By Zephyria 
Side Story Episode 5.
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While working as a mercenary, I had witnessed several horrific accidents. Compared to scenes where limbs rolled around and blood splattered everywhere, the situation here was actually easier to look at.
There was no nauseating stench or smell of blood, nor were there any grotesque corpses with burst intestines spilling out.
However, there was far too much death. Just a rough count of the rolling skulls put the number in the dozens.
Furthermore, cruelly, among the corpses strewn across the floor, no jewelry—things they might have worn in life—caught the eye.
Mu-hae silently touched the inner pocket of his jacket. He felt the outline of the bracelet that Olga had spent so long searching for.
“Will we be able to find the hidden passage now?”
Joo-oh, who was standing beside him and looking around, asked in a perfectly normal voice. Aside from a slight frown, he didn’t seem particularly shaken by the traces of death.
Then again, he was a guy who called human corpses ‘meat.’ There was nothing more useless than worrying that he might be shocked.
“Let’s look around all the operational areas first.”
“Then let’s start over there.”
Joo-oh grabbed his arm and trotted ahead. His hair, disheveled after that all-out body slam, fluttered with every step.
After visiting a few more spots while kicking aside bones, Joo-oh suddenly muttered in a voice that was barely audible.
“It’s hard when you hold onto too many things.”
Whether he was speaking to Mu-hae or just talking to himself as usual, his voice was surprisingly serious compared to his carefree expression.
“You have to think only of the truly important things to endure for a long, long time.”
Was it an illusion? For a moment, Mu-hae felt as if Joo-oh’s eyes belonged to someone who had lived decades longer than himself.
This shopping center must have been a very famous business in Solar City central.
Otherwise, they wouldn’t have installed VR equipment of this quality just for entertainment.
Though almost everything had been looted except for a few broken units, judging by the remaining brands, they must have been quite expensive twenty years ago.
To think they spent such things lavishly on virtual experiences like escaping dinosaur-shaped Aberrants on a primitive Earth.
“Looks fun.”
“It probably won’t work.”
“Do you go in there and then it shakes?”
It seemed to be the type where you wear a device covering your eyes and ears and sit in an experience hall, and the seat would shake and tilt according to the respective video.
Even though he knew it was likely broken, Joo-oh’s eyes looked regretful and wistful, so Jin Mu-hae played along and led him over.
There weren’t as many seats as he expected. Moreover, perhaps because there were no linked devices, they didn’t even move.
Still, Joo-oh looked excited just by looking inside. He beamed, swaying his body back and forth.
“Stay still. You’re going to break it.”
As Mu-hae turned to grab him, the front of his jacket brushed against something.
Beep-!
A notification sound rang out from somewhere. He quickly checked his Link Watch, but it only displayed the time of the region where the satellite was last detected; no anomalies were found.
Naturally, Joo-oh seemed to have heard it too. Their eyes met, Joo-oh’s red eyes looking slightly surprised.
Jin Mu-hae slowly turned his upper body to recreate the previous position.
Beep-!
“The bracelet.”
Only then did he realize what had touched the chair. When he took out Olga’s bracelet and held it against various parts of the seat, notifications rang out repeatedly as if they had been waiting.
But that was all. No change occurred in the experience hall where they were sitting.
“I think it’s broken.”
As Joo-oh guessed, it might be a device that worked long ago but had since stopped. Mu-hae stood up from his seat and stared straight ahead for a long time.
If this really was the entrance leading to the research facility, how should he move? No matter how many times he had watched Director Gil work, there was no way he had the ability to repair broken machinery.
Beep. Beep. Unaware of Mu-hae’s predicament, Joo-oh was playing around, attaching and detaching the bracelet from the seat.
Just as his concentration was wavering and his gaze kept drifting toward those white hands, a brilliant idea suddenly struck him. A very simple and clear method.
“Joo-oh.”
“Yeah?”
“Rip it out.”
Crr-ack! Screech—!
Screee— Crash! Crunch— Thump!
Just as he had ripped open the walls to find wiring, Joo-oh ripped out the seat—which was nearly the size of his own body—without batting an eye.
The connected wires snapped with a loud pop, and a fist-sized hole appeared in the flooring.
Screee— Clang!
Taking the momentum, he reached in and ripped out the floor itself. A large, hard steel plate—or rather, could that even be called a plate?
A mechanical device as thick as a block of iron was dragged out in its entirety. Once Joo-oh tossed it aside, a passage opened up, plunging surprisingly deep.
“But how do we go down now?”
“I’ll set up a wire, so hold on tight.”
It wasn’t designed for descending, even if it was as tough and sturdy as its price tag. Still, it would hold this much weight.
The two slowly descended through the passage, which smelled acridly of dust. Despite the air being cold enough to freeze one’s hands, sweat beaded on the edge of his forehead.
By the time they had moved at least 15 meters, they couldn’t tell if they had reached the bottom because it was so dark, but a solid floor touched the tips of their feet.
Simultaneously, flash! The area before them brightened. A research facility, broken in places, revealed itself!
“Whew, damn it.”
All sorts of thoughts raced through his mind. From admiration that such a place actually existed despite his doubts, to a sense of crisis that information about the Starpath might be contained here.
At the same time, the sight of it being completely destroyed and ruined, much like the second basement level, felt suspicious. It had been hidden so securely; had someone else come first and turned it upside down?
“Claws.”
“What?”
“…….”
While examining the long scars on the wall, Joo-oh’s lips parted. After a short sniff, he turned to Mu-hae with a strange expression.
“Is there something suspicious?”
“……No, I don’t know.”
Whether he was saying no or that he didn’t know, he didn’t speak clearly. Instead, with his mouth slightly tight, he kept looking around.
“Let’s go in for now.”
Nod. Joo-oh obediently nodded and stuck close to his side.
Passing through a lounge area that must have once been clean and cozy—now filled with torn couches, withered ornamental plants lying overturned, and shattered tables—a security-processed metal door blocked their path.
It seemed it was no longer operational, but there was no reason they couldn’t pass. Just as he had done throughout the journey, Joo-oh stepped forward and reached out.
Crunch, Clang!
Once again, Mu-hae marveled at that physical strength. He felt he should be grateful that Joo-oh hadn’t beaten him to a pulp yet despite possessing such power.
Joo-oh looked up slowly, as if seeking praise. His hands were still dirty, but he had cleaned them up with wet wipes immediately after descending the wire.
When Mu-hae stroked his fluffy hair, Joo-oh’s eyes narrowed. He looked so satisfied that Mu-hae almost wanted to pinch and stretch his cheeks.
“Ahem. Seeing as the lights are on, there is electricity.”
Clearing his throat, he focused on the situation again. From now on, they had to scour the laboratories and collect whatever data they could find.
He worried for a moment about how much the bracelet could open, but he soon realized there was no need.
“Jin Mu-hae. Look at this.”
Joo-oh appeared holding an unfamiliar Link Watch. Judging by the unpleasant stains on the strap, it seemed he had swiped it from some skeleton lying around.
Beep—.
He had expected this, seeing as the sensors had activated as soon as they arrived. Fortunately, the system inside seemed to be running properly.
With Joo-oh clinging to his arm now that there was nothing left to use force on, Mu-hae poked around here and there, searching for the server room.
There was no way such top-secret information would be stored in an external data center or device, so there must be a storage space.
“This is creepy.”
What he saw wasn’t just research on Crystal Blue. He encountered solutions containing swollen, unidentified organs, and discovered bones that appeared to be from beasts, left dead inside isolation rooms.
Furthermore, the further inside they went, the more annoying the security devices became. The gouges in the walls and broken furniture also increased.
At some point, Joo-oh became quiet. It was a silence uncharacteristic of a guy who usually bounded excitedly through any unfamiliar place.
“What. Is something bothering you?”
“No.”
“Then why do you keep staring blankly?”
Joo-oh didn’t open his mouth in the end and only shook his head. With the usually hyper guy being quiet, the air of the empty facility felt even colder.
After scouring how many dark laboratories and research rooms? The two finally found the main device where the data was stored.
“You have the pad. Bring it here.”
As soon as he connected the hacking device he received from West Wind, the sound of the fan from the equipment grew louder: vroom.
Before long, the data transfer history appeared on the pad screen. Normally, he would have taken the data and left without looking further, but since the flaw of the Starpath was at stake, he couldn’t just pass it by.
Mu-hae began to review the materials related to Crystal Blue one by one.
PROJECT SIGMA
> 3.324.061v
Develop a new entity possessing entity dominance by integrating the superior traits of secured special specimens.
Existing experiments possess outstanding individual abilities but exhibit flaws such as high aggression, low survivability, and unstable metabolic structures.
This project aims to eliminate these flaws using genetic recombination technology and concentrate the advantages of multiple entities into a single entity.
.
.
.
S-03 Ultra-high-speed Regeneration
S-07 Low-temperature Environment Adaptation
S-12 Reinforced Exoskeleton
S-19 Higher Cognitive Ability
‘SIGMA……?’
Then, a piece of data with suspicious content caught his eye, and he narrowed his brow and scrolled down.