90 people leave the bunker. The Lieutenant went with the main, and a colonel lieutenant ranked soldier went with the search. They need to be directed through the ark.
“Be careful.”
“Are you comfortable?”
“Hah….. I can’t express it! It’s heaven! Play and eat, I’ll pass on the next.”
Park Jin Hyuk gives Cha Jun Sung a taunting look. How good is it to not be moving? All he has to do is stay in the bunker and hang out.
Park Jin Hyuk also knows why he is staying behind. If a level 4 appears, he needs to stop it. Anything below that is up to the party and soldiers.
“I’ll leave her to you.”
“Sure. Koharu, be careful.”
“Yeah!”
Kyoko smiles and waves her hand. They have a 4 year age difference and they get along well.
They seem to be developing a good relationship. Koharu must also like Park Jin Hyuk, because she does not care. The search party and restoration party are getting farther away.
Park Jin Hyuk watched from the bunker entrance and went inside. He does not work as a guard. Seven Stars and the government had been considerate to an extent.
Seureuk.
“…..?”
Park Jin Hyuk was about to close the bunker door when he turned his head. A faint sound passed by his ear. He could barely hear it with his enhanced hearing.
Bump.
9 parties disappear far away. He thought that he had heard it from a close distance, but he must have mistaken the footsteps of 90 people and their chatter.
Park Jin Hyuk smiled and went in. He had joked to Cha Jun Sung, but it would be a lie if he said that he did not feel burdened by having to protect the bunker.
It is in a high gap dozens of meters away from the bunker. An odd creature with a fat and wrinkled body and thick fur is looking down.
It is a brown infestor. It is difficult to identify due to its dark coat and the dark environment. Of course the reverse is easy.
It had almost been discovered by Park Jin Hyuk whose body sensations are abnormally enhanced.
4 of them are stuck to each other. The brown infestors had followed the force all the way here by their scent. But there is a problem.
There are too many enemies. They may not be able to make rational decisions like humans do, but they have instincts as mutants.
They know that these humans wearing strange shells have considerable power. The infection pocket had shared the knowledge it received from the brown infestor with them.
The 4 contemplated. If they become adults and emerge, they can fight somehow. But it is impossible to do with these weak bodies.
Average infestors cannot divide or create offspring at will. The only species capable of that is the infection pocket. This is similar for the brown infestors.
Brown ones can create the average and brown infestors, but they are born without the reproductive function which makes it so that they cannot breed.
If infinite breeding had been possible, would the level 4 infection pocket have created just the 4 of them? They can be expressed as the body and alter ego.
The brown infestors each used a small amount of nutrients and created offspring.
There are 20 of just the brown species. They found the path to penetrate the bunker, but they are too big to enter. They will need to send these instead.
The offspring scatter. They need to go into the bunker, find a host, and quickly open the door. After, the main bodies will take care of the rest.
***
The bunker is calm among the unrest regarding the parasites. 316 of the 20,000 people who had been frozen in sleep had survived, for a survival rate of 1.5%.
Normally? There had been about 250,000 people on board the ark. Calculating with this as the basis, it is lowered from 1.5% to around 0.12%.
It is not annihilation, but it might as well be. Even though it happened 4 years ago, they remember the events as if they happened yesterday so they cannot help but be nervous.
“Hee hee! We’re all going to die!”
“I want to die!”
Park Jin Hyuk pitied the survivors. Is that really living? There is no difference from being dead. Their families became hosts and ripped people apart to eat them?
It is pure hell. Pure hell. There are not even 100 people who are completely sane. It is to the point where they cannot lead normal lives in society.
The force was designated to an area where it is easy to manage the survivors’ dormitories.
Seeing them all together, it is more like looking at a mental hospital. Without exaggeration, there is even someone who is smearing feces on the wall.
“Grandma, would you like to take a walk?”
“Yeah yeah!”
A young man takes the old woman’s hand and goes. He looks to be her grandson.
The grandmother’s condition is not good. It is confusing whether she has Alzheimer’s or if she has gone crazy. The young man takes glances at Park Jin Hyuk and keeps their distance. He seems to be scared.
He must be since Park Jin Hyuk caught the parasites without fear. Park Jin Hyuk did not really pay attention either. In situations like this, other people are just borders.
The party that the government left behind split into pairs to watch the bunker entrances. The soldiers either supported them or guarded other spots.
Half of the dorm is at attention. There is nothing that takes priority over life.
“I need to rest too.”
He dropped out of working the guard. He cannot sleep because he would feel bad to the force. He needs to sharpen his blades to take on whatever it is that could come at any time.
***
The offspring use all of their strength. They are smaller than millets, but it is not easy for them to enter. A wall made of concrete and steel is blocking the front.
After struggling through the passageway that the main bodies discovered however, they succeeded in entering. It was a tank that changed rainwater into drinking water.
They had targeted the tiny openings in the filter.
The offspring were cooped up in a corner and moved together. They are in such a hidden place that no one would be able to see them unless they were explicitly looking for them.
“Grandma, just wait a little. We’ll be able to go back to how it was before.”
The offspring stop moving. A living being suitable for infection is approaching. There are 2 of them. They are moving camouflage without the need to die.
The offspring jumped onto the clothes of the man and old woman, digging through their skins. Though they are small, there is bound to be pain since they are ripping through the skin.
The man pulled up the clothes from his side because of the pain. A red patch had formed as though he had popped a pimple. The grandmother was still blank as though she had not felt anything.
“No….. no!”
The man’s face turned blue. It couldn’t be? It cannot be. It could not be the aura of the infection he saw 4 years ago. This is a dream. A nightmare.
The surprised man’s thoughts are paralyzed. The offspring went up to his brain, took in the nutrients, grew sharply in size, and took over the brain.
It happened within moments. His grandmother showed similar symptoms. It is the transition into an infection host.
The change happened in a quiet place, silently. The offspring paced the progress as slowly as they could so that the bodies could not show rejection.
10 minutes passed. The hosts open their eyes. The man is all set up to become a mutant at any time, but it is not working on the grandmother.
The cells that configure the body have aged and are on the verge of rotting. They had infected her because they were in a rush, but she is unqualified.
They would need to use her as a place to hide until they find a healthy host to move into.
18 offspring hide themselves amicably inside the host.
Inside the man, 1 of the offspring fuses with another. The offspring’s limit is level 2, but they can become level 3 if they fuse.
They are becoming adults. It is something that they cannot do without a host, so they need to find infection targets to suck the nutrients out of them.
The hosts walk. They know where the infection targets are. They need to get the main bodies inside the bunker. To do that, they need strength.