Chapter 40 Why the Director of North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau Panicked After Discovering That South Korea’s Military Technology Was Among the Best in the World
A dark night.
Inside an old Starex van driven by North Korean special forces soldiers, the men skillfully assembled disassembled suicide drones.
“As expected, these South Korean bastards are nothing special. They even released spies. What the hell is an investigation without detention?”
One of the men snickered.
“Be quiet. We are almost there.”
The leader of Team Two rebuked him.
Click.
After loading his weapon, he checked the chamber with practiced movements.
It was a plastic handgun made with a 3D printer.
It was the only weapon their collaborator inside South Korea had been able to provide.
“Does this thing actually fire? What happened to the weapons we were supposed to receive?”
“The shipment brought in by submersible was discovered by the National Intelligence Service.”
“How did they find it? Is there a traitor among us?”
Hermes had supplied the information, but from the North Korean soldiers’ perspective, the NIS’s intelligence capabilities were incomprehensible.
“How many rounds do you think this can fire?”
“Five rounds. Any more than that, and the barrel will not withstand the heat.”
The youngest man, who appeared to be the most intelligent among them, answered.
“Have the other teams arrived?”
“Yes. Team One says they will be slightly delayed.”
“Team One? That is Director Baek Taecheon’s team.”
“Do not worry. They say they are caught in a little traffic.”
“Wouldn’t Director Baek Taecheon alone be enough? I don’t understand why they selected twenty of us.”
The man who had been snickering moments earlier spoke in confusion.
“They must have decided that even that human weapon would have difficulty.”
“But is that really true?”
“What?”
“What they say about Director Baek Taecheon—that he is a biological weapon created through drug experiments.”
“They were joking, you idiot.”
“Comrade Team Leader, we have arrived.”
The driver spoke.
“This is the place?”
The men stepped out of the van and looked up at Science Facility’s Factory No. 2.
Although the building stood in the distance, it was so enormous that it appeared to be right in front of them.
“Unload the drones, quickly!”
At the team leader’s order, they removed dozens of unmanned aircraft from the van and laid them out on the ground.
Soon, the sound of other vehicles arriving could be heard.
Their occupants also unloaded their drones with mechanical efficiency and completed the preparations for flight.
At that moment, one of the men spotted strange objects floating in the sky.
“Hey, what are those?”
It was too dark to see them clearly, but there seemed to be quite a few.
“What are you standing there gawking for? Begin!”
At the Team Two leader’s command, the North Korean suicide drones launched in a swarm.
Vroooom.
Whirrrrr.
Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!
“Aagh!”
“Argh, you fucking bastards!”
The moment they took off, the drones erupted in sparks and exploded one after another in midair.
The soldiers, showered in fragments, screamed in surprise.
“What happened?”
“They appear to be getting intercepted!”
“What are they using to intercept them? I can’t hear anything!”
“I-I don’t know!”
There were no gunshots tearing through the night sky and no missile trails.
Something invisible was simply erasing the drones from the air.
Bang, bang, bang!
[The air-defense laser cannon achieved a one-hundred-percent interception rate.]
“We can sell it. How many did it successfully intercept?”
[Twenty-three.]
“What is the situation?”
[Twelve people are infiltrating the building.]
“Whew….”
Stay calm.
I could do this as long as I remained calm.
I pulled down the four-tube night-vision goggles attached to my headgear and murmured quietly,
“Turn off the lights.”
Click.
Every light inside the factory went out, and absolute darkness descended.
Inside Science Facility’s Factory No. 2.
Crackle.
—Moran Team Two, do you read me?
“I read you. What happened?”
It was the leader of Moran Team Three over the radio.
—…Moran Team One has been wiped out.
“What? They only just entered. You’re saying all four of them are dead? Even the legendary Baek Taecheon?”
It was shocking.
The drones they had deployed outside had exploded in the air before reaching their target, and now they had received word that an entire team had been annihilated immediately after entering.
—I don’t know either. Be caref—
Bang.
The radio went dead along with the sound of an explosive detonating in the distance.
“Team Leader, what was that? Did one of our drones succeed?”
“Moran Team Three? Team Three!”
“Team Leader?”
“…It seems Teams One and Three have been taken out.”
“What? How could eight elite soldiers be defeated when we only just arrived?”
“Everyone, be careful. Our opponent does not appear to be ordinary.”
The North Korean special forces soldiers stood trembling as they guarded every direction with crude plastic handguns and flashlights.
“It seems that brat’s bizarre nicknames weren’t lies after all.”
“Do you know what bothered me most in his report?”
“What was it?”
“One of the Chinese assassins who tried to kill him disappeared in the darkness. Without leaving any trace. No one knows how it happened.”
The leader of Team Two felt an eerie fear he had never experienced before in the absolute darkness.
“What… does that even mean…?”
At that moment—
Rustle.
A black, human-shaped object silently passed through the edge of their vision.
“Over there! It’s him!”
“Where? There’s nothing there.”
“It was definitely there.”
“Enemy at six o’clock!”
The men guarding every direction spun around simultaneously.
Their flashlight beams cut through empty air.
“There’s nothing there! What are you doing?”
“What? I-I definitely saw something move.”
“…As expected, there is more than one of them.”
Crackle!
At that moment, one of the men standing at the rear collapsed to the floor, foaming at the mouth before he could even scream.
“There! Shoot it!”
Bang! Bang-bang! Bang!
Thud.
Something was struck by the North Korean soldiers’ bullets and collapsed in the darkness.
Despite being shot, it did not bleed.
Instead, its joints bent and twitched grotesquely as though it were convulsing.
“What the fuck is that…? Go check.”
“What? Me?”
“Hurry up, you bastard.”
At the team leader’s command, one man approached cautiously.
He soon screamed with a horrified expression.
“Wh-What the fuck is this?”
“What is it?”
“Th-This… isn’t human!”
“What?”
“It’s a human-shaped lump of metal!”
For the first time in their lives, the North Korean soldiers were facing something horrifyingly unfamiliar.
Its head resembled a camera, and its body had a human form, but its movements were nothing like those of a human.
“There are human-shaped robots?”
“We never heard about anything like that in ideological education!”
Crackle!
At that moment, another burst of sparks sounded, and two men simultaneously collapsed unconscious.
The team leader, now alone, spun around in terror.
Three humanoid robots stood in the darkness, staring directly at him.
“Fuck….”
Unable to determine where to aim or what to shoot—
Crackle!
He lost consciousness and collapsed before he could even pull the trigger of his plastic handgun.
Clatter.
Director Baek Taecheon, leader of Moran Team One, rose beside a destroyed humanoid machine.
“Whew, you bastards. These piles of scrap are refining their combat abilities in real time.”
Director Baek picked up the plastic handgun belonging to one of his fallen subordinates.
“Any surviving team members, respond. Can anyone hear me?”
“…”
Only a dreadful silence remained.
No one answered Baek Taecheon’s radio call.
“You’re saying they were all wiped out… while I was unconscious for a moment?”
A cold shudder rose from deep within Baek Taecheon’s chest.
Was he truly facing nothing more than a single high school student?
He forcibly swallowed to suppress the doubt.
Click.
After checking the chamber, he quietly ran toward the office where the target was likely to be.
Creak.
He opened the door slightly and spotted the target sitting before a brightly lit monitor.
Creeeak.
“You’re Ryu Hyesung? It’s over, you cowardly bastard.”
Baek Taecheon aimed the gun at the back of his head.
“You sit in a place like this and wage war as though you’re playing a game? You thought you were safe?”
When the target did not respond despite the gun pressed toward him, Baek roughly pulled down the hooded jacket he was wearing.
“What… what the hell is this?”
The figure beneath the hood was a robot.
Whirr.
When the robot’s head twisted at an angle impossible for a human, Baek Taecheon felt a surge of fear.
Whirr. Whirr.
Two humanoids entered through the front door.
Whirr. Whirr.
Three more entered through the rear door.
Whirr.
The arm of the robot sitting in the chair moved at a bizarre angle.
Crackle.
A Taser shot out, but Baek Taecheon twisted his body aside and avoided it, knocking the chair backward.
(Translator’s Note:Taser — A brand of conducted-energy weapon introduced by the American company Taser International, now Axon Enterprise. The trademark is also commonly used generically for weapons that fire wired electrical probes to incapacitate a target.)
Crash.
The humanoid tumbled across the floor, then slowly rose using joint movements impossible for a human.
Whirr.
Crackle!
The machines standing at the doors fired their Tasers simultaneously, but Baek Taecheon avoided every shot with animal-like movements.
“So I only have to dodge one shot from each of you.”
He took cover behind Hyesung’s workbench.
Whirrrrr.
All six charged at once.
Baek Taecheon fired repeatedly into the robots’ heads, but it had no effect.
The head was the least important part of a robot.
Only then did he realize it.
Combat between robots and humans was fundamentally impossible.
Click, click.
When the gun quickly broke, Baek Taecheon punched one of the robots.
“Aagh!”
Only his hand was damaged.
Baek staggered from the pain, but the robot felt none.
The machines simply charged and clung to him.
Once several attached themselves to his body, their overwhelming combined mass was impossible to resist.
He was completely subdued and slammed face-first onto the floor.
Creak.
At that moment, a man wearing night-vision goggles entered.
“Are you Ryu Hyesung? You cowardly bastard! What are you doing hiding behind machines?”
Baek Taecheon shouted, but the man wearing night-vision goggles approached as though nothing unusual had happened and crouched before him.
“Then is your Supreme Leader also a cowardly bastard for sending all of you instead of coming himself?”
“What?”
“You’re Director Baek Taecheon, aren’t you? I heard North Korea created you as a human weapon using a special serum.”
“That’s all a ridiculous rumor! I heard you were a deranged psychopath!”
“So did I.”
“Heh-heh-heh-heh.”
Baek Taecheon laughed in disbelief.
“What bullshit. Look at yourself. What are you if not a deranged psychopath?”
Ryu Hyesung silently removed his night-vision goggles.
When he showed his bare face without the slightest hesitation, Baek Taecheon instead felt an indescribable fear emanating from him.
“People only see what they want to see. Some call me a patriot, while others call me a mad scientist.”
“Aren’t you afraid, brat? Every dangerous bastard in the world will be coming after you!”
“…Heh-heh.”
When Ryu Hyesung laughed with genuine disbelief, even Baek Taecheon, known as the Human Butcher, swallowed his breath.
“Why should I be afraid?”
“What?”
“I’m the most dangerous bastard in the world.”
Baek Taecheon was left speechless.
The absurd declaration did not sound like a young man’s empty bravado.
“…You’re lasting longer than expected.”
Unable to withstand the weight of the robots piled over him, Baek Taecheon soon lost consciousness.
Operations Control Room, Reconnaissance General Bureau, Pyongyang, North Korea.
The Director of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, who had organized the North Korean special forces unit and personally ordered Ryu Hyesung’s assassination, trembled in fear.
“Is this true?”
He rapidly scanned the report in disbelief.
“Yes. The entire operation failed.”
“You’re saying they couldn’t kill one South Korean brat? Even with Baek Taecheon there?”
“It appears so. According to our collaborator inside South Korea, their military technology was at an unbelievable level.”
“What have you reported to the Supreme Leader? Did you tell him South Korean military equipment is among the best in the world?”
“He does not know yet. Comrade Director General must report it personally.”
“Do not report anything for now.”
“What?”
“I said don’t tell him anything yet!”
The Director General shouted with veins bulging from his neck.
Large drops of cold sweat poured down his face like rain.
“Ha… that fucking bastard….”
He swallowed as he stared at a handgun secretly hidden inside his desk drawer.
“Where is the Supreme Leader right now?”