By Zephyria “At least two.”
“What?”
“There are three severed arms. I’ve never seen anyone with more than two arms.”
Joo-oh’s deduction is surprisingly accurate. At least two people torn to shreds…
The mining crew dispatched here was said to be three, so Mu-hae had an ominous feeling that Ilgun might already be among them.
He hurriedly took pictures of the scene and was about to leave before the drone’s noise ended when Joo-oh suddenly pulled Mu-hae’s body with great force.
“What are you…!”
“No. Be quiet.”
The face he turned back with was serious, as if he were a stranger. His cool eyes were enough to make one’s legs tremble.
The tree in the direction Joo-oh was pointing at was shaking. Something was coming this way. As soon as he realized that, his whole body tensed up.
Whoosh, Joo-oh jumped up silently and climbed the huge tree trunk. He climbed onto the branch quickly and quietly like a wild animal, then reached down and pulled Mu-hae up.
As he stepped on the knotted part, his body shot up without even having to exert any force. Even though he was smaller than Mu-hae, he didn’t even shake, as if he were holding onto a crane.
Ker-lurk- Kroo…….
Then, a grotesque creature that looked at least 3 meters tall appeared in the vast Crystal Zone.
Arms and legs sprouting here and there, eyeballs sprouting randomly in all directions without distinction between face and back of the head.
Argos. As Joo-oh said, an Aberrant of a higher class than the Company’s estimate had returned to its place early.
Ignoring the decoy drone, trying to tear apart and scatter the intruder who had mocked it.
Ker-lurr-!
Argos crawled on the ground covered with corpses, moving its many limbs. Even the cold sweat dried up at the physiologically unpleasant sight.
He almost suffered the same fate as the miners down there. Thanks to the drone flying in the distance and disturbing its senses, and thanks to Joo-oh’s early escape, they managed to prevent the attack of an intelligent Aberrant.
Swish, clank. Jin Mu-hae took out his gun from behind. If they couldn’t get out of this situation before the noise stopped, they would be discovered by the Aberrant.
It was a creature with extraordinary senses, so it couldn’t possibly pass by a tree with two people on it without noticing. So he had to strike first and inflict a fatal wound now…
Tap. Just as he was about to pull the trigger, something warm covered the back of his hand. A soft but firm force stopped the attack.
Joo-oh was quietly shaking his head. Now was not the time to intervene, and as he was about to get angry, his unusually spirited eyes were unusual.
Eyes shining like jewels. That gaze even broke his anger and impatience. It felt like a strange sensation that he couldn’t understand rationally was enveloping his body.
While Mu-hae was hesitating, the drone’s noise was almost about to stop. Damn it. Just as his mind was getting complicated about how to deal with it now that he had missed the timing.
Tap!
The Aberrant moved its body in confusion and turned its back. As if confirming that the Crystal Zone was the same as when it left, Argos shook its head and disappeared again towards the hundreds of meters away where the drone was flying.
“…Hoo.”
Jin Mu-hae let out a short sigh and jumped down from the tree. Whether it was because of the tension, he felt a tingling pain all over his body.
Even though he had experienced unexpected luck, it was as if his instincts were telling him to run away. Argos had already left, but he still felt its murderous intent.
“Did you take all the pictures?”
“Yeah. Let’s get out of here for now.”
Mu-hae, who had been unconsciously backing away, soon came to his senses and grabbed Joo-oh. He had avoided the battle thanks to Joo-oh earlier, but he still couldn’t let him wander around as he pleased.
“Follow me. We need to find a shelter in time to eat.”
Eating was just swallowing a Daeyonghwan pill. Joo-oh laughed innocently as if he was happy with just that.
Only then did his stiff muscles relax and it became easier to move. Mu-hae periodically checked the radar and moved as far away from the Crystal Zone as possible.
“Do you think they’re all dead?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll check if there are any life signs in this area and stop by the shelter too.”
Apart from uttering hopeful words, he didn’t expect that there would be any miners left alive somewhere in the rugged forest.
Although they had cheap self-defense tools to protect their bodies, miners were not specialized in combat.
If they weren’t in the shelter by now, they would be lying dead somewhere.
Whether he knew it or not, Joo-oh nodded energetically.
Yeah. At least you’re comfortable. Mu-hae, who had seen him panic before, thought it was better this way and muttered to himself.
Two hours had passed since they had collected the remaining mining equipment in the area and wandered through the damp forest. Jin Mu-hae’s party finally explored the entire situation in the area and reached a nearby shelter.
The shelter looked rusty and broken, as if it had been neglected for a long time. The fact that the entrance was tightly closed was the only reassuring thing.
When he put his hand through the hole in the iron door and inserted the battery, the shelter door opened as if waiting for him.
Would anyone be left inside? If so, it was a hopeful sign. Judging from the fact that they hadn’t done any external surveillance or locked the door, either they had hardly ever used the shelter, or they were firmly believing that a rescue team would come.
Woo-oong-.
He faintly heard the sound of a machine running. The air also hardly smelled of stuffy dust.
Someone was indeed in the shelter. Joo-oh followed behind Mu-hae, who was leading the way, with quick steps.
As they passed the stairs and entered the center, turning on the lights that had been turned off, Pak! A shabby human hurriedly jumped out from behind the curtain.
“Who, who are you!”
Familiar language. A Goryeo City person. Prominent cheekbones that were dry and thin, slender eyes that drooped slightly with the impermanence of time.
“Mr. Ilgun. I’m from the Company.”
With a short introduction, the man slumped to the floor. The man’s trembling clothes were covered with dark red stains that had dried up.
“Ah… Ugh… From the Company…”
The man, who had collapsed as if falling, shed tears like he was vomiting. Perhaps because of the relief that he was now alive, he couldn’t even control his body and staggered, and was definitely a miner who had run away.
While Mu-hae left him alone and locked the door first, Joo-oh circled around the man who was sobbing quietly and looked around.
Then, as if doing him a favor, he took out a candy from his pocket and handed it to him. The man, who had received it in a daze, began to suck on the candy with his face covered in tears.
“Are you able to move? I’m planning to leave this area in a Small aircraft as soon as it gets light.”
“Yes. Yes! My limbs are intact!”
As if afraid that they would leave him behind, Ilgun jumped up and stomped his feet. Finally coming to his senses, he sat down on the cot with a long sigh.
“There are a few mining equipment missing in the Crystal Zone. Did you take them?”
“No. I didn’t have the mind to… But I did bring the Blue Energy I mined. I thought that would make them come to help me…”
“Did the remaining two get hurt while Blue Mining?”
“Kuh-huh, it was almost over… One guy’s head just flew off in an instant, and it was a mess in the blink of an eye. I’m sure we followed all the procedures and started.”
Safety rules such as parking the aircraft far away, minimizing noise, checking the radar, and waiting for 20 minutes before starting mining were just measures to increase the success rate.
It does not guarantee 100 percent the safety of the miners. That’s why it’s a job that’s used and discarded like a disposable item. Like a cheap noise drone.
The loss of life was unfortunate, but it was fortunate that Ilgun survived. Mu-hae, recalling his callous feelings, unfolded his pad.
“I’ll report it formally when I get back, but just in case, you’ll have to fill out the temporary investigation items.”
A report form that briefly entered how the incident occurred around what time and day was unfolded in front of the man’s eyes.
It was a bit harsh for someone who hadn’t even recovered from the shock of the accident. But if he couldn’t even endure this much, he couldn’t do a job like a miner.
“By the way, the Company urgently organized the data regarding this incident and discovered one suspicious matter.”
“Yes… Yes?”
“Mr. Kim Jo-seong. You answered so well to the unfamiliar name of Ilgun.”
At the subtle voice, the hand that had been waving on the pad stopped. The man slowly raised his head and looked up at Mu-hae.
A tall height that obscured the light, broad shoulders. Eyes that seemed to have no emotion and even felt oppressive.
The complexion that had been slowly returning as he put something sweet in his mouth disappeared in an instant. Thud. The slightly smaller candy rolled down from his pale blue lips.
“That’s, just, just because I was so surprised… I was surprised and scared…”
“Do you know that the area within a 300-meter radius of this shelter is a newly recorded Aberrant occurrence area? It’s hard to stay here for long with only a little bit of supplies.”
“No! Please, take me with you. Take me, please!”
Ilgun clung to him with tears in his eyes, even though he had never said he would leave him behind.
The Company wouldn’t even care if a disposable worker had a past or a future, so seeing him fall for these words so easily, he must be quite self-conscious.
“What are you doing here, a person who was processed as missing a long time ago?”
“I didn’t do it with bad intentions! I just made a big mistake… I couldn’t handle it…”
Ilgun wrung his hair, which was starting to fall out sparsely, and knelt down. After repeating an apology to someone he didn’t know who he was apologizing to, he stammered and told the hidden story.
“I was just going to use it for a while and put it back. If I refilled it without anyone knowing, it would be the same… But how would I know that it wasn’t the company’s official funds but slush funds, me. Waaah… I returned the money! I really did! But I knew they would retaliate, so I ran away, but I didn’t have the money or courage to go to another city, so I was just trying to avoid it for a few years, but…”
He didn’t have any family to support or find him, and he didn’t have any close friends to take him in, so he had been living in slums with a temporary identity he got from Sakdal.
Mu-hae’s eyes slowly turned away at the story that made his hopes, which he had had just in case, deflate.
Joo-oh, who met his gaze, was also shaking his head. It didn’t seem like a lie. No matter how he looked at it, he didn’t seem to be a person related to West Wind, let alone Return flight.
Damn it. He came all the way here and struck out. If he took the mined Blue Energy, he would get a good reward, but there was no luck in killing two birds with one stone.
Joo-oh gave Ilgun, who was half out of his mind from the series of shocks and was even telling stories from his childhood, another round candy.
It was the one he had dropped earlier. It must have been covered in dust, but it was a consideration that was hard to tell whether it was kind or cruel.
“So now there’s only one left?”
“Probably. There’s almost no record left of that person.”
The last missing person that they haven’t been able to get any information on yet is a woman named Kang Ju-seo. Like the first person, she disappeared while heading to another city, but there were no records of Aberrant or crime-related accidents near that date.
“Is she dead?”
“I don’t know.”
She may have left this world like others, or she may have run away and be alive somewhere.
Until he came here, he thought it was closer to the former, but after meeting a survivor who was alive and sucking on candy like this, his thoughts changed a little.
Maybe she is also living a new life under a different identity. With plenty of assets, she is now continuing the forgotten Return flight research alone…
“Let’s eat.”
Joo-oh rattled his bag and took out a half-empty medicine bottle. He looked like he would be happy with this fake meal as long as he could eat it with Jin Mu-hae.