Chapter 14 – The Choice

“Where… am I?”

Il-hyeon slowly opened his eyes in a bed.

Sometime during his unconsciousness, day had broken, and a sliver of light seeped through the blinds covering the window.

He blinked, taking in his surroundings.

It was not a familiar place.

The room was spacious and white, and the bed he lay on was a patient’s bed, complete with side rails.

Yet, it didn’t feel like a private hospital room; both its structure and atmosphere seemed off.

Il-hyeon patted himself down and, confirming he was unharmed, slowly sat up.

He wasn’t sure where he was, but at least it wasn’t a holding cell. That was a relief.

Drained of energy, he tried to clear his groggy mind.

‘Right… it didn’t work in the end.’

As the memory of what happened in Songpa returned, Il-hyeon let out a small sigh.

Honestly, he felt frustrated.

He had poured everything he had into that moment, only to be easily blocked by an A-rank Awakened.

If he had known this would happen, he would have just absorbed the ether. Instead, he’d tried to fight back and ended up vaporizing the core.

He had discovered a new way to use his core and his predation ability, but considering the value of a B-rank core, it was a terrible waste.

‘On top of that, I’ve shown all my cards. Do I have to live in fear for my life now?’

It was the worst-case scenario.

He had started working as a Scavenger to obtain ether without revealing his abilities, but now, because of that very work, his powers were about to be exposed to everyone.

All from a single, accidental mistake.

His heart grew heavy as he thought about what was to come.

‘But where in the world am I?’

He remembered collapsing, but he couldn’t figure out why he was in a bed instead of a police station.

He wasn’t seriously injured. The police wouldn’t have hospitalized him just for fainting for a moment.

He walked to the window, raised the blinds, and looked outside.

A building of a familiar design.

A massive, U-shaped structure, which included the very place he was standing, came into view.

It occupied a considerable amount of land, something hard to imagine within the saturated city of Seoul, a metropolis of 11 million people, not some foreign country.

And in the center of that building, amidst countless people and vehicles moving about busily, transport planes and helicopters were parked, taking off and landing.

It was a place Il-hyeon had seen many times on TV, though never in person.

The Aegis headquarters.

“Crazy… what is this?”

The sight outside the window made his head spin.

Kidnapping, confinement, torture, dissection.

All sorts of negative words flooded his mind.

The corporate and government conspiracies and actions that were staples in movies about the Awakened.

The thought that revealing his unique ability had landed him in the same predicament flashed through his mind.

Il-hyeon shook his head, trying to deny the thoughts that arose.

Il-hyeon touched his face.

It had returned to his original appearance.

While he could transform objects as he pleased, transforming living things, including himself, was not so easy.

Moreover, even if he did manage to change a living being’s form, it took effort to maintain it.

Having lost consciousness, the transformation of his face had naturally worn off.

*Knock, knock.*

A knock came from the door.

Startled, Il-hyeon spun around and eyed the door warily.

A moment later, a woman entered.

It was Lee Soo-yeon, the monstrous woman who had cut down his all-or-nothing strike with a single slash.

“You’re awake?”

Lee Soo-yeon said in a calm voice.

Unlike before, she wasn’t wearing her coat and was unarmed, dressed in comfortable clothes.

“Look, I know I was scavenging and I broke your ether, but isn’t kidnapping and confining me going too far?”

Il-hyeon said accusingly.

Honestly, he knew he was in the wrong.

Though he had his reasons, he had been engaged in the illegal act of scavenging and had been the one to trespass on their territory first.

In the process of escaping, he had recklessly used a B-rank core, a precious resource worth tens of billions.

But kidnapping? This was beyond acceptable.

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding. It’s not like that.”

Lee Soo-yeon said with a small smile at his words.

She took a water bottle from a small refrigerator and handed it to him.

Though thirsty, Il-hyeon accepted it but couldn’t bring himself to drink, his eyes fixed on her.

“We don’t know where you live, and since we weren’t going to hand you over to the police, this was the only place to put you.”

“What do you mean? Weren’t you going to hand me over to the Special Police?”

“I changed my mind. I decided to just keep it quiet. We’re not handing you over, and we have no intention of demanding anything. You know how much that ether you destroyed was worth, right?”

Lee Soo-yeon grinned playfully.

Her words brought Il-hyeon a sense of relief, but also a sliver of doubt.

Just as he was wondering *why the sudden change?*, Lee Soo-yeon spoke again.

“It was a bit of a hassle, though, thanks to the spectacular mess you made. A snake transformed from a building that size…”

No matter how well the area had been controlled, its sheer size meant there were witnesses and leftover debris.

“I told them it was a new type of monster, but you wouldn’t believe the fuss the government is making.”

Monsters that possessed surrounding objects had appeared several times before.

But never on this scale.

The government kept requesting data on the new monster, but she ignored them all.

Unlike typical corporations, Aegis was not a subcontractor for the government.

Theirs was a cooperative relationship of irreplaceable power.

This was especially true when operating overseas.

“Why are you going to such lengths for me?”

“Shall I be blunt? The scavenging you’ve been doing for the past two weeks… you were trying to hide your ability rank, weren’t you?”

Il-hyeon’s expression hardened, the question hitting its mark.

Had he been handed over to the police, it would have been revealed during the preliminary examination anyway, but her words caught him completely off guard.

“Did you run an ability test on me while I was unconscious?”

“Of course not.”

“Then how…”

“Why would an Awakened with your level of power be scavenging, a job usually for desperate commoners or Awakened who can’t secure contracts? And you weren’t just greedily collecting cores; you were even taking the lead in rescuing people. It also seems you have an ability to absorb ether from cores. You don’t want to be affiliated with anyone for now, and you have a reason to get stronger while hiding from others. Isn’t it obvious?”

Lee Soo-yeon had already pieced together his general situation.

Just from the incredible abilities he had shown yesterday and what she already knew.

Il-hyeon gulped down the water he had been holding.

“I’d say you’re at least above B-rank. All A… no, that ether absorption ability might even be S-rank.”

Il-hyeon said nothing in response to her guess.

He wasn’t foolish enough to say, ‘No, I’m all SSS-rank.’

“If you have even one S-rank ability… that’s certainly a level we’ve never seen before. It was a good choice. If you had gone around bragging about it, you would’ve been caught up in all sorts of trouble.”

In any country, a single S-rank ability would draw worldwide attention.

But an S-rank and two A-rank abilities? Organizations would have fought tooth and nail to recruit him.

By offering any condition necessary, or even by force.

“Anyway, I saw potential, and I wanted to make you an offer. The cycle is approaching, and I don’t want to see such talent go to waste.”

Lee Soo-yeon stepped closer, meeting Il-hyeon’s eyes.

“How about joining our team?”

Stunned by the sudden development, Il-hyeon instinctively took a step back.

“Wait… are you saying Aegis is scouting me? To join your team? The A-Team?”

“Well… if you’re uncomfortable with that, I could speak to another team.”

“No, it’s not that…”

Il-hyeon hesitated.

He had never imagined receiving a recruitment offer like this.

“One of our team members isn’t too keen on it, but I’m that interested. We’re not the kind of organization that needs publicity just to land a few jobs, so if your detailed abilities are unknown, that’s actually a welcome thing.”

Unlike other corporations, Aegis was the one all nations reached out to for help.

As long as one’s skills were proven, ability ranks didn’t matter.

And that was something Lee Soo-yeon herself had witnessed firsthand.

His potential and possibilities.

“I don’t know the exact effects of your abilities, but if needed, we can give you a share of cores instead of money. If it makes our team stronger, that’s a win for us.”

Frankly, for his current situation, the conditions were fantastic.

So good, in fact, that he worried it might be a scam.

Il-hyeon fell into deep thought.

“If I refuse this offer…”

If they were forcing him by holding something over his head, he wouldn’t have a choice at all.

But Lee Soo-yeon just chuckled and shook her head.

“Even if you refuse, I won’t go around telling people or hand you over to the police, so choose as you see fit. We don’t hold people back here. However, wherever you go from now on, you won’t find a better option than this. That much I can say for certain.”

***

Il-hyeon returned home in a car Aegis had prepared for him.

He hadn’t given a definite answer yet; he needed time to sort out his chaotic thoughts.

Meanwhile, Lee Soo-yeon was talking with a member of the medical team.

“I was wondering who this person Team Leader Lee had her eye on was, but I’ve never seen his face before.”

“C-Team is doing great after raising those two promising rookies. There’s no reason we can’t do the same.”

“You don’t really think that kid will become like Lee Tae-hee, do you?”

Lee Tae-hee.

The current top prospect, who, at only 19, possessed two A-rank abilities.

She was already a B-rank Awakened, a heavyweight in her own right, and a member of Aegis’s C-Team, expected by many to become the fifth S-rank Awakened.

“No, I see him as something more. Who knows? He might become team leader level… no, perhaps the next Daepyo to lead our entire company.”