Humanity Protection Company

TL/Editor: raei

Status: 5/week mon-fri

Illustrations: posted in discord

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Something felt off. Something was wrong.

Lee Yeonwoo's pupils dilated, absorbing a flood of light. He consciously widened his field of vision to take in all three people at once.

All three stared at Yeonwoo with the same look in their eyes, the same expressions, the same aura.

A strange tension filled the thatched cottage. Suddenly, a gust of wind rattled the windows, and they snapped out of it as if waking from a dream.

"Special Investigator. You haven't even investigated anything yet, have you? If you leave like this, we'll be too anxious to live."

Kim Podo and James Park spoke in unison as if they'd never quarreled.

Lee Chaerin began wailing again and approached Yeonwoo. Her outstretched hands reached for his feet, her voice desperate.

"Save us! We really didn't do anything wr-"

Yeonwoo reacted in an instant.

In a flash, he sprang up and backed away until his back hit the wall, while pulling a gun from his bag and aiming it at Lee Chaerin's head.

Click-

The dark gun pointed precisely at the back of Lee Chaerin's bowed head. A finger on the trigger.

"..."

"..."

"..."

Silence. Everyone froze. Kim Podo and James' lips, Lee Chaerin's sobs.

Only Yeonwoo, not even blinking, spoke in a tense voice.

"What if I say I have to leave now?"

His voice mixed with tension, suspicion, and a hint of hope. Yeonwoo screamed internally.

'This isn't happening again, right? This isn't another incident, right?'

People belonging to an anomalous world could be strange, couldn't they?

But his instincts were already ringing alarm bells, and Yeonwoo didn't expect things to turn out well.

Indeed, the three dropped their act.

"As expected of someone the company sent to warn us. Little tricks won't work."

"But we're prepared to fight you."

"You're not leaving."

The three spoke in turn as they slowly rose.

Kim Podo's green hair swayed like grass, then flowers bloomed from his head and his skin turned to bark. James Park pulled a dandelion from his chest.

Lee Chaerin got up leisurely, staring straight at the gun following her head as she grabbed her clothes.

"We're not representatives of the three factions."

Lee Chaerin roughly removed her top. Under her clothes were thin explosives. At a glance, they looked like thick underwear.

Kim Podo smiled brightly.

"We are representatives, but we're here to deal with you, not negotiate."

"F*ck me."

Three people, each determined to fight. Each one dangerous. The bombs, and the unknown effects of the anomalies.

Escape was impossible with a wall at his back and three people blocking the front.

But he wasn't cornered yet. Whether through negotiation, dice gambling, or burning money, there was still a way out.

Yeonwoo licked his dry lips once.

"What's your goal? There must be a reason you're turning against the company and doing this to me?"

"Well, about that."

Kim Podo clasped his hands. Following his gesture, the cottage's pillars, crossbeams, and floor twisted and creaked as if about to collapse. Yeonwoo crouched down instinctively.

Despite the house seemingly on the verge of collapse, James Park calmly brought the dandelion to his mouth.

"What more needs to be said?"

The dandelion seeds took flight with his breath.

And as the world turned red, Yeonwoo's sense of time began to stretch. A chilling sensation shot from his toes to the crown of his head.

'No, wai-'

Without warning, the attacks erupted.

Lee Chaerin's explosive vest ignited, the house crumbled, and the multiplying dandelion seeds filled the shrinking space.

Before instinct could flare up, before he could assess his opponents, violence exploded.

The near-suicidal attack Yeonwoo had feared so much.

'No time to even roll the dice-'

Death loomed clear. Yeonwoo, eyes bloodshot and glinting, barely moved in the slowed time.

He opened his bag wide to shield his face, and with his other hand, he covered his head and crouched down.

That was all he could do.

KABOOM!

The shockwave pummeled his insides. Debris from the collapsed building - crossbeams and roof fragments - battered his head. Dandelion seeds took root on his exposed skin.

Yeonwoo clung desperately to his fading consciousness and uttered his last words.

'Dice, revive me if I die!'

With that, he blacked out.

---

---

His whole body ached. His insides churned. He couldn't breathe. He felt like he was dying. Yeonwoo's eyelids fluttered, and he recalled the memory.

The scene of those crazy Green Association people launching their suicide attack. The collapsing house, the explosion, and the dandelion seeds taking root on his skin.

'I'm alive... I am.'

He really felt like he was dying from the pain, but he was alive for now. Judging by the lack of his probability-calculating sense, it seemed he hadn't died in the first place.

The dizzying confusion and hazy consciousness gave way to survival instinct. His thoughts began to flow.

'What's the situation now? I feel constrained, so I must be tied up.'

Yeonwoo slightly opened his eyes. From the outside, they would still appear closed, opened just enough for a narrow view that hazily revealed a new location.

An underground dugout.

A brightly lit underground space with yellow lighting reminiscent of the sun. Definitely not the company.

Yeonwoo naturally lowered his head, revealing tree roots, chains, and wires tightly binding his body, connected to various booby traps.

And not just one booby trap, but different kinds. From standard explosives to fruits that looked like bombs.

'These f*cking lunatics, I really... No. No. First, I need to escape. I have to survive.'

Yeonwoo forcefully suppressed his surging anger. Though he wanted to exact revenge right away, to blow everything up, he had to focus on escaping first.

'It's a gamble, but I'll have to roll the dice for teleportation.'

Even if he critically failed, he'd just be transported to a dangerous two-dimensional world. Better than being forcibly captured like this.

Just as Yeonwoo was about to call upon the dice.

A voice was heard. Kim Podo's tired voice.

"Don't think about escaping. We've planted seeds in your body. The moment you move anywhere, those seeds will use you as fertilizer and grow. You'll die."

They knew he was awake. Even teleportation had been preemptively blocked. He was being treated almost like a strictly isolated anomalous entity.

Yeonwoo stopped pretending and opened his eyes. His damp, sunken eyes looked at Kim Podo.

Kim Podo, his body in shambles, approached Yeonwoo and slumped down.

"I didn't expect you to wake up so quickly. Your body isn't at the level of an ordinary human, is it?"

"..."

"Ah, don't think about rolling anything against me either. If anything happens to me, those booby traps will go off. Even if I fall asleep or get persuaded."

It felt like all his weaknesses had been completely exposed and targeted. He'd been ambushed, his body bound, and all the dice rolls he'd used so far had been countered by his opponent.

But Yeonwoo wasn't the type to feel helpless or despair.

'Doesn't matter.'

He'd find a way to survive somehow.

Survival instinct stirred, and a strange sensation pricked up. His mind cleared, thoughts expanding and flowing at high speed.

Yeonwoo suddenly spoke.

"My information. You know it disturbingly well."

He'd dropped the polite speech. He wasn't in the mood for courtesy.

"That's right. We paid a fortune in gold to the Goldberg Club to buy it. Your reports, video footage kept by the company - we stayed up nights poring over it all to prepare."

Kim Podo lamented how difficult it had been because the dice were too versatile, how hard they'd worked in the short time since Yeonwoo's arrival date was set.

Yeonwoo grasped the situation as well.

'A dedicated unit...'

These people were a dedicated unit prepared solely for Yeonwoo. A simultaneous attack exploiting the dice's delay, an ambush wary of his abnormally keen survival instinct, traps designed to counter Yeonwoo.

They knew Yeonwoo's dangers better than Yeonwoo himself.

Yet the reason they kept him alive instead of killing him...

'They want something from me, or from the dice.'

If so, he could use that.

"For now, let's talk until Lee Chaerin and James Park open up again. Do you see that tree over there?"

Yeonwoo barely turned his tightly bound neck following Kim Podo's gesture.

There, in the warm light, was a tree where people bloomed. Lee Chaerin and James Park, who had detonated the bombs, hung curled up like fruit.

"This is the One Tree, a core entity of the Green Association. Each branch has one. It's also why we can't split up no matter how much our factions fight."

A family reborn from the One Tree. Minds connected through the One Tree.

Kim Podo looked at the tightly bound Yeonwoo.

"You can enjoy this benefit too. Quit the company and come over to our side. If you become our family, death isn't the end."

Now they tried to persuade him. Yeonwoo showed no reaction.

'Can't trust them. Don't want to join them either.'

After what they'd done to him. Yeonwoo silently called upon the dice. He might as well gather information.

'What should I roll? Right, spontaneous combustion on that tree would be good.'

The dice rolled-

Success!

That's when it happened.

Kim Podo's face hardened. The One Tree suddenly caught fire. There was absolutely no reason for a fire to start. The One Tree began to burn fiercely.

Yeonwoo's voice reached his ears.

"Looks like there's a fire?"

"You!"

Kim Podo sprang up and glared at Yeonwoo. The fire couldn't have started without Yeonwoo's dice.

Despite the angry gaze, Yeonwoo didn't even blink, just stared at Kim Podo's face.

Perceiving Kim Podo's emotions, expressions.

"Aren't you going to check on it?"

"...If I leave my post, who knows what you'll do! Other family members will put it out anyway!"

Despite fire extinguishers strewn right next to the tree, Kim Podo chose to keep watch over Yeonwoo.

'Monitoring me is more important than damage to their core entity.'

Then, they must desire something more important than the core entity.

Lightning flashed through Yeonwoo's mind. The lightning struck in jagged bolts, piercing through all the information and fragmentary clues he'd seen and heard so far.

'Something more important than the core entity. Something that would make them hostile to the company. Something they want from me. The tree the company told me to investigate.'

Everything connected. Yeonwoo's lips suddenly curled up.

"The Great Tree? It'd be Danger Level 6, right? You're thinking of using the dice to grow it?"

Danger Level 6.

An entity comparable to the existence of nuclear weapons - not just one nuclear bomb, but encompassing the danger of nuclear war that could be triggered by nuclear weapons.

The minimum condition to speak on equal terms with the company.

'This is just...'

Kim Podo's expression turned pale. Not from his injuries or blood loss, but because of Yeonwoo. Because of Yeonwoo, who was strictly bound and even had seeds planted in him.

He'd thought that growing a tree on the battlefield would surely mean death, that using Yeonwoo alone, relying on the dice's probability, had a higher chance of success.

Yeonwoo grinned.

"Looks like I can threaten you guys."

Yeonwoo spoke in a low voice, almost whispering.

"I can revive even if I die, but this is your last chance, isn't it?"

If they couldn't grow the tree, the company would dismantle the Green Association.

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