Seo Won genuinely questioned whether the man in front of him was in his right mind.
He had gone head-to-head with terrorists during the yacht party, so it was only natural for the man to have some idea of what kind of ability he possessed.
But he hadn’t revealed everything back then, and officially, he was recorded as a “Unregistered Ability User”—just an ordinary civilian on paper. That meant there was no way for them to know his level or classification. With such uncertainty about his powers, they should’ve been more cautious.
Seo Won stared directly at Kang Woo-chan, whose inexplicable confidence made no sense. The faint chill coiling around Seo Won began to condense, forming countless shards of ice. Before long, sharp ice fragments, each about the length of a finger, were positioned in an array centered around him.
Even when confronted with this, Kang Woo-chan didn’t so much as blink.
Instead, the muscular man standing behind him tensed, ready to spring into action the moment he was given the order, and dark energy began seeping from the eyes of the younger man beside him.
“I’ve got a proposal too.”
Seo Won crossed his legs and folded his arms in an exaggerated display of arrogance, deliberately mirroring Woo-chan’s posture.
“Send Song Jae-woo back, and stop eyeing Cha Han-gyeom. Do that, and I’ll let you all walk out of here alive.”
His expression remained frosty as ever.
“Of course, if we meet again after this… I’ll kill you on the spot.”
At those words, the younger man behind Woo-chan twisted his face in a grimace, baring his teeth.
He already found Seo Won’s smugness insufferable, but the way the man looked down on them from above—radiating that arrogant confidence—made him hate him even more.
That’s why he felt such agreement with what Woo-chan had told them all earlier.
Just like he’d said, they had to reclaim the poor “brother” currently in Seo Won’s clutches.
Whether he was a valuable Guide to them or not—it didn’t matter.
While the young man burned with hostility, Woo-chan simply stared silently at Seo Won for a moment before letting out a faint chuckle.
“Hmm. Not sure you’re in a position to be making demands right now.”
With that, Woo-chan lightly raised a hand. As if on cue, the two men behind him launched themselves at Seo Won.
The muscular man, with his superior jumping power, reached Seo Won first. He raised a clenched fist high, aiming to smash it down on the seated Seo Won.
As the punch came crashing down, dark energy spiraled from his fist.
KA-BOOM!
The impact was deafening—far louder than anything a mere human fist should’ve been able to produce.
The ground trembled violently, so much so that the sound of the wooden chair shattering into pieces couldn’t even be heard.
Seo Won had already darted away with agile precision, showing no sign of panic. Without missing a beat, he launched the ice shards he’d prepared. Half were aimed at the muscular man, and the other half went straight for the younger man’s head as he charged in.
The man who had shattered the concrete floor along with the chair quickly cloaked his entire body in the black energy that had originally been concentrated in his arm.
Since Seo Won had fired the ice shards at point-blank range the moment he moved, it was impossible to dodge them completely. So instead, the man infused his entire body with ESP, turning it into a kind of armor.
Normally, that would have been more than enough to block an attack. But Seo Won’s ice no longer qualified as mere “ice” in terms of hardness.
It was more akin to solid rock—its tips honed like blades, as sharp as spears forged for piercing.
The muscular man furrowed his brow as a sharp pain lanced through him, recalling the countless times weapons had tried and failed to pierce his body, only to shatter instead.
If someone like him, with physical enhancement abilities, was taking this much damage, then the young man beside him didn’t stand a chance.
Especially since Seo Won had aimed for the young man’s head in that split-second.
Judging by the way the man charged in and the ESP coating his fists and arms, he was clearly a close-combat Esper specializing in physical augmentation.
But the young man’s abilities had yet to be revealed.
Outwardly, he seemed to be of a different type than the brute beside him—his body was slender, not the sort that had ever thrown a proper punch. No one knew what his powers were, and for Seo Won, that made the youth even more of a threat than the obvious fighter.
That’s why he aimed for the head.
When you go for an obvious vital point, even someone attacking you instinctively shifts to defense. And in that moment, you could often get a glimpse of what kind of Esper they were—what kind of ability they might reveal under pressure.
Of course, they could also just die before they got the chance to do anything.
But the young man didn’t so much as flinch. Rather than defend, he didn’t even try to dodge the shards of ice raining down toward his head.
Instead, the black energy that had been smoldering in his eyes suddenly surged. And then—
THUD THUD THUD
The ice shards slammed into the youth’s face.
And the next instant, a thick cloud of steam burst from his head, as if someone had lobbed a smoke grenade directly at his face.
As the steam dispersed, what emerged was the young man’s head, now engulfed in vivid blue flames.
He wasn’t burning anything. His skin and face were untouched. Not even his hair was singed. The collar of the shirt wrapped around his neck hadn’t blackened in the slightest.
And yet, as if he himself were the fuel, fire blazed from his head. The blue flame—hotter than any ordinary red flame—radiated intense heat.
The youth, who had been charging in, let out a sharp cry and swung his hand.
At some point, his hand—hidden beneath his jacket—had also become engulfed in blue fire.
With a snap of his wrist, five balls of flame shot from his hand and hurtled toward Seo Won.
Seo Won backed away, his gaze fixed on the fire-element Esper whose ability was a direct counter to his own.
The blue fireballs landed where he had just been standing, leaving charred scorch marks on the concrete before vanishing.
Annoying.
No matter how strong his abilities were, fire and ice were natural opposites—that couldn’t be helped. Since they already knew he was an ice Ability User, this level of preparedness was, in hindsight, only to be expected.
But that didn’t mean he planned to just sit there and take it.
Even faced with the sudden appearance of his natural predator, Seo Won didn’t show the slightest hint of panic.
Dodging the relentless strikes of the muscular man who continued charging at him, Seo Won kept launching shards of ice toward the young man.
They weren’t particularly large—just numerous—but every single one aimed solely for the youth’s head.
Yet the young man didn’t even try to block them. He simply took the hits as he wildly swung both arms.
The blue fireballs that burst from his hands targeted Seo Won with unwavering persistence.
A homing type?
Through the back-and-forth exchange, Seo Won quickly deduced the nature of the youth’s power—those fireballs were effectively homing missiles.
At first, he’d aimed for the head to obscure the youth’s vision with the resulting steam, but even when the boy hurled the fire recklessly, the flames unerringly tracked Seo Won’s position.
Even when Seo Won twisted his body mid-dodge, trying to redirect the flames toward the muscular man instead, the orbs would veer sharply in the air, correcting their trajectory mid-flight to keep him locked as the target.
Forming instant ice walls to extinguish the fireballs, Seo Won silently clicked his tongue at how troublesome the youth’s ability was turning out to be.
But that’s all there is to it.
In that short time, Seo Won had gauged the density and intensity of the youth’s blue flame—its strength, its heat. With that information in hand, he decided to ditch any complicated strategy in favor of something brutally simple.
Flinging off the muscular man still lunging at him, Seo Won leapt back and slammed one palm onto the ground.
From the point of contact, ice rapidly spread outward, sweeping across the entire floor with staggering speed.
The wave of frost surged toward the charging brute, seizing his feet and immediately crawling up his legs.
The man focused ESP into his lower limbs and wrenched his frozen leg free by twisting his body with brute force, finally managing to stagger backward.
But the intensity of the ice had been overwhelming—even his forcibly freed leg was left with tattered pants and shredded shoes. The skin exposed underneath had turned red with cold, as if recovering from sudden frostbite, marred with shallow cuts.
Had it not been for his ESP-enhanced, nimble, and hardened body—and his quick instincts—he might have been frozen solid right then and there, dead before he hit the floor.
Unlike him, however, the young man, confident in his own power, didn’t even try to avoid it.
As if saying, I can melt ice like that anytime, he kept his focus entirely on attacking Seo Won.
But in the blink of an eye, the ice that crawled up his shoes surged higher and engulfed his entire body.
Every point the ice touched began to emit steam as it reacted with his ability.
Clouds of vapor billowed endlessly around him, surrounding the boy in a fog of rising mist.
And then, at last, the young man realized something was wrong.
He couldn’t move his body at all.
Frozen in an awkward stance, the youth twisted and flailed with all his might, trying to move his arms, his hands—anything. But strangely enough, his head moved just fine. So did his hands.
“Guh!”
With a sharp intake of breath, the realization struck him.
It wasn’t his body that was frozen.
It was the clothes he was wearing.
His outfit—the one that had refused to burn no matter how fiercely the blue flames blazed—had been frozen solid instead.
And not with ordinary ice, either. It was encased in something as hard as stone.
Now, the very clothes he wore had become a rigid shell, locking him in place like a prison.
Desperate, the youth tried to swing his hands somehow. To launch his fireballs, he needed to move his arms—so he kept attempting it again and again.
However, Seo Won had already discerned the youth’s attack pattern.
That’s why he had reinforced the cuffs of the young man’s sleeves with several extra layers of ice, encasing them tightly to prevent him from swinging his arms at all.
With the boy now completely neutralized, Seo Won turned his gaze toward Kang Woo-chan, who remained seated in his chair, calmly watching everything unfold.
“You get it now, don’t you?”
Just as Seo Won opened his mouth, a new shadow stepped out from behind Woo-chan.
There had been no presence, no sound—just sudden proximity.
The figure calmly placed one hand on Woo-chan’s shoulder, and with the other, brought the blade of a hand to rest against his neck.
Woo-chan glanced sideways at the cold hand resting on his shoulder.
Seo Won flashed that signature arrogant look in his eyes.
“This isn’t a situation for you to be making offers. It’s me.”
The person standing behind Woo-chan—was none other than a clone of Seo Won.
