Chapter 59 – Summoning (Part Two)

Il-hyeon stood in front of the transport plane at Aegis headquarters, dressed in civilian clothes.

Then, Seok Pil-joon, having completed his mission, approached him.

Before Il-hyeon’s return, a string of bad news—starting with Team Leader Jeong Jin-seong’s injury—had left Alpha Team with only three members, not enough to operate as a full unit.

As a result, the members had been sent to support other teams or were undertaking missions alone.

And yet, the circumstances didn’t allow for proper reinforcement either.

Awakened who had been on leave were all called back to form temporary teams on a large scale, and with everyone else swamped with work, there weren’t many who could be spared for another team.

Even if they scoured the entire world, the sites Aegis handled required some of the highest-ranking Awakened, so it couldn’t be helped.

Seok Pil-joon and Il-hyeon exchanged a light greeting as usual, and an awkward silence fell between them as they waited for Lee Soo-yeon.

To be honest, the two of them weren’t on the best of terms.

It wasn’t that they were on bad terms, but their first meeting had been unpleasant. Seok Pil-joon, who had lost both his parents to Awakened from an overseas criminal organization, had started off with a deep-seated prejudice, making it difficult for them to get close.

Besides, Seok Pil-joon wasn’t the type to get particularly close to anyone outside of work anyway.

This time, however, it was Seok Pil-joon who spoke first.

“Shake it off.”

Seok Pil-joon said, having been quietly observing Il-hyeon’s gloomy expression.

As Il-hyeon turned to him with a questioning look, Seok Pil-joon crossed his arms and spoke again.

“It was unavoidable, so forget it and shake it off. Think about the people you saved, not the ones who died. Otherwise, you can’t keep doing this job.”

A brief silence followed.

Il-hyeon, a look of surprise on his face, opened his mouth.

“…That’s not like you to say something like that.”

At Il-hyeon’s words, Seok Pil-joon’s expression twisted in embarrassment, and he quickly turned his head away.

When Il-hyeon first joined, Seok Pil-joon had classified him as someone who could never be trusted.

But they had spent a good deal of time together as a team, and the misunderstandings had gradually cleared up.

And now, in Il-hyeon’s position—having taken down an A-rank variant monster—there were plenty of people who would have grown arrogant from their own strength or reveled in the fame rather than dwelling on a colleague’s death.

But Il-hyeon wasn’t doing that.

Seeing him now, it was certain that he wasn’t the kind of person Seok Pil-joon despised.

“Shut up. You’re not in the best shape, so don’t go dragging everyone else down.”

Seok Pil-joon said, waving a hand dismissively.

A small smirk escaped Il-hyeon’s lips.

“Alright. Thanks.”

“Don’t smile. It’s creepy.”

As they were talking, Lee Soo-yeon, whom they had been waiting for, approached.

She then tossed the sword and Defensive Coat she was holding to Il-hyeon.

Catching the items, Il-hyeon immediately put on the coat and asked Lee Soo-yeon.

“What about Ghost?”

“He’ll be here soon from nearby. It’s urgent, so we need to leave first.”

Lee Soo-yeon patted his shoulder and boarded the transport plane, and Il-hyeon and Seok Pil-joon followed.

* * *

*CRASH!*

“Ugh…”

Il-hyeon grimaced as he was sent sliding back by the monster’s attack.

Immediately raising his sword again, Il-hyeon stared directly at the monster perched atop an ancient-looking tower before him.

A giant ape clung to the tower wall with its long arms, its incredible musculature and protruding mouth and nose visible even from below.

Acting purely on primitive instinct, the creature’s name was Baboon.

It was a high-rank monster that appeared frequently near China and India, and this time, it had emerged with a Gate in a Chinese city.

“ROOOAR!”

The Baboon let out a deafening roar and beat its chest.

As it glanced around, moving as if to show itself off, Il-hyeon muttered.

“Is it trying to film a movie all by itself?”

Il-hyeon watched the creature for a moment, then extended his arm.

Rather than charging in again to knock it down, he chose to use his ability.

He weakened the tower wall, causing it to crumble, and the clinging Baboon slid off.

However, the creature immediately moved like an acrobat in mid-air and clung back onto the tower.

“Ooh-ooh-aah-aah!”

The creature that had been roaring like King Kong just a moment ago now screeched like an angry monkey, swinging its arms wildly in the air as if cursing at Il-hyeon.

It was as if it was saying it wouldn’t stand for being provoked any further.

“This is giving me a headache… Should I just bring the whole thing down? But I can’t just carelessly alter it…”

The monster’s inexplicable obsession made Il-hyeon press his forehead.

If the tower the Baboon had been clinging to wasn’t a centuries-old cultural heritage site, he would have ended this long ago.

Just then, a problem-solver arrived to resolve the frustrating situation.

“I’m here!”

A single masked head popped out of the tower wall.

It was Ghost, who had just finished off a monster that had fled in the other direction.

The Baboon, startled by the upper half of a human suddenly emerging and floating beside it, brought its fist down hard.

But it only smashed the tower; Ghost remained completely untouched.

“Stop breaking things and get down!”

Ghost moved, kicking the Baboon hard.

Only then did the Baboon completely lose its balance and fall to the ground.

And Il-hyeon aimed his sword at the creature flailing in mid-air.

“Ooh-ooh-eek!”

Even in that brief moment, the Baboon sensed the killing intent directed at it and twisted its body to face downward.

Having roughly regained its balance and prepared to counterattack, it swung its arms back and thrust its fists toward Il-hyeon.

*Thwump!*

But two large spikes shot up from the ground, piercing both of the Baboon’s arms in an instant.

Then, Il-hyeon’s sword, already in position, thrust forward, bisecting the Baboon at the waist with a gruesome sound.

Thick, green blood poured out like a flood as the Baboon fell to the ground in two pieces.

Due to the strong acidity, the ground where its blood touched sizzled and smoked.

“Whoa… Are you sure you’re the same guy who was in bed for over a week? You seem way stronger than before.”

Ghost, watching from atop the tower in his ghost form, gaped in awe.

Il-hyeon was holding a rather large umbrella, blocking the monster’s blood raining down from above.

He had transformed a tree branch he had been holding in his other hand.

“That’s enough. Come down now.”

“Yes, yes.”

At his words, Ghost scurried down.

Il-hyeon folded the umbrella he was holding, stuck it in the ground, and turned around at the sound of an approaching presence.

From the forest behind them, Lee Soo-yeon and Seok Pil-joon were dragging monster corpses with both hands.

The monster carcasses were highly acidic, so they were gathering them beforehand to ensure the cleanup crew wouldn’t be in danger.

“It’s a little broken. And they specifically asked us to protect it without a single scratch.”

“That was an impossible request from the start. How are you supposed to preserve it with that thing clinging to it so openly? It might’ve been different if they’d found and reported it before the Gate activated.”

As Ghost muttered while looking up, Lee Soo-yeon approached and said.

The parts that Il-hyeon had broken to get the Baboon off or that the creature had smashed trying to hit Ghost were only a fraction of the damage.

The upper section was already in ruins from the mountain-sized Baboon climbing and hanging off it.

Just as Lee Soo-yeon and Seok Pil-joon were about to drop the monster carcasses with a thud, a scream filled with anguish suddenly rang out.

“不能??!!!”

The caretaker, having seen the broken tower, rushed in, fell to his knees, and began pounding the ground in despair.

Lee Soo-yeon spoke into her communicator, questioning the backup team.

“What’s going on? You didn’t even control access properly at such a dangerous site.”

-Well, the Chinese special police are handling site control right now, so…

“They’re always so needlessly difficult.”

Sites in China often came with a lot of unnecessary demands from the government.

Of course, the Chinese government couldn’t say much to irreplaceable organizations like Aegis or the Korean Response Team, but other Awakened corporations with less power were sick and tired of the difficult conditions imposed at every site.

Cases like this, where site control was handled by China’s special police instead of their own backup team, were frequent.

Alpha Team left the remaining cleanup to the accompanying backup team and departed for Korea on the waiting transport plane.

“Are you pushing yourself too hard?”

“No problem. But… there is a lot of work.”

Il-hyeon replied to Lee Soo-yeon’s question.

Up to now, Il-hyeon had been rushing between four different sites without a single break.

Considering he had joined partway through, it was an incredibly hectic schedule.

“Things have been unusual lately. There’s no sign of it getting better…”

Lee Soo-yeon said with a grave expression.

“At this rate, humanity is definitely going to collapse and go extinct from overwork. Ugh, I’m dead.”

Ghost threw off his mask and sprawled out on a long chair.

His sweat-soaked hair aside, he looked utterly drained from the past month’s fatigue since the cycle had changed.

But soon, Seok Pil-joon nudged him awake.

“We’ve arrived. Go home and sleep.”

“Ughh.”

Ghost groaned and got up weakly.

In this day and age, where you could get to the other side of the world in no time if you had the money, a trip to neighboring China was instantaneous for them in their state-of-the-art transport.

After finishing their work and landing at headquarters, they each boarded their waiting helicopters and left one by one.

Just as Il-hyeon finished a rough clean-up of his gear and was about to board his helicopter, Lee Soo-yeon, who had briefly gone down to the headquarters’ basement, approached him.

“You should take this.”

“This is…”

Il-hyeon stared blankly at the object in her hand.

A core from which a brilliant white light emanated.

It belonged to the Nightmare that Il-hyeon had defeated during the last incident.

It looked to be twice the size of a normal core.

Even Il-hyeon, who had absorbed various high-rank cores, had never seen one like this.

Coming from an A-rank monster’s variant, it was an even rarer item.

“I don’t know how you’ll use it, but put it to good use.”

After handing him the core, Lee Soo-yeon waved and left. Il-hyeon stared at the core in his hand for a long time.

* * *

“I’m home.”

Il-hyeon said as he entered the front door.

Immediately, he heard a clamor and felt a crowd rushing toward him.

Il-hyeon’s summons, who had been guarding the house, poured out to greet him.

“Ugh, stop.”

Unable to even take off his shoes, Il-hyeon calmed down the clingy creatures and stepped inside.

He hadn’t been able to take his summons with him since he’d been rushed to the field as soon as he woke up.

The staff had told him they brought them to his house while he was unconscious, thinking it would be fine since the creatures had been much calmer lately.

“You didn’t cause any trouble, did you?”

Il-hyeon looked around the house. Fortunately, aside from a few broken dishes, there were no gaping holes in the walls or signs of anything being burned to a crisp.

Smiling with satisfaction, he gently lifted the phoenix perched on his head with both hands, placed it on the floor, and went into his room.

“I’m going to get changed, so wait here.”

Il-hyeon said to his summons, who were staring at him blankly from the hallway, then closed and locked the door to keep them out.

Once the door clicked shut, Il-hyeon turned around, took the core that had been filling his pocket, and placed it on his desk.

“Hmm…”

He stared down at the core for a while.

In truth, Il-hyeon had only two ways of using a core.

He could either absorb the Ether with his Predation ability to increase his own power, or he could feed the core to his summons to strengthen them or grant them new abilities.

This time, however, he felt it would be a waste to just use it like any other core.

A very strong feeling.

He wanted to find another way, something beyond simply absorbing it himself or feeding it to his summons.

‘But how…?’

Yet no specific method came to mind.

It wasn’t as if his dormant collector’s instinct had awakened, either.

He just had a feeling that he could do something much greater with it.

“What is this…”

His own strange feeling made Il-hyeon frown as he looked at the core.

Then, without much thought, he slowly picked up the core he had placed on the desk.

Very carefully.

And then, something unexpected began to happen.

“Huh…?”

The light leaking from the core intensified, gradually enveloping the entire room.

The light grew uncontrollably, becoming so intense that it was a struggle just to keep his eyes open.

Panicked, Il-hyeon stumbled backward and threw the core he was holding into a corner.

“Ugh!”

As he retreated, Il-hyeon squeezed his eyes shut, a sense of bewilderment rising within him, wondering if something had gone wrong.

He had infused a little power into it when he held it, but certainly not enough to break the core.

Before long, the bright light began to fade.

When he finally opened his eyes, something completely different from anything he had ever summoned with his ability appeared before him.

A person lying unconscious on his bed—and it was the figure of a woman he had never seen before in his life.

“What in the world…”