Mercenary Black Mamba

To kill a Haunter with a firearm, one needed to be as skilled as Barrett. Mu Ssang manually wrenched out the heart of each Haunter and beheaded them. His tireless muscles demanded him to replenish energy and rest.

He took out a handful of apricots from his LBT-1195 multi-purpose bag, tossed them in his mouth, and chewed until they had the texture of porridge. Food, when broken down into smaller particles, is more rapidly absorbed and one will feel less sated. A sated beast became relaxed and slow. Likewise, when one feels sated, the sharpness of your mind and muscles suffer.

After feasting on the apricots, he punched a hole in an ompalocarfom and drank the juice. The aftertaste reminded him of sikhye. The stone-hard shell contained such sweet juice. It reminded him of Korea which he loved but couldn't bring himself to like.

Food brought nostalgia. The taste like sikhye drove away Hae Young's image that filled his head. Jin Soon and Edel came in her place. He missed Jin Soon's wide bosom and Edel's moist lips. He wanted to harvest some lettuce with his mother and enjoy samgyeopsal with his family. He even missed the horrible dishes made by Edel.

He missed the lake full of lotus flowers. He missed the pavilion full of a bamboo breeze. He wanted to burn firewood for the living room and read novels with his back against the heated floor.

He stared at the kukri. The blade that just took 22 human lives was not dulled at all and even shone with an ominous sheen. He had bought the artifact by chance from a secondhand store in a back alley in Paris. He couldn't even remember how many heads it beheaded and hearts it tore.

"Hahaha!"

Laughter escaped his mouth. For what, did he get showered in blood and bathed in a swamp riddled with parasites and venomous insects while feeding on wild fruits?

Could it be the capriciousness of the latently developed cerebral cortex's faculty of reason? Was it the fate of a chaotic being who hesitated on the border of reason and feeling?

It wasn't. One's first love was unfinished love that ended just when passion peaked and before it started to fall. Touching memories of unfinished love, acting together with the rosy glass through which the past days are glorified, were painted over with pastel colors. So one's first love could never be guilty even when it persisted in a corner of one's heart.

"If I started cleaning, I'd better finish it."

He sighed and pulled himself from the swamp. A human is a human because they fulfill their role where they are. On his shoulders was the fate of his family and 2,000,000 Novatopians.

The use of kukri, with its crescent blade, was to murder. If he wanted to cut vegetables, he needed to hold a kitchen knife. When he held the kukri, his fate was sealed as an asura.

* * *

An object that grazed past his ear buried itself in the base of a tree. McKinley jumped in his shock. It was a stone this time too. Such a primitive projectile already took the lives of many of his subordinates. He rolled into a thorny bush.

Hardy thorns relentlessly buried themselves in his uncovered limbs but it was better than certain death. The Shadow agent that followed him fired his MAG blindly. McKinley glanced back at his subordinate and continued to flee.

A zebra's enemy is another zebra. When chased by predators, a herd of zebras leave a slow and weak one among them as bait and flees. But Mu Ssang was not a lion. He didn't stop when he got something to eat for the day.

"Aargh!"

The last remaining Shadow agent cried out as he was killed. McKinley, overcome with fear, threw away his gas mask and ran with all of his might. Black Mamba was at least a hundred times scarier than VX.

A hefty object was tossed in front of him. It was a grenade.

"Gasp!"

McKinley jumped to take cover without assessing the situation. Boom! Debris rained down. Dust rose from freshly made bullet holes right next to him. Before he had time to register any pain, McKinley stood and ran frantically.

The devil was chasing him. He felt as if the devil would grasp the scruff of his neck right that moment. The fear he felt when he was left alone in the horrific corridor in Vietnam was nothing compared to this.

McKinley discovered a hollow dead tree and rolled in. It was a great tree killed by a strangling fig. He suppressed his wild breathing and listened in. Fortunately, the devil's footsteps were no longer heard.

"God, if you created evil to show humans how great you are, you must control it. If your divinity cannot control the devil, wouldn't he be you?"

If he hadn't feared Clairvoyance, he wanted to curse liberally at the sky. Someone who could smash an entire army base and kill off Grendels and Haunters as if they were flies had to be the devil.

He wanted to kill himself for shuddering in fear. He felt that miserable. But he could avenge himself only if he was alive. He only needed to hold for seven minutes until the Predators arrived. When a Super Grendel was here, he would be saved.

McKinley had no idea that the said devil was smiling diabolically with his prey cornered. Mu Ssang had driven McKinley into a temporary nest of Ciafus, an ant species native to the region.

Ciafus were known as "the piranhas of land". They were a nomadic species that sometimes formed a great colony consisting of more than 50,000,000 individuals. They lived as nomads without building anthills because of their sheer population and appetite. When they depleted all the food in their area, they had to move to another one.

McKinley's misfortune began with a small insect. A heavy object dropped onto his feet.

"What's this?" said McKinley in his mind.

He lit the emergency flashlight attached to his wrist. The circular light revealed a squirming giant ant that had to be more than 50 millimeters. The ant climbed the military boot, hauling its hefty body. Its slow, clumsy movement that was unlike most ants' reminded him of his present ordeal.

"God damn!"

He poked the ant with a military knife. He didn't know that the giant ant was the Ciafu queen that dropped from their temporary nest. Had he known, he wouldn't have cared. An ant was but an ant.

The ant with its abdomen cut off squirmed. He heard a noise overhead. The death pheromone that the queen gave off, alerted the soldiers. McKinley looked up and confirmed the source of the noise.

"What is that?"

McKinley's eyes widened and his mouth was open agape in awe. The inside of the hollow dead tree was covered with ants. The dark swarm rained down on him. Millions of soldiers covered McKinley.

"Aargh!"

There was a chilling scream. The swarm of soldier ants was never going to forgive the murderer of their queen. The small ones infiltrated his every pore and the large ones cut his exposed skin and the fabric of his clothes. Their powerful mandibles could even tear away pieces of the bulletproof vest.

The strong mandibles of the Ciafu soldiers were well known to never let go. The indigenous people here used a Ciafu soldier as a needle to sew torn wounds. When the soldier bit the wound shut, they cut off their head. The mandibles would be in place for days, clamping the wound like a pair of tongs.

Also, the Ciafus living in Ituri were not ordinary Ciafus. They could even hunt an elephant. McKinley wriggled frantically but the vengeful mutilation never ceased. He could barely take out a can of pesticide and spray himself.

It was no use. More joined than were killed. The great organic pesticide humans made against insects could not deter the colony of Ciafus.

"Fuck!"

He was in a pickle. If he ran outside, the devil would kill him. If he stayed, the ants would. Even in his panic, he pitied himself. The esteemed member of the great Freemasonry, a great general of the United States army, ended up as ant fodder.

"He doesn't deserve such a comfortable way to die!"

Mu Ssang appeared out of nowhere. The Ciafu ants were one of the most fearsome monsters living in the jungle of Ituri. Only someone who had firsthand experience could understand how fearsome their mass attack was.

He had cornered McKinley into where Ciafus lived but the ants were more powerful than he thought. In mere moments, they bit off his bulletproof vest, combat uniform, and boots, making him all bloody. He was going to die in a few minutes at this rate.

Resonance Wave shook the atmosphere. Ultra micro waves disturbed the sensory organs of the Ciafus. The swarm retreated as if they were faced with a mortal enemy. They loosened their mandibles and crawled out of his nose and ears.

"Fuck..."

McKinley cursed the ants in his respite. He felt heady from blood loss and ant venom. He frantically slapped the remaining ants that squirmed in his flesh with their mandibles buried deep.

"You must be McKinley."

A shadow covered the sun. A husky baritone voice like a wind from a deep cave echoed in his ears.

"What?"

McKinley looked up abruptly in his surprise. A tall man in a yellowish brown uniform looked down as if he had been there all this time.

"Black Mamba!"

McKinley fumbled over his pistol holder. There was nothing. The wretched ants even consumed his pistol. Those were truly horrific creatures. Had he not sprayed himself with pesticide, he would have been reduced to bones by now.

Mu Ssang smirked, grasped McKinley's neck, and lifted him up. Even if he was his enemy, he had to laud his resolve and will. Resonance Wave clamped McKinley's capillaries and stopped his bleeding.

"Are you McKinley?"

The question echoed in his brain again.

"Yes. I am General McKinley, the commander of the Green Zone," McKinley answered readily, then was jolted awake.

One of the fields researched in the Socrates Project had something similar to this kind of psychokinesis. An interference field called brain-washing waves or thought waves.

"Are you Black Mamba?" McKinley yelled in his protest.

"You are inviting more pain," Mu Ssang said with a powerful slap to McKinley's face.

Broken teeth and blood shot out of his mouth. The hefty body turned like a top and fell on top of the pile of dead ants.

"Ugh..."

His vision faded and his head rang. The acute pain from the broken jawbone prevented him from passing out. McKinley resumed his breathing and grabbed the military knife on the ground and raised himself to a squat. His body, hardened by killing training, reacted on its own.

"A pile of turd!"

Now, the slap landed on his other cheek and sent him flying a few meters away where he landed on his face again. McKinley shook his head and sat up.

"You are quite hardy!"

Black Mamba marveled. McKinley was a normal human, not a Haunter. He was impressed by his tenacity and resolve that allowed him to withstand two slaps from him. Compared to ordinary men, he could be referred to as a superhuman.

"Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?"

Mu Ssang tapped McKinley's shoulders lightly as an answer. He didn't want to talk with a perverted racist. Resonance Wave turned his shoulder joints, joint capsules, tendons, and muscles into a jumbled slush.

"Ugh!"

McKinley trembled. The military knife dropped from his hand. Tremendous pain crushed his nerves and shook his brain. The shoulder had a very intricate structure of bones, muscles, and tendons for it to be able to rotate 360 degrees. No medicine or engineering could replace the shattered structure.

"You know who I am."

Mu Ssang took off his full-face helmet. A feminine face with sophisticated features was revealed.

"Black Mamba!"

McKinley stared blankly. He looked just like the portrait he checked dozens of times.

"I am also the Korean researcher Hae Young's man."

"What?"

Startled, McKinley spat the blood and saliva that pooled in his mouth.

"You did all this just because of a woman?"

"You may say that but she is my everything."

"Aargh!"

McKinley stared at Black Mamba in disbelief, forgetting his circumstances all at once. He infiltrated a heavily guarded fortress and massacred Shadow agents and Predators just to rescue his lover. How ridiculous! What a romantic maniac.

"Clairvoyance? You cannot possibly have it!"

McKinley giggled. He just had to. Lamartin said Baphomet kidnapped the woman because of the philosopher's stone maturing in her womb. That's why they could never kill her. The Freemasons including himself had to fret after killing another woman mistakenly.

"Kill me quickly. I will answer any question," McKinley mumbled.

The Freemasonry was a lie. He regretted all the years he spent trusting the Grandmaster's might and served the Freemasonry with his body and soul.

"Who touched my woman other than you?"

"Captain Guderian, Vantz Guderian. He's my adjutant."

"Who used the object?"

"Master Sergeant Smith of Security used the barrel of a gun."

"Who tortured her?"

"The head of security, Lieutenant Colonel Michell."

McKinley mumbled as if he was sleepwalking. The excruciating pain attacked his brain, rendering him half-conscious.

"Filthy perverts!"

Torture could be a means to an end but rape was just an outlet for twisted desires. It couldn't be allowed even in times of war. It was such a filthy crime. That's why Japan denied the existence of comfort women.

"Captain Guderian, Lieutenant Colonel Michell, Master Sergeant Smith!"

Black Mamba said the names of his next targets. McKinley felt sudden hope. Happiness is doubled when shared and sin halved. He felt like he could be spared if he played his cards right.

"Executor Davis of the Committee is the overall director. I only followed his orders."