Black Badger Chapter 14

I thought I was a bit late because I'd been on my phone, but it turned out Yoon had just co out early.

So, what do we do starting today? Are we going to get beaten up like last ti?

I was worried, but things proceeded in a sensible direction.

We started with warming up and running. We set off from the cabin, took a long route around, and returned to the cabin. Everything necessary was neatly placed where it belonged along the streets. The city basked in warm sunlight, and Yoon and I ran in silence.

After returning, we walked ten minutes to the gym and did strength training. The gym was spacious, filled with rows of well-maintained, state-of-the-art equipnt, but there wasn't a single person there.

It was so strange that I couldn't hold back and asked.

"Why isn't there anyone here?"

"Because this gym is mine."

Crazy.

"When I'm busy, just co and work out on your own. I'll register your fingerprints."

This guy was seriously rich.

I'd suspected it from seeing his vehicle, but I hadn't realized he was wealthy to this extent.

Anyway, we worked out there. Yoon seed to want to gauge my abilities, so he had do a variety of exercises: lower body, upper body, flexibility training, and so on.

For so reason, my body wasn't keeping up.

It had been the sa during the run earlier. It felt like I should have been able to run faster and farther, but my body wouldn't cooperate. The weights and sets for strength training were the sa issue. My ankle flexibility seed reduced too. When I tried juggling, my dynamic vision was definitely off.

How did this happen...

Like this?

"Were you a trainer?"

I straightened my back.

"Pardon?"

"Even if you can't do the exercises well, you've done them for years."

Yoon squinted at , examining .

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his black windbreaker and furrowed his brow slightly.

"It seems like you've taken a few months off from training. But no matter what exercise I give you, you do it with perfect form and hit the right muscle groups."

"Is that so? That's a relief. It does feel like I've been off for a few months. I was just thinking my body isn't responding..."

"Don't you rember your training?"

Not really.

Whenever Yoon suggested an exercise, I reflexively knew how to do it. Deadlifts, bench presses, push-ups, pull-ups, and so on.

When I explained the facts, Yoon fell into thought and was silent for a mont.

Then he said.

"You even used a natural rolling technique when that mushroom hit you."

Did I?

"How much muscle do you plan to build?"

"I don't want to bulk up too much. That would reduce flexibility, leading to more injuries and limiting my movents."

"See?"

Yoon said.

"From what I can tell, you weren't soone who exercised as a hobby. You must have done it professionally, or been in the military or police, or maybe a stuntman."

Was that the case?

I still couldn't rember.

But Yoon didn't dwell on my answer. Instead, after finishing the strength training, he dragged my exhausted self to the shooting range.

The shooting range was below this gym.

How rich was this guy?

"I take back what I said about you possibly being military or police."

As soon as I finished shooting, Yoon comnted flatly.

"You handle exercises well, but why are you so bad with guns?"

Sorry.

Yoon spent the entire afternoon having practice shooting. He didn't seem to mind wasting live rounds, letting fire as much as I wanted, then dragged my utterly drained body to his house.

More precisely, he pulled to the spacious lab in the basent of his house.

It was a cool place with a faint sll of disinfectant.

There, he showed a model of the small core.

A glass do, like a half-snow globe, covered a city model.

"It's made of exactly the sa material as the Breath protecting the Center Core."

"Breath?"

"The original na for the barrier is Breath. Most people call it the core. But strictly speaking, the core refers to the entire area enveloped by the barrier. The barrier itself is precisely called Breath."

"I see."

"John Mullen invented Breath. I comrcialized it."

"Pardon?"

I was so surprised that my pronunciation ca out a bit off. I widened my eyes and looked at the man beside .

"Isn't that an incredibly amazing achievent?"

"If you want to get technical, yes."

He wasn't humble.

But now I understood why he was so rich. He probably had patents on it. It made no sense for soone who contributed to comrcializing an indispensable device for human life not to be wealthy.

Yoon looked down at the toy-like small core and pressed sowhere on its base.

Then, a small hole opened at the bottom of the semicircular do. It was arched, like a tiny door for little people.

Yoon pointed at the small hole with his finger.

"When leaving the core, you create a door in the core like this to exit."

"Do you go outside?"

Why go out? Wasn't the Breath there to protect the city from weird creatures like mushrooms or spiders?

A dry voice provided the answer.

"Civilians don't go out. We do."

The low, even voice explained.

"We have to reclaim the lost land, don't we?"

For a mont, I was swept up in a strange feeling.

I couldn't pinpoint exactly what emotion I was feeling or why. I just knew that the mont I heard that flat explanation, my mood turned peculiar.

It felt like a faint afterimage flashed before my eyes. Like a forgotten mory surfaced and vanished. It was too quick to grasp clearly.

I stared intently at my ntor.

"What's out there?"

The response ca lazily.

"Creatures."

Then I'll go outside the core once my term was up! The outside must have been dangerous.

"You have to serve your term before entering the core."

What?

"The core is full of civilians."

That was true.

Yoon turned on a screen mounted on the lab wall.

The display split into multiple sections, like monitoring surveillance caras. Then it began showing bizarre things. The backgrounds varied: so bluish grasslands, others desolate gray landscapes reminiscent of apocalypse movies.

The backgrounds shifted rapidly, like changing ga stages, with creatures lurking within.

Notably, there were no signs of humans anywhere.

That must have been the outside of the core.

"The area near the core is relatively safe. Badgers have cleared nests there. The farther you go from the core, the more dangerous it gets, and there are regions where drones vanish for unknown reasons. We divide areas by danger level. But just watching footage like this doesn't give you a real sense, does it?"

I had a bad feeling.

I imdiately gave a polite response.

"The video quality is excellent; it's as vivid as reality right in front of ."

"Explaining it in words won't stick in your head."

Yoon had no intention of listening to .

He pressed keys firmly, switching the footage. As the images changed rapidly, I grew more intimidated.

What were those incomprehensible things that occasionally appeared on screen...

My ntor continued his explanation, unconcerned with my expression.

"If creature danger levels are divided from 1 to 10, the zones outside the core are divided from A to F. A is the farthest zone badgers can reach, and F is where new recruits start."

"Ah. So the creature swarming in the top right corner screen is in A Zone?"

"That's an off-limits S Zone."

"Huh?"

I thought A Zone was the limit?

Yoon explained without taking his eyes off the screen.

"There are places even seasoned badgers can't enter. We group all those and call them S Zone."

"Then how was that footage taken?"

"By drone."

Ah.

"Good thing it's S Zone. We probably won't encounter it."

"S Zone will eventually beco F Zone and be incorporated into the core. That's why we go out."

"I'll correct myself: it's a relief because it's a distant future for ."

"Let's go outside in a week."

I knew it!

I knew you'd say that! From the mont you said words alone won't make it stick, I had a bad feeling.

This guy... I'd felt it since the mushroom creature incident: he definitely believed in learning through direct experience.

Yoon glanced at as I opened my mouth, then raised an eyebrow.

"Why the face?"

"Are you seriously asking because you don't know?"

"No."

This human.

Yoon turned off the screen.

Every action from my ntor felt efficient. No unnecessary movents at all.

He pulled out what looked like a tablet from under the desk.

"Let's build up your stamina for the week before we go out."

"Is it possible in just a week?"

"Your current condition isn't that bad."

Really?

I asked in a voice that couldn't hide my joy.

"That's a relief. I was really worried..."

"But you're still far from being field-ready."

Giving with one hand and taking with the other.

This ti too, my ntor ignored my reaction.

He swiped through the tablet, explaining the training schedule for the week.

Breakfast, then exercise from 9 a.m. Lunch. Rest, then exercise again from 2 p.m. Ends at 6 p.m., then study the world online on your own. Ask questions via ssenger whenever sothing cos up.

It was more straightforward than I'd expected. Ending at 6 p.m. and having legal internet ti was nice too.

Thinking about the self-introduction in a week made my stomach twist, but the week ahead itself seed decent, lifting my mood.

"Considering your situation, I'll advance one month's salary. Use that to manage your living expenses."

Before leaving Yoon's house and heading back to the cabin, Yoon handed a card and said that.

I smiled and accepted the card he offered.

"Thank you."

Having usable money made feel much more at ease. I should check the ATM to see how much was in it. Now that I had a place to stay and work, I could buy basic necessities like clothes and groceries.

Ah.

I'd been worried, but everything seed to be working out. I was glad...

BOOM!

"What was that!"

"What else? A creature."

Yoon smacked the fox-sized creature that had lunged at my face with his phone, then said.

The creature crashed to the ground along with the phone screen, splatting.

A phone wasn't a ping-pong paddle—how did you swat that with a phone? As I stared dumbly at the twitching lifeform on the ground with a blank expression, Yoon walked lazily toward it.

My ntor bent down to check the creature that had bounced up from the ground.

"Strange. It seed to be luring toward , but why did it jump at you?"

It was a creature similar to a whale.

Practically a whale, really.

Crack!

Yoon crushed it underfoot, killing it.

What a waste.

The thought flashed through my mind.

...Huh?

"Why is that a waste?"

"What?"

I couldn't understand why I'd thought that and muttered to myself, when Yoon straightened up and asked.

I hurriedly shook my head.

"No, it's nothing. But can this be used as bait?"

"Yeah. These things make sounds in frequencies humans can't hear. The creature alert had been going off since earlier, getting closer, so I deliberately used my phone to make noise and lure it in to catch it."

Yoon said, arching his brow.

He narrowed his eyes and looked at .

"Why did it go for you?"

"It probably thought I looked easier to take down."

Even if I were that thing, I wouldn't want to ss with Yoon.

It hadn't been long since I t him, but Yoon still moved with an eerily minimal motion, exuding an intimidating aura that made him hard to read.

"We weren't that far apart anyway."

Yoon seed oddly unconvinced by my answer.

He didn't say anything, though.

He just stared at for a mont before sending back to the cabin. He said if I reported the carcass, the cleanup team would handle it.

I nodded and returned to the cabin.

On the way back, I kept having this inexplicable feeling of regret.

Even I couldn't understand the source of the thought.

But it was regretful all the sa.

It was a rare, hefty specin.