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“Did you find anything?”
Hyeonseong asked Kwon Seojin.
“No, nothing. What about you?”
“I couldn’t find any cards either, but… I did find this.”
Hyeonseong showed him the diary. Kwon Seojin’s eyes widened for a moment.
“A diary?”
“Yes. If it comes to it, I thought we might be able to look for something like a control-room password in here.”
“If it’s the captain’s diary, there might be.”
Kwon Seojin agreed with Hyeonseong.
“Then let’s look for the captain first and check it afterward.”
“Sounds good. Then….”
They had searched the captain’s cabin thoroughly. The two of them left immediately and ran straight to the place where the android captain was “sleeping.”
The place they arrived at was one of the ship’s emergency charging rooms, used to fast-charge machines low on power.
‘We cut power as much as we could earlier, but….’
Hyeonseong opened the charging-room door while tense. The android captain was one of the units whose power could not be fully cut.
The door opened without a sound. Inside, an android sat on the floor with its system shut down.
The two of them approached carefully. Thankfully, nothing went wrong—no sudden reboot—before they reached point-blank range.
“Let’s search it.”
They examined the android. This time, they found what they wanted quickly.
“Here it is.”
Kwon Seojin pulled a card from the pants pocket the android was wearing. It was the android captain’s ID.
“The one I used earlier was the first officer’s ID, so this should have an even better chance of working.”
‘So that’s what it was.’
Only now did Hyeonseong learn what the card Kwon Seojin had shoved in without explanation actually was.
“Doesn’t look like there’s anything else worth taking. We got the most useful thing, so—”
Kwon Seojin kept talking, ignoring Hyeonseong’s glare, when—
Woooong—
A sound you often heard when power flowed into a machine brushed past their ears. It was obvious where it came from.
“……”
The Constellations reacted exactly as expected.
“This is….”
“Mm… I think we should hurry.”
They stared at each other for a brief moment.
“Run!”
The instant after, neither waited for the other—both bolted out of the charging room.
‘Damn it, it’s always like this!’
It was common for something left half-alive to cause trouble.
Knowing that didn’t make it any less infuriating.
Thud, thud, thud
The android captain pursued them viciously as they sprinted full speed toward the control room. Red light flickered in its eyes—it looked murderous.
‘It’s heavy, but stupid fast!’
You could tell from the pounding footsteps echoing through the ship. It was a hulking mass of metal—yet it was closing the gap in an instant.
‘Isn’t there anything that can trip it up, even for a moment?’
They needed time to lock the control-room door. Hyeonseong called up the list of stored items inside the Infinite Corridor.
‘Skills… only awkward ones.’
She had several skill cards obtained through various means, but none were clean fits for this moment.
‘If it were a skill like Hyeonyeong’s, I could shove it back a bit, but… wait.’
As Hyeonseong weighed options, a thought flashed bright in her mind.
‘I didn’t even need to rummage for anything.’
She glanced back. There was a ridiculously easy method.
She executed it immediately.
The entrance of the Infinite Corridor opened toward the android.
Teo-eong—
Kudangtang!
A loud crash rang out right after space split open. She didn’t need to look back to know.
The android had slammed into the Infinite Corridor entrance and toppled over.
‘Right—machines or not, if it’s a monster, it still gets repelled like that.’
She managed to knock it down. In the meantime, the control-room door came into view.
‘Just a little more….’
Hyeonseong closed the Infinite Corridor and looked back. The fallen android was already getting back up.
Woooong—
Then came the whir of machinery. The android lowered into a posture to sprint.
‘It stopped once, so it’s trying to use an acceleration skill or something.’
The moment she realized that, Hyeonseong opened another empty section of the Infinite Corridor again.
KWAANG—!
The android, rushing forward with an afterimage, collided with the entrance again.
The impact was louder than before, and the android was thrown even farther back.
‘Guess it doesn’t have combat weapons mounted.’
If it had been armed, it might have fired lasers or bullets once distance opened up, but it didn’t. Thankfully, simply blocking the path solved the problem.
That was how the two of them made it back to the control room without getting caught.
Bang!
The moment she stepped inside, Hyeonseong locked the door.
‘Now we just need to see if it works.’
After confirming the door was locked, she turned to the console. Kwon Seojin was already running it using the android captain’s card.
“How is it?”
Hyeonseong approached.
“It opened the authority. But it looks like we can’t take it over immediately.”
Kwon Seojin flicked his eyes toward the monitor. Following his gaze, Hyeonseong saw a message saying an inquiry had been sent.
“Even after opening it, it isn’t instant.”
“Honestly, that makes sense. If this were Ship No. 1 it might’ve worked, but this is No. 2.”
“True. When monsters show up as a fleet, that happens a lot.”
Hyeonseong understood immediately.
‘When will the reply come?’
She didn’t think it would never come. This dungeon was dominated by robots and androids.
Even without humans or other sapients, there were plenty of monsters capable of decision-making. Maybe the city’s system itself was still alive and could answer.
‘…Come to think of it, what kind of field was this, anyway?’
With a brief breathing space, another question surfaced. Hyeonseong first pulled out the diary she had stored in the Infinite Corridor.
‘Family, meals… This reads like something a human wrote.’
Skimming it revealed the owner quickly. The diary belonged to a human—the captain of this ship.
‘But the “captain” sitting down earlier was an android.’
She could almost guess what came next. Hyeonseong flipped further.
‘If it’s the Plague of Decay, it’s probably related to the field debuff….’
“A message came in.”
Right as Hyeonseong was about to dig deeper, Kwon Seojin spoke. Hyeonseong turned her eyes to the screen.
She had worried they might refuse, but it went through. Considering the chaos happening right in front of the skyscraper, it was an unexpected outcome.
‘Well, good is good.’
They had secured the control authority they needed. Kwon Seojin immediately began inputting commands.
“Execute it like this?”
He showed the command he had entered: halt all machine monsters operating inside the barrier.
“Yes. Do it.”
Self-destruction required a few extra calculations. For now, stopping them was best.
At Hyeonseong’s answer, Kwon Seojin executed the command. A message appeared saying the order would be carried out.
‘How’s it going outside?’
Hyeonseong took out her hunter device. She needed to inform them they had stopped the machines, and check for updated information.
‘Looks like they held on somehow, but….’
She sent a message first, then checked the updated status.
Thankfully, there were no deaths. But several people had been afflicted by field debuffs, including Decay.
It looked like the intense fighting had disrupted purification buffs or items.
‘To fully cleanse them, we have to end the battle first.’
She finished checking what she needed, then tossed the device back into the Infinite Corridor.
‘But what do we do about this?’
There was one more issue to handle before going back down to the ground. Hyeonseong lightly scanned the control room.
‘The command went through, so we should stop this too. …Come to think of it.’
She recalled the battleship’s monster info from earlier.
‘It said it can’t be hunted, but that doesn’t mean it takes zero damage. If that were true, we couldn’t have punched in through the hull in the first place.’
Her eyes went to the gaping wind-hole in the ceiling.
‘We may not be able to “kill” it, but we can still damage it to some extent….’
“Hyeonseong, aren’t we leaving?”
Kwon Seojin asked, cutting into her train of thought.
“We are. After I deal with this thing first.”
“You mean you’re going to stop it too?”
“Yes. If we leave it, it’ll definitely turn dangerous again. So we should deal with it while it’s in our hands.”
This time Hyeonseong placed her hand on the console, searching the range of commands she could issue to the battleship.
‘Of course it’s all here.’
From halting its movement to self-destruction—every method of stopping it was active.
“Do we just halt it like this? Or—”
Hyeonseong was about to ask Kwon Seojin’s opinion when—
‘Damn.’
A new message appeared. The androids whose power they hadn’t been able to fully cut had started up.
‘Looks like the captain re-enabled power as it moved around.’
Hyeonseong operated the console. She couldn’t let them retake control of this ship or leave it.
‘Honestly, I want to just blow it up, but at this size….’
She paused as she was searching for other commands. She was trying to avoid self-destruction because it was risky—then an idea hit her.
‘…The problem earlier was the monsters moving on the ground.’
The raid party had been locked in a chaotic melee, mixed in with the monsters. If she ordered every machine monster to self-destruct, a massive disaster was guaranteed.
‘But if it’s just this one, detonated in the sky… then we only have to defend one spot.’
With that thought, Hyeonseong returned to the self-destruction command.
The message appeared when she selected it. She selected it again, and a detailed settings screen opened.
‘We can set both power and timing.’
She first returned to the main screen. She reactivated the fighter jets and drones she had stopped earlier.
She ordered all the awakened aerial units to gather around the battleship. The units receiving the order moved quickly to cluster around it.
After confirming the aerial units were sufficiently dense, she returned to the self-destruction menu. In the detailed settings, she entered blast power and detonation timing.
“Three minutes is enough to escape, right?”
Hyeonseong asked Kwon Seojin.
“That’s plenty. But are you really going to blow it?”
“Yes.”
Hyeonseong answered while setting the detonation for three minutes later.
“It’s effective, but isn’t it still risky?”
“We only need to defend the sky.”
“True. If it’s only this exploding….”
Kwon Seojin nodded as he quickly understood.
“So the real issue is escaping. You do have a way back down to the ground, right?”
Hyeonseong asked.
“Of course. I have it, so—”
KWAANG!
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Thudthudthudthudthud
A sudden, violent racket swallowed Kwon Seojin’s answer.
It came from the control-room door. The captain and its crew were attacking it.
‘Settings done?’
Hyeonseong made a final quick check of the screen. Finding nothing missing, she gave final approval.
After confirming the countdown had started, Hyeonseong pulled out the android captain’s card and pocketed it.
“Let’s go!”
They had done what they came to do. They would not waste time lingering in the control room.
Just like when they boarded, Kwon Seojin pulled out Icarus’s Wax Wings again. The moment wings formed, he tucked Hyeonseong under one arm and launched upward.
Hyeonseong exited first through the hole in the ceiling. After stepping onto the battleship’s back again, she looked down.
The gathered fighter jets and drones came into view first. They were waiting calmly around the battleship, exactly as ordered.
‘Down there looks like it’s eased up a bit now.’
She could still see flashes of light from skills, but the atmosphere no longer felt desperate.
Stopping the robots’ movements had bought them breathing room.
“Let’s go down.”
Kwon Seojin came out after her, scooped Hyeonseong up again, and jumped straight down.
Using the momentum of the dive, Kwon Seojin descended quickly. They reached the ground in the blink of an eye.
‘We made it in time.’
The moment his feet touched earth, Hyeonseong looked up. A single dot was falling from the sky.
It wasn’t just free fall. Behind it trailed flame and smoke, the kind you saw when a thruster burned.
“Wait—that….”
“Looks like the captain.”
Kwon Seojin said, looking up.
“Damn it, when did it catch up?”
The one she most wanted to keep away was chasing them at a brutal speed. If it planted its feet on the ground, it was basically half a failure.
‘We have to smack it back up….’
“I’ll handle it.”
Just as Hyeonseong was considering using an EX-rank skill card made from Hyeonyeong’s skill, Kwon Seojin stepped in.
In Kwon Seojin’s hand was a metal sphere about the size of a bowling ball.
“Hah—!”
With a shout, Kwon Seojin hurled the sphere with all his strength. Wrapped in white aura, it flew toward the android captain.
‘This time it’s non-elemental?’
Up on the battleship, he had used fire-aspect aura on the spear. Now it was non-elemental.
‘Does he have multiple attributes? Or is it an item effect?’
Hyeonseong knew a fair amount about items, but she didn’t know everything. She couldn’t identify what Kwon Seojin had just used.
De-eeng—
The sphere hit the android squarely in the center of its torso. A bell-like sound rang out, and the android was knocked back upward.
‘Crap, the time!’
Hyeonseong spread the Infinite Corridor to its maximum width toward the sky.
“Everyone, gather!”
Just in case, she had everyone move beneath the Infinite Corridor’s coverage. At her shout, the scattered raid party hurriedly converged around her.
KWA-AANG—!
Not long after she deployed it, a massive explosion erupted in the sky.
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