Chapter 13 – A Blessing in Disguise (Part Three)

“Ugh!”

Flung through the air, Il-hyeon tumbled across the ground again.

No matter how he tried to flee, he was pursued through walls and any other obstacles, turned into a ghost, and dragged back. He was utterly helpless.

Seok Pil-joon and Lee Soo-yeon, still standing in their original spots, watched him.

‘Still, it’s not like I’m completely defenseless.’

Dragged back to his starting point, Il-hyeon thought as he scrambled to his feet.

He’d noticed something after being hauled back by Ghost three times.

When Ghost’s body was intangible, Il-hyeon couldn’t affect him, but conversely, Ghost couldn’t affect him either.

To attack or stop someone, he had to become tangible.

Moreover, it seemed he could only phase others by touching them when he himself was corporeal.

Of course, listing these hints didn’t change his situation.

The most crucial realization was that he couldn’t escape by holding back his abilities.

He had to get out of there, even if it meant revealing his powers.

If he was caught and handed over to the police, his identity and everything else would be meaningless.

Il-hyeon pulled the sword fragment from his pocket and formed his blade.

“That’s not an Ether Sword?”

Lee Soo-yeon watched the scene with curiosity.

She didn’t understand the principle, but he had assembled a strange sword from a piece of metal.

“It seems we’re past the point of persuasion.”

Seok Pil-joon drew his sword and stepped forward.

Il-hyeon glanced around.

As expected, there were no people, and the control perimeter was wide enough that he didn’t have to worry about being seen.

The problem, however, was the countless surveillance cameras scattered throughout Seoul.

“Hiding something? All the CCTV cameras in the area are turned off when we’re active, so feel free to show us what you’ve got.”

Seok Pil-joon said in a blunt tone.

Provoked by his words, Il-hyeon stomped his foot.

The ground around him churned, and ten golems made of concrete emerged.

The earth sank by an amount equal to the volume of the rather large golems.

They were summons inspired by a game Il-hyeon used to play.

“What the?”

“Monsters?”

The Awakened were startled by the sudden appearance of the golems.

Even with their years of experience operating worldwide, it was a type of ability they had never seen before.

Meanwhile, Il-hyeon summoned a hawk and soared into the sky.

Just as he was about to escape through the forest of buildings, Seok Pil-joon leaped into the air, using the sky as a foothold, and closed the distance in an instant.

Seok Pil-joon, who possessed the C-rank ability [Leap], slit the hawk’s throat, and Il-hyeon plummeted to the ground.

“Ugh! Dammit!”

Il-hyeon cursed as he hit the ground hard.

It was the fifth time he’d been sent rolling today.

“What the hell are you?”

Seok Pil-joon, who had instantly caught up, stared at him with a slightly surprised expression. Clutching his aching back, Il-hyeon extended his sword and replied.

“A thief, you bastard!”

Clang! The two swords met with a sharp ring.

The sheer force of his opponent’s strike sent a jarring tremor through his hand.

Seok Pil-joon smoothly deflected Il-hyeon’s thrust aimed at his chest, sending it over his shoulder.

He then easily tried to aim a kick at his opponent’s exposed abdomen.

But he couldn’t follow through.

“What is this now…!”

Vines morphed from the ground and wrapped around his ankle.

Seok Pil-joon lifted his foot, shattering the sturdy vines, and parried another incoming attack.

Just as he was about to instinctively counterattack, he felt something strange beneath his feet and used his Leap ability to jump into the sky.

Shhhk! Thorns shot up from the spot where he had been standing.

Seok Pil-joon had no idea what kind of ability his opponent possessed.

But he reacted on instinct, continuing the fight.

As Seok Pil-joon twisted in the air, his sword slicing down, Il-hyeon morphed the ground beneath him to spring backward.

Barely dodging the blade, he quickly regained his posture.

But Seok Pil-joon used his ability to create footholds in mid-air, attacking dynamically, and Il-hyeon was soon on the defensive.

Wham! A kick slammed into his stomach, sending Il-hyeon flying backward into a building.

“Ugh…”

Szzzt! The coat he’d painstakingly saved up for, even breaking his savings account, was completely destroyed by a single kick, its function lost.

When Il-hyeon looked up, he saw Lee Soo-yeon and Ghost slowly walking over, watching the scene unfold.

The golems, meant to buy time, had long since been shattered to pieces.

Il-hyeon had no choice but to admit the difference in power.

At his current level, he was no match for them.

Worse, his opponent wasn’t even fighting at full strength.

He had been toying with him with a relaxed demeanor from the start and was now on the verge of easily subduing him.

There was no way a rookie who had only been Awakened for two weeks could defeat a member of an elite team that had traveled the world for years.

Just as Il-hyeon was about to give up, he spotted the corpse of what looked like a B-rank monster lying beside him.

The monster’s body was fresh, its core not yet harvested.

‘That’s it!’

Il-hyeon scrambled over and began rummaging through the corpse to retrieve the core inside.

Lee Soo-yeon watched him with a puzzled, and partly disappointed, expression.

So, he had been after the B-rank monster’s Ether after all.

But she knew he couldn’t possibly escape with the core now, so she just watched him in silence.

“What are you going to do with the core at this point?”

Seok Pil-joon asked.

“It has its uses.”

Il-hyeon replied curtly, clutching the core in his right hand.

He could feel a power from the core in his hand that was on a completely different level from the E-rank cores he had absorbed so far.

He mustered all his strength and squeezed his right hand as hard as he could.

And then,

The core shattered.

“What…? No way! The core…”

The three Awakened stared in shock as the Ether core disintegrated before their eyes.

It was something research teams had failed to do, despite trying every method imaginable.

But now, a core had been crushed to pieces by one man’s grip.

The B-rank core’s Ether flooded into Il-hyeon’s body, and for a moment, strength surged through him again.

But he didn’t fully absorb this power.

Instead of taking it into his body, he left it ready to be used immediately.

‘I might be able to do it now.’

Il-hyeon formulated a plan for what to do with this sudden influx of power.

Something he had always thought about, something he had wanted to try at least once.

It was risky, but with no other options, there was no point in weighing the pros and cons.

‘No, it’s still too much to maintain a summon. The stamina drain is too great. In that case, I’ll attack with the Transmutation ability while briefly maintaining the Summoning ability…’

The Ether flowing through his body, combined with the excitement of battle, made his mind race.

Il-hyeon noticed the large, eight-story commercial building behind him.

He placed his hand on the building’s wall.

Il-hyeon poured every ounce of power he held into his ability.

Rumble!

The surrounding ground shook, and pieces of the building rained down as it grotesquely transformed.

The eight-story commercial building twisted and contorted, taking the form of a giant serpent.

And the massive serpent’s eyes twitched.

Kieeeek!

The colossal monster raised its head high and charged toward them.

‘Just one big hit is all I need.’

***

A giant serpent.

The monster surged forward at a terrifying speed, swallowing the road as it approached.

It kicked up a massive cloud of dust and effortlessly shoved aside nearby buildings.

The deafening roar of the entire street being laid to waste made even Seok Pil-joon and Ghost hesitate.

To an uninformed observer, it would look exactly like the appearance of a high-rank giant monster.

Just when it seemed unstoppable.

Slice!

The enormous serpent was cleaved in two by a black slash.

The serpent’s eyes, which had been momentarily given life, lost their focus, and it lost its balance, skidding across the ground.

Thud! The two halves of the massive serpent’s remains swept through the street, precisely avoiding the spot where they stood.

A tremendous roar echoed as a shockwave blasted through the area.

Among those present, only one person was capable of such a feat.

A black aura flickered around one of Lee Soo-yeon’s arms as she held her sword.

As she relaxed her stance, the black aura vanished.

“Ha… I went through all that trouble, you could’ve at least pretended to be hit. That’s just too much, really.”

His trump card rendered useless, Il-hyeon let out a hollow laugh and fell backward.

As his energy drained away and the tension left him, he collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

A brief silence fell after he collapsed.

“What is that guy’s identity?”

“Wow, that was seriously awesome.”

Unlike Seok Pil-joon, who was dumbfounded with disbelief, Ghost was purely impressed.

His voice was slightly excited, his tone elevated.

“I thought he was a peculiar case when I first heard about him… but I never imagined he’d be on this level.”

Lee Soo-yeon also let out a dry laugh at the unexpected turn of events.

Setting aside the fact that he had physically broken an Ether core, which was supposed to be impossible, he had displayed several different abilities.

His final attack, in particular, was far beyond the scope of a typical Awakened.

She approached the fallen Il-hyeon and checked his condition.

He was breathing steadily, with no visible injuries.

“Doesn’t look like he has any internal injuries or is seriously hurt. Maybe he overloaded from using his ability too much.”

“He doesn’t seem like a regular Scavenger. He might be affiliated with the IRC.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. If an organization like that had a promising talent with such an ability, they’d be nurturing him carefully. Why would they let him run around as a Scavenger?”

Even she couldn’t determine the rank of his ability just by looking at it for a moment; she wasn’t a machine.

An ability that seemed incredible at first glance often had strange limitations or weaknesses.

But the powers the man had shown were, at the very least, completely different from any ability she had ever seen.

And such abilities had endless applications for illegal organizations.

If a criminal organization had such a talent, they would have carefully raised him hidden from the eyes of all governments and corporations, not let him act as a Scavenger.

Letting him run loose like this in South Korea, a place teeming with high-ranking Awakened, made no sense.

“Anyway, let’s just hand him over to the special police quickly. We should tell the government and lock him up in prison for good…”

“For a mere theft charge? Why have you been so aggressive from the start?”

“I despise criminals. That includes Scavengers.”

Seok Pil-joon answered Lee Soo-yeon’s question firmly.

He had his reasons, so his attitude wasn’t entirely incomprehensible.

But it was becoming a problem.

Lee Soo-yeon’s mind had changed.

Completely different from before.

“But isn’t it a waste? I want to recruit him for our team.”

“What?”

As if he had misheard, Seok Pil-joon stared at her with strong disapproval.

But Lee Soo-yeon was lost in her own thoughts and paid him no mind.

“Though I’m not sure he’d want to join after a first meeting like this.”

“Haha, I’m all for it. I’ve never seen an ability like this in my life. I thought a Gate had opened.”

Ghost laughed cheerfully, kicking the massive remains of the serpent lying on either side of him.

If they were going to add a new member anyway, the mysterious man before them seemed like the most interesting choice.

However, Seok Pil-joon shook his head in opposition.

“Aren’t we Aegis? Just because he has a few unusual abilities…”

“It’s not just about his abilities. You can see his potential. You fought him, you should know.”

Lee Soo-yeon had been inwardly impressed while watching their fight.

By her standards, his physical specs were still lacking, but his outstanding combat sense and precise use of his ability against a stronger opponent were quite commendable.

Of course, even those physical specs were nothing to scoff at compared to ordinary Awakened.

Assuming his claim of being Awakened for only two weeks was true.

“You don’t actually believe that story about him being Awakened for only two weeks, do you?”

“He only appeared as a Scavenger around that time, and I have a rough idea of what’s going on.”

“Even if that’s true, if a criminal has that kind of talent, shouldn’t we lock him up before he gets stronger? He already has a record. If he joins a criminal organization and gets properly trained…”

“I’m not worried about that.”

Lee Soo-yeon said with conviction.

As if she was certain that would never happen.

She knew the details of his activities, which she had heard from her contacts in the police force.

Facts that hadn’t been reported in the media.

Of course, nothing was certain yet, but the puzzle pieces about him were fitting together in her mind.

“Even if that happens, it’s not a problem. We can just catch him and lock him up again then.”

“Hmph, regardless, I’m against him joining the team.”

“Then we’ll recruit him by majority vote.”

“You really…”

Seok Pil-joon glared at Ghost, who had subtly chimed in.

In response, Ghost simply raised his arms in a gesture and feigned ignorance.

“Well, we still need to hear what Team Leader Jeong has to say, so it’s not final. Besides, no matter what we decide, it’s up to this guy whether he joins or not.”

Lee Soo-yeon draped Il-hyeon’s arm over her shoulder and hoisted him up.

“In any case, we’re not handing him over to the police. The street was damaged during the fight. I’ll take responsibility, so let’s keep this quiet.”

Seok Pil-joon still wore a dissatisfied expression, but he had no choice but to obey his team leader’s command.

From behind his mask, Ghost whistled cheerfully.

In the meantime, the helicopter he had contacted arrived shortly, descending into the chaotic scene.