Chapter 157 – Their Identity (Part Eight)

“Ah, I think I might collapse from exhaustion.”

“…Stop being so dramatic.”

As the Awakened in the black coat muttered in an exaggerated tone, his colleague standing beside him sheathed his sword and replied.

The area was littered with the corpses of monsters, and the members of Aegis’s F-Team were catching their breath after the battle.

A foul stench was already rising from the decaying bodies, but the veteran Awakened of Aegis seemed so accustomed to it they didn’t even bat an eye.

*Vwoooom!*

But soon, a colossal shadow fell over the city where they stood. Bewildered, they looked up at the sky to see what was happening.

“Are… are you kidding me…”

“Is that a monster…?”

A gigantic creature, the Leviathan, was passing through the sky, blocking out the sunlight.

They had heard there was an S-rank Gate in Europe from which a giant beast was expected to emerge, but they had never imagined it would be this massive.

And that included the F-Team’s leader, Gong Min-gyu.

“Ha, it really is the end of days.”

He muttered, shaking his head.

Even for Gong Min-gyu, who had handled countless missions over twenty full years without retirement since becoming one of the first Awakened when Gates appeared, it was the first time he had ever seen a monster of that size.

“What were they thinking, assigning that to a single team?”

One of the team members asked Gong Min-gyu, his voice filled with disbelief.

A Gate of that magnitude would have been discussed in the last team leader meeting, which meant Gong Min-gyu must not have raised any objections.

Gong Min-gyu shrugged and answered.

“The new team leader who just joined us spoke with a lot of confidence.”

“Surely that can’t be the only reason.”

“But it is. He’s never failed a mission, and he was so adamant about it that we gave him the okay. Oh, right. Of course, there was a little internal politics mixed in…”

Gong Min-gyu’s voice trailed off as he recalled the conflict between Il-hyeon and Oh Ji-seok.

Their relationship was terrible. Oh Ji-seok, his pride wounded by Kang Il-hyeon’s rapid rise to the same rank, had challenged him to prove his qualifications. He had bet his own team leader position on the S-rank Gate, vowing to resign if they succeeded.

The problem was that Kang Il-hyeon, rather than letting it slide, had readily accepted the wager.

*‘A reckless decision born from pointless pride and bravado… or so I thought.’*

Amazingly, the Alpha Team, which many thought was taking on an impossible task, had already successfully cleared one S-rank Gate on their own.

Now, he was curious to see how the prideful Oh Ji-seok would react.

Il-hyeon hadn’t confronted him yet, but it was obvious Oh Ji-seok was in a very tight spot, likely grinding his teeth in frustration.

“Well… now that Alpha Team has taken down an S-rank Gate by themselves, there’s no reason to second-guess them,”

“Still, sir. With the last Gate, if they had failed, another team could have cleaned up the mess eventually. But if they fail to take down a monster like that, the loss of life would be catastrophic, with no chance to intervene…”

“If we focus our forces there, the team gets tied down, and damage will occur elsewhere. In a situation like this, there are no replacements for high-ranking Awakened. Team Leader Kang volunteered for this dangerous job to minimize the damage as much as possible. We can only hope this was the best choice.”

Gong Min-gyu replied.

*Boom!*

At that moment, a massive explosion erupted from the Leviathan’s right flank as it flew through the sky.

Of course, ‘massive’ was from a human perspective. The giant monster seemed unfazed, swimming through the air as if nothing had happened.

“Looks like they’re in the thick of it…”

“Are… are you sure they’ll be okay?”

A team member whose hometown wasn’t far from here gazed at the sky with anxious eyes.

Though he lived and worked in Korea, he was always worried about the safety of the family and friends he’d left behind.

“Let’s trust that they’ll handle their business, and we’ll focus on finishing ours. At this point, that’s the best we can do.”

Gong Min-gyu said, dusting off his team member’s coat. Just then, emerging from the colossal shadow of the monster that had passed over them, an Aegis transport aircraft approached.

***

“Kiiieeeek!”

*Crack!*

Inside the Leviathan’s flank, where the explosion had just occurred, Il-hyeon drove the sword lodged in a monster’s neck down with all his might, finishing it off completely.

The creature’s sharp claws raked across his arm as it thrashed, but the attack was blocked by his Defensive Coat, leaving no mark.

“Hoo… there are a ton of these.”

The inside of the Leviathan’s body was a complex maze, but each pathway boasted incredible width and height.

Even so, so many monsters were swarming in that the piles of their corpses were beginning to make it difficult to move forward.

Furthermore, their bodies didn’t contain cores, so killing them didn’t replenish his Ether.

Normally, all monsters had cores, but these creatures weren’t monsters in the strictest sense.

They were more like white blood cells in a human body, meant to fight off invading pathogens.

Even now, a tremendous number of them were flocking to every path he took.

The creatures swarmed from all directions, clambering over the dead to surround Il-hyeon, attacking without a moment’s hesitation.

*Fwoosh!*

At that instant, a massive flame burst through space and swept through the area, incinerating the approaching monsters and the corpses blocking the path.

The flame, which had cleared the suffocating passage, flickered before Il-hyeon and reformed into its original shape.

“You came right away.”

As Il-hyeon spoke, the Phoenix proudly spread its crimson wings.

The barrier that had been interfering with their telepathic link was completely gone, suggesting the situation on the other end had been resolved. He had asked Hyeon-seo to bring the Phoenix to him.

According to the future he had glimpsed, Seo Jeong-hwa and Lee Dong-won had definitely awakened new abilities and would have taken care of not only the surprise Gate but also the two Awakened from Eclipse.

With little time to spare, Il-hyeon quickly moved toward the next target point, lost in thought.

*‘It was supposed to be an investment for the future… I didn’t expect them to get this strong so suddenly.’*

The performance Seo Jeong-hwa and Lee Dong-won had just shown after their awakening had far exceeded Il-hyeon’s expectations.

The man and woman in white coats had both been high-ranking Awakened, seemingly at the entry-level of A-rank, yet Seo Jeong-hwa had overwhelmed and finished them both.

Of course, there were stories that Awakened became temporarily much stronger immediately after awakening.

The feeling of overflowing power that all Awakened experienced for the first time was related to that phenomenon.

However, for most people who awakened from an ordinary civilian level, that power boost was useless while they were still fledglings. But for Lee Dong-won and Seo Jeong-hwa, who were already in the middle of combat, it had worked out as a stroke of luck.

It was unlikely that Seo Jeong-hwa would be able to display that level of power again after waking up from collapsing due to overusing her abilities.

But even taking all that into account, their performance this time was astounding.

*‘Especially Seo Jeong-hwa… the fact that she was already an Awakened must have been a huge factor… This is the first case of its kind.’*

It was common knowledge that when a non-Awakened person awakened, they gained a much stronger body and power.

And the same applied when an Awakened person re-awakened.

Already possessing an ability and being a C-rank Awakened who couldn’t be ignored anywhere, she had been able to achieve a dramatic leap in growth through her re-awakening.

It wasn’t certain how far they could grow, but since all three possessed SS-rank abilities, it was unlikely their limits would be anything less than spectacular.

“Kiiieeeek!”

The Phoenix, transformed into a colossal flame, continued to carve a path through the monster-infested passages, allowing Il-hyeon to reach his target point with ease.

And there, a giant, crystal-like object—one of the massive beast’s sensory organs—was situated.

To kill the Leviathan, they first needed to steer it south.

He and his team members had destroyed a total of 11 sensory organs. Once he severed this one, the creature’s course would shift enough to head south.

After that, they would have a little more leeway in adjusting its direction. Destroying another 13 would send it plummeting into the Mediterranean Sea.

*Crack!*

*Vroooooom!*

As one of the main sensory organs shattered, the Leviathan’s body tilted precariously.

The creature flipped over once as if performing a trick before righting itself, causing Il-hyeon to be slammed against the ceiling and then fall back to the floor.

“What… what was that? This wasn’t in the briefing.”

Il-hyeon said, flustered.

The movement patterns provided by the analysis team had made no mention of anything like this.

It was unthinkable that the pre-analysis report, which detailed even the most minor points, would have simply omitted such a behavior. This meant something unexpected was happening.

“Just as I thought…”

Checking the hologram displayed on his watch, he saw that the Leviathan was, contrary to their plan, still heading west.

*‘And its altitude is slowly dropping.’*

Though still very slight, the Leviathan’s body was pointed downward, and its altitude was gradually decreasing.

Of course, at this rate, it wouldn’t hit the ground even after a full day, but the problem was that their plan had been completely derailed. That meant there was no way to predict when the creature might lurch again.

– Uh… something feels wrong here.

The voices of Hyeon-seo and the other team members came through the communicator, having also sensed something was amiss.

“Yeah, the original plan is completely off. Did any of you hit the wrong spot?”

– No, we were on standby at the next location.

– Not at all.

“Hmm…”

Il-hyeon nodded as if he had expected as much and fixed his gaze on the hologram displaying a model of the Leviathan’s interior.

If his team members had caused a problem, they would have reported it to him immediately.

In that case, the reason for the plan going awry was simple.

“Found it!”

Il-hyeon exclaimed after checking the damaged sensory organs.

There should have been only 12 destroyed organs, but a total of 14 were damaged.

Moreover, one of them was in a location not included in the plan and had been destroyed just moments ago.

The projected point of damage on the hologram.

An uninvited guest must be there, causing trouble. Without hesitation, Il-hyeon thrust his hand downward.

*Boom! Boom! Kaboom!*

Accepting some degree of impact, Il-hyeon blew through layer after layer of the floor, descending rapidly until he neared the point of destruction.

He reached the final floor in a matter of seconds. The enemy was below.

*Crash!*

The ceiling collapsed with a roar as Il-hyeon and the Phoenix dropped through.

Il-hyeon landed softly and immediately looked ahead, coming face-to-face with the culprit sabotaging their mission.

Not many could freely enter and move within a creature like this. Unsurprisingly, it was an Awakened from Eclipse, clad in a white Defensive Coat.

A man wearing a mask as red as blood.

Just like the Woman in the White Mask he had encountered before, it was easy to tell this was no ordinary member.

But Il-hyeon showed no signs of tension. He simply smiled and said, “Perfect. This time, I think I’ll take a look under that mask of yours.”