Chapter 173

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The Diver V

“Rgh, brp, blrgh...?”

Ha-yul struggled, clinging desperately to my back. She was being a bit dramatic. Unlike me, Ha-yul had been given goggles and an oxygen tank. Even her prosthetic leg had been replaced with ‘Noah Workshop’s Special Flippers.’ If this were a gacha game, it would have been an SR-ranked item.

That’s right. We were diving into a substance more toxic than a reactor pool in a nuclear meltdown, but Ha-yul had no real reason to struggle.

“Ha-yul.” My gentle voice reverberated softly through the water, carried by my aura. “Have you watched Evangelion? Remember the scene where the pilot dissolves into the orange liquid? If you don’t stay alert, only your diving suit will be left, and your whole body will dissolve.”

“......! ......!”

“Raise your aura and cover your entire body with it. Continuously remind yourself of who you are. If it’s too hard, think of your anger toward your father.”

Of course, I would protect Ha-yul if things got truly dangerous. But I couldn’t keep her sheltered forever. I was a harsh instructor to my guild members and comrades.

“Think of your mother if you prefer.”

“Hrgh...?”

“I know your maid doll, the one you’ve carried since Japan, is actually your mother.”

“......”

“If you disappear here, that doll will never move again.”

Bubbles rose behind me in a gentle stream that somehow felt particularly cold.

Just like in other cycles, Ha-yul quickly adapted to the training. Her fingertips turned pale and transparent, but the contamination didn’t extend beyond her arms. There were no signs of her transforming into a frog.

“Good. You did well.”

“......”

“Always think about the existence you carry. Compared to your life, the void’s poison is nothing.”

I felt a small nod against the back of my neck. Unlike the vast emptiness of the sea, humans each dug a dark well into their hearts. I trusted the depth of that well more than the sea’s expansiveness.

Swoosh.

As Ha-yul regained her composure, a creature swam past us about ten meters ahead. It was a shark-shaped anomaly.

“Uoooooh.”

Ha-yul was startled, and for good reason. Sharks didn’t normally make such noises, nor were they as transparent as glass, nor did they grow to be 20 meters long.

In this inhospitable ecosystem of the void, a bus-sized Megalodon swam past, alongside 15 of its kind. These sharks, extinct on Earth, were still thriving here.

“Uoooooh...”

“Uoooooh...”

Ha-yul clutched my neck with both hands (a habit she picked up from drinking with the National Road Director) and watched in amazement as the prehistoric sharks swam by.

Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

Ha-yul’s fingers tapped my neck like piano keys. It was a Morse code message, not a strange quirk.

Translated to regular speech, it meant, “Amazing.”

Squeeze.

Ha-yul spoke.

“Beautiful.”

Bubbles rose from the sharks as they swam away into the depths, uninterested in us. The ripples from their tails reached us, then delicately popped.

“Ha-yul, connect the puppet strings to the bow statue. I’ll handle the swimming.”

“......”

“Make sure to secure plenty of strings. If they break, we’ll have to come back and reattach them.”

The pressure of Ha-yul’s massage on my neck seemed to increase.

The task proceeded smoothly after that. We installed puppet strings from Ark No. 1 and stretched them out to connect to Ark No. 4, as if laying underwater cables.

Huff, huff, haa...!

We took breaks ranging from three hours to half a day every time we reached a new ark. Even Awakeners, with our superhuman recovery, couldn’t withstand the constant pressures of the super monsoon void for long.

After clinging to me underwater for hours, Ha-yul was left panting. “Exhausted.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. But I need more rest.”

Even during breaks, Ha-yul held tightly to my left hand. It was understandable. For safety reasons, we couldn’t bring her maid doll on this mission. Ha-yul could only communicate with me through sign language or Morse code.

Left with such extremely limited communication in the equally dangerous environment of the super monsoon void, old traumas resurfaced for Ha-yul. She had been neglected by her father—the former mayor of Busan, Jung Sang-guk—and lived a life of sheltered imprisonment. I was the one who brought her from Japan after she attempted suicide.

“Oppa.”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“......”

“Living is too hard.”

Ha-yul nestled into my arms like a baby kangaroo. I patted her head gently. With each stroke, her wet hair dried softly under my aura.

Human hands could cover many things. For instance, Ha-yul calling me “Oppa” while subtly confusing “O” with “A,” making the pronunciation ambiguous. We never mentioned this fact.[1]

“......”

“......”

We shared human warmth through this simple connection. For a while, we just stayed like that, exchanging the warmth of our bodies.

The awakeners in charge of Ark No. 4 were astonished by our visit.

“Good heavens. Did you swim through the water to get here?”

“Yes. We connected the puppet strings from bow to bow. I’m continuously infusing them with aura to prevent them from breaking, but the ship might experience some unusual turbulence due to the currents. Don’t be alarmed.”

“Yes, sir...”

“I knew the cafe owner was extraordinary, but...”

The awakeners were clearly unsettled by our daring actions. After receiving reports at Ark No. 4, I immediately set out for the next destination.

“Sure enough, tackling the super monsoon early—even if strenuous—leads to far better results.”

I swam through the transparent deep sea as I thought to myself. Ha-yul, having adapted, was now paddling along with me.

“In the previous cycle, the other arks suffered significant damage. Their mental limits are reached in about ten days.”

We continued connecting the arks with puppet strings, steadily but without rushing. Any knowledgeable person would recognize the tactic as similar to the ‘Chain-Link Strategy’ from the Battle of Red Cliffs in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but although Cao Cao met his downfall due to this tactic, there was no Zhuge Liang or southeastern wind to thwart us here.[2] The end awaiting the super monsoon anomaly would be overwhelming destruction.

Swoosh.

Of course, the super monsoon had something akin to the southeastern wind: ocean currents.

“Rgh, brgh, brrrr...”

Whenever strong currents surged within the water typhoon, Ha-yul and I were tossed around like driftwood, sometimes swept thousands of meters away from where we began. Navigating in such conditions was nearly impossible. I relied on my superhuman senses honed through many cycles and my perfect memory, sending out my aura like a radar to find our way.

Centerbound, we slowly pushed our way through, deeper and deeper into the center.

“Uoooooh.”

“Uoooooh, ooooh...”

As we neared the eye of the storm, the number of underwater anomalies increased. Besides Megalodons, there were Leviathan melvillei, Dunkleosteus, and Cameroceras—prehistoric rulers of the sea, swimming in their anomalous forms.[3]

It was as if they were asserting that true life on Earth belonged not to humans but to these depths.

“Kiyaaaah!”

Some creatures took an interest in the later-evolved humans. Ferocious, ancient whales attacked us with maws gaping. I drew my cane sword and demonstrated Moses’s miracle firsthand. Unholy creatures, not recorded in the Bible, witnessed divine power and perished. This was proof that hierarchical culture didn’t work when faced with the brutality of nature.

“Oppa, you’re the best.”

While fending off ancient sharks and whales, we finally connected all 12 arks. The work was completed on the ninth day, just as the sun was setting.

The fiery sunset set the storm’s rain ablaze with color. Unlike the ocean, which only received sunlight on its surface, the storm absorbed the sunset across the length of its towering body, dyeing the deep sea a vivid red. The puppet strings we had laid reflected the crimson sunset, twinkling like the Milky Way.

“......”

Throughout the return to Ark No. 1, Ha-yul couldn’t take her eyes off the storm’s sunset. Even in the void’s hell, designed to slaughter countless humans, there was beauty.

Life was brutal.

“Welcome back...”

Upon our return to Ark No. 1, Noah greeted us. Her eye infection had worsened so that, now, both of her eyes were bloodshot. I found myself surprised that Sim Ah-ryeon hadn’t healed her yet.

“You survived, huh?” she noted. “Did you really find and connect all 11 other arks with puppet strings...?”

“Yes. We’ll need to find a smarter method next cycle, but fortunately, the other arks haven’t been as heavily contaminated by void poison as ours.”

“Hmm...” Noah ran a skeptical gaze over us—specifically, over Ha-yul, who was clinging to me like a sloth. “You two seem even closer now...”

“After nearly a week of swimming together, you either become best friends or worst enemies.” I patted Ha-yul’s head. She happily leaned into my shoulder like a cat. “Now we just need to maneuver the arks to trap the super monsoon. Did anything happen while we were gone?”

“Well...” I expected a sarcastic remark about my survival, but Noah’s eyes avoided mine.

A sudden sense of unease washed over me, prompting me to lower my voice. “Director, what’s the issue?”

“Well, Undertaker, you know we thoroughly verified everyone boarding our ark...”

“Yes, we’re sacrificing ourselves for East Asia. Ark No. 1 especially, which is far more dangerous, was boarded only with verified personnel.”

“And I double-checked the list myself twice, but... it seems we had a stowaway.”

“A stowaway?”

I frowned. People already refused to board the ark even when incentivized. What person in their right mind would board illegally? Moreover—

“You’re saying our Awakeners failed to identify an illegal passenger?”

“Strictly speaking, ‘illegal’ might not be the right word. Witnesses say the person just appeared out of nowhere, as if they emerged from the floor...”

My sense of unease intensified. “Where is this passenger now?”

“We locked them in isolation area 13. It was the only empty space. Well, ‘locked’ isn’t quite right. They volunteered to go there. Would you like to meet them?”

I did.

Isolation area 13 had been submerged entirely on day one. The water hadn’t drained, and the clothes of the deceased floated like tropical fish.

There, kneeling calmly in the middle of the water, sat Go Yuri.

“......”

“Oh.” Go Yuri smiled brightly. “Hello, guild leader Undertaker, yes? Long time no see.”

I began to tremble like a small white bear facing a Malayan sun bear.

Footnotes:

[1] While “oppa” is a term of endearment used by a younger sister for her older brother (and other similar relationships), “appa” is used by a daughter for her father.

[2] The Battle of Red Cliffs was a turning point in Chinese history which paved the way for the Three Kingdoms period. In a catastrophic tactical error on the part of the warlord Cao Cao, he ordered his ships to be tied together to reduce the impact of the wind-born waves on the vessels and the crew, allowing his enemy—commanded by Zhuge Liang in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms retelling—to set the entire brigade on fire and eventually storm and annihilate the camp ashore.

[3] A sperm whale but with fangs, a half-shark-half-orca but with armor, and a mollusk but with ambush 100, respectively. Basically, all prehistoric apex predators that could kill a human in a heartbeat.

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