Black Badger

I bolted upright.

My head spun, but I didn't collapse. I covered the communicator dangling from my ear with my palm and stared blankly ahead.

Where was I right now? How had I ended up in this situation?

The last thing I remembered was falling with the creature.

And then...

Right. I hit the water.

There was a wide river below the canyon. That collision was my final memory. I must have lost consciousness from the bad impact with the surface.

I sat there dazed, slowly looking down at my body.

My combat uniform was soaked. The sharp, nose-stinging smell of blood assaulted me. But it didn't seem like my blood.

It must have been from the creature I stabbed with my sword. I could feel that I'd pierced its body cleanly.

With both hands, clearly...

Huh?

My sword.

My sword. Where was my sword?

I frantically patted myself down. The sword I'd stabbed into the creature's body.

Why was it gone?

[Hilde!]

As I blindly groped around, a sharp voice pierced my ear.

[Get a grip!]

"Yes?"

My senses returned.

My perceptions sharpened. In an instant, sights and sounds flooded in. A scene unlike anything I'd ever witnessed in my life etched itself into my eyes. The surroundings were quiet. A river flowed right beside me. Beyond it stretched a desolate clearing.

The sun hadn't set yet, but the area was dark. The trees weren't particularly dense, traces of the city were scarce, and what little remained was overgrown with faded grass.

And in the ashen clearing lay an elongated corpse.

It was the creature that had climbed up from the canyon.

I straightened my back.

"Aide."

[Report the situation.]

Ska's voice carried an unmistakable tension.

[Keep your head straight.]

This man had always seemed so composed. I'd thought he was the most relaxed person I'd met among the badgers. If Yoon had ennui and Ye-hyeon had battle-hardened experience, Ska had composure.

But not now.

I pressed the palm of my hand firmly against the communicator barely hanging from my earlobe.

"I think I lost consciousness after hitting the river. I'm in a plain below the canyon now, and the creature I fell with is dead across the river."

[Any other creatures?]

"I don't see any..."

I scanned the surroundings.

But there wasn't even a hint of presence, let alone the sound of insects. It was quiet enough to set my nerves on edge.

And why was it so dark? The grass was ashen and faded, and the few trees lacked vitality and color.

Overgrown tracks covered in plants and an old train car lying beside them were the only signs that humans had once lived here.

I tensed up and replied slowly.

"There's nothing around."

[Hilde.]

Ska's returning voice was heavy.

[Your feet.]

My feet?

"What about them?"

[There's nothing under your feet?]

I looked down.

What could be under my feet...?

And that's when I realized why the surroundings were so dark.

I also realized why Ska's voice had been filled with such tension. I froze, staring at the ground beneath me. I faced something completely unexpected and forgot how to speak for a moment.

A place where humans no longer dwelt, where nature had reclaimed dominance.

The ground was covered in black mold.

"No, is it mold or mushrooms?"

[Mold is a fungus.]

Ska gently corrected my mutter.

I reflexively admired how gentle the correction was. There was no hint of pity for my ignorance in Ska's voice. If it had been Yoon, his tone would have betrayed thoughts like, "It's exhausting talking to someone dumber than a chimpanzee."

But that wasn't important right now.

[More precisely, it's not just mushrooms—it's mycelium. Creature mycelium.]

Ska said.

[The fruiting bodies of that creature that covered A Zone will soon sprout up from the ground to devour the dead creature and you. Do you see anything moving?]

"Yes."

The massive black mold was slowly extending tendrils.

I rose slowly. My gaze fixed on the ground. I could see the net-like black mold creeping densely toward my feet.

This was insane.

It looked grotesque covering the vast ground, but was it really that threatening?

As I cautiously lifted my right foot from the ground, the aide's explanation continued.

[The main body is deep underground, and cutting off the fruiting bodies won't kill it. The mycelium is absurdly large too. The moment the fruiting bodies emerge above ground, run. We still haven't found a way to kill it.]

Seriously?

[The creature that was carrying your unconscious self probably got devoured by it after drifting into this area.]

I looked up.

I shifted my gaze to the corpse across the river. Only then did I realize it was covered in black mold.

This was crazy. Ska was right.

Moreover, there was a location tracker implanted under my finger. The high command had put it there to protect me from the unknown entity called Jae-yeon. They could track my position with it. They couldn't tell the deployed seniors outside the core, but they must have confirmed my location as soon as they received the report.

The signal probably kept flowing with the river current until it stopped here at the bend.

[Since it was digesting that creature, it left you alone.]

No sooner had he finished speaking than the ground under my feet began to writhe.

I stared in astonishment at the creature's corpse, which was shrinking before my eyes.

"The ground under me is moving."

[Thirty seconds until it sprouts.]

Ska advised calmly.

[Run like hell. If you have any last words, say them now.]

"Yes. Like hell... Wait, last words?"

[The high command doesn't give detailed orders to badgers outside the core unless it's a territory reclamation war.]

Now the net under my feet was dense without gaps.

The moment I tensed my calves, Ska's heavy voice struck my ear.

[Except when a badger's life is in immediate danger.]

Swoosh!

Swoosh! Sprout! The fruiting bodies emerged. My vision filled instantly with tentacle-like things. Black stems rose from the ground.

I ran in panic.

The mold tried to pierce my legs and cover my body.

What the hell was this!

I didn't want to die to mold. Especially not to this grotesquely nerve-like mold covering the ground.

"Ugh!"

I ran.

I ran like mad. I almost tripped. The fruiting bodies erupting madly from underground had struck my heel.

This wouldn't do. I had to head to the river.

Feeling the ground rising wherever my feet touched, I ran desperately.

If I could get to that flowing water, it'd be safe...

[Don't go to the river!]

At the sharp warning, I barely stopped at the riverbank's edge.

[Jumping into the water will just slow you down! You think there's none of that under the river?!]

Splash!

Black fruiting bodies burst through the water's surface.

Water droplets sprayed everywhere, I twisted my body and ran, the uneven mold rising behind me. Damn! Was this really mold? I gritted my teeth and leaped with every step. They said it regenerated even if cut, it was incredibly fast, the main body was deep underground, and the size was absurdly huge.

How had such a grotesque lifeform appeared?

How had something like this taken root on Earth? No one was there to answer the questions popping into my head. I didn't have time to think anyway. I just ran foolishly with every step. I knew that if I stumbled or fell even once, those tentacles would pierce and envelop me, digesting me.

It didn't seem to target me specifically.

It just indiscriminately tried to devour everything alive. Ska shouted into my ear as I ran, telling me to hold on. Until I escaped the land it covered. It didn't matter which direction I ran.

It was a fortunate misfortune. I had no time to think about direction. If I'd stayed on the ground a second longer, my instep would have been pierced.

I fell into a runner's high from the running.

An ecstatic state where only the wind's sound reached my ears amid the surroundings.

But it wouldn't last long. My breath was already up to my throat.

My legs were turning to stone. I'd slowed down slightly several times, nearly getting my feet pierced.

How far did this thing extend? Physiological tears welled up from the wind. Whether they were from physiology or from foreseeing a futile death, I couldn't tell.

I heard Ska shout something, but it didn't register.

Wow.

I was really at my limit now...

"Hey!"

The sharp shout snapped me out of the runner's high.

I widened my eyes.

The voice's owner was poking his head out from a subway entrance a few meters away.

"Run this way!"

Into the subway?

Angela had told me never to go down into the subway.

But this wasn't the time for that. To escape the creature covering the ground, I had to do something.

Besides, the subway entrance was covered in black mold on the building, but the inside looked clean.

There were no other options anyway.

First, survive!

I dashed toward the person who had stuck out his head.

"Hurry inside!"

He grabbed my arm as I reached the subway entrance.

"Before those things get in!"

The man threw me down the stairs, then thrust a device forward.

The device generated a strange barrier. With my legs giving out, I stared in awe as the black fruiting bodies densely covered the transparent barrier.

Fortunately, the situation resolved quickly. The mold was blocked by the translucent shield. The solid concrete floor. The one who had blocked the subway entrance picked up the immobile me, descended the stairs, lifted the iron door to enter the subway, then lowered the iron door again, shutting out the sunlight from above.

A gray space unfolded before my eyes.

I'd survived once more.

*

The communication cut out.

They said communicators didn't work well inside subways anyway. Static, static—the sudden noise mixed into the communicator made me furrow my brow. The other person approached me. Then he yanked the communicator from my ear as I sat slumped.

"Let me see it."

The man casually took the communicator from me, examined it this way and that, and clicked his tongue.

He pocketed the communicator in his own pocket.

"It's completely dead."

Then, looking at me still gasping for breath, he beckoned with his finger.

"Catch your breath and follow. You can't sit here forever."

The man never removed his black mask while speaking.

"You're not planning to sprawl out and sleep here, right?"

So, ten minutes after starting to follow the nameless man.

An eerily quiet subway devoid of any presence. A chilling space where footsteps echoed. I trudged along, staring at the back of the man ahead.

The subway corridor somehow had electricity. We walked past a stopped escalator. He hadn't spoken since we started walking, nor turned to look at me.

He hadn't asked my name.

Or given his.

"Um."

My low voice hit the empty subway walls and echoed.

"Who are you?"

"Your sky-like senior."

The man replied without turning.

Crisp footsteps. I followed him unsteadily, letting out a weary voice.

"Are you human?"

"Can't you tell by looking?"

"A badger?"

"That's right."

"But you can't be an official badger."

At my mutter, the man ahead stopped.

I stopped too. And I took in the sight of the one who stood with his back turned, unmoving.

A gray space. A place so clean it was hard to believe it was outside the core.

Standing in a spot like a city subway at 2 a.m., I looked at the unmoving human.

"If you were an official badger, Aide Ska would have definitely mentioned someone coming to rescue me..."

"They probably didn't know I was here."

"You don't have a communicator..."

"Communications don't work well here, I told you."

"Did my communicator go dead?"

"You're the one who said it was getting noise, right?"

"That on your waist."

The man twitched slightly.

"My sword?"

"...Yeah. I kept it safe."

"And the one on your left is a communication jammer."

He slowly turned his head.

I didn't move. My strength hadn't returned yet, and I didn't see the point in moving. So I just watched him in my exhausted state.

The man turning slowly. I gazed at his sharp eyes.

He had green eyes. Much clearer than Ricardo's.

Truly human-like eyes.

"I've seen it in Yoon's lab."

"Oh. That bastard's still alive?"

The man casually retorted, then chuckled.

He slowly pulled off his mask. As the mask came off, his features gradually revealed themselves.

Long hair fell messily over his shoulders. A beard that clearly hadn't been shaved in a while was visible.

The distinctive face of those long cut off from civilization.

The man tossed the mask to the floor.

"I thought Ye-hyeon must have died since the rookie Ska was giving orders. Looks like everyone's doing well? Or not. If Yoon died, Ye-hyeon would too, but if Ye-hyeon died, Yoon might not."

"Are you a deserter?"

I whispered in a tired voice.

"Did you flee outside the core?"

Like me, escaping from Jae-yeon.

Outside the core. Outside civilization. Outside the organization. Fleeing everything that bound him.

To a place teeming with creatures, where perhaps freedom was all there was.

"Have you been living alone outside the core as a fugitive? I didn't think there'd be badgers like you."

"You're a sharp junior."

He approached quietly and pressed a knife to my throat.

"Come along quietly."