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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Simzy
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“…Ah. That is… so… ah, so…”
She muttered to herself, staring at the screen frantically, as if being sucked in. A state of self-forgetfulness. Immersion… but it did not last long. 5 minutes. Or 10 minutes.
“I think I get it now.”
Before long, Cassandra leaned back in her chair. Her body went limp, as if she were very tired.
“There were patients like this in the early days, but no one saw it as an infection. They saw it as something like psychosis or a side effect of drugs. Cassandra also just saw the cases fleetingly while looking for them, she probably wouldn’t have connected this with that.”
If so, it meant that the Disease Crisis Management Agency did not know about the relationship between the goddess statue, the Limos virus, and Kibele.
“But Kibele must have known what this virus was. And the high-ranking people in the government would have known too.”
“…Neither side would have known in detail.”
“No way. They must have known.”
But Cassandra was adamant.
“No. They didn’t know. Cassandra knows. That they didn’t know.”
“How do you know that?”
Cassandra bowed her head. After a long silence, she clenched her fists and spoke as if letting out a breath.
“…There was a foolish little girl. She was smart, but her only blood relative, her father, had no particular interest in the child. The only time he showed interest was when the child solved a complex formula.”
I thought I knew whose story this was.
“The child’s father, without any explanation, gave her an assignment, saying, ‘I want to reassemble this virus like this, how should I do it?’
He didn’t seem to have high expectations, but the child solved it somehow. Because it was a simple cell recombination problem. The father patted the child’s head once and then brought a new assignment every time.
Then one day, he brought a white gown. And he pushed her into a crowd of people wearing the same gown and told her to solve the problem with these people.
Those people did what the child’s father had done. Without any explanation, they would say, ‘solve this,’ ‘solve that,’ and if she got the answer right, they would give her something delicious.
Then one day, they didn’t give her any more problems. ‘It’s all over. Thanks to you.’
That day, she just ate all day.
Someone sang, and someone stroked the child, saying, ‘You’re a genius. You’re going to be a great person. Well, you don’t have to worry about your future. Your father is one of the founders of Kibele, what would you be lacking?’
But the next day, soldiers stormed in. Saying that they had committed treason.
They hid the child in a cabinet, but they couldn’t save their own lives.
The child came back home, but the child’s father had been taken away, and the house had burned down. The father’s lawyers had given up on the defense, and the people she had thought were her father’s friends were rubbing their thick fingers together.
The last time she saw her father, he looked haggard. He looked at her with the same emotionless eyes as usual. ‘I have no inheritance to give you.’ He wet his lips once and then continued.
‘They took everything I had. If I transfer my shares to you, they’ll kill you and take all those shares. I can’t even give you my name. Instead, you will be given a new name.’
The child’s father passed away like that. At least, the people who had worked in the child’s household had made preparations in advance and had explained to the child, step by step, what had happened.
Her father was one of the founders of Kibele and was famous for his work in biotechnology. He had a lot of shares, and was particularly interested in artificially enhancing humans. Because it was a profitable research.
But he was also someone who had made money through dishonest means.
‘That’s what it means to do business in Elza. The state does not protect the corporations. You have to protect your own body. That’s why your father was a good person. Because he taught us how to protect our bodies and our property.’
The child hated all of it, so she decided to live with a new name and identity. All the things she had done in the past were erased. As if she had disappeared from the world for a certain period of time or had been abducted by aliens somewhere.
But she wanted to know what had happened. Why her father had passed away like that? Why Kibele had been taken over, not by someone else, but by the country of Elza.
Then, she looked for the puzzles her father had given her, one by one. They were all fragmented and in pieces, so she couldn’t see the whole picture.
But in the end, the child found out. The work that her father had made the child and the researchers do was the reconstruction of the Limos virus.”
Hadn’t Camilla said it? That Kibele was a company created by the nobles who had been pushed out of the eastern country, Römer.
Kibele grew like crazy, as if to take revenge on the homeland that had abandoned it. From spoons to tanks, it held almost every industry in its grasp.
There was no particular reason for Römer to dislike it, so they supported it fully, and even went so far as to establish it as the parent body of Elza. Even if it was the earnings of a child they had abandoned, money was money.
Probably, Cassandra’s father was in the highest position among them. And he must have been secretly pocketing money on the side.
I don’t know if they were jealous of that, or if there was some other reason. Seeing as they took away his shares as soon as the work of Cassandra and the researchers, putting the hunger-inducing ingredient in Kibele’s canned food, was over.
“What the child did was to combine the Limos virus with beneficial bacteria. To change it into something like the intestinal microorganisms that help digestion, so that the body would accept it well without any rejection.
But such a disguised identity couldn’t last long. So it was made to constantly mutate and evade the immune system. In other words, similar to continuously presenting a fake ID…
She had solved the most difficult part, and the other researchers had done the rest.
The child’s father had handled the work in that way. He would divide the work into pieces and throw it to his subordinates, and only the father knew the whole picture. That’s why he had no choice but to kill them all.
Then the zombie incident broke out. And the child was horrified to see the structure of the Cro-virus. Because it was similar in many ways to the structure of the result that the child and the researchers had come up with after thinking, fiddling, messing with, and fighting all day.”
It was Cassandra.
The person who had made the virus was Cassandra. Of course, she hadn’t made it all by herself. But no one could deny that she had played a decisive role.
“…I just believed that if I solved this, people would no longer be hungry. The child, and the researchers who worked with the child. If that can be an excuse.”
“So the ‘child’ entered the Disease Crisis Management Agency?”
At my question, the child, Cassandra, nodded her head.
“Because I thought I had to atone for the sin I had committed without even knowing it was a sin.”
“Was this the story you had with Camilla?”
“I apologized. I said I was sorry.”
“And then?”
“She didn’t know what to do, and then she just gave me a tight hug. That’s the end.”
Camilla must have been complicated in many ways.
And she must have known that it wasn’t Cassandra’s fault alone.
It seemed their relationship was neither particularly good nor bad, but this kind of confession must have been heavy.
Cassandra now looked at me.
“To the executives of Kibele and the Elza government, the fact that a ‘hunger-inducing ingredient was included’ would have been enough. They probably didn’t know about the rest of the story, or they didn’t care.
They wouldn’t have known about the original state of the Limos virus either. Because only a very few people, like my father and the dead researchers, knew its true identity. Including Cassandra.
But no one listens to Cassandra’s words, so it’s as if no one knows now. That’s why Cassandra wants to speak with results. Even if it means sacrificing her body.”
I looked at her hands and arms. The needle marks were clear. I remembered her absurdly strong strength and her poor stamina.
“What happened to your body?”
“An experiment that was judged to be a failure. An experiment to restore the body to the very end, even after receiving abnormal damage. Since my body had been weak since childhood, my father had clung to it.
But I don’t know if he did it because he loved his daughter, or because she was a good laboratory specimen. Well. In the end, it did help in figuring out the ingredients of Kibele’s cure and culture medium solution.
That’s why it’s okay for Cassandra to inject viruses into her body. Because she can endure it. But it didn’t become universal. They said the other child who had received a similar procedure had died. But…”
“But?”
“…No. Nothing. It doesn’t seem to be that important.”
She had gotten carried away and had gone too far. It didn’t seem like she would be able to answer again even if I asked. And I wasn’t that interested either.
What was important was, anyway, now.
“Anyway, you didn’t create the Cro-virus, right?”
“That’s not it. I don’t even know how it was created. What I can guess is that the cultured meat nutrient solution was infected, that it combined with some stem cells, and that it was exposed through some route.
As a result, a monster came out. It constantly makes the infected person hungry, and even heals and cares for the host so that it can spread itself far and wide. It paralyzes judgment and strengthens instinct. So that it will eat more according to its impulse.”
Cassandra manipulated something again. The Limos virus and the Cro-virus appeared on the screen. When she fast-forwarded the time, the number of Limos decreased, but the number of Cro increased.
“In a place with a high concentration of Limos virus contamination, that is, a place like an unprotected zone, the two viruses compete with each other and eat people. But in the end, it will be the Cro that wins. Even if the Limos self-destructs because it can’t control its own anger, the Cro survives.”
“…Is there a solution?”
“I don’t know. The Limos virus has no origin, and the Cro-virus is constantly mutating. I don’t know if we can make an antibody for Limos, but even then, its toxicity is so strong that the antibody is meaningless.”
“Then you’re saying there’s no answer?”
At my words, Cassandra’s eyes became clear.
“No. I’ll find it. If you think it’s not there, it’s not there. If you think you have to find it, it’s there. Whether it takes a year, or ten years. I’ll find it. It’s a variation of a problem I’ve solved before. I can solve it somehow. I have to. As long as I survive until then…”
If I could survive until then.
What was the way to swim with a school of sharks and not get bitten?
“Cassandra.”
“Yeah.”
“Actually, there was one experiment I was doing without you and Camilla knowing.”
“…An experiment? What?”
“Zombies don’t attack each other well. Unless they’re recognized as food. So I was wondering what would happen if a zombie didn’t think of us as food.
Animals are like that, aren’t they? You can track them by making them smell a specific scent, but if it’s a familiar scent, you can lower their aggression.”
Cassandra was bewildered.
“…That’s bold. So… and then?”
“I don’t know. I did it for about 2 weeks, but it doesn’t seem to have much effect. There was one perfect one, a thing tied to a utility pole with a chain. But it was freed from the chain.”
I told her the story about the gendarmerie zombie. Cassandra listened to my story silently.
“Cassandra thinks that if there’s plenty of food, it won’t move to another place. It probably won’t go far to find freedom just because the chain is off.”
“Then it’s still there. I took care of it a bit before I came. If that thing thinks of me as a friend. Do you think this is possible?”
Cassandra was still bewildered and tapped on the desk. But she soon shook her head.
“I’ve never heard of such a case. And, I can’t tell just by listening. I’ll have to see it for myself. But if we go, that zombie doesn’t know Cassandra’s smell, so it will probably show aggression. And you said it’s still unfamiliar with Johan’s scent?”
So this won’t work.
“…Or.”
It seemed Cassandra’s words weren’t finished.
“Or?”
Her finger poked my chest firmly.
“Your pheromones. Not pheromones, but anyway.”
“The thing that the Cro in my and Camilla’s bodies is said to produce?”
“It’s weak, but if it’s at a level where it’s effective on a zombie dog… an unexpected result might come out. If it hates you, it will go wild to kill you, and if it has a favorable impression, its aggression will be lowered, and if by any chance it comes to like you… probably hmm. It’ll act like a dog in heat.”
“I don’t want that.”
“It might not just attack you. Just like how a hungry zombie doesn’t ‘necessarily’ eat you. It eats what’s nearby. A threat is a bit of a different story… but in theory, I think it’s worth it.
If your pheromones get stronger, and if you can just soothe its hostility and wariness, then after that, something might work out somehow. If it’s possible for a zombie not to be hostile.
But as I said before, that component of Johan’s is too weak. It’s at the level of sniffing when you smell the perfume of a passerby. It has to get stronger.”
“How do I make it stronger?”
“Well. If the virus needs to get stronger, it would be good to put some kind of overload on your body. Camilla’s workout is also very excellent.”
You mean that training program where you walk in on two feet and crawl out like a worm.
“And… hmm… fighting off a weak external infection. To do that, you’ll have to go out and fight more.”
Fighting actively. That sounded okay too. And there was a good excuse for it.
The laptop of the heretics we had fought a while ago. Inside it was information about the goddess statue excavation plan, the expected location, and what measures to take when recovering the goddess statue.
So if we went to that area, there would be many hungry and starving zombies that were relatively easy to deal with. Maybe we could even get the contaminated goddess statue.
But that meant I could also be exposed to the Limos virus. It would be a very dangerous journey if I didn’t prepare my defenses thoroughly.
And I didn’t particularly feel like getting into an unnecessary physical fight with a zombie.
“But you can’t fight zombies every time.”
“Th-then, there is one more thing…”
Strangely, Cassandra turned her face. But with one hand, she held on to the hem of her clothes. What was it that made her so shy?
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