Humanity Protection Company

Illustrations: posted in discord

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Everything had returned to normal. A sense of stability washed over Yeonwoo, as if he\'d put on protective gear. His mind, previously fixated on a single issue, relaxed and began to take in his surroundings more broadly.

The subtle sense of wrongness that Yeonwoo had been exuding disappeared. He flopped backwards, drained. Holding up his self-made certificate with both hands, he stared at it against the ceiling.

The crooked ID photo and messy handwriting.

"Haha."

He couldn\'t help but laugh. His own handmade equipment. A certificate that was entirely his own, which no one could cancel.

Yeonwoo carefully tucked the piece of paper against his chest and closed his eyes. Ignoring his darkened vision, he focused on his inner senses - his survival instinct and the dice\'s contamination.

\'It worked.\'

The dice\'s contamination was slowly increasing.

His survival instinct was no longer blocking the contamination. It didn\'t see it as a threat anymore. This certificate would protect his sense of self.

The path to raising the dice to Level 6 had opened. In the near future, he\'d reach Level 6 with both his survival instinct and the dice.

A smile played on Yeonwoo\'s lips.

\'I\'m feeling a bit more confident now.\'

Wasn\'t this enough to earn the right to live proudly in this perilous world?

As Yeonwoo was imagining a hopeful future, he drifted off to sleep. The tension had eased, and his energy was spent. The sound of his soft breathing filled the small room.

------

A few days passed.

After taking a few days off to rest in his room, Yeonwoo came to work late, grinning from ear to ear. He\'d taken a refreshing shower, checked his certificate several times, and put on his old suit for the first time in a while.

"Good morning, everyone!"

His cheerful greeting rang out.

The investigation team members, who had already arrived, looked at Yeonwoo with puzzled expressions.

Since Yeonwoo had seemed unwell, they hadn\'t visited him, so this was their first time seeing him since he\'d made his Human Qualification Certificate. The sense of wrongness was gone. He seemed to have pulled himself together.

The team leader spoke up.

"Oh, Yeonwoo. Did you get your certificate back?"

"There was no way to get it back, so I made one myself."

Yeonwoo proudly pulled out his Human Qualification Certificate. It was a makeshift certificate on A4 paper.

The others\' gazes turned subtle as they saw it. Thoughts flashed through their minds, from the team leader to Choi Jae-min - he\'s even forging official documents now, he made something similar because his comfort object disappeared, he used the dice to create a substitute, and so on. Ꞧ

Shock, pity, understanding - various thoughts crossed their minds.

In any case, it was a good thing.

To be honest, having an on-edge Yeonwoo around had made them all feel uneasy.

"Well, I\'m glad it worked out."

"So, are you going to start taking requests and working again?" Yoo Ji-yoo asked.

Yeonwoo shook his head.

"I\'m planning to take a break from requests for a while."

Was work really that important? The dice would reach Level 6 if he just spent his time well. What mattered now was eating well, sleeping well, and staying safe.

\'Though I guess there won\'t be any dangerous work anyway, thanks to my survival instinct...\'

He felt lazy and reluctant to work.

Hadn\'t he just fought the Warrior after taking a request from headquarters? No matter how careful you were, accidents were never far away.

Yeonwoo sat down and asked casually:

"Are there no investigation tasks these days?"

"Oh, we haven\'t been getting much work lately. Actually, I heard there\'s talk about possibly disbanding the investigation team."

The team leader spoke up. It was the first time he\'d mentioned this. It was important information.

Ji-yoo and Jae-min whipped their heads around. Their eyes widened.

"D-disbanded? What\'ll happen to us?"

"No way! If this place shuts down, I\'ll end up in a lab! Or maybe some weird department!"

For the investigators, this wasn\'t just about losing one department. Their livelihoods, even their lives, were at stake.

But the team leader lounged back, unconcerned.

"Departments can disappear anytime. We\'re capable staff, so we\'ll just be moved to other departments. But..."

He dragged out his words, then smiled. Not just Jae-min and Ji-yoo, but even Yeonwoo leaned in to listen. The team leader continued:

"The talk of disbanding has disappeared. Because we investigated anomalies on our own."

"...We did?"

Jae-min and Ji-yoo looked at each other, puzzled. Had they done something like that?

"Well, you know. We handled the doomsday cultist terror attack well, retrieved the love potion, and even found that baby recently."

The higher-ups had postponed their decision.

Might the investigation team and its members be bait for anomalies, just like Yeonwoo? Wouldn\'t it be better to keep them around and find ways to use them?

Plus, the team leader owned the building as the landlord.

As he explained this, Yeonwoo smiled awkwardly. No matter how he looked at it, his own nature was the cause.

\'I guess this helps too.\'

If the investigators went to other departments, it would be boring and frustrating - no, difficult to adapt. It could cause problems if people who were used to running away became special forces or security guards.

Just as the investigation team showed its tenacious survival ability, much like its investigators:

Yeonwoo\'s phone rang. It was Mark Jung. Yeonwoo quickly answered.

"Hello, this is Yeonwoo."

"I hope you\'ve been well."

A voice heavy with fatigue came through. It was low and subdued. Yeonwoo wore a bewildered expression.

"Um... Are you okay?"

"No. I feel like I\'m dying. The Human Qualification Exam suddenly went crazy and changed. The data center that was blocking it got flipped upside down, and because of that... Ah..."

Mark Jung poured out his complaints.

The data center that had been running countless simulations to prevent the Human Qualification Exam from entering the world. The AI running the simulations had passed the Anomaly Qualification Exam, causing chaos...

"The data center is paralyzed. Even the backup center produced a passing candidate, so the exam has been let loose in the world. This means more anomalies will be created in the world."

An anomaly that creates anomalies had gained freedom.

Cold sweat beaded on Yeonwoo\'s forehead.

\'Uh, what? Did I cause this accident? Huh?\'

He swallowed hard.

"Can\'t Safety Measure 001 handle this?"

"That\'s designed to suppress a specific area... We don\'t know where the exam will pop up, and the current suppression power isn\'t enough to stop it."

Mark Jung sighed, saying that phenomena-based anomalies were the hardest to block.

"We\'ve raised the danger level to 5 and managed to contain it for now, but there\'s been too much damage."

Wanting to share his pain, Mark Jung sent a video to Yeonwoo\'s messenger.

Feeling guilty, Yeonwoo muttered:

"You don\'t need to show me this..."

"I\'m showing you this for a reason. If anomaly-creating judgments go wrong, this is what happens. Please refrain from the requests headquarters made."

It seemed Mark Jung didn\'t know that Yeonwoo had contributed to creating the Anomaly Qualification Exam.

Click. Yeonwoo reluctantly played the video.

It showed a poultry farm where an egg quality inspection had suddenly turned into an Anomaly Qualification Exam, and the eggs had become anomalies.

Suddenly, a farm worker lifted an egg. His voice was filled with enlightenment:

"Life is an egg! Life is an egg!"

"Kim! What are you doing with that egg- Life is an egg! It was an egg all along! LIFE IS EGG! Our lives are eggs!"

The farm workers gathered around, gazing reverently at a single egg, then rushed out together, chanting:

"Life is an egg!"

"..."

Yeonwoo watched the scene, speechless. The video moved to the next scene.

An autopsy was in progress. The autopsy itself had become an Anomaly Qualification Exam, and the corpse had become an anomaly, suddenly sitting up.

"Urghhhh!"

The zombie-like corpse wreaked havoc in the autopsy room, but the medical examiner quick-wittedly set it on fire.

The zombie burned. Its skin and flesh blackened and fell off, and then the corpse shuddered. As the flesh fell away, stark white bones were revealed.

"The seal of flesh has been broken! I am the king of skeletons! I shall free the world from the bondage of flesh!"

The zombie had become a skeleton. Blue ghostly flames formed in its eye sockets.

The next moment, the medical examiner\'s hammer shattered its skull, killing it.

Clang!

"..."

Yeonwoo squeezed his eyes shut and turned off the video. The world had turned into chaos. He\'d really messed up big time. No, wait.

\'It\'s the fault of the anomaly that transformed just because I asked for a Human Qualification Certificate.\'

Anyway, I\'m human, and it\'s the anomaly\'s fault.

Still, pangs of conscience made Yeonwoo speak in a small voice:

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

"No, it\'s fine. This isn\'t a big enough problem to require your intervention, Yeonwoo. We\'ve managed to clean things up for now."

It\'s just that there\'s a ton more work now.

Mark Jung spoke with a heavy sigh, then forcibly raised his voice:

"More importantly, I called to tell you about your compensation for wrapping up the headquarters\' matter last time."

"C-compensation?"

"Yes. After all, the experiment results were beyond our expectations, and you captured the Warrior too."

Conscience, conscience was hurting.

Yeonwoo wore a pained expression, then quickly waved his hand in the air.

"No, I don\'t need any compensation. Actually, I caused an accident, so I should be disciplined with isolation-"

"Not at all. If we don\'t reward employees for things like this, why would anyone work?"

Mark Jung\'s voice suddenly became more alert as he continued:

"There was talk of giving you a medal or a commendation, but I thought you wouldn\'t like that, so we prepared a different reward."

For an elite agent like Yeonwoo, simple material rewards were difficult. If they needed something, they could get it themselves, or they already had enough.

So they usually rewarded with honor or other non-material things, but Yeonwoo was a survivalist, so material rewards were actually better.

Yeonwoo suddenly looked tempted. He licked his lips and carefully asked:

"Is it a house?"

"Ah. It\'s not a house..."

Mark Jung sounded flustered.

Giving him a house would be pointless since it might just explode, so a house was...

"Then maybe some ordinary bullets?"

"Huh? No, it\'s not that either."

There weren\'t many ordinary bullets left now. They\'d used one during the experiment, and another to kill the Warrior.

He\'d heard that they\'d developed the technology to mass-produce them, but the company didn\'t seem to care about bullet development and was focusing on something else entirely.

Yeonwoo tried to hide his disappointment.

It was fortunate enough that the Anomaly Qualification Exam incident had been buried. Or he could save this for later, in case it came to light.

"Well, then I\'ll accept just a small reward."

"If there\'s anything you want, please say so. We\'ll do our best to meet your request."

"Is full-scale military equipment possible?"

Yeonwoo\'s eyes lit up. It was a minor request.

"Well, if you\'re talking about missiles, warships, or fighter jets, that might be difficult..."

Mark Jung\'s stopping words made Yeonwoo panic.

He wouldn\'t take those even if they were offered. They weren\'t personal equipment. They needed infrastructure like runways, plus maintenance. He couldn\'t use them even if they were given.

Besides, it seemed like he could borrow them if needed anyway.

"Not those, I mean like Special Forces equipment. Combat suits? Bulletproof helmets or vests?"

"That\'s certainly possible. But it still seems too little for a reward-"

"No, no. It\'s fine. If you really feel bad about it, you can just turn a blind eye when I accidentally cause trouble in the future."

Yeonwoo answered smoothly, and Mark Jung accepted his request.

The call ended. Yeonwoo smiled faintly.

\'With a bulletproof vest, even ordinary bullets won\'t be a problem.\'

------

A board meeting was held. The directors gathered via video conference, quietly looking at the reports they\'d received.

Project: Ordinary World. Their ideal had been firmly closed off for a long time, but Yeonwoo had opened that closed door.

The possibility of non-anomalous anomalies obtained through the dice. The standard of ordinariness.

Data proving the numerous theories researchers had established from various angles.

And now, a wedge had been driven into the open door.

The Anomaly Qualification Exam.

One director spoke:

"You\'re saying we\'ve secured cases where anomalies failed the exam and became non-anomalous?"

The process of anomalies becoming non-anomalous.

The door to an ordinary world had been flung wide open, and now they were paving the way. Once the door was open, preparing and walking the path wasn\'t difficult.

"If we combine this with our other technologies, we can create an ordinary world..."

The core theory and technology had been secured. Other technologies needed for the ultimate goal were already prepared.

All that remained was trial and error. Act for the test, correct mistakes, and ultimately create an ordinary world.

"...But aren\'t we moving too hastily?"

Another director nervously flipped through the documents. They detailed the technology for this experiment, but there was a problem.

"This is what we prepared as our last resort, but it\'s not even complete yet, and there are many unstable aspects. If something goes wrong, it could be disastrous."

"That\'s right. Maybe it would be better to move slowly, step by step. There\'s no need to rush."

Several directors voiced their opposition, but many didn\'t accept these objections.

"If we fail, we fail. Even if we perish, humans from parallel worlds and two-dimensional worlds will carry on our mission. It\'s better for us to sacrifice ourselves and pass on the data."

"Even if we fail, it won\'t result in anything dangerous for humanity anyway."

"Let\'s just vote. No one\'s going to change their mind here."

The vote was held.

The result was majority approval. The dangerous experiment had been authorized.

The directors made various sounds. Exclamations, expectations, anxiety, repulsion. Their eyes were all fixed on the document.

This experiment. The unfinished last resort.

[Extinction Defense Device: World Alteration]

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