Chapter 75

Stars were glittering thickly in the black sky.

I shook Cha Si-eon awake as he slept soundly in a place without even a roof.

“Team Leader, wake up now. Team Leader.”

When I shook his shoulder, Cha Si-eon, who had been sleeping like the dead, snapped his eyes open.

Cha Si-eon looked back and forth between me and the night sky with startled eyes.

Then he hurriedly raised himself.

“Ugh……!”

No, he tried to raise himself and failed.

Judging by the way he grabbed his waist and twisted, his wound seemed to have opened.

It seemed better for him not to push himself.

But Cha Si-eon endured the pain and finally sat up.

Then he asked me murderously,

“What time is it right now?”

“It will be midnight soon.”

At my answer, Cha Si-eon’s face crumpled all at once.

“Are you out of your mind? What were you thinking, doing this kind of……!”

He slept well enough, and now he was throwing a temper again.

“I did it with the intention of making a countermeasure from now on. There are still 2 hours and 40 minutes left until 「Blood Rain」 falls.”

At my calm reply, Cha Si-eon’s gaze grew even more ominous.

So I scratched at Team Leader Cha once more.

“If you want to blame someone, blame your own inadequacy. You were the one who mistook the medicine, you were the one who staggered and passed out cold, and you were the one who failed to gain my trust and cooperation. This is all because your leadership is lacking, Team Leader.”

“…….”

“And we do not have time to waste right now. Stop acting emotionally and focus on the situation.”

Cha Si-eon clenched his teeth.

It seemed he was speechless because I returned almost exactly what he usually said.

But he looked like he was about to explode again soon, so I held out the notebook to Team Leader Cha.

Cha Si-eon glared at it as if asking what this was.

Without a word, I opened the notebook and held it out again.

Cha Si-eon reluctantly snatched it.

Then, as he looked through it irritably, he came face-to-face with it.

All the nonsense he had babbled while drunk on sleep.

Cha Si-eon’s expression grew stiffer and stiffer, then he raised his voice at me again.

“Why did you write all this down too? Have you really gone insane?”

“I wrote it down for you in case you did not remember what you said. I went to the trouble of thinking of you, and this is how you react.”

“That is why I am asking why you think in such a way!”

“You said it yourself, so why are you taking it out on me? Do you think I wanted to know your ex-girlfriend’s name, Team Leader?”

“……!”

Cha Si-eon’s face turned pale.

Team Leader Cha began frantically searching through the notebook, and I watched the sight for a while before adding,

“I am joking.”

“…….”

Cha Si-eon froze in place as if he had stepped on a land mine.

Then he slowly lifted his head and looked at me.

In Team Leader Cha’s 2 eyes, the will to strangle me was strongly dwelling.

At that blazing gaze, I instead felt as if everything piled up inside me washed away cleanly.

Ah, perhaps I endured for the sake of this moment.

When I smiled slyly, strength entered Cha Si-eon’s jaw.

It seemed he wanted to beat me up, but perhaps because he had his dignity, he could not actually throw punches.

Thank goodness he was a well-socialized fellow.

Satisfied by Cha Si-eon’s morality, I opened my mouth again.

“Team Leader Cha Si-eon.”

“Why are you calling me?”

“Honestly, were you in your right mind?”

“…….”

No answer returned.

So I returned something Team Leader Cha had once said in a roughly similar form.

“I mean, were you maintaining reason and thinking of a rational alternative or other countermeasures?”

Perhaps he recognized the familiar expression, because Cha Si-eon’s gaze fell to the ground.

Cha Si-eon only had a bad personality; he was not someone without a sense of propriety.

Even less was he a coward.

Just as I believed, Team Leader Cha wiped his face, then reluctantly admitted it.

“It is true that my judgment was clouded.”

Yes, why would it not have been?

For 3 days, he had neither eaten nor rested properly.

Just as he had been trying to catch his breath for a moment, I had appeared, of all people.

Moreover, what Cha Si-eon felt when he saw me did not seem to be relief, but a sense of utter trouble.

Since he had heard the news about 「Ant Hill」, the thought of definitely keeping me alive and sending me out must have come first.

And cornered like that, what he chose was the spirit of patriotic martyrdom, offering his body for the nation.

I will admit it was desperate.

And at the same time, that it was ignorant.

“How is your body?”

When I asked about his condition, Cha Si-eon stared at me gloomily.

He did not seem willing to answer, so I relied on the light of the streetlamp and examined Team Leader Cha’s condition.

First, the bloodshot look in his eyes had almost faded.

Instead, sleepiness remained.

It seemed he had woken after sleeping very well, and that physical and mental stability was transmitted even to me. Yet he himself seemed displeased by this refreshment.

That temper of his, seriously.

After confirming that Team Leader Cha was fine, I sat across from him.

“Let us eat first.”

Then I emptied out the plastic bag containing snacks.

Yu-ju had told me to pass them to Jae-gyeom, but it looked like we were going to eat them all.

But well, as long as the objective was achieved, it did not matter what the process was.

If Cha Si-eon returned alive thanks to this, Kwak Jae-gyeom would revive too, so let us make grateful daily use of it.

---

“It seems to have been downgraded after the second reorganization.”

Cha Si-eon said while holding out his hand to me.

So I passed Cha Si-eon the cola and asked back,

“Downgraded?”

“It seems to be the effect of Intensive Suppression Week. At the time, we destroyed the space every time we broke through a zone, and the engagements were fierce as well. Even so, the reorganization proceeded, so I wondered about it, but perhaps because of the damage from then, the Special Zone seems to have shrunk compared to before, and its grade seems to have been lowered.”

Its grade lowered.

I had heard of resetting Special Zones or stopping their reorganization, but this was my first time hearing something like this.

But Cha Si-eon’s words had a point too.

「Island Where Blood Falls」, which I had seen through the manual, had 10 zones from A to J, and each of those zones had 7 patterns.

In other words, this place was a gigantic maze in which no fewer than 70 spaces of slaughter were combined.

But now?

The places we kept going in and out of were 8 zones, from B to I.

But the patterns of these zones were fixed as one each.

Zone D flood, Zone E black-and-white photo, Zone H soap bubbles, and so on.

They were all new patterns, but compared to before, the difficulty had fallen a long way.

Since they were single patterns, once we cleared them a single time, after that we only had to follow along exactly.

“I did not know downgrades could happen too.”

“This is my first time seeing it as well. To begin with, there are not many Special Zones that have undergone second awakening, and there has also never been a case where we withdrew while resetting one, so it seems to be because of that.”

So this was the product of a situation that was neither one thing nor the other.

“Well, that is fortunate. Thanks to that, we are at least moving somewhat more easily.”

“This is not a situation where we can be relieved.”

Cha Si-eon said this while handing me half of the newly opened jerky.

“Because of this, 「Big Cat」 also appears to be in a sensitive state.”

A dangerous entity becoming sensitive.

Well, 「Moving Gun」 had been in pain, and the barcode-headed 「Employee」 had been afraid.

So it could become sensitive too, I suppose.

“Are you certain it is targeting you, Team Leader?”

“I am certain. Moreover, I originally have a rather ill-fated relationship with 「Big Cat」.”

“An ill-fated relationship?”

“In the past, when I was on the same team as Manager Kwon Mu-seop, I participated in the extermination operation against 「Big Cat」.”

Was this a story from when Manager Kwon Mu-seop was a team leader?

“Then is that not quite old?”

“That is correct. It was 3 years ago.”

Then it must have been when Agent Lee Seop had gone missing and the full-scale war was in full swing.

“At that time, Manager Kwon Mu-seop’s team continuously pursued 「Big Cat」 and had dozens of engagements with it.”

“But you did not catch it in the end?”

“No. Every time it was cornered, it called a mercenary entity and fled, so we frequently missed it.”

“It seems 「Big Cat」 is not that strong an entity.”

“It is strong.”

At my words, Cha Si-eon firmly shook his head.

“If one only considers the entity’s specs, it is top-class among all entities in Special Zones. If 「Big Cat」 made up its mind and fought, it would be difficult for our side to handle as well.”

“For that, it seems to fight too badly…….”

I recalled Group 1’s operation report.

Group 1 personnel had engaged 「Big Cat」 a total of 13 times.

And 「Big Cat」 had run away 9 times among those.

“That is because its strategy is not good compared to the specs it possesses. 「Big Cat」 ran away whenever things became even slightly unfavorable, even in situations where it could have endured sufficiently.”

“Does it lack judgment?”

“Rather than that, it seems to be on the emotional side.”

“Like you, Team Leader.”

“…….”

Oops, my tongue slipped, did it not?

I avoided Cha Si-eon’s frosty gaze and put a potato chip in my mouth.

“……In any case, 「Big Cat」 has a bad relationship with our side, and it knows how to identify individual people. So it also attempts retaliation.”

Retaliation?

“After the Bureau reorganization, an agent who had been on Manager Kwon Mu-seop’s team and was assigned to the Exploration Team once carried out a mission here. At that time, 「Big Cat」 recognized that agent and followed them around while attacking.”

Someone who had been on Manager Kwon Mu-seop’s team, then went to the Exploration Team?

“Is that about Baek Sa-ra?”

“That is correct. Several explorations were conducted, but 「Big Cat」 targeted only Agent Baek Sa-ra in particular, so it interfered with operations.”

“Uh, could that not have been because of the ring?”

Baek Sa-ra had said that during the total-war period 2 years ago, she had torn off a piece of 「Big Cat」.

If she had made that into a ring and worn it around, perhaps 「Big Cat」 had been stimulated by that.

“No, it was not that. Agent Baek began wearing that ring after 「Big Cat」 started following her.”

“After?”

“Knowing that 「Big Cat」 was targeting her, she made a ring out of a piece secured in the past and wore it. It was a sort of provocation.”

“Aha…….”

So 「Big Cat」 remembered Baek Sa-ra, who had been a team member of Kwon Mu-seop’s team, and much later recognized Baek Sa-ra during exploration and came to take revenge?

This is a real cat, is it not?

So-called spiritual creatures like cats or magpies supposedly remember people who tormented them and hold grudges too. This was exactly that kind of thing.

What are these things, really?

And what on earth is Baek Sa-ra’s identity too, making a ring out of that cat’s piece and wearing it around just to have a psychological battle with it……?

In any case, if 「Big Cat」’s habits were like that, then after discovering Cha Si-eon isolated alone, it had no reason not to follow him.

So for us, the best course was to leave this place before 「Big Cat」 began wandering around.

But now, only 2 hours remained until 「Blood Rain」, 「Big Cat」’s active phase, fell.

Could we reach Zone A within that time?

Realistically, it seemed impossible.

It had not appeared until now, so there was no way it would suddenly appear through luck.

“Team Leader, are you certain that door is connected to Zone A?”

“The island’s spatial structure has not changed. So it will appear eventually.”

“Then should it not have appeared long ago?”

At my question, Cha Si-eon took out his own notebook and held it out to me.

On the page he had opened, the letters A through J were written vertically, and beside each letter, the number of times had been marked with tally marks shaped like the character .

“The number of zones I broke through while I was alone.”

He is only showing this to me now?

I glared once at Cha Si-eon in disbelief and counted the records written in the notebook.

---

A – 0 times

B – 13 times

C – 12 times

D – 7 times

E – 11 times

F – 14 times

G – 8 times

H – 16 times (☆duplicate 1)

I – 11 times

J – 0 times

Total 92 times.

---

He really did move around a lot, all alone.

It was impressive that he endured without collapsing.

And as expected, Zone A had never appeared even when Cha Si-eon was moving around alone.

In addition, neither had Zone J.

“Even after this, are you certain Zone A will appear?”

“The spaces of a Special Zone cannot be completely independent from their original form. Distortion can occur, but they are not excluded or deleted, so the space called A itself likely still exists according to the existing structure.”

Just as I was about to refute him immediately, Cha Si-eon placed a yakgwa in my hand.

It seemed to mean I should listen while eating this, and if that really was the case, it was an excellent judgment.

When I put the crumbly yakgwa into my mouth and chewed, the sweetness choked my throat.

Having succeeded in silencing me like that, Cha Si-eon finished explaining.

“Even so, the reason Zone A continues not to appear is that every zone we have broken through is a separate space of its own.”