only one trembling; most of the D-ranks were already dreading the future that was coming for them.
Unfortunately Jang Hwa-young was not the kind of model leader who soothed her people while pressing forward. She wasn't an incompetent commander, but she wasn't a brilliant general who could wring more than a hundred percent out of her forces either.
Luckily deputy leader Jack had a bit more sense for that sort of thing. He kept glancing back and offering a word of encouragement to the anxious D-ranks.
"Don't worry! We're veterans at this. Trust us and follow, and you won't die!"
The word "veterans" gave them something to cling to. With an S-class Hero standing right up front, surely they themselves wouldn't be the ones to die—that was the look on most faces.
The endless black of the night began to take on a deep blue tinge. Torn scraps of cloud slowly grew clearer overhead. Sunrise was starting somewhere far away.
Kang-jun soon felt a faint killing intent brush his skin. It was like being licked by a rough tongue. Of course no one but Jang Hwa-young and himself could sense it yet; everyone else's mana stats were still far too low.
We're starting to enter their territory.
Jang Hwa-young gave the signal to arm up. Anyone with a weapon or shield gripped it tight, ready to fight at any moment.
Not far ahead they found proof of nesting. Parts of the buildings were covered in strange organic matter.
"Ugh."
The people who saw it sucked in sharp breaths. The nesting had spread on an enormous scale.
"Nesting…"
Jack muttered it like he was talking to himself.
Most of them had no idea what they were looking at. Plenty were hearing the word "nesting" for the first time.
Jack looked at Jang Hwa-young as if asking what to do. This wasn't their target zone, but they couldn't just walk past it. Any building undergoing nesting would definitely have monsters inside, and monster clearance was part of their mission.
"We're going in."
They reformed the formation. Jang Hwa-young took the very front, Jack the very rear. After that it was guard, dealer, healer, dealer, guard in sequence. It didn't line up perfectly, but they got it close enough.
Kang-jun and Lexy took rear dealer positions, so they moved up a couple of rows.
The building that was turning into a monster nest no longer looked intact. Almost every window that could have been a hole was already smashed, and the front doors were gone entirely—not even the frames left.
Around the wide-open entrance there wasn't a single monster, not even a scrap of their filth. For a place that supposedly welcomed guests, the presentation was lacking.
Jang Hwa-young raised a hand to shoulder height and spun it in a circle—the signal to go around. Even she seemed reluctant to charge straight through an entrance as wide open as a whore's hole. Not a bad call.
Team 1 circled to the back of the building. Nesting hadn't progressed as far there. Jang Hwa-young tilted her head back, gauging the height.
"We're going up."
Deputy leader Jack immediately read his captain's mind and relayed it to the team.
"We enter from the roof. Everyone get ready."
At the same time Jang Hwa-young began climbing the outer wall, tapping protruding sections as she went.
The rest of the team scrambled after her, scaling the wall right behind.