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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Xrecker
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The first thought that came to me when I was faced with a hard-to-believe reality was denial. It couldn’t be. It was impossible. It was just my guess.
But the answer derived from the numerous pieces of information I had gathered so far could not be erased, no matter how much I tried to deny it in my head.
How could Ruche have guessed that the superhumans might be dead? Even without knowing that experiments were being conducted on children who had not yet reached puberty, she could have sufficiently guessed about the disappearance of the superhumans.
The information right in front of her and the resulting conclusion were in a realm where one could sufficiently deduce it by gathering information. However, Ruche, who thought I was investigating superhumans in connection with my mission to monitor the Hunter Killers, would have completely entrusted this investigation to me.
That’s why she had only just now been able to guess that the superhumans might be dead.
But the most important thing was not that she had guessed that the superhumans might be dead. What was important was that she had thought of it in the same context as me, at the same time. The moment our thoughts coincided, it became difficult for me to deny my own thoughts.
It felt like I was trying to believe that an accident that had happened right in front of my eyes had not happened.
“No way, that can’t be. All those people…”
I forced myself to utter words of denial and turned my gaze from Ruche to the monitor.
Yes, the guess that the superhumans were dead was just a guess. There was still no clear information, and it was just one conclusion based on the information so far.
“Right? No matter what, there’s no way all those people are dead.”
Death is an unavoidable part of life. The time of a living being is not infinite, and there is always an end. The death of a person is also a natural thing.
I too had lived for a long time, but that didn’t mean I could avoid death. The same went for the people around me. Death was unavoidable for anyone.
But if the superhumans were dead, that death had a completely different quality from a normal death. It was a well-known fact that superhumans were created beings.
The fact that an superhuman created through experiments was dead meant that there was a problem with the experiment, and if they knew that for 20 years and continued to create superhumans, it was no different from murder.
I had seen the faces of the people of planets that I thought had met their end while invading them countless times. But a planet that committed such an extreme act was Earth, for the first time… no, the more I thought about it, the only conclusion I could come to was that the superhumans were dead.
Let’s take an example. Let’s assume that just as the time of a living being is finite, the power of an superhuman is also finite and is continuously consumed. And the person who was an superhuman at the beginning loses that power over time.
And in the end, they return to being a normal person. That was discovered 3 years after the appearance of superhumans, and the rotation of superhumans has been going on until now.
“…….”
I bowed my head at my own absurd idea. It was a story that didn’t make sense. First of all, there was no information about the replaced superhumans anywhere. Was it not in the database?
That couldn’t be. The Spacetroe server database had almost all the information about what had happened on Earth for the past 20 years. Confidential information was protected by a system superior to the database, but it was impossible for information about humans who had lost their superhuman powers to not be in the database.
“A?”
At Ruche’s worried voice as I bowed my head, I was about to lift my head but bowed it again at the headache I felt.
“!”
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
At my short sound, Ruche got up from her chair and looked at me.
“Yes, I’m fine. I just have a bit of a headache.”
I gestured that I was fine and made her sit back down, and I lifted my sweaty face. My eyes went to the news article on the monitor.
Suddenly, I remembered Indigo’s case. Did he know this? Whether it was death or the extinction of power, that there was an end for superhumans. Was that why he was acting so violently?
His actions were absolutely unforgivable, and I couldn’t understand them, but it was worth considering with the answer I had just come up with. Maybe something related to this had made Indigo the person he was.
“……What happened to the superhumans?”
“What if…. What if the power of the superhumans is consumable, and the current Earthlings have found a way to suppress that consumption or prolong their power?”
“If we knew how the power of the superhumans was generated, wouldn’t we be able to know about that too?”
The power of the superhumans. On Earth, where their technology was significantly inferior to that of Spacetroe, they had created a new human race that was strong enough to defeat Spacetroe, which had accumulated long combat experience and training, in a physical fight.
That power was still a mystery even after 20 years, and I hadn’t been able to find any clues about it.
To know the most fundamental thing about superhumans, I needed information about that power.
‘Should I just check it out somehow?’
The only thing I could do now was to ask my five girlfriends about the power of the superhumans. Since Yu-bin was still keeping the fact that she was an superhuman a secret, there were actually four people I could ask, but even with four, I would be able to confirm some things. However, how to bring it up was important.
After we started dating, I had tried to avoid talking about superhumans as much as possible. It was partly because of the stress they were under, but also because I was worried that I might say something wrong and reveal my identity, so I had intentionally avoided topics related to superhumans.
It wasn’t easy to bring it up again. To bring up the topic of superhumans to them, who had been subjected to experiments since before puberty, as early as when they were preschoolers……. Wait a minute.
What if they had confirmed that the power of the superhumans was limited and had experimented on children before puberty to minimize the impact on their genes during the experimental process?
It wasn’t entirely unconvincing. Even the members of Hunter Killer had had their superhuman powers for well over 15 years. This had been discovered in the early days of experimenting on superhumans, and if we assume that the limited time for a normal adult was 3 years, then the story would fit.
The first replacement of superhuman personnel began 3 years later, and after that, they were periodically replaced. The children who had been experimented on before puberty became adults, and they were deployed.
The whereabouts of the currently replaced superhumans had not been found, but if what I was thinking was right, it also explained why they had experimented on young children. A new answer had emerged that the end of the superhumans was not death.
The members of Hunter Killer might be able to return to being normal humans without dying.
Then the information I needed to find was related to gene experiments. I couldn’t find information about superhumans in the Spacetroe database. But Spacetroe had also been conducting gene experiments for a long time, and there were bio-roids that had been created as a result.
Spacetroe was so active in gene experiments that there were entire fleets dedicated to scientists for various experiments. It was a natural occurrence because they always needed genetic information about the planets they were invading, and I was grateful that there had been gene experiments.
Ruche was staring at me as I was searching for gene experiments and bio-roids in the database search bar, and she let out a sigh at the search results on the monitor.
“Fuck.”
A curse came out of me without me realizing it. The search results did not exist.
The database of the general server that the various soldiers and officers were currently using was a place where the data of the past 20 years on Earth was stored. To find information from before that, I had to go to the server at the fleet command post.
In the end, I put my hand on my forehead at the conclusion that I had to go back to the ship.
“Why the bio-roids?”
“I was trying to find something about the experiments.”
“It’ll be very difficult if you don’t know about the superhuman experimental system.”
Ruche was right. Even if I went to the command post and entered the server, if I started the investigation without knowing the superhuman experimental system, I would have to search through all the vast information, and my lifespan might run out in the middle of the investigation.
Ruche, who didn’t know that the Earth Defense Alliance had experimented on children before puberty, probably wouldn’t have thought that I knew one of the things about the superhuman experiments.
“Just in case.”
“I see.”
Ruche accepted my vague excuse.
There must have been experiments on children among the Spacetroe gene experiments. It was impossible for Spacetroe, which had a much longer history than Earth’s civilization, not to have such experiments.
However, to talk about it and find definitive information, I had to report to Ruche that the Earth Defense Alliance was experimenting on children.
But the moment I reported that, she would ask about the source of the information, and I couldn’t think of any excuse other than the truth. And if I reported it as it was, the members of Hunter Killer would not be able to avoid disadvantages in the future.
Maybe I was thinking too complicated. After a simple report, I might be able to get permission to enter the fleet command post server and find the information quickly.
……I was annoyed at myself for being so indecisive. My fist clenched, and I hit my head with it.
“What’s wrong?!”
Ruche, who was next to me, was startled, but the moment I got annoyed, I couldn’t hear her voice, and I hit my head with my fist several times.
“Don’t do that. What’s wrong? Are you not feeling well?”
Ruche, who had grabbed my hand as I was hitting my head, was looking at me with a worried expression. Only after she had grabbed my hand did my reason return, and I leaned back in my chair, looked at the ceiling, and let out a deep sigh.
“It’s the headache.”
“Should I get you some medicine?”
“It’s okay. It’ll get better if I rest a bit.”
I spoke with a smile as if it were nothing, but she was still looking at me with a worried expression.
“If you’re sick, go home and rest. Don’t overdo it.”
“You don’t have to worry so much. I play around like that all the time, so I have to do it when I have to.”
There was no time for rest now. After the shock I felt when the answer of the superhumans’ death came to me, the answer that only their power would be extinguished came to me. A glimmer of hope had emerged, and an investigation related to it was needed.
“I’ll go home after I do a little more research.”
“……Okay.”
I had tried to reassure her, but she was still worried about me, and after looking at me, who had my gaze fixed on the monitor again, she returned to her office.
As soon as she returned to her office, Ruche closed the door and leaned against the wall, sighing.
The most frequent thing Ruche, the team leader of Team 3, had heard from Seira, the team leader of Team 4, was, “Don’t let A do anything.” If asked if her relationship with Seira was good, she would answer that it was not, but even with that relationship, she knew the intention of what Seira was saying.
So, as the team leader of Team 3, she had given A trivial tasks, and recently, she had given him the mission to monitor the members of Hunter Killer.
Although she had given A the mission to monitor Hunter Killer, she hadn’t expected to get any information from the surveillance in the first place.
It wasn’t easy to get information while monitoring from a distance, and especially since the surveillance time was limited and the members of Hunter Killer were felt to be very thorough in many ways, she had naturally thought that the mission would be a long one.
She had thought that the situation where A was not doing anything special would last for a long time, but faster than she had thought, he had begun to look for something.
She couldn’t know what he was looking for, and she couldn’t think of how to stop him.
Today, too, seeing him lying on his desk, she had been about to tell him to stop the superhuman surveillance mission, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it to him, who was looking at the monitor with a determined gaze.
Ruche, who sympathized with Seira’s words more than anyone, also knew better than anyone that A was enthusiastic when he worked.
Ruche, who was staring blankly into the air, took her back off the wall she had been leaning on and walked to her desk, sitting down in her chair. As she looked at the blank monitor, the image of A, who was probably still outside checking various data, came to her mind.
And when she came to her senses, she discovered her own reflection in the black monitor. It was a face that was clearly full of worry.
“So I was next to him with this face.”
She had felt that A was being particularly gentle to reassure her, but if she was sitting next to him with such an expression, anyone would be like that.
She straightened her slightly disheveled dark gray hair and turned on the monitor to find a way to do something herself. The screen came on, but her hand stopped again as the image of A, who was working without even caring about his sick body, came to her mind.
“Aah!”
She let out an annoyed sound and ran her hand through her newly arranged hair, messing it up, and leaned back in her chair.
Soon, her hand went to the desk drawer and took out an old notebook.
As she flipped through the notebook, an old photo came out. In the photo were A, who was making a V with his hand with a reluctant expression, as if he didn’t want to take the photo, and a girl with short black hair, who was smiling brightly and also making a V with her hand, just like A.
“……Sunbae, what should I do?”
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