Chapter 46: The Original Sin
His demented laughter subsided, replaced by the exhilaration of pure, mad genius.
"Do you want to know the truth, Ji-Hoon? The real truth? Not the fairy tales I tell the others?"
He spread his arms wide, like a director unveiling his masterpiece.
"The Fertile Burst... it wasn’t the Creators. It was me."
My mind went blank. It was impossible.
"Decades ago," he continued, savoring my shock, "I discovered their existence. I understood the threat they represented. So I began to collect the DNA of every creature from the breaches I could find. I ran experiments. To make us stronger. To evolve humanity."
He tapped his chest. "I injected myself with extremophile bacteria found on the corpse of an Abyss Lord. I acquired their physiology. My astral body is no longer a mere consciousness. It can divide. Millions, billions of times. Like bacteria. As long as a single part of my soul exists somewhere, I am immortal."
He wanted to create supermen, modified humans capable of fighting the Creators.
"But I made a mistake," he admitted, without the slightest regret. "A genetic miscalculation. I tried to create a virus that would target and enhance humanity. But the virus mutated. It became unstable. It escaped."
He smiled.
"On August 15th, twenty years ago, that virus reached critical mass and spread across the entire planet in a silent wave. The event you call the ’Fertile Burst’. It wasn’t an attack. It was a lab accident. My accident."
He looked at me, his eyes shining with a twisted pride.