Chapter 64: IF-017-1 Part 17

The bedroom lights were off.

Emily Harper, a researcher assigned to FPL 017-1’s auxiliary base, couldn’t fall asleep.

“…Hhic!”

Even when she tried to shut her eyes and rest, she would flinch in fear.

Now, she sat at the edge of her bed, lost in thought.

“…
Haa.”

It was the same day she’d returned from a dispatch to the 4th Research Facility.

Though she’d gone to bed early, exhausted, she had woken up from an incredibly vivid nightmare.

Every time she closed her eyes, the vision of “that thing” from her dream returned, tormenting her.

Emily couldn’t fall back asleep.

It was one of the worst nightmares she’d ever had.

Even someone as unshakable as Emily felt like a scared eight-year-old who desperately needed her mother’s arms.

She clutched her head.

“Damn that 4th Lab.”

Judging from the dream, it was clear the nightmare had been triggered by what she’d experienced while escaping the bizarrely altered 4th Research Facility.

“OO…”

Her eyelids began to grow heavy with fatigue.

And once again, the haunting scenes from the dream flickered before her eyes.

It was so vivid, she could hardly believe it had been a dream.

***

In the dream—

Emily had become a member of an ancient civilization.

A civilization that flourished around an endless lake, the most brilliant to have ever existed.

In the dream, Emily looked up.

The palace towering above made modern skyscrapers look like children’s toys.

A city surrounded by fortress-like golden walls, unshaken by any foreign invader—

A thousand-year city.

And with the dawn of a new millennium, the festival began.

Reptilian creatures from the lake, mimicking humans.

The festival celebrated the defeat of those terrifying monsters, said to live for a thousand years.

Though dream-Emily felt uneasy, the festival was an important holiday marking the city’s millennial history.

She couldn’t just skip it.

Emily opened her eyes.

She already knew what would appear next—she’d seen it in the dream.

But opening her eyes didn’t help her escape.

With her face buried in her hands, the memory replayed vividly in her mind.

Eventually, the festival reached its climax.

And then—

That thing emerged, overflowing from the endless lake.

Its claw alone was thicker than the golden walls.

A single scale was larger than the palace that resembled the Tower of Babel.

Its thousand blazing eyes, more terrifying than the sun, shimmered like the most beautiful jewels, revealing the true source of the gold that had always poured from the lake.

“Hhic…!”

Shamefully, Emily had shed tears in the dream, overwhelmed by fear of that thing.

Even so, The nightmare wouldn’t let her go.

Its image lingered before her eyes.

That thing was the reason the golden city had built such a tall palace.

It was why the city had constructed fortress-like walls.

It was the thousand-year curse—

A primal fear etched into the thousand-year-old city.

It was the lake itself.

“Please… just go away…!”

Emily waved her hand in desperation, but the thoughts that had surfaced wouldn’t leave so easily.

That thing had come ashore.

Despite its overwhelming power, it was restrained—bound—thrashing in discomfort.

Yet no one could oppose such a transcendent being.

They could only despair over a curse passed down through generations.

When the being rose, everyone knelt.

When it opened its eyes, everyone was consumed in flames.

A god.

A god of destruction, awakened to carry out judgment.

After the judgment ended, the city no longer existed on land.

There was only one survivor.

Ironically—

The only one left was a young princess, untouched by the city’s golden corruption.

But dream-Emily was not that survivor.

She had watched the young princess meet the gaze of that thing.

And then—

Flames ignited in Emily’s chest, spread through her body, boiled her brain like soup, melted her eyes, and finally— everything turned to white.

***

“Click.”

Emily turned on the light in her room.

Only then did the image of that thing finally vanish from her sight.

“Haa… shit…”

Emily let out a deep sigh.

What made it even more ridiculous—

The high priest who had burned most horrifically in the dream looked exactly like Director E from the lab.

If it weren’t for that detail, Emily wouldn’t have been able to dismiss the dream so easily as a bizarre fluke.

She got up.

Just recalling even a small part of that creature made her question whether her mind had been tainted.

Maybe some fresh air would help her forget.

She grabbed a jacket and stepped into the hallway.

“Ah, Harper. Where are you headed?”

“Just up to the roof for some air. What about you, Jake?”

“I got a call from the situation room.”

“Oh, something related to 017-1, I guess. Good luck out there.”

Just like always, she exchanged brief pleasantries with a colleague.

Then Emily opened the door to the roof and stepped outside.

“Brr… it’s cold.”

Tonight, the Milky Way looked like it would spill across the sky.

Gazing at the beautiful night sky calmed Emily down a little.

Under the Milky Way, she clenched her fist.

“Come on. What am I doing, freaking out over a nightmare at my age—phft! Ugh, what the hell?”

Muttering to herself, she shook her head.

Her hair whipped around violently.

“What’s with this wind?”

Looking puzzled, Emily tied up her hair and peered over the railing.

The water in the wetlands was receding.

“…Was that just my imagination?”

The thought that popped into her head was a tsunami precursor.

But Emily shook her head.

“Come on, this isn’t the ocean. The wetlands are, what, ten meters deep at most?”

She chalked it up to her rattled nerves after the dream.

Tried to shrug it off.

But maybe the dream had cursed her after all—

Because at the edge of her vision, Something strange came into view.

“…Water?”

Faced with the impossible, Emily stood frozen and slowly lifted her head.

Her gaze crept upward, little by little.

And with that, her expression hardened.

It was a wave.

No, it was a tsunami.

It made no sense—a tsunami in a swamp, not the sea.

But there was no better word to describe the unnatural wall of water heading her way.

“A high place. I need to get to… ah, the comms tower.”

As the shadow finally loomed overhead, Emily broke into a sprint toward higher ground.

No matter how sturdy the 017-1 annex base was, there was no way it could withstand a tsunami of such ridiculous scale.

Going down wasn’t even an option.

Not that Emily knew, but the lower levels had already been submerged long before the wave even hit.

It was, in every sense, a wise decision.

Emily reached for the ladder attached to the tallest comms tower in the base.

As she climbed…

“Ow.”

A sharp pain made her look at her palm.

Blood trickled from her hand, where the skin had been torn.

She gritted her teeth and grabbed the rusted, chipped ladder once more.

“Why is this thing so rusted?”

But worrying about tetanus a few weeks down the line was pointless when the real crisis would strike in just a few minutes.

Emily kept climbing.

Thud.

The top of the ladder.

But the shadow kept growing.

Cold sweat rolled down Emily’s neck.

When she had seen it from the rooftop earlier, it hadn’t been this massive—but now, up close, the wave seemed monstrous in scale.

“Damn it.”

Emily stepped onto the railing.

She took off her jacket, hooked it onto the antenna, and began to climb with everything she had.

It was a vertical antenna, not made for climbing, with nowhere proper to step.

An average person would’ve slipped and fallen instantly.

But Emily clung to the top of the antenna.

The highest point of the 017-1 annex base.

There was no time to gauge how much the water had risen.

“Seriously… I just woke up, and what the hell is this?”

She steadied her dazed mind, panting for breath.

And then—

The tsunami hit, swallowing everything below Emily in an instant.

CRAAAAASH!

Emily clenched the shaking antenna with all her might, as if an earthquake had struck.

“…!”

Seconds passed, though to Emily they stretched into an eternity.

Under the dark clouds…

Her blood-soaked hands trembled uncontrollably.

“Holy…”

She looked down and was left speechless.

It was as if the water had risen to match the full height of the tsunami.

The rooftop of the 017-1 annex base, where Emily had just been standing moments ago, was completely submerged—erased from view.

It was hard to believe this was the end of the mighty 017-1 annex, the same facility that had captured the infamous IF-017-1 entities multiple times.

And then Emily saw what had caused the tsunami.

“That small white thing… no way.”

She recognized it.

It was IF-017.

The entity was calmly walking through the flooded land, parting the water like a modern-day Moses.

It was known as the god and progenitor of the IF-017-1s—the top-tier anomaly.

‘What was it doing here, when it was supposed to be in the 4th research facility?’

‘What were that armor, those scales, and the crystal-like horns?’

None of those questions mattered.

From her high vantage point, Emily could clearly see—

IF-017 wasn’t just parting the water.

The gap in the flood formed a distinct shape.

As if there was some massive, invisible entity occupying that space.

It was much smaller than what she’d seen in her dream.

But still…

It looked eerily similar to that.

“…!”

Fear surged up again, and Emily broke out in goosebumps.

IF-017’s face remained expressionless.

It was as if generating the wave that destroyed the 017-1 annex had required no effort at all.

Like some ancient titan awakened from slumber, wiping out a civilization without even trying—just as in her dream.

Emily’s body trembled like a leaf.

“I-It hurts…”

But the shaking couldn’t just be from pain or exhaustion.

In fact—

She wasn’t even aware of the pain in her hands anymore.

“It’s… hot.”

From deep within her.

From the depths of her heart, a heat began to bloom.

Just like in the dream.

Even after she had crushed those infuriating white coats, the fury still hadn’t cooled.

It felt too empty.

She was far from done.

And something kept pushing her forward.

“Graaaah…”

Honestly, even she had to admit—

They had just gotten started, and already everyone was turning into lake stars?

Only one person was left.

With things like this, there was no way to satisfy the rage of the thousand flames.

As she moved forward, those thoughts in mind—

Suddenly, she realized something.

‘The rage had subsided.’

“Graah?”

Only a little.

A tiny, tiny bit.

So little, in fact, it was laughable even compared to that pathetic flicker she’d given to the chubby snake.

But still, it had cooled.

‘Wait.’

‘It didn’t feel like it was going to cool down at all.’

‘So what happened?’