# Chapter 97
The Fourth Fragment: Red Room
The elevator doors closed quietly behind him. Lee Hwan swallowed dryly, feeling tension stiffening his spine.
What ferocious thing might be waiting? Would it be even more horrific than the fourth basement floor?
But when he exited the elevator and turned the corner, what entered his view was, surprisingly, a peaceful-looking rest area. A large hall with tables, chairs, a ping-pong table, various green plants, and electronic devices greeted him first.
The corridors extending from both sides of him probably formed a circle, encircling this entire fifth basement floor.
Lee Hwan carefully examined his surroundings as he cautiously walked into the hall. Habitually checking the ceiling, he noticed that this space had relatively few CCTVs, creating many blind spots.
Only then could he breathe a bit more easily. It was a rest area in the true sense.
As long as no one jumped out, he could stay here for a while. With that thought, Lee Hwan wasted no time heading to a corner, leaning his back and head against the wall with a pale face.
He wasn’t physically tired but wanted to lie down briefly. If not that, then at least sit. But not knowing when something might happen, he couldn’t relax.
Lee Hwan just leaned there, blinking slowly, ready to bolt if anything happened. His sharply honed nerves gradually calmed.
Only then did he notice soft classical music playing from somewhere.
‘Is this… a nocturne?’
A familiar melody. It was the music that often played in the car when returning home from family trips when he was young, trying to lull him to sleep when he was still too excited to calm down.
If not for the circumstances, it would have been comforting music, along with the comfortable temperature and refreshing green plants. It was quite a well-decorated place for researchers to release stress and rest properly.
But perhaps because of what he had seen on the floor above, Lee Hwan found all of this rather uncomfortable.
‘After searching thoroughly… just find the fragment of causality and get out.’
He craved something sweet. He missed a soft, comfortable blanket and a springy mattress. To be thinking such thoughts while infiltrating the heart of enemy territory—he must have weakened considerably.
Forcing himself to pull his tired mind together, Lee Hwan put strength back into his body.
Following the left corridor, a series of labs with windows allowing glimpses inside came into view. Most had their lights off, making them deathly quiet and desolate.
Wondering if he could find good information like on the third floor, he shone his flashlight into several rooms but found nothing notable.
Even if he searched through every computer for information, he would likely only discover documents with important content entirely redacted due to passwords he didn’t know, just like before.
Moreover, thinking that a fragment of causality was here made his steps increasingly hurried. Lee Hwan carefully walked along the wall of the corridor until he reached a place that gave him a certain feeling.
‘Can the fifth basement floor be this large?’
At the intersection with the right corridor was an automatic door with security devices installed. Looking through the transparent door, he saw a massive barrier wall raised on the ceiling just behind it.
A wall to prevent something from escaping here in case of emergency. Recalling the barrier walls installed at each landing, it was hard to grasp just how many layers of defense they had created—beyond double or triple.
He needed to pass through here to find what he was looking for. As usual when approaching fragments of causality, the hair on his arms stood on end, conveying an ominous sensation.
—Beep. Identity confirmed.
Damn. This time even an AI voice came out. Lee Hwan was greatly startled by the sudden sound and widened his eyes, but perhaps thanks to crossing the line between life and death numerous times before regression, he unconsciously managed to stop himself from jumping.
What if someone inside had heard this sound? After entering through the automatic door, he stuck to the wall for a while, examining his surroundings, but fortunately, no researchers came rushing out.
Lee Hwan calmed his heart, which was jumping like a tree frog, and slowly walked inside again.
‘The atmosphere here is… different.’
He couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was different, but the area inside the automatic door felt closer to a closed psychiatric ward than a laboratory.
That might have been due to the wheelchairs and mattresses piled in what looked like a storage room. These didn’t seem like they were prepared for researchers.
Unless people who walked just fine on the first floor suddenly lost the use of their legs upon entering this place, there was no need to keep several barely-used wheelchairs.
Moreover, after wandering from door to door and entering a large space, Lee Hwan made a serious face seeing more than a dozen monitors.
It seemed the room hadn’t been fully used yet, with few signs of handling. Each monitor displayed a clean image of laboratories equipped with beds and bathrooms, providing minimal living spaces.
Laboratories made for people to stay in. It was obvious who the subjects would be without even thinking about it. At least it was fortunate that they all appeared empty for now.
Lee Hwan pressed the monitors, manipulating the screens, and realized he could control the CCTV according to his intentions.
Of course, a place with all sorts of advanced equipment wouldn’t have cheap surveillance cameras installed. This meant that the moment someone detected his intrusion, all those blind spots he’d so diligently found would become useless.
Afterward, Lee Hwan walked while examining the ceiling. It wasn’t just because of the CCTV. This Building D had barrier walls installed wherever there was something important and dangerous.
How many thick steel walls had he passed that would activate if necessary? It seemed that the “something” they wanted to contain so desperately might have the monstrous strength to tear through them.
Or perhaps it would have such strength soon.
Follow that. Muttering this to himself, he passed several doors and reached a large laboratory that, unlike other rooms, had something like a nameplate attached.
RED ROOM.
Creating such a suspicious name was quite a talent. Feeling the approach of the end, Lee Hwan slightly massaged his goosebump-covered arm and slowly entered.
‘…!’
Inside, one entire wall was an opaque cage. From the wall divided into four sections, occasional thumping or rustling sounds could be heard.
But nothing could be seen, so when he knocked on the wall, it made a hollow sound. Presumably, it was a material similar to bulletproof glass made from gate byproducts.
Looking around, he saw monsters displayed on a large monitor of a machine in front of the wall.
The split-screen showed two monsters. It seemed only two were separated and placed there so far. Or perhaps there were originally four, and some had died.
Unlike the transformed test subjects seen on the fourth basement floor, what appeared on the monitor had the perfect form of monsters. Whatever experiment was in progress, they were real monsters.
Lee Hwan carefully traced his memories. One was probably an A-class monster that supposedly appeared from the Bukhansan gate. A large lizard covered with black, hard scales—A-class animal-type Black Lizard.
Its characteristic gait and irregularly protruding spines on its tail were exactly as described in the guidebook. However, he was hazy on whether it originally had such large spines and three pairs of legs.
The other was a monster with a body over 3 meters long, an A-class animal-type Baloc. He knew it as a monster that didn’t appear domestically, so it was amazing how they had smuggled in such a large monster.
‘A Baloc…’
Those with appearances unlike any Earth animal or with unique forms were exceptionally given truly monster-like names.
It was somewhat different from forcibly matching monsters with names like “squirrel” when they barely resembled one. Lee Hwan guessed this was purely the preference of scholars.
‘But why do these all look slightly strange?’
Moreover, Lee Hwan was someone who had memorized monster types and characteristics until he was sick of them. If Balocs originally had fangs long enough to protrude from their mouths, he wouldn’t have missed it.
Though he had never seen either monster directly, he immediately noticed something was off. Were these also mixed up like the animal test subjects on the floor above?
‘No, they’re too natural for that.’
As if that’s how they were meant to be, there were no twisted or awkward parts—everything fit too perfectly. The three pairs of legs, the long fangs.
To make a childish comparison, they looked as if they had evolved to the next stage.
Evolution… evolution.
‘…strictly speaking, classified as neo-human…’
The faint words he had heard with his ear pressed against the door now floated around in his head again. The subject that he mentioned, classified as neo-humans, was probably Awakened people. A new form of humans that didn’t exist before.
‘I’m getting a feeling about this…’
Awakened people appeared suddenly with the creation of gates, and the Health Promotion Association decided to meddle with gates to gain those changes for themselves.
They started bringing monsters out of gates to conduct these experiments. They had already tried mixing monster factors into human DNA.
“…”
Information connected and disconnected repeatedly in his mind, almost within grasp. Lee Hwan slowly dug through the links of relationships that might be connected somewhere, staring blankly at the monitor.
Immunity. Was it immunity? The name attached to the TF team’s project was surely because a related paper had become the foundation of the experiment. That paper Lee Hwan had received along with the tablet PC…
A self-defense system that organisms have to protect themselves from pathogens or parasites. Similarly, the main thesis of the paper was that gates also undergo their own changes as the frequency of interference increases.
‘Could that change… not have just ended with the creation of hidden rooms?’
An uneasy conjecture crossed his mind. If gates truly had such a system, perhaps the changes might also affect monsters or native plants.
What if those transformed monsters were examples?
Simultaneously, Lee Hwan experienced a strange sensation of his back going cold and the nape of his neck tingling. It wasn’t simply from surprise. This was…
‘Fragment of causality…’
Another hallucination begins. He knows he should hide immediately before someone barges in, but once this feeling has started, it would be futile to try.
[Fragment of causality discovered.]
As the customary system message appeared, Lee Hwan’s consciousness sank deep down again.
