Given the strange situation, I had tried to hide my abilities to some extent.
But the week of training had been more interesting than I expected.
The others followed along reluctantly, but once I got to use weapons other than guns for the first time in ages, I ended up running wild without thinking.
People watched me and showered me with admiration.
“How can you copy that spear technique after seeing it just once?”
In truth, I had only copied the outward form of the spear technique by feel.
“It wasn’t just the spear technique, was it? The shield techniques and swordsmanship were the same, and you were praised like crazy during survival training too. Everyone’s jaws dropped when they saw you start a fire just by rubbing sticks together.”
It was the same with the shield techniques and swordsmanship.
As for survival skills, I did that every time during operations, so there was nothing difficult about it.
In truth, I wasn’t as good as when I fired a gun.
Back then, no matter what gun it was, I could zero it immediately and hit the target, but close-combat weapons really weren’t easy.
I could copy movements by instinct, and because my body had grown stronger, I could overpower opponents with strength, but once it reached anything like actual martial arts, I couldn’t keep up.
The reason they hadn’t noticed was thanks to the senses and body that had grown even stronger since I came here.
‘Even so, it wasn’t to this extent before. I really do seem to have gotten stronger after coming here.’
I subtly bent the spear in my hand and glared at the large tent set up in the center.
‘On top of that, I don’t know why, but my senses are pointing inside that tent.’
During the week we had been on the base, it was the tent people had been kept from approaching.
Only the U.S. soldiers and a few technicians went in and out of the tent, so it naturally drew the attention of the people in training.
Even inside this military camp full of secrets, it was the most secretive place.
For the past week, people had been exchanging opinions about what might be inside that tent.
“Maybe there’s an underground tunnel connected to China?”
“There might be some new superweapon.”
“Or maybe there’s a spaceship or a time machine.”
The talk ranged from realistic guesses to things that sounded like they belonged in science fiction or fantasy novels.
Of course, no one actually believed any of it.
Time passed, and the final day arrived.
After breakfast, we were gathered in front of the tent.
Unlike before, the tent entrance was wide open.
Contrary to expectations, there was only a huge hole inside the tent.
It was an anticlimactic result.
In the vertical tunnel dug out by machine, an elevator that looked like something used in a mine had been installed.
The guides carrying guns loaded us onto the elevator one by one.
The soldiers boarded the elevator first.
On an elevator with a capacity of eight, two guards, five soldiers, and finally I got on.
Grrrrrr.
With a strange noise, the elevator carrying us began to move slowly.
As the elevator descended, people merely looked at one another with anxious faces.
The elevator went down far longer than expected.
As we descended, the temperature around us gradually rose.
‘Surely we’re not going all the way down to where there’s lava, are we?’
After descending hundreds of meters by elevator, we transferred to another elevator.
After changing elevators like that several times, we were finally able to get off.
“At least we’re not going down to the lava.”
As Master Sergeant An said, the place where the elevator stopped was an ordinary natural cave.
Lights were hung throughout the cave, so it wasn’t dark.
Instead, the cave was extremely hot.
“It feels like we came down several kilometers.”
Master Sergeant An, who had come down with me, muttered as he wiped away his sweat.
He was right.
It seemed like we had descended at least three or four kilometers.
‘Was this made before the war? But the elevators we rode seemed to be American-made.’
All the writing on the elevators was in English.
‘It hasn’t even been a year since the Allied Forces occupied this place.’
The area near Baekdusan was the first place occupied after the main force of the U.S. military pushed north like mad from the beginning of the war.
Because the U.S. military had thrust upward like an awl, the surrounding front lines were thrown into chaos, and those of us following behind had suffered terribly.
When the U.S. military reached Baekdusan, we had even thought unification would happen right away.
But the U.S. military stopped beneath Baekdusan, and we had to clean up the other regions.
In any case, even if the U.S. military had occupied it quickly, they had taken this place in the middle of the war.
It still hadn’t been a year.
‘And yet they already dug a tunnel several kilometers underground?’
It wasn’t ordinary soil either, but rock formed from hardened lava.
It was utterly incomprehensible.
After getting off the elevator, we walked into the cave with the guards.
After walking for a short while, we saw a sight we had never expected.
“Are these ruins?”
A vast underground cavity connected to the natural cave.
No, it was an enormous stone chamber carved out of granite.
The walls and floor illuminated by the lights were filled with patterns I had never seen before, and in the center of the stone chamber stood an altar whose purpose was difficult to guess.
While I was staring blankly at the stone chamber, the others entered as well.
Like us, they stared at the chamber with dazed expressions.
“Could it be some kind of prehistoric ruin?”
“It does seem that way… But it’s very different from the ruins I know.”
Even without listening to what people said, this stone chamber didn’t resemble prehistoric ruins in the slightest.
Of course, it wasn’t as if I knew much about them.
But even I could tell that the patterns drawn on the walls were different from murals of hunting animals or cuneiform.
Though it was made of stone, the patterns engraved into this chamber and the design of the chamber itself were extremely refined.
Not just the patterns, but even the chamber walls and the altar all didn’t look outdated at all.
“No matter how I look at it, this ruin doesn’t seem to have been made for religious or cultural purposes, but for functional reasons.”
Among the people, a middle-aged man was looking around the stone chamber and excitedly prattling on.
Just then, the guards called us.
We gathered in front of the altar at the center of the chamber.
Perhaps thanks to the week of training, even the civilians were now able to stand in line.
Then the suit we had seen on the first day, the general, and the U.S. soldiers entered the chamber.
They stood in front of the altar and faced us.
This time, the suit was the first to speak.
“Pleased to meet you. I am Yang Seungtae, First Deputy Director of the National Intelligence Service.”
The suit turned out to be an even bigger deal than I had thought.
“You’ve all been through a lot. I’m sure there have been many things you were curious about, and you’ve done well enduring it.”
At the deputy director’s words, people let out incredulous laughs.
It wasn’t that they had endured it because they wanted to. They had simply been afraid of the guards’ guns.
“Now, before we depart for the operational area, I will explain as much as possible to all of you.”
At the suit—the deputy director’s—words, everyone wore puzzled expressions.
Where were we going from down here?
“There is a great deal of backstory, but to put it briefly, several years ago, the United States discovered ruins capable of transporting people to another planet. The ruins here are likewise capable of transporting people to another planet.”
It was an absurd statement I had never heard before.
Not even as a joke had such a thing come up among the people.
But there was no way the First Deputy Director of the NIS would tell a joke.
“Of course, not just anyone can be transported. Only certain people are capable of it.
You are the suitable candidates we found. In a short while, you will be spatially transferred from this place to another planet.”
Shouts immediately erupted.
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Don’t joke with us!”
“Are you saying we can travel through space?”
A strange remark was mixed in at the end, but most of them were saying they couldn’t believe it.
Ancient ruins that transported people to another planet—this was material that belonged in an SF drama.
“It may be difficult to believe, but you will confirm it for yourselves shortly.”
With those words, the deputy director raised a hand.
The people beside the altar manipulated the equipment connected to it here and there.
I looked at the equipment they were operating and let out a sigh.
At a glance, it was scientific experimental equipment packed full of mathematics and physics.
As expected, equipment like that didn’t suit me.
Regardless of how I felt, once they operated the equipment, a pattern appeared in the empty air behind the deputy director.
Vwoooong.
The circular pattern floating in the air resembled the patterns engraved into the walls and ceiling of the stone chamber.
“Is it something like a gate?”
Listening to someone say something that sounded like fantasy, I stared at the circular hologram floating above the altar.
“It’s really beautiful.”
The pattern floating in the air was beautiful enough to make everyone marvel.
The pattern above the altar brightly illuminated the stone chamber.
As the light spread, the stone chamber transformed from an ancient ruin into something like a wizard’s laboratory from a fantasy film.
It was an unbelievable sight.
People began to believe the deputy director’s words.
There were still those who didn’t believe, but many began asking questions.
“What planet are we going to?”
“Why are we going?”
“What do you mean we’re suitable candidates?”
“It is safe, right?”
Questions poured out chaotically.
There were so many it would have been hard to answer them all at once.
The deputy director looked around at the people and raised his hand.
Clack.
The guards aimed their guns.
Silence fell over the stone chamber.
With a satisfied expression, the deputy director began to explain.
“These ruins are connected to another planet—the fourth planet of the TRAPPIST planetary system, forty light-years from Earth. If you undergo spatial transfer here, you can cross that distance in an instant.”
With my humanities-major level of knowledge, there was no way I would know where TRAPPIST was.
But even I knew that a light-year was an enormous distance.
“Forty light-years? Even the star system closest to Earth is four light-years away! Even the spacecraft that went to Mars recently would have to travel for tens of thousands of years to cover one light-year!”
This time, a university student refuted those words.
The others nodded as well, but the deputy director answered in a calm tone.
“It may be hard to believe, but we have already completed verification.”
Did that mean they had even finished testing it?
Well, they were about to send dozens of people right away. There was no way they would send us without testing it.
“The reason we are going to that planet is because there are items there that we need. Your task will also be to go there and send those items back to Earth.”
He said he would tell us everything, but the deputy director didn’t even say what the items they wanted were.
Instead, he answered another question.
“As I said a moment ago, suitable candidates refers to people who can undergo spatial transfer through these ruins.
We found such people through more than a year of blood tests.”
At the deputy director’s words, I remembered the blood tests we had been taking all this time.
I had diligently shoved my juniors onto the bus, telling them to make sure they got tested.
“Don’t tell me… If that was the reason for the blood tests, was Baekdusan captured first because of these ruins?”
Master Sergeant An muttered in a low voice.
It seemed he had only just arrived at that conclusion. Judging by their expressions, the others seemed to have reached a similar conclusion as well.
However, if that was true, the problem didn’t end there.
If the U.S. military had rushed here because of the ruins, then the war itself might have been because of these ruins.
The justification for the war had definitely been to prevent North Korea from using nuclear weapons.
But for it to suddenly be because of ruins…
Then again, it had been strange that the United States, which had been leaving North Korea’s nukes alone, had suddenly made such a huge fuss.
“This looks like we’re screwed…”
Master Sergeant An and the others’ faces turned pale.
If that was true, we might not be able to return home peacefully.
Screams erupted from every direction.
Frightened screams and commotion.
Amid them, a woman’s voice rang out.
“Going to another planet? Even if that’s true, it’s incredibly dangerous! How do we know we’ll get there safely? We might end up somewhere else. We might end up in airless space! I’m going home!”
Certainly, aside from the secret of the war, there were other problems too.
People tried to raise the commotion even further, but the ones standing in front of us were soldiers.
The uproar did not last long.
When people saw the guns aimed at them, they quietly shut their mouths.
After everyone grew quiet, the deputy director spoke.
“As I told you when you first entered this facility, you have been conscripted. Abandoning the operation is impossible. Even those who refuse until the end will be trapped on the planet on the other side after spatial transfer.”
It was just as I had expected.
They had offered a great deal of money, but an army at war was always unreasonable.
People stared anxiously at the holographic door floating in midair.
I looked at the door too.
The door leading to another planet floated beautifully in the air.
Unlike the fear filling the surroundings, my heart continued to pound with anticipation.