Chapter 37 – The Calm Before the Storm (Part One)

An individual training room in the Aegis basement.

The spacious interior resembled a gymnasium, complete with a state-of-the-art virtual training machine capable of simulating specific scenarios for light combat drills.

A facility unimaginable elsewhere, yet here it was merely a simple space dedicated to a single Awakened from Aegis.

Il-hyeon was currently occupying one of them.

In a slightly different way.

“Ugh…”

Standing in place, Il-hyeon paced back and forth, trying to settle his churning stomach.

It wasn’t indigestion or nerves.

It was simply Ether flowing through his body.

The countless cores he had received from the research team.

Even though they were relatively low-output E-rank cores, their sheer number meant they contained a substantial amount of Ether.

Considering Il-hyeon usually absorbed D-rank cores, unless he happened to take down an ace monster and get a B or C-rank core, this was more Ether than he would get from one or two missions.

And that wasn’t all.

He still had the Ether cores allocated to him from the B0 Gate operation.

The cores from that day, when he had taken down far more monsters than usual, had been distributed today.

He had just absorbed all of them—hundreds of E-rank cores, plus the ones from the last mission, which included a few B-rank ones.

Although it was being absorbed quickly, he had taken in so much that he could feel the Ether still circulating, not yet fully integrated into his system.

“Ugh, looks like you can overdo it even with something as good as Ether.”

Il-hyeon muttered to himself.

It wasn’t enough to cause any physical problems, but the writhing sensation was unpleasant.

He had a feeling that if he tried to absorb more right now without taking a break, it wouldn’t end well.

He had always thought that when it came to Ether and cores, the more the better, but it seemed his body had a limit to how much it could handle.

‘Well, I am taking a massive chunk of energy into my body…’

It was an expected outcome, given that the amount of Ether he had just absorbed was far greater than any amount he had taken in at once before.

A short while later, the Ether circulating inside him was finally absorbed completely.

“Hmm.”

Il-hyeon flexed his right hand, looking down at it.

He could feel a strength greater than before.

After rapidly reaching the level of a B-rank Awakened, the tangible sense of growth had somewhat dulled, but now it was back with a vengeance.

Since joining Aegis and growing stronger, it had been difficult to recapture the feeling he’d had when he first absorbed Ether, but he was experiencing it again now.

It felt like his growth had kicked into high gear once more.

His body was in peak condition, and he had just absorbed a massive amount of Ether. There was only one thing to do.

Test his ability, as always.

*Crack!*

With a light gesture from Il-hyeon, the floor shot upward.

The hard concrete floor morphed, taking on the appearance of tree roots as it danced in the air.

It was clear he was using less effort than before, the movements smoother and more fluid.

Satisfied, Il-hyeon began creating and summoning various things on the spot.

From a bear with a ferocious expression to a large carnivorous plant, and even a tiny rabbit.

They all had one thing in common: the forms he created were so detailed they were indistinguishable from the real thing.

It was a world away from the time he’d made a lopsided mouse.

“At this rate, I might even be able to create a person… A person? Right.”

Something occurred to Il-hyeon from the words he had just spoken.

He reached his hand out into the empty air.

*Fwoosh!*

The space in the empty air distorted for a moment.

Then, a green light burst forth, and a tiny fairy materialized.

The fairy, formed by manipulating the air, was so small it didn’t even fill his palm. It hovered in place, flapping the two wings on its back.

“Whoa…!”

Il-hyeon let out a gasp of surprise.

An arm extended without much thought, and his ability.

He had finally succeeded in summoning a humanoid, something he had been attempting whenever he had a spare moment.

He hadn’t expected much this time either, having tried it on a whim, so its success surprised him as well.

The fairy made a strange, high-pitched sound as it circled around Il-hyeon.

Its mouth moved, but it couldn’t speak.

“It doesn’t seem to have any special abilities…”

Il-hyeon murmured, staring intently at the fairy.

Although he was happy to have finally succeeded in summoning a humanoid, it didn’t seem to possess any special powers or great physical strength.

It was hard to expect much from something so small.

‘Well, it is the first time.’

It was unrealistic to expect too much from his very first humanoid summon.

His other summons had been clumsy at first, too.

There was the hawk that had cooed like a pigeon, and when he first started manipulating air, he’d had a hard time getting it to hold a proper shape.

The fairy hovering before him now also had indistinct facial features and a generally faint form.

‘I’ll have to practice this for a while.’

Il-hyeon believed a human-shaped summon would be the most effective in fights against monsters.

The range of applications was different, and if it could even communicate directly, that would be even better.

Plus, if things got dicey, he could probably just hand it an AT Sword.

For some reason, though, he hadn’t even been able to summon one until now.

Distracted by his new summon, Il-hyeon checked the time.

He hadn’t come here just to train, so he couldn’t stay here forever.

Il-hyeon dismissed the summon, restored the room to its original state, and took the pile of core fragments to the research lab.

“Thank you. If you need anything, just let me know right away.”

Choi Eun-chae said with a beaming smile as she took the box full of fragments.

As a researcher, she was naturally thrilled to have secured such a large quantity of experimental samples that were impossible to find anywhere else.

After leaving the research team, Il-hyeon was heading for the elevator when he happened to cross paths with Ghost in the hallway.

“Where have you been?”

“Ah, my schedule got canceled, so I was just chatting.”

The two got on the elevator together and headed upstairs.

Ghost, who had been quiet, suddenly remembered something and asked Il-hyeon.

“What did the research team say?”

“That they won’t let me off the hook if I don’t show up.”

“Oh, man…”

At his words, Ghost put a hand to his head.

“What kind of bet did you make?”

“It was nothing much, but they keep asking me to help with some weird experiment…”

Just then, the elevator arrived, and Seok Pil-joon walked past them.

He looked quite furious as he stormed out of the building.

Seeing this, Il-hyeon asked Ghost.

“What’s with him?”

“You know he used to be a Raven, right?”

“A Raven?”

Il-hyeon asked back, not understanding.

Ghost slowly explained.

Team Raven.

Unlike other teams that typically hunted monsters for their cores, Raven was Aegis’s only anti-personnel team, specializing exclusively in dealing with human opponents.

They were highly independent, and their activities were not widely known.

When Seok Pil-joon first joined Aegis, he had belonged to Raven and worked there for his first three years.

However, he had a tendency to get overly agitated and aggressive when dealing with criminals, which was why he was transferred to another team.

That, and Jeong Jin-seong had taken notice of him and personally recruited him.

“He’s already pissed that the Timjang got hurt, and you know how he gets with criminals. He was probably secretly planning to use this chance to teach those bastards a lesson. But then the case suddenly gets handed over to someone else…”

He spoke as if it were someone else’s problem, but Ghost felt much the same way.

A member of their team had been injured, and he didn’t like that the job was being given to someone else.

His original plan had been to look those bastards in the face and wipe them all out.

“It’s the Daepyo’s decision. What can you do? Just listen to her and don’t complain.”

Lee Soo-yeon appeared, placing a hand on each of their shoulders.

Soo-yeon, who had appeared without a single sound, made Ghost and Il-hyeon, who were looking the other way, jump in surprise and spin around.

A small smile touched her lips at their startled expressions, and she calmly announced their next schedule.

“We’re heading out on dispatch as planned. We leave for Madrid tomorrow at 1 p.m. Go home and pack.”

* * *

A city in northern Mexico.

The headquarters of the Cartel del Rojas was located underground in the middle of the city.

It was disguised as a different business, but that was hardly enough to evade Aegis’s pursuit.

“Ugh!”

A cartel member standing guard on the building’s rooftop had his mouth covered as his neck was snapped.

The intruder, who had appeared without a sound, caught the man’s limp body and laid it down.

And it wasn’t just here.

One by one, every guard standing watch was taken down without a single scream.

Three figures—two men and a woman—stood before the heavily locked door leading to the basement.

All of them were Awakened wearing Defensive Coats, and on their left arms was the emblem of a black raven.

The mark of Raven.

“Are you sure they’re all here?”

-Yeah, I’m sure.

The man in the center, who had a deep voice, communicated with a team member elsewhere through the device in his left ear.

Just a few hours ago, they had detected movement indicating that the boss of del Rojas was gathering all his members in one place.

Whether he was trying to come up with a countermeasure now that he knew he’d been discovered, it was a golden opportunity to wipe them out in one fell swoop before they could scatter and escape.

“We’re going in.”

A woman wearing a black baseball cap tore the entire door off its hinges with one hand.

The three Awakened quickly moved inside.

At the bottom of a short flight of stairs, another locked door appeared, which they kicked down.

*CRASH!*

“What the…”

The three Awakened who entered the cartel’s headquarters froze, at a loss for words.

The intel had been correct.

Over one hundred and fifty members had gathered here.

But all that remained were their brutally scattered corpses.

Not a single person was left alive.