Under Creature – Chapter 12.1

Author: nicotine

Yigeom felt a sense of exhilaration.

When he was trapped in the debris, everything had seemed bleak, but now, as if his hardship was being rewarded, he was surrounded by nothing but good timing.

Kwon Sanghyuk’s ability was plenty strong. Hallucinations and invisibility. Weren’t they abilities perfect for a surprise attack? In fact, he was specialized in it.

However, if Kwon Sanghyuk had met with one piece of bad luck, it was meeting Yigeom.

Their abilities were a terribly poor match. What’s more, it was a rainy day. It was the optimal condition for Yigeom to use his ability.

Because of that, no matter where Kwon Sanghyuk tried to hide, he was right in the palm of Yigeom’s hand.

Hallucinations? Water was everywhere. If Kwon Sanghyuk cast a hallucination on him, he just had to turn his vision to the rainwater.

Even if the texture felt different, even if his nerves felt strange, he could verify everything with water.

Whether he was stretching his arm out straight, whether his body was moving, what he was touching right now, and…

Where Kwon Sanghyuk was.

What good was invisibility? As long as you don’t disappear, you exist. Could a human possibly avoid the pouring rain? No matter how much Kwon Sanghyuk ran, hid, and paralyzed Yigeom’s senses, he couldn’t avoid it.

And Yigeom wasn’t just looking at his own situation. He was also observing the situation with Seo Dohyun, A, and the remaining Latters beyond.

And the opportune, repeating time as well.

‘A surprise attack would never work.’

Yigeom plunged his blade like a flash of light.

“Ugh…!”

A shrill scream was heard.

Realizing that his abilities were not working on Yigeom, Kwon Sanghyuk released his invisibility and hallucination.

Blood was dripping from his shoulder.

“How did you know? Where I was.”

“You said it yourself. That I’m lucky.”

Yigeom muttered as he flicked the blood off his blade.

‘Sanha hyung gave me this. It got something dirty on it.’

Kwon Sanghyuk let out an incredulous, empty laugh.

“At this point, I’m getting curious, Yigeom-ssi. About your ability. I’m sure it has something to do with your eyes.”

“Who knows.”

There was no need to tell him the right answer.

“Maybe I just took a guess and hit the lottery.”

Kwon Sanghyuk charged, his blade glinting. Since his powers weren’t working, he had switched to physical combat.

What to do about this.

It’s not like I’ve been doing nothing for the past six months.

For Kwon Sanghyuk, it was a single moment, but for Yigeom, with Seo Dohyun currently using his ability, it was a repeated scene.

In addition, he had also learned boxing and steadily built up experience through practical training with Kang Taeha.

There was no way Kwon Sanghyuk, who had only trusted and relied on his seemingly invincible power, could overpower Yigeom in a physical fight.

From Kwon Sanghyuk’s perspective, it was in an instant, but from his own, it was after several repetitions, that Yigeom succeeded in subduing Kwon Sanghyuk.

The moment he was certain of his victory, a strange sensation writhed and surged within him. It was almost instinctive.

Dodge, now.

Yigeom twisted his body in an instant, leaping back.

Swish-! The tip of a blade grazed past Yigeom’s shoulder.

‘What was that?’

He was sure he had subdued Kwon Sanghyuk, he must have. Then who was the one attacking him?

Just then, the Kwon Sanghyuk who had been lying on his back beneath him vanished like an illusion, and a chillingly sharp blade flashed before his eyes.

He hastily pulled his body back, but a small scratch appeared near his eye.

For a moment, his head spun and he felt dizzy. He had felt this before. The hallucination from being exposed to a Blood Hunter’s blood.

Without hesitation, Yigeom immediately took out an antidote and injected it into his forearm. To think the antidote he diligently carried after joining the vigilantes would come in handy like this.

More importantly, Kwon Sanghyuk?

As he focused again, trying to sense his presence.

“Is your ability related to your eyes, Yigeom-ssi? Your vision?”

He appeared from behind. At the same time, thud, a knife was stabbed into his shoulder.

Then, as if mocking him, the figure disappeared once more.

“…Haa.”

What in the world was going on.

Yigeom did not panic, and decided to slowly think it over from the beginning.

Kwon Sanghyuk had realized his ability was related to his vision. When he didn’t know that, hallucinations didn’t work on him. But why now?

Step by step, take it easy. Panicking is the enemy in a battle. Slowly, while dodging Kwon Sanghyuk’s attacks, he had to find the reason.

But…

“Ugh!”

It seemed Kwon Sanghyuk’s intention was to slowly toy with Yigeom instead of killing him right away, as if tightening a noose. Did he think Yigeom was a cornered rat?

It was annoying, but this could actually be an opportunity. Yigeom endured the pain and calmly evened his breathing.

A place where hallucinations could be used other than vision.

Smell, taste, hearing, the sense of touch. Even so, they couldn’t have as great an effect on hallucinations as sight.

Then where could it be? Why was he falling for the hallucinations so helplessly?

He could hear Kwon Sanghyuk’s mocking laughter by his ear.

No, in the first place, was I even under a hallucination? Couldn’t it be that he just used invisibility?

He had thought Kwon Sanghyuk was easy to deal with because his powers didn’t work on him, but he supposed he couldn’t let his guard down after all.

He re-evaluated everything from one to ten, thinking it over and over.

Then, suddenly, it came to him.

Sight, smell, all these are derivative senses.

By signals transmitted by the brain.

‘The brain!’

Did he cast a hallucination on the entire brain? If so, the current situation made sense.

Also, if his own ability also started from the brain, it made sense that his vision through water had become strange.

‘Is he insane?’

In the meantime, Yigeom bent his knee from a knife stabbed into his thigh and bit his lip hard.

What kind of cheat-like ability is this…! If the brain, which sends all sensory signals, is malfunctioning, there’s no other way to deal with it.

What should I do…

‘Gyeom-ah, do you think your ability is perfect?’

Suddenly, a conversation he had with Seo Dohyun while catching a creature came to mind.

‘My ability?’

‘Yeah. Do you think my ability looks good?’

‘Isn’t that obvious? It’s a cheat.’

At the time, he thought Seo Dohyun was saying something nonsensical. If you can turn back time by 5 minutes, isn’t that a cheat?

‘If it was such a cheat-like and perfect ability, Sangwoo ajussi wouldn’t have died.’

‘…What are you trying to say.’

‘Things like this. It’s all a bluff.’

‘What?’

‘Isn’t it? There’s nothing scarier than not knowing your opponent’s ability, right? It’s all like that.’

Yigeom breathed slowly, mulling over the past conversation.

There’s nothing scarier than not knowing your opponent’s ability.

In other words, Seo Dohyun can always find out his opponent’s ability by turning back time. Always… No matter how much the opponent exaggerates their own weak ability, it won’t work on Seo Dohyun.

Bluffing… it’s something you can do because you don’t know each other’s abilities in detail.

Why did this conversation suddenly come to mind? What would Kwon Sanghyuk’s ability rank be? Manipulating the brain is truly an incredible ability. A? S?

The brain is steeped in hallucination… Then why can I think continuously? Why can I feel pain? Why? Why?

There’s only one conclusion.

Kwon Sanghyuk cannot control the brain. He probably doesn’t have that level of ability.

Of course, he might be able to do it crudely, since my current state says so.

But is this pain real? Could this be the hallucination itself?

The Blood Hunter that fought Seo Dohyun in the Iryeon said that in order to inflict pain on others, one had to concentrate deeply and quietly.

Quietly…

He finally realized.

The reason Kwon Sanghyuk wasn’t killing him.

‘It was because you couldn’t kill me.’

It was also strange that he was maintaining his sanity after losing this much blood. He should have collapsed from excessive bleeding long ago…

Look, he feels the pain, but he’s fine.

If Kwon Sanghyuk were to really kill him, it would become obvious.

That all of this is a hallucination.

Because there’s no way a person could survive being stabbed in the heart.

If that’s the case, it means that Kwon Sanghyuk is concentrating his ability somewhere, to trap him in this hellish swamp of hallucination.

Where is it, where is that location, and whatever it is, getting out of this hallucination came first.

Now, Kwon Sanghyuk hiding somewhere and stabbing at him just seemed cute.

He grimaced at the pain from time to time as he lost himself in thought.

I need to get out of here fast…

Whoosh!

At that moment, his vision inverted and his body staggered. As if waking from a dream, he blinked his eyes, and his body was clean without a single wound.

What is this?

Did the hallucination… break?

Before him, Kwon Sanghyuk stood still with his eyes shut tight, sweating bullets. It seemed he intended to corrupt his mind within an endless hallucination. To make him lose even the will to attack upon waking.

But… did he not notice that I woke up from the hallucination?

What the hell is going on?

First, he lunged at Kwon Sanghyuk and subdued him. This isn’t a hallucination, is it?

After quickly severing the tendons in his ankle to stop him from trying anything, and roughly twisting his arm behind his back, Yigeom was still bewildered.

“Aaaargh!”

Then, seeing Kwon Sanghyuk scream his head off, he naturally came to a realization, ‘Ah, so this is real.’

“How did you wake up…”

“Who knows. Maybe your power just ran out?”

Yigeom frowned. It was a hallucination Kwon Sanghyuk himself had created, yet he was asking how he woke up.

Then who woke him up?

Just then, he noticed Kwon Sanghyuk’s uninjured shoulder trembling violently.

Yigeom could figure it out without much difficulty.

It was the same side he had aimed his gun at half a year ago.

‘Did his treatment get delayed because he ran away.’

Yigeom pressed down on the spot with the back of his knife.

“Here, are there aftereffects?”

“…Just kill me instead.”

He thought the perpetrator wouldn’t even remember what happened that day. But that wasn’t the case.

For the past few months, he wasn’t the only one who had been thinking of killing Kwon Sanghyuk. Kwon Sanghyuk must have also been suffering from the aftereffects, remembering him along with the pain.

Yigeom suddenly burst into a dry laugh.

“Well, this isn’t so unfair then.”

“I said just kill me!!”

Kwon Sanghyuk struggled and thrashed. His body was so tense with rage that all the capillaries in his eyes had burst.

He found the sight truly satisfying.

“Kill you?”

“Yes!”

Even the peace of death was a luxury for Kwon Sanghyuk.

‘Wait! Where are you going?’

‘I… I’m scared of hunting creatures, so I’m going to wait downstairs. I don’t need to observe either. Haha.’

‘You think I’m not scared? If you brought me here, you should at least stay by my side.’

‘Aaaargh! No! It’s cruel and gross and scary!’

Yigeom sneered, scoffing.

“Sorry. I’m not one to watch cruel things.”

With that, he chopped the back of Kwon Sanghyuk’s neck, knocking him out.

Finally, the long, long nightmare of the past had come to an end.

🦅࿐

Namgoong Sanha groaned. Around the corner, the prison guards and vigilantes were joining forces to fight the inmates.

Although the number of inmates who escaped the prison due to the explosion was far greater, they were bound by restraints and unable to use their powers. Because of that, the fight was still evenly matched for now.

But the number of guards and vigilantes was limited. They would be the first to get exhausted physically.

That was Namgoong Sanha’s biggest worry.

He was a technician, not a combatant. Jin Geonwoo was also a healer. The only person here who could be called a combatant was Seo Doa, and Cha Jewoo was barely usable as a fighter.

The oldest person here was Namgoong Sanha.

No matter their individual roles, as the eldest, he couldn’t just step back and leave the fighting to the kids.

On top of that, Yigeom had asked him to look after the kids.

‘What should I do. Should I just jump in with my bare hands.’

As it happened, the inmates had both their hands and feet tied in restraints, and couldn’t use their powers or creature-ize.

Whichever way he looked at it, if it came down to a physical fight, Namgoong Sanha, who had diligently worked out and built up muscle, had a high chance of winning.

Namgoong Sanha made a firm decision and clenched his fists. It seemed he had no choice but to join in.

“Excuse me.”

Startled by the voice that suddenly came from behind him, Cha Jewoo flinched back and quickly surveyed the stranger’s appearance. The man had restraints on both his hands and feet.

“Wh-who…”

He muttered apprehensively, wary of him. But the man paid him no mind and approached Namgoong Sanha, pushing his face forward.

“Hello, you remember me, right?”

“M… me? Wh-who are you…”

“I know. A way to stop the inmates’ riot.”

Watching the inmate speak so boldly, Namgoong Sanha searched his memory to figure out who he was.

‘Who is he…’

His mind was a jumble of confusion. As Namgoong Sanha just opened and closed his mouth, unable to speak, the frustrated inmate introduced himself.

“We’ve met before!”

“Uh…, um…”

Namgoong Sanha studied the inmate’s features again. It was definitely a familiar face.

Who was it… Who… Ah!

Something flashed through his mind like lightning.

The day an incident broke out when he was about to give Yigeom a ride to his appointment, the man at the center of that incident. A person whose face he had only gotten a glimpse of because he was arrested as a suspect right after the case was closed, with no time to exchange words.

‘He’s definitely Yigeom’s…’

“I’m Yoon Yigeom’s friend! Jooseungtae! You know Yoon Yigeom, don’t you?”

🦅࿐

Yigeom grabbed the unconscious Kwon Sanghyuk and walked, dragging him across the floor. It would be a pain if Kwon Sanghyuk woke up and ran away if he just left him there. A long, bloodstained trail formed on the floor they passed over.

‘He’s such a pain even when he’s unconscious.’

He looked around, wondering if there were any spare restraints, but there was no way there would be.

Perhaps because he had used his ability a lot, his eyes were slowly starting to ache.

‘Where is everyone?’

Yigeom took one last look at the whole scene. Seo Dohyun was fighting well with the vigilantes up front, and while looking towards Namgoong Sanha’s group, he spotted a familiar face.

‘Jooseungtae?’

Yigeom, with Kwon Sanghyuk in tow, quickly headed towards where Namgoong Sanha was. But his steps, which had been spurred on towards his destination, came to a stop before long.

A group wearing restraints blocked Yigeom’s path.

“Where are you off to? The server room? Mind taking us with you?”

What the heck is a server room? Yigeom scanned them with an irritated gaze. They were people who couldn’t use their powers or creature-ize because of the restraints. There was nothing to be afraid of.

Yigeom muttered their names, which he had read and memorized from the files.

“Kim Seunghun, Shin Hayeon… Kim Jeongsu.”

In order, they had the abilities of wind, telekinesis, and healing. Their weaknesses were… Yigeom put down Kwon Sanghyuk and instantly rushed into their midst.

Kim Seunghun couldn’t see with his left eye… if he were to aim for a blind spot, that would be it.

“Keuk!”

Yigeom pivoted to Kim Seunghun’s left, then immediately aimed for a vital point. He then knocked him over into Shin Hayeon, and using the moment of confusion, dealt with Kim Jeongsu. He struck the back of his neck to knock him out, and finally subdued Shin Hayeon.

He had overpowered all three in less than a few minutes. Although their hands and feet weren’t free, it was still an astonishing display of movement.

“Hoo.”

Yigeom caught his breath and smiled with satisfaction. He could now handle this much on his own without Seo Dohyun.

He went back to Kwon Sanghyuk, grabbed one of his legs, and started dragging him again.

‘But why did they ask about the server room?’

Because he had knocked out the inmates, he failed to ask the important question.

Well, does it matter? The urgent thing right now is to go find Namgoong Sanha.

🦅࿐

Namgoong Sanha cried out, startled.

“Ah! Aaaaaah! Gyeom’s friend!”

“Huh? Gyeom hyung’s friend? Who?”

“Gyeom oppa has a friend like this…?”

Jewoo and Doa stared intently at Jooseungtae. Yigeom had a friend who was a Blood Hunter? This was the first they had heard of it.

“We got to know each other through an incident a while ago. You wouldn’t have met him.”

“Um… The way to stop the riot?”

On behalf of Sanha, who was dazed by the unexpected reunion, Jin Geonwoo asked. Jooseungtae showed him the restraints he was wearing.

“It’s this.”

“The restraints?”

Jewoo carefully inspected the restraints from all angles, as if there were some hidden secret device. But there didn’t seem to be anything special. Then, Jooseungtae pointed to the wire part inside the restraints.

“They’re designed to conduct an electric current from here in case of an emergency. Just enough to knock someone out.”

“What? Really?”

“Yes. The guards and vigilantes should know about it…”

Jooseungtae glanced at the people fighting tooth and nail with the inmates and continued.

“They must be too busy to have time to say anything, and the inmates certainly wouldn’t mention it, so you probably didn’t know.”

Namgoong Sanha, flustered by the hopeful news, asked.

“Then how do you make the current flow?”

“Here.”

Jooseungtae showed them the bottom part of the restraint. Befitting a state-of-the-art restraint, it had a fingerprint recognition feature.

“If you place a guard’s fingerprint here, it will activate after 3 seconds.”

“……”

It seemed far quicker to just subdue the inmates than to grab the restraints of that many prisoners one by one and press a guard’s fingerprint on them.

“Is there another way?”

Jin Geonwoo, having judged this method to be unusable, asked again.

“Another way… If we go to the server room, we can control all the restraints. We can use the electric shock just by pressing a switch, but…”

Jooseungtae hesitated for a moment before continuing.

“The problem is, we don’t know where the server room is. Even if we get there, it’s unlikely they’ve set it up to be handled so easily. And if the server room’s machinery was also damaged by the explosion…”

“First! Let’s at least try to find it.”

Namgoong Sanha stepped forward as he said that. It seemed like the best method for now. Just then, Seo Doa shouted urgently.

“Wait, more importantly, is this person trustworthy?”

Although Namgoong Sanha vouched for him as Yigeom’s friend, Jooseungtae was a Blood Hunter. It was only natural to be suspicious of him readily sharing a way to quell the riot in this situation.

As Namgoong Sanha fretted between the two, Jooseungtae said calmly.

“It’s fine. It’s natural to be suspicious. But I only have 5 more months to serve before I’m released, and even that could be shortened for good behavior. Why would someone about to be released cause a riot and lose their good behavior points?”

“…Excuse me, how many years have you been serving?”

Jewoo, who had been quiet, asked.

“It’s been about 7 months.”

“You’ve resisted the addiction for 7 months?”

“You could say that.”

Jewoo carefully examined his skin. There were scarred areas on his body where he had likely scratched due to withdrawal symptoms, but there were no other new wounds. It meant he had overcome the thirst for blood to some extent. In that case…

“I’ll trust you!”

Jewoo declared resolutely. Because he knew better than anyone that resisting the thirst was not an easy task.

“I agree too. There’s no other way right now.”

When Jin Geonwoo also said they should follow Jooseungtae’s opinion for now, Doa hesitated before nodding as well.

“Then let’s look for the server room first. Don’t you think the guards fighting over there would know? Should I bring one over?”

“Gyeom might know too… I wonder if he’s okay on his own.”

Namgoong Sanha suddenly worried about Yigeom, who had stopped in his tracks for them, and muttered.

“Yoon Yigeom is here too?”

Jooseungtae’s ears perked up as he asked Namgoong Sanha.

“Uh… Yes. We just parted ways a moment ago…”

“…I see.”

The brief excitement at the news of a welcome friend during his imprisonment was fleeting, replaced by a slight sense of disappointment that their timing was off and they couldn’t meet. Still, this was not the time to worry about such trivial matters, so he suppressed his regret.

In the meantime, Doa and Jewoo dragged over a guard who had collapsed nearby, and Jin Geonwoo finished healing him.

“Ugh, ugh… Where…”

“Where is the server room!?”

“Sorry, but please hurry! It’s urgent!”

The guard, who had struggled to open his eyes, had no time to get his bearings and could only answer the students’ barrage of questions in a daze.

“If you go to the right from here…”

“To the right? What’s next!?”

Eventually, the guard staggered and propped himself up against the wall. He seemed to sway a few times, but after Jin Geonwoo poured another heal on him, he gradually came to his senses.

The guard clutched his throbbing head and muttered.

“The server room… Is it because of the restraints?”

“Yes! So please guide us quickly!”

“It’s no use. Several of us have already headed that way. But seeing as there’s still no news…”

“Never mind that, just guide us! Hurry!”

“…Hoo, yes. Let’s go.”

At Jewoo’s urging, the guard shambled along. Apart from regaining consciousness, the aftereffects of his injuries still made it difficult for him to support his own body.

“Get on my back!”

“…What?”

“Hurry!”

Taking advantage of the guard’s confusion, Namgoong Sanha hoisted him up with a grunt!

“Where to from here!”

“T-to the right.”

“Got it!”

Following the guard’s directions, they ran with all their might. The sounds of fighting could be heard from all sides, and the path was littered with grim signs of battle – collapsed people, blood-splattered walls, and rubble.

Only after passing all of that were they finally able to arrive in front of the server room.

Namgoong Sanha looked at the wall in front of him and asked the guard.

“Pant… pant. I-is this it? There’s nothing here?”

“Could you put me down for a moment.”

Namgoong Sanha, gasping for breath, set the guard down.

“Fortunately, it seems this area wasn’t caught in the explosion.”

Soon, he fumbled with the wall, and upon recognizing his fingerprint, a door slid open from the opposite side with a clatter. Judging by the lack of any signs of a break-in, it seemed no one had set foot inside yet. Did the guards who had gone to the server room first get caught by the inmates…

Namgoong Sanha suppressed his grim thoughts and asked the guard.

“Um… The control for the restraints can’t be handled by just anyone, right?”

“It requires the approval of the prison warden or at least three general guards.”

“Approval, meaning?”

“Fingerprint and voice recognition. It also recognizes irises, so approval won’t work with a dead body. …For the record, I am not the warden.”

At that explanation, everyone’s face hardened.

“If I knew this would happen, I should have brought a few more people from back there.”

Doa muttered under her breath, glaring at the guard for not telling them sooner. The guard then pleaded, sounding wronged.

“Bring guards in that situation? Are you going to heal a collapsed guard and carry them on your back like you did with me? Or are you going to pull out a guard who’s fighting a group of inmates?”

He had a point.

From whether Jin Geonwoo had enough energy to heal two more people in the first place, to who would carry them if needed. There were many constraints. An enemy might even appear in the meantime.

As for bringing an uninjured guard, the already small number of guards were struggling to hold back the group of inmates, so that was also impossible.

In any case, it was a better choice to bring two more guards than to search for the warden in this vast prison, but…

“I’ll go out.”

While everyone was contemplating what to do, Jooseungtae volunteered.

“I’m a fellow inmate, so they won’t be as wary of me. As soon as I find a guard, I’ll tell them to go to the server room…”

Knock, knock.

Suddenly, a knocking sound came from outside the door. As everyone held their breath, the knock sounded once more.

Knock, knock.

“It’s me. I know you’re all in there, so please open the door.”

Jooseungtae muttered his name at the familiar voice.

“…Yoon Yigeom.”

🦅࿐

“…Hey.”

Choi Baekgil kicked the limply collapsed Oh Hyunsoo with his foot.

There was no reaction. He was definitely dead.

A sudden chill ran down his spine. Oh Hyunsoo was a man who was excessively cautious, as much as he could see the future.

And that man, the one who was certain of their victory, was dead. Along with the words that the future had changed.

“……”

Choi Baekgil glared at Seo Dohyun without a word.

He was simple, but he wasn’t stupid. That bastard must have done something. He must have used that, that unknown ability of his again.

What that changed future was… for a moment, it felt like his intuition was screaming intensely.

To run away, now.

Choi Baekgil ignited his entire body in flames. His hair fluttered and was singed in places, but he couldn’t contain his anger.

‘Was I cowering before that guy again.’

He couldn’t forgive himself for being that way.

He wanted to land at least one blow on Seo Dohyun. As he thought that and charged sharply, someone blocked his path.

Consumed by rage, he could only see his target. He tried to quickly shake off the obstruction and bring his fiery fist down on Seo Dohyun, but the obstruction was tougher than expected.

Only then did a sliver of his reason return.

‘A.’

A, his whole body encased in ice with the help of the vigilantes, stubbornly rushed at him, aiming for his vital spots.

“Keuk!”

Besides that, various other powers from the vigilantes entangled him.

Truly. The vigilantes were a cockroach-like bunch who, no matter how many you killed, would crawl out from somewhere again.

He had killed so many vigilantes until now, yet not only did they appear before his eyes like this again, but he ended up being captured by a man named Seo Dohyun.

It was infuriating, and he felt pathetic, so he had spent every night whetting the blade of revenge.

So much so that the withdrawal symptoms from blood felt like nothing compared to his burning desire for vengeance.

And today, on the long-awaited day of revenge, he still couldn’t even inflict a single wound on that bastard.

‘Why? Why? Just why?’

Choi Baekgil erupted, spewing fire as if exploding. The pressure blast sent A flying backward.

Choi Baekgil’s skin slowly contorted in the flames, and before long, he had transformed into a conflagration that would devour even himself.

As befitting a group that worshiped the serpentine creature, Serra, his body began to be covered in snake scales, and his pupils slit vertically. It was creature-ization.

“Seo Dohyuuuun!!”

He finally let out a thunderous roar. His tongue, glimpsed for a moment, was forked. He was in a form that could no longer be called human.

A form somewhere between human and creature.

In that state, he leaped at Seo Dohyun unconsciously. The vigilantes used their powers to hold him back, but it was not enough.

Shaking off everything that bound him, Seo Dohyun greeted the recklessly charging Choi Baekgil with a delighted smile.

Then KWOONG! The two clashed and the ground vibrated. Dust rose like a thick fog.

‘The situation!?’

The vigilante members, coming to their senses one by one, quickly assessed the situation. Seo Dohyun was floating high in the sky. He had been swept away by the pressure blast Choi Baekgil had unleashed like an explosion, just like A.

One of the members used telekinesis to bring him safely back to the ground. He was unconscious but still breathing, covered in severe burns.

‘What about Choi Baekgil?’

When a wind user cleared the dust, Choi Baekgil was revealed, standing in the center of a deep crater.

‘…Did Choi Baekgil win.’

Just as a grim feeling set in.

“Cough!”

Choi Baekgil coughed up blood and sank to his knees.

Looking at him closely, his eyes were deeply pierced by a sword, and a small dagger was embedded in his chest. Only hot steam rose from his entire body. It meant he could no longer produce flames.

In that brief instant, Seo Dohyun had inflicted a fatal wound.

‘Good, now’s our chance…!’

Seeing the perfect opportunity to capture Choi Baekgil, the surrounding vigilante members tried to rush in, but someone blocked their path.

A member who recognized the figure muttered quietly.

“…Adam.”

The white snake insignia engraved on the back of the cloak was, without a doubt, Adam’s.

Adam’s reinforcements had arrived.

🦅࿐

“…Oppa?”

“Did you say Gyeom hyung? Qui-quickly open the door… Uh… how do you open this!?”

Jewoo fumbled in front of the numerous control buttons and called for the guard.

“Wait a minute, Jewoo-yah!”

Namgoong Sanha stopped Jewoo, then pressed himself tightly against the door and shouted.

“G-Gyeom-ah. How did you get here?”

It was a question asked with the possibility in mind that an enemy with an ability specializing in disguise had transformed into Yigeom.

“Because there’s water, of course…”

When Yigeom answered as if it were obvious, Namgoong Sanha was finally relieved.

“I see. More importantly, are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Ah… right, Gyeom-ah. We need two more guards.”

“What?”

“The restraints have an electric shock function. But we need approval to activate it…”

“I get it.”

Yigeom cut him off before he could even finish his explanation.

“Anyway, I just need to bring two more people, right?”

“Uh… uh uh? Wait! I’ll open the door first. So with us…”

“It’s okay. I’ll be back soon, so stay safe inside.”

“Gye… Gyeom-ah?”

Without any time to open the door or stop him, Yoon Yigeom’s footsteps faded away.

Clomp, clomp.

Drag.

Clomp, clomp.

Drag.

‘…What’s that dragging sound?’

As Yigeom moved away, the sound of something being dragged also grew distant. Namgoong Sanha pressed his ear against the wall, but there was no way he could hear.

He wanted to check the CCTV since it was a server room, but they were all destroyed by the explosion, showing only black screens.

“He’s gone? Gyeom hyung left? To where?”

“Well… he said he’d be back soon?”

“All by himself, that’s dangerous! Let’s follow him quickly! Guard-nim, how do you open this door to get out?”

“If you press the switch on the side…”

In the midst of the commotion, footsteps echoed from the hallway outside. Everyone fell silent in an instant.

Doa’s eyes darted around as she listened intently to the footsteps.

‘Is that Gyeom oppa?’

Clomp, clomp.

Drag.

Thud.

Clomp, clomp.