Clearing the Game at the End of the World

“Grrrgh! Hah, arhhhh!”

“God f—ing damn it! Hey! Hang in there! You’re not dead yet, not yet, so!”

Ian picked up Vex’s scrawny body and rushed behind the armored car. As if he had let go of something after meeting him, Vex was losing the light in his eyes and slowly collapsing.

‘It’s too late.’

He’s killed countless people, and countless more have died next to him. It was easy to tell the difference between those who would live and those who would die. Those with their necks straining. Those who endured the pain, clenched their teeth together, and struggled to live were those who still had enough strength to live. On the other hand, people who attempted to hand their comrades something had limp bodies and glassy eyes…

“S-sorry… I-I…”

“Shut up! Don’t waste your breath saying anything stupid!”

P-pt! P-p-p-p-pt!

While he was struggling to block up the hole in Vex’s stomach, the enemy’s bullets were showering down on them from behind. It seemed like they used his moment of hesitation to change their locations.

“Those mother—ers…!”

He needed first aid. But he couldn’t do it in a spot where bullets could fly towards them at any time.

Ian carried Vex and hurriedly entered the armored car next to them. Vehicles like armored cars and tanks were hard to break through once the hatch was closed.

‘And the Raptors plastered a ridiculous amount of shields on these, so it should buy some time.’

Tsssssss—

Just as he sprayed the styptic spray he brought from the Dome onto Vex’s side, he could feel dozens of eyes train onto him and Vex.

‘The enemy… no, just kids. This is the waiting room for the expendable drivers.’

Tssssssss!

Gurgle gurgle!

Styptic spray. It was an item with an element that swelled up like protein when it came in contact with water. This was all he could do at the moment, but it was far from enough to provide proper care to Vex, as his intestines were already dangling out.

“Ohhhh. How could this be…? No, it can’t be…!”

An old man who had been in the center of the children ran towards Vex and collapsed in front of him.

The truth that Ian had been so desperately trying to avoid was displayed on the elderly man’s face as an engulfing despair. Vex was going to die. In a few minutes, or maybe right now.

“I had told you to just go… The kind cannot survive in this world! I told you that this was enough, but why did you push yourself to this state…?”

Ian quietly placed himself near Vex, kneeled down on one knee, and brushed away his hair from his forehead, drenched in sweat and blood.

He was convulsing. And even if he had prevented the bleeding, the man had been hit in an organ. Blood was pouring out on the inside, so he was feeling cold. A human body without blood is much colder than you’d think.

‘He hated the cold too.’

‘It’ll get warmer some day! What about this winter?’

‘Are you dumb, midget? Each winter is getting colder and longer.’

‘You’re the dumb one! I lived in a run-down building in Area 45! You’ve never plastered mud on your skin to avoid freezing to death, did you?’

‘You… are you really that poor?’

‘Keheehee! Back then, I felt guilty if I had too much on me! I’ll be warm and cozy inside the shelter this winter! This Christmas, I’m going to ask for a different present from Santa for the first time!’

’…What did you ask for last year?’

‘The morning sun! I asked him to make the sun rise just a minute faster!’

In the end, he was unable to experience the warm winter and left on a long journey.

‘A world where the kind cannot survive, you say.’

It was a quote that every Wasteland survivor lived by. The phrase that they repeated like a spell any time they needed to carve away another portion of their morality in order to survive. He could roughly figure out why Vex stayed behind. Because aside from the very first moment, all of the tiny eyes inside this armored car were hanging onto Vex.

Tremble—

Vex must have felt his hand as his eyelids opened with great effort.

“…Jaw.”

“Vex.”

His dumb, feeble-hearted, oddball comrade was about to take his last breath.

“Car…picked out…car…for you…”

“Why didn’t you do as we told you to? We said to drive out a tank.”

“Tank is…too small… can’t take everyone…”

Ian tightly clenched his teeth and raised his head. It was just going to be another one of the many deaths he’d face in his life. One that he can never forget and that will consume his mind if he doesn’t spend his life dangling his foot on death’s door.

He was trying to save these children. Vex. Even when the situation changed for the worse, he was unable to give up and faced the enemy that closed in on him, ending up like this.

“…No wonder. Too many of those shells missed for it to be dumb luck. And a lot less shots compared to the number of tanks.”

The corpses outside. Some were just soldiers, but most likely, many of them were tank crew soldiers. Since the number of people operating the tanks decreased, it was only natural that the rate of artillery fire decreased as well.

‘I owe him. I had too much to pay back already.’

Ian cupped Vex’s face with one hand, then slipped his other hand into his jacket. The old soldier knew very well what this meant.

The old soldier, with his frail legs, crawled towards Ian and clung onto his clothes.

“Y-you! What are you…?”

“He is one of my only two friends left in this world. I have to bid. Farewell.”

He saw it with his own two eyes. The Type 3 mutant, wandering through an endless memory of sadness. Ian had no intention of making his friend into something like that.

“He’s still… he’s still alive! If we can start this vehicle and get to the Dome, they’ll have doctors there! You all are from the Dome, aren’t you?”

Ian loosened the buckle of the leather holster strapped right above his heart, where he held his wife’s memento for all 24 hours of the day. A Deringer, smaller than the palm of his hand. A gun he always carried around under the thought that when he’s no longer able to handle all of this anymore, using the gun where her touch still remained to end his life just might let him reunite with her.

‘Molly’s kind, so she’ll treat you well if you tell her you’re my friend.’

Vex had been alone for almost his entire life, so he didn’t want him to be alone even after death.

A doctor, the old man said. If Woojin was here, would anything have changed? If it was the doctor who managed to save him when half of his face was blown off, maybe…

It felt like fire was falling out of his eyes. He will send him away painlessly. He’ll send Vex away, then rip all of the bastards that made him like this to shreds to the point that not even the best doctor in the world can’t stitch them back together.

The gun with the same temperature as Ian’s left his holster.

In that moment…

Rustle—

Maybe it was because the old man was clinging so desperately to him, but something that had been inside the holster slipped outside.

A small ampule about the size of two fingers. That he completely forgot about. A vial that could break if it hit the floor…

Grab!

Hope.

“Oh god….”

God.

It was a being he cursed his entire life. The reason why that bastard is alive is because of all the curses that the survivors spit at them. They say curses are a blessing to longevity, after all. I probably have a large portion of responsibility for their lives.

But they must have really existed after all. Seeing that an unbelievable miracle like this happened.

Ian reached back into his holster with trembling hands. It’s there. A needleless syringe. A gift from Old Man Woojin that came with the ampule and completely forgot about.

“Oh f—ing god!”

He wasn’t going to thank him, though. God took too many things from him for him to thank God back.

And so, this was probably God’s gift in return for taking everything else.

What he was holding in his hand was a relic he received from Woojin back in Area 43 when he asked them to take care of Gyosu, and it was known to bring people that were even standing at death’s door back.

It was a Revival Kit.

“My goodness… that’s…! There was still one left in this world?”

As he heard the old man exclaim in disbelief, Ian swiftly injected the ampule with an opaque purple liquid into Vex’s heart.

Shpt!

With a needle-free injection’s distinctive sound of air releasing, the mysterious drug flowed into Vex’s body.

‘This won’t guarantee he’ll live.’

It was called a drug of miracles, water from the spring of Siloam, and other exaggerated names, but it was still a man-made drug. Narcotic painkillers, hematopoietic cells, and all sorts of modern biotechnology were thrown into it, but it wouldn’t even be called science anymore if it was able to make a person who just had their intestines ripped out by a large-caliber bullet stand up right away.

‘But it bought time.’

He hadn’t used it before, but he heard the rumors. A ridiculous story about how a soldier who was on the brink of death after getting shot in the liver, or was it the kidney, by a 7.62mm bullet got a single shot of this revival kit and walked on his own two feet for two hours and made it back to his unit. He would have dismissed it as nonsense, but the endless praise the guy from the story rattled on after he returned to the base a month later was too loud for him to ignore.

The effects were visible right away. His body, convulsing as if he would stop breathing at any moment, stilled and started breathing normally, and his heart was beating hard enough for his entire body to shake. It was the effect of narcotic drugs. The power of the Revival Kit is said to at least keep its user alive. He wasn’t sure of the exact time, but Vex should be able to keep up for about two hours like that soldier back then.

“This can’t be…this can—tkgh!”

Ian grabbed the collar of the old man who was shaking his head beside him. He didn’t have time. He needed to take Vex to a doctor as quickly as possible while the effects of the drug were still in effect.

“Explain this situation. Right now!”

And the elderly soldier, instead of criticizing such behavior, gave the odd man with a metallic jaw a short explanation of what happened here.

“He tried to save the children. Roni was to take the front tank, and I was to drive this armored car and escape. But unlike the tank, the armored car wouldn’t start. I used every single method I knew, but it didn’t work!”

And while saying that, the old man’s eyes scanned the cockpit panels next to them. It felt like these weren’t random attempts but ones made from actual knowledge.

“You. Are you a Raptor driver?”

“I was! I know as well. Although it seems analogous, the vehicle has a biometric recognition lock. But the identification code I used long ago when I was in service and the emergency tank crew code all didn’t work!”

Ian’s face wrinkled as he listened to the old man’s rant. Tanks had their locks deactivated because of the frequent change of drivers, but it was a different story for armored cars. That’s why he told him to escape on a tank. But even so, if even the emergency code was blocked…

“Noisy Pack… Their technological pack’s here, so they’re taking that much more care in managing it. In some way or form, someone probably figured out that the vehicle was stolen and blocked the connection.”

Vex. When the enemy started to close in on the car with the children in it, he probably went out to buy time while the old man tried to start the car. Which is how he turned out like that.

“…Damn it. Not a single thing works out smoothly, does it?”

He didn’t have time to hesitate, nor did he plan to. He already promised himself that he’d rather die than make any more regrets in his life.

“Get out of the way.”

“We don’t have time to do this! If what you just shot into that young man is the drug I know, then stop wasting time on this scrap and escape through a tank!”

“I said get out of my way!”

Ian pushed aside the old man that blocked his path to the cockpit, as if he was going to make Vex ride on a tank no matter what.

In the corner of the cockpit. There was a screen with a blinking green cursor that identified the user when they brought their wrist up to it. The bio-identification device.

Ian put his wrist against that device without hesitation.

Beep. Be-beep—

The bio-identification device read his code and started to compare it to the other codes saved in its database.

Normal methods weren’t going to work to start this armored car. Since the Noisy Pack completely locked down the system, unless he unlocked it with the code that only those nerds knew, the car wouldn’t start up.

Except for just one exception.

B-beep!

On the bio-identification device that had been looking for his identity on a blinking red screen, a green light lit up, and a row of smooth letters greeted his return.

[Code Verified. Welcome, Ian Desmont.]

“Yeah, nice to meet you too. Although this does sort of feel like meeting an ex.”

Dn-dn-dn-dn-dn—

Vrrrrrgm!

As soon as the system greeted him, he started up the car, and the armored vehicle let out a loud roar and burst into life.

The old man who had been watching him from behind jumped back in shock the moment he saw the green light, then collapsed right on the spot after reading the words on the screen.

“I-IIIIII-Ian… D-Desmond, the trait…”

“Let’s end it there, won’t we, mister? I know old men like to talk about the old days, but try to think from the perspective of the listener too, will you?”

“Y-you’re really Ashfield? Is that yo—”

Bang!

“Go out and switch with that Ronin or Coleman kid. You’ll need to be a veteran driver if you want to keep up with me.”

After sharply cutting off the old man and sending him up, Ian proficiently pulled the lever to raise the RPM, then completed preparations for departure.

Clang!

K-k-kk-krg!

Something flew towards the vehicle, shaking it, but that was it. Just the short glimpse he got of it outside let him know that this was a sturdy armored car, with even its tracks neatly covered. It would be hard to cause damage unless they had tank-level firepower or anti-tank weapons.

‘They’re surrounded by tanks, so they probably didn’t bring that many tank-level firearms. The Exosuits are weaker to physical mass impacts, so they would have brought more large-caliber ammunition. That means we have some time until equipment that can deal with an armored vehicle comes.’

Once they were out of formation, artillery would rain on them just like before, but he was able to do it with a combat vehicle, so with an armored car, it’ll work out somehow.

There was some spare time while he waited for the tank in front to get out. Now a little bit calmer, Ian scoured the nearby panels under the vague memories that floated up like smoke.

Although it’s been several years and it was a car that he didn’t use that often, there was one thing he definitely remembered. When you opened the small lid at knee height under the handle, there was a cigar jack, and the compartment next to it had a pack of cigarettes. He pushed it open to see a cigar box with a finish of the Raptor’s trademark scale pattern.

Click!

Phhht—

Ten-eighths of the Raptor’s Nest consisted of soldiers, had that many more nicotine-addicted men, and was that much better at making cigarettes.

The distinctive, rough scent of cigarettes that he had forgotten for a long time.

“My damned past finally caught up to me, alright.”

Rumbleeee!

Seeing the tank in front of him start to move forward, Ian stepped hard on the large metal axel of the armored car.

In his eyes as he looked back at Vex, who was breathing heavily surrounded by the children, was something that could be called anger, grief, or madness. Or perhaps something that could be called the combination of the three started to creep into his eyes.

“You returned a name I have long forgotten, so you’ll need to be prepared to pay the price! You hot-blooded reptile bastards!”

Next to Ian, who was driving with a violent glint in his eyes, appeared new letters on the green screen that had been blinking peacefully.

[Noisy Pack. Confirmed Administrator connection attempt. Rejected. Request from higher commanding authority.]

The Noisy Pack had head administration over all, although not much, of Raptor’s electronic-related devices.

There was only one group that had a higher authority over the electronic devices, the Raptors.

Those with power to completely shut down the Noisy Pack’s access electronically under the situation where the Noisy Pack betrayed them. The five top-level Raptor Executives.

Be-beep—

[Swarm Alpha Online]

It was the moment Ian Desmont, who was called a demon that lived on ash and one of the Raptor’s legendary founding members, then went into hiding for years, finally revealed himself.