Chapter 167 – The Battle (Part Two)

WHIRRRRRR!

A suddenly appearing barrier sliced off one of the helicopter’s rotor blades.

The unbalanced helicopter spiraled down and crashed, but not before Seong In-ha, the leader of Aegis’s G-Team, rescued the pilot and bailed out just before impact.

BOOM!

A loud explosion erupted. Landing lightly on her feet, Seong In-ha quickly scanned the area.

“What in the world is…”

The Aegis headquarters was under siege, a chaotic battlefield where Awakened from both sides were locked in a fierce struggle.

A pure white barrier cut them off from the outside world.

The non-Awakened staff had evacuated to the secure basement, but there was nowhere else for them to go. The members of Aegis, meanwhile, had all come out to face the invaders.

“Die!”

A man charged at Seong In-ha from behind.

Seong In-ha reacted instantly, spinning around and drawing her sword in a single motion, swinging it with enough force to cut him in two at the waist.

CLANG!

However, contrary to her expectations, the man’s Defensive Coat didn’t shatter on the first strike.

She’d heard rumors, and it was true—their Defensive Coats were stronger than the ones used by Aegis and the government, which were thought to be cutting-edge, and they wouldn’t break easily.

Unfazed, Seong In-ha’s second attack completely disabled its protective function, and her third strike cleanly took his head.

As crimson blood sprayed, staining her clothes, another Eclipse Awakened charged from the front, sword raised.

The incredibly skilled Seong In-ha once again dodged her opponent’s blade with fluid grace, finding an opening to thrust her own sword forward.

This time, however, things were different.

FWASH!

Her opponent’s body suddenly transformed into a dark crimson shadow, and her sword passed right through him.

The mass of shadow, which seemed to exude the coppery scent of blood, slithered up Seong In-ha’s outstretched arm, attempting to engulf her completely.

This was exactly why fighting an Awakened without knowing their ability was so dangerous.

She had rushed back after receiving the urgent call and hadn’t even had time to don her Defensive Coat. A look of dismay crossed Seong In-ha’s face.

But just as the crimson shadow was about to consume her, it was caught by another shadow that suddenly appeared.

A shadow as black as pitch.

With incomparable size and power, it dragged away the shadow-morphed man and, in turn, swallowed him whole.

CRUNCH!

“Aaaargh!”

Jo Yoon, the leader of B-Team, who controlled shadows.

He, too, had been on standby inside the headquarters and had joined the fray, slaughtering the enemy.

Jo Yoon was always in the conversation when discussing the strongest of Aegis’s team leaders, so even the fully prepared Eclipse Awakened were no easy match for him.

“That was a close call… I owe you one.”

“I’ve repaid my debt from two years ago.”

“You still remembered that?”

Jo Yoon didn’t answer. He simply took off the Defensive Coat he was wearing and tossed it to Seong In-ha.

Seong In-ha glanced from the coat to him, then asked.

“What about you?”

“I don’t need it. Did you hear anything about these guys on your way here?”

“Yeah, I heard some of them are former Aegis members from the previous generation.”

“They’re the ones in the masks.”

“Then…”

Seong In-ha’s voice trailed off as she turned her head, her gaze following Jo Yoon’s.

A man in a black mask was striding toward them.

He moved as if completely unconcerned by the fact that he was outnumbered by two team leaders.

“I bet he’s a familiar face, too.”

Licking her lips, Seong In-ha raised her sword and took her stance.

***

KRAAANG!

Sparks flew as three swords clashed at once.

On the outskirts of the compound, Il-hyeon and Oh Ji-seok were fighting eight Awakened, having already taken down three of them.

Thankfully, none of them wore masks, but dealing with the rest was still no easy task.

“These bastards, what kind of trick did they pull!”

Oh Ji-seok shouted, swinging his bizarre-looking sword.

While Oh Ji-seok’s words were usually nonsense, Il-hyeon had to agree with him this time.

He couldn’t see the entire battlefield, but at a glance, it was clear the attackers outnumbered the Aegis Awakened by at least two to one.

It was incomprehensible how the enemy had amassed so many fighters.

It would have been one thing if they’d padded their ranks with fodder, but every single one of them was a high-level Awakened, at least B-rank or higher.

Aside from the former Aegis members, he didn’t recognize a single face. The drugs used by criminal organizations could never produce this many high-level Awakened.

He had suspected from their activities that their organization was large, but he was still shocked by numbers that far exceeded his expectations.

What’s more, there was no guarantee they had even brought their full force.

And that wasn’t the only immediate problem.

Their goal, above all, was to rescue Hwa-yeon.

That was something they had to prevent at all costs.

If they freed her from the underground ability-suppression chamber built by the research team, and if Hwa-yeon recovered her powers, she could potentially mind-control everyone in the facility.

Even if they rescued her and fled before her powers could fully recover, there was no telling when they might return to use her mental abilities to take over all of Aegis.

He couldn’t let her fall into their hands—he’d sooner kill her himself.

“Hey, Kang Il-hyeon. I’ll handle things here. You go on ahead.”

Oh Ji-seok blurted out in the middle of the fight.

“Can you handle this alone?”

“Do I look like I’d lose to these pricks? Stop hovering around and getting in my way, and just scram!”

He could have been nicer about it, but his words were always so harsh.

Since Il-hyeon had to get going anyway, he didn’t refuse the offer.

The entire area was already a war zone.

Running on foot would mean getting bogged down by other Awakened, and taking to the air would only make him a bigger target on a battlefield teeming with all manner of special powers.

That left only one option.

To travel underground.

The area was fortified with a thick, reinforced underground facility designed to be impenetrable, but for Il-hyeon and his transformation ability, that was no obstacle.

CRACK!

Il-hyeon placed a hand on the ground. It cracked and split open, and he quickly jumped into the resulting hole.

“Agh, that crazy bastard! He could’ve just run, but no, he has to go and bust a hole in the damn ground!”

Hearing Oh Ji-seok grumbling from above, Il-hyeon paid him no mind and sealed the hole behind him to prevent anyone from following. Then, he headed for the facility where Hwa-yeon was being held.

Inside the vast underground facility.

As Il-hyeon made his way through the corridors, he encountered members of Eclipse who had already penetrated deep into the facility.

SHWIIINK!

The moment Il-hyeon saw them, he reached out a hand, transforming the long corridor so that spikes shot out from every direction.

Thousands of sharp spikes erupted without a single gap, disabling their Defensive Coats in an instant.

Then, making the spikes vanish as quickly as they had appeared, Il-hyeon cut down the stunned operatives in a single stroke.

But they weren’t the last enemies he would encounter while moving through the facility.

He found them either fighting Aegis team members or, in unoccupied areas, disabling parts of the facility. One thing was surprisingly consistent: they weren’t killing the Aegis staff.

They knocked out anyone who resisted, but they weren’t taking lives… or so he thought, until he saw that wasn’t the case.

SHUNK!

“Guh…”

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than he witnessed an Eclipse operative killing a staff member. Il-hyeon instantly disabled the man’s coat and killed him in kind.

“Damn it, what’s with the sudden change?”

If they’d been killing people from the start, he would have been prepared, but this sudden shift felt like he’d been blindsided.

But one thing was certain: most of the invaders were indeed sparing the staff, disarming them and herding them into one place.

It wasn’t his imagination or a coincidence.

“Come to think of it… they mentioned a ‘list’ before. On what basis are they deciding who lives and who dies?”

Their past actions showed they had no qualms about civilian casualties from their terror attacks, but their attitude toward the Awakened was clearly different.

He’d seen statistics from Raven showing that, compared to the widespread terror attacks orchestrated by criminal organizations, very few Awakened had been caught in the crossfire.

According to Kim Yu-jin, they wanted to create a world where the Awakened ruled over the non-Awakened, a goal that seemed consistent with this pattern.

However, as everyone knew, Eclipse’s victims weren’t limited to civilians; they had killed a significant number of Awakened as well.

That was the problem.

It was impossible to find any meaning in their killings; there were no common threads connecting the Awakened they had targeted so far.

Their selection process was so irregular it seemed completely random, with no regard for affiliation, age, or ability.

“…Better to hear it straight from the source than to stand here wondering.”