Clearing the Game at the End of the World - Chapter 180: Lead and Silver Coins (34)

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Drip-

“….Orpheus or whatever his name was, he really was a damn genius. Almost blew my mind.”

Ian quietly muttered, wiping the blood dripping from one ear. It had been fun to dive among the snipers and thrash around, but since the men had clung to the slope of the valley and remained unresponsive until the bullets fell, he hadn’t inflicted much damage despite his grand entrance. He had managed to capture their attention and stop the sniping towards the base, but… because of that, all their barrels had turned towards him.

After kicking out spiritedly, he entered the dented truck’s cargo area and for about ten minutes, was beaten up by ricochets off the bulletproof panels. No matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t come up with a bizarre method like that guy and was about to rush in half-dead when-

Squeeeeek-!!!!

A strange resonance and light spread from beyond the rock canyon, paralyzing his thoughts.

When he opened his eyes, what filled his vision was a wide plain covered with burnt and shattered corpses, and his wife was nailed to a wooden post at the top of that mountain of corpses.

It was a familiar sight. During his days living as a madman after losing his wife, he had seen this vision several times a day. Back then, he used to carry a small pocket knife and slash his thigh every time he saw the vision, but Wujin used to threaten to cover his thighs with steel plates as the scars healed over the stitches and new cuts kept appearing.

Regrettably, he was naked in the pile of corpses, and his usual gun and knife were not beside him. According to his memory, there was only one way out of this vision.

The scar-covered man climbed the stairs made of bones and intestines towards his wife hanging there.

Her fingers and toes bore clear signs of torture, and her face was swollen beyond recognition from the beating. Frozen in place by that horrific sight, Ian couldn’t stop the longing for her from rising.

“….Molly.”

“….I….a….”

The woman hanging from the post lifted her head to speak. The tip of her tongue was missing. Of course, he had never seen such a sight before, but it matched the last vision of her he had seen alive. The bloody trace at the corner of her mouth was enough to give the surviving Ian terrible imaginations every day. The pain sufficient for such a gentle and fragile woman to take her own life. Just because she was with me. Just because I was true to my own heart, she faced a horrific end like no other.

“….I missed you.”

Splat. Splat.

Ian couldn’t stop himself from moving closer to his wife, despite the horrific disfigurement. He knew how it would end, yet he was driven by emotions strong enough to lose control of himself.

“A world without you… is still boring. Filled only with black and gray, it doesn’t feel like I’m alive at all. If the old you saw me now, you’d think I was someone else with all the strange things I’ve done. Running into armed enemies with just a shotgun, setting off a claymore in front of them. I’ve drunk harsh liquor until I thought I was dead, smoked cigarettes until I forgot my own name. Doing so made the colorless world seem a bit more alive. Ian Desmond, consumed by impulse and addicted to alcohol and cigarettes. If I confessed to you now, you might slap me on the spot.”

What would Molly say as a witness to his life as Metal Jaw?

‘What would she say? Dressed in a white nurse’s skirt that reached her calves, hands on her waist, squinting her eyes and scolding [What are you doing!]. Whether it’s a handsome young man or a rough bearded man with a fully shaved jaw.’

“Khhh… that would be something to see….”

Splat.

Finally, he reached her feet. Clearly battered by all sorts of tools, those small feet seemed to fit in one hand.

“Even now… yes. I can distinguish at least the shades of light and dark. I’ve found someone not entirely boring. Manly. Spirited. And just as mad as me.”

Even as he spoke, his body faithfully moved closer to his wife, following the scene in his memory. Those small feet, cold and limp like a corpse. He just wanted to hold them

“I’ve missed you so much…. I love you, Molly, just as I did the first day we met.”

The moment his hand touched his wife’s foot.

Boom-

His wife exploded into pieces, scattering among the pile of corpses, some of them showering over him.

The heart of a man as tough as steel crumbles in his wife’s bloody embrace, and hell arrives above him. He wants to gouge out his own eyes, unable to bear it, but the nightmare isn’t over yet, and he must go further.

The wooden post where his wife had been hanging. A small ember burns beneath it. The shape of a child, charred black.

“Leoni…”

My hell. The scaffold I created.

My beloved child. I wanted to give you more love than anyone else, but the days with you were far too short.

By embracing that small pile of ashes to his chest, his nightmare is completed. The bodies that had fallen rise up, snarling, and rush toward him.

“Even struggling to handle the death of just two people, I’ve killed enough to make a mountain. How could I ever repay the debt for those sins.”

Amid the pain filling him from head to toe, he looked at his daughter who was left burning. The daughter crumbled to ashes in his hand. Remaining in it, a small, white two-barreled pistol.

His last refuge. The keepsake of his wife that made him think ‘one more time’ whenever he contemplated suicide.

Ian quietly placed the gun against his temple amid the undead surging towards him like waves.

If he became buried in memories this way, maybe he could be with her forever in this horrific vision. Although the thought was temptingly horrific.

“….Take good care of Leonie. My love.”

Bang!

With a gunshot, the man’s body collapsed. He never intended to die, no matter what.

He didn’t have a religion, but he firmly believed that there was a heaven prepared for his wife and daughter, and a hell for someone like him.

Wouldn’t the distance between this world and heaven be shorter than that between heaven and hell?

He intended never to be far from his family again. That’s why he did not intend to die.

****

After experiencing the nightmare hundreds of times, Ian returned to reality. Feeling like his head would burst if it continued, Ian impulsively stabbed his ear with his finger to pierce the eardrum.

Pop!

“Argh!”

Though it was a ridiculous idea that making a hole would relieve the pressure, the sharp pain helped his boiling brain gradually return to normal.

‘My physical condition… has turned to rags. Even without any special trauma, my body stiffened as if I had been electrocuted.’

Not firing, not exploding, but still, a weapon that kills a wide range of people in the world’s worst way. How could such a shitty weapon exist? He wanted to smash it into scrap metal until it became just that, then blow it up with a heap of C4.

His hands trembling, he pulled out a mirror to check outside, but heard no sharp gunfire or tense breathing. Well, those snipers lying outside were probably more affected by the weapon that wrung people out compared to him inside the relatively sheltered truck cargo. Both he and the snipers had been using high-level personal shields at maximum output, but Ian nearly died, so anyone less resilient would likely be dead. It was a terribly frightening feeling, but since the enemies were dead, he had probably come out ahead….

Bang!

Crunch!

“….Not all dead, huh. One guy left. Must be that guy then.”

Ian muttered as he looked at his hand full of broken mirror shards and pulled a pistol from his holster.

Smith & Wesson, 44 Magnum revolver. The pistol he grabbed reluctantly due to the nagging from Professor Park and Vex, who were like overbearing mothers-in-law.

‘I should have chosen something more delicate and accurate if I knew this would happen. At least using Magnum ammo was the best compromise I could make.’

Right now, when he couldn’t muster the strength in his arms, weighed down as much as a heavy shotgun on his back, the only thing he could aim and fire was this lighter pistol. Of course, he had something even lighter on him… but that was too precious to use now. That was for me.

Taking a deep breath, Ian kicked the half-tattered door open and threw himself out. His target was the rock cover in front of the cargo door, but his legs didn’t cooperate, and he ended up rolling pitifully on the ground. Fortunately, the other side wasn’t in any shape to shoot straight either.

“The air… is disgustingly thick.”

It was suffocating, and there was no need to look for a cause. The strange noise that had thrust him into an old nightmare was clearly emanating from a bizarre stone altar, flashing ominously.

Ping! Crunch!

The bullets that had stupidly flown elsewhere were now accurately hitting towards the rock he was using for cover.

“Mikhail Pletnev…. Still, your shooting is exceptional. I thought you only sniped, when did you grab a pistol!”

“I’ve always used a pistol the longest. I was a police officer before the war, after all.”

“Ha, you were a cop, a head-buster! Those killed by you would turn in their graves!”

“Not really. They died because they deserved it, my job hasn’t changed, then or now.”

Mikhail Pletnev. He was what you’d call a ‘police officer distanced from promotion.’

‘Mikhail. Why did you kill him?’

‘He was a criminal wanted for two cases of robbery-homicide, five assaults, and seven cases of burglary. He was reaching for a gun.’

‘Exactly! I told you not to antagonize him but to make a deal! The plan was to find out the trade routes and bases of the gang he belonged to in exchange for releasing him, but you went straight for the handcuffs, and he freaked out thinking he was betrayed!’

‘If we release him… who then pays for his crimes?’

‘You damn fool… Acting all righteous by yourself and catching just the tail end of it. Who’s going to take care of the head? Don’t you understand? Capturing just one drug dealer saves many more people than catching a small fry, isn’t that right? Huh!’

‘Yes.’

Mikhail Pletnev answered without hesitation. The world was too complex to be fully understood by his mind, especially the intertwined lives of people and the tangled affairs of crime and victims in police work.

He was a straightforward man. Commit a crime, pay the price. If he considered all the contexts and intertwined situations, no one could be arrested. He simply arrested each criminal as they came into view.

Even when he choked a criminal to death in prison having fallen out of favor with the chief.

Even when he aimed a gun at the head of a commander attempting to betray and switch sides during the war.

Even when he set fire to the meeting room where the higher-ups were plotting the massacre of civilians, he was consistent.

The appropriate recompense for those who sinned.

When his close friend Alexander Young created a group called Dome, he chose to be the police that monitored them, adding his name to the Enforcement branch.

Alexander Young. If only leaders like him filled the world, my simple justice would have been easier. Unlike him, who turned away from the complexities of the world, Alexander faced them, striving to find justice.

Mikhail held as much respect for him as he felt friendship.

Therefore, he had to betray him. Alexander Young was a far greater and more necessary presence in the world than someone who simply raises his gun at the sight of criminals like a dog chasing bones. If he had to weigh their lives, he would place Alexander’s above his own without hesitation.

Boom-!

Crunch!

With a gun sound that hardly seemed like it came from a pistol and the chipping away at the rock, Mikhail realized that Ian wanted a close combat.

“Ashfield. The moment I first saw you, I knew you should not be left in this world, no matter what.”

Because he lost a subordinate? Because countless civilians burned alive at his command?

No. There was a more significant reason.

That cold gaze. Realizing that he performed all these acts without a hint of guilt or a madman’s glee, Mikhail understood. If there were such a thing as pure evil, it would be this being. At least in the case of this man’s condemnation, his simple justice and the world’s complex justice would align.

After being helplessly subjected to his massacres across the battlefields of Dome and Raptor several times, suddenly the devil disappeared, and Mikhail, like a madman, raged in fury.

He condemned both the struggling criminals and those who vowed revenge within the bounds of the law he knew, but there was one exceptional case where he killed without a hint of mercy.

The criminals who truly repented and sought forgiveness.

What else but escape is it, to forgive oneself by one’s meager standards before even paying for their crimes, trying to find comfort? Before they could lighten their heart’s load, he hurriedly killed them.

Click, ping-!

‘Second from the front at 11 o’clock. No, directly in front at 9 o’clock. Can’t see any movement or traces clearly.’

He pulled out a grenade and tried to stabilize his shaking vision, but his head was clearly malfunctioning; his sight continued to wobble, unable to focus.

Swoosh-

Boom!

Between the explosion and the flying debris, he heard swift footsteps approaching.

‘Damn, was it at nine o’clock?’

Click-

Crunch!

Regrettably, a heavy military boot stepping on his wrist was faster than him turning the gun.

The man before him was not the sleek and ruthless man he remembered, but rather a man with half his face filled with metal and a muscular body.

“Ashfield. You’ve changed too much.”

“Ptoo! They say even rivers and mountains change in ten years; for a flesh and blood person, five years is more than enough. You, on the other hand, haven’t changed at all. Bykhozha. I thought there’d be a day when we’d stand shoulder to shoulder working with Dome. It seems like the only thing we can prepare for each other, then and now, is a bullet.”

Ian’s condition was almost no different from what Mikhail saw. Blood streaming from an ear, a leg limping from shrapnel wounds from a grenade that had exploded too close.

Despite looking like he could collapse at any moment, there was a nonchalance in his tone and a smirk on his lips.

A devil who seemed to have buried his past and become a new person.

Mikhail couldn’t bear it.

When news of BDSM first spread in the community, he hadn’t recognized it. He was merely collecting information involuntarily because the name Ian was ingrained in his ears.

Even when they were revered as heroes of Dome, their preferred combat styles, appearances, and other details were posted on the community, Mikhail uncharacteristically chose to ignore the ominous premonitions. It couldn’t be. Alexander Young would never praise the worst murderer of the era as the guardian of his city.

After dismissing memories of Ashfield as delusions for months, when he heard they had arrived in District 38 and went to see him in the middle of the night. Although completely changed, when Mikhail faced those deep, blue eyes filled with coldness, he could not betray his own convictions.

He had no intention of blaming Young. Young was a man who had found a more superior form of justice than Mikhail himself in every aspect. He was just a wayward cop messing things up again.

“It’s okay if you commit more crimes. I’d even understand if you hid to escape your past. But you… at least you should not have become good.”

Click.

The revolver cocked, and Mikhail spoke as he saw the lead bullets face him inside the silver gun barrel.

“No matter how many people you save, no matter how much happiness you bring to others, your sins do not disappear before they are paid for. If the sinner forgives himself and becomes good, then who bears the resentment and pain of the deceased and their kin? Who gave you, or anyone in the world, the right to refuse the victims’ suffering?”

Cough, hack!

Ian, staggering and aiming his gun, looked down at Mikhail, who was spitting blood. Mikhail’s leg was crudely crushed and broken, bearing clear marks of gunpowder, showing where bullets had grazed his temple.

It was easy to guess who had done this to the leg, given the bloody, fist-sized rock lying next to Mikhail. As for the temple… it seemed he had turned the gun on himself just in the nick of time.

‘A sniper without peers, and I wondered why he couldn’t keep distance. He would have died even if left alone.’

Blood from him was forming a small stream down the hill. This man, facing death yet unflinchingly spewing anger.

“You are… huh. Yes, this kind of man.”

If asked what kind of man… frustratingly good. Not that I hate him or anything, but it’s like he’s angrily arguing that if I become good, what are those who should resent me supposed to do? Like a family seeing the murderer of their father becoming a pastor in a remote village church, living in repentance. An excessively upright fury, not because of belief, but simply because that’s how he feels. That’s the kind of man Mikhail Pletnev is.

Of course, he’s an enemy now, and Ian should be blowing his head off and checking if his remaining friends are dead or dying. But until he could release the words he was holding in, the trigger was too heavy to pull.

“….To clear up any misunderstanding on your last journey, only by your insane standards could I be considered having shifted between good and evil. I’m still the bad guy. Almost every day without fail, I killed people, and far from reflecting, I reveled in the easy money like a psychopath.”

“….”

“Just a few days ago, I killed a bunch of diligent inspectors from District 38, both for public and private reasons, so don’t worry about me going to heaven—”

“….You can’t pull the trigger.”

“Huh?”

“The trigger. Is it heavy? Do you feel its weight now? Only after all that slaughter? If this isn’t redemption, then what is it?”

“….Damn.”

“….Huh. Huhuhu…. Hahahahaha!”

Suddenly, Mikhail, reading the conflict and torment freezing over Ian’s face, felt an uncontrollable delight.

“Damn… You weren’t just forgiving yourself for your own satisfaction. It’s not pretense… you’ve genuinely become a good person. Disgustingly, shockingly changed, Ashfield.”

Sometimes, his simple justice aligned with the world’s principles. The penalty assigned to Ian Desmond wasn’t merely to die resented as a criminal. Unwittingly becoming a good person, haunted by his past crimes, he would repeatedly and endlessly feel the weight among the many people he would continue to kill. Mikhail couldn’t help but burst into laughter thinking of the pain and guilt Ian would flounder in for the rest of his days. His death would also become his torment, eternally condemning him in memory.

“Shoot.”

“….Damn. I’ve never been like this in my life, but just this once, think it over one more time. Killing someone like you would disturb my sleep.”

“Huhuhu… Cough! …If you don’t shoot, I will.”

Click!

Drip… drip…

Too weak to even lift the gun, a hand rose from the pool of blood, lifting a Beretta.

“Damn it! I don’t want to kill someone like you! What am I supposed to say when I get to hell and the reaper asks why I killed a rare good man like Mikhail Pletnev? Huh! As if I don’t have enough sins to repay already!”

“….137 murders, 569 counts of accessory to murder, 2895 illegal detentions, 391 assaults, and… for one count of manslaughter, I’ve executed the sentences for you lazy bastards….”

He was at his limit. His contradiction. Maintaining his beliefs by betraying his own beliefs, leaving the murderer Mikhail Pletnev unchecked. Finally, his release from this complicated world was approaching.

“….Put the gun down.”

“You’ll continue to be haunted by your past as you live….”

“Put the gun down.”

“I’m grateful to have been part of your life’s sentence….”

“Put the gun down, you bastard! You’re gonna die anyway, just die nicely alone!”

Trembling… click.

“May your remaining life be devoid of a single happy day. Ashfield.”

“Damn you, you crazy son of a biiiitch!!!!”

Bang-

A gunshot rang out.

The man tied to his past died, and the man burdened with many pasts lived.

“….God…. damn God…. If you have any conscience, just drop me a cigarette…. please….”

Ian sat next to the corpse, fumbling for his pack of cigarettes lost in the battle, and heaved a deep sigh.

In the distance, over the hill, a convoy of vehicles armed with all sorts of strange equipment approached the battlefield.

The mark of District 38’s administration. Prepared against radiation and bizarre weaponry, something heavily laden had shown up.

Just as the cursed light seemed to have vanished like the setting sun.

“Coming at a worse time than the cavalry in a Western, or the cops at the end of a Hollywood movie….”

Ian snapped a glow stick in his pocket, lighting it as he finally lost consciousness.

He was truly exhausted now. Having finished all his tasks, he felt just like Ezel said, wanting to go home and snack on something.

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