Kim Je-Hyeon, the leader of the opposition party, stood as the counterweight to President Seong Dong-Hyeon's ruling party.
But in the 22nd century of Korea, labels like 'Ruling' and 'Opposition' were just for show. Handshakes across the aisle were as common—and meaningless—as backstabbing your own allies.
Kim Je-Hyeon was holding a secret meeting with a man. The long-haired man sitting opposite him belonged to neither party. He was Lee Nam-Yong, the leader of the terrorist group 'Thanatics'.
"I must admit, you surprised me. I didn't expect you to destroy every EV Terminal in less than a day."
Kim Je-Hyeon swirled his wine glass gently as he spoke.
"Representative Kim, you look nervous. Scared I might demand payment for that little job?"
Lee Nam-Yong looked beyond detached; he looked bored. Kim Je-Hyeon furrowed his brows slightly.
"Do you think I, Kim Je-Hyeon, would break a promise like that?
Name your price. I'll give you anything!...Within my power, of course."
"Induce Mana Overdrive in the citizens under your magic's influence.It's something you were planning to do eventually anyway, isn't it?"
Hostility flashed openly in Kim Je-Hyeon's eyes at Lee Nam-Yong's arrogant command.
"You... how did you know that?"
"I thought we agreed not to ask about each other's secrets.In any case, I expect you to fulfill my demand as well.If you refuse... next time, I'll bring down this building instead of the terminals."
Lee Nam-Yong stood up and left without a backward glance. Cracks spiderwebbed across the wine glass in Kim Je-Hyeon's clenched hand.
"That arrogant terrorist...!"
The glass finally shattered into fragments, and expensive wine soaked his hand.
***
Meanwhile, at Yu-Han's house.
"..."
"What's with the pout?"
When Yu-Han acted nonchalant, Alice snapped.
"Even if I'm in a robot body now, how could you do that to me?!"
"Is it such a big deal? The number of trash bags you killed just went from one to four. Besides, you didn't look like you were going to lose to them."
"You... that attitude is the problem!"
Seeing Alice turn her head away in a huff, Yu-Han felt like he was dealing with a cat.
In fact, cats were the animals he hated most.
"Fine, I admit the prank was a bit much. Sorry.But... you were the one who killed them, right?If you had just beaten them up and called it a day, we could have all laughed it off."
"No, my body moved on its own...It felt like, for a moment, I became something that wasn't me..."
"Sounds like the classic criminal defense.Everyone says that.'My body moved on its own,' 'An evil spirit possessed me'—drunk drivers and murderers all sing the same tune."
"Fine! I admit I was partly at fault too! I'm sorry! Happy now?!"
"Sure... In my infinite mercy, I shall forgive you!"
Alice was dumbfounded. Somehow, this had turned into her apologizing and Yu-Han forgiving her.
Still, this human was helping her, one way or another. The bounty they received for killing the thugs seemed substantial too.
To her former self, it probably would have seemed like pocket change.
But after searching the figures directly in her head, she realized it was actually an unusually high wage for a single day's work.
'...If he pulls something weird again, I should sneak out of here.'
She just hoped the terminals would be fixed soon. Just then, she sensed a presence near the window.
...Wait, wasn't this the 10th floor?
Before she could even point that out, the window was flung open.
"Yu-Han 𝑪~!! How have you been?!"
A lively girl with a youthful face, seemingly around middle or high school age, burst in. Judging by the wolf ears naturally poking through the holes in her cap, she was probably a Wolf Beastkin. Beastkin were the second most populous race after pure humans.
"There's a front door, you know."
Apparently, even Yu-Han didn't consider this normal.
"Because! I knew mean old Yu-Han 𝑪 wouldn't open it for me! Hehe.I used to live here too, you know. You're soooo mean!"
"Haa... If you knew that, you shouldn't have come.Well, I was about to call you anyway, so I guess this works."
While the two were chatting, the girl finally noticed Alice. In that instant, the Five Stages of Grief flashed across the girl's face—Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance—before finally settling into a complicated expression.
"Y-Yu-Han 𝑪... who is this? Why is she in your house..."
"Just a robot I picked up off the street."
"Ah, a robot?"
Kim Ga-Eun looked blatantly relieved.
Naive Alice didn't understand why the word 'robot' made her so relieved.
"She claims to be human, but who knows what the truth is?We're calling her 'Alice' for now."
"I see... Alice 𝑪! I'm Kim Ga-Eun!"
"Right, nice to meet you."
Looking closely, this girl named Kim Ga-Eun actually had quite a cute face.
"But how do you know a guy like Yu-Han?You look far too decent to be mixed up with someone like Yu-Han..."
Yu-Han snorted at the question, but Kim Ga-Eun looked ready to seize the opportunity and recite an epic saga.
"Good question! Yu-Han 𝑪 and I are bound by a deep destiny..."
"Cut the crap. It's just another old grudge."
"Tch..."
Kim Ga-Eun pouted in obvious disappointment, but only then did she seem to remember why she had come here in the first place.
"Wait, this isn't the time, Yu-Han 𝑪!An exit ban has been issued for Old Seoul!They say the terminal attack was obviously carried out by people from Old Seoul...!"
"So what? That's just another day in Korea."
"Because of that, a massive mob has appeared in the Old Seoul Plaza, and they're making a complete mess of the place."
"A mob...? Smells suspicious. Shall we go take a look?"
Alice was horrified by Yu-Han's words.
"You're not planning to kill them all, are you?!"
"You seem to think I'm some insane serial killer, but I'm a model citizen with a strong respect for the law.Unless there's a problem, I'm just going to watch.Come along and see how the world works."
Alice wondered why Ga-Eun would have come in such a hurry if there wasn't a problem. But with nothing to do until the terminals were restored, she had no choice but to follow them.
***
Old Seoul, Sector B-4 Plaza.
"Seong Dong-Hyeon, step down!! Resign!! Impeach him!!"
Dozens of protesters screamed, taking over the plaza. Just then, an oblivious citizen walked past them.
"Hey, you! Do you love Representative Kim Je-Hyeon?!"
"What kind of crazy question is that... Why should I love that guy?"
"How dare you not support Kim Je-Hyeon!!We've got an anti-democratist here!!"
The mob swarmed the citizen and began beating him mercilessly. Yu-Han, Alice, and Kim Ga-Eun watched the scene from the sidelines.
"Definitely no problem here."
"You're right. Just business as usual."
Yu-Han and Kim Ga-Eun reacted dryly and started to head home.
"Wait, they're beating up an innocent citizen, and you say there's no problem?!"
"They aren't registered sanction targets, so there's no real reason to kill them. That would actually be a crime, you know?"
"Then I have to at least try to stop them...!"
Before Yu-Han could stop her, Alice rushed toward the protesters. She shoved through the people doing the beating and helped the victim to his feet.
"Everyone, stop this!"
"Who the hell are you, bitch?! Are you an anti-democra... t...?"
The protesters, who had been about to shout, froze upon seeing Alice's beauty. Then their attitude shifted dramatically.
"Oh my, Miss.That man is a maggot gnawing away at our democratic society, the kind of filth that only wishes for the nation to fall.Exterminating bugs is a perfectly righteous act."
"The person you're beating isn't a bug, he's a human!This is illegal!"
"Tsk, tsk. The people are the owners of the nation, aren't they?So our will is the law!If you'd like, we can get a room and I can educate you nice and slow... about humanity or something."
"You people are disgusting."
"What...?"
Facing the enraged protesters, Alice hoisted the bloodied citizen onto her shoulder.
'Stay calm... recall the sensation from back then...'
Those movements she had used when swinging her blade at the thugs—it had to be a function built into this robot body. Alice tried to reproduce that state by her own will. The entire thought process took less than 0.1 seconds.
"What are you idiots standing around for—Guh?!"
Alice drove her elbow into the man blocking her path and knocked him down.
"Damn it, what the hell is with this bitch?! She's way too violent!"
"Grab her arms and legs already!"
They tried to lay their hands on Alice, but she struck the approaching rioters with punches and kicks, vaulted lightly into the air to step on their heads, and redirected the ones charging at her so they crashed into each other.
Her movements were like those of a martial arts grandmaster, but of course, Alice had never learned martial arts in her life.
'Is this... Combat AI Mode?'
Alice broke through the encirclement, perfectly calculating the trajectories of her enemies and the optimal movements to counter them. The time she had accidentally killed the thugs was probably because this AI had activated automatically.
But this time, she consciously tried not to kill them.
"You slippery eel...!! If there is a God, he shouldn't let a social evil like them get away! It's so unfair!!"
They collapsed to the ground, watching their comrades get helplessly broken through by Alice.
But did God really answer their prayers?
Suddenly, strength began surging through their bodies.
"Wh-what is this...? My body feels light all of a sudden!"
"Wait... why are horns growing on you?"
"Then why do you have three eyes?"
Their bodies rapidly expanded, distorted, and mutated grotesquely. Before long, the protesters were gone, replaced by a horde of monsters. They had even forgotten human speech, letting out nothing but beastly cries.
"Wh-what are these monsters...?!"
The monsters roared and charged at Alice. Seeing their superhuman strength and speed, Alice realized she would eventually be caught. No matter how precise the AI's calculations were, it couldn't make the physically impossible possible.
"I can't help it...!"
Alice tried to draw her beam sword, but it flickered and died almost immediately. Only then did Alice check her battery. As the price for running around while calculating with the AI, her battery had already dropped to single digits.
"Alice 𝑪...! Snap out of it!"
The person who jumped between Alice and the monsters to block them was Kim Ga-Eun.
"Ga-Eun? You... you're blocking those monsters with your bare hands?"
"I'm technically a sanctioner too, you know."
Then, Kim Ga-Eun's body began to expand and twist as well. Her form was several times more grotesque than the other monsters.
What finally appeared was a bizarre creature unlike anything Alice had ever seen: it had a wolf's head, but its lower body carried traits from all kinds of animals—claws, scales, spikes, tentacles, poison, and more.
"Wait, what happened to you too?! Transformation magic?!"
"It's not magic. It's the wonder of bio-engineering."
The one who answered in place of the monster that had once been Kim Ga-Eun was Yu-Han, walking over while lazily swinging his blade. And yet, despite his casual movements, the path behind him was piled high with monster corpses.
"I once took a job at a research lab.It was a project to create the ultimate chimera organism.She's their masterpiece."
The monster that had been Kim Ga-Eun lashed out with thorny tentacles, tearing enemies apart like kimchi and spilling their guts everywhere. She spewed acid, dissolving them without even leaving their bones behind, and reduced them to pulp with furious kicks.
At this point, the monsters on the receiving end almost looked more pitiful.
While Alice stood there in a daze, Yu-Han and Kim Ga-Eun quickly brought the situation to an end. Monsters or not, they were civilians at their core. They couldn't defeat two experienced combatants.
"Yu-Han 𝑪... I don't think there's a single one left."
"Then let's count how many there were. We'll file for the mutant disposal allowance."
After finishing her conversation with Yu-Han, the monster shrank back into the form of a girl. Of course, her clothes had been reduced to tatters by the transformation.
Kim Ga-Eun gathered the remnants of her clothes and barely managed to cover herself, then smiled awkwardly at Alice.
"...This is always the problem when I turn back from being a monster..."
Kim Ga-Eun used summoning magic and outfit-changing magic in quick succession, instantly returning to a pristine outfit. Alice struggled to find the right thing to say to her—even with the help of her AI.
***
"What is that? Those things..."
Kim Je-Hyeon was receiving everything the berserk protesters saw and sensed. Naturally, he also witnessed Yu-Han and Kim Ga-Eun wiping out his mob.
"Ah... I wondered who it was. It's Yu-Han...He's starting to become quite the nuisance.I suppose I have no choice but to remove him..."
Kim Je-Hyeon immediately placed a direct call to the Director of the Bureau of Life Management (BLM).
"There are some individuals I'd like to register as sanction targets."