Once the standoff ended, the railcar departed again. Not even ten minutes had passed, yet many things had changed from a moment ago.
“What are you planning to do with us?! Hey, Team—”
SMACK!
The young man sprawled across the cargo compartment.
He had only been hit by a fist, but he could not properly steady himself. His arms were tied tightly with rope.
Immediately after, a cold sensation touched the young man’s forehead. The end of the nail gun dug shallowly into the creases of his brow, drawing beads of blood.
“Ugh, aaugh! S-stop. Aaaagh!”
“Stop whining and shut up already! If you scream any more, I’ll shoot you like this.”
“O-okay..., mmph. Hngh!”
The young man clenched his molars and endured the pain. Instead of screams, ragged breathing began to flow.
At the outlaw’s violent behavior, the other bounty hunter could no longer run his mouth either.
“This is better. Honestly, you’re not even animals, so why do you only listen after getting hit?”
As if satisfied, the outlaw sat comfortably in the cargo compartment.
She was a woman who looked close to her thirties. Perhaps she had suffered a burn, because part of her face was disfigured.
She was the only outlaw who had boarded the cargo compartment. The rest of them walked through the underground passage while surrounding the railcar from the front and back.
No matter how one looked at it, they were keeping watch.
‘Judging from what I’ve seen so far... even if they colluded with the team leader, they don’t trust each other that much.’
Kim Yi-hyeon had also had his nail gun taken away, and his wrists were tied behind his back.
The bounty hunters in the cargo compartment could not resist. Even so, the outlaws maintained their formation.
The only person they needed to be wary of right now was the team leader. It was too early to be certain, but there was a high chance the team leader was not completely one of them.
If he also kept the tattoo on the man’s wrist in mind, he could guess the general circumstances to some extent.
“This friend is at least to my liking.”
The outlaw looked at Kim Yi-hyeon and grinned. Kim Yi-hyeon’s thoughts, which had been buried, surfaced all at once.
“Your head must be spinning pretty fast. You were pretty impressive earlier too. You, how long has it been since you came underground?”
“...Today is my first time.”
“First time? Really?”
He answered with silence instead. The outlaw’s eyes went round, and she burst out laughing.
“Haha! What an unlucky bastard. I don’t know what you did outside, but you must have been pretty confident. Doesn’t this feel like a disaster out of nowhere?”
As she said, it was certainly a disaster.
Originally, Kim Yi-hyeon had planned to build up achievements step by step. In order to get used to the underground and accurately grasp Cilicia’s current situation.
Because Cilicia’s collapse began not on the surface, but underground.
Main Episodes 1 and 2 were gradually approaching.
In truth, Cilicia was not the main stage. In the main episodes, the Professor, the player, never visited Cilicia even once.
The rough outline was like this.
The Professor’s group returned to Selvlogics Lab thanks to Ghost’s sacrifice. Through Kushan, they learned about an organization called Legion, to which Shadower belonged.
Afterward, Director Kushan grasped Legion’s movements and dispatched operatives to a nation called Plaoria.
They clashed with Legion and succeeded in stopping the offensive. However, a few days later, certain tragic news arrived.
The sudden news that Cilicia had fallen. To summarize, they had been caught in a diversionary operation.
‘Their real objective is this side. I’ll leave Plaoria to the Professor and somehow handle things here.’
The immediate problem was lack of information.
‘I remember the development, but... it’s hard to match the timing.’
Cilicia’s collapse was certainly not explained in detail in the main episode. Instead, it was assigned to a certain operative’s side story.
What he needed to know was exactly when that story began. He judged that getting onto the “flow” of the scenario was the top priority.
For that reason, at least two weeks. He had planned to use the leeway Rosco had earned him to refine his plan, but......
‘I didn’t expect things to turn out like this on the first day.’
However, it was still too early to conclude that this was pure bad luck. Rather, Kim Yi-hyeon was even thinking the exact opposite.
If his prediction was correct.
This was a precious opportunity.
‘For now, let’s wait.’
The moment the next change occurred. That would be the timing for Kim Yi-hyeon to move.
***
‘Two hours. No, has it been about three?’
Underground, it was difficult to grasp the flow of time. It was not a situation where he could check a watch either, so he had no choice but to estimate inwardly.
Dozens of minutes had already passed since the vehicle stopped. The place where it had halted was a spacious underground passage. Perhaps it was the outlaws’ base, because military tents were set up there.
Naturally, this was not the original destination. Kim Yi-hyeon tried to remember the route they had taken as much as possible, but the attempt came to nothing.
‘The routes are too complicated to remember one by one. To begin with, aside from Metrocity, the stations don’t have any distinctive features.’
On top of that, they had been thorough. The station names on nearby platforms were covered with spray paint. The two stations he had passed recently were “GW” and “C2,” respectively.
There was no way those were the official names. They were probably codes or something used among the outlaws.
In short, it meant this area was under the outlaws’ control.
‘This city really is deformed.’
Kim Yi-hyeon looked up at the ceiling.
The surface. He could easily imagine streets where people and patrol drones moved around.
But once one left Metrocity, the underground was this dangerous.
“That team leader bastard, something about the way he looked at people felt unpleasant. I should’ve noticed earlier......”
“It may not be the team leader’s independent decision. Which company did this job come from? Procast? They might have been colluding with the outlaws from the start to supply them with goods.”
“C-colluding? What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you heard? Lately, there’s been a lot of noise about companies working hand in glove with outlaws. It was something people had been hushing up for a long time, but now the rumors have spread everywhere. They’re crossing the line more and more.”
“What kind of dogshit bastards would do that......”
The two bound bounty hunters whispered. They had been dragged in as prisoners and shoved into a tent. There was no one inside watching them.
From outside, faint voices could be heard. It did not seem especially busy. It appeared they had already moved all the cargo from the compartment.
“Do you think... we can live?”
A voice trembling unsightly. A clinging gaze shot toward Kim Yi-hyeon.
“Are you asking me?”
“D-don’t you have anything in mind? You were going to shoot that team leader bastard. But in the end, you didn’t. You have a plan to escape, right? Right?”
“I just didn’t want to die right then.”
Kim Yi-hyeon brushed it off vaguely while thinking inwardly. Is this guy an idiot? They might be pretending to leave us alone while listening outside, so what the hell is he doing?
‘Was I like that in Tulavia too?’
It was a shameful memory. The days when he struggled against three Speeders and vomited his guts out. Not even a month had passed, yet it felt like the distant past.
“...Damn it. Do those bastards need prisoners?”
“Hard to say.”
At least in Kim Yi-hyeon’s judgment, they did not seem to value the prisoners. If the prisoners had value, they would have tried to control them more strictly.
‘Generally speaking, what that person said just now should be right.’
A deal between a company and outlaws. It was right to see the driver, who had not been locked up here, as being in on it as well. Only these three had been unlucky enough to get caught up in it.
Once the deal ended, the team leader would return and give the station attendant a false report. They were attacked by a pack of monsters, the cargo was lost, and the bounty hunters other than himself went missing......
There was no reason to dispatch a search party for unaffiliated bounty hunters who only did odd jobs. The incident would be buried without even becoming an issue.
‘If this is an ordinary deal, that is.’
A powerful premonition approached. This would not end with simply feeding the outlaws’ bellies. “They” were not that easy.
Kim Yi-hyeon wriggled his hands without making it obvious. Since a little while ago, [Glitch Knife] had been gripped in his hand.
‘This is subtly scary.’
It was a scene he had seen many times in fiction. Cutting rope with a hidden knife.
Trying it himself, he hesitated to put strength into it boldly. He was afraid he might cut his own flesh by mistake.
Just in case, he had only cut the knot about halfway. So that when the time came, he could tear free with strength.
A few minutes passed, and the entrance of the tent was suddenly pulled open.
“Crawl out, trash.”
An outlaw with half his face covered by a mask gave the order. A small crossbow was attached to his wrist.
Kim Yi-hyeon did not see a gun. At the very least, it seemed this group had not issued one to every outlaw.
That was not exactly a relief. There was every possibility they were hiding them. Moreover, a crossbow itself was more than threatening enough to a human body.
Kim Yi-hyeon obeyed the order without complaint. He carefully rose and went outside the tent. The other two reluctantly followed him out.
“Ah, you’re here. Bored from waiting?”
In the middle of the base, the female outlaw sitting on top of a wooden crate waved her hand. Opposite her stood the team leader.
Their gazes met briefly, then parted. The team leader’s expressionless face made it hard to read his thoughts.
“All of you kneel, bastards!”
Crack!
The outlaws kicked the backs of the prisoners’ knees. As Kim Yi-hyeon knelt, his eyes quickly moved.
As far as he could confirm, there were 14 outlaws at the base. Not few, but not many either. If this was all of them, they were not a large group.
“Now, friends. Listen carefully to what I’m about to say.”
The female outlaw looked over the three and opened her mouth. It seemed she was the leader here.
“Your treatment has been decided. There were all kinds of options. Usually, in times like this, we ransom you, right? But you people, hm......”
She lowered her eyes as if regretful.
“I don’t think there’s any business to be had. It’s not easy for us to negotiate with the surface bastards. From what I hear, none of us wants to work hard just to earn pocket change.”
The outlaw received a crossbow from one of her comrades. Then she nocked a bolt onto the string.
“So this is how it turned out.”
“H-hiiik!”
The young man, scared out of his wits, twisted his body and fell forward. He lifted only his head, looked up at the outlaw, and pleaded.
“S-spare me. Money! Is money the problem? I have savings. It isn’t much, but... r-right. If I take out a loan, I can prepare up to ten million!”
“Is that underground, or on the surface?”
The young man could not answer and only opened and closed his mouth. To obtain the money, he had to go up to the surface, but outlaws could not go in and out of the surface.
“See? There’s no reason to let you go, right?”
“That’s......”
“Well, think positively. Originally, you should have died a while ago. We only didn’t touch you because that bastard said he would handle it himself.”
The outlaw glanced sideways at the team leader and clicked her tongue.
“But what he says is that we should use you as laborers? Bullshit. Why should we feed two pieces of trash when our own lives are already harsh?”
Her narrowed eyes turned toward Kim Yi-hyeon.
“You do look useful. That’s why you irritate me. I don’t know when or how you’ll stab us in the back, so sorry, but I’m going to remove the source of trouble.”
The outlaw took a shooting stance as if aiming at prey. The sharp arrowhead came into view head-on. Kim Yi-hyeon’s Adam’s apple bobbed.
“Haha. You really are something. Even after things have come this far, you don’t beg for your life even once. But here’s some advice. Sometimes, you have to become ugly.”
Thump, thump!
Kim Yi-hyeon’s heart began beating violently.
After he had suddenly fallen into Polaris, a sensation he had experienced several times returned. The balance of his five senses collapsed, and only the necessary parts stood out.
“Make good use of that lesson in your next life.”
This time, his hearing became especially sharp. His own breathing and others’. The voices of the outlaws watching from afar. Footsteps moving around, and—
Thwack!
An arrow lodged in the outlaw’s forehead. Still in the posture of holding the crossbow, her body fell backward. Blood streamed from the pierced spot.
“Sh-Shess!”
“Where did that suddenly come from... Aagh!”
It was not only one shot. Three arrows that flew in stealthily each buried themselves in the vital points of three people.
‘As expected, they came.’
The private military company, Lotus Company. Among the various armed groups active in Cilicia, it was a massive force counted within the top three.
The tattoo carved into the team leader’s wrist was the symbol of “White Fang” Platoon, which belonged to Lotus Company.