Chapter 88 – The War Begins (Part Two)

Il-hyeon was speeding down the road, sitting in the driver’s seat of a car stained with the unpleasant smell of blood.

But in one corner of his vision, he was seeing a completely different place.

Sharing his vision with the cat at his parents’ house, he confirmed they were both safe and let out a sigh of relief.

His parents thought it was just an ordinary cat, but it was one of Il-hyeon’s summons that had absorbed a core.

Feeling that Korea was no longer safe with the cycle changing and the unusual increase in threatening Gates, Il-hyeon had summoned one of his creatures and given it to his parents.

Had any danger arisen, the creature would have stepped in, but thankfully, nothing had happened.

“Ugh…”

Just then, Seo Jeong-hwa, who had been unconscious in the passenger seat, came to and opened her eyes.

Dazed, she gasped and quickly looked around.

“What… what did you do to me?”

Realizing she had been knocked out, Seo Jeong-hwa stared at Il-hyeon with extreme caution.

She clearly remembered losing consciousness without a chance to do anything after the shadow at her feet writhed, a crow appeared, and an unpleasant sensation swept over her body.

The image of three crimson eyes came to mind, and she rubbed her arms as if goosebumps were breaking out.

But the man at the wheel just shrugged as if it were nothing and replied.

“I heard what I needed to hear. I have a rough idea of the situation now.”

If there were constraints placed on her mind, all he had to do was forcibly extract the information.

“The IRC…”

“What? How? Don’t tell me…”

“It’s what you’re thinking.”

Il-hyeon nodded at the surprised Seo Jeong-hwa.

He had imbued the crow made of shadows with a hallucinatory ability and succeeded in getting information about the organization from Seo Jeong-hwa’s own mouth.

However, since Il-hyeon didn’t originally possess mental-type abilities and wasn’t familiar with them, he could only manage a rough imitation.

The mental manipulation on her seemed stronger than expected, and her resistance was so fierce—plus, Il-hyeon’s own ability was still lacking—that he couldn’t extract detailed information.

Fortunately, Seo Jeong-hwa’s brainwashing seemed flawed and incomplete, allowing him to obtain some of the most urgent pieces of information.

First, the ones behind this were the world’s largest criminal organization, the IRC.

Il-hyeon had heard of them and knew of their notoriety, but they were an organization that had never been associated with this kind of terrorism.

He couldn’t figure out the motive behind why these guys, who usually dealt in profitable ventures like drugs, weapons, and Ether smuggling, would suddenly pull a stunt like this.

‘I should probably take her to an expert. Maybe Team Leader Yoon In-hye of D-Team will do.’

Since the captured terrorists were all dying without exception, likely to silence them, she was the only key to getting more information.

Meanwhile, Seo Jeong-hwa tried to clear her dazed mind and assess the situation.

She then noticed that the sturdy ropes that had bound her wrists were also untied.

“Where are we going right now?”

“Yeouido Park.”

“Damn it, how much did I tell you?”

Yeouido Park was one of the next targets she knew about.

It was also the next target she would have had to go after if she hadn’t been caught by Il-hyeon.

“I don’t even know anymore.”

Clutching her head, Seo Jeong-hwa shook it in resignation.

Seeing that he even knew the next operation area, she must have spilled everything about the organization. It was an undeniable betrayal she couldn’t take back.

She had blurted it out while under a hallucination and didn’t even remember it, but the resistance still squirming inside her made her head spin.

“You said they’re targeting the Gate, right?”

Il-hyeon said, glancing sideways.

According to the information he got from her, the next target was the site where a Gate would appear.

Contrary to his expectations, they weren’t planning to attack crowded civilian areas with explosives. Their plan was to stop the Awakened trying to block the Gate and unleash monsters into the city.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

Swallowing hard, Seo Jeong-hwa spoke without further hesitation.

Now that things had come to this, she had no better options.

“You know that stopping them at one park won’t be the end of it, right?”

“I heard that too.”

Following an attack of such massive scale, targeting a single park was obviously not the end.

These guys, who had essentially declared war on the entire world, would continue this type of attack endlessly.

The only silver lining was that the scale of the subsequent attacks wouldn’t be as large as the first.

No matter how powerful the criminal organization IRC was, they didn’t have the resources to continuously launch attacks of that magnitude now that everyone was on alert, unlike the initial unguarded state.

“Then just drop me off anywhere. If they find out I betrayed them…”

“No. Even if I heard a few things, I don’t trust you completely yet.”

“Ha. You said you rummaged through my whole mind, didn’t you? Why can’t you trust me?”

“When did I say that? I didn’t hear everything. This isn’t my area of expertise.”

“What? So you don’t know about the organization?”

“I know the name. But I didn’t hear any details like your organization’s purpose or location. Can you tell me the location of your headquarters?”

“I only know a few small places. All over the world… Hngh.”

Seo Jeong-hwa grimaced mid-sentence and exhaled with difficulty.

Just saying that one sentence made her stomach churn with a mixture of intense guilt, fear, and resistance.

It was the aftereffect of the powerful mental manipulation she hadn’t yet shaken off. Even to Il-hyeon’s casual glance, she looked to be in great pain.

“I guess it’s no use.”

Even under the hallucination, she hadn’t been able to speak about crucial information directly related to the organization.

And while they talked, the car had nearly reached its destination.

Seeing that he really seemed to intend to drag her to the scene, she spoke with a great deal of irritation.

“Ugh… If I help you this time, I’ll get something out of it, right?”

“Of course.”

“This is driving me crazy! Fine… I’ll cooperate fully, so make sure you protect my life! And get rid of this damn brainwashing!”

“Good, you made the right choice. We have five minutes until the Gate activates, so we’d better move fast.”

After a quick glance at his watch, Il-hyeon saw the cordoned-off street ahead and turned the wheel.

The area around the park where the crack had appeared was broadly cordoned off.

Il-hyeon was about to roughly park the car and move, but Seo Jeong-hwa grabbed his arm urgently.

“What, five minutes? We have to hurry! They’ll be attacking by now!”

“What are you talking about? Altena is handling this. You think they’d risk a direct confrontation?”

Il-hyeon asked, unable to understand.

The Gate that had appeared in the park was a B5-rank, which meant that appropriately skilled Awakened would be dispatched to handle it.

Given how tense the situation had been lately, it wasn’t being handled by Aegis or the government’s Response Team, but by Altena, one of the nation’s six major corporations, who were on standby.

Altena was one of the strongest of the BIG6, and if their Awakened were capable of handling a B-rank Gate, they would be no match for terrorists of the level that had attacked him.

In that case, the only method available to them would be to intervene and disrupt the fight between the Awakened and the monsters that appeared after the Gate activated.

He couldn’t understand why she was rushing him when there were still five minutes left.

But that was Il-hyeon’s mistake.

On the contrary, Seo Jeong-hwa spoke as if she couldn’t understand him.

“Don’t tell me… you think rank is all that matters when Awakened fight each other, not monsters?”

*Bang!*

Before she could even finish her sentence, a loud gunshot rang out.

People who had already heard the news of the sudden terror attack were sent into a panic, and screams echoed through the air.

The special police controlling the scene were also startled, whipping their heads around to find the source of the gunshot, but in that time, a dozen more shots rang out from all directions.

Il-hyeon threw open the car door, shot up, and dashed outside.

He quickly pinpointed the general location from the sound, but his attention was drawn elsewhere.

Along with the gunshots, he felt a strange energy appear and then vanish from within the park.

“EMP rounds. It’s already started.”

Seo Jeong-hwa said as she followed him out.

Anti-Awakened EMP weapons.

A weapons system developed on a large scale by the government in the past to control the Awakened.

Unlike conventional EMPs that disabled electronic equipment with powerful electromagnetic pulses, its main feature was using Ether to affect only the bodies and equipment of the Awakened. It didn’t even have any effect on monsters that moved using cores.

It simply blocked all of an Awakened’s special powers and degraded their physical functions.

These EMP-type weapons were useful for subduing rampaging Awakened, but ironically, they became a major headache for government-affiliated Awakened around the world once they fell into the hands of criminal organizations.

*Crash!*

Just then, a person was suddenly sent flying, crashing into and shattering the windshield of the car Il-hyeon had been driving.

A man wearing a Defensive Coat, now useless due to the EMP, was unconscious with blood streaming from his head.

And a special police vehicle was flying through the air right above him.

Il-hyeon casually batted the large, flying vehicle aside with one hand.

*CRASH!*

The special police cordon was completely collapsing as a fight broke out inside, caused by the terrorists who had suddenly stormed the scene.

The man who had thrown the entire special police vehicle at them strode toward Il-hyeon.

The man, who had the same red arm as Seo Jeong-hwa, charged in an instant, likely thinking Il-hyeon was just some random Awakened passing by.

*Thwack!*

But the charging man was instead met with Il-hyeon’s fist. His jaw twisted, he lost consciousness, and he collapsed after rolling across the ground for a good distance.

Seo Jeong-hwa, who watched this happen right beside him, snorted as if she wasn’t even surprised anymore.

Il-hyeon muttered without even turning his head, leaving the thrown man behind him.

“They’re really causing a ruckus.”

Il-hyeon stomped his foot with some irritation, and a giant bird erupted from the ground beneath him with a cracking sound.

The bird, made of solid rock, spread its massive wings wide to either side, then soared high into the sky, kicking up a tremendous gust of wind.