“What in the world…”
FPL’s rookie researcher, Kang Hana, was at a loss for words.
Waking up to a mountain of missed calls and text messages was certainly surprising.
But what she saw next was so shocking that the previous surprise barely even registered.
‘Had it been a problem that she chose to sleep on the cot in the corner of IF-017’s isolation room observation area instead of using her perfectly fine bed?’
‘Was she having a nightmare because of that?’
Thinking this, Kang Hana opened the door to step outside and looked down at her feet.
It was a cliff.
“Huk.”
The laboratory, the break room, the other isolation rooms—
Everything except IF-017’s isolation room had been completely wiped away.
As if a highway had been constructed over the entire facility, sparing only one stubbornly remaining house that refused to be demolished.
Of course, her own room had also vanished without a trace.
“…Oh my god.”
Kang Hana closed the door again.
If she had slept in her usual room outside the isolation chamber, she would have disappeared without a sound.
Holding onto her trembling chest, she sank to her knees and quietly praised the humble cot.
“Whew…
Wow…”
After finally managing to calm herself down, She checked her phone to figure out what kind of catastrophe had unfolded while she was asleep.
Most of the missed calls and messages were from Emily Harper.
Although they hadn’t known each other for long, Emily had hyped her up so much that Hana could never quite match her energy.
She was a senior researcher from another base, working in the same department.
The messages from Emily painted a shocking picture.
[In summary: IF-684 had escaped and breathed fire, blowing a hole in the research facility.
Since there wasn’t even a trace of IF-684 to be seen anywhere, Kang Hana had only now realized what had happened.
‘Has it already flown away?’
‘Or was it hiding somewhere?’
Kang Hana had no way of knowing while she was isolated in IF-017’s observation room.
She called Emily.
[The response she got was an automated TTS voice:]
“The person you are trying to reach is currently in an unreachable area.”
“…Huh.”
Quickly giving up on the hopeless call attempt, Kang Hana carefully reread the messages to extract more information.
One thing she noticed—at some point, the messages had completely stopped.
[The last message read:]
“The Siegfried Unit has begun firing Level 2 ‘Nothung.’ If you’re still there, the EMP will make it hard to contact Research Site 4 for a while.”
“So, external communication is impossible for now…”
Kang Hana started looking for a way to survive in this place.
Could she escape on her own?
She pondered for a moment before shaking her head.
The photos Emily had sent of the current state of the isolation room were absurd.
A space hundreds of meters wide had simply ceased to exist, leaving IF-017’s isolation room floating in the middle of nowhere.
‘If only it had some balloons attached, it would have looked just like a house from an old animated movie.’
“So this is what they meant by ‘spatial fixation’ in IF-017’s containment properties…”
Kang Hana recalled something she had once heard from Senior Researcher Giselle.
It had saved her life, so she was grateful for it—
But now, how was she supposed to survive in this floating prison?
She looked around for anything useful.
Snacks, bottled water from the dispenser.
None of it was helpful for escaping.
Just seeing those items made her realize she had two choices—how would she survive?
She decided to endure and wait for rescue.
Checking her charger, she found that her phone was still charging fine, just like the ceiling lights were still on.
Even though an EMP had supposedly gone off due to a nuclear explosion, nothing in this isolation room was damaged.
Kang Hana couldn’t help but be impressed.
“Spatial fixation is god-tier, and cots are invincible.”
With nothing else to do, she passed the time staring at her phone.
“I wonder if Senior Giselle is okay…”
Even though she had her own problems to deal with, she found herself worrying about someone else.
***
Temporary Operations Room
Siegfried Unit Commander Long Weilan entered the tent, brushing aside the curtain.
She had come after receiving a report that someone familiar with IF-017 had been brought in.
A woman sat quietly, hands folded neatly in her lap.
Looking at her back, Weilan let out a dry chuckle.
“…Oh. So you’re the one they said ‘knows IF-017 well’?”
“Yes.”
The woman turned to face Weilan and nodded.
It hadn’t been long since they last saw each other.
Her face looked exhausted as she bowed politely.
“Hello.”
“Ha. Figures. If it’s about IF-017 from Research Site 4, of course it’d be you. I don’t even know what I was expecting. I can’t exactly just kick you out, either…”
Ignoring the formal greeting from Gamma-ranked researcher Giselle Hartmann, Weilan sat down with a sigh.
Before Giselle could ask why she had been called, Weilan acted first.
She placed something on the table—
A Tsuchinoko.
Giselle gasped and shot Weilan a sharp look.
“Yeah, IF-017 left this little guy with me. Any idea what it means?”
The creature was biting into Weilan’s coat with all its might, as if determined to tear it apart this time.
Giselle glanced at it and made a passing comment.
“Why is it chewing on your clothes?”
“It kept biting me, so I figured its teeth would break eventually, and let it use my coat as a chew toy.”
Weilan shrugged, her mechanical arm shifting slightly as she did.
Giselle hesitated, her gaze flickering toward the tsuchinoko on the table.
Then she gave her assessment.
“…For a standard IF-098, this behavior is odd. It isn’t running away but is being openly aggressive. This suggests it may be a special anomalous specimen. According to protocol, it should be subdued and securely contained.”
The logic was clear, but—
“…You serious? You’re telling me to lock up the thing IF-017 personally handed over, just because some rulebook says so?”
Weilan’s tone was incredulous.
But Giselle simply nodded as if it were obvious.
“If we follow protocol, yes. That’s correct.”
“Easy for you to say, huh? What, you want us to pick a fight with 017 over this? We’re the Siegfried Unit, not some suicidal warriors.”
Weilan ground her teeth and slammed her fist on the table.
But before she did, she carefully lifted the tsuchinoko by the scruff of its neck and placed it to the side—
So that it wouldn’t get startled.
It was still chewing on her coat.
“Is there a section in your precious rulebook on what to do when IF-017 drops off an IF-098 like this?”
“…There is no such clause.”
“Then why the hell are you rattling off regulations? You think I called you here to recite a damn manual?”
Weilan grabbed Giselle’s collar and shook her.
Yet despite her troubled expression, Giselle’s eyes remained locked on the Tsuchinoko—watching it warily.
Seeing this, Weilan’s eye twitched.
Her patience was running out.
“Ha, this fucking bastard… so now he thinks I’m even easier to deal with than some tiny, bottom-tier anomalous phenomenon…?”
“But Weilan, rules are… rules must always be followed….”
“It’s ‘Weilan’ now, huh? You little—!!”
Just as Weilan’s mechanical arm hissed, venting steam in response to her rising fury—
She stopped.
The rapid heartbeat she could feel through the flat chest she was gripping—
Giselle was gasping for breath.
“What’s so wrong about following the rules? Even if I can’t trust headquarters, I have to trust the rules they’ve set without question.”
“Because if I don’t…”
“If I stop believing in the rules…”
“Anomalous phenomena always hide their true nature.”
“If I don’t believe in the rules, then I, my team, you, Weilan… even that idiot rookie…”
“We’ll all follow her fate.”
“That’s why we have to follow the rules…”
***
—Click.
Click.
The multiple safety locks on Weilan’s mechanical arm disengaged as she brought it down onto Giselle’s head.
The impact made Giselle bite down on her tongue, instantly cutting off her words.
“Kyaaak.”
Damn.
The prosthetic limb of someone at Alpha rank really did have top-tier performance.
“You fucking coward. Your eyes are glazed over again.”
Weilan grabbed Giselle’s cheek and turned her head to the side.
Following Weilan’s forceful guidance, Giselle’s gaze landed on the Tsuchinoko.
The creature…
Had bitten into Weilan’s coat so ferociously that, in just that short time, it had completely exhausted itself.
Its tiny mouth now weakly chewed at a fifth of its previous speed.
“Do you seriously see that pathetic little snake the same way you saw IF-017-1…? How long are you going to keep this up? This is exactly why your standing keeps dropping.”
“…I made a disgraceful display. I apologize.”
Giselle lowered her head.
Weilan crossed her legs and leaned back into her chair.
“Forget the rules for a second. What does Giselle Hartmann, former head researcher of IF-017, think? Why do you think IF-017 left this thing with me?”
“IF-017’s intentions…?”
Giselle fell silent, deep in thought.
Weilan listened intently.
Then, at last, Giselle opened her mouth.
“I don’t know.”
“…What?”
“I have no idea.”
“If you want insight into IF-017’s personality and thought process, the current researcher in charge—my junior—would know more than I do.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
“You fucking—”
“Did you seriously take all that time just to say that—?!”
Weilan’s fingers twitched, inches away from grabbing the back of Giselle’s neck.
But then, she sighed, flexing and unflexing her mechanical hand as she asked, “Is there some rule that says it’s okay to beat the shit out of a Gamma-ranked researcher for mocking an Alpha?”
“…There is no such clause.”
“Then what the fuck am I supposed to do?”
***
Five minutes later.
With a subtle smirk, Long Weilan gently stroked the utterly exhausted Tsuchinoko, sprawled out on the table.
Meanwhile, Giselle Hartmann—her nose bleeding profusely—stumbled out of the tent with the help of a Siegfried Unit medic.
“There’s no such rule, huh…”
The traitor snake had fled.
It had hidden itself from the unprecedented entity.
A tiny, pale-white figure, bouncing—plop, plop—across the surface of molten lava, an impossibility in itself.
There was only one place to hide from such a being.
Inside the lava.
The creature that humans called IF-684 chose to recontain itself.
But—
‘There’s only one left now. Wouldn’t it be a waste to stop here?’
Plop, plop—
The entity’s presence drew closer.
The snake had to breathe.
It couldn’t stay submerged forever.
Its face peeked cautiously out of the lava’s surface.
Hiding was no longer an option.
And worse—
That presence was heading straight for it, as if it had already been discovered.
Desperate, the traitor snake burst out of the lava.
—Thud.
Scrape, scrape.
Thud.
Scrape, scrape.
Thud.
Its footsteps were strangely uneven.
For good reason.
The traitor snake had only one limb left—
Its left front leg.
The rest had been cut off.
All by that unprecedented entity. Instantly.
Now, it approached, lightly tapping across the lava’s surface.
“No, no, no…”
“NO!!”
The traitor snake had no way to escape.
It didn’t even have time to think of running—
Because before the thought could form, its last remaining limb had already been severed.
It wasn’t dead.
Shattered though its body might be, it still held on to its core, the broken fragments of its gemstone.
Losing a few limbs wasn’t enough to kill it.
Which only made this even more humiliating.
Once, it had been fire and death itself, capable of incinerating all beneath its wings.
And now—
It could do nothing but writhe helplessly on the ground.
Thud.
Finally, the traitor snake collapsed, crawling across the dirt like the lowest of beasts.
It shed burning tears.
“This… this is too cruel…!”
The unprecedented entity stood before it.
Unreasonably, the gemstone was still nowhere to be seen.
The snake already knew it couldn’t claim it.
It already knew it couldn’t destroy it, either.
It simply wanted to run.
But even that seemed impossible.
The entity met the traitor snake’s gaze.
Then, resting its chin on its hand, it seemed to ponder something before sending out a thought.
“There we go. Now you actually look familiar. Earlier, your limbs were way too long.”
Its expression was… radiant.
As if—
It had just swatted a noisy mosquito that had been bothering it all night.