Chapter 166 : Repetition of the Past
Chapter 166: Repetition of the Past
Though it would normally burn intensely while maintaining a firm core, now even that was gone. It simply spread out as if to consume everything within range.
Within it were emotions: fury at being unable to return, self-mockery at having been brought back without permission, confusion caused by Kim Youngjun, all contained intact.
The profanity he spat out inwardly, which no one could hear, was also an expression of such complex feelings.
“···?”
As the CCTVs went out one by one, was he trying to check the external situation?
One armed guard inside the building opened the door and poked his head out slightly, which was an incredibly unfortunate decision for him.
He had essentially walked into the maw of a monster eager to smash anyone to resolve the emotions swirling within himself.
Crack!
Baek Woohyun didn’t give the armed guard even a moment to discover him and react. He immediately grabbed the head with telekinesis and twisted it in one motion.
With a chilling sound, the armed guard’s head turned beyond the limits of human joint mobility, and he collapsed with his hand still gripping the doorknob.
It was a vain sight, hard to believe that a human life had disappeared.
“Wha···! What’s happ···ing?!”
“He fell···! His, his neck is twist···ed!”
“”Attack! We’re under attack!””
The other armed guards inside the building who witnessed their colleague’s death shouted noisily. Their voices were loud enough for even Baek Woohyun, still quite distant, to hear.
Then, in the telekinetic ripple Baek Woohyun had spread, busy movements were detected. They seemed to be running around frantically to respond to the emergency situation.
Surely, if just a brief moment more were given to them, the building would become thoroughly fortified.
“······.”
Of course, Baek Woohyun wasn’t one to just watch that happen.
Still wrapped in blazing transparent flames, he took a bold step forward.
Simultaneously, the telekinetic ripple extending from him swept through the building interior again, identifying all the armed guards deployed in external security positions.
And that meant the lives and deaths of everyone currently on the building’s ground floor were now in his hands.
‘All of them.’
Baek Woohyun’s eyes scattered an eerie ash-gray light.
It was a terrifying gaze that made observers not even dare to think of meeting it.
One that only a grim reaper who had taken hundreds, thousands of lives with his own hands could reveal.
‘Die.’
──!
An overwhelming manifestation of supernatural ability achieved in an instant!
The slight modification that occurred in the telekinetic ripple that had completely dominated the building interior came to the armed guards as an inescapable disaster.
How could they, ordinary people, avoid invisible nooses placed around their necks that hanged them at their master’s whim?
Even Awakeners with supernatural ability resistance would find it difficult.
However, this was merely a misfortune based on the fact that their opponent was Baek Woohyun.
If they had asked other telekinetic ability Awakeners to kill all enemies inside the building using the same method, they would have dismissed it as nonsense.
They would say it was easier to just collapse the entire building, that it was impossible to individually track and snap the necks of enemies inside.
“······.”
In any case, with all enemies blocking entry now gone, Baek Woohyun’s steps didn’t stop.
Far from hiding, he boldly reached the front of the building and stepped inside safely, stepping over the corpse of the enemy he had killed first.
“Wow, that’s impressive?”
At the same time, Kim Youngjun, who had appeared beside him at some point, let out an exclamation of admiration. He even gave Baek Woohyun a thumbs up.
Even to him, who had rich combat experience from fighting the research facility and Corporate Alliance for so long, the current scene was naturally admirable.
There’s a saying, “You see as much as you know,” isn’t there? Having fought numerous Awakeners, he could better appreciate Baek Woohyun’s strength.
“I guessed you’d be pretty good, but I didn’t know you’d be this strong.”
“Well, that’s why you brazenly rammed into a corporation, right?” Kim Youngjun added, shaking his head. His expression said he couldn’t possibly match that.
He even shrugged his shoulders with a joke about how an untouchable outcast pig like himself would just follow along.
However, Baek Woohyun, who had seen him from ‘that side,’ could guarantee he hadn’t just been idle either. He must have done something else besides the CCTVs.
In fact, the quiet state of the underground research facility side, while all the armed guards on the ground floor were dead, proved this.
“······.”
As Kim Youngjun from ‘Reverse Planet’ acted more similarly to Kim Youngjun from ‘that side,’ Baek Woohyun’s expression only hardened.
It created unwelcome emotional comrades for him, who couldn’t cleanly cut off the idea that NPCs were just others, remaining clumsily cold.
Forcibly suppressing the urge to ask if he didn’t remember him, he bit his lips.
“I found a secret passage leading to the underground research facility. Should we go that way?”
“No.”
Baek Woohyun answered briefly, deliberately not giving Kim Youngjun his gaze.
His two eyes looking down at the marble floor emitted an eerie ash-gray light again. It was the same scene as when he manifested his ability inside the building.
The transparent flames that had quietly subsided also blazed up with tremendous force as if asking ‘when was that?’, causing Kim Youngjun to stealthily step back to take cover.
“I’m going straight through.”
Crack!
“Oh···! That’s no joke!”
Like the floor of Geumshin Electronics’ office building, this building’s floor couldn’t withstand Baek Woohyun’s supernatural ability. In fact, it would have been the same for any building.
With the build nearly 80 percent complete, plus the power of supernatural ability techniques enhanced by various equipment was devastatingly strong.
Soon he’d be able to crush entire 4-story buildings like this one wholesale, so what was the big deal about tearing up a floor?
Besides, the one handling the ability was none other than Baek Woohyun.
There was nothing to be done when he, who once reigned as terror in the research facility under the name ‘Annihilation,’ gritted his teeth and gave his all.
To put it bluntly, if he wasn’t trying to obtain materials from inside the research facility, he could even collapse the building itself to bury the underground.
“Whoop!”
Kim Youngjun jumped into the hole revealing all the way to the underground one step ahead of Baek Woohyun. His movements were very light.
Even though they didn’t yet know what might be lurking below. That meant he was that confident in his skills.
Or it could be because he had consistently served as a scout until now.
“······.”
“······.”
Kim Youngjun, who landed lightly, followed by Baek Woohyun, and researchers with shocked expressions faced each other.
After a brief silence, as Kim Youngjun shrugged his shoulders and silently drew his dagger, the researchers belatedly let out cries like screams.
“Int, intruders! Intruders! Call the Etinel users!”
“What the hell were the guards doing to let intruders in so openly?!”
“Hm.”
Slash!
Kim Youngjun’s dagger, swung like lightning, slashed through one researcher’s throat. It was a speed the weak researcher couldn’t even react to properly.
Blood poured out from the split wound, and the researcher who had clutched his throat with a deathly pale face soon collapsed onto a puddle made of his own blood.
It was indeed a clean skill befitting the master who had taught Baek Woohyun how to handle daggers.
“···You actually killed him?”
“Crazy! Run! He’s a murderer!”
“Whenever this happens, I just can’t feel like these bastards are the same kind of people as me.”
Kim Youngjun spoke while watching the researchers frantically attempting to flee.
Perhaps because he had just ended a life with his own hands, his eyes glistened with thick killing intent.
Even the smile formed on his lips, combined with that, was simply chilling.
“Actually killed, murderer, what the hell are they talking about?”
Kim Youngjun, who shrugged as if dumbfounded, lightly kicked the dead researcher’s corpse with his foot.
“What they did to us is several times more terrible than this. ─Right?”
The moment Kim Youngjun turned around asking the question, Baek Woohyun’s mind went to the distant past. To that time from ‘that side’ when he met Kim Youngjun and was tested.
Though the detailed situation and surrounding environment might have been slightly different, the Kim Youngjun of that time had also asked Baek Woohyun the same question.
The words about not feeling like researchers without even awareness of committing terrible acts were the same people as himself were identical, not a single syllable different.
That fact made this moment feel like a repetition of the past to Baek Woohyun.
‘···Damn.’
It was a remarkably terrible feeling, so Baek Woohyun spat out profanity inwardly again.
At this rate, he thought it might have been better to avoid his old comrades in ‘Reverse Planet’ forever.
If he had, at least he, who had been wandering between ‘this side’ and ‘that side’ and barely tilting toward one side, wouldn’t have felt like this.
“······.”
Whoooosh-!
What Baek Woohyun chose instead of answering Kim Youngjun’s question was the manifestation of his ability.
He reached toward the researchers struggling to escape from this place, not knowing he had kept them locked in with the doors closed, then clenched strongly.
The intense force that even tore up the building’s floor whole turned toward their soft, squishy bodies, and the result was obvious.
Crack!
Five or six people were crushed on the spot in an instant. A perfect compression where not even blood could seep out.
It was truly a natural result, as Baek Woohyun’s ability, which compressed even space when reaching extremes to artificially create black holes, was at work.
The moment they faced him at close range, the researchers were already as good as dead.
“They became like meatballs. If my friend who died similarly had seen this, he would have liked it, calling it revenge.”
“······.”
“Well, anyway. I’ll go extract some materials from the research facility side now, so can I ask you to clean up?”
“Yeah.”
Baek Woohyun answered, thinking that would be better. He no longer had confidence he could maintain composure while looking at Kim Youngjun’s face.
Soon, just like when he left to smash CCTVs, Kim Youngjun disappeared smoothly from his spot, and Baek Woohyun, left alone, let out a deep sigh.
Kim Youngjun must have chatted this way and that to build rapport with someone who would become a comrade, but to him it only felt like a reverse effect.
Because his mind, constantly being pulled toward ‘that side,’ toward the past, regarded Kim Youngjun from ‘Reverse Planet’ as fake and pushed him away further.
“······.”
In Baek Woohyun’s ash-gray eyes that had become heavily clouded, the image of the real Kim Youngjun watching him as a specter suddenly appeared.
Though he from ‘that side,’ who had stayed with him until the end, surely hadn’t died, why was he here with him like the other specters?
The answer to the question he couldn’t know before suddenly came to him, perhaps because he was alone.
‘Because I thought he was dead.’
If you can’t see someone again no matter how much you want to, how is that different from them being dead?
Baek Woohyun, who while conversing with Kim Youngjun from ‘Reverse Planet’ realized anew the fact that he couldn’t return to ‘that side,’ ended up thinking that way.
That was a specter—no, a phantom—born from his perception. It was also evidence proving his somehow broken mind.
“······.”
Baek Woohyun, standing among the specters that had increased more than before, looked down at his hands for a moment, then slowly moved his steps.
***
The encounter with Kim Youngjun that started with a surprise attack.
The invitation to join the test subject group.
And even the underground research facility raid.
Before the story that drove forward like cutting through chaos, the studio panel and viewers were deeply immersed.
Except for one person—Jeong Nayeon.
‘Something’s strange.’