Chapter 24 : IF-684 ‘Dragon’ (3)

He hid behind a cracked pillar, gasping for air.

He was just himself.

The name tag on his chest had long been soaked in a dark red color, hiding the letters “G-6031” beneath it.

The firearm issued to G-6031 had already left its owner’s hands and was crushed under claws, no longer serving its purpose.

The comrades who entered in a group were all torn apart and butchered, leaving no bodies to call for help from G-6031.

Decisively, the operation G-6031 was supposed to carry out had long been a failure.

He was not G-6031, he was just himself.

The red uniform, already deepened in color today, smelled of metallic decay.

He clenched his teeth.

He felt that if he made a sound, he would be discovered.

His heart, oblivious to the situation, beat loudly.

The air smelled of sulfur.

“Yesterday, I destroyed it once, so it should be stuck in molten metal, regenerating…

Damn it, why is it still in one piece?!

The re-compressed nuclear atom bomb ‘Notung’ is useless, it doesn’t do a damn thing!”

It was true.

‘It’ had half its body blown away, four of its six limbs mangled, and its ribs fully exposed, yet somehow, it was still alive and threatening everyone’s life.

This was beyond expectations.

A sharp stone fragment fell to the ground and brushed against his ankle.

A thin red line appeared on his ankle, but it was enough to make his heart nearly stop in shock.

The vibrations that shook the area meant that ‘it’ was nearby.

The pillar he was hiding behind shook uneasily.

It was the sound of a blind reptile lowering its body and crawling, but the thick concrete floor could not support its massive form, cracking under the weight.

It must be a truly enormous creature.

Strangely, there was no sound of breathing, footsteps, or crying.

He didn’t have the courage to look back, so he only knew that the floor, unable to support the weight, was cracking and fragments were scattering.

The sound faded away.

But he didn’t rise from his crouching position, for he couldn’t be sure that the monster had left.

It might have seemed foolish.

After all, it looked like this was his only chance to escape with his limbs intact.

If it weren’t for the fact that a comrade who had left saying they would make it had returned as a pile of bloodstains three minutes ago…

He would have been running toward an escape route, pushing through his leg, which had bones exposed in deep gashes.

He knew.

That monster.

IF-684 was unreasonably intelligent.

At least, it was much smarter than himself, who had once followed his younger sibling’s suspicious religion, only to end up working as a laborer in the hellish FPL.

He knew very well that survival was impossible by thinking too hard.

And so, despite everything, he ignored the flashing red light beside the exit, trying to convince himself he could survive.

The area around him was in chaos, like a bomb had exploded, and in fact, it had exploded several times.

All the warning lights were shattered, but that one red light remained intact, which didn’t make sense.

He resisted the instinct that told him to rush toward it.

Sure enough…

-BOOM!

The entrance he had been staring at, along with its light, was destroyed by a single blow.

The entrance, large enough for a dump truck to pass, was crushed by one of the three claws that lightly pressed against it, reducing it to rubble.

Then, the irritating, hissing sound.

“KRRRrrrrrrr…”

It wasn’t the sound of breathing, but more like fire burning.

Yes.

He had barely survived the contest of wits with the scaly fisherman who sought to fillet him alive.

But could this truly be called a victory?

He had only extended his life by a few seconds, and in return, the enraged monster was even more furious.

The sound of its heavy tail scraping the concrete floor was all he could hear as he reassured himself that he had made the right decision by staying hidden.

But his goal wasn’t just to survive for a few more seconds.

He had a plan.

“Will it be okay?

It should be okay, right?

I calculated it right, please, damn it, please!”

He constantly checked his wrist.

It was soaked in blood, but the gamma-level wristwatch he had been issued worked flawlessly, showing no signs of breaking despite the harsh conditions.

Looking at it, he forced a smile without raising his lips and gazed up at the ceiling.

He saw a faintly jagged crack running along the pillar he was hiding behind.

This wasn’t a natural crack but an artificial groove.

The reason he had hidden here, stepping over the sacrifices of dozens of his comrades, was to reach this point.

It was one minute.

To have a chance at survival, he needed to last at least one more minute.

He anxiously checked the time.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry…!”

Thump, thump, thump.

The wristwatch was silent, but his heartbeat took its place.

They say an empty cart makes a lot of noise. While no sound came from the ‘heart’ of the monster, his own heart, as large as his fist, thudded loudly, so much so that he worried it might give him away.

At least, that’s how it felt to him.

Then,clank, creak

“Finally!”

He heard the mechanical sounds from above and ran, turning his back on the pillar.

There was no time to waste.

He wasn’t the only one who heard the sound of the mechanism.

The sound of concrete cracking completely vanished. This could only mean one thing:

He had to run faster than IF-684.

He heard the voice of a comrade who had just died, exactly like it had been.

“Are you leaving, little creature…?”

For some reason, the content of the message didn’t even try to disguise itself as a comrade’s voice.

Did IF-684 already know that he wouldn’t care to look back at the voice of a fallen comrade?

He didn’t have time to think about such things.

He didn’t dare look back, fearing that if he did, his injured legs would give way, so he threw himself forward.

Thud!

The moment he threw himself forward, the ceiling split apart, and a thick steel wall fell.

“KYAAAAA…!”

A chilling scream echoed from beyond the wall.

The ceiling didn’t collapse; the material was different.

As a gamma-level operative, he knew exactly what this wall was.

Thud, thud, thud-thud.

The sound of walls closing in sequentially.

These walls had been impervious to direct hits from grenades.

Six layers of walls, three meters thick.

“So this was it… heh heh heh.”

Even IF-684, monstrous as it was, couldn’t break through.

“You damned lizard, always so eerie…!”

That’s what he thought.

“…Huh?”

Because of that, he closed his eyes and turned his head, ignoring reality.

Hissss…

“Ah… it’ll be fine, it’ll be fine, no it won’t.”

It was impossible for the wall to have melted away and disappeared without a trace from the breath that the creature exhaled.

“Seeing you happy, I guess this place connects to the outside…?”

Dragging its tail across the ground, scattering concrete debris, the exit, which was large enough for a person to pass through but too small for IF-684, was destroyed.

Perhaps all of its actions were part of a plan to lead him here.

The blind monster had used him as a guide.

That was impossible and something that shouldn’t happen.

Thump, thump.

The ‘Dragon Heart,’ the source that gave IF-684 its overwhelming firepower, was pulsing right in front of him.

“Ahhhhh….”

He turned his head away from the mocking laughter coming from the monster, whose voice mimicked that of his first dead comrade.

“Haa, ugh… aaahhh!”

He couldn’t look away from the pain that was slowly roasting his whole body.

Well, that was to be expected.

It made sense that ‘ash’ couldn’t turn its head away.

Who could blame the ‘ash’?

“Blood, flesh… I can feel the meat filling her eyes…

This wasn’t a bad final amusement… lowly creatures.”

Now.

The ‘ash’ was nothing.

The only one who knew that the ‘ash’ was ‘that’ thing was the one who would never call it ‘that.’

It was just ‘ash.’

“When I first heard it, I was disgusted…

A water snake, who does it think it is, spouting nonsense as if it were some deity…”

A living fire, a being akin to death.

“Stop it.

Look, earth creatures.

Listen, little beings.

Though that may be a small, weak water snake, isn’t it quite wise…?

Isn’t there something to learn from it…?”

A storm of wrath that could turn everything under its wings into ashes.

“Soon. Once her lost wings are restored, she will break through this narrow, vile cage and soar to the sky…”

There was no reason to refer to ‘ash’ as ‘that.’

“That sly water snake… It would make a fine first treasure to commemorate eternal freedom, wouldn’t it… heh heh.”

In the end, all that remained was…

Only the thick, pungent smell of sulfur.

“Eyes more precious than any jewel… Truly, I covet them…”

Thud.

Thud.

Now, with nothing left to hide, every step the creature took caused the earth to shake.

The sulfurous smell spread throughout the entire research facility.

An alarm rang, signaling a code-dark level of danger.

“Right, the lowly creatures were just a means to return her wings. That wasn’t the goal…”

The highest-grade IF.

An IF with extreme hostility.

The unknown phenomenon that caused the most containment failures in history.

“I thank you for telling her to break through directly… Water snake. Heh heh heh. Heh heh heh heh…”

IF-684 had escaped.