Chapter. 23. Gedroitz’s heir, Deul (18)
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『It’s a complicated story, right?』
“It’s not that it’s complicated…. It’s a bit puzzling.”
I took a breath and slowly calmed down my jumbled thoughts.
This is definitely important information. Gedreutz still seems to be working on something. The Artists’ Association is aware of it and has already been speculated to have some involvement. The conversations taking place here and now contain high-value information, down to every word, and it is information that could change the game in the not-too-distant future.
“Why on earth are you telling me these things? At this point? “In this way?”
The important thing is that I have absolutely no idea why this information was relayed to me.
why? At this urgent moment, did they send a message through such secret means and bring me, who came in with great caution, in front of their leader, the Collector, who appears to be a completely non-combat entity? Why on earth? Why are you telling me all this?
『That’s because the main character of this whole story is you, Professor Park.』
“William Turner W Collector and Natasha Gedroitz are doing something inexplicable…. This is all a story about me?”
“yes. The moment you became the only success model conceived by the electronic world called GG, everything Andrei Gedreutz had prepared began to revolve around you.』
“If you are ready….”
『The war between Dom and Raptor will soon begin. . Type 3 variant ‘War’, which was located in area 2 and was constantly spreading radiation. The server room waiting for you beyond the sky of Next Space’s space shuttle, which was already ready for launch a long time ago. “I say these things.”
As I looked back at the two-faced monster in the white suit and the woman connected to the cable who had no relation to me, numerous emoticons on the screen nodded.
『You are already at the center of everything. Whether you like it or not, you will be caught up in the final plan your father has prepared.』
『I just wanted you to know before that』
Jiing –
The emoticons that filled the screen disappeared, and someone’s video took their place.
Sloppy angles, poor quality, and it’s obvious that it was filmed by an incompetent amateur with terrible equipment, so the video actually has a certain family warmth to it.
=========
“Gedroits. Is there really a need to use such an old camcorder? “If you just tweak the security camera settings a little, you will be able to record 3D video without having to do anything.”
“Turner, the problem is that you have such a hard head. Engineers at our level need to be guided by some emotion that goes beyond calculation. “Turner, it’s like you made a separate vacuum styler and put it in your room to store that damn white suit.”
“That’s-”
“Ignore what old man Will says. “That is the opinion of a madman who has already reached the point where he guesses all the scientific capabilities of our generation without learning them.”
“Your father is not like that, Mr. Li Xue. “That person also studies a lot!”
“From my position as a research assistant, I would like you to stop.”
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『This is a video record left by my father. This was 11 years ago, not long after the original W joined your father’s research team.”
“Is that three years before World War III broke out?”
“yes. My father had a hobby of making videos of himself. Because the level of knowledge was so extraordinary, there were many cases where other people could not easily understand what was said. “Maybe he got tired of repeating the same thing over and over again, but at some point he developed the habit of recording his own conversations.”
Gedreutz’s appearance in the video was similar to his appearance revealed through various media. The image of an eccentric scientist who was energetic and confident for his age and confidently shouted ‘Fuck you’ at press conferences to the world was clearly captured.
『This is 18 months after the video just now.』
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Quang!
“In Brazil… they conducted clinical trials on a variant virus? “That too against people?”
“To be exact, it seems to have been implemented independently by the Brazilian military government.”
“why!”
“They cut off the hotline, so I couldn’t find out the details… but I think they decided that the failed project had enough useful value for military purposes. To the World Health Organization (WHO), which had expressed dissatisfaction with the amount invested so far, a huge amount of money was donated in return for sharing intermediate results-” “
In the first place, samples T-4 T-31 T-78 showed that the subjects were excessively aggressive. You saw it so you decided to throw it away! Why on earth do they still have that?! The ‘Adapter Plan’ is not just about creating powerful monsters with mutated viruses! To be reborn as a being that far surpasses biological singularity so that our descendants can escape from the predestined future! It was a project that depended on the life and death of humanity! “It’s just because of money and trashy power!!!”
“…Just to mention, it is said that the drug den in Brazil, the area targeted for the experiment, designated the entire area, including the test subjects, as a biochemical contamination area and incinerated it. “This is a report of the experiment shared by the Brazilian military.”
Palak. Palak.
“…Everyone expressed their aggression.”
“Maybe there was a problem with the gene sequence.”
“….no. Mutant viruses are perfect. “It brings out the innermost essence of the host.”
“I believed that it would transform people into something ideal, a perfect human being without pretense or embellishment. I believed that we would become a strong force to overcome the inevitable destruction and that we would transform into positive beings for each other in a world where despair is like a fog. “I made it with that much faith.”
“….It was the person who was wrong. This is just the essence of humanity revealed by the mutant virus. “The image of an ugly, twisted, sad beast.”
“The adaptor plan was a failure. “A mutated virus… won’t be able to save people from their planned destruction.”
=========
In the video, Gedreutz was talking to William in a sad voice, as if he had been betrayed by all of humanity.
“This….?”
『First plan. The adaptor plan through mutant viruses was the simplest method. Destruction will come one way or another, so let’s regenerate people into powerful beings who can withstand any adversity.』
“The mutated virus was not developed to create monsters… It was a kind of plan for evolution? “For all of humanity?”
“yes. Traces of that remain in the current variant. A body specialized for dry environments that can survive for long periods of time without food or moisture. Radiation adaptability with no problems even when exposed to radiation exceeding 30 sieverts. Don’t you feel something?』
“Hunger and radioactivity… Preparing for a post-nuclear war environment.”
『Famine is a problem that will occur if humanity approaches extinction in any way, and radioactivity is a representative threat that exists not only in nuclear war, but also in scenarios such as gamma-ray explosions from solar winds, meteorite collisions, and even destruction by machines. It was for that reason that the two functions were included as a priority in the mutant virus in the experimental stage.』
It was a kind of fairytale imagination.
Imagination that if the essence of the human ego can be brought out from deep within and transformed into a biological body, it will become a hard and strong shell that can overcome the numerous trials to come.
To others it was a wild dream, but to Gedreutz it was possible.
That’s how Gedreutz created his masterpiece, ‘Mutant Virus’, and was betrayed in a way that was more heartbreaking than any other way.
Humans infected with a mutant virus were reborn based on the most terrible memories of their lives.
Jiying-
Another video. The date at the top showed that one year had passed since the previous video.
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“America, Russia, China, Switzerland… all the arrogant bastards are clinging to us. I can’t maintain balance like this…”
Jump!
“What are you, Gedroitz!”
“Stop yelling, Li Xue. “Your voice is so loud that it makes my head hurt.”
“Orpheus Zeus Poseidon Hades! “What comes to mind when you hear this name?”
“That’s fun. I understand that you are a Buddhist. Have you suddenly become interested in ancient Greek gods?”
“Don’t act like a fool! This… this is not a normal weapon! “Why are we making these weapons of mass destruction and even handing over the blueprints to powers around the world?”
“You need candy to trick fools. Unlike viruses that just need to be sprayed, the ‘Complete Plan’ requires national support in many ways. “When I said things like ‘an unprecedented weapon that has never existed before and will not exist for the next 100 years,’ leaders from all over the world flocked to it like ants on sugar.”
“So, you are asking why I am so obsessed with the ‘destruction’ that will never happen and try to hasten it with my own hands!”
“Oh Li Xue. That’s what I really wanted to hear. I really hope so. Like the mistakes I’ve made so far, I hoped that my prediction that ‘if things continue like this, all of humanity will perish’ was a foolish mistake. After seeing the reality of the people in the last failure of the adaptor plan, I could only hope that my assumptions were wrong. So, I made a friend who would look into the future and calculate for me.”
=========
In the video, Gedreutz opened the curtain in one corner of his laboratory.
Lots of screens, lots of cables. A spherical machine body about 1m in diameter.
Except for the spherical machine in the center, it looks exactly like the collector in front of you.
“no way…?”
To the question pointing back and forth between the video in front of her and her, the collector only responded with a sad emoticon.
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“Scalable future computing system. Linked to the information lines of each country that I received in return for the weapons of mass destruction blueprints I sold, I receive information from around the world in real time and create a virtual Earth based on that. I’ve seen countless Earths go through different conditions in accelerated simulations. The result… despair. There was only despair. No matter what future or what conditions we impose, humanity will self-destruct. “It seems that there is such a thing as fate.”
“…Gedroits.”
“So, if it was going to happen anyway, we wanted to reduce the number of predictable variables as much as possible. Among the predictable scenarios of destruction, I choose the one that I can control as much as possible and make it happen. “Nuclear war, a slightly modified variant of the virus spread, Dome Raptor… I prepared a lot of things.”
“Andrey Gedroits!”
Slam!
=========
While the dead-eyed Gedreuz muttered his plan, Li Xue’s eyes were nailed to the machine he had created called the future computing system.
Big old machine. Lots of cables.
In the video, her eyes could be seen going from suspicion to shock to hatred.
I also knew what Li Xue saw that made him do that.
Where her eyes were directed. Among the piles of cables was a pipe that was very familiar to me.
A transparent tube is gulped to supply organic matter and moisture into the interior.
The life support device included in all connectors, and which I also found helpful when playing for long periods of time, was connected to a spherical machine said to have been developed by Gedreutz.
=========
“Natasha… Where is Natasha, who was moved to this research building a few months ago!”
“What you think is correct. In one way or another, I removed unnecessary parts and ‘connected’ them inside. are you okay. Because it was conducted while completely asleep. From that child’s perspective, it must have felt like waking up from sleep and having a body that was in pain completely reborn as if it were new. “The background of the moment when the child came to his senses was a hill with a real baobab tree that the child had longed to see, so it must have felt like receiving a gift.”
“She’s your daughter! “Because her condition got worse, you locked yourself here to focus on researching her illness!”
“Treating diseases caused by genetic defects is something that requires a country to invest a very long time. I really cared about that child… but I didn’t have enough time to devote to that much research at this point. “As someone who knows a lot and has committed a lot, I have to take responsibility for a lot of things.”
“How on earth did it end up like this?…”
“Don’t misunderstand. She’s in pretty good shape now. Gedreutz’s game: Are you becoming a god within a world made of electrons and overseeing the creation of a new world? It’s amazing. “The simulation, which was somewhat awkward and creaky when it was made only with machines, was completed into a surprisingly dynamic and detailed world with just a drop of living human spirit.”
“Natasha can now walk and run freely in there. You can fly too. You can make the little prince’s baobab tree, which he so desperately wanted to see, grow to fill the entire planet! “If this isn’t treatment for that child, what is it?”
“Of course, Mr. Turner, who came a little earlier than you, defined it as an act of murder against Natasha. I almost destroyed the masterpiece of my life. “I didn’t know he was a person who could express such dynamic emotions.”
“Yeeeeeee devil!!!”
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Taang! bang! Taang!
The moment Gedreutz’s finger pointed to the bloody suit lying in the corner of the laboratory, Li Xue’s gun finally burst into flames.
The three bullets grazed Gedreutz’s collar, which he easily dodged as if he had known it in advance, and flew away in vain.
Electrical sparks flew from where one of the stray bullets hit, and the sparks began to spread into a huge fire in a laboratory filled with all kinds of chemicals.
“This is…”
『Watch until the end. Because it’s almost the last time.』
As the fire spread in the basement laboratory of the Gedroitz Company building, Li Xue was cursing and lowering the fire shutter. Rather than trying to stop the flames, they hope that the flames and everything inside will burn up without being able to escape.
[Li Xue has also entered a necessary scenario. Next… it’s your turn. Mr. William Turner.]
[Please be good to me this time as if you have never disappointed me before. I have a lot of work to do]
[Shouldn’t we at least have a control factor in the experiment? It is an inevitable choice in order to herd the flock of survivors.]
….Slap!
[For the time being… I guess I’ll have to live under the name Raptor.]
Gedreutz, who was looking at her back, looked at the fallen researcher in the white suit with eyes like a withered old tree and his ‘future computing device’. After looking at.
Li Xue shot himself in the temple with the pistol he had dropped.
Taaang –
The silver pistol is spitting fire.
The genius of the era passed away in vain,
his head smashed and his brain spattered .
A few seconds after he left, the man in the white suit, who had fallen on the floor, coughed up blood and struggled to get up.
As he was struggling in pain, his eyes were filled with venom as he passed by his chest, which was gushing out smoke and blood, and the sphere connected to numerous cables.
Bloody hands caressed the sphere containing Natasha Gedreuts and painstakingly fumbled with the control panel inside the laboratory.
[Biological code… Cough! Gedreutz is locked with the author’s biological code… The code does not work without a life signal. This can’t go on like this….]
The man, who had dragged Gedreutz’s corpse with his head exploded and placed his hand on the security panel several times, saw a pathogen labeled ‘variant virus’ in the ampoules stored in disarray as the flames spread further and further. Put it in.
[….alive. We need the biological code of a living Gedreutz.]
[Mutification process. If it’s as recorded in the experiment, we can induce the process to some extent…. Cough!]
[If Natasha wants to stay alive while I’m changing…]
Push!
The liquid in the ampoule was instantly sucked into my wrist.
The man, who was screaming like an animal in terrible pain, managed to insert the other injector he was holding into the tube of the ‘future computing device’.
He fell, muttering as he dragged Gedreutz’s decapitated body to his feet.
[….I was also quite involved in the development of the variant virus.]
[Gedroitz didn’t like it, but the T-92 was quite good…. A slightly more advanced virus when he abandoned the adaptor plan. That’s it… Even the living hear this…]
[…Actually, I hope Gedreutz spreads this to the world and kills everyone… Cough! It was my heart. My father was overjoyed upon hearing the news of his mother’s death, as if he had just had a lump removed. The mass media, fascinated by the subject of the tragic death of a celebrity, the public who judged me a crazy psychopath based on their articles, and the judge who sentenced me to life in prison for various political reasons even though it was clearly manslaughter based on the opinion of the public…. I am in this absurd world. I realized that I had killed my mother, the only person who treated me purely, with my own hands.]
[It was you who brought me back to life after being captured by Gedreutz’s slave contract just because I nodded with my empty shell-like body. A girl of extreme innocence, isolated from the world due to illness and untainted by the filth of the media and society. The way you treated me… was like the way my mother treated me.]
[Cough! ….Natasha. The moment you saved my soul, I decided to live the rest of my life for you.]
[So live… If we both survive, if we survive, no matter how ugly it may be, I will become your new father. Unlike that devilish maniac, I am there only for you and will never leave my side no matter what happens…]
Wood-duk!
The man, William Turner, stopped talking there.
The pain of the flesh that was created inside the body breaking through the old body was not at a level that could be endured with willpower.
The body, which had been kneaded into dough while still alive, with its flesh bursting and bones breaking, dragged in the corpse with its head exploded at the man’s feet during the messy process.
The spherical machine next to it began to collapse from the inside. Instead of a voiceless machine, the screen connected to it projected screams expressed in all kinds of languages.
And in the video from the camcorder obscured by thick smoke.
Beep-beep-beep-beep-
It shows someone’s staggering silhouette disarming Gedreutz’s security panel.
The fire shutter is opened, the circulation device is activated, and the smoke gradually disappears.
The stumbling man in the white suit reached out for a pile of cables in the corner of the lab.
A girl with cables connected to numerous screens and a bundle of cables connected to her back.
A girl with remnants of metal somewhere on her pure white skin, as if she had just been born.
[….It’s quite confusing, but this is certain.]
The being in the white suit approached the girl and alternately kissed the girl’s forehead, which had a calm face as if she was asleep.
[I guess I was born for you.]
Man W carefully unscrewed the connections between the wall and the girl’s device and then carefully placed her and her components in a container placed on one side of the lab as if it had been prepared for them.
The video ended with W disappearing in a freight elevator with the Collector.
『This is our story.』
The soft mechanical sound of the collector flowed into me as I couldn’t keep my mouth shut about Gedreuz’s shocking past.
『The terrible fact that although there was no pain, he was dismantled alive by his trusted father and became a component of a machine. Natasha Gedreutz, who became a Type 3 mutant based on the memory of that moment, is the current Collector.』
“The moment her mother was murdered, and the girl who had barely regained hope for life was treated as a terrible experimental material on the test table just a few meters away from me. The moment I recognized the fact. Due to those two traumas, the current W is a type 3 variant that was born as a mixture of the William Turner of the past and the ideal Gedreuts that William Turner had ‘imagined’.”
『That’s how the two variants that became the beginning of the Artists’ Union were born.』
Natasha Gedreutz, or rather the collector she used to be, said as she put up an image that seemed to embody boiling emotions on the screen.
『You would have noticed. Gedroitz already knew Li Xue’s reaction through a simulation of the future computing device. Not only her, but also William, who has collapsed, comes to his senses in the fire. Using the body he left behind, we will see what choice he will make and what the consequences will be. “I knew everything.”
“In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that the current Artists’ Union was created as he intended. Not just the Artists’ Union, but the world. “The current situation and everything.”
The words of the collector and W didn’t really enter my mind. In my head, Gedreutz’s last words in the video were just repeating over and over again.
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‘Shouldn’t we at least have a control factor in the experiment? It is an inevitable choice to herd the flock of survivors.’
‘For the time being… I guess I’ll have to live under the name Raptor.’
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Gedreutz committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.
A controlling factor for herding the flock of survivors.
Raptor.
I had no choice but to bury my head in my hands because I didn’t want to admit it.
“….Since when?”
『You must have been preparing for quite some time. He had many connections with the governments of various countries through various projects, and was especially connected to the military, which was interested in war weapons. It would not have been difficult for him to find a suitable target among them and take action.’
Andrey Gedroits is dead. That was clearly true.
….but. While working on a project that put the survival of humanity at stake, I was weighed down by a tremendous sense of responsibility and crushed by the burden.
Was the spirit of Andrei Gedreuts extinct along with his body?
“I am guessing that it is probably awakened by some trigger. Given the circumstances, the most likely one is… you. Professor Park.”
“Holy shit…”
The voice of the two-faced monster told me that the answer I wanted to deny was not wrong.
“Gustave Al Harb Raptor… Since when?”
A technology that allows different personalities to reside in a certain body. It was GG’s technology that I personally experienced that I couldn’t deny even if I wanted to.
Andrey Gedroits. A being who peeked into the future, shaped the world, and caused World War III by manipulating the heads of countries like puppets.
A being who created GG and imprisoned countless data souls to create countless worlds, and through those ordeals, it could be said that he processed me into who I am today.
and Gustave Al Harb Raptor. He is the head of the most powerful armed group other than Dom and is currently heading south with numerous troops in tow to fight an all-out war.
『If the server room is an organization that stores GG’s data, then as the ‘main hard’ of the virtual operation system, I can handle any electronic device connected to Gedreuts Company’s satellite and its network as if it were my own body.』
『Raptor As a general rule, the Society forbids me to infiltrate digital devices from the Gedreuts Company, but I have occasionally been able to spy on what is going on inside the Raptor Society through machines mixed in with their loot. Gedreutz is planning something terrible. As a unique person called ‘Collector’, I want to stop it because it conflicts with my purpose.』
Jiying-
A new image appeared on her screen along with the Collector’s resolute mechanical sound.
It’s me. Me, who was making a living in a personal shelter in Area 47, me, who was shooting with Ian Vex in the basement of Area 45, me, who entered World 3 as a ‘Professor’ character, who passed through the Saint Warlord and eventually succeeded in escaping with all the data souls that make up GG. my appearance.
『Still, everything is taking place on the stage prepared by Gedreutz. There are only three beings in the world who can change that.
』 『Either it is Raptor-Gedreutz himself who has inherited his spirit and is trying to control the plan as intended.』 『
GG’s main hard is a being that has acquired a personality, and he is the one who has taken over the world. A collector who can have a strong influence on all the Gedreuts Company systems that he has set up to control.』 『
And you, who inherited the legacy prepared by him in the most legitimate way in the project he had already abandoned, back when he still maintained his purity. I decided that only these three were the few who could change his plan, which was already close to completion.』
The countless images of me blurred and what appeared was me now. It was me facing the Collector and W in the deep basement of a nuclear shelter located somewhere between Russia and the Middle East.
『Please, please. “Would you please save the world one last time?”
The reason I couldn’t easily answer the earnest mechanical sound was probably because of my image reflected on the screen.
My reflection on the Collector’s blurry screen looked closer to a humanoid monster wearing a military uniform.
I thought of Dana waiting for me in Area 47.
The people in the chat room, Bex and Ian, as well as my people.
The transformation progressed much faster than expected. When you get off the plane? No, that’s not the reason.
Because, in my experience, it felt like I only had to use the same amount of force to open a hard bottle cap. That doesn’t mean I overdid it.
Before I knew it, my body had become incredibly powerful.
‘It’s changing on its own without you having to use any effort.’
As if the moment of need was approaching.
How much is left? 1 year? one month? one week?
While everything is uncertain, one thing is certain.
A sense that there is a thin line within me and that the moment the transformation stage crosses that line, I cannot return.
In the end, I was unable to answer the collector’s request.
Now all I wanted to do was run to my house in District 47. I threw away everything, the world and my heir. I just wanted to go back.
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