Chapter 54 – [What Is Life, Just Live It the Way You Live It]

The container truck drove for over an hour with us on board and eventually came to a stop.

“Roughly, the location is out of Gangwon-do… Around Guri-si? I don’t know the name of the town, but it looks like a quiet place.”

A human experiment was conducted and the subject even escaped, but in order to keep silent, there must be fewer witnesses. So, of course, there is a need for a pure research facility with no private houses nearby.

It smells like water. Judging from the location, it is the smell from the Han River.

Why is the lab close to the river? Are you trying to supply drinking water?

Anyway, we arrived at the lab. I unfolded my senses and grasped the rough structure of the institute.

And I was quite surprised to see that facilities were built tens of meters underground. No, what kind of Umbrella are these bastards? Why are you trying to make Raccoon City in Guri?

There seems to be 20 floors underground. It is the law to dig underground before arguing against building laws.

“I’ll go from here, so you go”

“Sah, are you saving me?”

I gestured to the man who had been my informant and camouflage party to get out of the way.

“I must have told you the information well. I would have used it as it was to be used.

“Oh no! I’m going, I’m going!”

The man trembled and took a sneaky step backwards to escape at any moment.

Wouldn’t it be unfair to kill everyone else and save this one?

Well, I’m a guy who thinks living is more painful. I’ll bet that guy will commit his suicide not long after running away.

Everyone else is dead, but do you think you’re the only one left alive and in a good state of mind? Even if you are a Force user, your mentality is a separate issue in the face of murder.

In the meantime, I will have nightmares and suffer as much as possible before committing suicide. The most painful way to die.

The man ran away and I put my research ahead. Before rushing in, he put on the Raccoon Man mask again and contacted Shion.

“Oh, it’s me”

[Did you kill someone again?]

“…..Sorry”

[Okay. Even if you die anyway, cheap people don’t care much]

Even if he said that, Shion has a soft heart for a Transcendentalist. He has sympathy for those who die because they deserve it. So she rarely hurts others herself.

So killing and harming people is my specialty. If Shion had tried to solve this problem, she would have put a lot of time, money, and effort into it.

“We’ll be rushing to the lab soon. Did you find this location?”

[There is one place registered as a laboratory by name at this location. It’s not that big, and it’s not that small, but there’s nothing special about the ongoing research.]

“Isn’t it also a research institute affiliated with Leverage?”

[That’s right]

Leverage is a company headquartered in the United States. Perhaps this lab is just one of many branches, and if you want to hit it, you’ll have to hit the US headquarters.

But that doesn’t work. Even if they did a human experiment, it was an American company. That would be considered an act of terrorism and could make the country itself hostile.

Of course, I don’t think I’m going to lose even if it’s the United States, which is a great power. It’s just that in the process, most of Zion’s wealth will be lost, and the social situation will collapse as well… Anyway, the Earth will be eaten up.

Let’s think about the next story later and solve the problem in front of us.

“Are there any precautions before entering?”

[If hacking is done internally, I can also steal information. If you can’t pierce it from the outside, you can pierce it from the inside.]

“Aha? Let’s dig inside?”

Shion is vulnerable to skills combined with superpowers, but that means you can’t enter from the outside, not that you can’t enter if you open the door from the inside.

If you try to hack inside, Shion can collect information about this place.

[If you go inside, there must be a computer for research or analysis. I don’t know what type of computer it is, but first set the user rights…]

“Quick and easy”

[After getting permission to connect with a researcher, insert the USB attached to the left ear of the mask]

“OK”

I sneakily touched the left part of the ear part above the head of the mask. The triangular ears turned around and were eventually pulled out. At the end of it, there is a terminal like a USB, so you can plug it in.

[By the way, are you just going in? It will be mistaken for terrorism later]

“The place I usually mess around with is down here, so if they can say it’s terrorism, try it.”

The place I will destroy is not the camouflage lab on the ground, but the secret lab in the basement.

I messed up there, but you’re going to call it terrorism? What’s broken? If you go into it, the trouble will be that way. Not me

I climbed over the fence and broke into the laboratory.

Brother is here, bitch.

*        *    *

According to my gut feeling, the only way to get down to the secret laboratory in the basement was by elevator. Up to the 1st and 2nd floors of the basement, it looked like the area of ​​a camouflage laboratory, but there was a secret laboratory further underground after a while.

It must be a way that you can’t go to the secret lab without rough authentication. But isn’t that it?

“When the body is bad, the head suffers.”

I sneaked in and forced the door open in front of the elevator. And down there, you can see a space deep enough to be invisible, about the first or second basement floor.

He tossed his body and fell down. After a few seconds of flight time, I landed on top of the elevator car.

We arrived at a fairly deep place, probably already at the bottom. Roughly a third of the total secret lab. It’s still the beginning, but from here you can see the way down further.

After breaking the ceiling of the elevator car and entering the elevator, I squeezed open the door again and entered the secret laboratory in earnest.

It has a pretty neat design inside. The aisle with white and light sky blue as the base welcomes me, but the feeling is the same as dirty.

Let’s start by finding a computer. Before that, there was a need to temper one researcher.

There were not as many people as expected. No, people were mainly in the deep lab further down. There are few people on the upper floors, so it seems that there is not much to gain than expected.

I have two purposes for coming here.

One is to get information about these guys first.

The other is to exterminate all of these children.

“There’s no need to hide to eradicate”

An assassination is an assassination if all the witnesses are killed by accident.

After passing through the hallway for a bit, I looked up at the ceiling and there was a surveillance camera. Maybe it was on the elevator side, but seeing that there is no response, is it managed by the laboratory on the ground? Anyway.

I made a gesture of slitting my neck with my thumbs saying that you guys were fucked and went further inside.

“Huh? Who…?”

And I met a person for the first time in this institute. The reason I don’t call them human is because most of them here don’t deserve to be called human.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

He looked at my face, then the Raccoon Man mask, and questioned. I quickly ran over, grabbed his hair, and hit the wall a few times to make it easier to talk.

“Uh, uh…”

“Here’s an employee? Do you have access to computers used in the facility?”

“Well, that’s what the researcher has…”

“Okay?”

Go by go!!

I just scratched his face against the wall. A red mark drawn in a straight line is drawn on the wall. At first I tried to scream, but then it subsided and I lost consciousness.

If you ask if it’s not serious, don’t ask the opposite.

Do you think the bastard who works here doesn’t know anything?

I don’t know if it’s a camouflage lab on the ground, but the guy who works in a secret lab underground? I’d rather believe the story that grown-ups still have innocence.

Around the time I thought about what to do with a half-corpse. Alarms began to sound throughout the laboratory.

Ah, now it’s the beginning in earnest.

Giing, knock!!

The covers on the ceiling and walls were opened, and equipment to repel intruders protruded from inside. What appears to be a gun is pointed at this side, and red dots are visible all over my body through a laser sight.

Do-do-do-do-do-do!!!

And without giving a moment’s delay, they shoot. The bullets fired from all directions were easy to make with one person and a rag, and the body of the man I was holding turned from a half-corpse to just a corpse.

The bullets used were excellent in anti-personnel power, and the impact was no joke. But it wasn’t enough to break through my force field. I left the mangled corpse and walked down the bullet-infested hallway.

Do-do-do-do-do!!

If it was threatening, I would smash it, but I didn’t have to worry about not being able to penetrate my force field. Just wasting bullets.

[Information to the staff inside the institute. An intruder is present. Modify boundary level from C to B]

Broadcasts reverberating throughout the laboratory signaled a higher level of alert. And the barrage of bullets stopped.

It seems that he decided that the gun was useless. In a normal world, guns are the pinnacle of weapons, but here it is different.

Even if they mainly use cold weapons, those who can exert greater power than firearms are Force users. General Force users are said to be weak against firearms, but that doesn’t mean they are weak.

I felt signs of rushing in this direction and decided to move to achieve my two goals.

Even without a blueprint of the building, the structure can be roughly grasped, and the facility is largely divided into three zones.

Up to the upper floors can be reached by elevator, but to go to the middle floors, you have to go through the passage in the upper floors, and to go to the lower floors, you have to go through the passage in the middle floors again.

If you destroy everything, you don’t have to worry about the passage, but I need to collect information first, so I can’t do that.

My place is at the bottom of the upper level. There is a passage leading to the middle layer here.

“I’m a bit uneasy about why they made it into such a cumbersome structure…”

Even if information leakage is a problem, the structure is too inefficient due to the nature of the research institute. However, if an intruder enters, it will be difficult to break in and escape.

Full-fledged research facilities seem to be located from the middle floor. I quickly found an elevator that went down to the middle floor.

Likewise, I forcibly opened the door and headed down. From here, you can go down to the bottom of the middle layer.

Now the middle class. There are quite a lot of people here. There are researchers and there are force users. Among them, Force users came up from above and below to pursue me.

“Hey, they look like they have a lot of money. They hired so many Force users.”

They’re probably nominally hired by the lab for research, but in reality, most of them do dirty work like this.

At the end of the straight aisle, a team of Force users blocked the way as they spurred the door. Then they found me and each took up a weapon.

“There it is! Raccoon Man!”

“Oh, what a welcome welcome!”

The number is ten. If you look at the kids I saw at Mt. Duryu, it looks like there are 10 people in a team. Given the size of the squad, it is estimated that there will be a few more teams.

While blocking the straight path with a shield, a force user with a long-distance system characteristic or weapon attacked from behind. There were simple fireballs, but there were also cold weapons like arrows.

When something like a fireball lands near me, boom! And exploded A large portion of the hallway blazed and arrows flew towards my head, cutting through the flames behind them. I caught it reflexively, but before long, electric shocks were discharged in all directions.

“I’ve been curious about it since long ago, but why don’t Force users use guns?”

I’m not strictly a Force user. So I don’t know what a Force user would know. A force user who uses a gun… There is one person in the US who uses a firearm, but I haven’t heard of anyone else.

Quaang!!

I rush at them and push the guys with shields all the way to their shields. In an instant, the formation collapses and the rear personnel behind are defenseless.

Trampling on the limbs of the fallen shield soldier to incapacitate them and punching those behind them.

The first one was the one who threw the fireball.

“Gagging?!”

His chest caved in and he vomited his blood. Hemoptysis is usually a common occurrence in fiction, but in reality, internal bleeding is quite serious.

After defeating all the rest, I finally grabbed the force user holding the bow by the collar and asked what I was curious about.

“Hey, do you use a bow instead of a gun? Isn’t a gun better?”

“Uh… Huh?”

“Honestly, a gun is better than a bow.”

What should I say? The bow has a traditional and antique kanji, but the gun has a tek-tical kanji. Personally, I like guns more.

So, there was a time when I held a machine gun in both hands and fired like Rambo in the past.

“Well, that’s right, not everyone can put enough force into something as small as a bullet…”

“Ah, was there such an unexpected problem?”

If you think about it, the original species disposal team used firearms, but that was because the original species did not have the same physical resistance as the enemy species, so it was effective.

Intruders are first filtered out by attacking with firearms with the defense system as before, and if they still cannot be repulsed, the second force user is put in to deal with it. Honestly, a sword wielded by a force user might be more effective than a gun.

“Thank you for answering, I’ll kill you nicely instead”

“Now, wait. Save.”

With a thump, he twisted his neck and killed him instantly. My nerves are gone, but it won’t hurt.

After killing a team of Force users, he moved on again. And I found a door that was quite dubious.

Inside… There are people’s reactions, but they don’t want to come out of the room? Most of the people who hear the alarm and avoid it are researchers, and the people who come to me are Force users, but this person feels confined to the room even though he is a Force user.

After breaking down the door and entering, there were doors at regular intervals on both floors of the corridor, like a psychiatric ward. The door was thick and strong even from the outside, and even the small window on the door was made of thick iron bars. It’s like a prison

When I pressed the button next to it, one of them responded. With a beep, the window on the door opened and I could see inside.

There was a person inside, but there was no active life response. It was as if they were alive, so they would not resist if they were killed, and only people who were likely to die were sitting against the wall. Didn’t react even though I was watching.

What on earth do you do to change a person like that?

First of all, the people here seem to be victims, not officials, so we decided to rescue them. However, in my view, there is no point in saving people who do not respond. Even if you save a subject who has no desire to live and let him escape, he will end up going to a mental hospital.

It is unclear whether intelligence remains in the first place.

“Hey mister! Hey!”

“……..”

There was not even a reaction. Seeing that there is no response to the call, I don’t have the will to live, so I think it’s better to die here.

Just in case, I checked all the rooms in this area. Those who were imprisoned did not discriminate between men and women. Roughly, the sex ratio was half and half, but there was no one who was sane among them.

What can I say when I look at the people I met who escaped from department store fires and kidnappings…It was because of a lack of firm will? I can’t judge, but it’s the look of a person who has abandoned all hope and gave up.

In the meantime, I found the only survivor in a room.

“Hello?”

“……!!”

When I asked, the woman who had been silent raised her head and looked at me. Then she hurried to the door and knocked on the bars.

“Hey, hey?!

“…Ah, why are you telling me you ate fish instead of saving someone?”

“Save me anyway! I’ve been kidnapped here!”

“Get away from the door for now. I’ll smash it.”

The door was very thick. It was made of a special metal, not iron, and made it almost an inch thick, making it impossible for most Force users to escape. Maybe the walls too.

This time, he slammed the door a little harder. A heavy metal sound was heard and all the security was smashed and the door was completely shattered.

With the appearance of an almost bomb exploded, the woman trapped inside came out.

He didn’t seem very old. At least the same age as Ruri? At best, they are new adults and young, they are high school students.

“Mr. Raccoon Man, did you come to save us?”

“No, I’m just here to kill the bad guys”

“Sir, can’t you just say that you came to save me there?”

“Lying is bad. But how old are you?”

“……I’m a high school sophomore.”

“Still a kid”

Are underage Seeing minors kidnapped in places like this gave me a glimpse of their influence.

This child is also a force user. It looks like it hasn’t been a few months since he woke up, but the amount of force he has seemed to be more than Baekri.

“How did you get here?”

“I don’t know. I was walking down the street at night when strange men suddenly kidnapped me… When I woke up, I was here.”

“How long have you been kidnapped?”

“Not that long. Two or three weeks?”

Almost a month. Perhaps I am a child kidnapped after the Yeongdeungpo department store incident.

“What about your parents?”

“……No. I’m from an orphanage facility.”

“During the Great Depression?”

“No, after that”

Twenty years ago was a time of confusion when both enemy species and force users appeared at the same time. Naturally, there were many casualties at that time, and a separate national facility was built for the orphans that resulted.

Although it is now in a decreasing trend, orphans are still occasionally created by hostile species. Some of the 20-year-olds in today’s society are from institutions.

“Are you kidnapping an orphan who doesn’t have parents and doesn’t have to think about the next thing? Look what these bastards are doing?”

“Mister, why don’t we escape first? I hear people rushing here…”

It seems that the sound of footsteps heard from a little far away can be heard by strengthening the body.

I have one bag, but I don’t care too much. Same as one or two

“I’ll steal the information here, and then I’ll leave.”

“Uh…If that’s the case, it should be lower than here. Sometimes it’s an experiment or something and I’ve been dragged away.”

“Experiment?”

“Yeah…… I gave a strange injection or something.”

There were needle marks on her arms. Force users have high body regeneration, so those marks disappear quickly, but reddish marks and discolored blood vessels around them were visible, as if a rejection reaction had occurred.

I held her wrist and quietly looked inside her body.

……Under the Gaia Force, there was an alien aura. It’s not that much, but it’s dangerous if left alone.

I decided to focus my mind for a moment and get rid of that energy. Thinking about this, I think it was a good idea to start the Infinity Force Core. No matter how different the energy, the Infinity Force Core accepts and absorbs all abilities. And change it with my own power.

I absorbed all the foreign energy in her body and let go of her wrist. Taking a deep breath, she expressed relief at her lighter body.

“Huh? Huh? Mister, I’m feeling better now. What did you do?”

“I absorbed a strange energy inside of you.

The heterogeneous aura within her was similar to the power of the enemy species rather than the Gaia Force. What did they say…Raph Energy? They say that the power of the enemy species is called that.

You’ll have to look into the research materials to find out the details, but if you fuse the power of a force user and an enemy species, quite frightening results will emerge.

Enemy species do not suffer from physical attacks, but force users can attack.

Force users beat enemy species, but firearms work.

So, what if you mix half and half enemies and force users?

Physical attacks do not work, but a perfect body with superhuman abilities like a force user is born.

I don’t know what to use such an existence for, but at the point of human experimentation, it was eliminated. First, hack the information about this facility and then find the person in charge. It’s probably at the very bottom.

“Once I’m done with my business, let’s escape together. Don’t worry, I’ll take you home.”

“…That house is a facility.”

“Who doesn’t know? I’m from a facility. I’m a cheap kid who gives me 20,000 won on the day I go on a school trip, but it’s better than here.”

“Ah, we took care of 30,000 won.”

“Your facility is better.”

Since they were from the same facility, he put on a relieved expression as if the tension had eased a bit. Even though she looks tired and anxious, she has a pretty face, just like there are many handsome and beautiful women among Force users.

Compared to Ruri of a similar age… Ruri has a cute puppy-like vibe, but this one has a kitten-like vibe.

“What’s your name? You need to know what to call it.”

I asked her name and she answered.

“I am Cheon Ye-jin.”