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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Simzy
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“Cassandra. I threw that away when I was scattering the jewels.”
“The people of Hampton are far more lewd than you think, Johan. There are things in there far more sinister and grotesque than that. If you really don’t believe me…”
“No, don’t get up! Camila, stop laughing!”
It really seemed like Hampton just deserved to have fire and brimstone rain down on it. Camila, unable to watch any longer, offered a compromise.
“Then let’s do this. When we travel, you and I, Johan, will be in different cars, and Cassandra can ride in whichever car she wants. How about that? Would that put you at ease?”
“I don’t see any particular reason to refuse.”
Surprisingly, Cassandra accepted it readily.
We didn’t move all of our belongings from the safe house. We left behind three months’ worth of long-term storage food and drinking water, along with some clothes.
The rest—ammunition, jewels, alcohol, and the few electronic devices we had—were divided appropriately between the 2.5-ton truck that had been in the fire station garage and the pickup truck we had brought from Hampton.
Still, we were able to finish all the camouflage work by 9 in the morning. Cassandra and I would ride in the 2.5-ton truck, and Camila would drive the pickup.
“You have the map, right?”
The destination was clear. A cultured meat research facility located on the outskirts of Samarano. The place Cassandra had mentioned. It was about a half-day’s journey from Hampton, so it wasn’t too far from Laetitia either.
The problem was the route.
The ‘half-day’ journey I mentioned was when passing through the small city of Szczerń and two more small towns. Of course, this was also a non-human protection zone. Meaning it would be crawling with either zombies or gangs. It was too dangerous.
“If we were to take a detour, we’d have to plan for about two to three days. And considering we’ll have to refuel along the way, we can’t just take a massive detour.”
Camila’s point. I agreed with her.
“I think it’s fine to invest more time to look around. It seems we’ll have to stay here for quite a while. Oh, right, Cassandra. You said the lab doesn’t necessarily have to be here, right?”
She had said there was no particular reason we had to go only to that place. Any place where we could observe cells and analyze blood would do.
However, the cultured meat research facility was the most secretly hidden place she knew of, and she recommended it because it was located near a large plantation, so the human density itself was low.
“Let’s do this.”
Camila pointed to another spot on the map. On the map, it was next to a fairly large lake. There was a forest nearby, and it was a quiet place with a small yacht marina.
“How about we use this as a temporary base? It’s about an hour and a half from the cultured meat research facility. We can stay here, clear out the area around the lab, and if it seems safe, then we can move there for good. Even if someone finds our tracks, it won’t matter since we’ll have moved on by then.”
I was a little worried. It was a place I had absolutely no information about. The Samarano I remembered was a land that had been flattened by indiscriminate bombing.
“What’s here?”
“It’s a small supply depot built during the war, and later it was used as a training center for the Central Liberation Army. It was discovered and abandoned long before the zombie outbreak, but I heard it wasn’t destroyed. It was used kind of like an air-raid shelter, so it should be pretty sturdy.”
It sounded a bit strange at first, but upon second thought, it made a certain amount of sense. Under normal circumstances it might be different, but this was the middle of a non-human protection zone. Let alone the Elza National Gendarmerie, not even the Liberation Army would set foot here. Camila added.
“And, I was briefly an instructor here. When I taught combat swimming. So I know the surrounding geography to some extent. At least which routes are key points?”
Being somewhat familiar with the terrain was a definite advantage.
“Camila. By any chance, were there no bombings or anything like that around here?”
“Bombings? I don’t know. There probably wasn’t much in the war 10 years ago, though maybe there were some in the war before that. After that, there wouldn’t have been any reason to drop bombs. Why do you ask?”
“It’s nothing.”
Camila seemed curious, but she soon just shrugged her shoulders.
Camila left first in the pickup truck. Cassandra and I followed behind at a slight distance. Since Cassandra said she couldn’t drive a 2.5-ton truck, I took the wheel.
The sunlight was brilliant, the sky was blue, and the dead forest was a yellowish, blackish-brown. Against the backdrop of the vast wilderness, a zombie was leisurely tearing at a corpse. It was early summer.
Although it was early summer, it wasn’t that hot. Cassandra and I had the windows rolled down about halfway. Our sense of smell had long been paralyzed by the warm wind mixed with the stench of blood and rot, but it wasn’t hot enough to turn on the air conditioner.
It was a pastoral journey.
Cassandra rested her chin on her hand and just stared blankly out the window. She hadn’t said a word since getting in the truck. I hadn’t either, but the awkwardness was unbearable.
Awkward. It seemed I had changed a lot while traveling with Camila.
Before, I was never bored even when I was alone. Because that was normal. But when I rode with Camila, we would talk about something pointless, or share a little body heat. Anyway, it was always fun.
But Cassandra was completely silent. I couldn’t tell if she was angry, or if she was just naturally a quiet person.
“A-hem. Cassandra?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t abandon you. You were shot in the back. I didn’t have any medicine back then. But you had a lot of your doctor colleagues behind you, right? So I think handing you over to them was a rational decision.”
“Okay.”
“…Is the place where you were hurt before okay?”
“Yeah.”
It seemed she had no interest in anything other than what she wanted to say. I suddenly wondered if Camila was listening to the radio. Or maybe she was humming to herself. Still, this was too awkward. I had to say something.
“Why is the grass so random?”
After saying it, I realized it was a completely random thing to say. Cassandra didn’t stir. Feeling embarrassed, I added an unnecessary explanation.
“It’s strange, isn’t it? Some of it is withered and dead, but the one right next to it is green and lush. And some of it is growing too fast.”
“It’s manipulation.”
“Ah, manipulation… huh?”
Setting aside the fact that it was the first proper answer I had gotten, the content was a bit strange. Manipulation.
“What kind of manipulation?”
“A rapid plant growth experiment. You could call it artificially induced progeria. Take corn, for example. In the southern part of Elza, it takes an average of 110 days from planting to harvest. But what if you could harvest it in just 50 days?”
“Hmm, simply put, the cultivation costs would be lower. Assuming, of course, that sufficient nutrients are supplied. But is that even possible?”
“You’re looking at it right now.”
The forest of power lines. Vines had definitely grown from a zombie corpse that had died not too long ago.
Weeds grow fast, but I was a bit skeptical about them growing to a level where they almost covered a two-lane road. Especially since they hadn’t grown from the ground.
“You didn’t experiment on weeds, did you?”
“No. We tried it on every plant we could. We had to collect as many cases as possible.”
It was something I couldn’t quite understand. More than anything, I wondered if there was a need to force plants to grow.
“Was there really a need to force it like that?”
“Yes. We had to artificially increase production.”
As I listened, a chill ran down my spine. The Cassandra I knew was a researcher at the Disease Control Bureau. Meaning, she was a doctor. But now she was saying ‘we had to increase.’
As if she herself was an employee of Cybele.
“Cassandra. How do you know all that? No, it’s not that I don’t trust you. I want to know how you know all this.”
“How is that different from not trusting me?”
“Because I want to understand.”
Cassandra’s empty green eyes stared blankly at me. A sigh escaped me on its own.
“I want to understand what you’re saying. I’m not asking because I don’t trust you, I’m asking because I want to know why it became like that, how it could be.”
Cassandra’s lips twisted. After a moment of thought, she opened her mouth as if reluctantly.
“…Alright. But don’t ask any more than that. It’s painful. Before Cassandra became a doctor, she was a researcher at Cybele.”
It was strange to just accept it with an ‘ah, I see’. No matter how I looked at it, Cassandra didn’t seem to be older than her mid-twenties.
“You must have been busy. After graduating from medical school and working as a researcher…”
“It was before I went to medical school.”
“…What?”
“I was a researcher at Cybele before I became an adult. For almost six years. So, from thirteen to eighteen.”
“Was that even possible?”
“Because Cassandra was smart.”
No, that seemed to be a completely separate issue from being smart. But she didn’t seem to be joking. She was completely serious.
“They told Cassandra. That if you could finish all this research quickly, the number of starving people in Elza would decrease.
They explained that if food production increased, the price would naturally go down, and if the price went down, the workers of Elza would be able to eat their fill at a cheap price.
That part was true. Too much of Elza’s land has been devastated by long wars. The land itself is good, but there are few places where large-scale agriculture can be done. But there is a large population to support.
And Cassandra found a certain formula. However, since the world cannot be predicted by formulas alone, we had to apply it to each plant one by one. Observing mutations, identifying unexpected problems during the growth process.
Doesn’t it sound plausible? If the plant growth cycle speeds up, the processing cycle must also speed up accordingly. More jobs are created in Elza. Because you have to do a lot of work in a short amount of time.
The idea was that jobs would increase, food prices would become cheaper, and the people of Elza would enjoy greater abundance. And Cassandra naively believed those words.”
It sounded plausible at first glance, but upon careful thought, the story didn’t add up.
First, whether it’s people, animals, or plants, there is a clear limit to the amount they can consume. If you could eat indefinitely, things like indigestion from overeating wouldn’t exist.
If a person is poor, they might have to skip a meal. But just because they are rich doesn’t mean they eat 10 meals a day.
Who on earth would eat all of that?
Cybele’s food products contain an ingredient that stimulates hunger.
Cassandra had said that.
It’s not just me; the people of Elza have been eating Cybele their whole lives! Because even if it tastes like crap, it’s the cheapest! Kids from poor families would starve to death without Cybele! And you think it’s just the kids? Adults, poor laborers, they absolutely depend on Cybele!
Camila had said that.
“…Why? Why go to the trouble of increasing food production, only to put a hunger-stimulating ingredient in the processed food? Why go to such extremes?”
“Because Cybele makes money.”
“They’d support a single company to that extent?”
“It’s not just a single company. Cybele’s major shareholders, the board of directors, are all members of prestigious families from the Römer nobility. To be precise, they are ambitious people who fell out of the power struggle in Römer and set foot in the ‘colonies’.”
Cassandra added grimly.
“…The Elza government is the same. People say the Elza government is Römer’s puppet. That’s only half true. To be precise, it’s a puppet of a company founded by the abandoned children of Römer.
Making all the people of Elza materially dependent on Cybele, and politically controlled by Cybele’s puppets… that was the future Cybele envisioned. And there’s nothing that chokes a person’s neck quite like food. But they failed.”
“Not a success?”
“They failed.”
Cassandra stated definitively.
“…Cybele was arrogant. They had no doubt that they would become more and more prosperous, but they didn’t know that there was a goddess’s curse within the blessing. They are blind and can’t see what’s ahead, but Cassandra is not. That’s… why I’m here now. Because I have to stop the Eruptor Protocol from proceeding.”
The title of this game. The title. Eruptor Protocol.
“You said before that you had to find a counterexample. What is the Eruptor Protocol?”
“It’s simple. It’s just a grand blockade protocol in preparation for the end.”
Cassandra’s hands trembled. The tremor that started in her hands spread throughout her body. With her chin trembling, she struggled to continue speaking.
“The entire region of Elza will become a Human Non-Protection zone. All borders will be closed. Just like they did on the outskirts of Hampton. Everyone thinks the zombie outbreak will calm down then. Isolate, and exterminate. That’s the gist of it.
But it’s not. Everyone is thinking too one-dimensionally. No one is willing to accept that the virus mutates. But mutations are already occurring at a very fast rate in all biological groups.
The cycle of the ecosystem will disappear, and all species will be hell-bent on devouring each other. Just as a beast grazes on grass, a building-sized flytrap will melt and eat people.
In a trapped place, they will exchange mutations with each other, until finally, only one, the most dominant, survives and swallows the world. Until there is finally nothing left to tear at and it eats itself. Until there is nothing left to protect.”
Cassandra leaned her trembling body against the seat. It seemed she was trying to calm herself down somehow. With difficulty, she finished her words.
“The Eruptor Protocol must not be implemented. Mutations are already occurring severely, and if the struggle for survival is added, the mutation of living things will accelerate. They will compete to survive, evolve, and finally… something that no one can stop will emerge. Cassandra emphasized, proved, and explained it two, three times…”
“And no one believed you?”
Cassandra nodded her head two, three times.
“…No one.”
“I believe you.”
No. It would be more accurate to say that I knew. Because I had seen what the world became after that. Bizarre creatures. A broken world. Humans wandering for amusement in the cracks of the world. Even as she trembled, Cassandra smiled.
“You’re lying.”
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