WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 381: Each One's Homeland (15)

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Snatching up the gas mask that had come loose in the impact of his fall, Gyeoul thought of Anne again. He could not help it. Terrible images forced themselves into his mind. Anne taken prisoner, being torn apart and eaten by necrotoxin addicts. Or Anne herself poisoned, tearing someone else apart and eating them. He could even see the traitors cheering as they watched. His exhausted body twitched as if it might spring forward at any moment. But before he charged in, he had to know at least the bare minimum of the situation.

Stay calm. Stay calm.

The weight of the stone, felt for the first time in a long while, pressed hard against his solar plexus. Hoo. Gyeoul let out a breath that might have been a sigh or only habit, then shouted to the FBI SWAT operator.

“Here! Who’s in charge?!”

“I am now!”

“Now?!”

Amid the endless gunfire, the operator pointed at a corpse on the road with its head blown open. A punctured ballistic shield lay abandoned within reach of the spilled brain matter. Gyeoul narrowed his eyes.

“Looks like they have snipers?!”

“Yes! The machine guns are bad enough! But the bastards putting single shots on target with .50-caliber rounds! They’re the real problem! I don’t think there are only one or two of them! And they’re damn good!”

.50 caliber was the cartridge used in heavy machine guns and anti-materiel rifles. Against a round powerful enough to punch through three or four people in a line and keep going, body armor was meaningless. In a situation like this, the best option would be to use rockets and blow apart the entire room where the sniper was hiding, but that was impossible until they confirmed where the hostages were.

After driving off the helicopter, the traitors were conserving their heavy weapons too. They probably did not have much ammunition. If they had, they would have hosed down every piece of cover the FBI agents were using.

Gyeoul spotted the communications line running to a public phone booth and asked, “Contact with the inside?!”

“It was cut thirty minutes ago! Looks like they blocked it!”

“What was the last transmission?!”

“Something happened upstairs! They said they were going to check it out! That was the end!”

Gyeoul muttered a curse without realizing it. Then he froze, startled by himself.

‘This is not the time!’

Crack. Gyeoul tore the side mirror off the vehicle he was using as cover and held it past the bumper. The distorted hotel reflected in the mirror looked smaller and farther away than it really was, but it was enough for his enhanced eyesight to examine. One, two, three, four... As he counted the flickering muzzle flashes, bang! The mirror exploded. Gyeoul irritably shook the shards from his glove, crawled on his knees, and reached toward the FBI sniper.

“That. Let me borrow it for a second!”

“You mean the rifle?!”

“Yes!”

The agent handed over the rifle and magazine without delay, though the worry was clear.

“Be careful! That damn hotel! Every guestroom window is Level 10 bulletproof glass! This thing won’t even dent it!”

Gyeoul had expected as much from his earlier observation. The enemy were firing with only their muzzles poking through the window gaps. They did not seem to be thinking about hiding their bodies at all. The bullet marks on the windows also showed the traits of bulletproof glass. The glass was covered in white blotches and cracks, but there were almost no shattered spots. Was that fitting for a luxury hotel in an age when the end was approaching, or had this too been part of the rebellion’s preparations?

To kill an enemy sniper, he had to aim for a gap of two inches or less. A short-barreled rifle was not accurate enough for that. That was why they needed a sniper rifle even at an engagement distance of less than 100 yards.

Gyeoul fired five shots in a row at the pier sign across from him. Even in calm wind, the group landed slightly to the right of the aiming point. The rifle was not tuned to Gyeoul’s eyes. It did not matter. He only had to offset his aim by that much. After swapping out the lightened magazine, Gyeoul exposed half his body while kneeling.

The FBI agents panicked at his recklessness.

“Danger-!”

Bang!

Victory and defeat were decided in an instant. Blood splashed across a hotel window, and fragments of paving stone scattered beside Gyeoul. Done! When there were several snipers, they naturally split their fields of fire. Before their attention converged on him, in that short window, Gyeoul silenced all of them one by one. The many machine guns that had been laying down wide suppression also went quiet. Only after he had killed the assistant gunners shoving the dead gunners aside did Gyeoul release the breath he had been holding all at once. Perhaps because of the bleeding, his breathing was more ragged than usual.

A strange silence pressed down on the hotel’s front. Gyeoul tossed the borrowed rifle back.

“Everyone, follow me!”

“The snipers...”

“They’re gone now!”

Gyeoul sprinted out without even checking their reactions. As he ran, he fired in full auto. On the top floor, an enemy aiming a rocket launcher flinched and threw themselves flat. The shots did not hit. Even after he emptied half the magazine, all he had done was hammer innocent glass and window frames. His whole body rubbed painfully against itself. At the edges of his vision, faint darkness pulsed now and then.

Unconscious firing and unconscious reloading. The waste of ammunition increased. His condition was clearly abnormal, but the shorter engagement distance made up for his reduced combat power. At least his reaction speed was still enough to crush the enemy one-sidedly, even if it was gradually slowing.

In the end, it was a race against time. Anne’s uncertain safety on one side, and his wound cutting down his combat endurance on the other. The more his stamina fell, the more his impatience grew.

In only a few minutes, Gyeoul pushed back the traitors in the lobby and smashed open the security room door. He did not enter. Bullets rained out. A terrified enemy’s desperate last stand. The moment the gunfire faltered, Gyeoul rushed in low. He shot out two people’s knees, used one of them as a shield, and killed the other.

Ghhk, kk.

Crunch. The one who had fallen first and was twitching had their neck crushed under Gyeoul’s foot. Without even time to look back at that death, Gyeoul checked the closed-circuit monitors.

“Anne, Anne, Anne...”

Then his gaze stopped on one place. There was a section where the traitors were moving strangely. They had sealed off a certain area while aiming not outward, but inward. They were also shouting something toward the inside. The soundless cameras, limited by their angles, offered no more information than that. Unfortunately, many screens had gone dead.

Hoping the people there were the FBI and CIA agents, including Anne, Gyeoul searched the hotel interior map hanging on the wall for the shortest route. Twice, three times, he etched the route into himself with 「Map Navigation」 and tried to run, but sudden dizziness caught him by the ankle.

Why did they even reproduce this feeling?

The cause was injury and blood loss, so lowering the pain synchronization rate would not solve it. Gyeoul collapsed over a corpse, suppressed his irritation, and roughly pushed himself back up. A throb from 「Survival Instinct」 brushed past him. The source of the warning was the two muzzles lowering their guard in front of him. The FBI agents who had followed Gyeoul looked at him in confusion.

“Lieutenant Colonel? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

His locked-up voice made the answer worse than silence.

“Please leave this place to the others now...”

Gyeoul shook his head, cutting off the SWAT operator.

“Fourth floor. Reception hall. Send support.”

By the time he reached the hall, his memories of the process in between were unclear. Run, shoot, kill, run, shoot, kill... There had been moments that would have been dangerous without supporting forces. When traitors bursting out from the side got behind Gyeoul, the ones who blew their heads off were the White Cell agent and D.C. Police Tactical Unit officers who had desperately caught up to him. Gyeoul had run because he trusted them to do exactly that.

Thanks to that speed, the enemy’s counterattacks grew more disorganized by the moment. Gunfire and screams rapidly closing in, radio calls being cut off in clusters. It was more than enough to break their will to fight.

So the resistance weakened further and further, and the breakthrough began to feel more and more like charging through empty ground.

The rebellion was ending.

Gyeoul did not want to cry at its end.

Tatatatatang!

Bullets poured from the inner side of the hall where the traitors had been facing off. If this was not a planned trap, it was clearly friendly fire, or hostages mistaking them for the enemy. Given the circumstances, it was unlikely to be a trap. Instead of Gyeoul, who was leaning against a pillar and catching the breath that had risen to his throat, another White Cell agent stepped forward.

“Cease fire! Cease fire! We’re the rescue team! We’re here to help!”

An angry answer came back from inside.

“I’m not falling for that! What kind of bullshit are you trying to pull, you motherfucking traitor bastards!”

It was Kramer’s furious voice.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I am the person who will become President of the United States! Rather than suffer the disgrace of being used by terrorists! I’d rather die fighting here! Come on! Come at me!”

Another threatening gunshot rang out. It was not Anne. Gyeoul felt the strength drain out of him. But there was no guarantee Kramer was alone. The White Cell agent who had stepped forward first sent Gyeoul a silent request. Gyeoul pulled down the gas mask covering half his own face and shouted with force.

“Kramer! Do you remember my voice?!”

“Who the hell are you now?!”

“I’m Lieutenant Colonel Han Gyeoul!”

Kramer seemed too agitated to recognize him right away, but there was no way Kramer did not know Gyeoul’s voice.

“We really are here to rescue you! I’m coming out now, so please don’t shoot!”

With his rifle hanging low, Gyeoul raised both hands and slowly revealed himself. He walked slowly, making his footsteps clear. Kramer, still on guard as Kramer peeked out, brightened in an instant.

“God! It really was you!”

Kramer was so large that the rifle in those hands looked like a toy held by an adult. Kramer did not seem to have even imagined Gyeoul might have joined the rebellion. That was how glad Kramer was, but Gyeoul passed right by and checked the inside of the room where Kramer had been hiding first.

The first thing he saw was the corpse of an FBI agent.

‘Serrano.’

One of the two people who had moved with Anne. As dizziness washed over Gyeoul, troublesome people clung to him. A man wearing a turban and a woman wearing a hijab. Others poured out thanks in English with distinctive accents. Unfamiliar languages were mixed in too. Gyeoul shouted at all of them.

“Step back! The situation isn’t over yet!”

The area went quiet at once. His anger had leaked out. The sharply surging 「Threat Level」 had frightened them. Ignoring that, Gyeoul pointed at Serrano’s corpse and asked Kramer fiercely.

“Was this the only FBI agent here? Did you see any other colleagues?!”

“...”

Kramer swallowed dryly before answering.

“I don’t know about anyone else besides this person, Lieutenant Colonel. But the first place that got noisy was the rooftop. The rebel bastards came in by helicopter at first. The ones storming in from the ground came after that... If there were other agents, I think they probably went upstairs.”

His memories after that were unclear too. Gyeoul searched floor after floor with that much desperation in his heart. The electricity was out, and the interior was dark. As similar scenery and similar firefights repeated while everything grew harder, he felt his mind blurring. He had chills, and the dizziness came more often.

At least the encounters with the traitors were individual and scattered. The enemy had already lost all organization. Many threw away their weapons and surrendered. Knocking them unconscious without mercy, Gyeoul never slowed down, even with his exhausted body. Calling Anne’s name, he opened up floor after floor, then another new floor.

‘If Anne is alive, what situation would she be in?’

While responding to the helicopter assault, they had also been attacked from the ground. In other words, their escape route had been cut off. If so, the logical choice would be to hide in one of the countless guestrooms. Hide and wait for rescue to come. Or she might have moved quietly, striking the enemy from behind.

‘But what about the toxin? Where is it?’

Dark imaginings tangled Gyeoul’s thoughts.

“Anne! Anne! Where are you?!”

How much farther had he gone, raising his voice?

The door to one guestroom opened, and sunlight from the window spilled into the corridor. From it, someone carefully emerged with a pistol in hand.

“Gyeoul?”

Dull blonde hair shone. Anne looked as if she could not believe what she was seeing.

“Ha...”

Gyeoul laughed.

“Haha! Hahahaha!”

The laughter would not stop. Gyeoul had never laughed like this before.

Footnotes:

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