WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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Chapter 175: Alliances and Maneuvering (10)

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Gunfire rang out.

A single shot fired into the sky announced the start of the public execution.

Gyeoul swept up the row of live rounds with one hand. With the other, he held the magazine. As his hands came together, the rounds lined up in his palm slid in all at once. Five on the first push, four on the next. Two pushes, and the loading was done. It was a speed comparable to using a loading aid.

He set the loaded magazine down and began assembling the pistol. His hands were faster than the eye. Faster than the audience from both worlds, this side and the other, could follow. Faster even than Gyeoul's own perception. Weapon maintenance under restricted conditions was where he could draw out the full measure of his technical ability.

Click. The sound of the magazine locking into place. Clack. The sound of the slide being pulled and released.

No soldier could fail to understand the meaning of those overlapping metallic sounds. No way. Already? Several pale death row inmates trembled as they looked at their executioner. The table was clean, without a single part left over. A perfectly assembled pistol. He held it in his right hand, wrapped his left around it, and let it hang below his stomach.

Tick. The safety coming off. Creak. The hammer being pulled back.

The faint noises that followed made the death row inmates flinch as if they were having seizures. With every nerve strung tight by their blazing will to live, those sounds must have seemed louder than thunder.

Half of them were still assembling their weapons, cold sweat pouring down their faces. Their whole minds were on the table, and they had no attention to spare for whatever sounds came from beyond it, or whatever happened outside it. No, they were desperate not to pay attention. Or their senses had been completely severed from the outside world.

Whatever their character, their mental strength was fairly good. How had they gone so wrong?

Gyeoul watched them calmly.

Waiting until the final moment might be a cruel form of mockery.

Given the nature of this place, however, a public execution was better when it was dramatic. In other words, it was a necessary evil.

The death row inmates themselves were confused. Even so, clinging to a thread of hope, one woman reached for the weapon she had put down. Her resolve pulled the rest along from their hesitation.

Objectively, this should have been the point where they felt humiliated. But with their lives hanging by the second, who had room for that kind of emotion?

'Anyone who did would be anything but ordinary.'

Right now, the world in front of them must have gone dark in the literal sense. Uneven breathing. Racing heartbeats. The sudden surge of blood made their heads hot and taut, paralyzing thought. It was no different from the tension of combat. It was also why soldiers who had been through combat could keep trembling for hours afterward.

In any case, for the moment, their chances of survival had increased, if only a little.

But......

The death row inmates needed far more time than usual to assemble their weapons. They dropped parts, let them slip, sobbed, and picked them up again, over and over. If one looked only at that sight, it was hard to imagine the tragedy that would follow.

Military training was repeated mechanically because soldiers had to remain mechanical even in situations like this.

Since these prisoners seemed to have been former high-ranking officers, whatever had been drilled into their bodies must have gone dull. Or perhaps nothing had ever been drilled into them at all. From their fumbling hands, Gyeoul read the authority, idleness, and comfort they had enjoyed. In any organization, the ones more faithful to the basics were always the people at the bottom.

Clack. After Gyeoul, someone loaded a pistol for the first time.

The main actor was, as expected, the person who had been calm from the beginning. He had finished with frightening focus, and only now did he look up at Gyeoul. The wavering flame of a fierce will to live in his eyes left a strong impression.

He was also crafty. Even though Gyeoul was deliberately waiting, he did not aim his completed firearm right away. Perhaps he was certain that if he did, he would die first. He seemed to have guessed that if Gyeoul had calmly finished assembling his weapon far ahead of him, then Gyeoul would also aim and fire much faster than he could.

'Good situational judgment.'

Gyeoul stared at him. The middle-aged man glaring back with beads of sweat on his forehead had not had a haircut in some time, and his rough hair clumped together like icicles. Even the round bald spot on top of his head looked grotesque rather than funny. Like a monster that resembled a human being.

What the calm death row inmate was waiting for was another death row inmate's shot. When Gyeoul shot that sacrifice, he would use the opening to aim and pull the trigger.

If Gyeoul changed his mind even now, the plan would become meaningless. But it was also the only chance the calm death row inmate could hope for. If he failed, he was dead anyway. So there was no point in worrying about failure or fearing it. That was what Gyeoul sensed in the shabby prisoner's deeply sunken eyes.

The strange standoff stirred the testing ground, inside and out.

The other death row inmates, finishing their assembly one by one, realized what was happening as well. Those who did not immediately aim at Gyeoul simply rode along with the balding man's intent.

Of course, not all of them were that clever.

"Uaaaaah!"

Bang!

Faint smoke rose from Gyeoul's muzzle. How long had it taken from aim to shot?

Captain Fowler had assessed that he could face five opponents head-on. The five Fowler had assumed were trained soldiers whose training had been drilled into their bodies.

The prisoner with a hole through his heart dropped the rifle he had been holding first. Swaying, his face twisted in pain, he clutched at his chest, shed a single tear, and sank to his knees with a choking death rattle. Thud. The sound of a life hitting the ground rang in his ears. The corpse collapsed at a diagonal and went into a long convulsion.

Gyeoul swept his gaze over the three in half-formed postures.

The time one fool had bought them was far too short. The three who had reacted reflexively, thinking this was their chance, had not even raised their muzzles all the way. Their faces were horribly distorted. Caught between conflict and fear, three muzzles lowered again. Only after watching to the end did Gyeoul lower his gun as well.

The standoff resumed.

The prisoners now knew that one sacrifice was nowhere near enough.

Seven remained. To face Gyeoul, they needed a simultaneous attack. Even then, it would only create the barest chance where none had existed before. In their hostility, the prisoners watched one another with fierce caution. How efficient could those exchanged glances be as communication? The air overflowed with emotion and little else.

The man who made up half of this standoff, the one with his rough hair tangled together, was grinding his teeth. He looked as if he hated the rest, who had freeloaded on his plan, as much as enemies. From his point of view, the other prisoners were nothing more than trash who ought to die for him. There must also have been anger at having his idea stolen.

Every weapon in the testing ground was complete.

A silence pulled taut hung over the place.

Gyeoul thought of westerns. Judging only by the setup, it had become no different from a duel between gunmen. A fight that measured reaction speed and precision. This tension should be enough to suit the intent of the general who had arranged this place. That was only Gyeoul's guess, but he doubted he was wrong.

'Even if I'm wrong, the result will be the same.'

None of the seven prisoners could raise their muzzles first.

Their twitching hands, however, were full of malice meant to deceive not only Gyeoul, but the other prisoners too. Little tricks of deception, as if they were about to shoot. But they lacked boldness, so the tricks had no effect. They were afraid that if they moved their hands too much, "Kurt Lee" would shoot them dead first.

It was time to end this.

The moment he decided, intent became action at the speed of an electric current. Ba-bang! Two gunshots joined into one, two executions carried out in succession. The stunned death row inmates reacted as one. They had plenty of ammunition, and in their panic, bullets fired into the floor ricocheted wildly.

But Gyeoul could see the lines of fire. None of the red warnings touched his body. Their lines of aim were rising from far below.

Sometimes the warnings were unclear because they included a margin of error, but their abilities were so poor that it did not matter.

Bang! Bang! Ba-bang!

Death spread with the gunshots. He killed them all, leaving only one prisoner alive.

The woman who had set her automatic pistol to full-auto and sprayed was pierced from between her brows to the back of her head. Blood and brain matter streamed like tears as she toppled over. Beside her, the man screaming "Uaaaaah!" had a bullet lodged deep in his throat. Another had his brain turned to mush by a bullet ricocheting inside his skull. One who tried to flip the table over and use it as a shield exposed his thigh instead, and an artery was severed. He flailed, trying to stop the bleeding, but two hands were not enough. Gyeoul did not have enough bullets to ease his pain.

When only one round remained, the final prisoner began to sob miserably. His muzzle was still angled away. He had frozen like a statue in that position.

Not one of them had kept up with even half of Gyeoul's reaction speed.

Gyeoul carried out the final execution.

Bang!

The man's head snapped back. Strength left his entire body. The death row inmate fell backward. Clatter. The sound of the chain tied to his feet scraping together. He died staring at the cloudy sky with blank eyes.

Gyeoul put the gun in his holster and loosened his hand.

Clap, clap, clap. Applause came from behind him. The one giving it was Lieutenant General Xieru. Her face was intensely excited. Every clap landed with excessive force.

And once the leader began, the rest followed. The applause grew.

Listening to it, Gyeoul reflected on the reaction speed ingrained in his body.

Like TOM aptitude, was this also something a person was born with? Gyeoul searched his memory for a manual he had read long ago. System correction was electrical and chemical at the same time, and it worked at the neural level. It also increased real physical reaction speed.

There had to be a limit to it.

'Still, it really feels like I've gotten faster than before.'

His point of comparison was the apocalypses he had lived through.

Was it simply because he had grown that much more used to it? Or was it only an illusion?

As he pondered, the testing ground was cleared. The place meant to verify a second Han Gyeoul had only just begun. To convince disloyal subordinates, and to make them believe in the possibility of the Chinese-American community that would be built in the United States, no ordinary farce would be enough.

Lieutenant General Xieru was a cold person. She would expect returns equal to the price she had paid.

That one-sided evaluation and expectation reminded him of someone.

Along with memories from when he had been alive, Gyeoul consciously pushed down the rolling stone.

He guided his thoughts in another direction. For example, what he would report when he returned.

Gyeoul's evaluation of Lieutenant General Xieru would become important reference material for the CIA as it shaped its future strategy. Though it had not been behavior suited to the persona called Kurt Lee, the questions and answers he had exchanged with the general before the test would serve as useful information for the Intelligence Agency agents.

'Lieutenant General Xieru's words may have been nothing but self-glorification. But in the moment she said them, she looked as if she truly believed them. Or maybe it was her unconscious desire to become that kind of person showing through.'

If so, it would be fair enough to call her a decent person. That was Gyeoul's conclusion.

The final judgment would be made by the Intelligence Agency after they reviewed the conversation, but Gyeoul's opinion as a field agent would also be attached to the report.

Gyeoul glanced dryly at the corpses being dragged away.

Long bloodstains remained on the testing ground. The metallic smell rising from them mixed with the stench that had been there from the start. The cloudy light pouring through the broken ceiling, the cool spring wind, and the cries of angry birds drawn by the smell of blood formed a flood of sensations suited to this world.

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

#As of 17:06, some content has been deleted. There was an error in the description.

Q. [Anti]Kid-nim: @Author-nim, did you use the power of the old ones to make Trump whale! So this was the secret of the U.S. presidential election...!

A. No. Trump spent real money on his own, so there is nothing I can do. Please accept reality.

Footnotes:

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