TL/Editor: raei
Status: 5/week mon-fri
Illustrations: posted in discord
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The meeting of the First Deputy Director, Chief of Staff, and Planning Director had changed in nature. It had become a nexus connecting the three departments forming the backbone of the Korean branch - Intelligence, Special Forces, and Branch Management - in preparation for war.
All kinds of sounds bustled about. People ran, reports and orders were loudly repeated, keyboards clacked and papers rustled.
The three senior employees sat in grim silence until the First Deputy Director spoke with difficulty.
"Why war..."
None of them had ever truly wanted to fight like this. Even the Chief of Staff felt the same. At most, they had wanted to exchange checks and balances, or engage in minor skirmishes.
This remained true even after the Goldberg Club and Artists' Association joined hands and counterattacked forcefully.But the situation had slipped from their control. A small spark had grown into a wildfire. The preliminary skirmishes had evolved into full-scale war, its scope engulfing not just Korea but the entire world.
At the center of the conflict, they smelled the stench of burning. They were the ones setting the fires. The Company.
"Headquarters wants it."
At the Planning Director's words, they looked at a single email.
It was an order from headquarters. Stripped of its complex formalities, it could be summarized in a few short words:
- Let's go to war. Beat the crap out of all the other groups.
The Chief of Staff parted his dry lips. His hoarse voice sank low.
"Has headquarters lost their minds? Or have they been mentally dominated by some doomsday cultist? How can all-out war make any sense? Countless people will die, blood will flow."
"We didn't even need war to begin with."
The First Deputy Director wearily pulled out his phone and showed them the screen. The call log displayed records of incessant calls from the Korean branches of other groups.
Groups have their own lines of communication. Those lines had caught fire.
"They say they'll admit their mistakes and make concessions."
The other groups had also noticed headquarters' movements.
The Club and Association, which had been gleefully spreading viruses and going on performance tours, abruptly stopped their activities and went into hiding.
- Huh? Uhh? Looks like those guys have lost it.
- Crap, they're having a fit! Duck for cover!
- Get ready to respond!
Though they had been monitoring the Company's movements and forming alliances, they stopped all outward activities. If anything, they were backing down and withdrawing.
"The Club is willing to offer profits, and the Association is willing to hand over artworks."
They too didn't want all-out war.
But the Planning Director repeated like a parrot:
"Headquarters wants war."
"No. Isn't this enough already? Stopping here would be best. If we push any further, the Company - the Earth - won't be able to take it. No Company employee wants war right now."
The First Deputy Director and Chief of Staff looked at the Planning Director with desperate eyes.
The branch isn't just a puppet of headquarters. They can refuse headquarters' orders and influence its decisions.
But the Planning Director squeezed his eyes shut and said:
"We can't change it. War must happen."
"No! No war should ever happen!"
The Chief of Staff slammed his fist on the table. For a moment, silence fell around him.
The Planning Director opened his eyes. He looked at the Chief of Staff and the Company employees with bloodshot eyes. He clicked his mouse weakly.
"Look."
"What-"
The Chief of Staff's mouth, which had been shouting with a flushed face, and the First Deputy Director's eyes, which had been speaking volumes, closed. A deep sigh escaped them.
"Ah..."
War was unavoidable.
The document they received was brief:
[Earth Extinction Scenario: Anomalous Contamination]
[Contamination Level Measurement Report]
[Contamination Purification Plan: War for Destruction]
---
---
[Earth Extinction Scenario: Anomalous Contamination]
Why write something difficult and heavy? It's just pessimistically writing about something that those in the know are already aware of. Even if I'm the spokesperson for extinction, I'm not a gloomy person.
Anomalies multiply. They contaminate people and the world.
Just as tools turn people into anomalous entities, people turn social groups, natural objects turn regions, and regions turn spaces into anomalous entities.
So what'll happen when the number of anomalous entities exceeds a certain level? What if we let them loose without any management?
Like the rabbit plague in Australia, the number of entities will explode. Contamination will spread uncontrollably, turning Earth into a planet of anomalies.
Humanity? Would humans living on an anomalous planet still be human? They'd just be something contaminated and mutated, like aliens from Pluto.
So let's manage the numbers before it's too late. You get it, right?
---
---
[Contamination Level Measurement Report]
It's been less than 100 years since we discovered that contamination is a real phenomenon.
Professor Lee of Anomaly Studies proposed the [Anomaly Genesis Hypothesis: The First Anomaly], and it was established as a law when the research team of [Project: Ordinary World] accidentally created ordinary bullets and an ordinary room, proving it.
We found a way to measure contamination levels using a few byproducts of the research, and we measured contamination levels from various angles.
To state the conclusion first, we need to implement the purification plan immediately.
The contamination level has passed the warning level and is approaching the danger level. We need to reverse it now, at its peak, back to the level of several decades ago.
0.4% of modern human genes are contaminated. On average. Humans with particularly high contamination even mutate.
Earth's contamination level showed dangerous signs, enough to cause anomalous climate events.
Anomalous climate - didn't a not insignificant number of its constituent entities multiply in places we don't know about and affect the Earth's climate?
The Company needs to move as soon as possible.
The two-dimensional world we thought was another universe. The two-dimensional world we thought just had different laws of the universe was a world completely overtaken by anomalies.
To avoid such a future, we must suppress interactions with the two-dimensional world, develop contamination purifiers, and destroy anomalous entities on a large scale.
---
---
[Contamination Purification Plan: War for Destruction]
Certainly, if we leave the contamination any longer, irreparable damage will happen.
Alright.
Let's start a war. War is the best option.
We don't have the technology to make contamination purifiers. Technology to purify contamination, technology to eliminate anomalies.
Despite the Company's best efforts in research, we've only managed to create 13 bullets and one small room. We can't even reproduce those.
The easy and efficient method is war. Let's clash indiscriminately - Company, friendly groups, hostile groups - and smash the anomalous entities.
While we're at it, let's clean up the afterlife too. It's just another anomaly, isn't it? It probably accounts for the largest share of contamination.
The battlefield: the afterlife. Participating forces: everyone.
Let's purify the Earth.
---
---
War was approaching.
Lee Yeonwoo didn't return to the office but went to a hotel room to meet Mark Jung from headquarters.
To ask if there would be duties as a special investigator, given the war, and to obtain information about the war.
"First, read these."
Mark Jung gestured as he sipped his coffee. At the end of his gesture were three confidential documents. Extinction scenarios and plans related to contamination.
It felt similar to the anomalous climate scenario he saw on the day time stopped. Yeonwoo quickly flipped through the papers, then suddenly looked up. Fine. He understood. He didn't want an Earth ruined by contamination either.
But.
"Will the Earth be able to withstand it?"
He'd heard about and experienced global-scale devices like the Ark and the Broken Clock. Each group probably had something similar.
Won't the Earth explode before we can purify the contamination? Aren't we all going to die?
"It won't."
Mark Jung casually held his coffee cup with both hands. As an employee directly under the Director, he knew quite a bit of information.
The danger level 5 and 6 entities that the Company was suppressing. Those stockpiled as weapons.
It was time to empty the arsenal.
"That's why the war will take place in the afterlife. It's a place we need to destroy anyway, so it's perfect, isn't it?"
"Uh..."
Yeonwoo gaped blankly. This looked quite dangerous, didn't it? Approaching hostile groups was one thing, but investigating anomalous entities to be used in the war was another.
In Company terms, wasn't this like investigating the Ark or the Broken Clock?
"Can't I take a vacation? I suddenly feel sick."
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