Chapter 81. The Village of Women (1)
“Ugh... sob...”
Hyeona sat in the hallway, crying uncontrollably.
After Victoria’s refusal last time, her despair seemed to have grown even worse.
No matter how desperately Jeongheon tried to comfort her, it was useless.
“Honey, please stop crying.”
“But... but...!”
“That’s why we came all the way here. Doctor Mary’s daughter rejected us, but Abraxas will help.”
While Jeongheon desperately tried to calm his wife, an unfamiliar voice came from farther down the corridor.
“Good afternoon.”
A fat white man with a cane came waddling toward them.
He looked to be in his mid-forties.
His head was completely bald, and he wore a spotless white lab coat.
One of his legs seemed impaired, so he had to rely on the cane while walking.
Every step made his body sway awkwardly from side to side.
Jeongheon immediately realized that this was the person they had been waiting for.
“Ah, hello.”
“I heard about your unfortunate circumstances. You must be devastated.”
The man offered Jeongheon a gentle expression of sympathy.
Jeongheon was surprised by his fluent Korean.
“You speak Korean very well.”
“Of course. Abraxas works with companies from many different countries.”
The man smiled pleasantly.
“Korea is one of our important clients as well.”
This man...
This man will help us.
For some reason, the smile gave Jeongheon absolute confidence.
“Can you really clone our son?”
Hyeona finally wiped away her tears and asked.
Apparently, she trusted him too.
The man nodded immediately.
“Of course.”
“Abraxas possesses exceptionally advanced biotechnology.”
“Our cloning techniques are on an entirely different level from conventional methods.”
He smiled warmly.
“You will be able to meet your son again in a healthy body.”
The couple looked at one another.
Hope returned to both of their faces.
Then they bowed deeply to the man at almost the same time.
“Thank you for letting us see Eunho again!”
“We don’t know how we could ever repay you...”
The man simply waved away their gratitude.
“No need.”
“We are the ones who should thank you for agreeing to participate in Abraxas’s Sophia Project.”
The Sophia Project.
A project designed to create genius children by injecting special drugs into the cerebral cortex.
Jeongheon and Hyeona had managed to make contact with Abraxas by chance.
In exchange for having their dead son cloned, they agreed to take part in the project.
Perhaps their desperate feelings had reached someone.
Abraxas, which oversaw the project, had readily accepted their condition.
Of course, there was one other thing that mattered to the couple.
“If we participate in the experiment, our son will be reborn as a genius, right?”
Jeongheon asked expectantly.
The man nodded without hesitation.
“Of course.”
“Getting into Harvard at the youngest age in history may not even be difficult.”
“Everyone will envy him.”
He smiled broadly.
“You have made the best possible choice for the child who will be born again.”
The couple immediately brightened.
Just imagining their son being praised as a genius seemed enough to excite them.
Even Hyeona, who had been sobbing moments ago, was now smiling brightly.
“Come to think of it, you’re practically the savior of our family, but we never even asked your name.”
Jeongheon asked carefully.
The man let out a hearty laugh.
“Hahahaha. Just call me this.”
Then he spoke a somewhat unnatural name.
“No. 11.”
“That is the name Abraxas gave me.”
Yukgap quietly controlled his breathing with a tense expression.
Before long, a strange sound echoed through the floor.
Tap, scrape. Tap, scrape.
Whatever it was, it was getting closer.
“It’s coming!”
The moment his heightened hearing caught it, Yukgap gave the signal.
Seryun and Victoria hurriedly mixed various chemicals together.
“How much longer until the compound is finished?”
“It needs more time!”
The two worked desperately.
The mixture they had combined began bubbling violently.
Yukgap tightened his grip on the daggers in both hands.
“I’ll buy you time!”
“Finish the compound while I hold it off!”
Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.
The strange vibrations traveling across the floor grew steadily closer.
Yukgap manifested his beast form and narrowed his eyes.
Before long, a grotesque life-form appeared beyond the doorway.
It had enormous antennae and a dark red head.
“Screeeeech.”
It produced a noise like metal grinding against metal.
Yukgap could not tell whether the sound came from its mouth or from the horribly distorted segments of its body scraping together.
Not that it mattered.
“SCREEEEEEEECH!”
The creature rushed toward Yukgap with a massive body that looked wrapped in armor plating.
Yukgap gritted his teeth.
Countless legs covered its body.
Its shell was black and ominous, while its head and antennae were dark crimson.
The grotesque creature looked almost exactly like the centipedes commonly found in the back alleys.
Except this one was dozens of meters long.
“SCREEEEEEEECH!”
The enormous centipede wriggled violently and charged.
Victoria, still mixing chemicals behind Yukgap, shouted a warning.
“Careful!”
“Don’t worry! This much is nothing!”
Yukgap used his specialty, acceleration, to evade the centipede’s attack with ease.
Its prey vanished before its eyes, leaving only an afterimage.
Apparently enraged, the centipede raised its body upright.
“SCREEEEEEEECH!”
Yellow venom sprayed from its inward-curving fangs.
Yukgap reflexively raised an arm to shield himself.
The moment the venom touched him, a numb, burning pain spread across his flesh.
“Tch. Going straight for poison?”
Apparently, it intended to paralyze him and slowly corner him.
Victoria asked anxiously,
“Yukgap, are you okay?”
“This much will heal!”
“You focus on what you’re doing!”
Yukgap crossed his daggers and violently shoved the gigantic centipede back.
At that moment, Robert came charging in from the distance, shouting at the top of his mechanical voice.
[Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!]
Yukgap grinned.
“There you are, scrap heap!”
[Burn the pest.]
With those brief words, Robert opened a flamethrower from his chest.
A torrent of blazing fire erupted forward.
“SKREEEEEE!”
The centipede recoiled as the flames struck it head-on.
Yukgap immediately seized the opening.
“Hyaah!”
He hurled one of his daggers with all his strength.
The blade struck the centipede’s head with tremendous speed and force.
Already retreating from the flames, the centipede suddenly stiffened.
It looked paralyzed.
Yukgap had clearly hit a vital point.
“It’s finished!”
At that moment, Seryun raised the completed chemical mixture.
Victoria snatched it and shoved it into Robert’s side.
“Good! Deploy it!”
Robert’s eyes flashed.
[Die quietly, pest.]
A mist of chemicals sprayed rapidly from his body.
The rigid centipede was engulfed in the substance.
It writhed violently in pain.
“SKREEEEEEEE!”
Then it gave one final, weakened shriek and collapsed.
It was clearly dead.
Only then did Yukgap wipe the sweat from his forehead and let out a relieved breath.
“Whew. Is it finally over?”
“Thank goodness the insecticide we rushed together actually worked.”
Victoria looked equally relieved.
Once everything had settled down, Seryun looked back and forth between the two.
“Now that we’ve dealt with it, would someone please explain what exactly is going on?”
“Why is there a monster like that wandering around the restaurant?”
Seryun had simply come to Restaurant Shelley because he had business there.
Instead, he had walked in to find Yukgap and Victoria fighting a gigantic centipede.
Before he knew it, he had been dragged into the situation and forced to quickly mix an insecticide from the chemicals in the restaurant.
Fortunately, it had worked.
Otherwise, he might have been attacked by the monstrous centipede himself.
Under his questioning, Victoria spoke in a tiny voice.
“Well... you know how a pig only has four feet?”
Seryun stared at her.
“Yes?”
“I thought that was a shame.”
“So I tried combining pig and centipede genes to create a pig with a thousand legs.”
“And?”
Victoria avoided his eyes.
“The genetic fusion went wrong, and I made a pig-sized centipede instead.”
Seryun let out a quiet sigh.
“I nearly had a heart attack when a gigantic centipede attacked me the moment I entered the restaurant.”
“And you’re telling me all this happened because you wanted more jokbal?”
“B-But if I successfully create a pig with a thousand legs, it could revolutionize the restaurant industry!”
“If you start two revolutions like that, everyone will be dead.”
How did one even combine pig and centipede genes badly enough to produce a centipede the size of a pig?
In its own way, it was almost impressive.
“Anyway, why are you here?”
Yukgap asked as he returned his daggers to his waist.
Seryun held out a document.
“These are the results of the investigation you requested last time.”
“The investigation?”
Yukgap’s voice trembled.
There was only one thing he had asked Seryun to investigate.
Seryun explained calmly,
“This contains information on missing-person reports filed under the name ‘Kim Jeongseon.’”
Yukgap practically snatched the document from his hand.
It was packed with personal information.
Seryun continued explaining.
“First, ‘Kim Jeongseon’ is a relatively common and gender-neutral name, so it took some time to sort through the records.”
“From those, I narrowed it down to a handful of missing-person cases that seemed connected to you.”
Yukgap rapidly scanned the page.
“Five cases in total.”
“I filtered them using what we know about you. Male, in his thirties, from Gangwon Province, and so on.”
Seryun added carefully,
“The chances are relatively high, but I cannot say any of them are definitely you.”
“That’s fine.”
Yukgap’s hands trembled around the papers.
“At least now I have hope.”
Ever since escaping Abraxas, he had struggled endlessly to gather fragments of his past.
And now, the result of all that effort was finally in his hands.
One of these five missing-person reports might be connected to him.
The thought that he had finally taken another step toward his past filled him with hope and anticipation.
