It itched beneath my scales.
At first, I thought it was heat left inside my body. I had stayed too long in the ruins near the wall, and when I moved while swallowing contaminated energy and using talismanic arts, there were times when my circulation was slow to settle.
This time was different.
The itch rose not from the outer scales, but from beneath them. Every time I bent my body, the old skin and the flesh inside shifted out of alignment by a hair’s breadth. The gaps between my scales were slowly widening, and a new layer was rising underneath.
Shedding.
I had already experienced it before.
Even in this body, I had shed my skin. There had been a time when my entire body changed as if it had been turned inside out.
But this was different from then.
There was no poison, and no hunger. Dao power and demonic power flowed along their proper paths. My insides did not twist, nor did instinct leap out first.
My old skin was rising.
— Snake, wait. Are you shedding right now?
AI’s words quickened.
Yes.
— Then won’t I get swept up with it too? I’m practically attached to the inside of your body right now.
It’s not something to worry about.
The fact that something else was inside my body still grated on me, but for now, I had to acknowledge it.
The reverse scale, which was practically AI’s true body, was already deeply connected to the circulation inside me. It was not in a state where it would fall off just because I shed a layer of skin.
— Oh, that’s a relief.
AI let out a breath.
— You seriously startled me. I thought the whole house was suddenly getting remodeled.
Remodeled?
For a moment, I was at a loss for words.
For something that had settled down inside a snake’s body, it was speaking like the owner of the house.
— What? It was a decent metaphor.
— No, from my perspective, it is a house. If the walls and ceiling suddenly start moving, I’m going to be surprised.
I had no time to deal with that level of shamelessness.
The problem was the location.
Once shedding began, my movements would slow. My eyes, body, and scales would all fall slightly out of sync for a while. One or two infected could somehow be dealt with. But if anything else interfered, it would become troublesome.
I spread out my divine sense.
I sensed it immediately.
The presence of humans was coming in from several directions.
It was not a single group.
They were entering simultaneously from multiple points outside the wall. Broken roads, collapsed residential blocks, the vicinity of the waste disposal wing, even maintenance passages leading to the lower part of the wall. Their presences split into small groups as they moved.
Their movements were not scattered at random.
When the front stopped, the rear stopped as well; while someone checked the debris, others blocked the surroundings. If infected sprang out, they attacked at once. If they fled too far, they did not bother chasing them.
It was a mixture of clearing and searching.
— Snake. There are too many human signals.
AI said.
— It’s not just one or two teams. They’re sweeping broadly from the outer side inward.
They were different from the infected.
Among the living presences were the mingled smells of metal and old gunpowder. Faint electrical hums caught here and there as well.
The drone reactions were behind them.
They did not go ahead of the humans. They did not open paths or search for infected first. They circled at a fixed distance behind, only receiving markers and footage.
The machines remained in the rear.
The ones entering first were humans.
I wondered if they were looking for me.
It was not as if I had left no traces here. I had tested the Azure Thunder Thread, and left behind knight-class remains as well. If the humans had seen those traces and moved, it would not be absurd.
The Council of Sacred Radiance.
Wudang.
Red Eyes.
They came to mind one after another.
Just because I had created the Azure Thunder Thread did not mean I could face every enemy. If someone like Red Eyes came again, my current body would find it difficult to endure.
I added an eye technique to my divine sense and first examined the humans’ strength with the Insight Eye.
I did not detect the unique flow of mages. Nor was there any of the internal energy I had seen from the humans of Wudang. At most, there were traces of bodies reinforced with prosthetic arms, support frames, and drugs.
They were far from Red Eyes.
They were different from Yeon Mujin as well.
They were far too lacking to be people sent to capture me.
— I’ll check their predicted routes.
AI quickly cross-referenced the positions caught in my divine sense.
— They’re sweeping by divided zones. They check infected reactions, debris, and equipment, in that order, then move on to the next zone. They’re not narrowing in on this side.
I saw it similarly.
The humans were not gathering in one direction. They swept a set range, stopped, recorded, then moved again. They were searching for something, but their movements were not those of people who knew my location.
Then one group stopped.
It was a place where infected corpses were piled up.
They did not pass by immediately. First they checked the surroundings, then dragged over pillar-like equipment from the rear. The folded supports spread open, and the tips drove into the ground.
A hazy light revolved once around the upper part of the pillar.
A short while later, the black dust around where the equipment had been embedded thinned. The contamination clinging to the floor also peeled away from the edges.
A small infected creature beneath nearby debris twisted its body. Unlike the ones that had charged in response to energy, this one retreated instead. The black powder clumped on its carapace scattered first, and its bent legs missed the ground.
The humans did not attack immediately.
A drone circled after its movements, and one of the humans behind them left a marker. A short while later, another group set up the same equipment a little distance away.
— That equipment… I thought it was a relay, but I don’t think it is.
AI said.
— It looks like a contamination purification device. Not complete purification, but more like temporarily clearing away fallout and erosion reactions.
Erosion.
When the corpses of infected and contaminated energy accumulated for a long time, even the land changed. Like the contaminated zones outside. It was not only living things that were ruined; even the ground beneath one’s feet began to resemble that nature.
The humans had not come only to reduce the number of infected.
Each time a pillar was set up, the gaps caught in my divine sense shrank. The movements of the drones remaining in the rear also stabilized little by little. It was still loose, but several points were changing at once.
At first, they were closer to scattered dots left here and there. But as more equipment appeared, those dots touched one another. The broken radio static briefly came back to life, and the radius in which the drones circled gradually widened. Through the black energy covering the ruins, paths laid down by humans were forming.
An invisible net was spreading over the ruins.
It was not aimed at me right now.
But if left alone, it would one day reach this place.
Then one group crossed the line.
It was a gap leading beneath a collapsed road. The infected reaction was weak, but the inside was strangely quiet. The moment the two humans in the lead tried to step in first, the drone following them stopped.
A short warning beep burst from a bracelet.
One human swallowed a curse and withdrew. The other held out for a moment, muzzle aimed inside. But he did not enter. Soon, a piece of equipment was embedded in front of it, and only a red marker was left behind.
The infected inside did not come out either.
They were avoiding each other.
I looked farther out.
The places the humans entered and the places they avoided were divided.
In some directions, infected still remained. Even so, none of the groups went deep inside. They only checked the exterior and withdrew, and they did not embed equipment farther in.
It was the direction where a noble-class had appeared.
They had not left it empty because there were no infected. The humans were avoiding that direction. Whether the higher-ups had blocked it off, or whether the route had been planned that way from the start, I did not know.
What mattered was the fact that they were not going deep in that direction.
I could see a path.
Places the humans would sweep.
Places they would avoid.
Places that changed after equipment was embedded.
The brief gaps between them.
The place I was currently in was close to one of those gaps. It was not a path they were closing in on immediately. For the humans to reach this side, they would have to pass through other sectors first. They would not be able to easily enter the direction where infected remained either.
That much would buy me time to shed.
— Snake, if it’s now, you can slip out secretly.
— The humans’ routes don’t overlap yet.
I had already factored that in.
The itch beneath my scales grew clearer. The new layer was pushing against the old skin. My circulation did not waver. If I moved from here, that flow would be broken.
Nor could I fully trust the talismanic arts laid over my scales.
They were not disappearing. It was just that the sensations beneath my scales were changing. In this state, I could not guarantee that the Vajra Talisman and Azure Thunder Talisman would interlock as usual.
There was a path to flee.
It was simply not the time to move.
I lowered my body.
I went deeper into the gap where a collapsed iron plate and concrete were wedged together at an angle. It was narrow even for a single human to crawl into, and difficult for a large infected to approach. The rebar above concealed me, and the black dust outside buried my scent.
It was not a perfect place.
It would be stranger to find such a place in District 30.
I left my divine sense outside.
The gap I had calculated would not last long.
I pushed my body into it.
An old scale fell to the floor, and the skin beneath began to loosen.
My body slowed on its own.
My divine sense remained outside. But the moment the sensations of my body sank inward, the presences outside that had been clear until just now grew one layer more distant.
In that gap, I caught a presence in the air.
Too close.
— Wait.
Neither sound nor vibration had time to follow.
Something was falling straight down from above my head.
— No!
Kwaaaaang!
A tremendous impact smashed down from above and shattered the ruins.