WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Oblivious
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The World Is Not a Game ◈
Chapter 19
──────
At the hopeful question, Hyeokjin gave a bitter smile, then shook his head as he operated the switches on the outside of the cylinder.
“No, unfortunately not. So far, only ‘humans’ can use warp energy.”
“Then what the hell is that?”
Instead of answering Nikki's puzzled question, Hyeokjin pressed the last control button on the cylinder.
With a soft Click!, the metal casing around the cylinder slid inward, revealing its transparent interior.
Inside the crystal cylinder, filled with clear, pale green liquid, was...
“...Fuck. It really is a human.”
A pink brain, a long spinal cord, and a complex web of wires connected to the living tissue.
The moment Nikki saw what the cylinder really held, she swore and frowned. Hyeokjin nodded without any particular change in expression.
“That's right. To be precise, it's a brain and spinal cord extracted and kept alive. You could say we're in similar situations, except this one doesn't have a prosthetic body. A miniaturized life-support system keeps them alive, while warp-based synthetic narcotics keep them unconscious. This is the ‘Power-Up’ equipment. It stimulates their brains to draw out warp energy by force.”
“Haah. This is seriously fucked up. Decades ago, we couldn't even have imagined something like this. There weren't nine people who came in here. There were eleven.”
As Nikki sighed at the revelation and weakly rested her forehead on the table, Hyeokjin activated a mechanism in his body.
Click! Six steam vents rose from his back and began releasing hot steam.
Once that process was complete, Hyeokjin split open his abdomen with both hands.
Bizarre alchemy devices filled the space where biological organs should have been. As Hyeokjin removed the devices from his abdomen one by one, Nikki looked at the cylinder held by his servo arm and spoke bitterly.
“Anyway, who the hell are those two? They must've really pissed off the government to end up like that.”
“Maestro and Veil Thorn, apparently.”
“The psychopathic thrill killer who calls themself an artist, and the assassin who slaughtered the entire Chinese Communist Party leadership and fled? Come to think of it, the S-ranks who weren't selected for the final roster were suddenly sent out to hunt Renegades, weren't they? They took quite a few losses, too. I thought it seemed far too excessive just to win popularity and calm the public. So this was what they wanted to use them for.”
Nikki nodded as though a lingering question had finally been answered. Hyeokjin gave a small nod in agreement.
Legally, only Closers were allowed to wield warp energy. But as always, a few people slipped through the law's net.
Former Closers who had broken the restraint and control devices implanted in their bodies and escaped. Or people who had deliberately made contact with rifts in third-world countries where dungeon security was poor, gaining the ability to use warp energy.
People like these, who could wield warp energy without being Closers, were called Renegades.
There were very few of them.
Most spatial rifts that released warp energy were under government control, so civilians almost never gained warp abilities by chance.
About 5% of all Renegades were secretly trained by governments to carry out dirty work. The remaining 95% were human weapons trained by international criminal organizations without government knowledge.
For that reason, governments had viewed them with hostility from the beginning and cracked down hard. After the shadow worlds began their encroachment on reality, Renegades were either “killed immediately upon capture” or “forced into military service.”
Anyone who remained in hiding despite these ruthless measures was naturally bound to be highly skilled.
There were even four or five whose abilities rivaled those of S-rank Closers. Veil Thorn and Maestro, now in Hyeokjin's hands, were among them.
Superhuman villains who had spent decades hiding from the law and government surveillance.
Until then, their movements had been hard to trace. The expected gains from hunting them down had also been small compared with the potential losses, so the government hadn't paid them much attention. But once it decided to keep them alive and use them as batteries, it ruthlessly deployed its forces to catch these slippery bastards, caring nothing for civilian casualties or the lives of countless lower-ranking Closers.
“...Hey, Vanilla. You said you could make prosthetic bodies here, right? Then couldn't we give them bodies and put them to work? They're basically trapped here, too. If we tell them they have to follow our orders to get out, I think they'd cooperate.”
“I considered that myself. But however I looked at it, it seemed likely to create more problems we couldn't control. You can't expect these things to act rationally. They're bombs that could go off at any moment. If they could've been controlled in the first place, they wouldn't have ended up like this. You know that as well as I do, don't you?”
Unable to argue with Hyeokjin's question, Nikki smacked her lips bitterly.
With humanity's survival at risk, governments tried to win over anyone with the necessary skills and put them to work, no matter how much trouble they caused.
People as powerful as Veil Thorn and Maestro were extremely tempting prospects. Governments offered such S-rank-level fighters a chance to become S-rank Closers.
The government would forge an identity for them and promise to make them S-rank Closers after they spent a few years working as A-rank Closers and building a cover history. That was the offer used to lure them in.
It wasn't a bad deal for those receiving it, either.
Lower-ranking Closers were treated as nothing more than disposable resources. But S-rank Closers could gain popularity, wealth, honor, and almost everything else a person could want. It was a world apart from life as a Renegade, constantly fleeing government hunts and hiding from public view.
Very few could resist that temptation.
In fact, a few of the current S-rank Closers had been Renegades before having their identities cleaned up and becoming Closers.
But anyone who had remained a Renegade to the very end despite all that...
Was either a psychopath who could never be controlled, or someone who had committed an unforgivable atrocity.
These two were such cases.
Even with humanity on the brink of destruction, they had run wild to satisfy their desires, fueling social unrest.
They were “uncontrollable monsters wearing human skin,” far more dangerous than the monsters that crawled out of shadow worlds.
Finally giving up on the idea of giving them bodies after hearing Hyeokjin's argument, Nikki looked at the cylinder with pity.
“...Haah. How did the world end up like this? Warp is a curse. Without it, we wouldn't have to do this fucked-up shit, and they could've at least lived like human beings...”
“No. These things don't deserve to live like human beings. What they did wasn't something a human would do. They should be grateful they can at least be used like this before they die. Their lives did nothing but harm others. Now they've been put on a path that benefits all of humanity, haven't they?”
Hyeokjin gave a cold snort and shook his head, answering firmly.
At his reaction, a complicated expression crossed Nikki's face. Then, as though she couldn't stand it any longer, she sprang to her feet and glared down at him, snapping angrily.
“Ha! That's pretty rich, coming from you. Hey, Vanilla! I wasn't going to say this, but you do realize you're in pretty much the same situation as they are...”
“I know.”
Hyeokjin answered before Nikki could finish.
Thrown off by the interruption, Nikki blinked in surprise. Hyeokjin pulled various wires and cables out of his body and connected them to the cords on the outside of the cylinder containing the brain and spinal cord. He continued as though it were nothing important.
“When I went to the defense research institute this time, I realized it while they were imprinting the information I needed. Something had been wrong with my mind all this time, and I'd been little more than a puppet. But I stayed quiet. Protesting wouldn't change anything. Above all, I'm more satisfied with my life now than I was before. Of course, I couldn't go through all this again.”
While Nikki remained frozen, unable to respond to one unexpected answer after another, Hyeokjin pushed the “Power-Up” equipment into his hollow torso and closed his abdomen.
The six steam vents protruding from his back retracted into his body and shut with a Click.
Hyeokjin then picked up the miniaturized alchemy equipment he had removed from his body and began attaching it to the auxiliary servo arms on his back. Nikki's lips twitched as she finally spoke.
“So you're going to die here??”
“...I didn't say I was going to die.”
“Hey, don't dodge the question. You know it, too, don't you? Being on the delaying team means you're almost 100% certain to die. If you hadn't volunteered for it yourself, you might've gotten out of here alive. You're not a combatant here anyway! And you're weak! You would've been left out of the drawing for the delaying team! If you weren't brainwashed, why the hell did you volunteer? Was it some pathetic hero complex? Aren't you scared!?”
“Hmm...”
Nikki had started calmly, but her anger built as she spoke. By the end, she was practically shouting at him.
Under her angry gaze, Hyeokjin paused his work, folded his arms, and rubbed his chin as he gathered his thoughts.
She was right. If he had stayed quiet, he might have avoided being selected.
Then why had he volunteered?
Because he didn't want to live?
Or because he wasn't afraid?
The artificial warp hormones produced by the alchemy devices installed in his body dulled his emotions and kept his thinking cool and clear. But they didn't erase his emotions completely.
The fundamental desire of all living things, the urge to survive, still existed faintly within him.
Hyeokjin closed his eyes for a moment and calmly listened to what his own heart was telling him. Then he opened them and slowly spoke.
“I'm scared.”
* * *
“...What?”
“There's fear in my heart. I have that fundamental, instinctive desire to live. Certainly, if my own survival were all that mattered, I shouldn't step forward. But alongside that fear, there's also regret. How should I put it? Regret about the past? I suppose that's close enough.”
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
