How to Live as an Immortal Chapter 92

Chapter 92

This Is a Gift for You

***

***

The man commanding Team 2, Gustak Dengke, crushed the short, half-burned cigar under his foot. The scheduled ti had already passed, yet no contact had co from Team 1. Needless to say, they had not shown up at the agreed location either.

It was then that one of his subordinates cautiously spoke.

“Do you think they were taken out?”

“It’s hard to imagine, but we have to assu so.”

Denying it with a “That’s impossible” would have been unprofessional. Anomalies could occur at any ti.

What mattered was how proactively one responded in such a situation.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that true skill was determined at this very point.

Countless plans ford and vanished inside Gustak’s head. One thing was certain—they had underestimated the opponent’s strength.

“Who’s the key player?”

One was a rookie fixer, and the other—

“Wouldn’t it be the secretary? Snow Apparel’s parent company is a gacorp, isn’t it? Soone dispatched from there wouldn’t be half-baked.”

“The secretary, huh.”

Gustak shared the sa opinion as his subordinate.

Im Sol, Baek Seol’s right hand, forty-three years old.

The information he had received from this client, Baek Ryang, had been limited. It had to be. Im Sol was soone Baek Seok-do had personally assigned to Baek Seol.

Her past was thoroughly concealed.

All that could be known was the work she had handled after entering Baekdu. Even that was insufficient to grasp her true nature. Most of it consisted rely of administrative experience.

But one never knew.

She might be like him—

Gustak shook his head and turned around.

“As always, high-paying jobs never go smoothly.”

Objectively speaking, the combat power of Team 1 and Team 2 had been nearly identical. Now that he knew Team 1 had been wiped out, charging in recklessly would only lead to trouble.

The ability to learn was humanity’s greatest wisdom.

“Where are you going?”

“To pick up a card.”

***

In the northern district of Hyphen Colony, buildings that had collapsed while propping each other up stood in abundance. In a way, they resembled the remains left behind after a god had died. At that mont, a group of bikes cut across the endless stretch of structures.

“Move, move!”

It was the procession of Saul, an Outrider crew that road this area.

Originally, they did not move around this noisily. Acting rashly made one an easy target for other factions.

But right now, they had no choice.

Because—

Boom!

A nacing pursuer was on their tail.

Just as Howl, the leader of Saul, glanced back, a massive body burst through a shattered building. Eight legs carried forward a hulking mass of tal as large as a house.

At first glance, it looked like a spider or an octopus, but it was nothing to scoff at.

It adjusted the height of its joints depending on where it stepped, accelerating no differently from a living creature.

Its physical capabilities were astonishing as well, almost to the point of defying the laws of physics.

A multi-jointed assault tank, Heavy Armor.

Alongside powered armor, it was one of the rising weapons of the current era.

Of course, to Howl, it was nothing more than a mysterious machine that had appeared out of nowhere and now threatened his life.

“What the hell is that thing?”

No matter how hard he thought about it, he couldn’t co up with any cause. To begin with, Saul’s sphere of activity was limited entirely to Hyphen Colony. It was far too small a place to accumulate grudges of this scale.

“Answer !”

He fired wildly with a submachine gun.

Shooting with one hand, his aim was a ss, but perhaps because the Heavy Armor was so large, not a single bullet missed. Even so, it didn’t an cracks ford in its armor.

He had long since learned—after sacrificing his subordinates’ lives—that such resistance was aningless flailing.

Sure enough, the bastard’s main cannon rotated, and a rciless roar erupted.

Boom!

A massive hole opened up right beside him. Had he been even a second slower, that spot would have beco his grave.

It was ti to decide.

In truth, the answer had been set the mont they encountered it.

“Lead it to 3-B.”

“……You’re not thinking of using that, are you?”

“That thing needs to shed so bloody tears too.”

After signaling his intent to his subordinates with hand gestures, Howl imdiately dashed off, taking narrow alleyways known only to locals. He didn’t once assu the opponent would lose track of him.

It would definitely follow.

The mont he was certain of that, the ground trembled.

Upon reaching the prepared location, Howl pulled a detonator from his coat. As if unaware of what its future might hold, the Heavy Armor steadily closed the distance.

3-B.

It was an open lot prepared in front of Saul’s base. Since it had originally been secured for a last stand, a large number of anti-armor mines had been buried underground.

No matter how cutting-edge the machine was, if it stepped on them unguarded, it would be reduced to an unrecognizable wreck.

Moreover, the Heavy Armor was not shaped like a conventional tank. It didn’t rely on caterpillar tracks to move, but maneuvered solely on thin legs. It might have been fast, but its structure inevitably had limits in durability.

If they unleashed their full firepower the mont it faltered, destroying it would be easy.

After confirming that the Heavy Armor had entered the designated zone, Howl pressed the switch without hesitation. The supplies they had stockpiled for future contingencies detonated in a chain reaction in an instant.

A trendous explosion spread across the area, and a cloud of dust shot high into the sky. At the sa ti, the ground collapsed inward, and a violent shockwave shook heaven and earth.

It’s done.

Wearing a triumphant smile, Howl raised his hand. His subordinates had already encircled the area monts earlier. All that remained was to put the final mark on it.

But—

Howl couldn’t issue the order. Sothing flashed from below, and then it surged upward. Unable to withstand the sudden change in air pressure, he was thrown backward.

He stared blankly up at the sky.

Despite being exposed to that level of firepower, not a single scorch mark marred the Heavy Armor’s plating.

“What—”

As if blowing away Howl’s astonishnt, boosters ignited at the rear of the Heavy Armor.

At that mont, the body of the Heavy Armor, which shot upward like a rocket, opened up. The external armor spread wide to the left and right, resembling wings.

What on earth was it aiming for?

As if answering Howl’s unspoken question, the Heavy Armor, which had seed ready to glide endlessly, retracted its legs. Then it dropped—no, it descended.

A move that fully exploited height and gravity.

Even as it fell, the Heavy Armor rotated its main cannon backward and fired in rapid succession. It even used the recoil from the discharged shells as propulsion.

Each ti celebratory bursts seed to explode in midair, the massive body accelerated without end.

When it finally beca nothing more than a line slicing across the sky, Howl’s eyes widened.

“This makes no—”

Boom!

The instant the Heavy Armor slamd into the ground, buildings and roads were swept away like waves.

***

In a world where conflicts beyond war were prohibited, developing new weapons was not as simple as it sounded. Official deploynt required test runs, yet securing a suitable location had not been easy.

Without collecting data across diverse environnts, a weapon’s reliability was as good as nonexistent.

Moreover, from Nodetech’s standpoint—supplying to the Mars Defense Force—perfection was mandatory. Even as a gacorp, it couldn’t shake off the label of competitive bidding.

Pursuing more perfect weaponry was only natural.

Thus, operating a prototype in a ruined autonomous district was hardly a surprising choice.

Even if innocent casualties occurred, there was no Public Enforcent Corps to sanction it, and they could experience combat infinitely close to the real thing.

It was a ruthlessly cold line of thinking, yet at the very least, the test pilot, John, agreed with it.

Hadn’t he just witnessed it monts ago? A re Outrider crew had piled up landmines like a mountain. A vicious tactic they would never have revealed had there been prior negotiations.

A human standing before death beca more proactive than anything else.

Of course, that didn’t an he had been tense.

This was already his fifteenth sortie. At this point, he could carry out the mission half-asleep. That wasn’t a joke. In fact, the machine and John’s consciousness were connected via a device.

John’s role was that of a biological component.

Even at this very mont, vast amounts of information were being engraved into his mind.

In terms of controlling every sensory function of the machine, the principle was similar to that of an Actor, yet it was entirely different in that it clearly separated pilot and machine.

That was also the essence of ‘Dive,’ the Heavy Armor newly developed by Nodetech.

Thud, thud, thud.

After parking Dive at the maintenance facility set up in the northern district of Hyphen Colony, John disengaged the adapter attached to the back of his neck. When he opened the hatch and stepped out, a familiar face ca into view.

A wiry beard thick as steel strands and a solid square jaw.

It was Al Hamr, a chanic exclusively assigned to Nodetech.

“Congratulations. You broke the top score again.”

“Is it a aningful score?”

“From the perspective that you’re improving, isn’t it encouraging? So, any discomfort?”

“After about ten consecutive jumps, the posture control program recorded values slightly different from reality. It’s only a milliter discrepancy, but it looks like it needs adjustnt.”

“As expected. It’s still incomplete, so we’ll need to refine it further.”

After receiving a few more pieces of feedback, Al began his work.

“Oh, right. The team leader was looking for you.”

“Do you know what it’s about?”

“Well, you’ll have to hear that directly.”

It was unlikely he had been summoned for small talk. So John headed there imdiately. Passing through the maintenance bay and going inside, he stopped in front of a door labeled Team Leader’s Office.

Knock, knock.

“Who is it?”

“It’s , John.”

“You’re faster than I expected. Co in.”

Inside sat a black man who resembled a herbivorous animal. A small fra and a gentle expression. He was Willie Burns, the general manager of this project.

Rumor had it he had once served in the Mars Defense Force.

It was a career that contrasted sharply with his outward appearance, but that wasn’t John’s concern.

“John, it’s already been three months since you joined the project.”

“Now that you ntion it, it has.”

“Don’t you find piloting Dive boring?”

“It’s just starting to get interesting. We still have the continuous maneuver test and the maximum output test left.”

They were the most important items on the schedule. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the weapon’s viability would be determined by the results of those two tests. In fact, they had deliberately been left for last—to throw a grand party befitting the occasion.

It was then that intriguing data ca through via short-range communication.

After checking the contents on his device, the corner of John’s mouth lifted.

“A request, is it? Interesting. If I rember correctly, there hadn’t been even a hint of this before.”

“It’s a gift for you. Depending on how you handle it, I’ll recomnd you to the Mars Defense Force.”

Willie’s gaze turned cold in an instant. The impression of soone who had never stained his hands with blood shifted noticeably, and even his voice changed.

“Don’t you want to beco the official pilot of the Heavy Armor?”

***

Dominique, who had been bustling about since dawn, left the underground parking lot before the sun had even risen. He joined the junior he had called and headed straight for the southern district.

“Let’s get moving too.”

After urging Im Sol, Ga-on took the passenger seat.