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The message Hyeonseong typed was transmitted immediately.
A reply came back at once.
Hyeonseong typed again.
Hyeonseong kept typing.
Right on time, a Constellation sponsorship came through. She’d been planning to ask that alchemist Constellation for help anyway, but before she could even explain, the exact buff she needed arrived.
More messages followed.
Once again, the alchemist Constellation requested that Hyeonju pay the cost on her behalf. It asked that every time it helped.
‘This time too, I’ll probably just have to run some small errand.’
Every time she got help, she felt it again—this was a Constellation that was remarkably friendly to its contractor.
How much did it cherish its contractor to extend help to the contractor’s family for such a cheap price?
‘From the few times I’ve talked to it, it seems friendly to humans in general, too.’
The same reply appeared again—identical to the first.
She rephrased and resent the same point repeatedly, but every reply was identical.
‘…This is it.’
From the repeated response, Hyeonseong realized how the central system was broken.
It could not recognize any message asserting that there existed a human not infected with the Plague of Decay.
‘It’s not broken in the sense of “exterminate all humans no matter what.” It’s broken in the sense that it can’t even conceive the possibility that someone might be uninfected.’
She didn’t know why that failure had occurred. The captain’s diary didn’t explain it either.
But she could think of something to try.
‘If it can’t believe the possibility, then we just show it.’
Hyeonseong typed immediately.
A short reply came back. Thankfully, this message was recognized properly.
She sent another message. This time she felt uneasy.
‘If it can’t recognize the possibility of no infected carriers, it might not even understand why a test is needed.’
Again, a proper reply came back.
A fairly grim question came back. Of course, there was no reason to be afraid now.
A reply arrived to her short message.
She decided to push her luck and ask for one more thing.
She almost typed “here,” then hurriedly changed it to “Libra 1st Command Center.”
She sent the revised message.
The moment that message arrived, the area went abruptly quiet.
The bombardment raining down outside had stopped.
“Did it work?”
One team member who’d been fighting robot monsters asked.
“No, not yet.”
“Then what was that?”
Another team member asked Hyeonseong.
“They paused it temporarily on their side. We still can’t issue commands yet.”
After answering, Hyeonseong looked toward the hole in the ceiling. Two androids were coming down through it.
“Th—!”
“Don’t attack!”
Hyeonseong shouted at the teammates who were about to rush in.
“Look at what they’re wearing.”
She pointed at the approaching androids. Even at a glance, they looked far removed from combat.
“…Medical robots?”
The team quickly identified them. With overt medical-style attire, it would’ve been stranger not to.
“Why are those here?”
A team member asked.
“I called them.”
Hyeonseong answered, briefly explaining the conversation she’d just had with the central system.
“Then the Complete Immunity buff earlier…”
“It’s what you think.”
Hyeonseong answered and stepped toward the medical robots first.
“How do we do the test?”
She asked in a light voice—though her thoughts were anything but light.
‘What if it doesn’t register properly?’
How the other side would interpret the Complete Immunity buff was one issue, but the bigger issue was separate.
‘If it sees an uninfected result and triggers another error…’
Remembering the moment the same reply came back over and over made her spine chill.
But it was too late to invent another method.
‘There’s nothing else to try anyway. If it fails, then it’s all-or-nothing.’
One medical robot offered a long, thin needle. Hyeonseong took it.
‘Doesn’t look like there’s poison or any other device.’
She checked the item info the moment it was in her hand. It was an ordinary blood-draw needle.
Once she confirmed, she pricked her fingertip. A blood droplet quickly clung to the needle’s point.
“Here.”
She handed the bloodied needle back.
The medical robot pulled a palm-sized box from a bag slung over its shoulder. It looked like a diagnostic kit.
The diagnosis proceeded quickly. The android applied the blood to the tool inside the box, then stared at the result in silence.
“Is there a problem?”
Hyeonseong asked, face tense.
The result had appeared fast, but the reply wasn’t coming.
Infection was not confirmed. However, it appears additional verification is required.
Only after her question did the reply arrive.
“If infection isn’t confirmed, then isn’t that the end?”
This time the reply was long. The moment she heard it, Hyeonseong instinctively understood what it meant.
‘The Complete Immunity buff got detected as a “factor,” huh?’
She had no idea when that otherworldly Constellation learned a phrase like that, but either way, it was exactly the form she needed.
Additional verification appears necessary. We apologize, but please provide another blood sample.
The medical robot offered a fresh needle. Hyeonseong took it and pricked her fingertip again.
While she was doing that, needles were also handed to the rest of the team. They copied what Hyeonseong did, then returned the blood-tipped needles.
The medical robots began diagnosing with the collected blood.
The diagnosis did not end easily. The same unidentified factor was detected in everyone’s blood.
“That’s… the buff we received, right?”
Seona asked in a small voice.
“It should be.”
Hyeonseong answered without taking her eyes off the androids.
‘They need to recognize that it’s an immunity factor.’
Around the androids, small hologram windows appeared and vanished in rapid sequence. It looked like they were cross-referencing registered medical data with the factor.
Only after roughly thirty minutes did the reply arrive.
‘That took forever.’
Hyeonseong knew it. Identifying a never-before-seen factor would normally take far longer than thirty minutes.
‘But that’s when you’re not in this situation.’
Thirty minutes, when you didn’t know if monsters would suddenly resume attacking, felt like an eternity.
“That’s a welcome sound. So what’s the result?”
Hyeonseong asked.
“Then…”
More hologram windows flickered around the medical robots, then vanished.
The medical robots continued. This was the moment she’d been waiting for.
‘…Huh?’
The voice that had been flowing smoothly suddenly began to stretch and shake, then filled with noise.
The voice failed to complete the declaration and turned into pure noise.
“Wh-what’s wrong with them?”
The team backed away from the medical robots, wary.
“Damn it!”
Instead of explaining, Hyeonseong sprinted to the machine.
She hurriedly typed and sent a message to the central system.
A reply came quickly—but it wasn’t in great shape.
‘There’s noise smeared over the letters, too.’
The text wasn’t fully corrupted, but the screen kept glitching and restoring.
Hyeonseong sent another message.
Another noise-riddled message appeared.
“Seona!”
If there was a technician who could help here, it was Seona.
At her call, Seona grabbed the machine again.
As if it detected Seona’s contact, the central system sent another message.
Seona immediately worked the console and screen at a frantic pace, opening functions as instructed and locating and removing the error.
The medical robots’ noise continued, but no one complained. Everyone was focused on Seona’s work.
Only the “correcting an error” message kept appearing.
Each time it did, the noise seemed to lessen slightly.
But the rate was not fast.
‘Seona’s rank was… B.’
Seona clenched her teeth as she worked the console. But with B-rank stats and skills, removing an error occurring in an S-rank system wouldn’t be easy.
“This—!”
Seona ground her teeth while moving her fingers rapidly. She looked genuinely furious.
‘Is there anything that could help?’
Hyeonseong called up the item list stored in the Infinite Corridor. She needed to feed her something—recovery potions, stat buffs, anything.
‘Stamina recovery, and since she’s using skills nonstop, mana recovery, and…’
Every time she found a potion that seemed useful, she pulled it out of the Infinite Corridor and set it beside her.
‘We probably can’t expect another Constellation buff like before.’
Constellation messages were still pouring in, but there was nothing of substance among them.
Basically impossible missions dressed up as “help.”
And completely useless commentary.
‘They’d be more helpful if they just shut up.’
Hyeonseong bared her teeth as she collected empty bottles and pulled out another potion.
“What do we do about those things?”
Other team members asked while glaring at the medical robots.
Since the error began, the robots had stayed in place, emitting endless noise.
They didn’t seem hostile, but the way they shook made them look like they could explode at any moment.
“Should we break them?”
“If we break them wrong, it feels like we’re screwed…”
“Then we can move them up there for now.”
After a few lines of discussion, Kwon Seojin offered an opinion.
“Up there?”
In response, Kwon Seojin pulled out a whip from his bag.
When he snapped it, the whip’s tip latched onto both medical robots. After confirming they were secured, he swung again and hoisted them up through the ceiling hole.
“If they explode just in case, it won’t cause a major accident this way.”
After lightly placing the two robots on the upper floor as if it took no effort at all, Kwon Seojin put the whip away.
‘Lifting metal lumps that big could be an item effect… but the control skill is definitely her own.’
Watching Kwon Seojin, Hyeonseong frowned.
Earlier, she’d suspected a prophet-type trait, but considering the weapon handling she’d seen so far, that didn’t quite fit.
‘With typical prophecy-type traits, it’s known to be hard to raise physical combat power. If we stick to the usual case, her real trait is probably combat-type… and she has a separate prophecy-related skill?’
Sure, this world could produce all kinds of exceptions—but it was also true that chasing every possibility was a headache. For now, it was better to align with the common case.
“Ah…!”
Just as Hyeonseong was about to check on Seona again, Seona suddenly gasped.
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