April Vengeance (9)

They had to go down two more levels to reach the bridge.

The stairway was blocked by a thick barricade. All sorts of materials had been piled up, but it wasn’t makeshift at all. The detective gestured to the boy officer to take a look. It was tied by wire and nailed firmly in place. The barricade was so thick it filled the entire stairwell; dismantling it would require quite a bit of time.

Bullet marks were found along the walls. Gyeo-ul touched them with his finger, assessing their depth and caliber. These were telltale marks of heavy automatic weaponry.

There were dozens of corpses scattered around, in gruesome condition. They had been badly torn apart and eaten. Pssshh. Putrid gas escaped from their anuses, and maggots crawled all over their skin.

The detective flipped over a corpse. Around the eyes, the skin had blackened. Black viscous fluid oozed from the mouth. The entire body was messily mottled. Frowning and covering her nose with the back of her hand, agent Gibson stabbed the body with her machete. Stab, stab. Slicing and scraping, she searched for something.

Swarms of jet-black flies buzzed around, sticking everywhere, much to the annoyance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation agent. Gyeo-ul nonchalantly shooed them away. Then he asked in a hushed voice.

“What are you looking for?”

“Wait a second… This is it.”

What she pulled out with her knife tip was a small piece of metal, slick and sticky. A shattered bullet. She easily found the remaining fragments. Wiping her knife on the carpet, she took off her gloves and touched the fragments with bare hands, as if to check their temperature.

Now, the female detective offered her expert opinion.

“The mutants’ skin did not decay. There were no exceptions. This is evidence that the infection spread so rapidly, there was almost no stagger in each individual’s infection timeline. In contrast, given the body temperature and the extent of livor mortis, this corpse has been dead for at least eight hours. The barricade is also unusual. If the infection spread quickly, they wouldn’t have had the time to build something this sturdy. This is just a possibility, I suppose.”

The implication was clear: there had been conflict between humans on this ship. The infection outbreak must have occurred as a disaster amid that chaos. She continued in a gentle tone.

“Heavily armed individuals killed civilians. If they needed a barricade like this, it means the fighting was quite intense. It wasn’t just a unilateral massacre.”

Gyeo-ul agreed.

“Looks like we’ll need to be ready to fight people, not just mutants.”

“Yes, that would be best. This job just keeps getting more complicated.”

The detective let out a heavy sigh, glancing discreetly at the boy officer. After all, this rescue mission had started due to one person’s stubbornness. The boy managed an awkward smile.

But she didn’t complain. That kind of self-restraint was only natural for a field agent. Complaints were pointless; all that mattered was presenting opinions. The detective was not considering withdrawal yet.

“We need to find another way. We have no idea what’s happening beyond the barricade.”

“What about the elevator?”

It was not a suggestion to ride quietly. To look for another stairway, they would have to go all the way to the center of the cruise ship. There was an escalator before that, but according to the schematics, it led directly to the central Grand Buffet. That route would be exposed from all directions—extremely dangerous.

‘A perfect place for a mutant group to ambush.’

Even at Atascadero State Hospital, the mutants picked their spots to lie in wait. Attacking humans, in the end, was to increase their number of hosts. Overwhelming with numbers was an effective strategy to reduce risk. A wide and open space was essential for that.

“That sounds reasonable. Let’s go.”

The detective agreed. Gyeo-ul took the lead. She followed. Only one set of footsteps could be heard. This level of stealth had crossed from genius to superhuman, and was virtually Gyeo-ul’s limit. Any more and the resource consumption would have been too severe.

‘In this world, even devoting everything to one technique wouldn’t be enough…’

Gyeo-ul was an oddity, repeating life in the same universe twenty-seven times. Few people endured repeated failure in a world where one could surpass limits.

The control entity had pointed that out to him.

Gyeo-ul would occasionally raise his fist. As the detective kept watch, Gyeo-ul searched the cabins for any clues. But after searching six cabins, all he found were hanged corpses. The mutants had eaten from whatever height was convenient. From the waist to the thighs, nothing was left but bone.

The hallway widened. Cabins lined both sides, with six elevators in the middle. All the elevators were stopped at the fifth floor.

“All are in emergency stop mode. What was on the fifth deck?”

The detective asked, and Gyeo-ul called up the schematics in his memory—his enhanced cognition helped greatly.

“The grand theater, atrium, casino, two dance clubs, a café, a restaurant, and five bars…”

All pleasure-related facilities. On a luxury cruise, what else would there be? The fifth floor was an extreme example.

‘Building an atrium in the middle of a ship, honestly…’

The atrium was an open space with a view of the sky. To make a closed vessel feel that open, how much space had to be set aside? On a cruise ship, it was perhaps the greatest luxury imaginable.

Agent Gibson tilted her head.

“I don’t know… There’s probably some meaning to it, but we don’t have any clues.”

She muttered, at least acknowledging the possibility that there were survivors there.

“For now, I’ll open the door.”

Gyeo-ul slid his fingers between the door crevice. Thanks to his augmented combat strength, he opened it easily. The Federal Bureau of Investigation agent pushed the opened door, looking a little more puzzled as she glanced at the boy officer. It hadn’t been much of a waste of time.

“Wait a moment. Using a rope to go down is simple enough, but even you’d have trouble opening the door in that position, first Lieutenant Han.”

She entered one of the cabins Gyeo-ul had searched and brought back a descent device. Gyeo-ul drew his pistol and fired three shots over her shoulder. Bang, Bang, Bang! The heads of the things silently waiting behind the locked cabin doors shattered one after another as the doors opened.

The agent flinched but didn’t turn around. She carried on as if nothing had happened. With a bit of adjustment, she set up the descent device to control the speed of the descent.

“Okay, all set. Go down. I’ll cover you.”

Gyeo-ul descended on the rope. The vertical shaft had little in the way of work lights. Only the elevator car far below could be seen.

Screeee— The manually opened door gave a metallic shriek. Beyond it, pitch-black darkness. Even with night vision goggles, nothing could be seen. Finally, he snapped and tossed a disposable infrared light stick. The green glow seemed so light, swallowed by the dense darkness. It wasn’t enough to illuminate the long corridor.

‘Is there really nothing there?’

If mutants were around, surely he would have heard something. He radioed the detective that she could come down, then finally set foot on the deck. Discarding the descent device, he scanned the surroundings.

The air was rotten. The detective, who soon came down, gagged at the stench. Gyeo-ul suggested:

“Put on your gas mask.”

“No, it’s all right. I’ll adjust soon enough.”

“You don’t have to push yourself… One person is enough.”

He meant, it was sufficient for one of them to stay alert by scent. When dealing with mutant infectees, smell was an important clue. Even if their skin didn’t rot, the odor of mutants was distinctly different from corpse decay. Their metabolism was so much more active that a sweaty, unwashed human paled in comparison.

‘If this were in Korea, things might have been different.’

Mutants basically inherited the traits of the hosts they infected. Functional mutations were another matter. So, if the background were set in Korea, olfaction would become less important—not entirely meaningless, but still.

He thought about this. In this universe, they probably wouldn’t go that far.

Gyeo-ul and the detective walked through a hallway filled with death. Not the aftermath of disease, but the passage of human malice. Sweeping an infrared glow along the wall, hidden markings became visible—a word of nine letters, black in the green light:

Vengeance.

He saw no color through the night vision goggles, but Gyeo-ul guessed the letter was written in blood. The severed heads rolling on the floor were enough of a clue. The detective sighed.

“I hope the madmen who did this are already dead. What grudge could possibly drive them to this kind of torture…”

As she said, the decapitated corpses were all stripped bare. Traces of severe abuse were left behind. In the worst cases, they’d been flayed alive. Chunks of skin and flesh were thrown about carelessly.

“I don’t know. There’s no limit to how much people can hate each other.”

Gyeo-ul spoke from his own experience. Humanity was limited in all things, but among all his experiences, hate was the only emotion he’d found to have no boundaries.

‘People say love is endless, but I’ve never seen anyone love like that.’

Did such an emotion really exist?

For Rose, maybe. Gyeo-ul thought she was the only exception, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe it was just a hopeful illusion, something he wanted to believe. Expectation breeds disappointment. In life, the boy had grown used to giving up on what he wanted, what he had, and what he could have.

‘But at least the things I felt I had to have—I never wanted to let go.’

Gyeo-ul severed his thoughts. Getting lost in the past, picking at scabs that hadn’t healed—such habits were bad.

As they advanced, the hundred-meter corridor continued to display atrocities: scenes of beheadings, shootings, the signs of fierce combat.

At the entrance to the bridge, a marble dining table had been erected, riddled with bullet holes. Beyond it lay the decaying corpse of a soldier with empty hands. So where had the weapons gone?

Finally, they arrived at the bridge. Cold ocean air blew through broken windows. It was dark as well, but the terminals all had lights. The detective, expecting the worst, exhaled in relief.

“It’s an unfamiliar system, but I think I can handle it. First, I’ll reduce our speed.”

“You can pilot a ship?”

“Yes. On narcotics raids, all sorts of things happen. Fights can break out anywhere—land, sea, and sky. It’s best to learn the basics of flying and sailing. It’s not a qualification required for all agents, though.”

Even the old world had its drama. Her dangerous history and the records that had formed its foundation struck Gyeo-ul as impressive. In previous worlds, he’d never been so closely involved with the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Central Intelligence Agency.

There was a slight feeling of inertia. Proof the ship had started decelerating.

“I’ll change course to 0-1-0 degrees. At least we should avoid the typhoon.”

Agent Gibson turned the wheel left. It was unavoidable—but now, everyone onboard would realize someone had taken control of the bridge.

As expected, they could access the internal lines for all passenger cabins from the bridge. The only problem was that it would require more than a thousand repetitive operations. Before trying, Gyeo-ul and the detective, who had blocked the bridge’s doors, decided to check the CCTV first. It might save them a lot of work connecting to all the lines.

The first thing they checked was, of course, the fifth deck.

‘Things are abnormal here too.’

Unlike the eighth deck, the power wasn’t out here. That’s why the blood that stained the atrium was reflected without filter. The corpses in the casino had all been stripped. At the bars, mutants crouched, doing nothing but killing time.

“Wait, was the last image the grand theater?”

The detective manipulated the console. The camera returned to the interior of the theater. Many mutants wandered there as well, but Gyeo-ul’s focus locked on the stage. For some reason, there were many snapped ropes—but notably, one particular mutant infectee was tied up.

‘A leash?’

It wasn’t just that. The mutant was female, but unlike any they’d seen so far. Her immune rejection was visibly severe. The parts covered with rope had their flesh stripped away completely. The other end of the rope was tied to a stake.

The detective, sensing something odd, rewound the theater’s footage to see earlier scenes.

Gyeo-ul understood the meaning of vengeance.

—————————= Author’s Note —————————=

#Viewer Chat – Unread Messages

It’s coming out soon. I’ve put it off since so many people dislike it… haha. Once April Vengeance ends, rose’s Withering Season will come. Though, that may change.

#Illegal Sharing

I normally don’t say this, but…

For those of you sharing this novel everywhere: please don’t do it. I see everything you’re sharing.

I’m not saying I’ll report you. Chances of catching anyone are less than one in ten anyway. The sites are so clever—foreign servers, no IP collecting, no personal info needed, no access logs, secret comments, one-on-one anonymous sharing, etc…

Given all that, if I had time to file lawsuits, I’d rather spend it writing.

I’m only saying this today because lately, I see my work getting shared a lot. Nearly in real time…

Comments from those places put authors in a tough spot.

It’s fun, post more, keep updating.

Hahaha. But for more updates, the author needs to keep writing.

I’m trying to see if being a full-time author is possible, but at this rate, it’s just not.

If this novel is something you could take or leave, then there’s nothing I can do.

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Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep