WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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Chapter 157: A Bridge Too Far (5)

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Good. Including the area scattered by the torrent, a gap worth running through had opened.

Gyeoul threw away the empty magazine and jumped down.

“I’m going! Cover me!”

On the first step after landing, he inserted the rifle’s last magazine. The mutants that noticed prey had dropped among them reacted at once. They might lack finesse, but they were faster than humans. One even failed to control its own reaction and rolled the other way. Kyaaaak! Yellow teeth stood out against pale, rotting flesh. Gyeoul’s vision filled with creatures racing over the current.

He held the rifle in one hand. With the other, he swung the heavy crowbar. Whoosh! A Beta Ghoul twisted its upper body. The swing went wide. That was fine. It was an attack meant to be dodged. The ghoul lost its balance and tilted backward. Driven by fierce craving, it reached out toward Gyeoul.

It did not reach.

An inch to spare. The lowered crowbar caught behind its knee. He yanked hard. Passing the spinning monster, Gyeoul accelerated.

Countless charging feet threw up spray. A rainbow bloomed above the water. The rainbows overlapped, blocking Gyeoul’s path. It was a scrum of monsters. Gyeoul leaped and flattened himself. Shaaaak! He slid under the vicious hands of the starving plagues and swept through their legs. The impact of a fully armed boy toppled two mutants. He still had strength to spare. He was not buried under their rotten bodies.

He had to get up before his speed died. He shot the next one in the head. Tudududuk! Steam burst from the gun that had been submerged underwater. Its power had dropped, but the bullets were still powerful. The monster’s neck snapped around. Gyeoul’s heel caught on its toes. At the same time, Gyeoul struck the ground with both arms. Rising on inertia and recoil, he drove the crowbar into the head of the creature falling backward. He pulled with raw strength and used the momentum to recover his balance. The dead monster was flung away by the recoil. The ones approaching from the left tangled together. The Beta Ghoul gifted with a corpse roared savagely.

The next obstacle was a solar panel. Gyeoul jumped. He stepped on the center of one panel, then the edge of the next, then leaped to the panel after that. He ran along the edges as footholds. His acceleration was no different from running on flat ground. His body leaned forward.

Only the Beta Ghouls could come close to him there. Enhanced variants whose raw strength made even two of them difficult for Gyeoul to handle. They cleared the first panel easily. Their sense of balance, however, was no match for Gyeoul’s. The same was true for every mutant.

Bang! One that failed to slow down crashed into the next panel. Superhuman mass, superhuman speed. The support frame, assembled from steel beams, collapsed as a whole. Some stepped on the panels and slid. The rest passed through that space.

Behind them, panels collapsed one after another. They pushed forward while crushing their own kind to death.

A chorus of ragged breaths and shrieks closed in behind Gyeoul. Not all mutants were the same. A superior host formed the foundation of a superior mutant. So a gifted Beta Ghoul seemed able to rival the boy in a straight sprint. There was also the difference in gear and clothing. The boy was carrying half his body weight. The ghoul was naked.

Gyeoul spun around. Starting with his upper body, his whole body turned. He planted his foot, slid in the direction he had been running, and aimed his rifle from that position. Casings flew. An eyeball burst. It did not die. In agony, veins bulged across its whole body. It screamed while shedding bloody tears, then was struck and knocked down by its own kind charging in from behind. They trampled it wildly. Its scream sank underwater, bubbled, and went silent.

Tan Guosheng was busy protecting himself. Perhaps the rifle rounds had run out, because the officer was firing a pistol.

The equipment room was close now. The door was on the side. It was covered in old bloodstains. Gyeoul shot through the iron bolt. Then the door flew open. One must have been trapped inside. It was emaciated. Traces of wasting that even Metabolic Suppression had not fully stopped. Too close to dodge. No room to attack properly either.

‘The neck is too far.’

It barely failed to reach him. Even so, the lower jaw was in range. Gyeoul swung the crowbar in a half swing. Crack. The jaw fell away. Impact. He slammed into it with his whole body and killed its inertia. They flew together, overlapped. The thudding impact crushed it beneath him.

Kaaak, kak!

The monster could not get its bearings. Gyeoul’s vision spun too. He staggered once, got up, and crushed the prone monster’s throat with a forceful kick. Crunch. The cervical vertebrae shifted under his foot.

The room was not very large. It was filled with a low humming noise. Gyeoul could not tell which equipment was a transformer and which was a battery. He could not tell which cable was high-voltage either. Each line coming in from the panels probably had low voltage.

Mechanical knowledge could also be obtained through skill acquisition, but not right now. He did not have enough experience left.

Either way, to avoid electrocution, he had to climb somewhere. Even if his combat boots were insulated, that meant nothing when his whole body was soaked.

He kicked off the wall and hung from a ventilation duct. Twisting his body, he climbed onto the pipes along the ceiling. Several lines overlapped there, wide enough to support him. He could not see whether any part of them touched the floor. Still, even if the pipes themselves were metal, they were painted, so it seemed safe enough.

He searched for a thick cable. The muzzle wavered. His breath was still ragged from the sprint. But at this distance, it was not enough to throw off his aim.

Dududuk! Duduk! He severed every wire he could see lying shallowly submerged in the water. Steam kept rising from the barrel. Click, click. Hollow sounds echoed from the chamber. Mutants poured through the entrance. Gyeoul drew his pistol. Dudududuk! Falling casings splashed water droplets.

A Beta Ghoul leaped. At that moment, the rest that had not jumped began to convulse. He had hit the right thing. Gyeoul fired several more rounds. A machine with its supports knocked loose toppled over whole. From somewhere rose a sharp, savory smell. Pabak, pak. Sparks flew from the fallen machine.

Gyeoul flipped himself over. On pipes too narrow even to lie down on, the boy’s combat power was limited. Of course, the same was true for the ghoul. Every time he kicked, its head snapped back and drool spilled from its mouth. Crunch. Grrrk. It bit into the heel of his combat boot. Gyeoul shook it off with all his strength. Teeth tore free from the gums with a grinding crack. The fang remained stuck in the heel.

He felt a vibration. Stone dust poured from the anchor point. A melee between one armed soldier and one muscle-packed monster had loosened the screws. Gyeoul reflexively shut his eyes. Dust still got in, making the inside of his eyelids gritty. The creaking pipe finally fell. Clank, bang! Only one side seemed to remain fixed. On the pipe, now a twisted slope, the boy and the monster slid. He lost the pistol. He barely grabbed a protrusion. It was the fallen anchor point. The monster grabbed Gyeoul’s combat boot.

“Ugh!”

The boy felt his muscles convulsing on their own. Shaking, he looked back. The monster was in far worse shape than Gyeoul. White foam boiled from its mouth. One knee was touching the water’s surface.

His vision began to darken. A signal that he would soon lose control of his body.

No, he was already losing it in real time. The electrocution was indirect and incomplete, so he was only enduring it with his enhanced abilities.

Gyeoul dragged himself up with difficulty. The monster was still hanging from him. Getting out of the current came first. Even if the monster escaped with him, he would recover faster.

He squeezed his body through the supports attached to the ceiling. At that point, his vision stopped darkening. With strength that had not fully returned, Gyeoul kept climbing the pipes. The ghoul’s grip loosened. The hand that had refused to let go even while it foamed at the mouth had not been moved by the monster’s will. It had only been contraction from the electric shock.

When he shook his leg, it finally fell away. Water splashed noisily.

Cough, cough.

A cough forced out by spasms in his lungs. He had no time to think about whether the pain was real. He hated this feeling, yet it also felt strangely welcome. It had been a long time since the night by the lake, since he had been buried in the landslide.

His body quickly returned to normal. No immutable correction from the side effects of electrocution was detected. Full recovery would take a little more time, but by the time the water drained, enough strength and sensation had returned for ordinary combat.

Gyeoul climbed down carefully, stepping only where the water had drained. He recovered his pistol too.

The mutants had collapsed in all kinds of positions. Some corpses were discolored, but many looked relatively intact.

“Li! Are you all right?”

Tan Guosheng’s shout was excited. “Yes...” Gyeoul had been about to answer, but he closed his mouth and felt through his pocket. Turning so the officer could not see, he quickly took out the medicine and swallowed it. Crunch, crunch. The bitterness was familiar now. A scratchy unpleasantness crawled into the back of his throat like an insect.

‘Good thing no water got in.’

It was important, so he had kept it in his pocket and fastened it tightly.

If pressed, he figured he could claim his voice would not come out.

The officer came closer. Gyeoul put a hand on his knee and acted exhausted. He made his breathing irregular. Seeing this, Tan Guosheng knelt in a dry spot. The officer’s face was full of pure concern.

“Hey, stay with me! We did it! We did it! What am I supposed to do if something goes wrong with you now?”

“A little.”

After swallowing once, Gyeoul slowly straightened.

“I’m just a little tired.”

“Is that so? Are you sure you’re not hurt? You weren’t bitten anywhere?”

“I was bitten in one place.”

“What?!”

When the officer recoiled in horror, Gyeoul showed the combat boot. A white point stood out among the teeth marks. It was the corpse fiend’s fang, still stuck there. He twisted it out with a gloved hand. It was long and sharp, like a vampire’s. Curved inward, it looked as if it would be fatal if it caught flesh.

“What do you think? Would you like to keep it as a souvenir?”

“Idiot! Waterlogged brain! How can you joke about that? I thought you meant it!”

The officer shouted in fury, calling him an idiot with water in the brain. After huffing for a long while, Tan Guosheng looked up at the sky and began laughing like someone who had lost his mind.

“What is this? Why am I stopping halfway through being angry? Hm? Hahaha!”

After laughing for a long while, the officer looked at Gyeoul with tearful eyes.

“Amazing. You really are amazing. You never stop impressing me. Yes, I’ve seen something similar before. The famous Han Gyeoul. You were like that man.”

Gyeoul had expected this to come up someday. He showed faint displeasure.

“Why would you compare me to that greenhorn whose peach fuzz isn’t even gone yet?”

“...Hm?”

Gyeoul’s disguised face was rough, and the altered voice was extremely coarse. On top of that, there were the skill and decisiveness he had shown so far. Tan Guosheng shrank back.

“No, I only meant to praise you...”

“I don’t like seeing a man who has not even served one full year treated like a hero. My comrades and I fought for years in Iraq... Isn’t it laughable? Real veterans beg in the street while some lucky brat gets respect.”

That was Kurt Lee’s background. But it was not some absurd story he had invented. Despite America’s excellent veterans’ system, there were veterans who lived on the streets.

‘Rather than benefits being insufficient, it proves how severe the mental wounds of war are.’

Sergeant Elliot had said it before. Just hearing fireworks made his nerves stand on edge. And that was one of the milder cases. More than half of American combat veterans carried sedatives around with them.

Kurt Lee was only a fictional person. But if one day a veteran Gyeoul met for the first time hated him, he would not find it unexpected.

“Lieutenant Colonel. I have my pride too. Even if I’m only pretending to be a mercenary right now, I don’t believe I’m beneath him in skill or pride.”

“Ah...”

Had his disappointment in his homeland come through well enough? Gyeoul let his gaze turn cold. Tan Guosheng nodded fervently.

“You’re right. The achievements of some greenhorn from a small country like that must be mostly fabricated anyway. I acknowledge it. You are the real thing. Chinese blood will out, won’t it?”

“I may not look it, but I’m still American.”

“A person’s roots aren’t hidden by nationality. Does having citizenship change your parents too? If we make it back safely, I’ll tell you something very important. It won’t be a bad thing for you either.”

“...I’ll look forward to it. More importantly, I’d like to confirm the kills first. Some of these things may still be breathing.”

“Mm, yes. I suppose so.”

The naval officer showed delayed fatigue. The unease of thinking it was all over, only to realize something might still be left. Tan Guosheng took a golf club from the corpse of one mutant. It was in fairly good condition. It must have been something sold inside the store.

Even if they were confirming kills, they could not use guns.

For a while, only cracking sounds continued on the rooftop.

============================ Author’s Note ============================

#Research Errors

There are several errors, or descriptions that may possibly be errors, in this chapter.

1. Solar power transformers and storage batteries are actually rarely installed in rooftop equipment rooms. They do exist, but at least among the big-box stores in downtown Alameda, there are none. They draw the cables into the building interior instead.

2. There is no reason for pipes like the ones described in the work to exist in a rooftop management room. I would appreciate it if you could consider this a liberty taken for the story’s development.

3. I wrote that ground-fault circuit interrupters usually do not activate for leakage caused by flooding, but apparently a patent exists that makes them activate. I was not able to confirm whether this is common.

4. The Chinese military grenades were described based on older models. In the case of the newer model, Type 86, the charge is only 40 grams, so... For now, I did confirm that the older model itself is still in use.

#Research

I will also briefly mention the research.

Some readers may find it strange that bullets could not break the water pipes and that grenades had difficulty destroying the water tank...

Based on 7.62 mm rifle rounds from World War II, which were stronger than modern rifle rounds and had 4,000 J of kinetic energy at 100 yards, firing at a 1/4-inch armor plate, 0.63 centimeters thick, penetrates 0.1 inches, or 0.25 centimeters.

Therefore, I judged that cast iron about 2 centimeters thick with water inside should normally deflect ordinary rifle rounds.

The international standard I referenced was 1200 mm in diameter with a pipe thickness of 18.7 mm, just short of 2 centimeters. Tan Guosheng’s calculation only produced an approximate value.

For the water tank’s material, reinforcement, insulation, stainless panel thickness, and so on, I referred to materials from the Korea Metal Tank Industry Cooperative. However, since these materials are from 2008, please understand that there may be differences from current data.

#The Author’s Note has gotten long, so I will postpone the Q&A. If there are any important questions, I will answer them in the next Author’s Note. :) Everyone, have a happy weekend.

Footnotes:

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