Chapter 45

A Revised history

It took less than an hour for me to completely flip over and get out from Decker & Jefferson’s Detroit lab.

As soon as Nate took a step out of the lab, he made an expression that would remain with me for a while.

“…Woah.”

Although the number of pollutants in the atmosphere had decreased since the Cataclysm, it had not been long enough for large cities in the U.S. to suddenly turn into clean areas. The star’s footprints were still dim in the night’s curtain above my head.

Nevertheless, Nate mindlessly looked at it, the stars in the sky, without having enough of it.

Next, he turned his head a little bit and stared at the moon that floated across the skyline of Detroit faraway and the effects of light pollution it created as if it were the most beautiful sight in the world.

“Let’s go.”

I regretted that I killed the researchers too easily.

Swish!

I spread the [Stardust Wing] and flew up together. This item’s effect, which perfectly protected me from air friction, was applied to Nate as well.

Nate spoke, looking at the scenery under his feet, which looked like a drooping beam of light through the darkness.

“Doctor.”

“Don’t call me a doctor. I’m Seo Jin-wook.”

Perhaps because he was caught at the age of nine and was locked up at the now age of 19, his vocabulary and expression skills were not yet fit for his age, and his attitude was a little intimidated.

I reminisced about Nate, who I saw in my previous life. It would take time for him to change into that cheerful and clever figure that I could remember.

“What should I do from now on?”

This might also be him trying to observe his position.

Before leaving the lab, I promised Nate. Unlike these guys, I was not going to conduct any experiments. Instead, I wanted to get help from him, and it was not like something will ‘be given to him’ just like he had been experiencing, but he still had to ‘give something.’

I answered, choosing only the vocabulary that was not hard for him to understand.

“I’m preparing to stop something. Because if I don’t prepare in advance, everything you see below you right now will be gone.”

I happened to pass through Lake Erie and face Cleveland. The nearing lights of the city were dazzling.

Like Chicago, Cleveland was one of the cities that suffered dungeon-related chaos and was destroyed before other regions. Although after the collapse of the SSS-class dungeon, it would be the same everywhere else in the world.

“If we don’t stop it, the view of the city from here will become like the lake we just passed.”

Then Nate turned and looked at the lake. The stillness of the water was like a dark mess that absorbed all the light. There was no sign of artificial light.

“You just have to get stronger this way.”

I didn’t know what Angelica, who had rescued him in my previous life, had said, so I spoke what I could say off the top of my head.

“You need to be so strong that no one can lock you up, force you to do something you don’t like, or bully you. Your friends will help you.”

Nate did not answer. I kept silent while flying so that he could be lost in thought.

During the hours-long flight to Washington, D.C., the red Mana pouring out of Nate’s heart continuously traveled all over his body for a second, creating various patterns, and I was looking at it silently.

*

I stayed at a hotel in D.C. for a few days.

Nate’s long captivity had him weakened even if his body had Awakened. With proper nutrition and training, his body will soon return to optimal condition.

In the meantime, I asked the Senator for another deal through Oh Jin-hwa. It was to create a new identity for Nate.

In the previous life, after being rescued by the government, he lived on by recovering the identity of Nathan Drake, who went missing, but he did not have to do so in this life. The U.S. government raided the Detroit research lab and rescued the locked up experiments right after I left, but of course, Nate wasn’t among them.

‘Unless I hack all Decker and Jefferson’s servers and wipe out the information, I can’t completely wipe out Nathan Drake’s traces.’

It was practically impossible to find and remove all the backup files. I was sure some of the personnel who weren’t in the lab at that time had survived.

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So the information of the subject Nathan Drake, who was classified as an unusual individual, would one day flow into the U.S. government, and there was no reason to restore his identity as it was.

If he disappeared like this, the government would assume that Nathan died in the uproar.

‘He needs to come with me.‘

When I asked him because it was better to change his name, he insisted on Nate as his first name. He also picked the last name with a completely different name for himself, not Drake. I didn’t ask why he chose this word. I just nodded and passed it onto Oh Jin-hwa.

*

“Come eat before you continue.”

Nate, who was concentrating, opened his eyes like a lightning bolt and got up.

He had instinctively activated his skills and consumed his Mana until now, but he didn’t even know the basic ways to train. He was starting Mana the way I had told him to do so.

“It’s food!”

At this, he ran violently to the living room.

After returning to a normal human body, his face changed. He gained weight and grew a little taller just after a few days of rest. It showed an Awakened’s natural recovery that was of an industrial level.

He then sniffed, looking at the plate.

“What is this?”

“Hamburger. You said you wanted to eat it.”

“It’s a little different from what I remember…”

I ordered the handmade burger as a room service perhaps looked a little different from the fast food he had when he was nine.

“Do you eat this wooden skewer in the middle?”

“You eat the rest after taking it out.”

“It’s too big. I can’t eat it in one bite.”

He thought about it for a moment after looking at the enormous hamburger.

Swoosh!

The blue Mana from his core turned red. A wave of red briefly swayed and activated the skill. Then, the vitality immediately disappeared from Nate’s face.

I knew what the situation was.

‘External Zombification… That too, of just the facial area.’

And…

Crack!

He turned to a zombie state only above the neck and opened his mouth wide by dislocating his jawbone.

The skin on his cheek lost elasticity and stretches out. The area between the roof of the mouth and the tongue was enlarged.

“Meow!”

The cat, who was grooming on the sofa, was surprised and ran away to the bathroom. Nate popped the hamburger into his mouth with his mouth wide enough to chew on a whole human head.

Crack!

The dislocated jawbone was repeatedly joined and dropped again. It reminded me of the five black snakes wrapped around my wrist, eating food.

“Ummm… Ith gud!”

Anyway, he seemed to be satisfied with the taste.

“Use this next time.” When I handed him a knife, he held it in his hand and made a surprised expression.

I looked at him in a perplexed manner.

Since he just activated the skill, decomposition didn’t take place yet, so it did not smell, but even fake zombies were almost the same as real zombies while they activated the skill.

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He changed his face into a zombie to eat a hamburger…

‘Yeah, there’s still a gap to fill.‘

Nate didn’t have the repulsion of an ordinary person.

Even if it was a fake zombie that is transformed from a healthy body, it looks like it would frighten ordinary people. This is because it evokes instinctive repulsion towards the corpse.

However, Nate, who had to stay in one room with real corpses for several years, has no sense of that.

‘Rather, he might feel intimacy towards it.’

All the experiments he turned into zombies while in captivity were Nate’s favorite people.

Because of the Necromancer’s nickname, people in my previous life had regarded him as a cold-blooded, bloodless that enslaved the dead who were unable to rest.

Of course, the truth was different. Nate did not control the real dead, but he just held the traces of them in his heart. In addition to this, he took care of them as if he was dealing with artifacts left behind by someone close to him.

-Next news…

I turned on the TV while Nate was eating.

A few days later, Decker & Jefferson’s news was still making the headlines. Even though the investigation was not entirely completed, the quick-witted reporters finished figuring out the situation and stripped down the company. Major executives were arrested, and stocks fell to scrap paper overnight.

Nate seemed a little surprised at first, knowing that that was where he was at, but now he was watching the news calmly while eating.

‘Yes, he needs to know how what he’s been through is judged objectively and in a social context.‘

Then the news screen changed.

-This is breaking news that just came in.

‘What’s pushing the Detroit News away?’

And as soon as I checked the following screen, my face stiffened.

Nate, who was recovering his memory little by little after even forgetting to read and write, read the caption with a stutter.

“S… Korea?”

He turned his head before asking with a bright smile.

“Doctor, is that where we have to go?”

I managed to nod my head. “…That’s right.”

The breaking news today was about the state of a dungeon in Korea.

This dungeon, which the Korean government has named ‘Siheung 8th dungeon‘, is again rated S. It is an S-class. Early this morning, the dungeon’s stability, which had been being cleared, led by the Celestial Dragon Guild and joined by six guilds to clear, for three months now, had changed. It changed from the regular normal state to very unstable by leaping several classes.

Siheung 8th dungeon.

It was the giant dungeon that the Celestial Dragon Guild had been pouring most of its power recently.

The internal structure was so wide, and the number of people who could enter was so large that they were conducting a long-term attack by partially rotating the exploration teams. However, according to the progress, there was also a prediction that it might take more than a year.

‘In fact, that prediction is correct.’

It took nearly a year for Siheung 8th dungeon to be cleared after it was first discovered in the previous life. In particular, many hunters were sacrificed in the final exploration that achieved the clear.

And the reason why I was surprised now was…

‘It’s still half a year from now that the Siheung 8th Dungeon’s rating had suddenly changed in my previous life!’

The time didn’t fit at all.

‘Butterfly effect?’

I couldn’t calculate all the changes I had made by being reincarnated and the butterfly effect derived from it.

However, it was hard to accept that it was because of me, including this one. Could human beings… Could an Awakened affect the stability of the dungeon in any way in the first place?

‘No, there isn’t!’

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Everything in the dungeon except the clear was controlled only by the system. If this was the case, then why did it change so suddenly?

-According to an official report, the Korean government has delivered an unusual request for other governments’ assistance. They decided that it was too difficult to respond only by domestic hunters alone for a limited time.

-There have been many cases where S-class dungeons have been found, but most of them have been stable or very stable. This is the first time that an S-class dungeon has turned into a very unstable state.

The aftermath of an S-class dungeon collapsing was something no one could expect at this point. I remembered the list of hunters who were dispatched at the time.

‘Of course, there was a support team from the U.S.‘

I also knew which Hunter agency formed this team at the request of the U.S. government. It was a company in Edward Danton’s hands.

‘As expected, it’s hard to run a business related to hunters or a dungeon outside his hands in this country.’

I immediately contacted, Oh Jin-hwa.

The message was simple.

‘I’d like to join the U.S. team that will be dispatched on the Siheung 8thth dungeon. Not as Seo Jin-wook of Celestial Dragon, but as a different person. I want to talk to the Senator directly about the price. There will be some parts that can be traded with each other.‘

I sat next to Nate, who already ate all of the hamburger was sucking his fingers and kept thinking.

My head was more complicated.

It is because…

‘The Siheung 8th dungeon is the place where Seo Jin-wook died in his previous life.’

Yeah, he died in that last attack.

Together with Han-Seol.

‘I’m not going to re-enact the death as it was.’

Just as the dungeon is the best stage to target me, it is a good place for me to target anyone.

‘Now it’s time to finish cleaning under feet.’

*

A few days after talking with the Senator, Nate and I were at the airport.

“What is this?”

“It’s your passport. Take care of it.”

Nate took a long look at Korea’s ticket via Japan in one hand and the passport I gave him in the other hand as if it was interesting.

Then, suddenly, the shadows swayed under his feet. I held him back before a slightly melted arm came up from it and took his passport.

“Wait, wait! You don’t have to leave it to your friends in the shadows. Just put it in your pocket.”

“Yes.”

I guess that was what it meant to take good care of something for Nate. To leave it to the zombies hidden in the [Shadow Grave] so that no one but himself could touch it.

‘Well… it’s the surest way, but this is the airport.’

Nate opened the side with the photo again before keeping his passport and looked at it with wonder.

“That’s your full name now. I made the last name the way you wanted it to be. So don’t forget, don’t panic if someone calls you by that name.”

“Yes, doctor.”

“Take out the doctor when you call me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Remove the latter as well. I’m the same age as you.”

“Okay.”

He continued to live as Nathan Drake after his rescue in his previous life, but now things had changed. His name had changed just as I had created the turning point of history.

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He looked at the photo of himself embedded on the passport, and underneath he noticed his name, which caused a faint smile.

Nate Hope.