Chapter 85 – Making a Move (Part Four)

A dark shadow fell over the terrorist. He broke out in a cold sweat and turned around.

Behind him, where there had been nothing a moment ago, now stood a massive bear.

A drop of drool leaking from the bear’s mouth landed on his cheek.

“Ugh… Aaah!”

*Smack!*

The bear’s paw swung forward, striking the man squarely in the head.

The man flew helplessly and landed on the tracks, just as a train pulled into the station, grinding him away without a trace.

“Well, I ended up killing him.”

Il-hyeon muttered, scratching his cheek.

As he stared blankly at the spot where the train had passed, Il-hyeon was a little surprised by his own feelings.

‘This is the first time I’ve killed a person, but it’s not as shocking as I thought it would be.’

He had killed countless monsters, who were nothing less than enemies of humanity.

But when fighting other people, he had knocked them out but never taken a life.

There was never a reason to, nor did he particularly want to.

That was why he had thought he would be in deep shock if he ever had to kill someone, even in an unavoidable situation.

After all, killing a person was a terrible thing, whether they were evil or not.

But right now, he felt surprisingly numb.

Was it because he was furious they’d taken a civilian hostage, or was he always this desensitized to such things?

He pondered it, but he couldn’t find a clear answer.

“Ugh…”

The red-haired woman, who had just witnessed the man’s gruesome end, groaned, her face pale.

“I don’t have time for this. Just surrender quiet—”

“Shut up!”

The woman cut Il-hyeon off and charged at him.

Her right arm flared with a crimson light, and a heavy, powerful sword strike swung toward Il-hyeon.

*Clang!*

Il-hyeon met it head-on, overpowering her with sheer force and knocking her sword aside before thrusting his own toward her chest.

Pushed back by his strength, she seemed unable to dodge the attack.

But the woman boldly let go of her sword and dropped into a low stance.

Il-hyeon’s sword cut through empty air. From her low position, she planted a hand on the ground and swung her red-enhanced leg in a wide arc.

*Whoosh!*

Forced back by the unorthodox counterattack, Il-hyeon dodged. In that brief moment, the woman spun and caught her falling sword.

‘Not just her arm, but her legs too?’

This was the fourth Awakened with the same type of physical enhancement he’d encountered. But the woman before him was different from the other terrorists.

Unlike them, who could only enhance one part of their body, she could enhance one arm and both legs simultaneously and use them threateningly in combat.

Furthermore, even in terms of pure combat ability, excluding her physical enhancement, she was clearly stronger.

Unlike the man who had nearly collapsed from the first attack, she had withstood Il-hyeon’s assault surprisingly well.

“Her arm is bright red just like the others, but she’s a lot stronger than them.”

Il-hyeon tilted his head.

He’d assumed they were all at a similar, mediocre level since they had the same ability, but this woman was on a completely different plane.

But he added another remark.

“Still crude, though.”

“Yeah, right. Spoken like someone from the great and mighty Aegis.”

Spending time at Aegis, a place filled with monstrously powerful individuals, had naturally raised Il-hyeon’s standards.

The woman stuck out her tongue with a look of disgust, making a comical face.

Seeing this, Il-hyeon let out a small laugh before moving to end the situation.

Wasting any more time here could make it too late to resolve everything.

He immediately extended an arm and transformed the floor. Countless vines erupted from below, lashing out at the woman.

She dodged and weaved with her enhanced arm and legs, cutting through the vines, but in her focus on them, she missed the most dangerous threat.

*Thwack!*

Il-hyeon, who had closed the distance in an instant, struck the woman across the face.

With a dull thud, she was sent flying, tumbling weakly across the floor. She trembled as she struggled to lift her head.

“Hey! You’d hit a woman like that?!”

Her face stinging from the blow, her eyes welled up with tears.

For some reason, getting hit like this felt incredibly unfair.

But in the world of the Awakened, there was no gender discrimination, and Il-hyeon was not one to go easy on someone in a situation like this.

“Don’t give me that.”

“Ack!”

Il-hyeon grabbed her arm, flipped her over his shoulder, and slammed her onto the ground in one fluid motion.

Lying on the cracked floor, the woman lost the will to resist and went limp.

Il-hyeon transformed the floor directly beneath her, creating ropes of incredible hardness that bound her hands and feet tightly, ensuring she couldn’t fight back.

The bear, which had been sitting idly and watching the fight, opened its protruding mouth wide and yawned.

The skill gap between the two was so vast that it hadn’t even found a reason to intervene.

“Well, good work.”

Il-hyeon snapped his fingers, dismissing the bear whose job was done.

The bear’s form dissolved into gray flooring material and collapsed.

Il-hyeon pulled the explosive from the trash can and quickly absorbed its Ether.

Once all the Ether was absorbed into his body, he tossed the empty black object back into the trash.

“Ughhh…”

Just then, the woman, who had briefly lost consciousness, groaned and came to her senses.

Il-hyeon looked down at her in surprise.

Her body was tougher than he’d expected.

“You’re awake already?”

“Shut up… Ugh, what’s this?”

Frowning, the woman struggled to speak and discovered that her limbs were tightly bound.

It looked like an ordinary rope, but it was so strong that even when she enhanced her arms and legs with red energy, she couldn’t break it.

“I told you to give up quietly.”

“Hmph, you’re so smug. Do you really have time to be standing here? You should be running around like a dog. Not even you, a member of Aegis, can stop the explosions here.”

Only a few minutes remained until the detonation.

But not only had he not yet removed all the bombs scattered throughout the station, but there were additional explosives hidden all over the vast underground shopping center.

However, Il-hyeon replied with an exceptionally relaxed attitude.

“I don’t know about that.”

“Wh-what are these?”

The hundreds of mice he had summoned swarmed before Il-hyeon and the woman.

Seeing them, she was horrified.

“Did you get them all?”

Il-hyeon said, looking around.

In response, the hundreds of mice that packed the area nodded in unison.

A few of them came forward and handed Il-hyeon round, black objects.

The woman’s face filled with horror as she saw the explosives.

“What? No way!”

“Luckily, they didn’t go off before the timer ran out. I guess you can’t detonate them manually, huh?”

The mice had successfully retrieved all the explosives hidden throughout the station and the underground shopping center without any issues.

Il-hyeon began absorbing the Ether from the black objects in his hands, one by one.

Before long, the absorption was complete. Feeling a considerable sense of fullness, Il-hyeon dismissed the mice.

The red-haired woman looked up at Il-hyeon in disbelief.

“Don’t tell me… you disarmed them?”

“I just sucked out the Ether. They’re empty cans now. Now, I guess it’s time to take care of the last piece of business.”

Tossing the Ether-less explosives into the trash can, Il-hyeon hoisted the bound woman up and slung her over his shoulder.

“Aah! W-wait. You’re not going to… do anything weird, are you? Right?”

The woman’s face flushed hot.

She was terrified of being dragged off to some secluded place, bound hand and foot, and having something horrible done to her.

Holding her firmly as she struggled, Il-hyeon spoke.

“You’re going to be my guide.”

“A… guide?”

“Your friends ran away. Tell me what vehicle they’re in and where they’re headed.”

The first SUV they had found was already abandoned.

The remaining stragglers had fled in other vehicles before the explosions were set to go off.

He had tried to have one of his summoned mice tail a terrorist, but since they were Awakened themselves, it had failed.

His veteran mouse, currently out on another scene, could have easily tailed them by hiding its presence and riding on their head, but it was unreasonable to expect the same from a temporarily summoned creature compared to one that had consistently consumed cores.

“You think I’d tell you that? Ugh, slow down! And stop touching my ass!”

As Il-hyeon started running to exit the building, she couldn’t stand the jostling and shrieked.

Being a grown woman carried over someone’s shoulder with her limbs tied was an indescribable source of embarrassment.

“You’re so noisy. I don’t have time to take it easy. And you know the punishment for terrorism, even if it’s an attempted one, right?”

Unlike in the past, 20 years ago, anti-terrorism laws all over the world had been drastically revised.

Due to the risk of mass destruction from explosives that were much lighter and more powerful thanks to the discovery of Ether, and the constant threat of Gates, the penalties for terrorists were incomparably harsher everywhere than they used to be.

Participating in planting explosives in a facility of this size for the purpose of mass murder of civilians would earn at least a life sentence, even if it was only an attempt.

Conversely, if a captured terrorist provided information or cooperated in various ways to prevent further damage, their sentence could be significantly reduced.

“I’ll tell them you cooperated enthusiastically to prevent a disaster. So just talk.”

“Don’t make me laugh. I was prepared for that much when I started this.”

“Really? It doesn’t seem that way. I don’t know what your circumstances are, but…”

“Grk…”

Her hesitation exposed, she hung her head, her face flushing as she bit her lip.

Just as he said, she didn’t want to go to prison, but it also seemed impossible to escape the man’s firm grip on her waist.

To be honest, she had never felt any sense of camaraderie with the colleagues she was being asked to give up.

But even so, betraying the organization was unthinkable for her right now.

“Come on, you just have to tell me a few things. Do you want to rot in prison for the rest of your life at your age? It’ll be taken into consideration. You might even avoid prison altogether.”

“Ugh…”

The woman’s eyes darted back and forth at Il-hyeon’s sugar-coated words.

She began to rationalize that if she only gave up information on the ones who had failed and were running away now, it wouldn’t be a major betrayal of the organization.

After a difficult internal debate, she finally spoke.

“F-fine. But I can’t tell you much. I’ll give you the rendezvous point and the vehicle, but first, put me down from your shoulder!”

“Good. You made the right choice.”