Chapter.7 Masquerade Ball (6)
***
The professor’s plan was simple.
First, according to the scenario, the old picture is dragged to the final stage.
In the process, even if it was directed without a single thread of thread, due to the nature of the content, the old picture will inevitably run out of steam at some point.
All the professor and his party had to do was take a quick look before getting out and happily watch the model garden being devastated and the people fighting and scolding the executive branch. The only danger here is that while leading Old Picture to that point, the play is sloppy and we become its target
.
.
.
.
.
Piyung!
“I thought so!
“professor! What happened! “Was this something that was discussed in advance?!”
“How could that be! You damn bastards! “Even if it’s for the sake of the reality of the play, this is a bit excessive!”
The group, who had been crossing the streets with a giant monster and his puppets, repeatedly taking cover and advancing without any trouble, suddenly stopped progressing due to the rapidly changing situation and hid in a nearby alley, raising their voices.
The opponent, who had been playing well until now by only shooting blank bullets, suddenly started using live bullets.
“Hepburn! Something ended on bad terms with someone from the executive department earlier, so maybe that’s why they just want to kill him! “From what he said, it seemed like he had a very negative view of you being alive!”
“Yes, that’s right! Even if it were me, I would rather keep a discarded card alive and use it when I have a big grudge against my team!”
Quaaaang!
Patter!
“C’mon! It would be easier to just kill him! We even have a lot to take away if we kill! There are a lot of weapons! “I have that key too!”
“Then the play! The political life of the executive branch depends on it, so it’s strange to ruin it just to eliminate a few dangerous elements! look! Bullets are raining down like this, but no one goes near the old picture the size of a three-story house, so I have no intention of ending the play yet! This may be a bit too realistic a situation! Right now we’re taking cover, but if we actually lean out, they’ll automatically avoid our aim…
Pit-shoo!
Tang! Tangerung-
.
.
.
.
“This is a play? uh!! If this is enough, my mother-in-law, Haiha, will jump out of her grave and give me a standing ovation! This is an aimed shot with 200% certainty! They’re after our lives! “This is not the time to sit around and do plays!”
The professor was speechless when he saw that Ian was pierced by a bullet as soon as he put his bulletproof hat on the end of the gun.
‘They are clearly trying to kill us. Even against fairly well-trained opponents. ‘The reason why the mortar only destroys nearby buildings while shooting at pinpoints is probably out of fear that it will touch the Old Picture.’
I have no intention of breaking the play. At the same time, he tries to kill the lead actor in the play.
“ah.”
The professor suddenly had an idea and immediately took out the ‘script’ from his pocket.
Palak Palak
=====
#2 The main character and his party saved a civilian family by throwing themselves away. The head of a family of three feels trustworthy in such a soldier.
#3 The group heads to the escape point through a hail of bullets. He consoles his family, who are anxious about experiencing this situation for the first time in their lives, and arrives at the escape point safely.
#4 End of play. Act according to the situation.
=====
These are all instructions on what to do. The rest is only an explanation of how to deal with the old picture, the location of cover, the point where the mortar falls and scatters debris.
‘Shake hands. Fly and save yourself. It’s comforting… As expected, the entire direction of the play depicts a soldier sacrificing himself for his three families. Make the target feel good about their dedication and then have them die before their eyes? There’s no way he’ll like you and follow your advice in such a simple and stupid way, right? No matter how stupid you are, you know that such a plan will fail! No matter how much I think about it, I don’t understand. How on earth are you going to tame an old picture?…’
Suddenly.
At that moment, a cold feeling passes through my mind.
If you cannot understand an event in front of you, blame your own carelessness. I must have missed a clue somewhere. However, if you cannot understand the grand context including the event itself, you must go back to the beginning. Because the prerequisite itself must be wrong.
‘If it’s a living creature and it’s possible to recognize the situation and control it to some extent… wouldn’t it be possible to educate it?’
‘Ha ha ha ha ha! Dom is already very excited about this incident. That giant monster is the specialty of District 47 and has officially come under the control of the Dome!’
“Hahahahaha….”
When I remembered their words, I couldn’t help but laugh out of my empty heart.
I break down the assumptions I made based on the information I received and select only the information I have confirmed with my own eyes.
‘The executive branch is hostile to our forces and seeks to exploit or eliminate them.’
‘They’re trying to do something with the old picture.’
‘The executive branch is one of the core forces of the Dome. If they were stupid, there’s no way they would have survived until now.’
‘And those guys showed that they had a stupid plan and a stupid director.’
‘As a result, our troops, who judged it to be a simple and failed plan, followed their lead and stood in front of Old Picture, which would run away just 10 meters further, receiving live fire from them without any weapons.’
Why didn’t I know this? We noticed that they were hostile to us to that extent. Why did you judge the situation based on information from the enemy’s mouth?
“Fuck. “I was deceived.”
“why. “Did you find out something?”
“uh. Roughly. These guys are real. “I thought it was a bit too shabby.”
Information that was believed to be certain turns to dust and scatters, and the truth hidden there is revealed. The stupid but big plan to tame old pictures is a really big plan that is just a part.
I can’t believe even a part of what a guy who hides his name says. It is my mistake.
“Haaa-”
I can’t help but sigh, but I’m glad I noticed it now. I stupidly stuck my neck out to the tip of the knife with my foot, but the blade hadn’t penetrated in yet. We need to move properly from now on.
First, we need to check whether the newly created assumption is true.
The professor spat and asked Ian and Bex with a sharp look on his face.
“Do any of you have anything to check the situation outside? Judging from the atmosphere, it looks like it will fly away the moment it sticks its head out.”
“Nothing.”
“me too. “The great sword is also non-reflective, so you can’t use it that way.”
“Uhm… I have no choice. “Just wait a moment.”
“What else are you going to do…! hey! Where!”
The professor, who came out of the alley to avoid Ian’s stopping hand, rolled forward with all his strength.
Piyung!
Pabababak!
As soon as I put my body out, the bullets hit me, scattering dust around me. However, the shot that seemed like it would pierce the professor’s body at any moment suddenly stopped when the professor was halfway across the street.
“also. It’s not that there was no need to do more plays, but the main character’s death itself was part of the play.”
An old picture in which three mannequins with tentacles are hidden in an alley and the huge body is exposed in the middle of the street. The professor, standing in front of the main body with his body fully exposed, could see the enemies lined up in the distance at what looked like a window on the roof of a building, as if they were openly asking for a look. For some reason, the enemies are wearing Dome’s military uniform. They even brought a flag with a large dome symbol on it, which was useless in urban warfare, and waved it. Among them, something resembling a silver exosuit could be seen. Seeing that there was no one inside, it looked like something similar to a model.
‘A three-way intersection with a five-story commercial building. It’s located exactly on the border at the end of his walking route.’
The location they were in seemed quite familiar. In the past, when I first participated in a play due to my mistake, the person from the inspection department who was there to lead the play drew a big red line on the map.
‘No matter what happens, you must not drag him all the way here.’
‘why?’
‘Because this is where his memory ends.’
‘What happens when the memory is lost?’
‘What happens when a sleepwalker wakes up?’
“You will open your eyes and find yourself in a strange place without even realizing it.”
Old Picture, which normally moves to that borderline, suddenly appears very agitated, but upon seeing the street in reality completely matches the image in the memory, it calms down and returns to the house where its hiding host lived with his family and falls asleep. However, the moment it reaches the border and wakes up, if the street looks different from what it remembers, it goes on a rampage and turns the entire model garden of its area into a kill zone.
‘Because that destination is the place where the host’s past memories and the present memories obtained as old pictures intersect. Since the Type 3 mutant is a living creature, it is bound to accumulate memories that it accepts as old pictures somewhere, separate from the host’s memories.’
The judgment that it was a sloppy plan needs to be corrected. It’s quite sophisticated. The life of the Old Picture is similar to that of a woman who is devastated after giving birth to a stillborn child. A life immersed in grief where one holds the body of a dead child in one’s arms, breastfeeds it, mutters things like “This can’t be happening” or “This is ridiculous” and constantly denies reality.
The enemy’s plan was to give Old Picture, whose only goal in life was wandering through dark memories and denying reality, a new goal.
The loss of memory means that the host’s life has ended here. The family members who were with them would have also met the same ending, so by overlapping the situation in which the family members died and the situation in which the person with whom they had a similar bond died before their eyes, the situation in the memory was connected to reality, and grief was transformed into anger, and the person on whom the anger was to be poured out was created. The intention was to imprint the image.
‘Head of the executive branch of an armed group whose political defeat has been confirmed. The moment he is overthrown, it is as obvious as hell that he will get back all the evil he has done. The way to survive in that situation is to struggle and build your political position, but there is also an easier, more certain, and enriching way.’
Before I knew it, the enemy fire that had been pouring down like rain had stopped. They know it too. I can’t stay here all day. If you go out, you will be exposed to their fire, but if you don’t go out and hang on here, it will conflict with the memory of the old picture of having to go to the end of this street, and the guy will run away. If that happens, you will have to get out of cover and run out into the street where enemies are firing crossfire from all directions.
Crack!
“You crazy bastard! “How dare you jump out into the open without any cover!”
“Standing around like a fool! Even go out and say it openly! I thought you panicked and went out to die! What an idiot! “You idiot!”
When he returned to the flower bed where his group was, his two friends welcomed him warmly.
“No, I won’t shoot. If their plan goes as planned, we’ll need to die in a rather dramatic way. Pick in front of the confused Old Picture! And something like a puncture on the head.”
“What do you mean by that? “Does this mean that the content of the play has changed or something?”
“No, it’s a complicated and simple situation.”
The professor said, pointing to a group of Dome-clad soldiers aiming at them from the other side.
“They look like kids from Raptor.”
“what? Why does a raptor suddenly appear?”
“It means that the absurd clown play called Taming Old Pictures was part of a huge play from the beginning.”
The professor said with a chuckle, as if he was somewhat disappointed.
“They played with us a lot. This wasn’t just an event to get some election votes. “The Executive Branch betrayed Dom, joined hands with Raptor, and tried to use the Old Picture to overthrow the entire District 47!”
I feel like a pebble caught in a huge torrent.
I heard a rumor that raptors have become more active recently. A new underground bunker was created in area 45 without any reason. Soon, once the owner of the security key is confirmed, District 45 will be reborn as a new dome city. In that case, the Raptor will encounter a huge wall stretching from Area 47 to Area 45-43, including the area around Area 45. From the Raptor’s point of view, who must endlessly plunder, the moment a huge wall of dome forces is created, they have to go round and round, but in this world where the price of oil is the same as that of gold, an increase in travel distance is likely to lead to losses no matter how much you try. It means rising. This is an unbearable loss for a raptor who maintains the size of the group through plunder without a production base. In the end, it was a self-evident fact that if things continued like this, the Raptors would be pushed to Area 30, so the Raptor Society had to somehow prevent Dom from taking over Area 45.
“The Executive Director, who will die if he stays still, and the Raptor, who will be pushed out to the 30th Division area where radioactive fog periodically blows in. “These desperate guys must have hit it off well.”
“But… the fact that we stimulated that monster was only a result of coincidence, right?”
“Did you forget? Dome manages the entire District 47. “You guys didn’t have any specific destination in mind back then, right?”
“Hmm. yes. “I was just going for a drive, look around, and then come back…”
At that moment, a memory of that day flashed through Ian’s mind. At a crossroads, a group of scavengers sat around a rusty drum that had been set on fire in an alley, raising their voices. The road is blocked because one wall has collapsed. An alley that looked suspiciously dimly lit and dangerous. As someone who didn’t know much about this area, I thought I should avoid these roads.
“…You were induced? “Is this me?”
“I told you. The kids from the dome are experts in street fighting. This is even their home ground. “It wouldn’t have been easy to just naturally drive a car to the executive branch’s powerful forces.”
You can check my schedule by just watching the broadcast, so they must have been aiming for a time when the two of them would go out without me. It attracts BDSM with a key and stimulates old pictures. We, who naturally came to take responsibility, are forced into this ridiculous plan using threats. Since they were planning to kill him anyway, they could have used strong threats without having to think about what would happen next. When all preparations are completed, at the end of the play, through ‘a situation where a familiar being dies in front of your eyes’, the person who killed the precious person he knew was imprinted on the person wearing Dom’s military uniform. From then on, if you make Old Picture completely angry by shooting a gun or throwing a grenade and then run away in the direction of the dome, Old Picture will attack the dome’s soldiers who jump out and wonder what’s going on.
‘Taking advantage of the chaos, the executive branch will attack from the inside and Raptor’s special forces will attack from the outside.’
Literally everything was a play. A huge play set in the entire District 47. Even the plan to tame Old Pictures was used as part of a play, fooling even the hostile HIV Dome inspection department and civilians.
“It means that both Lee Sang-guk and the guy who called him Jack were actors. “I spun it around so loudly that it was truly ridiculous.”
Should I say that it is famous and empty? It’s subtle and lethal. It’s a strategy that’s almost like a swindler, with no way to avoid it since we’ve come this far.
Yikes!
It’s time. If Old Picture’s main body bubbling takes longer, it will run wild in a situation that does not match the host’s memories. At that moment, mortars will rain down like hail on the flower bed where we are hiding.
“Damn it. I heard that a shrimp’s back explodes during a whale fight. “If I knew this would happen, I wouldn’t have come to Area 47.”
“You have to speak clearly. In a way, we came from Area 45 with a knife stuck in the whale’s back.”
“First of all, I understand the situation. So what do you plan to do now? If you run away with all your might while the monster is still in a situation….”
“There is no way they wouldn’t have thought of that after setting up such a big plan. The moment it moves, it will become a honeycomb. “The reason we’re still alive is because Old Picture reached that critical point and then had to watch us die.”
“Then what should we do! “If I’m dragged forward like this, I’ll die according to their scenario!”
“How can I do it?”
The professor said, slowly raising his body and moving forward to get a clear view of the Old Picture.
“In the end, plays are created by actors. This guy is the key to this case, right? “The play isn’t over yet, and the script says that the last part is up to you.”
Now that I think about it, that guy named Jack said that he could use an old picture to commit a terrorist act. I wonder how much he laughed at me when he said that. It must have been funny how funny it must have been for me to do whatever I wanted without even knowing that they had such a plan in mind.
I can’t let this go because it sucks. Since I played around without pay, I guess I should do the finale the way I want.
“The executive department and Raptor friends had planned it out in detail, but I felt like my understanding of the characters was lacking because I was trying to just learn about the project that others had risked their lives for for years by writing about it.”
A plan created based on all the action principles of the Old Picture. However, there are facts that were not included in the report about him.
why.
Why did he die? How, when, under what circumstances and why do you feel so sad? What does it mean that the memory left behind by the host in his final moments is of himself wandering the streets holding the hands of his family?
The professor knew at least part of the cause. A small memory left by the spirit wave of a monster returning home howling at the end of a normal ‘play’ a few years ago.
The professor slightly tore the short-sleeved shirt he wore under his military uniform and handed it out to the two people.
“Put your saliva on your ears and cover them. You have to put it deep enough that you think it will actually reach your eardrums. From now on, if I make an opening, I’ll probably faint. So, please hold on to your senses somehow, then carry me on your back and take me to our car.”
“What about the snipers?”
“You can never aim. People who only learned through writing can’t survive that. “But just in case, Bex, please secure the alley in the 1 o’clock direction.”
“…I’ll organize it as best as I can.”
There was a tension that could not be hidden in the playful tone of voice. Ian, who was watching Bex silently moving away, held the professor’s shoulder while quietly rolling a piece of wet cloth into his ear.
“What percentage?”
“…about 60%.”
“There is a chance that even you will survive.”
“…30%.”
“Boggy.”
There was a lot of worry in his growling voice, but Ian let go of the shoulder he was holding. Because I knew that if I asked, the professor wouldn’t tell me how to do it or send someone else instead.
“I have no confidence in stopping the Vex if you die.”
“At least break a leg.”
“I have no intention of stopping you.”
“…..”
Tuk.
As if there was nothing more to say, Ian pushed the professor’s back.
“Go now, gambler. “I pray that the goddess who was attached to the last coin toss still stays.”
“That’s reassuring.”
It’s a strange feeling. 30%. Seven out of ten means you will die. But when I saw a big boy behind me trying to light a cigarette while wiping his nose and an old boy holding a blunt sword and scanning the inside of the alley and where he was like an owl, I thought to myself, ‘It’s not bad.’ I had the same strange thought.
I never wanted to die, but it was a truly unknown feeling.
“hey! Mr. Dojin!”
That may be why the voice of the professor walking to the middle of the street and yelling at the monster gave me a strange confidence.
A mannequin of a man holding his family’s hand tightly and carefully sticking out his head, and the lumps of flesh that control it.
The professor smiled broadly at them and put the muzzle of the gun to his chin.
“You’ve worked hard so far, Mr. Dojin. “I’m going to release you now, so don’t get lost and go on your way!”
Takak… Takakkak…
[What is that….]
Taang-!
At that moment, the trigger was pulled without hesitation, and the muzzle burst into flames, and a
sharp gunshot pierced the end of the panicked doll’s words.
Slurp.
The professor’s body collapses like a doll in front of a mannequin.
[uh, ah? Are you dead? Where did it go… Ah… Uh… Uuuuuuu-!]
Bubble, Bubble, Bubble-
The body of the doll that witnessed this trembled like an aspen tree, and the flesh boiled up and then
crashed-!
It melted into no shape and seeped into the floor.
When the professor confirmed that the object’s main body had disappeared, he remained in a prone position and quietly plugged his ears with his fingers. Although it was a blank bullet, it received the full impact of gunpowder at close range. Even though I had tried to block it by raising the neck collar of my military uniform, I couldn’t help but feel my head pounding.
Jjiiiing –
A mental wave radiating from the ground, penetrating between those headaches.
‘I guess I wanted to increase the scale of the play… Even if it gets too big to handle… let’s see if they’ll be smiling…’ The
old picture sank into the ground, leaving behind only a pile of shoes and three mannequins.
The guy hasn’t disappeared.
Coo coo coo coo-
kwaang!
The convenience store behind it explodes, revealing what looks like a pile of black ashes hidden inside.
All the streets except the spot where Kim Do-jin died were bursting open, and as if breaking out of their shell, the huge body of Old Picture hidden underneath was reaching out to the world.
‘Damn… it’s gotten a lot bigger in the past few years…’
When the inspection department first provoked me to create this model garden. A few years ago, a stupid ‘actor’ tried to show me his natural side by asking him about his family, and I completely woke him up.
And now.
The Old Picture, which was born and showed its true form for the third time, was that of a gigantic giant with only the upper body half burned and melted.
‘This guy’s Achilles’ heel isn’t simply losing a loved one. A trigger is a person who commits suicide before his eyes and his own helplessness in stopping it.’
“Quuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!”
Kuwaak!
A scream burst from the mouth of a monster the size of an entire miniature garden in the center, and a huge mental wave hit the entire area 47.
‘It’s okay that I… committed suicide! Oh my! There’s no direction to that guy’s anger….’
Shake it off!
The professor, who had been gritting his teeth as he endured it, was unable to overcome the mental wave that erupted from close range and lost consciousness.
***
