Episode 198 [ New York (4)]
Rattling.
The track car carrying the family moved quickly on the tracks.
It was a track car with only seats on wheels, but it was equipped with a mana stone engine and ran quickly on the railway.
“It’s too dark. “Do we live here now?”
The mother held her whining daughter in her arms. It was the daughter who abandoned her doll and dog.
As a mother, there was nothing I could say about making her live in this dark place even though she couldn’t do anything better.
“But it will be safe here. “You’ll have a lot to eat and make a lot of friends.”
“You just need Bailey as a friend…”
My daughter muttered softly. Even after a long trip around South America, my daughter still hadn’t forgotten about the dog.
“Look here. You said the station you passed by a little while ago was a station where wheat and vegetables were grown, right? “The station we pass by now is a station where pigs and sheep are raised.”
To divert the attention of a child who was becoming depressed, the father pointed to a station that was quickly passing by.
Steel cages containing pigs, sheep, and chickens were piled high on the complex platform.
“It’s a pity…”
The child’s expression got even worse as he looked at the livestock trapped in the iron cage. It had the opposite effect.
The child’s mother glared at his father, and the father scratched his head.
“Now you have powers too. “All you have to do is increase your strength and save everyone. You can release the animals trapped here, let people live on the surface, and go see Bailey again.”
At her mother’s words, little Isabel nodded with a strong expression,
“Yes! I can do it.”
At her words, her mother hugged her tightly with an apologetic face.
*
Isabel hugged Bailey tightly. The dog licked the back of her hand.
A little while ago, she remembered the first time she passed by this railroad.
When she was very young. It was a memory of, but I remembered it like it was yesterday.
Unlike the time when she rode the Manastone railway car with her parents, she was holding Bailey and walking on the railway with a new colleague. A new
station approached in front of the group.
[Canal Street]
Light There was no platform, but she knew right away what station it was.
“This is a station where crops were grown. After this station was taken over by monsters, bread stopped coming.”
She repeated her father’s explanation to the group.
The area around the platform was full of traces of battle.
Broken walls, trenches, dead plants, and scattered dirt. Large rats quickly ran away through the dirt.
Isabel saw the rats and body. He flinched. The hunting habit still remained.
“There’s no body here either.”
“Yes. Monsters and mutants love human corpses.”
Isabel calmly responded to Kyung-hoon’s words. She then warned the group to be careful.
“You have to be careful from the next station where you raise the animals. From that station, it is mutant territory.”
Isabel bit her lip.
After the Ratman monsters destroyed the underground city and returned to the surface, this underground city was taken over by other monsters who had been pushed down by the Ratmen. However, those monsters also could not reach the station located in the deepest part of New York City. I couldn’t get to it.
Monsters who had abandoned humans were settled there. Mutants who ate monster meat and killed their colleagues were there. As Isabel said, the
platform at the next station, Pullen Street Station, was guarded by mutants.
The mutants were still wearing tattered clothes. However, there were many mutants who took off their clothes and ran around on all fours. The
mutants without clothes no longer looked like humans.
There were mutants with beaks as sharp as those of birds, and mutants with thorns all over their bodies. They were no longer human in appearance or movement.
They stood guard as loosely as ever.
This area was their land, recognized by the Lord of Manhattan.
No
one would invade their kingdom except the occasional petty thief. I couldn’t do it.
But today was different.
Boom, boom, boom…
The mutants fell to the ground one by one from behind as bullets flew from somewhere.
Boom, boom!
What the mutants around the station noticed was when only the mutants behind the pillar remained. .
Squeak!
The startled mutants screamed and one mutant tried to run up the stairs.
Boom!
But as soon as that mutant left the pillar, his head exploded.
It was all Kyung-hoon’s sniping.
The surprised mutants hid behind the pillar and showed off their abilities. They tried to do it.
The thorny mutants’ thorns got longer and the mutants with their bodies full of mucous tried to climb up the wall.
Crumbling.
But they stopped moving when they saw the winged lion that appeared from the darkness on the other side.
Its wings were fluttering. The lion’s paw swung around.
The mutants had no time to show their characteristics.
When Bailey turned back into a puppy, Shane and Isabelle, who had been hiding in the dark, lowered their cloaks of camouflage.
The two were right in front of the platform. They were willing to help if they could. Things ended with Kyung-hoon and Bailey.
Shane jumped onto the platform and walked towards the stairs.
“All we have to do is block those stairs, right?”
“Yes, the other staircase collapsed during the last invasion.”
Isabelle answered, following behind Shane.
As she said, the other stairs on the other side of the platform were covered in rubble.
Shane stood in front of the stairs and looked up.
Ta ta ta ta.
Footsteps were approaching from afar.
Shane tilted the camera. The stairs and the underground plaza visible above the stairs did not seem that big.
“Is this subway station big enough to raise livestock to feed the people of the underground city?”
“The station is not small, but it was connected to the basement of another nearby building to form a large area.”
“Why are the mutants here now? “Do these guys also raise livestock?”
It was said as a joke, but surprisingly, Isabel nodded.
“I raise the monsters I catch, raise the rats, and raise everything I can eat. They also raised the mutants they gave birth to…”
At the last words, Shane’s camera turned to Isabelle.
But Shane couldn’t say anything. He just promised himself that starting tomorrow night, they would watch another educational broadcast together instead of a cowboy movie.
Key benefit!
Along with the sound of footsteps, a mutant’s characteristic roar was heard.
He thought he had finished quietly, but unfortunately, he seemed to have been caught.
Shane took out a handful of mana bombs from his subspace bag.
He threw the bundle of bombs up the stairs and ignited the one remaining stick bomb.
“Adios.”
He gave a final goodbye and threw a bomb up the stairs. He
then ran to the other side, holding Isabelle.
Bang!
Kieiik!
A scream was heard and the stairs exploded. Rubble poured down and the ceiling collapsed.
The stairs were blocked.
Isabelle was held by Shane. He let go and brushed the dust off his hat.
“Thank you for your hard work.”
Kyung-hoon approached Shane before he knew it. He looked at the collapsed stairs and continued,
“Now that we’ve blocked this platform, there’s no need to worry about getting blocked in the back, right?”
-If it is mutant territory starting from this station, there is no need to worry about being blocked from behind. However, you should also think about enemies coming from the next station.
Kyung-hoon grinned at Eve’s words. There was no reason not to block the front when you could block the back
. The noise at the station could have been heard at the next station. The group quickly ran to the next station.
There were monsters on guard at the next station, but they couldn’t stop the group.
Moreover, this time, it didn’t seem like the sound even reached the outside of the platform.
Kyung-hoon passed the monsters lying on the floor and entered the tunnel on the other side of the station.
“Please take care of Eve.”
-I will specify the coordinates. The ceiling is 10 meters ahead, and…
Kyung-hoon installed the TNT taken from sub-space in the place designated by Eve.
It was a waste not to use the mana bomb to destroy the tunnel.
After the installation, the party went straight to the platform. We went up the stairs.
After everyone went up to the next floor, Kyung-hoon pressed the wireless trigger.
Quaaaaa!
The entire station shook with a loud explosion sound. When
the bomb exploded, the walls and ceiling of the tunnel beyond the platform collapsed in an instant. Stones and dirt. The tunnel was blocked due to
this pouring in. The road on the other side to this station was also blocked.
Now we only have to deal with the enemies in the World Trade Center area centered around this station. I
could feel noisy movements everywhere.
“What should I do?” “I don’t think there will be time to process everything.”
-It’s enough to just deal with the attacking enemies.
Everyone in the party agreed with Eve’s words.
Drones came out of subspace, and small robot spiders clung to the walls and moved around.
Instead of the party, they were guards who would check the inside.
“Then . Should we go meet Isabel’s parents?”
Isabel nodded slightly at Kyung-hoon’s words.
The World Trade Center area, the core of New York City.
It was where key facilities such as political and military facilities and professionals lived.
Isabel’s parents were also among those professionals. Her mother was a doctor and her father was a mana stone engineer.
Thanks to that, she was able to stay here in the World Trade Center area, but contrary to her mother’s wishes, she was an outsider and was unable to make friends. The large subway plaza was filled with iron plates and It was divided into various partitions.
Exchanges, warehouses, slaughterhouses, offices, armories, etc. The underground plaza divided by partitions was like an underground city made up of a complex maze.
However, the partitions and steel plates were all broken and torn off.
What should have been walls became passages. And the place where the passage should be was blocked with trash.
A drone was attached to the ceiling and scanned the maze-like square.
Mutants were running toward the underground platform.
-In the next passage, turn left and go straight and stop for a moment.
Eve and the others are there . gave instructions.
There was no reason to grapple with mutants in a maze like this.
The group moved quickly to the place Isabel had told them, with Eve’s guidance, and
the group left the subway station a while later and found themselves in the underground parking lot of an unknown building. I entered.
The parking lot was empty.
The stairs and entrance to the parking lot were tightly blocked with rubble.
Abandoned cars were seen everywhere, and cubicle houses made of boards and iron plates were also seen here and there.
Isabel walked towards one of the cubicle houses.
She I stood in front of the entrance blocked by an old cloth and took a deep breath.
My heart was pounding.
I didn’t know that my mom and dad might be waiting behind this cloth.
Phew. Phew.
But with a deep breath, she returned to reality.
Isabel lifted the cloth.
“Ah…”
The inside was empty.
Old books were rolling around on the floor, the messy beds and spilled dishes were still there from that day.
She went inside.
Snap.
The fountain pen caught on her foot rolled forward.
The rolling fountain pen The silver stopped when it hit the jeweled hairpin in front of her.
Isabel stopped, looked down,
and sat down quietly.
“Mom, Dad…”
She carefully picked up the hairpin and fountain pen.
There was black blood on the hairpin and fountain pen. There were traces left.
It was the hairpin her mother had been wearing in her hair that day and the fountain pen her father had put in his pocket.
Isabelle’s father and mother were not there.
But she was able to find traces of her parents today. She had
the hairpin and fountain pen in her arms. She hugged her and bit her lip.
She decided not to cry. She wasn’t going to cry.
Tears were running down her cheeks, but she didn’t know she was crying.
Squeak.
Bailey sat down next to her and put her head on her feet.
Shane quietly kept her quiet. He was standing behind.
Then Gyeong-hoon turned around.
“Please protect Isabel.”
He pulled out his sword from subspace,
“Call in all the mutant locations you have identified, and find where the leader is.”
– I understand.
As an orphan, Gyeong-hoon did not know his parents. But strangely enough, he could feel her pain and sadness.
Gyeong-hoon was angry. The sword became red.
