Chapter 101 – The Assault (Part One)

The scattered terrorists saw their comrade fall to Seok Pil-joon and swarmed him.

The first to reach him, a woman, threw a punch. Seok Pil-joon, intending to catch the attack, twisted his body away, sensing its unusual power.

A glowing red arm grazed the collar of his shirt.

*‘So this is that troublesome ability…’*

A physical enhancement-type ability whose official name had yet to be revealed.

It was an ability possessed by most of the terrorists who had appeared this time. The enhanced body parts boasted significantly greater durability and power.

Of course, they were still no match for high-ranking Awakened like Il-hyeon or those from Aegis. Overall, however, the ability’s power was formidable enough that ordinary Awakened found them much more difficult to subdue.

*Crack!*

In an instant, Seok Pil-joon’s arm shot out, striking the woman square in the lower jaw and completely dislocating it.

The woman crumpled to the side, but the other terrorists, either fearless or foolish, charged forward bravely.

Seok Pil-joon dodged a dagger aimed at his heart, then used a joint lock to snap the man’s arm. The severely bent arm was twisted so unnaturally that the white bone protruded from the skin, clearly visible. Seok Pil-joon smoothly snatched the dagger as it fell from the man’s limp hand and plunged it into its owner’s throat.

The limp corpse lost its life without even a scream.

Seok Pil-joon immediately hurled the body backward with force, and another approaching terrorist collided with it, momentarily halting his advance.

In that brief moment, Seok Pil-joon closed the distance with a man rushing from the other side and slammed a powerful fist into his abdomen. The man was sent flying, crashing through a wall before tumbling to the ground.

With four of them taken down in a flash, the remaining two hesitated.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Damn it, why isn’t this working?!”

The woman beside them urged him on, while the scowling man burst out in frustration.

The man standing in the back had apparently been trying to use a mental-type ability since before the fight began, but it was useless against Seok Pil-joon.

His high resistance to special powers meant that most abilities were completely ineffective.

Seok Pil-joon scoffed and advanced. The woman with the longsword stepped forward to block his path.

Both of the woman’s sword-wielding arms turned crimson.

Seok Pil-joon quickly closed the distance, dodging the predictable swing of the sword and leaping high into the air.

Jumping into the air, where it was difficult to maneuver, was generally not a wise choice in a fight between Awakened, but he possessed an ability that allowed him to overcome such disadvantages.

Twisting his body in mid-air, Seok Pil-joon launched himself toward the ground once more, landing with his foot crushing the woman’s neck.

Having subdued her as easily as one would a child, Seok Pil-joon broke all of the fallen woman’s arms and legs to immobilize her before looking down at her.

“If I cut these off, will they return to normal?”

“W-Wait! Aaargh!”

The woman cried out frantically, but Seok Pil-joon picked up her sword and sliced off both of her reddened arms in one swift motion.

She screamed in agony, spewing a torrent of curses.

He watched her impassively for a moment as she cursed him with every word imaginable, but nothing seemed to change.

“It doesn’t seem to be a parasitic-type ability.”

While not common, parasitic abilities that lived inside an Awakened’s body did exist.

They were unique and often quite powerful, but they were generally avoided because they tended to have a negative impact on the host’s mind.

And since wielders of such abilities often ended up in criminal organizations, he had suspected it, but that didn’t seem to be the case this time.

While he was observing the woman with the severed arms, the man who appeared to be the mental-type Awakened hesitated behind him before turning to flee.

Seok Pil-joon threw the longsword he was holding at the fleeing man. The blade flew through the air in an instant, piercing one of his legs.

Seok Pil-joon walked over to the man, who had fallen while clutching his leg, and stood before him.

“Why are you doing this? What do you gain from it?”

Seok Pil-joon asked, looking down at the trembling man.

Awakened from criminal organizations were always driven by disgusting selfishness; he was curious why they were suddenly displaying this kind of collective madness.

Even if a few of their leaders had gone completely insane, it was impossible for all the subordinates in the organization to follow suit like this.

“Get lost.”

The groaning man spat at Seok Pil-joon’s face.

But Seok Pil-joon, as if he had anticipated it, moved his head slightly to dodge, and the spit missed his face.

“What’s the point of this suicide mission?”

“What’s the point?”

The man paused for a moment, then began to laugh maniacally.

“This is just a process.”

After spitting out those words, the man’s body convulsed, and he began to vomit blood.

It was the usual situation: a useless pawn of the organization being disposed of, his life ebbing away.

Seok Pil-joon considered cleanly slitting the man’s throat to end his unsightly display,

but he decided to let him die in as much pain as possible.

“A process…?”

He couldn’t tell if it was just the spiteful nonsense of a dying man or if it held some deeper meaning, but it was not something he could easily understand.

Seok Pil-joon pulled the sword from the man’s leg, tossed it to the ground, and surveyed the wrecked surroundings.

Fortunately, no one had been caught up in the fight, but his eyes fell on the shattered ground and walls, remnants of the battle.

*‘Why did they target this place?’*

Until now, their main targets had been crowded places or areas near where Gates had appeared, all to maximize damage.

But this was just an ordinary, unremarkable park.

There were no large crowds or important infrastructure—nothing of value for them to target.

As Seok Pil-joon scanned the area, mulling over these questions, a crack suddenly appeared in the empty air.

*Crack!*

The fissure in the middle of the park grew larger and larger, eventually forming a massive, green-glowing Gate.

“No way…”

Seok Pil-joon muttered, taking a startled step back.

The moment he saw the Gate that had appeared out of nowhere, a thought flashed through his mind.

The terrorists who had swarmed this empty park, and the Gate that had appeared right on cue, as if it were all orchestrated.

The technology to predict when and where a Gate would form did not exist.

Despite enormous investments of capital and manpower over the years—driven by the fact that such a development would drastically reduce damages—no significant results had been achieved, and research had been repeatedly suspended.

But these guys had been waiting with explosives, as if they already knew a Gate would appear.

If Seok Pil-joon hadn’t happened to notice and stop them, it was obvious that a secondary disaster caused by the Gate would have followed the terrorist attack.

“What in the world is going on…?”

***

A derelict factory in southern Texas.

The building had been shut down long ago and was securely locked, but for some reason, the faint sound of voices could be heard leaking from within.

“What is all this?”

“Ether Cores.”

Cha Yeon-hee asked curiously, looking at the boxes piled high in the hallway. Il-hyeon answered without hesitation.

They were securely locked metal boxes, but even without looking inside, Il-hyeon could sense the flow of Ether within them through his ability.

They were packed to the brim with cores overflowing with a considerable amount of Ether.

The combined value of all the cores stacked here was clearly astronomical.

They were valuables far too precious to be left abandoned in the hallway of a dilapidated, deserted factory.

“…Are these all cores?”

She hadn’t really been expecting an answer, so she was taken aback by his clear reply and asked again.

“Not all of them, but most.”

“Hmm…”

Here and there were boxes from which he could feel almost no Ether signature.

Cha Yeon-hee stared blankly at the massive stacks of boxes.

If they were truly filled with cores, it would be the first time she had ever seen such a large quantity gathered in one place, even during her time with Raven.

It was a feat impossible for anyone without immense financial backing.

They continued down the hallway and arrived at a room deep inside the building.

*Click!*

Il-hyeon turned the old, loose handle and entered.

Inside, a man bleeding from his head and tied to a chair, along with the two people surrounding him, all turned to look at Il-hyeon at the same time.

Jeong Jin-seong and Song Joon-ho. The man tied up was Marcus Lopez, an American smuggler.

Marcus was being interrogated by them. Despite his haggard face, his body had no major injuries and seemed relatively unharmed.

“Looks like you’ve all been busy.”

Cha Yeon-hee whistled as she approached.

She had heard that Jeong Jin-seong and Song Joon-ho had captured the smuggler right after they had approached the mayor of Niges and extracted information from him.

“So, did you get anything out of him?”

“He sang like a canary, but we still need to verify if it’s the truth.”

“Is he the only one here?”

“We tied up his underlings and locked them in the back room.”

Song Joon-ho gestured behind him with his hand.

Surprisingly, there wasn’t a single Awakened among their crew, so they were easy to subdue.

“There’s just one problem, though…”

“A problem?”

“The drugs don’t work on him, so it looks like they took some precautions. It’s uncertain if your ability will work either.”

Song Joon-ho said.

Before Il-hyeon and Cha Yeon-hee arrived, they had given him several times the normal dose of truth serum, but it had no effect.

Intrigued by his words, Cha Yeon-hee approached the bound Marcus and tried to use her charm ability, but it was completely useless.

“You’re right… There’s no way a normal person would have this level of resistance. Did they place some kind of ability on him as a restriction?”

“Hey, I told you nothing but the truth! I don’t want anything to do with those guys anymore, so please, let me go!”

Marcus, tied to the chair, shouted desperately.

Unable to understand their Korean, he was anxious about what they might do to him.

“Looks like he doesn’t know why the drugs aren’t working either.”

“Then I guess we’ll have to find out for ourselves.”

She looked down at the man.

If Yoon In-hye had been here, they could have extracted every last piece of information without needing to interrogate him, but she had already left. She had her own work to do elsewhere.

This wasn’t a common occurrence, but it wasn’t something they had never encountered before.

It was absurd to rely on Yoon In-hye, who wasn’t even a member of Raven, every time this happened, so of course, they had their own methods.

Seo Jeong-hwa, whose deep subconscious they had needed to probe, had simply been an exception.

*Clatter.*

Song Joon-ho took out his tools.