Chapter 25
This Ends It
***
The mont Baek Ga-on cornered Giness and clenched his teeth, the interior of the ship shook violently. It was not a vibration caused by internal factors. It was still too early for the IED to explode.
Which ant there was only one possibility.
An external factor.
Hadn’t he seen it on the way here?
There was only one thing to consider.
Docking.
‘Was I too late.’
Sure enough, the engine room itself began to heave. It was already a separated space. It went without saying that the external armor, alloy plating, and cables were being peeled away like onion skins.
As an unprecedented molting occurred, the ground swayed like waves.
Taking advantage of the inevitable gap, Giness advanced and swung the plasma cutter.
There was no turning back now.
“No matter how much you babble, nothing’s changed in the end!”
Avoiding the streak of light etched through the air, Ga-on used the equipnt falling from the ceiling as footholds and leapt up to right under Giness’s jaw.
Then he kicked his knee high.
It was a light movent, as if springs had been attached beneath his feet.
‘No…….’
This was proof that sothing had gone wrong with the gravity generator. It was hard to view it positively.
“Miss Phytoncide, get out of the engine room now. It should be fine as long as you close the door.”
“But what about you, mister?”
“I’ll be fine, just go!”
“Are you taking your eyes off ?”
With those chilling words, plasma grazed past his forehead.
After confirming that the girl had exited the engine room, Ga-on brushed back his hair. There was no one watching now, so he had nothing to hold back.
Charging forward fiercely, he grabbed Giness’s forearm with his bare hand, along with the plasma cutter.
At the sa ti, a pungent sll rose as Ga-on’s arm evaporated.
Because it looked like nothing but a suicidal act, Giness sneered inwardly, but—
Crunch.
At the following sound, his eyes widened.
Since it was an embedded device, it was inevitably less durable than the tal armor covering the prosthetic body. But that was only in comparison. It was not sothing a human could casually crush.
“You……?”
“What, you thought you were the only one who escaped being human?”
The hand Ga-on had thought was gone forever had already regenerated.
Without giving Giness ti to process it, Ga-on slipped into his blind spot and hamred at his side. He did not care even as his fists shattered.
Thud, thud, thud!
Under the rampaging violence that broke its shackles, Giness’s arm bent the wrong way. It was not because he had yielded to so indescribable brute force. From the beginning, a prosthetic body had no fixed direction to speak of.
Since it used spherical joints, distinguishing front from back was aningless.
Freed from the innate limitations humans were born with, Giness persistently tracked Ga-on.
A neck and waist that rotated a full 360 degrees.
Unlike Giness, who could swap his front and back while standing in place, Ga-on had no choice but to change positions to avoid him.
As ti passed, the wasted movent paths increased, and the gap between them naturally widened.
The highlight ca when Giness’s elbow began to spin violently.
Along with it, the plasma cutter also started rotating like a propeller.
At the sight resembling a massive grinder, Ga-on hesitated for a mont, and a part of the space passenger ship was torn away.
Kugugung.
Soon, through the gap, the vastness of space revealed fragnts of itself. A scene faced without any distortion or correction. Rather than admiring it, Ga-on hurriedly grabbed a nearby pillar.
Imdiately after, disaster struck the interior of the ship. All kinds of objects were sucked outside.
The natural phenonon caused by the pressure difference displayed a chilling suction force.
Fortunately, it subsided quickly, but it was not sothing to view optimistically.
They had been exposed to an extre environnt.
Radiant heat originating from the sun and the extre cold that ruled space. And the temperature difference born between the two.
The rciless cosmic ultraviolet radiation toward living beings, and the fact that one could not breathe in a vacuum, were both deadly, but the most threatening factor was the extrely low pressure.
On Earth, the boiling point was 100 degrees, but in space it was 20 degrees.
The human body temperature was 36.5 degrees.
It was a suitable temperature for bubbling and boiling.
Sadly, what a human could endure in space with a bare body was about one minute.
It should have been an opportunity to reflect once again on the grace of the ho planet, but there was one exception.
That was Giness.
As a cyborg, he could operate in outer space without protective equipnt. The fact that he stood calmly in the engine room turned into chaos was proof enough.
The unspoken ti limit approached in seconds.
Just because he would not die did not an victory was guaranteed.
Carving out a way to live depended solely on one’s own will.
‘This ends it.’
Having organized his thoughts, Ga-on tore out the steel fra that had been supporting the Tokamak until just monts ago.
Estimated length: six ters.
Since it had to withstand the heat generated by a nuclear fusion reactor in ergencies, it was a material unrivaled in heat resistance.
It was suitable to be used as a blade that cut plasma.
***
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
The girl who had fled alone kept muttering to herself. She wanted to help, but it was beyond her abilities. Staying there out of guilt would only be a burden.
At this point, at the very least, she had to make sure that the sacrifice was not in vain.
Just then, Raymond Horner, who had collapsed, caught her eye.
The man who had introduced himself as a space security officer.
After he betrayed them, she had suspected that he might have lied about his identity, but the badge he had shown was genuine.
‘Wait.’
That ant there was a direct line to the Mars Defense Force. It might be usable as an ergency contact network.
Hurriedly flipping Raymond’s body over, the girl hacked into his device.
“Ah!”
Fortunately, the line was still alive.
With Neria, who had been operating the ship’s systems until now, already dead, things could not have been going better.
After imdiately sending a distress signal to the Mars Defense Force, the girl let out a sigh of relief.
The mont her tension eased—
Kabang!
A violent vibration, strong enough to make her bones ache, swept through the interior of the ship.
“Mister!”
Reflexively, she leaned her face toward the hatch.
What unfolded beyond the external viewport was a surprisingly fierce battle.
A man moving so fast that his motions seed to break apart visually, and a cyborg leading a blue mass of light.
The residual heat from their clash, unable to dissipate, scattered in all directions as sparks.
Though she had lived her whole life far removed from martial arts and was a complete layperson, she could easily tell that the level of their exchange was extraordinarily high.
And that this confrontation would not last much longer.
The engine room was now no different from outer space.
It went without saying that Giness, a cyborg, held an overwhelming advantage.
‘No.’
The mont the man raised the steel fra and took his stance, the atmosphere in the entire area changed.
Startled, the girl looked down at the goosebumps rising on her arms without realizing it.
This was instinct.
The instinct that nothing in front of that man could survive.
What on earth was about to happen?
Almost at the sa ti that thought crossed her mind, the man swung down the steel fra.
There was no sound at all, but the shockwave that followed told her everything.
“What….”
She had done nothing more than blink once. A mont too brief to even be called an instant.
In that span of ti, Giness was cut in two.
If she had not watched it from beginning to end, she would have dismissed it as soone’s trick.
Most astonishing of all was that the slash that pierced Giness reached the Tokamak itself and split it cleanly in half.
Kugung.
It was at that mont that the personal spacecraft recoiled in surprise at the unexpected explosion. From their perspective, it must have looked as though the Tokamak had suddenly been destroyed.
Of course, even if that had not been the case, the outco of fleeing would surely not have changed.
Another vessel was approaching from afar.
Humanity’s greatest and strongest force.
The Mars Defense Force.
***
With the appearance of the Mars Defense Force, the personal spacecraft was subdued in an instant. Needless to say, peace returned to the space passenger ship as a result.
The soldiers who boarded the ship imdiately began post-incident procedures. They questioned the passengers about the course of events while retracing the chain of causality.
The one who received the most questions was the girl.
Since she had contacted the Mars Defense Force herself, she answered sincerely and to the best of her ability.
Yeah, she did not leave out the part about how Raymond had sacrificed himself to self-destruct the Tokamak.
Since it was an outright fabricated story, she had expected them to press her on it, but surprisingly enough, the Mars Defense Force seed to find it plausible and promptly closed the case.
However, for the girl who knew the truth, the aftertaste was undeniably bitter.
Not only had they turned an internal accomplice into a hero, they had also sunk one person beneath the surface.
Because of that, even after arriving safely at the spaceport under the guidance of the Mars Defense Force, the girl could not hide her sullen expression.
“If it hadn’t been your request, I wouldn’t have said a single word.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
Ga-on accepted the girl’s sulking in an indifferent tone.
If he had changed his identity a long ti ago, he might have revealed it. But this was right after leaving Earth. The Millennium Code Gate would surely be searching with eyes wide open, and it was obvious that this news would reach their ears sooner or later.
Gambling recklessly just to gain a bit of fa was not to his taste.
“But are you really okay?”
“With what?”
“I don’t know what kind of work you do, but it would’ve helped your record. If things went well, you could even enlist in the Mars Defense Force.”
“You say so scary things so casually.”
To begin with, Ga-on had been a soldier. And one who had been pushed into it by the flow of the tis.
In an era full of tears, it had been a tear-inducing profession, so there were no good mories to speak of.
It held no appeal whatsoever.
“Still, thanks for calling the Mars Defense Force in ti. I was wondering whether I’d have to board the ship those guys called in.”
“If it were you, mister, that really sounds like sothing you’d do.”
The girl stared at Ga-on with cold eyes and shook her head.
When they had first t, she had thought he was full of bluster. But after going through a series of events, she realized it was never empty talk.
It was astonishing that soone this eccentric had not beco a rumor until now.
eting the girl’s gaze, Ga-on spoke.
“You know it’s proper etiquette to pretend you didn’t see even after this, right?”
“Don’t worry. I’m a lady who keeps a gentleman’s secrets.”
Ga-on smiled in satisfaction and waved his hand in farewell.
“Then take care, Miss Phytoncide.”
“How long are you going to keep calling that? My na is—”
The girl lifted her chin in protest, but Ga-on had already disappeared into the crowd.
Her plan to shout at the heartless man with all her strength ended up circling inside her throat.
So many things had happened in rapid succession that she had forgotten one important thing.
“Ah.”
Letting out a quiet exclamation, the girl pressed a hand to her forehead.
“I didn’t ask for his na.”
Nor his contact information or address.
At the very least, she had wanted to repay him sohow, but that now seed impossible.
Miss Phytoncide.
For so reason, it felt like she could hear that irritating voice at her ear.
This was not fair. So she decided on her own.
“See you later, Mr. Fetish.”
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