Zamboanga, Philippines.
Ever since the day news of Dennis’s death arrived,
Sin Junggi had not come out of his workshop.
The door was locked,
and thick blackout curtains over the windows kept out the sunlight.
Inside the workshop, it was dark.
Only the light above the workbench,
and dozens of monitors, lit the room.
Metal parts were scattered across the workbench.
Shell casings and detonators.
Warhead schematics.
Dozens of weapon blueprints lay spread out in disarray.
Sin Junggi sat before the workbench with the face of a man who had neither slept nor eaten for days.
He looked almost like a madman.
His mind was filled with only one thought.
Revenge.
And Dennis’s face.
The bastards who had tried to kill Dennis were probably laughing and talking somewhere even now, weren’t they?
Just thinking that made his blood feel as though it were flowing backward.
He knew he must not get worked up,
but every time he thought of Dennis, rage boiled up inside him.
It was too hard to endure.
He wanted to fire a gun right this instant.
He wanted to launch a missile.
Sin Junggi slowly stood and walked to the workbench on the other side.
The weapons there had blueprints entirely different from the ones he had been developing moments ago.
Missiles. Large-scale explosive devices, tactical weapons, combat drones, biochemical weapons—their blueprints were piled up densely.
Sin Junggi was a man who thought in terms of extreme efficiency.
In the end, weapons were nothing more than technology for killing people.
To kill people, he did not concern himself with safety mechanisms,
humanitarian scruples, or environmental issues.
Only one thing mattered.
How efficiently could it kill people?
That was what he focused on.
Even so, there were weapons he had given up on himself.
Weapons that simply did not produce efficiency.
Weapons whose killing power fell short of expectations compared to the cost or energy required,
or weapons with great killing power that could not be controlled.
Weapons too dangerous to handle.
Weapons so radical he had thought it was still too early—he had stopped developing them himself.
But now, on his workbench, every one of those weapon blueprints had been brought out.
He was thinking of combining those weapons to create something new.
‘If I can kill those bastards, I can do anything.’
‘I could even sell my soul to the devil.’
Sin Junggi muttered.
The more he did, the more he thought of Boss Alex.
By now, he was probably already moving to avenge Dennis.
They had not contacted each other,
and with the door locked, Sin Junggi had heard no news at all,
but if it was the Alex that Sin Junggi knew, he would definitely act that way.
At this moment, the only person Sin Junggi could lean on was Alex.
Because he believed Alex would take revenge, he could shut himself in this room and continue his research.
Sin Junggi had only one thing to do.
He just had to develop weapons.
He just had to develop the weapon that would be driven into them at the end.
He wanted to make the weapon that would kill those bastards with his own hands.
The rest, the boss would take care of.
With that one belief, Sin Junggi was barely managing to move his body.
Like a child, he depended on Alex for everything and did nothing but make weapons.
Leaning on the powerful belief that the boss would handle it, he focused on development.
.
.
.
Knock, knock, knock.
A knock sounded at the workshop door.
But Sin Junggi did not respond.
It was probably someone telling him to eat.
Probably someone who had come to tell him to take a break.
He thought it was just some annoying person who had come to persuade him.
So he gave no answer.
He simply buried himself in his work.
But the knocking continued.
Knock, knock, knock.
Sin Junggi grew irritated.
Instead of opening the door and losing his temper, he tried to put on his noise-canceling headphones.
Even the energy it would take to get angry felt wasted.
Just as he picked up the headphones, a voice came from outside the door.
“…Sin Junggi.”
His hand stopped.
It was a voice he ordinarily would not hear so easily.
But it was a voice he could never forget.
It was Boss Alex.
Sin Junggi stood there for a moment, then slowly walked to the door and undid the lock.
Click.
When the door opened, Alex was standing there.
At the sight of him, the tip of Sin Junggi’s nose stung.
His vision blurred.
Tears flowed down silently.
The grief he had been holding back so tightly,
the emotions he had been forcing down, all collapsed at once.
Sin Junggi could not say a word.
He simply pulled Alex into an embrace.
And began sobbing like a child.
His gaunt shoulders shook violently.
Tears and snot streamed down together.
He did not even feel embarrassed.
He simply poured out his sorrow.
Alex said nothing.
He quietly patted Sin Junggi on the back.
Once, twice, three times.
Until Sin Junggi had cried enough.
Until that weeping stopped.
.
.
.
Sin Junggi no longer looked human.
He was closer to a zombie.
Perhaps because he had been shut inside the workshop for days,
his body had grown visibly thin,
and because he had not washed properly, he smelled stale.
His hair was a tangled mess,
and his beard had not been trimmed.
It was impossible to think this was Sin Junggi,
the man who lived by maintaining his routines.
Impossible to think this was Sin Junggi, who had an extreme loathing for dirty and unsanitary things.
He had always been cold, a bastard who hated showing emotion to an extreme degree.
And yet that Sin Junggi burst into tears the moment he saw me.
At first, that side of him felt unfamiliar,
but considering his relationship with Dennis, it was understandable enough.
This was also why I had left him alone even though he had not attended the meeting in Johor Bahru.
He needed to be given enough time to grieve.
The workshop was as much of a mess as the grief Sin Junggi had suffered.
Weapon blueprints, shell casings, and guns were rolling around everywhere.
Among them were cups of unfinished coffee.
Several paper cups were full of cigarette butts.
As far as I knew, Sin Junggi did not drink coffee.
He always drank iced chocolate.
All kinds of simulation results were displayed on dozens of monitors,
and unorganized blueprints were spread across the workbench.
As though he had carried out some simple experiments here,
the acrid smell of gunpowder was mixed in as well.
After crying for a long while, Sin Junggi calmed down a little.
He finally managed to pull himself together.
Seeing Sin Junggi sitting in a chair, I asked quietly,
“Did you sleep at all?”
Sin Junggi shook his head.
“…No need. I have work to do.”
Sin Junggi stood again and sat down in front of the workbench.
Then he took out a blueprint and unfolded it.
A project named ORCUS, the god of the grave.
It was a project I had seen too.
“This… Isn’t this the one you scrapped before?”
“That’s right. Back then, the blast radius couldn’t be controlled. But we don’t need that anymore, do we?”
Sin Junggi spoke as if it were nothing.
“What?”
“Back then, I sealed it because civilians might be harmed. But there’s no need for that anymore.”
As he said that, Sin Junggi’s expression looked incredibly bitter.
Orcus was a weapon in the category of what we commonly called thermobaric bombs.
Ordinary bombs create impact through the explosive force of the explosive itself.
But thermobaric bombs work differently.
First, an explosion spreads combustible material into the surrounding area.
Then that mixed air is ignited all at once.
At the moment of detonation, the surrounding air is used as fuel.
At the instant of explosion, tremendous heat and pressure occur simultaneously.
Along with a powerful shock wave, a temporary vacuum state is created.
That is why people also call them oxygen bombs or vacuum bombs.
If a thermobaric bomb enters the interior of a building, a cave, an underground bunker, and the like, one should assume that everyone inside will die.
Because three things strike at once: the shock wave, the extreme heat, and oxygen deprivation.
It was that powerful and that vicious a bomb.
Sin Junggi had modified it to be even stronger.
But as a result, its blast range became impossible to predict.
Its power had grown so great that the blast radius could no longer be specified.
Sin Junggi had classified Orcus as a bomb whose blast radius could not be controlled.
Saying that such a weapon could not be used, he had sealed it himself.
And now that Orcus had appeared again.
And.
Another blueprint visible behind it.
NEMESIS, the goddess of revenge.
This was a weapon I had personally sealed away.
This weapon was not a simple bomb.
Its structure itself was entirely different.
It had a [multi-stage explosion system].
First explosion—surface shock wave.
Second explosion—collapse of underground structures.
Third explosion—supermassive thermobaric blast.
It was a weapon designed so that these three stages would detonate in succession.
Once used, it was powerful enough to make an entire district of a city vanish completely.
That was why I had strongly opposed this project.
Saying we would use this was the same as saying we would wage a real war.
No matter how much we smuggled, made money, and treated human lives lightly, this was not right.
This was a weapon that crossed the line.
That was why I had sealed it personally.
Nemesis had more than ten times the destructive power of Orcus.
It was a weapon that collapsed the very structure of a city.
They were both the same in that they were weapons of the devil.
But their explosive power and the scale of disaster they caused were on completely different levels.
And now, Sin Junggi had even taken out all the weapons he had sealed away until now.
Even the weapons whose development had not been completed.
I looked back and forth between the blueprints and Sin Junggi.
Sin Junggi was dirty because he had not washed, but he was not acting strangely.
If anything, he was too calm.
Cruelly so.
He was in an utterly normal and rational state.
And so I could not stop Sin Junggi.
*******
I put Sin Junggi to sleep for a while.
I told him to sleep,
but Sin Junggi stubbornly insisted until the end that he would not.
So I had no choice but to knock him out briefly.
Even though I hit him lightly, perhaps because he was exhausted, Sin Junggi collapsed limply like a paper doll.
I let out a sigh, laid Sin Junggi down on the bed, and came outside.
When I closed the door and stepped into the corridor, Scott was waiting.
“We’ve set an appointment with Parallax.”
Scott reported.
After my phone call with that old man that day, the words “let’s meet properly face-to-face” had come up, so our working-level people had been negotiating.
At most, it would be a brief meeting over a cup of tea,
but arranging that meeting had taken quite a long time.
“Where?”
I asked lightly.
“Mauritius.”
“…Mauritius? Mauritius… The honeymoon place?”
I thought for a moment and said it.
It was a place I had not expected at all.
“That’s right.”
“Why go all the way to Mauritius just to see each other’s faces? Isn’t that in Africa?”
Scott began explaining.
“They said first that Singapore or Hong Kong, anywhere in Asia, would be inconvenient for them and refused to come.”
“Then do we walk into those bastards’ jaws?”
“That won’t do either. We also said we wouldn’t go into their territory. Europe and South America were excluded because their influence is strong there.”
“So we ended up going all the way to Africa?”
“Yes. There are some issues with bringing all our people into the United States, and while looking for somewhere safe and neutral, that was what we ended up with.”
Scott calmly explained why Mauritius had been chosen as the location.
“As far as I know, Africa is those bastards’ territory too.”
“That’s true, but Mauritius is a rather special region, so it’s fine. Unlike other African countries, it’s a tourism country, public security is good, and the politics are stable.”
“Who knows whether those bastards will pull something there.”
“That’s why Allen has already departed. With the Obsidian Unit. He said he’d make the security checks strict. He’ll check the hotel, the movement routes, the surrounding buildings, even sniper points.”
Hearing that Allen had departed put my mind at ease.
If it was Allen, he was trustworthy.
To be honest, I usually did not pay this much attention to security.
Would I really die?
And even if I did, it would not matter.
That was how I felt.
But the old geezer I had sensed over the phone was different from other people.
He was impossible to get a read on.
A person who could not be predicted at all.
On top of that, he was crawling with greed.
I could not even guess what might happen.
I did not care if I died,
but I could not die without avenging Dennis.
Perhaps Scott had sensed that too, because he had chosen the location carefully.
He was being sensitive even about the little things.
That was why coordinating the location had dragged on,
and why we had ultimately ended up with Mauritius.
“When are we meeting?”
“In five days. At a high-end resort on the eastern side of Mauritius.”
“Haha. It really is a honeymoon.”
“We needed a place that would not attract attention while still allowing our personnel to enter, and that was the most suitable option.”
“That old bastard is coming too, right?”
“Yes. He says he’ll come in person.”
“Good.”
I smiled.
But my eyes did not smile.
What should I do when I met that old bastard?
No, I tried to roughly picture what those bastards might do.
But nothing came to mind.
There was too little information.
I felt a little frustrated.
I said to Scott,
“Prepare the operation.”
“Understood. How many people should we bring?”
“A lot… No, bring everyone.”
“Is this war?”
Scott’s eyes changed.
He asked solemnly.
“No, not yet. But we don’t know what’ll happen. We have to prepare.”
“Understood.”
“Prepare the weapons and pack them properly. I’ll take the weapons myself.”
“Understood.”
Scott left, and I remained alone in the empty corridor.
I remained alone in the corridor I had once walked with Dennis.
‘Dennis, wait just a little longer. The bastards who made you lonely, the bastards who killed you—I’ll grind them to dust no matter what it takes.’
I steadied my heart once more.