The Espers already deployed and fighting the beasts paused, glancing over at Hyun Tae-oh in surprise at the sight of the creatures suddenly frozen solid.
The moment the dozens of mutant beasts froze in place, Hyun Tae-oh unleashed his full power, reducing them to bits.
“Bits” hardly did it justice—they were shredded so finely it was more accurate to say they turned to dust and scattered into the air.
Somehow, a few of them began regenerating, but for reasons only he knew, Hyun Tae-oh, clearly furious, froze and obliterated them again before the regeneration even completed—again and again, without pause.
Kang Chi-yu and Min Yu-hyun, standing side by side, stared at him in silence.
As the S-rank Espers began taking on the regenerating mutant beasts one by one, Kang Chi-yu focused intensely on Hyun Tae-oh’s left arm.
“Thankfully, Esper Hyun Tae-oh has nearly wiped them out. No need for Guide support—once the site’s cleaned up—”
“He’s hurt…”
Kang Chi-yu suddenly cut Min Yu-hyun off, murmuring the words like a thought escaping his lips.
Min Yu-hyun looked up at him, then turned his gaze to Hyun Tae-oh.
Even from a distance, it was clear—Hyun Tae-oh’s left sleeve had been slashed clean across.
The faint flashes of red were unmistakably blood.
Hyun Tae-oh rarely got injured during missions, so the sight was strangely jarring. Min Yu-hyun flicked his fingers together with a sharp snap and said to Kang Chi-yu,
“You have to get that on camera. Hyun Tae-oh getting hurt while fighting beasts? That’s rare.”
Kang Chi-yu frowned slightly but didn’t respond. Instead, he took off toward Hyun Tae-oh at a brisk pace.
That brisk pace soon turned into a run.
“Hey! Don’t leave your post!” Min Yu-hyun shouted after him, but Kang Chi-yu didn’t even glance back.
Hyun Tae-oh’s body was glowing with a strong yellow aura, despite having taken a rampage suppressant, and that wounded arm… Kang Chi-yu couldn’t just stand by.
S-rank Espers noticed the B-rank Guide darting across the battlefield and called out to stop him, shouting warnings. He ignored them all.
Kang Chi-yu kept his eyes on Hyun Tae-oh’s broad back, running straight toward him—until Yoon Do-jae stepped in and grabbed his arm, stopping him again.
“It’s dangerous,” Yoon Do-jae said with a slight frown.
“I’m fine.”
Kang Chi-yu spat out the words in rapid succession and slipped past him, sprinting straight toward Hyun Tae-oh.
Hyun Tae-oh had just crushed a mutant beast with his bare hands when Chi-yu called out.
“Hyun Tae-oh!!”
At the sound of his name, Hyun Tae-oh immediately turned. His eyes went wide—then narrowed, irritated.
Before Chi-yu could even reach him, Hyun Tae-oh teleported and appeared right in front of him.
“Why the hell are you running around like that? Who dropped the defense barrier? Who the fuck was it?”
He scanned the area like he was ready to kill whoever had undone the barrier.
Kang Chi-yu grabbed his left wrist and pulled it closer to check the wound.
“You’re bleeding. Are you okay?”
“…Hurts like a bitch.”
Suddenly, two mutant beasts shot toward them. Hyun Tae-oh wrapped his injured arm around Chi-yu, shielding him as he launched a counterattack.
While holding Chi-yu close and fending off the two beasts, a freshly regenerated one lunged from behind.
Chi-yu quickly reached out to use his Sleep skill, but Hyun Tae-oh beat him to it, paralyzing the creature first.
He took out the remaining beast in front of them.
The paralyzed monster behind them was shredded to pieces by Yoon Do-jae, who flew in just in time.
“Fuck…”
Hyun Tae-oh’s eyes were nearly glowing orange now—a clear sign he’d passed the threshold into a pre-rampage state.
He was hanging on by sheer mental fortitude.
Seeing this, Kang Chi-yu quickly initiated Broadcast Guiding to ease his strain even a little.
Hyun Tae-oh, letting out a low curse at the sensation, tilted his head down to look at Chi-yu.
Still holding him tightly in his arms, he stared with burning intensity. Then, without even glancing at the beast flying in, he extended his hand and annihilated it.
A late-arriving S-rank Esper watched the entire scene unfold—first blinking at the vanishing beast, then staring again at Hyun Tae-oh.
Hyun Tae-oh ignored him, puckering his lips into a duck face and muttering,
“I’m fucking dying here. Guide me, Chi-yu.”
Contact Guiding was most effective from Stage 2 and up, and their hastily signed contract had stated that any Guiding must be at least Stage 2—so there was no reason to refuse.
The fight wasn’t over, and the place was crawling with Espers and Guides, which gave him pause. But with everyone clearly seeing Hyun Tae-oh on the brink of rampage, no one would question salivary contact Guiding on the spot.
Well—maybe one person.
But Hyun Tae-oh didn’t seem to care at all. He kept leaning in with those puckered lips, demanding.
After a brief hesitation, Chi-yu squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his lips to Hyun Tae-oh’s.
As soon as he linked his energy to Hyun Tae-oh’s unstable waves, the pain the other man was enduring flooded into him—wiping away every other thought.
It wasn’t exactly that he felt the pain. It was more like… he could see it.
Pain didn’t transfer to the Guide, but the experience was almost like watching it happen as a spectator. He could feel how Hyun Tae-oh’s energy was twisted and unstable, how he’d pulled every last ounce of strength just to keep fighting.
And so, Chi-yu poured all the energy he could into him, trying to ease the burden.
But this bastard—
He wasn’t acting like someone being Guided at all.
Hyun Tae-oh kept adjusting the angle of the kiss, relentless and deliberate, making it impossible to overlay his energy cleanly.
He was on the edge of rampage, and yet he kissed him like he didn’t give a damn about Guiding.
Now, with one hand gripping the back of Chi-yu’s neck so he couldn’t pull away, the kiss deepened to the point Chi-yu couldn’t even stay upright.
Eyes were on them from every angle. The drone camera hovered overhead, filming everything. Even the mic on Chi-yu’s lapel was catching every wet, indecent sound.
Never mind the sheer embarrassment of making out in the middle of a battlefield—what really filled Chi-yu’s mind was the thought: Is Hyun Tae-oh not even slightly bothered that Min Yu-hyun is watching this whole thing?
Did he even understand what kind of relationship he had with Min Yu-hyun?
Because from where Chi-yu stood, Hyun Tae-oh didn’t seem to care at all.
Still, to stabilize his state—and to make sure PairBorn’s camera caught clear footage of Stage 2 Guiding—Chi-yu kept going, focusing hard to keep the salivary contact unbroken.
Meanwhile, Hyun Tae-oh’s right hand stayed busy, fending off mutant beasts trying to reach Chi-yu. Yoon Do-jae jumped in as backup, cleaving any that slipped through.
Chi-yu kept his eyes tightly shut, focusing completely on Hyun Tae-oh’s unstable wave patterns.
Then, without warning, the relentless kiss ended.
It had been so intense it felt like it had sucked the air out of him, and when it stopped, Chi-yu gasped to refill his lungs.
He looked up just as Hyun Tae-oh cast a defensive barrier around him again.
His eyes seemed a bit steadier now.
“I figured it out. Don’t move from here, got it?”
Chi-yu barely opened his mouth to ask what he meant when Hyun Tae-oh wiped his lips with the back of his hand and teleported back into the fight.
There, in the midst of a pufferfish-like mutant beast, he found a single spike that was slightly longer than the rest—a barely visible detail.
He focused on that one subtle difference and destroyed it.
Instantly, the bloated monster’s body shriveled like a deflated balloon and turned black and dry. It didn’t regenerate.
When Hyun Tae-oh glanced at Yoon Do-jae, who had been watching carefully, the man pressed a hand to his mic and alerted the Espers: the beasts’ weak spot was a single, slightly different spike.
As expected of S-rank Espers, they quickly adapted, accurately targeting the weak point and clearing out the mutant beasts that had multiplied through regeneration.
Chi-yu watched Hyun Tae-oh dispatch the remaining beasts, chewing on his lower lip as his eyes drifted back to the blood still trailing down Hyun Tae-oh’s left arm.
“I never thought I’d live to see Hyun Tae-oh getting Stage 2 Guided with my own eyes.”
At some point, Min Yu-hyun had come up beside him, arms crossed and smirking as he watched Hyun Tae-oh.
Chi-yu turned his head to look at him.
Min Yu-hyun stared back—not at Chi-yu exactly, but at the shimmering barrier around him, scanning it up and down with that usual condescending gaze.
“This is the same guy who used to freak out just from holding hands. Throwing fits over nothing.”
He gave a dry laugh, one that sounded less amused and more empty. Then, irritated by the defensive barrier Hyun Tae-oh had created, he tapped it with his knuckles.
“So. Childhood friend’s okay with all this?”
What did he mean by that?
Was he annoyed that his secret lover was clearly favoring an old friend?
Or was he just commenting on what was plainly visible?
“……”
Chi-yu turned his gaze back to Hyun Tae-oh instead of answering.
He wasn’t trying to be rude.
He just didn’t know what kind of relationship Min Yu-hyun and Hyun Tae-oh actually had, and one wrong word might offend them both—so he kept quiet.
But Min Yu-hyun seemed to take the silence as arrogance.
“Must be nice, huh? Being the childhood friend.”
His pretty lips curled into a sneer, his voice dripping with sarcasm that couldn’t have been more obvious.
