Chapter 55
Woo Nayeong was receiving reports from her aide in front of the large monitor in the control room, which displayed a map of the entire residential district. Complaints from various government departments were flooding the changgui specialized team, and the management bureau’s civil complaint office was apparently on fire.
On the screen was drone footage of the Da-213 sector, which had turned ashen gray. Hunters could be seen busily moving around near the spot where the explosion had occurred, where the floor had melted and stuck together in black.
Woo Nayeong manipulated the screen to connect the changgui occurrence points on the map with red lines. The occurrence intervals had become overwhelmingly shorter compared to their first appearance. As their numbers increased, a pattern emerged. She followed the red lines with her eyes and discovered when they had begun to show regularity.
Woo Nayeong raised her hand toward her aide. It meant to shut up. Until then, he had been rattling off meaningless reports, but he quickly closed his mouth and stood at attention.
“The direction has become clear, hasn’t it?”
“Huh?”
“Exactly from here… hmm…”
The aide fidgeted, unable to find words to respond to his superior’s muttering. When all he could do was stand at attention and wait for the next instruction, Woo Nayeong finished her brief contemplation and snapped her fingers.
“Increase the undercover personnel stationed near Baek Mujin’s guild. Replace them with hunters of higher grades too. Ah, right. I should send Sanghui over there.”
“What? But we’re already short on manpower. If we send Hunter Woo Sanghui too, District 1 will be completely exposed.”
“What about Jaehui?”
“Hunter Woo Jaehui is following Hunter Baek Mujin around.”
“Ah, that’s right.”
Woo Nayeong pressed her head. She was so frantic that she had completely forgotten orders she had given herself.
“Send both Sanghui and Jaehui to Baek Mujin’s guild.”
“What?”
She narrowed her eyes at the aide who hesitated, not quite understanding. While she was debating whether to explain, alarm sounds rang throughout the control room in layers.
“Ra-3 sector! Energy reaction detected!”
“Report from sector 17 in the south gate direction too! Ah, no, this is…!”
The operator who had been frantically moving his fingers suddenly shot up from his seat.
“Eight changgui entities appearing simultaneously along a straight path!”
As soon as the scream-like shout ended, lights began flashing frantically on the electronic board. The interior of the control room was engulfed in unprecedented chaos.
Woo Nayeong stared at the monitor with her hand on her forehead, then scanned the alarm messages once more and hardened her expression.
“Look at this. They’re moving toward the District 3 boundary. These bastards are advancing with a clear purpose right now.”
“Uh…”
“How long are you going to just gape? How much do I have to teach you?”
“I’m sorry.”
Woo Nayeong turned her body from facing the monitor to look at the entire control room.
“Cut all communication channels connected to Baek Mujin and open a direct channel with me. Tell all teams that future briefings for Baek Mujin will proceed directly through the control room, and issue withdrawal and redeployment orders to all districts that don’t border District 3. Tell each member to move immediately to their reassigned sectors!”
As soon as the orders were given, the atmosphere in the control room changed. Everyone maintaining their posts in the control room straightened their backs with tension and began moving their hands busily. The sound of typing on keyboards soon filled the space.
* * *
“Huff, gasp… ha, shit… Baek Mujin, really… ah…”
Woo Jaehui panted as she followed behind Mujin, who was crossing District 2 at tremendous speed.
A withdrawal order had come down, but she ignored it. The direction Baek Mujin was heading was also District 3 anyway. The coordinates of the changgui that had been appearing like crazy since a while ago were also pointing toward District 3.
“Whether these changgui bastards are fucking multiplying or running away or what… huff… anyway, it seems like something big is going to happen. Huh…”
Voices saying “Target found” and “Target elimination complete” came through the communicator one after another.
Sometimes the order got mixed up, causing the hunters delivering information to have voice cracks. Even those delivering information through energy data and coordinates were surprised, so how much more so for someone seeing it with their own eyes at the scene? Woo Jaehui wiped away her flowing sweat and clicked her tongue.
She had long since discarded her thick combat uniform. Her sweat-soaked short-sleeved shirt stuck clammily to her skin. It was impressive that she, who had relatively poor mobility, had followed this far. Every time she breathed, it felt like dozens of needles were stirring inside her lungs.
Mujin’s silhouette visible in the distance looked more like a beast than a human. His movement flying straight toward his prey had not even a hint of hesitation. He seemed to have entrusted his body to instinct without any calculation. Bouncing up, running, slashing a changgui, burning it, jumping again…
“You call them friends. No matter what, they have your friend’s face, but you kill them too well…”
Mujin, who had charged along the alley wall, snatched a changgui’s nape with one hand. When he slammed it straight down to the ground from mid-air, the changgui’s body shattered like tofu. Black, sticky liquid that splattered up to waist height stained the wall. Woo Jaehui, who arrived at that spot, half-closed her eyes.
If she were ordered to kill a monster with human form, even an enemy would hesitate. But Mujin’s current movements seemed possessed by evil spirits. No, he seemed like an evil spirit itself.
“Ugh, the smell…”
[Target detected, Na-32 sector east direction. Energy intensity estimated at level 4.]
[Subject moving, 3 entities appearing within the same sector.]
[Position fixing impossible. Route prediction failed.]
[Additional target. Alert level upgraded to black.]
Target reports poured in to the point where it seemed like a communication error.
Mujin smashed the human-shaped changgui without hesitation. Woo Jaehui, who was one step behind, was more like a scene cleanup crew than a hunter, just checking each scene one by one. That is, a brutal incident scene cleanup crew.
[Target moving west. Position Ra-53 section. Energy intensity level 5.]
The communication rang again. Mujin immediately turned his body without any preparatory movement. Watching him move as if coordinates were spread out as a screen before his eyes, Woo Jaehui let out a single scream.
“Running again?!”
Battle, battle, battle… It was the moment they crossed the boundary into District 3 while slaughtering every changgui they encountered.
The form of one changgui wavered like jelly. The one that had been torn to shreds by Mujin’s strike flowed like melted slime and escaped into the sewer.
“New pattern!”
When Woo Jaehui shouted, Mujin shot a fireball into the sewer. The fire that bounced in like a living ball spread quickly through the sewer interior, but ended up missing the changgui’s fragments.
“…Damn shit.”
Was it because the rhythm was broken by one mistake? Like a tightly drawn bowstring snapping, Mujin staggered. Blood that had risen up surged past his throat and finally burst out of his mouth. The boiling energy he had been suppressing seemed to have finally reached its limit.
Without even a moment to soothe his churning insides, the communication rang again.
[Target confirmed, location District 3 southeast sector 20, energy intensity level 3. Inside Club Alterna.]
Due to the aftermath of his core shaking, the blood vessels under Mujin’s skin heated up red. His heart, sensing danger, beat violently, and the blood in his expanded vessels bubbled and boiled. His vision became hazy from the heat, and his head hurt as if being squeezed.
Uncontrolled energy overflowed through the gaps in his opened core. Mujin decided to use this in reverse. He drew up more power to press down and bind his core. Every nerve cell in his body screamed. His unconsciously clenched molars were on the verge of breaking.
He slowly exhaled a long breath.
[Baek Mujin, are you listening? Inside the building, civilians are densely packed. But this one has the same energy pattern as the one that self-destructed.]
Woo Nayeong’s voice came through the communicator. Had his nervous system broken down, or had his brain melted? It was difficult to understand the meaning. Only one word from the droning voice stuck firmly in his mind.
[You know what that means, right?]
The ones that appeared simultaneously as if they had been waiting were heading toward District 3. It was something he had already noticed while chasing and moving after them.
The initial self-destruction was both bait and a test.
What they were targeting was both Eunseong and himself. More precisely, it was intended to separate him from Eunseong. He had fallen beautifully into that trap.
“…Hah.”
Had they perhaps even read Eunseong’s location information from him?
His heart pounded noisily. Mujin laboriously connected his fragmenting thought processes and headed toward the club building. He looked at the building with flashing neon signs through his bloodshot eyes.
His reason told him to abandon this place immediately and run to Eunseong, but he couldn’t move easily, as if heavy weights were attached to the soles of his feet.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
