# Chapter 98
“Ca-calm down… AAAARGH!”
With someone’s scream, the field of vision flickers and returns, and the scene before my eyes changes.
A laboratory in ruins. Expensive equipment has disappeared somewhere, and desks and shelves are completely empty. Broken glass litters the floor, and on top of it lies a researcher who couldn’t even close his eyes. Fresh blood soaks the floor with a squelching sound.
Standing in front of him with a well-sharpened knife is… Kang Dongha.
He strips the ID card from the trembling researcher’s neck and stuffs it into the pocket of his blood-soaked clothes. A few tears flow down his cheeks, which have lost weight from whatever ordeal he’s been through.
“Hoo… hoo…”
Perhaps he had been grabbed by the collar by the researcher just before, as his shirt buttons are all torn off, revealing patches of bare skin.
Between those gaps, scales have sprouted arbitrarily on his rotting chest.
‘…!’
At this unexpected sight, Lee Hwan feels his heart sink. It’s not just because of the horrific scene. Something that shouldn’t exist on a human body is attached.
Kang Dongha… attempted semi-awakening.
Why would he? If this weren’t a hallucination, he would surely have made a gasping sound in surprise. Lee Hwan feels a shock as if he’s been hit on the head.
Kang Dongha is the type of person who would inject it into his own body only after the semi-awakening had been completed and its safety verified at least five more times. Even if all researchers in this place ended up in that state, he alone would remain unharmed.
Moreover, judging from the missing teeth in his mouth as he takes rough breaths, the time is probably after the monster wave. There are no researchers left to perform semi-awakening on him, who has already served his purpose and been discarded.
Even if he were briefly unrestrained, he would soon be captured. There’s no way to leave traces of forbidden research on such a person…
If so, there might be someone going against Naru’s wishes, or he might have injected the drug recklessly himself. There’s no way to know beyond that. All Lee Hwan knows is that Kang Dongha attempted semi-awakening.
And that he is dying from the failed experiment.
The piece of causality continues to illuminate him, announcing his miserable failure. If he had succeeded, he would have swallowed the regression skill stone long ago and returned to the past.
But Kang Dongha is still in Building D, in a ruined world with a broken body. And that’s in a room on basement floor 1 that anyone can enter.
‘Why on earth…’
What made this person, who had been so protective of his own life, make such a choice?
Frustration, despair, and some kind of resolution are set in his eyes that have lost their light. Lee Hwan feels a chill from his dilated pupils.
At the same time, a premonition of something extraordinary brushes his mind. Lee Hwan is enveloped by a sense of foreboding.
Thump, thump…
Kang Dongha enters what appears to be a break room and throws off his blood-stained clothes. Lee Hwan watches with a devastated feeling as he tenaciously searches through empty lockers to find someone else’s clothes and lab coat to put on.
His chest to shoulders are blackened and dead. Here and there, hard scales like those often seen on reptilian monsters have sprouted, but rather than suggesting he’s gained any ability, it just looks like an incomplete transformation.
After putting on the researcher’s clothes, Kang Dongha takes out an ID card, fountain pen, unknown drug, and red skill stone from his discarded clothes. He hangs the ID card around his neck, puts the fountain pen and drug in his pocket, and the skill stone…
‘…Ugh!’
He slits his chest and pushes it in so no one can take it. Not even blood flows from his necrotic flesh. It’s a violent and creepy idea, unlike him who would exaggerate even the slightest injury.
‘Please.’
Lee Hwan struggles, not wanting to see this miserable scene anymore, but the system doesn’t listen to his will. The view continues to focus on Kang Dongha.
“Huk, sob… haah…”
Kang Dongha staggers back to the previous room. He drags the researcher who is still not dead, vomiting blood, towards the elevator.
Perhaps he’s dealing with evidence and emptying the research building; the corridor is deserted without even an ant in sight. No one notices his actions.
Beep. With the scan, the researcher’s body is thrown out of the elevator. Basement floor 5. Kang Dongha is heading there.
The horrific scene continues. Just like basement floor 1, the corridor is completely empty. There are hardly any researchers walking around. Kang Dongha grabs a researcher who unfortunately encounters him and presses a knife against his neck.
“Hoo… hoo… Open the central door.”
When the terrified researcher opens the inner door, Kang Dongha stabs the knife deep into his neck to prevent him from screaming. The floor becomes soaked in red.
Already the second murder. With his changed eyes, Kang Dongha’s attitude suggests he has nothing to lose now. Lee Hwan watches him with a blank feeling.
He staggers and walks, and walks again, entering the innermost laboratory. The place where Lee Hwan was just moments ago, the Red Room.
With trembling hands, he begins to operate the equipment in front of a cage. At some point, the cage that was black becomes transparent, revealing the monster inside.
‘That monster…!’
Lee Hwan is struck by a shock so great it makes his chest tight. Is this pain coming through a hallucination, or is it a reaction of his real body from being so shocked?
A quadrupedal monster over 4 meters tall. Dark red leather so thick it seems impervious to knives, and vertical pupil eyes with brilliant yellow. The creature with uniquely purple teeth is all too familiar.
How could he forget? A monster with an appearance not seen in any guide, possessing terrible power that he barely defeated with all his might, which then spat out a red skill stone.
‘Could that be… surely not.’
Simultaneously, Lee Hwan feels Kang Dongha’s emotions again. It’s not anger or resentment, but deep fear and despair. He is terrified not of the monster in front of him or his ruined life, but of what will happen afterward.
He takes a fountain pen from his pocket. When he presses the back, a red light blinks once. It’s a recorder.
“May 21, 2029. Final recording. Cough, kek… The Naru Group announced that the monster wave would soon end, but less than two months later, all research leadership entered bunkers. Only they predicted the apocalypse.”
As if prepared in advance, his heavily cracked voice, though trembling, recites what he wants to say without hindrance.
“The skill stone I possess, cough… huk, huk… activates time-related skills of S rank or higher. After my previous attempt failed, I…”
Kang Dongha pauses for a moment. As if choked up, he closes his eyes and frowns, then immediately drops tears. The emotion is so vivid that his lamentation seems audible.
Until the end, he believed in the skill stone. He thought that if it was time-related, perhaps he could undo his mistakes. That he could avoid ever going near the laboratory from the beginning.
But he ultimately failed to awaken. The skill stone, his only hope, became a useless gem, and the things he had done snowballed, with humanity facing disaster.
Failure. Complete failure. The news is clamoring that with Naru’s support, the monster invasion will soon calm down, but the current situation is just a taste of what’s to come.
Monsters will burst forth, push borders, and devour continents. Aquatic monsters will spread through the seas, and all adjacent countries will perish.
Conventional weapons are less effective, but they can’t enter gates to make anti-monster weapons. No harsh environment can harm monsters that survived even harsher conditions in the gates.
And he was abandoned outside the bunker.
The future is crystal clear. Even with the skill stone that could have been his only lifeline, his wretched body couldn’t awaken even a small ability.
Now it cannot be stopped. It’s impossible alone.
“I’ve searched Building D, cut all systems connected to the basement, and installed a time bomb on the basement laboratory’s independent power supply.”
In his desperation, he chooses the next best option. Passing the lever of hope to someone else.
“So that the barrier system won’t work and the monsters in the basement can escape.”
Kang Dongha breathes heavily for a moment. He grimaces in pain as if suffering from his broken body. But soon, he grits his teeth, controls his breathing, and continues speaking while operating the machine.
“Rock fire bear-4-27 is intoxicated by the injected drug and is expected to rampage for about five hours…”
Whooosh-
Crunch, ROAR-!
“Cough, haah… If a hunter far from Naru finds this record, I hope they find the skill stone in my stomach and use it. If you look for me at the ‘Tami Tree’ bar and mention the white bowtie…”
Suddenly, feeling that time is up, he hurriedly takes out the drug from his pocket and puts the fountain pen into the case that contained it.
Kang Dongha sprays the drug all over his body and continues to operate the machine.
Beep-! Beep-!
With a warning sound, the cage opens, and the rampaging monster escapes. The monster, with eyes reddened from excitement, sniffs around and turns to look at Dongha, who is soaked with the drug.
EEEEEENG!
Sirens blare all around. Mixed in is a threatening growl that makes one’s heart sink just from hearing it.
Kang Dongha puts the fountain pen back in his pocket and closes his eyes. Lee Hwan, unable to close his own eyes, witnesses the entire scene.
The end of a selfish human being, torn to pieces and devoured.
‘Ugh, huk…’
His breath doesn’t become shallow. There isn’t even awareness of breathing. Yet Lee Hwan feels as if his breath is choking.
BOOM-!
With a thunderous sound from above, the ground shakes, and the loud warning sounds and sirens stop as if they were a lie.
All lights go out. The monster howls and escapes the laboratory.
The viewpoint now follows the monster.
