Natural Enemy (Part 2)
Kim Chomok had already left his sixth victim stripped of armor, dying or dead—it didn't matter—lying in the dark alley. In effect, he'd turned the surrounding area into a blank spot on the invaders' intelligence map. That was when—
"Goddammit, where the hell are they all coming from?!"
The Machine-Elf commanding entity El-Dragon had crossed the gate with only a small force, having lightly intended to recruit "external labor." But now he was facing a desperate human uprising in the plaza.
"What's going on? I can't pick up any signals. Hey—have the recon squads lost contact?!"
"Contact lost! All existing personnel have lost contact!"
"Damn it! We don't even have any spare forces left to deploy...!!"
The cut-off forces had kept sending reconnaissance teams in that direction, but none had returned. Tat-tat-tat! Clang!
"These damn locals!! Why do they keep rushing in to fall down?!"
The militia, a mix of old men and women, had been steadily making accurate shots, grinding his nerves to dust. The country already ranked in the world's top five for having the most soldiers—harsh treatment and endless conscription periods saw to that. The monsters had punched countless holes in the active-duty and younger generations, but—
"I've held this rifle for over ten years, you little shit! Take the people's bullets!"
Even though their physical prime had passed by the time they finished their service, the training they'd received didn't go anywhere. And that simple motive—"if I can't kill these bastards, my family gets dragged off too"—was the perfect trigger for a defensive war that turned most nations into unkillable forces.
"Stubborn bastards! What the hell do you want us to do—just drag you off and put you to work! Why are you fighting to the death over this?!"
"We just want to cut a few of your ropes, that's all! Why do you have to make it so goddamn hard! Die, you little shits!"
Even if they fought and died, the mindset of the swamp ghosts—"you will never do anything good"—completed their mutual annihilation. In a lynching situation where one hand became two hands, two became many, even a heavyweight champion had no answer. Every time one Northerner went down, five more rushed in, brimming with grudges.
"Fucking hell, are we doing attrition warfare until we die...?!"
Like bees swarming a hornet's nest, surrounding and killing it with their bodies and heat. Bullets flew, slightly worn-out grenades arced through the air—but the invaders endured, trusting their armor and their own durability.
"Eat this, you alien monster fuck!" CLANG!
"Ugh—goddammit! What the hell is this! Are you trying to blind me, you cowardly little shit?!"
The enraged civilians, using coal-derived oil instead of petroleum, doused their entire bodies in it, accepting the sacrifice. "This damn stuff—can't see in front of me!"
Desperately trying to wipe away the black curtain blinding their vision with a wrench they held in their hands—but oil was slippery to begin with, and grinding the same smooth substance across it only spread it thinner.
"What kind of shitty trick is this... it's sticky and slimy, so it must be oil... wait—oil?"
The brain, flooded with irritation, sent a warning signal: This is not the time to get hit anymore! You can't take any more bullets! Fall back!! Everyone retreat!!
The commanding entity El-Dragon, who realized the oil hadn't been thrown just to blind their vision, coated his armor with energy to block additional rounds. "What do you mean by that?! Our allocated quota is—"
"That's not what matters right now!! How can you still not understand why they're throwing oil?!"
He urgently issued retreat orders to the other squad members, but—clang clang clang!—it was already too late. The worst he'd imagined had started long ago. The distinctive green tracer rounds of countless bullets struck his adjutant's armor with a sound that rang clearly in his ears. Their marksmanship was accurate enough to hit the target in one shot, though no one had the luck for that—but death-ready soldiers, doused in oil as sacrifice, were now glistening oil-soaked targets.
Incendiary rounds—every bullet in the drum packed tight with flares—the assault rifles roared. Incendiary rounds generate temperatures exceeding 1000 degrees upon impact on surfaces coated with specific flammable materials. Against soldiers who'd showered in petroleum-based oil, and the rifles that collided with them—what would happen the instant of impact?
FWOOOOSH—!!
As the old saying goes, it was as clear as ming ruo guan huo—plain as daylight.
"Aaaaagh—!!"
"My body's burning up—goddammit! It hurts, but if I put up an energy barrier between my body and the armor, I'll be fine. The oil will burn off quickly, and the fire will go out once the fuel's gone. So why—why did they just coat us in oil to cause a moment of pain?"
The significance of this ambush was an act that targeted the fundamental truth: no living being can survive without this mechanism.
"Keh-heh...!! My eyes burn and my throat burns...!!"
"Ugh...!! You damn brats...!! I can't breathe—!!"
Fire consumes oxygen to burn, releasing carbon monoxide and various harmful substances. Even if the invaders had evolved to adapt to their own worlds, any animal that breathes needs oxygen. No matter how strong they were, they couldn't live without breathing. It was a fine play aimed at that.
"Roll on the ground! Roll and put out the fire, wipe the oil off the ground, then think about what to do!!"
"B-But bullets are flying at us?!"
"Trust your armor—extinguish the fire first!! Even if you get shot and hurt, if you can't breathe, you'll be dead within three minutes!!"
For El-Dragon, who had to maintain his forces, this was the best choice available. If he trusted the armor and eliminated the incendiary material, he could push back these rabble and retreat. But—
"Hmph, so they even handle their own cooking now? This place really does have excellent service."
"[Black Horse Girl]: My dear, there's something deeply wrong with their word choices. Doesn't it sound like they're talking about a meal?"
FWOOMP!!
"AAAAGH—!!"
"Sorry about that. Right now, it's our one and only meal. Apologies, alien."
Before they knew it, a pair of predators had closed in and torn everything to shreds.
"...I don't fully understand the situation, but now's our chance! Die!!"
Ahead was an enraged local, holding oil and incendiary material in his hands, aiming for instant combustion. "Phew... when this is over, you'll probably be bedridden for over a month, and I'll be fixing up rooms."
"You look weirdly happy for someone about to die..."
Behind him was a girl who looked like death itself, and a young man who looked about half a step stronger.
"Haha..."
The invaders' eyes, caught between the two hells closing in like a vise, began to dim.
"...Let me ask you something. If I surrender and cooperate actively, will you accept that?"
"Voluntary cooperation? Nah, I don't need that. Kids cry and beg for cooperation if you just poke them a little, don't they?"
Instead of restoring civilian life in occupied territory, these human hunters who harvested lives—it was time to pay for the sins that had come back to them after the recon team.
***
All sentient beings, when hope fades and they're cornered, make their final desperate stand. But the crazy bastards who kept coating themselves in oil and setting themselves on fire were starting to get on his nerves.
Kim Chomok, who couldn't even fight head-on and could only watch from the sidelines to see when they'd start rolling on the ground, said:
"Ah, you rolled! Unlike in games, rolling in real life doesn't grant you invincibility."
"...You're not dying easily, are you."
He only performed the finishing blow—a punch strong enough to pierce the energy barrier they'd raised to block armor and fire. With so few of them left, a single mistake meant instant retirement. It wasn't easy.
Before long, the invaders were disarmed at minimum, their bodies' energy organs half-destroyed, and they were captured.
"So... you're one of the people who came from the south? They're climbing up toward Pyeongyang now, I hear."
"The dictator's gone and public order has collapsed, and monsters keep pouring in, so there's no choice but to head north."
"...That's guilty conscience... So, what are you planning to do with these bastards? Tie them up and drag them off?"
The sacrificial lambs of the unofficial north-south military operation, weighed against the light reconnaissance Kim Chomok needed to do.
"Isn't it a great sin they committed against your city? You should help with the reconstruction—only then is it just."
"...!! Labor reeducation, is it? But if we do something like that, won't something big happen? The international community—"
"Oh please, these guys are 'professional slave traders who even robbed America.' If we go all the way, there'll be no reconciliation."
They were now in a situation where they had to provide what the invaders wanted most—for the sake of North Korean residents.
"They took our armor and I stripped them to the bone, so they can't use their full power anymore...—minimum, if you want to stay alive, you're not going to cooperate willingly, are you?"
The malice of the wise, wise human species—capable of a fair fight even against other creatures in isolation—ran this deep.
"What?! Who the hell dares to— I'm High Commander El-Dragon! Treat me and my soldiers with the respect we deserve!!"
Of course, no matter how much you wanted to put them to work, if the person you're ordering around talks back like that, there's no point. The invaders, barely managing to lift their bodies from the pain of unconsciousness, apparently still couldn't believe their situation.
"Don't think you've won! You're nothing but sacrificial offerings for the Great Ascension!!"
They were in a state of spiritual victory, denying reality to prepare themselves for "we haven't lost yet!"
"Hmm, either way, I need to get information from the bastards I'm dealing with..."
Since they couldn't even grasp their own situation, he'd do them the favor of self-awareness—and get information at the same time.
Kim Chomok, who had no idea why he was there, began interrogating them one by one in front of the crowd, tied to a restraint chair.
"Name."
"You damn slave-candidate brat... Aaaaagh!!!"
"I didn't hit you. I just have my finger as my lawyer here—it just happens to run into you now and then. Name!"
He held the more terrifying threat—worse than any violence or torture—while wielding a finger. The North Korean residents who'd lived lives worse than slaves, on the verge of having their status as slaves confirmed, watched this scene. But—
"Tsk, is it that everything's just one bad harvest? It's only me who's the bad crop?"
"You're ruthless. Absolutely ruthless. The fact that South Korean bastards have no grudges left means this is definitely fried."
The gaze they showed the invaders screaming over there, mixed with the hatred that had always existed and an unfamiliar sympathy that had crept in without knowing when—after all, even though they'd been dousing each other in oil moments ago to burn them alive, the expressions on the invaders' faces as they screamed were pitiful. Every time they spoke, he'd poke poke because they were late. Every time they gave the wrong answer, he'd poke. Every time they just breathed, he'd poke—
No matter how you looked at it, he was just "poking with his finger," so why were they making such agonized faces?
"Talk! Who are you thinking of... no, that's not it. What do you work for?! What's the faith in your heart!"
"What are you even saying... Aaaaagh!! Okay! Okay! We work for the Mechanical Ascension...!! Argggh!!"
"The fact that you think such stupid thoughts proves it's a lie! Cyberpunk is a sci-fi genre, you idiot!!"
Watching them scream until their throats gave out, some sympathy was bound to form. When enemies are at each other's throats, the minimum amount of sympathy appears—and he was the kind who'd stick his finger right into the public execution.
"Craaagh— I told the truth and you're making me suffer like this, then just kill me already!!"
Under the continuing interrogation, most of the Machine-Elves broke and told the truth from the start—but—
"Do I look like a fool? The logic of 'I didn't tell you properly so it doesn't count as lying'—are you seriously going with that?!"
"No, no, you damn kid— Aaagh!!"
Thanks to the rotten bastard who kept poking even though he knew the truth, saying "I don't believe you" and repeating similar or identical questions, only the highest commanding entity El-Dragon, who'd told nothing but the truth from the beginning after having his energy pathways sucked dry, was left with a taste of death.
Since he was already such a vicious brat who kept ripping out the energy transfer pathways, after the second poke he'd only told the truth—but he kept not believing him, repeating the same questions over and over.
"Actually, I know too."
The persistent bastard with the finger only had one true grudge:
"...You miserable little shit, if you'd known from the beginning... Aaagh!!!"
Just looking at humans who looked similar was enough to automatically trigger PTSD in his body—that was the torment itself.
"You think you can just run your whole species as slaves? You have no idea how ruthless this wise human species is, do you."
Master-slave relationships built on violence, intentional and dishonorable disgrace and exclusion—these three premises break the body, break the mind, and make even the enemy settle for a small reward. The manual of blood, accumulated over countless victims, was literally as thick as a mountain. The amateurs who dared present their business cards now, when Earth had already walked this path 150 years ago?
"We will... we will have revenge...!! Keh..."
Finally unable to bear the agony, El-Dragon hung his head. Kim Chomok looked at his face and said:
"Later, when you get out, make sure to tell everyone I poked you crazy during the interrogation."
—They'd probably look at him and say, "What a pathetic bastard."
Kim Chomok, who had done nothing more than poke poke in front of witnesses, finished his last tie-breaking with a faint smile.
"So where to? Think this one's the last?"
And so the invaders' treatment of North Korean residents was brought to an end. The official punishment: Labor Reeducation. The unofficial punishment: "The labor reeducation period shall be set at our discretion."
"An eye for an eye, a slave for a slave. From now on, your name is Gu-sik."
Not knowing that after the unit moved north, they were scheduled to go to an official prisoner-of-war camp. Kim Chomok watched the faces of the invaders, who wore expressions of despair at the level of punishment that had been handed down, and smiled brightly.
No matter when, no matter where, no matter what species—
The most perfect lesson that the bastard on the inside is the real piece of shit was another victory claimed today.