WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Little Prince in the Ossuary

00049

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#Omens (5), Atascadero

Jeffrey's squad came in blind. From his position, Gyeoul had a clear view through the convex mirror at the corner. Jeffrey and his soldiers were keeping watch in their own way, but it wasn't enough. Especially on the path they'd already cleared. Having confirmed the locked door, it made sense that they'd let their guard down.

Gyeoul borrowed a six-shot grenade launcher from one of his soldiers.

By then, Jeffrey had walked right into the center of the trap. From the darkness behind them, a pale shape descended along the wall. Not a sound. Moving like a predator stalking prey, it crept slowly toward the door leading to the auditorium.

"Jeffrey! Get down!"

Gyeoul leaned half his body out from the corner. Jeffrey's soldiers flinched at the shout. A few rounds came flying his way. Two grazed him. He barked.

"I said get down!"

His aim was past the auditorium windows. He dragged the muzzle to the right and pulled the trigger in rapid succession. Thwump thwump thwump thwump thwump thwump! Before Jeffrey's side could even finish ducking, a chain of explosions tore through the corridor.

The dark hallway erupted in blasts and light. Torn iron bars and glass shards rained down in showers. The sounds of hell poured out of the auditorium.

Gyeoul threw the grenade launcher back to the soldier and charged forward, spraying rifle fire. The soldiers joined in. A furious volley. The shape in the darkness blocked with one arm and held firm, gripping the door handle with the other. Sparks flew. The door swung open as if it had never once been locked.

Only then did they spot the monster at their backs. Jeffrey's side opened fire from half-crouched and prone positions. Metal rang, blood sprayed. The wounded creature fled in a panic. The gap it left was immediately filled by mutants pouring out of the auditorium. Six grenade detonations hadn't been enough to kill them all.

"My God! What is all this?!"

Jeffrey's shout.

"Over here! Now!"

Gyeoul threw a grenade. It went off inside the auditorium entrance and mowed down the swarm flooding out. He switched to rifle fire to suppress the writhing ones, and his squad members followed his lead. Grenades flew in rapid succession. Then one bounced off an iron bar and came back. Caught between lobbing it again and pressing forward, Jeffrey's squad scrambled in every direction. The grenade was about to come down right over their heads.

Ping! Gyeoul's round struck it mid-air, angled just enough that it wouldn't detonate. This time the grenade cleared the window. It went off the moment it did. Gyeoul slapped the dazed soldier across the cheek.

"Get it together!"

Not in anger. Literally. The shock of the mistake had knocked his finger off the trigger, and every gun counted right now.

Finally, Gyeoul linked up with Jeffrey's squad. He dropped to one knee beside them and suppressed the mass of mutants.

"Are you all right?!"

Keeping his aim, he asked. Jeffrey took up the same position alongside him.

"I have no idea what's going on!"

Ratatat!

"But I'm fine!"

A bottleneck was forming. Forced out through a narrow space, the mutants couldn't use their numbers. The piled bodies became obstacles too. Around the auditorium door, corpses had stacked to more than halfway up the corridor. An obstacle for Gyeoul as well. The special mutant that had fled beyond it was out of sight.

"I'm going after the target! Cover me!"

"Hey, wait!"

Gyeoul started running. Mutants pushing out to add to the pile turned on him. The covering fire was cautious. He might get hit. Three broke through the thin barrage. His magazine ran dry. He drew his pistol and fired exactly three shots. He'd rushed it. One was still moving. He cracked it across the head with the grip as he passed.

Swapping the magazine, he vaulted the wall. A wall of the dead and the dying, built by themselves. One brick made a last convulsion. His ankle was caught, and Gyeoul rolled down the far slope with his whole body. Clatter. In his spinning field of vision, snapping teeth flashed past.

He landed, found his footing, and kept moving. He spotted the special mutant escaping beyond the iron bars and got it in his sights. Half a breath. That was all it took.

As the rounds flew, the creature found the nearest exit. A door to the side. Beyond it, a small courtyard. Surrounded by the special ward buildings on all sides, open only to the sky.

The boy slid wide and changed direction. The monster was waiting for him.

"Ugh!"

A flash dodge triggered by 「Combat Sense」. A whip-like blow grazed past. A deformed arm, nothing but muscle, not a bone in it. Thrown onto his back, Gyeoul aimed with one hand.

Ratatatatat!

Several hits sent the creature running again. He sprang to his feet and pushed into the courtyard.

The full picture of the monster, revealed at last. The special mutant clung to the wall and swung one arm down toward the rain-soaked brush below.

Sparks flew. Current ran through the ground and the water. Wide range, low efficiency, but enough to make Gyeoul stumble.

Combat boots were insulators. The rainwater was the problem. A momentary paralysis. Aiming was difficult. Seizing the opening, the creature scaled the remaining wall, leaving a trail thick with blood. Gyeoul's shots came too late. Concrete shattered in streaks that chased behind it. Another round found the mutant's calf.

This was the one that had taken a full magazine in their first encounter and still gotten away. It made it to the roof.

"Throw me a magazine when I go up!"

He might run short on ammo. He shouted it back to the soldiers who'd followed and ran straight at the wall. With the 「Movement」 correction, he stepped off windowsills and drainpipes and scaled eight vertical meters.

"Catch!"

A magazine sailed toward him. He snatched it the moment he crested the roof and went after the monster again. The fleeing creature was already taking fire. The watchtower soldiers hadn't scored clean hits, but they'd cut the special mutant's speed down significantly. The mutant used the tangle of ventilation equipment across the rooftop as cover.

The ventilation system was a maze, deliberately complex to prevent prisoner escapes. Gyeoul cleared it again and again. The moment he got past the last obstacle, the monster was twenty meters out. A few low exhaust pipes between them, face to face. He aimed immediately, then stopped. The mutant's upper body, between the ribs, had gone a burning red.

Whoosh!

A wall of heat slammed into him. Too fast to dodge. Exposed for just a split second. Rolling across the rooftop, Gyeoul stared at the steam rising from his whole body.

Right. This one manipulates electricity and electromagnetic waves.

「Insight」 confirmed it. The microwave principle.

A mutant he'd never seen before, with patterns he'd never encountered. Nothing to do but push through.

He pulled the pin on a flashbang and let go of the safety lever. Two seconds later he lurched upright, threw it, then immediately covered his ears, squeezed his eyes shut, and dropped.

The pitch-black world went white for one instant. The blast that followed hit through his whole body. Gyeoul shifted position and stood back up. The special mutant was clutching its eyes and staggering. Even so, the front of its upper body was heating up again. The path of the microwaves it emitted was visible to the naked eye. Falling raindrops evaporated one by one, drawing a faint, hazy curtain across the air.

The aim was more accurate than he'd expected. It was only the staggering that threw it off. Tracking his movements, responding properly. Like a bat using echolocation to perceive its surroundings, this creature might be using radio waves as a second sense. That was Gyeoul's read on it.

He'd confirmed the range and spread of the long-distance pattern. Now he needed to know the cycle. He threw his remaining flashbang.

Bang!

Mutants recovered faster than humans, but back-to-back flashbangs left them helpless. The heat wave it fired went wide again.

Confirmed. One to two seconds for warmup. About five seconds of emission.

Gyeoul aimed at the creature's knees. He fired until one joint was destroyed. Already the leg he'd emptied a full magazine into during their first encounter. He intended to put it out of commission entirely.

Flailing its whip-arm in aimless arcs, the special mutant clutched the wound with its other hand. Sparks flew and smoke rose. Cauterizing the injury to stop the bleeding.

The whipping arm stretched and snapped back with impressive elasticity. Electricity would be running through it too.

Getting caught by it would be bad.

The creature's sight returned and it glared at Gyeoul. Fury in those eyes. But what it chose was to run. Even with one leg destroyed, it found a grotesque way to manage it.

Swinging one arm like a whip, it flung it toward a fixed point and seized it. The arm's muscles contracted. Its body was pulled forward. Faster than most people at a full sprint. The other arm substituted for the leg. One limb dragging uselessly behind it completed the picture.

Gyeoul threw a grenade, timed to detonate high in the air. The blast hammered down on the creature. The special mutant was smashed against the rooftop, stained in a red the rain couldn't wash away. Its deformed body squirmed like a worm. What had been a desperate escape was now barely a crawl.

"Ensign Han! You there? Alive? Respond!"

The interference had dropped sharply. Proof that the special mutant's energy was spent. Gyeoul steadied his breathing and closed in at a quick walk.

"Yes, I'm fine. Go ahead."

A sigh of relief crackled through the receiver. Ensign Jeffrey asked.

"Ha. Thank God. Where are you? We're still on our way up to the roof."

"Ensign-nim. Are you truly unharmed?"

Corporal Liberman's voice cut across the transmission. Radio contact had only just come back, which caused the overlap. Not bad enough to be unintelligible. Gyeoul replied.

"Take your time. It's almost over."

The special mutant couldn't flee anymore. It squirmed in place. The tentacle-like arm glistened in the rain like an earthworm on a wet day.

Even that soon stopped. Aside from the faint rise and fall of its chest, it was essentially a corpse.

Gyeoul kept his distance. Cunning as it was, playing dead was a real possibility.

Some time passed. When the other two squads arrived at the roof and were closing in, the special mutant went berserk without warning.

KRAAAAAAH!

Muscular whips came lashing in. A living whip that changed direction mid-swing on its own. Gyeoul leaped clear. It had been a dangerously close distance from the start. Spending its last reserves, it wrenched its limbs and lunged. A broken body, though. It couldn't catch him.

For a few seconds, the radio erupted with extreme static. Crossfire poured in from Jeffrey's and Liberman's positions. The mutant's skin hung in shreds. Gyeoul gave up on the radio and shouted.

"Hold your fire! Cease fire! Cease fire!"

He sent large hand signals toward the watchtowers. They saw his arms crossing in repeated X shapes and stopped as well.

It had already taken too many hits. The holes in its body were past counting. Everything around it was soaked in blood. Gyeoul stepped on the end of a tentacle, pushed it down, and approached.

No response. If it had anything left, the electrocution would have come by now. He fixed a bayonet to his muzzle and prodded the wound. Still nothing.

"What happened?!"

Jeffrey came sprinting up and skidded to a halt a few steps away. Fear of the monster. A short, sharp curse. Gyeoul kicked the mutant's body a few times, then pressed his thumb firmly against the back of its neck to check for a pulse.

"Dead. Unfortunately."

"Huh? Unfortunately?!"

"They said to capture it. That doctor."

"...You were actually going to try? You're out of your mind."

It was practically a compliment.

Jeffrey had been on the radio with headquarters. He came back with news.

"Good news, everyone. That doctor is getting disciplined. Feel so much better."

"Disciplined? What for?"

"For mishandling the situation. The person in charge has been changed."

They could get the details later.

Either way, the helicopter arrived just as originally promised. From the transport crew, they picked up new information. Just like during the Grumble shock, this new species was appearing simultaneously across a wide area. A large-scale response operation was underway.

"So we weren't the first?"

Gyeoul asked the Medical Service Corps officer. A major in rank, though more scholar than soldier in bearing. Two corpses of the same type of mutant were already strapped down inside the helicopter, in very poor condition. The result of exposure to overwhelming firepower. The officer nodded.

"Casualties were significant, but it's a better situation than during Grumble. The air force played a major role."

"The air force was involved?"

Jeffrey asked. The officer confirmed.

"At first they thought it was foreign military radio interference. So they launched tracking missiles at the signals."

"Missiles? That must have been something."

"Anyway, it's a shame. The specimen you secured is in the best shape of anything we have. Could have had a live research sample, if things had gone a little differently."

The major seemed genuinely sorry about it. He asked whether they'd return by helicopter, but leaving their vehicles behind wasn't an option. Before boarding, he extended a hand to Gyeoul.

"Someone as well-known as you, if I didn't shake your hand, I'd regret it later."

He left with a smile and a salute and climbed into the helicopter.

The formation shrank into the distance. Corporal Liberman turned to the rest of them. "Continuing the mission isn't realistic at this point. We should pull out."

The mission continuation he meant was the search for the missing. The soldiers were exhausted, ammunition was heavily depleted, and there wasn't enough time left before sunset.

As the senior officer, Jeffrey accepted.

"Right. We've done what we could. Let's head back. You agree?"

Gyeoul nodded.

Footnotes:

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