Chapter 52 : I, Descend (2)
Chapter 52: I, Descend (2)
Before coming to District 28, Kang Hyunseong had called Go-eun.
To ask for help.
You'll be shocked.
But that was the answer he got in return.
As for the current Lee Taebaek... well.... How should I put it? Somewhere between composure and passion? Anyway, that's the state he's in. You don't believe me? The mission's tonight, right? Then just see for yourself.
He had no idea what she meant.
She cut off the beginning and the end of her explanation, then declared that he'd be dumbfounded.
At least he understood that she was expressing unusually high expectations for Lee Taebaek.
There had been a more subtle implication hidden in Go-eun's voice.
She wasn't the type to spout nonsense.
I'll bet you premium beef that you'll be shocked. Not cultured meat—the real thing. But if you're surprised, Kang Hyunseong, you're paying. Promise. If you don't keep it, you'll lose your di...
Kang Hyunseong found it strange.
‘I've recognized his potential from early on. But did something else happen while I was away?’
Everyone who had experienced Lee Taebaek firsthand praised his potential.
Lee Taebaek was extraordinary.
He would undoubtedly reach the realm of a true master.
Everyone who knew him believed that without question.
But...
‘...Even so, it'll take at least a few years.’
Even if Go-eun personally taught him magic, Kang Hyunseong had estimated it would take a full year before Lee Taebaek could practically wield it.
Even those blessed by the heavens.
Even geniuses.
They all had to go through the proper process.
Well, once every few centuries, someone appeared who completely ignored that process.
The kind who reduced even the greatest geniuses of the age into ordinary people.
Flash—
The lights came on throughout the long, narrow corridor, cutting off Kang Hyunseong's thoughts as well.
The sudden brightness made him frown before his eyes widened.
“Huh.”
The corridor was, quite literally, horrific.
The floor and walls were stained crimson.
Blood was spreading through the gaps between the tiles like branching streams.
Chunks of flesh clung to the walls.
Just looking at them made his eyes feel as though they were burning red.
Corpses were strewn across the floor.
Every one of them had pale, bloodless skin, with icicles hanging from their nostrils.
Kang Hyunseong stared down at the dead in astonishment.
Lee Taebaek twisted his blade free from another corpse.
“Let's go.”
Lee Taebaek turned his back as he spoke.
His breath trailed out in a long white plume.
Kang Hyunseong nodded absentmindedly.
“R-right. Yeah.”
“With Ice Magic, at the very least, every electrical wire running through this corridor should be frozen.”
“......”
Kang Hyunseong's astonishment became unmistakable.
His thoughts were bleached white, just like the corpses before him.
Ice Magic had been lost along with the downfall of the North Sea Ice Palace, an organization that had stood outside the established Martial World.
Countless mages had attempted to restore it.
Every attempt had failed.
Now and then, a few people claimed to imitate it, but at best, they produced results comparable to an ice machine at a shaved-ice shop.
Even so, mages never stopped pursuing Ice Magic.
To them, it was an obsession.
‘The reason those cursed mages are so desperate for it.’
Among all elemental magic, only Ice Magic possessed crowd-control abilities.
Its destructive power was far inferior to the other elements.
Practically nonexistent.
However, the moment it possessed crowd-control, all those shortcomings became meaningless.
Since no one had ever witnessed the genuine article, its absurd performance had remained impossible to verify.
But...
Lee Taebaek proved it with his own body.
He immobilized the enemy.
Using that advantage, he seized favorable positions and slaughtered them in an instant.
Once their bodies froze, they couldn't even resist.
Not only did he immobilize them with ice—
He even stopped bullets in mid-flight.
“The CCTV won't be working for a while. By the time the Central Control Room checks it, we'll already be long gone.”
Ice Magic alone was enough to leave him speechless...
Yet the precision with which Lee Taebaek used it shocked him even more.
He paralyzed radio transmissions?
Good grief.
Where the hell had game balance gone?
“The left?”
“...Yeah.”
Prompted by Lee Taebaek, Kang Hyunseong moved.
Still glancing repeatedly at the corpses, he followed behind.
‘Which one of us is the Battalion Commander?’
Still...
It didn't feel all that bad.
“This one's mine.”
Whenever enemies appeared in a wide corridor, Kang Hyunseong took the lead.
Whenever the passage became narrow or twisted, it was Lee Taebaek's turn.
“How many?”
“Two.”
“Let's finish them quickly.”
The process went like this.
The instant before encountering the enemy, Kang Hyunseong signaled with his eyes after detecting their presence.
Lee Taebaek cast his magic.
The force field extending from his fingertips spread across the corridor.
【Cooling】
Power cut.
Thrown into sudden darkness, Magno-Strom would hurriedly activate their infrared cameras.
During that brief opening, one of them eliminated the confused enemies.
Whooom!
Kang Hyunseong's arm whipped through the darkness.
The gangster's neck snapped backward after taking an elbow to the throat.
“Fu-uuck! Where are they?! Whe—”
Fragments of the dead man's teeth flew into the face of the nearby gangster.
Before he even had time to react, Lee Taebaek thrust forward with his blade.
[The Administrator buffs the Operator's Agility.]
[The Administrator buffs the Operator's Strength.]
The sharp blade swept past Kang Hyunseong's ear.
It sliced through the enemy's carotid artery.
Blood erupted.
“R-report to the boss...!”
Trying to scream?
Trying to use the radio?
【Flash Freeze】
Lee Taebaek's magic only needed to seal their mouths shut.
The corridor never had the chance to descend into chaos.
Crack!
Slash!
The gangsters died without ever realizing what had happened.
The lingering cold swallowed even their final death rattles.
This round had taken twenty seconds.
An instant.
Even that time was steadily decreasing.
“Nicely done.”
“Complimenting someone after they kill people? Anyway, how much farther until we reach the Ten Gang Alliance's leader?”
Thanks to that, everything progressed far faster than expected.
In other words, they were almost at their destination.
“Just two more corners. Rock's monitoring everything in real time and updating us over the radio. Our progress is so fast that they've started hiccupping. First time I've ever heard them do that.”
“That's actually kind of cute.”
“Want me to tell Rock you said that?”
“Fuck off.”
“Why can't your personality match your face? Are all Siesta Enforcer Hounds as foul-mouthed as you?”
“You never know when you're gonna die, so you might as well say whatever you want.”
“That's quite the excuse.”
“Enough chatting. Let's move.”
This was the first time they had ever fought together.
Even so, things were going so smoothly that it almost felt wrong.
That was why they could afford to exchange such meaningless banter.
While running, Kang Hyunseong glanced sideways.
Lee Taebaek was running right beside him.
Kang Hyunseong ranked among the fastest members of the Resistance.
Yet Lee Taebaek followed him effortlessly.
He even looked bored.
His pride took a slight hit, so he increased his speed.
It lasted only a moment.
Lee Taebaek lightly overtook him.
‘Feels like only yesterday he was getting beaten with clubs by the prison guards in the Brain Prison.’
In reality...
It really hadn't been that long.
‘Has it even been two months?’
What kind of insane growth rate was this?
His growth was even more shocking than the speed at which he was running.
“...Why do you keep staring at me? You've got a girlfriend, you know. Creepy bastard.”
Feeling the gaze, Lee Taebaek threw out the remark.
Drops of sweat flew from his hair.
‘What a face. Like the world revolves around him.’
Skill.
Looks.
There wasn't a single flaw.
Now he was starting to become annoying.
Kang Hyunseong let out a quiet laugh.
Seeing that, Lee Taebaek instinctively widened the distance between them.
“Kang Hyunseong, don't tell me... No. That can't be it. I never wrote that setting...”
“What the hell are you talking about? What setting?”
“Never mind. Anyway, why do you keep looking at me? If it's because my face is covered in blood, just think of it as camouflage paint. We're on an infiltration mission.”
Apparently, he meant it as a joke.
It was terrible.
Even Lee Taebaek's Ice Magic felt warmer.
“I'm just bitter. Bitter because this world is fucking unfair. At this point, I can't help wondering if maybe not just the Solar System, but the entire universe revolves around you.”
“Tell me about it.”
Kang Hyunseong had merely complained without thinking.
Lee Taebaek, however, answered with surprising seriousness.
“Lately, my luck's been way too good. Almost excessively so. Sometimes... I even feel like the world moves exactly the way I say it should.”
“Isn't that taking it a bit too far?”
“Yeah.”
Lee Taebaek chuckled.
“You're right. That's way too much. If that were true, it wouldn't make sense that I was a death row inmate.”
“You're ridiculous.”
Kang Hyunseong looked forward again.
Silence lingered briefly.
Then, after a while, he spoke again.
“Just asking out of curiosity. This operation... how many people do you think are going to die? I mean, on the Resistance's side.”
“Fuck. That's a death flag.”
“I know! I said I'm just asking!”
“I'm kidding. Why are you getting so worked up?”
Your sense of humor is garbage, asshole!
Just as Kang Hyunseong was about to add something—
“You asked the wrong question.”
Lee Taebaek interrupted first.
“You shouldn't have asked how many of us are going to die.”
“You should've asked how many of the enemy are going to die.”
“What...?”
“We're all going to live.”
He said it with complete certainty.
“Then the enemy?”
“They all have to die.”
He knew it was unreasonable.
But—
“It's the War on Crime.”
Kang Hyunseong found it absurd.
Yet at the same time, something around his heart stirred.
He found himself encouraged as well.
[The Administrator buffs the Operator's Mental Strength.]
[The Administrator buffs the Operator's Faith.]
It was all thanks to his remarkable subordinate.
[＃1 Small-Scale] 1.8.6 Patch Notes
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They had arrived at their destination.
Unlike the heavily guarded exterior of the building, the innermost area was strangely quiet.
Wondering if it was a trap, Kang Hyunseong expanded his Presence Detection.
There really wasn't anyone else.
“Hm. I only sense people inside that room. Probably Levi and two or three of their lackeys.”
Kang Hyunseong said while staring at the door.
As a side note, “Levi” was the leader of the Ten Gang Alliance.
She had a cute name, but an utterly vicious personality.
“What kind of person is Levi?”
Lee Taebaek asked, wanting to verify it.
Just in case his knowledge differed.
“A crazy bitch.”
“I already knew that.”
“She's even crazier than people think. The reason the Supreme Commander usually leaves the Ten Gang Alliance alone, even when they stir up trouble, is honestly because of that woman.”
Kang Hyunseong let out a bitter smile.
“He said it once before. ‘Just because a mad dog bites people doesn't mean people should bite it back.’ If even the Supreme Commander—a collector of madmen—said that, then that tells you everything. Unless you kill that bitch, she'll keep coming after you forever. She's one stubborn psycho.”
As he spoke, he slowly approached the door.
Lee Taebaek followed.
The two of them took positions on either side of the entrance like guardian statues protecting a temple.
“How strong is she?”
“Honestly, the two of us aren't even necessary. She's the type that belongs more in the category of lunatic than powerhouse. The problem is that she's so insane it's impossible to predict what she'll do. Since we've made it this far, capturing her is practically guaranteed, so don't worry.”
That ended their conversation.
Kang Hyunseong pointed at the door with his thumb.
Lee Taebaek nodded.
Their presence remained concealed—
Creeeak—
At that moment, the hinges screamed.
The door began splitting apart along the grain of the wood.
Boom!
A deafening explosion rang out as the door flew away into the distance.
The impact was so tremendous that the air itself trembled.
Their surprise lasted only an instant.
Rumble...!
Soon, they saw what had emerged.
A figure pushing through the cloud of dust.
Reflected across its sleek surface were the curved images of two men.
The leader of the Ten Gang Alliance, Levi...
And her beloved mount, Red Hare.
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◈ Main Patch
• The Massacre Ending is now guaranteed.
• Those with the ‘Identity: Gang’ cannot survive.
〉〉 Auto Saving....
〉〉 Applying Patch.