WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ The Little Prince in the Ossuary

Chapter 125

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April Vengeance (13)

Mosquitoes that landed on mutants died. Animals that fed on infected corpses came down with stomach trouble. Their filthy blood and flesh were toxic. What did that do to humans? No one knew. No one was willing to eat it, and human testing was out of the question.

Thoughts raced through his mind.

Its intelligence was far too high to call it a mutant. Around the Eta (η) Ghoul range, some could manage basic vocabulary. Even then, it was just mimicry of human speech. A complete sentence was impossible.

And the man still retained memories from when he was alive. He recognized the boy's face and said his name.

If he was not a mutant, then this had to be the result of eating what should never be eaten. Declining intelligence and rotting skin. How much had he eaten? How long had it taken for symptoms to appear? The second question mattered most. If his mind was still deteriorating, that rotten man could snap at any moment.

Even now.

He could not move around carrying a time bomb. But killing him was also a problem. He was an important specimen.

He had to subdue him. Quietly. One clean strike should do it. Gyeoul approached the man. A hand reached out, as if accepting kindness, as if offering trust. That was the opening. He held back his strength, but not his intent. A blurred fist lashed out.

Crack!

'That reaction speed...!'

It hit, but not the vital point he wanted. The man rolled away in pain on pure instinct. He was faster than expected, and Gyeoul missed his chance to grab him. Crash! The rotten man knocked over a display case. He dodged with inhuman speed and crashed into more things, making even more noise. Then he cried out through sobs.

"It huuurts! It hu-urts! Whyyy, why, why did you hit me? Huh? Whyyy did you hiiit meee-!"

A chorus of shrieks answered him. Monsters had heard the commotion and were rushing in as a pack. Gyeoul frowned and fired his rifle at the man. Bang, bang. Just two shots. Both calves tore open. Not fatal. He had no intention of killing an important specimen. Pain was enough as long as it kept him from running during the fight.

He would finish this fight, stop the bleeding with First Aid, and worry about dragging him later. Battle was already at his doorstep. First, he had to knock the man out.

"Aaaaaaaah! Blood! Blood! It hurts! L-look! I-I'm bleeding hereee!"

The man screamed. His ugly face twisted with sheer terror. He hurled a display case at Gyeoul. Clumsy attack. Gyeoul slipped aside with half a step, and in that opening the man smashed reinforced glass with panicked punches. His forearms were soon covered in blood. Maybe he thought that was better than relying on his ruined legs. He ran on both arms instead. That also caught Gyeoul off guard.

Then he bolted out of the kiosk. Not away from mutants, but toward them.

Darkness flashed. Muzzle flash. A precise shooting rampage that burned through three 30-round magazines in sixteen seconds. From the direction Gyeoul aimed after charging out, the plague pack could not move a single step forward. They were pushed back instead. Their numbers had already been thinned. At full strength, they would have pushed through by sheer mass.

Gyeoul still had not fully adapted to his upgraded combat skills. How far could he go, and where was the limit? The line was still unclear. Power you could not control was a dangerous tool.

Even so, this fight was manageable. He had hidden in the kiosk to keep the rotten man safe. In the middle of a pitched battle, he had not been confident he could protect that man too. At the time, he had thought he was only a survivor.

Inside the line he had forced back with the barrage from level 14 「Firearms Mastery」, his personal combat gear was still where he had dropped it in a hurry. Gyeoul broke through to that point. Aside from a few stragglers, the open area was little more than a field of corpses. Running over the soft ground was not difficult. It was the effect of stacked corrections.

For mutants, it was the opposite. The terrain worked against them. Hard to keep speed, hard to keep balance. Their sense of balance was already worse than a human's. As they kept tripping and falling, Gyeoul poured overwhelming firepower into them. The more he fired, the better the ground became for him. For mutants, it was practically a swamp made of piled bodies. Shell casings spilled out in a steady metallic stream. Heat haze and smoke rose under the barrel cover. He quickly pulled out a canteen and poured water over it. Tsss. The boiling hiss vanished in an instant.

Dozens of magazines still remained in his pack. He had plenty of grenades too.

'Can't lose him. And he can't die.'

Gyeoul tracked the fleeing man with his eyes, then froze in confusion. The mutants were not attacking the rotten man. They only bared their teeth and charged at Gyeoul. Using his arms as legs, the man crossed straight through the plague swarm and disappeared from sight.

Did they see him as one of their own? Gyeoul had thought he was not a mutant.

He pushed the confusion aside and scattered three grenades and a flashbang almost at once. Even rough throws landed where needed thanks to the 「Throwing」 correction. Three seconds of burning fuse. Gyeoul put three shots into the nearest three enemies, then dropped flat and covered his eyes and ears.

The blast was a resonance that shook him to the bone. The vibration was strong enough to make his molars throb.

Gyeoul sprang up at once. A hand was right in front of him. He grabbed it and snapped it hard. Then he stomped down on the shoulder, crushed it, and kicked the head away.

About twenty died to the grenades. Bodies had blocked most of the fragments. Even the survivors struggled to stay on their feet. The overlapping indoor blasts and violent flash had done their work. Gyeoul calmly shot them down, one after another. Sharp gunshots rang out, followed by a high whine in his ears.

Just when he thought he had nearly cleared them, a new wave rushed in. It looked like the ones on the fourth floor had come down too. He was in a tight spot, but then he heard pounding from the ceiling and changed his mind. He grabbed his pack with one hand. With the other, he split nine shots while pressing himself to the wall. Getting cornered would be dangerous, but there was a vent here.

He pressed the pistol to the vent and fired several rounds into it. He was firing so whatever was inside would hear him. He switched weapons immediately and changed the rifle magazine. One of the few drum mags.

'These might be hard to use later.'

High-capacity magazines jammed more easily. Better to use them while the rifle was still in good shape.

Kyaaaak!

In the middle of a twenty-round burst, what he had been waiting for popped out. Gyeoul caught it from the corner of his eye and grabbed it. If he smashed it, fluid would burst everywhere, so he crushed it with grip strength instead. Crunch. The soft bones of the fetal mutant caved in. He threw the swelling body like a bomb. The living bomb flew straight, struck the ceiling, and burst over the mutants' heads.

Raw screams erupted from the crowd. Gyeoul cut down the front rank first. As expected, the ones behind flailed at empty air. Many had damaged eyes. Faces were melting in patches. The intact ones crashed into the broken ones.

Thump-thump-thump. Small creatures that did not understand the situation were closing in through the vent one after another. The count came from linked 「Combat Sense」 and 「Insight」, plus warnings from 「Survival Instinct」. Six, with no gap between them.

A little short, but... Gyeoul measured the remaining distance of the corridor.

Soon, small monsters began dropping from the ceiling. Their jumping power was absurd for their size. They lunged at Gyeoul like projectiles. But their mouths were small. Even while chattering, they were easy to dodge and grab. Judging by how they struggled when caught, they could not self-detonate either.

New mutant types were always functionally unbalanced. If they became enhanced mutants, what would they turn into?

Gyeoul whipped the one in his hand hard. Snap. Its neck broke from that alone. He dodged or shoved aside the others still hopping toward him, then 「Threw」 the swelling corpse. Only after he killed and threw the other five did the first one finally explode. Boom! Boom! Acid blasts erupted one after another at chandelier height.

Then he resumed fire. He cleared out the spaces the explosions had not reached first. As always, the key in a fight was making space.

Gyeoul slipped into the space he had created. Blinded, burning creatures reached for him. Between those grasping hands lay a narrow, precarious path. In that path, he removed only the real threats.

Blind mutants could identify hosts only by smell and sound. They grabbed one another and tried to sniff. Then one would shriek and let go. Many grabbed the same target again moments later. Even intact ones got snared in the mess. They could not break free from the web of rotten hands, and only glared at Gyeoul while screaming. Kyaaaak!

Rat-tat-tat! The instant gunfire rang out was the most dangerous moment. The living, writhing path tightened shut. He had to move as soon as he fired. If he stayed, he would be buried or torn apart by bites. 「Close Combat」 was useful here. Amid the constant strikes, he was also adapting to his enhanced skills.

Ah, right. I had this. Gyeoul pulled out the thing bothering him in his pocket. He flicked it out and shot it with a single round. Clang, shattering glass. Perfume sprayed everywhere. A harsh scent spread fast. The mutants' sense of smell was badly disrupted. The web became even stickier.

At last, Gyeoul escaped the screaming maze. It was the shipboard casino, drenched in red light. He walked backward and took careful aim at the intact ones. Bang! Bang! The tangled mass heard the shots and changed direction. It still moved at a hopelessly snarled pace. His targets were the ones still looking straight at him. Shot after shot rang out. Beside him stood a broad board and a round wheel. Shell casings bounced into the roulette wheel. A clear metallic sound rolled across all thirty-eight numbers. Gyeoul tilted his head. A switch was mounted on the side of the wheel.

He recalled old footage he had seen through CCTV. During real gambling, the wheel was spun by hand. Even when no one was playing, it still turned for display.

Gyeoul stood there and emptied one magazine, making sure shell casings poured into the roulette.

Then, once only the blind ones remained, he flipped the switch. Ting, ting, ting. If it were a ball, it would have dropped into one number and stopped. A pile of shell casings did not. They kept bouncing without pause, clear ringing sounds that drew in the sightless mutants.

'At least let this draw as much attention as the commotion downstairs...'

A luxury cruise was a five-star hotel at sea. The soundproofing was solid. Even blind ones would become a headache if they forced their way down during the survivor escape.

Gyeoul withdrew quietly. Mutants with their facial skin melting off in strips gathered around the roulette board. Their pain-wracked bodies buckling and jerking looked almost like gamblers leaping around in excitement.

Now it was time to chase the man who had run.

The 「Tracking」-enhanced trail was a series of wet red handprints. Blood from his legs must have soaked his hands too. He had run this far practically upside down. It looked ridiculous, but in reality it was threatening. His physical ability was above a Beta Ghoul. His balance in particular was at a level rarely seen in mutants.

Gyeoul poured water over the barrel as he followed the trail. A faint hiss of steam dispersed. The short, intense fight had put heavy strain on it. He would probably have to replace the barrel when he got back.

It likely had not gone as far as rifling collapse. 「Combat Sense」 affirmed that judgment.

The trail led down the central stairs.

In the breathing room granted by silence, Gyeoul once again considered the man's identity.

A monster with intelligence and emotion. On the emotional side, it reminded him of an unsettling memory. Humpback, one of the special mutants. They had fought, but that monster had clearly shown fear, as if combat was not why it existed. The large amount of pus was another common point between that old monster and this man.

No, too hasty. There was not enough evidence to conclude that. Even ordinary mutants oozed pus. It was a product of immune rejection.

It might even be a clue to a vaccine. Normally, a Morgellons vaccine could not be made without 「Plague Immunity」... but who knew. This world changed in especially extreme ways.

Either way, capturing him alive was best. Gyeoul focused on the present. The blood trail was fading. That meant the filthy man's bleeding was slowing. Yet during the entire pursuit, there was no sign he had stopped even once. His recovery was beyond human too.

Tracking posed no problem. It was a single path. The center of deck 4 was open, and the fore and aft were still blocked by bulkheads.

As soon as he entered deck 3, a restaurant came into view. Of all the multi-level restaurants, this was the largest and most luxurious. Directly across from it was the Grand Galley.

The rotten man stood in the middle of the wide hall. But he was not alone.

Gyeoul said under his breath.

Isn't this a bit too much?

============================ Author's Afterword ============================

#Orthodox Murim

I had always wanted to write an orthodox murim story someday. Not new-murim. But after looking at N Store sales trends, I started thinking it probably would not work...

#Q&A

Q. OnionMushroom-nim: @Eomeot. Did they find an infected person with an ego...?

A. Well now. Did they? Heh heh. Ketaro-nim wrote a long comment about that man's identity, and some parts were right while other parts were not.

Q. PAM-nim: @Korea, well... when you look north, it would not even be strange if things collapsed any day. This incident was really interesting too. The news felt like watching a drama or a movie.

A. Yeah, this is a very hard era to live in as an author. Reality keeps outdoing fiction... though if I had written "the president was being controlled behind the scenes by a shaman!" before this whole incident, people would have called it a story that threw plausibility in the trash. Hahaha.

Q. qoewh-nim: @Author-nim, I have a question. For AI-generated characters, the emotional expressions are way too vivid. No matter how amazing the Control AI is, something feels off. So here is my question! In worlds run by players other than Gyeoul, are emotional expressions this vivid implemented too? If yes, how many?

A. Hmm... answering this is a spoiler, but it is not that important, so...

No.

Gyeoul's TOM grade and aptitude are in a class of their own. The problem is that it is talent brought into bloom by his environment.

Q. qoewh-nim: @My guess is the original creators are not actually out there frying chicken, they are just pretending while monitoring everything, right? Aren't they the hidden masterminds?

A. Heh heh heh. No. They are not.

Q. Nesstor-nim: @Unless the geography of the Korean Peninsula gets mentioned, Korea...? What place is that again? (laugh) A. Well. Who knows. Heh heh.

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