〈Operation Name: Rescue (No. 91) Report〉   1. OverviewOperation designation S9-H090 C1-R1 (No. 91)Black sphere coordinates: 52SCG23635 (37.501611°, 127.004743°)Black sphere occurrence time/date: 7.3. 12:34Personnel deployedFirst-wave personnel: Rescue Team 3 (total 136)Team Leader: CODE16 (Chief Hunter Gu Sawon)Responsible Hunters: 8Senior Hunters: 21Full Hunters: 76Junior Hunters: 30- Second-wave personnel: none (total 0)   2. Operation Progress7.3. 12:34 Black-spherization occurs at S9 District University Hospital12:49 First-wave Rescue Team 3 inserted13:04 Foreator appears13:16 Foreator settles, otherworldization proceeds13:27 Second-wave rescue insertion abandoned, S9 District retreat order issued13:34 S9 District otherworldized and sealed   3. Operation ResultsCivilian casualties: S9 district residents presumed all deadHunter casualties: Rescue Team 3 presumed all deadThat day was like a miracle.[Breaking news just in. We’re receiving a stream of unbelievable reports that residents of the S9 district have returned alive.]The day everyone in the world called a miracle.[That’s right. Today marks the seventh day since S9 was [N O V E L I G H T] sealed. It’s been known that ordinary people die instantly in otherworldized zones. For survivors to return today, seven days later, can only be called a miracle.][We’ll connect you live to the site of the return. Reporter Ahn Hoyeon.]“Yes, this is Ahn Hoyeon.”And a day when a miracle found me, too.Hunter Gu Sawon stood with his back to the perimeter wall, staring blankly. Around the perimeter zone, the place was awash in tears. Reunions with family members thought to be dead were happening here and there. In the distance, a reporter was interviewing a young man.“How do you feel right now?”“...I don’t know. I’m just dazed. I don’t even know why I’m here.”Sawon looked around. People with hair in disarray, people covered head to toe in injuries, people in ragged clothes. Every survivor looked shabby. They had things in common: they were residents of the S9 district, and they’d returned alive from an otherworldized place. Not only that.“So you’re saying you have absolutely no memory of what happened inside S9—inside that otherworldized space?”“Yes. I remember running away from the Deaters... but after that, nothing comes to mind. When I came to, I was here.”None of the survivors had any memories of inside S9. Sawon looked down at his own hands. They were covered in wounds.“Thank you for agreeing to the interview despite your confusion.”The reporter lowered the mic and searched for the next interviewee. As Sawon slowly lifted his head, his eyes met the reporter’s.“Hunter Gu Sawon!”The reporter ran toward him.“A hunter! Up until now, every survivor has been a civilian. We’ve met our first hunter survivor! Hunter Gu Sawon, may we have a moment?”Sawon stared vacantly at the reporter. The reporter ignored his lack of response and fired off questions.“Do you remember what the situation was like inside S9? Civilian survivors say they can’t remember anything that happened in there. Do you remember anything, Hunter Gu Sawon?”At the reporter’s words, Sawon looked back. In the middle of the perimeter wall—easily three meters high—there was a large gate. The only entrance into the S9 district was still firmly shut. The multiple layers of locks showed no sign of having been opened....How did I get out of there alive?“Hunter Gu Sawon?”At the news that a black sphere had formed in S9, Sawon had deployed faster than anyone. S9 was the district where he was born and raised, the zone where the people he cared about lived. So he had taken the lead. He should have been in the middle of a life-or-death operation...Why am I here? What on earth happened?“Hunter Gu Sawon, what is that monkey on your shoulder?”At the reporter’s words, Sawon turned his head left. A baby monkey of unknown origin was perched on his shoulder.“Kii.”The monkey squeaked softly and skittered down his arm to his chest. Without thinking, Sawon supported it with his arms.“Kkii-ii, kii.”Round eyes met his gaze. The moment he blinked a couple of times, his vision was sucked into the monkey’s pitch-black pupils. Shadows swallowed everything. At the same time, faint voices rang in his ears.‘...Save the people.’‘Is that your wish?’‘Yeah.’‘Good. I’ll grant your wish. In return...’“Hunter Gu Sawon!”A tap on his shoulder yanked his consciousness out of the dark. Startled, he looked back.What was that just now?“Are you all right, Mr. Gu Sawon?”As the reporter asked in concern, a small animal whined. A baby gibbon fussed in his arms. Sawon just stared down at it for a long time.The monkey climbed up his chest and wrapped his neck. As if its heart were connected to his, a desperate feeling came through. It was like he could hear it whispering to stay with him, to be together forever. With its whole body, the monkey was asking to be taken along. Sawon’s instincts pointed to only one choice.I don’t know where you came from... but I’m taking you.A powerful urge rose that it had to be so. Hugging the monkey, he murmured into its small ear.“Got it. Come with me.”“Kkii!”It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, yet it felt like a resolution he’d held for a long time; his mind didn’t waver. He wondered if this little creature had something to do with what was happening now—if that was why his heart leaned toward taking it.He lifted his head, and a large boundary marker came into view. On the white sign, “S9” was written in red.“Should I call you Nine...”“Pardon? What did you just say?”At the reporter’s question, Sawon motioned with his eyes at the monkey in his arms.The day the world called “Nine’s Miracle” was the day a miracle found him.***Five years after “Nine’s Miracle.”“It’s a Deater! Aaaah!”People screamed. A flood of bodies poured out between buildings like a tidal wave. The heart of the city turned to chaos in an instant. Armed personnel shouted urgently.“Evacuate this way!”Zzt.The radio crackled.- Melting-type Deater in the rear! The retreat route is blocked!“Damn it! Secure an alternate evacuation route!”A man in protective gear leveled his gun forward.“Aaagh!”At the head of the wave, a dozen-odd abominations were eating people at random. Three meters up behind them, a pitch-black oval aperture had opened. Deaters were popping out of that black sphere one after another. Hunters tangled with them in close quarters.Boom!With the sound of a building collapsing, the black void widened.“This is Code 50. HQ, please respond. The forward rescue team is on the verge of annihilation.”The moment that space becomes a perfect sphere, a massive tension will spread, fixing the gate in place. If that happens, there’s no way to seal it. So it had to be stopped before it completed its transformation into a perfect sphere.In the Republic of Korea, there were now only five zones left where humans could survive. If a gate set in the heart of a hub where major infrastructure stood, it was certain the country would draw even closer to its end.The man shouted urgently into the earpiece at his ear.“HQ, orders!”Zzt.- This is HQ. All personnel, cease combat. Fall back. Get as far from the combat zone as possible.“What?”Code 50 looked startled. The order over the radio continued.- We’re switching to operation SOP.Operation SOP. At those words, all the hunters’ eyes flashed with a mix of looks. There was no time left to hesitate. The man shouted.“Retreat!”As if they’d been waiting for it, the hunters at the front turned and ran in unison.And someone had been watching all of this from the start. Gu Sawon lazily tapped the button on the in-ear comm in his ear. A hologram prompt floated in his view.〈Connecting single line.〉Zzt.A voice came over his radio.- Code 16. We’re switching to operation SOP.Sawon stood on the tallest rooftop, looking down at the pandemonium below.“Director. Are you really sending me?”- Yes.He pulled up the mask resting on his chin. He flipped up the hood of his pitch-black coat and cinched the drawstrings tight. As he tapped the ground with his toes, a transparent film like a hologram wrapped his wrists and ankles. It trembled finely like a dancing slime. Stroking his opposite arm from elbow to wrist with one hand, he spoke.“Confirm it before I launch. No liability for property damage, no liability for civilian casualties, no face exposure, take down all articles. And on TV...”- We get it—deploy now!He stepped onto the rooftop ledge with a sigh.“I wonder if you know what it feels like to be called a murderer every time I deploy, Director.”He mimed twisting a bracelet on an empty wrist. The transparent buoyant substance hugging his limbs clung tight and reshaped into small metal guards. From his wrist, a small animal cried.“Kkii!”“Aaaah!”Screams still rang out below. He cracked his fingers and leaned forward.“Let’s go, Nine.”His guards quivered. With the giddy chatter of a monkey, he jumped, diving off the roof. As he plummeted, a hologram targeting overlay set objectives. Red dots lit up over multiple prey to be engaged simultaneously. A machine voice chimed in his ear.[Would you like to set targets?]“Cancel batch targeting. Switch to normal mode.”As he thrust his right arm into the air, the guard wrapped around his wrist instantly shifted into an organism. The transparent organism billowed into the shape of a monkey’s arm and shot out like a chain. Along the path it passed, the surfaces of buildings, power poles, and such were ripped up at random as if drawn by tension. The organism devoured those fragments like mad as it solidified. A power pole, gnawed as if by rats, bent askew.Screeech, thud!“Aagh!”People fleeing were crushed under the pole. But Sawon didn’t stop. His objective was not to rescue people—it was to seal the black sphere.Boom!The flung monkey arm bit in like a grapnel, burying itself in a far-off wall.Whish!Grabbing the weird line connecting his wrist, he flew forward. At the same time, he snapped his left hand hard through the air.Clack!The left-hand guard turned into a long blade. A system voice sounded at his ear.[There is a speed-control zone ahead.]But the voice was drowned by a Deater’s shriek.Screee!Thock!Arcing through the air, his blade took a monster’s neck clean off. With a wet slap, a boulder-sized head bounced along the ground. Blood splattered his left cheek. With a mere beckon of his right hand, the monkey arm hurtled back to him. The organism retook the form of his metal guard. But the fragments it had gripped did not return, pelting down to the ground like hail. He flipped once in midair.“Nine.”“Kkik!”This time, the guards around his ankles and calves became organism. In a flash, they shaped into a transparent board. Right before his feet touched ground, he shouted:“Two hundred kilometers per hour.”“Kkii, kkik!”The moment his soles met the street, the board solidified. Like iron filings to a magnet, concrete and car panels were ripped up and adhered to the organism. The board he rode tore toward the black sphere at speed. Every time it rolled a flourish in the air, Deaters’ necks dropped in a circle like juggling balls. Where he turned in figure eights, the limbs of hacked-up Deaters popped like popcorn.Screech, thud!Wherever he passed, the road was gouged like by an excavator and walls collapsed. The street became a wreck in an instant, and still people’s screams burst.The system voice announced:[This is a 70 km/h zone.]Wiiing!But with the black sphere dead ahead, his board had just passed 270 km/h. The black oval swelled. Another Deater was about to emerge.Fwoosh!Hurtling like a bullet, he flung both arms forward and leaped.“Nine!”His left-hand blade and right-hand guard both shifted to organism in an instant. The board went transparent and balled up in front of him. Fused into one, the organism transformed into a gigantic gibbon-like monster. The creature called Nine roared in a different voice than before and gaped its jaws. The monster trying to crawl out of the black sphere had its neck torn off by Nine’s bite.Thud!The headless Deater’s corpse fell. Sawon landed on its chest.Crunch, crunch.He could hear Nine chewing the head in its mouth. Pushing off Nine’s shoulder, he sprang up. In the same motion, he yanked a cube from his chest and hurled it into the black hole.Poom!With a blast, a sticky fluid burst out. The viscous substance from the cube meshed into a net and plugged the hole. As his feet hit the ground again, Nine reverted to a transparent organism. He blinked once, and the organism was again his guard. He pulled off his hood, soaked with blood, and hit his comm button.“Mission complete. Send the sealing team fast. At most we can hold for five minutes.”Zzt.- They’ll arrive in three. Withdraw.At the same time, a helicopter sounded behind him.Thududududu.One after another, voices came over the net.Zzt.- Dispatch rescue teams urgently.Zzt.- Requesting rear-line support.Silently, he looked back. The cityscape, more ruined than what the Deaters had made, and people trapped under the debris came into view. Rescue squads were racing in with urgent shouts. Hunters were hurrying to eliminate the black sphere.“...Same old story.”As always, it looked like casualties caused by his hand would outnumber those killed by Deaters. Such sacrifices were never welcome. But with sealing the black sphere the top priority, it was unavoidable.He was staring blankly at the horrific scene he’d made.“Urgh...”A human groan came from underfoot. Only then did he glance down. Beneath the Deater corpse he was standing on, a hunter lay pinned.“You... are...”He forced the words out; the right side of his body had already been eaten by a Deater. Sawon crouched beside him.“If you’ve got last words, say them.”The man’s lips twitched.Save me... Scrapper...But the words never became sound; they scattered with his last breath. Sawon quietly looked at the eyes that never closed.Code Number 16, real name Gu Sawon. The world’s one and only hunter who could use Deaters as his subordinates. Because death and destruction were all that was left where he passed, people called him Scrapper.Before he knew it, the sealing team was practically on top of him. Leaving the howls behind, he thrust an arm into the air. His guard became a monkey arm again and shot out. Nine’s hand caught a distant rooftop rail.Fwish!His body was yanked toward the building.As he sliced through the sky, a voice crackled in his ear.Zzt.- Gu Sawon. Report to HQ.“I haven’t even eaten yet. I’ll eat, grab a nap, and come tomorrow.”He answered with a flat face. But the bellow that followed made him knit his brows.- When I say come, come now!

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