NTN 36

Chapter 36

A Strange Death

The conversation between Harris Brown and Seong Geon-woo was little more than light chatter meant to ease the tension.

Geon-woo glanced at Harris’s companion — a woman just over 160 cm tall, her appearance quite average. Her naturally drooping linen-colored hair brushed her shoulders, and a neat beige beret sat atop her head.

“Looks like you haven’t found anything useful.”

Geon-woo turned his gaze back to Harris as he spoke.

Harris replied, his face expressionless.

“We were just passing through to kill some time. It’s no surprise there’s nothing to gain here.
Finding supplies in these ruins without proper equipment is nearly impossible.
Is this your first visit?”

“Yeah.”

Geon-woo answered honestly, then shifted the topic.

“You guys also got that mission? The one to find the man with black hair and golden eyes?”

Harris nodded slightly.

“Let me give you some advice — though you’ll have to pay for it.
Drop that mission. There’s been some strange movement north of Weiru Station lately.”

“Is it related to the anomaly deep in the swamp? You heard that roar that night too, didn’t you?”

Geon-woo pressed.

Harris’s expression grew grim.

“Yeah. We happened to be north of Weiru Station that night.
When dawn came, we moved forward and found several corpses — they hadn’t been dead long.
There weren’t any fatal wounds, but their faces were all twisted in the same way — frozen in agony and terror.
One of them was even wearing a grotesque smile.”

Yong Yeohong felt a chill run down his spine, but the eerie feeling faded quickly as Geon-woo asked another question.

“No fatal wounds… Were they clothed?”

‘What kind of question is that?’
Yeohong muttered inwardly.

Harris’s face stiffened slightly.

“No. They weren’t wearing anything.
Whoever found them before us probably stripped them clean.”

“Professional work.”

Geon-woo’s offhand remark left Harris feeling a step behind in the conversation.

After a quiet breath, Harris continued.

“They didn’t even leave a strand of hair behind.
If they had, I could’ve made a decent wig out of it.
Anyway, after seeing those corpses, we dropped our mission and headed straight back.
We didn’t even stop to rest — got here just about an hour ago.”

“Pretty quick.”

Geon-woo commented casually.

“We were on bicycles,” Harris replied without turning his head. “There are narrow swamp paths that cars and bikes can’t use, but bicycles can.”

Geon-woo nodded.

“One last question.
Are there any other relic hunters or wasteland drifters around here?”

“A few. But since you’re armed like that, unless you provoke them first, they’ll probably leave you alone.”

The sunlight glinted off Harris’s hair.

“And if we weren’t armed?”

At that, Harris’s expression twisted slightly.

“In Ashland, being weak is a crime.”

A flicker of hatred flashed in his eyes.

Before Geon-woo could ask anything else, Harris exhaled and regained his composure.

“Now it’s my turn to ask something.
Consider it payment for the warning I just gave you.”

He didn’t really expect Geon-woo to answer — the information he’d shared wasn’t particularly valuable. Plenty of other relic hunters had already sensed trouble and withdrawn as well.

Besides, more than a day had passed since the incident, and it would take at least another day to reach Weiru Station from here. Harris was certain they wouldn’t arrive in time, even without his warning.

“Can I pay in another way?”

Geon-woo released his grip on the rifle’s magazine and reached into his inner pocket.

“Depends on what you offer.”

Both Harris and his companion grew tense — they had no idea what he was about to pull out.

Geon-woo swiftly produced two packs of compressed biscuits — part of their lunch.

“…Not bad. Very generous.”

Harris hadn’t expected payment in food. Two packs could barely make a meal for two, but it was still valuable.

Geon-woo tossed the biscuits to them. Harris and his partner let them hit the ground instead of catching them — afraid he might pull the trigger if they reached out.

“See you around.”

Geon-woo smiled and said goodbye as if parting from a friend.

Then, keeping their guard up, he and Yeohong stepped carefully toward the massive gates of the steel factory.
The other pair did the same.

Once the distance between them was far enough that even a marksman would struggle to hit a target, Harris finally told his companion to pick up the biscuits and fetch the bicycles.

As the two cyclists disappeared into the ruins, Geon-woo and Yeohong scanned the plaza beyond the gate, rifles in hand.

“Looks like a residential area outside. Should we search here first, or go inside?”

After a short hesitation, Yeohong asked.

Geon-woo didn’t even glance at the crumbling, vine-covered buildings on either side.

“Let’s start inside. We’ll map out the layout first.”

“Got it.”

Yeohong agreed without protest.

The two passed through a massive black gate wide enough for several cars to drive through side by side.

“Guess even relic hunters have limits. They didn’t take this gate.”

Yeohong glanced back in awe.

Geon-woo also looked over the massive structure.

“Maybe it just wasn’t worth the effort.”

Rather than chatting further, they proceeded deeper into the old steel factory along a wide, worn road.

To their right stood a large, roofed single-story building without doors. Inside, instead of partition walls, there were only supporting pillars, with shallow pits in the floor — just big enough for a person to stand or lie in.

“What do you think this was for?”

Yeohong asked.

“No idea,” Geon-woo replied. “But if you stood in those pits, it’d be easy to work on the underside of a car.”

“So, a repair bay? And that next to it — a garage?”

Yeohong nodded, as if the pieces clicked together.

“Let’s mark it later.”

Meanwhile, on the left side of the path lay a foul-smelling pond, a few sparse trees, and a small building overgrown with green plants.
Ignoring these for now, they continued inward.

Before long, they reached a section with several towering chimneys surrounded by steel frameworks and makeshift structures.

Huge black pipes, like coiled dragons, extended downward from the chimneys, connecting to various points around the site. Most were cut open along one side.

Winding their way through the corroded “forest” of steel, they reached a broken railing. Beyond it was a water tank filled with rainwater.
It was hard to tell what it had once been used for — the overhead structure blocked most of the sunlight, casting the entire area in an eerie shadow.

The silence was suffocating.

Uneasy, Yeohong finally spoke.

“Didn’t he say other relic hunters were around? Why haven’t we seen anyone?”

Geon-woo shot him a sharp look.

“Why are you setting off flags right now?”

The moment his words fell, a loud metallic crash echoed from above.

Something large and dark plummeted down, bouncing off the steel beams several times before landing heavily in front of them.

It was a human body — torn and bloodied from the fall, blood splattering everywhere.

The crashing noises continued above, reverberating through the structure.

Before either of them could react, a figure stepped out from around the corner.

Taller than Geon-woo, the figure’s body was made entirely of black metal, with a grenade launcher on its left arm and a flamethrower and laser emitter on its right.

It wore a tattered yellow monk’s robe, draped with a red stole, and its eyes glowed crimson.

At the sight of that grotesque machine, both Geon-woo and Yeohong felt their hearts plummet. Goosebumps prickled every inch of their skin.

They both thought the same thing at once:

A Monk of the Order!

In Ashland, these were among the most dangerous beings in existence.

Their other name: The Immortals.

According to textbooks distributed by Bango Bio, humanity had achieved groundbreaking progress in several fields of science before the fall of the old world — none more remarkable than consciousness uploading.

Consciousness uploading was a technology that transferred a human’s mind into a specially designed robotic bionic chip, freeing them from the limitations of flesh.
They would no longer age, grow sick, starve, or die — so long as they received regular maintenance, they could live eternally in digital form.

However, before the old world’s collapse, the technology was riddled with flaws and remained confined to laboratories.

After the destruction came chaos — and with it, a group of robots emerged, calling themselves Immortals.

They claimed to have once been human, their consciousness preserved through that very technology.

According to them, only a few functioning facilities and chips remained, and only one factory could still produce compatible robotic bodies.
They no longer understood the full principles — only how to operate what was left.

Thus, the Immortals roamed the wastelands, seeking to reunite humanity, rediscover the lost science of consciousness uploading, and grant eternal life to humankind — to end the age of darkness and usher in a new world.