Chapter 76
As expected, the government was strongly opposed.
“N-no, you can’t!”
The moment he heard what I wanted, Director Jo Hyeongbin turned pale and shook his head.
“No, I’m telling you, I have to go.”
“I’ll be killed! Hunter! Do you want to see my head hanging in front of Gwanghwamun?”
“It’s not your fault, Director Jo. Why would you be killed?”
“Hunter Kim! Every country has closed its borders with the UK. Our country has, too.”
“They’re stopping people from coming from there, not people from going into the UK, right?”
“... You have to come back, Hunter... Are you planning to stay in the UK?”
He was practically in tears.
“It’s dangerous enough as it is, but if you go in there, there’s no telling when you’ll be able to come out. The government can’t take on that kind of risk.”
“That’s why I’m telling you I’ll take care of it and come back.”
“In principle, the government cannot authorize any current flight plans to the UK.”
“Then I’ll fly through a third country that does authorize them.”
“Hunter!”
“Why are you shouting?”
“... I’m sorry.”
Director Jo sighed, put a hand to his forehead, and backed down a step.
“This is beyond what I can handle on my own, so you’ll need approval from my superiors.”
“Your superiors... the minister?”
“Someone even higher up, in your case, Hunter Kim.”
“... The president?”
As if on cue, my phone began to ring.
The caller was...
─This is President Kang. Hunter Kim Segyun, how have you been?
“... Mr. President.”
─I’m asking you sincerely. How about reconsidering?
“Mr. President. Do you think the abilities I’ve shown so far are all I’m capable of?”
─... Good heavens.
“You’ve received reports on the situation in the UK by now, haven’t you, Mr. President?”
─Yes, I have. Every employee at the Korean Embassy in the UK has even written a will. I just received their wills a little while ago.
Is it that bad?
“I know what the situation is, and I’m still saying I’ll go. No, I have to go. Surely you don’t think anything will change by locking down London, or even closing the border with the UK.”
─......
Thinking those measures would be enough to stop it would be rather short-sighted.
This thing had already induced psychosis, making people voluntarily enter the Gate, carry the pathogen inside them, and come back out to spread it.
“If the situation gets any worse, even I might not be able to stop it.”
Well, honestly, I didn’t think I’d be unable to stop it. But it would at least become a hassle.
And it would take a lot of time.
─All right. I’ll authorize your departure.
“Thank you.”
─Our government will provide every form of support we can, tangible or otherwise. Please return home safely.
Now that everything was settled, all that remained was to set off.
Before that...
I should say goodbye to the people who’d come all the way to the airport despite being busy.
“Mr. Segyun.”
“Ms. Gyuseon, I’m counting on you.”
“You really have to be careful. No matter how strong you are, Mr. Segyun... From the information I’ve received, it’s a dangerous bacterium. I analyzed the data from the UK’s NHS, but... I couldn’t make sense of it at all. Its very structure is completely different from any bacteria on Earth.”
“Yes, I’ll be careful. And speaking of which...”
I took one of a pair of earrings from my inventory and handed it to her.
“... What is it?”
“A communication earring.”
It was another pair of Ansible Earrings, different from the ones I shared with Zephyros.
“Please don’t think I’m being a bother if I ask you for help from time to time.”
“Of course! Ask me anything, as much as you want!”
After finishing my conversation with her, I headed over to the two middle-aged guys waiting behind her.
“Are you really sure I don’t need to go?”
I chuckled at Senior Choi Kang’s question and shook my head.
“Muscles won’t stop bacteria, you know.”
“You’re underestimating Vajra’s lightning, kid.”
“Ahem. Still, I can’t risk even the slightest chance of danger.”
Next was Zephyros.
There wasn’t much we needed to say to each other.
We simply clasped hands tightly once, then exchanged a slight nod.
“I’ll be back.”
And with that, I boarded the plane bound for London.
I never thought I’d visit the UK for the first time like this.
**
Ninety-nine point nine percent of flights from Korea to London would land at Heathrow, on the outskirts of the city, but my private jet headed for London City Airport, the closest airport to central London.
Part of it was a courtesy, but it was also probably a sign that the British government wanted to respond as quickly as possible.
I feel like I keep having unusual experiences.
Even in Paris, I landed at a different airport instead of the usual Charles de Gaulle.
And after a flight of nearly twelve hours, we finally entered British airspace.
That item I somehow got installed aboard Ahmad’s private jet... I’ll get my hands on it no matter what.
London City Airport, where we landed, was utterly desolate.
It wasn’t a particularly busy airport to begin with, but since the outbreak, it had been completely shut down.
When I got off, waiting for me were the British Hunter Association, the British government, and finally...
“Hunter Edward Frost.”
“Hunter Segyun Kim. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
The world’s strongest ice mage.
He was a Hunter I’d admired, too. I finally got to meet him in person.
It was a shame we didn’t even have time to catch up.
As we headed for the car together, I asked him right away.
“Are you feeling all right?”
“Oh, yes. If you’re worried about infection, I’m fine.”
How could he be so certain when he couldn’t even see it?
“A ‘Stagnant Space’ had formed around me at the time. It’s a space of extreme cold, close to absolute zero. Something like bacteria couldn’t have gotten through it.”
Something like bacteria, huh.
As a bacterium listening to that, I found it a little insulting, but he wasn’t wrong.
“I understand. How are things being handled?”
“... We’ve isolated the infected, but the bigger problem is the people who recovered from the infection. We don’t know what they might do in the rear...”
“Are you tracking their whereabouts?”
“The Metropolitan Police and the Hunter Association are on it, but... there are too many of them.”
“I suppose it would be difficult to isolate everyone.”
The one saving grace was that the worst-case scenario—former patients finishing their dormant period and becoming sources of reinfection—didn’t seem to be happening at present.
According to Ms. Gyuseon...
If they could become infectious again after a dormant period, they wouldn’t have needed to enter the Gate in the first place.
She thought they had probably evolved to become less infectious, or lose their infectiousness altogether, in order to survive while dormant for a long time.
That was why they must have entered the Gate to acquire a new source of infection.
“For now, I’d like to see the person who caused all this.”
“... Their condition isn’t good. It’s deteriorating rapidly.”
“Yes, that’s fine.”
I felt bad for the person, but it would actually be better if they were dead.
Pathogens often die along with their host when the host dies.
All I had to do was revive the dead specimen and check what kind of properties it had.
Following Frost, we arrived at a hospital near the epicenter.
I looked through the window at the patient isolated in a negative-pressure room.
“Did you subdue the patient yourself?”
“Yes. We woke the patient briefly for questioning, then froze them again. Should I wake them?”
“No. Do you have any blood samples or anything like that?”
“Pardon? Oh, yes. We should have drawn some blood for research.”
At my request, a few test tubes’ worth of blood were placed in front of me.
“I have something to do for a moment. Could you give me a moment?”
“Oh, yes.”
Once I was alone, I took a deep breath and used Misian.
But...
“... There’s nothing?”
That meant there were only ordinary bacteria, with no separate, dominant bacterial group detected.
That was strange.
Before, I wouldn’t have had any way to check, but things were different now.
Since I’d confirmed there was no infectious agent inside, I opened the test tube of blood and sent Gluttony individuals into it.
Soon, Awakened Misian unfolded.
Just like that, I could borrow Gluttony’s vision and observe the tiny world.
Inside the refrigerated blood, I could make out red and white blood cells.
And weaving between them...
were things like fragments.
Fragments that looked as if something’s original form had burst and torn apart.
“So it doesn’t leave behind a corpse...”
I was a little flustered by an experience like this, which I’d never encountered before.
Could the blood have been stored improperly?
After thinking about it for a moment, I went outside.
“Did you find anything...?”
“I think I need to look a little longer.”
If I said I wanted to go in there, there was no doubt they’d make a fuss...
Besides, nothing would change even if I went in myself.
Instead, I sent Gluttony into the negative-pressure room.
Once again, I looked at the blood through the eyes of a Gluttony individual that had infiltrated the Blood Mage’s body.
And what I saw was...
bacteria dividing and changing into different forms in real time.
Not a single one was the same as another.
Could you even call those the same organism?
They kept changing like that, and once they reached a certain threshold...
instead of dying and leaving a corpse behind, they simply burst apart.
The genetic material left behind by the burst bacteria absorbed nearby amino acids and multiplied.
So that was why there were no corpses.
... This is bad.
I never knew there were bacteria that didn’t leave behind corpses.
I may control bacteria, but strictly speaking, the bacteria I control are undead bacteria that have ‘died and come back to life.’
But if it doesn’t leave a corpse in the first place... there’s no way to bring it back to life.
Isn’t that a perfect counter to me?
It was at that very moment.
I snapped my eyes open at the sensation I felt from Gluttony, then focused my awareness on it again...
Amazingly, the forms of the unknown bacteria being newly created from the genetic material...
were changing to resemble Gluttony.
At the same time, tens of billions of them began swarming toward the Gluttony individuals that had infiltrated the body.
... They sure aren’t afraid.
Sharing my contemptuous feelings, the Gluttony horde tore into the oncoming ‘counterfeits’ in an instant.
The ones imitating Gluttony attacked them in turn, but...
What kind of attack power could overcome the durability of Gluttony, which, under the influence of my control, had become something beyond bacteria?
[The individual ‘Gluttony’ has taken no damage whatsoever from the attack!]
... As if there could be anything like that.
After my first awakening, Gluttony could now even be affected by my emotions. It moved through the blood as if it found them laughable.
Well, they did land the first blow...
So they could die without regrets, as far as I was concerned.
“Wipe them out.”
At my quiet murmur, the Gluttony individuals inside the Blood Mage’s body spread throughout it in an instant and began hunting the unknown bacteria.
The bacteria were being disassembled in no time.
But when Gluttony approached the brain...
“Huh?”
Genetic material that I’d thought wasn’t alive, and was incredibly tiny, passed right through a brain cell’s membrane and disappeared.
The Gluttony individuals snarled, left barking up the wrong tree.
No matter how powerful the individual, Gluttony was large, because it was bacteria.
Unless it planned to disassemble and kill every brain cell, it couldn’t follow genetic material small enough to pass through cell membranes.
That was practically molecular in scale...
“No wonder we couldn’t find it.”
It passed freely through cell membranes and lay dormant inside brain cells. How could anyone find it?
At that moment...
Beep, beep, beep, beep! A sharp alarm sounded, and the consciousness I’d projected into Gluttony returned to reality.
“What’s wrong?”
“The patient’s brain waves are unstable. If this continues, the patient will become brain-dead.”
“Damn.”
It looked like it was having a seizure in there.
... None of my bacteria could serve as a substitute.
Bacteria were generally too large. Even the smallest known bacterium was 200 nanometers across.
Gluttony must have been around 1,000 nanometers.
But to pass through a cell membrane, it had to be a molecule no larger than one nanometer.
What should I do?
What kind of bacterium... No, if it could move at that size, should I call it a virus?
Even calling it a virus didn’t feel right.
It was, at most, one pair out of the thousands of base pairs that made up a virus.
What the hell kind of germ was it? A zombie?
It kept mutating and recovering...
“... A zombie?”
“Pardon? A zombie?”
“N-no, nothing.”
What was a zombie? An undead.
Then that meant this thing...
had all the properties of an undead.
Why hadn’t I thought of this?
In a hurry, I picked up the blood I’d examined a moment ago and went into the restroom.
This time, instead of using Misian...
I used a different skill.
“Undead Rise.”
Could it really work?
[You have discovered an independent undead with no caster.]
[Would you like to use the Undead Rise skill?]
[Target: Approximately 500,000 Pride strains.]
... It works.
“Move the methanogens to Preset 2 and use it in their place.”
[You have gained control of approximately 500,000 Pride strains.]
Wait, there’s someone besides me who can command bacteria as undead?
First, the description.
With my heart pounding, I swallowed hard and opened the description window.
(2) Pride (Pride)
─Number of individuals: Approximately 500,000
─Description: The pinnacle of ‘pathogens,’ capable of differentiating into pathogens, viruses, and parasites with any effect. A product of the great experiment, ‘Central Authority ─ Central Dogma ─.’ When a sufficient number of individuals gather, they gain a small amount of intelligence.
... So something like this came from beyond the Gate?
Seriously...
Now I’m even more curious about what that Gate is.