The Trap
"Uh, uh... right. Keep watching, just like that. The second you pick up anything suspicious, you call."
Inside the vehicle, Son Soo-min, captain of the mercenary team Red Moon, broke the silence.
"Looks like about seven inside. We've got the numbers for now, but nobody gets careless. Understood?"
"Yes, sir!"
Red Moon's own roster was exactly ten. Add Wi Kang-jun, the tracker, and me—the freelance hire—and the total came to twelve.
On paper, we weren't outmatched. Even so, not a single face in that vehicle looked at ease.
A clash between the Awakened could be overturned completely by a single irregular. Our side had prepared me to be that variable. Nothing guaranteed the other side hadn't done the same.
Son Soo-min knew it as well as anyone.
"Do not relax. Not for a second. Guard the Mage while we get a read on the situation, and once it settles, you move on my order. No rash action. No panic. Clear?"
"Yes, sir! Understood!"
The reply cracked through the cabin again, loud and sharp—the discipline of people who staked their lives on the work. Maybe it was because the enemy this time was human, not a monster. Either way, it sat in clear contrast to the calm of the Shield team.
After that, silence pooled in the vehicle. Only Son Soo-min's voice surfaced now and then, briefing his people in a low, steady murmur.
The vehicle drove north at speed, and the scenery whipped past. Godeok, then Hanam. The southeastern districts, once fairly prosperous, had gone musty and dim, like a photograph left too long in the sun.
"The east is already a lost cause."
Son Soo-min shook his head, eyes on the window.
"The farther out you go, the more contaminated zones there are, and they say the Contaminated are crawling all over them. It's a mercy the things don't leave their territory—but even the experts can't agree on how long that luck holds."
The contaminated eastern sector. Time and again, the government and the Hunter Association had failed to clear away the unidentified contaminant.
As the Contaminated pushed their range outward, the borderland between Gyeonggi and Gangwon had rotted into a lawless zone. Expansion east was choked off, and the axis of development swung west. Only the factories that needed vast tracts of cheap ground still bought land out here, turning out goods and shipping them on.
"Well. For us the work never runs dry, so it isn't all bad..."
Red Moon had planted itself in Seongnam for much the same reason.
It was a place where the Contaminated and the industrial complexes sat side by side in force. Safety incidents were inevitable, and fights over interests broke out often enough. Companies, as a matter of course, kept at least one mercenary outfit watching their backs. This job was no exception. The factory owner had been feeding Red Moon a steady stipend under the name of a retainer, so the moment trouble hit, Red Moon moved.
Looked at that way, the owner who'd had his goods stolen was desperate—but the mercenaries who had taken the contract were every bit as desperate.
Fail to handle a single theft cleanly, and the other factories tied to Red Moon would have no reason to keep the relationship alive.
Son Soo-min's ice-edged orders. The locked-in discipline of the company. There was a reason for all of it.
"We're almost there."
Wi Kang-jun, who had listened to the hunters with a frozen face the whole way, murmured it under his breath. Son Soo-min turned on him.
"How much farther?"
"I can't see that precisely. Only... staying in the vehicle looks dangerous."
Son Soo-min's gaze raked over him, plainly unimpressed. Nothing strange about that. A freelance tracker and nothing more was never going to satisfy a professional mercenary captain.
The vehicle stopped. The mercenaries piled out in an instant, reformed their line, and started to move.
"We'll move fast and stand ready for anything. I'll assign two of my men to you, Mage, so if you'll follow at your own—" He turned as he spoke, and a ripe curse tore out of him. "—ah, son of a bitch!"
The mercenaries, glancing back in confusion, startled just as hard.
I had already wrapped myself in the mana threads dangling from both hands. I looked at them and shrugged.
"Let's go."
Son Soo-min swallowed dry. He stared blankly at the threads for a moment, drew one long breath, then turned slowly and spoke to the subordinates who still couldn't take their eyes off me.
"Move out."
We cut fast across the forest path. While Wi Kang-jun, carried in a mercenary's arms like a child, called directions this way and that, I looped mana threads around the branches and followed.
No need to walk. Comfortable. Easy. I was starting to feel, in my bones, why people called a mage unfair.
No. Not quite. In this case, maybe it was my trait that was unfair.
"You're here, sir."
We linked up with the mercenary who had been watching the target since yesterday. Everyone gathered and hashed the operation out at speed, and, professionals to the last, they reached a conclusion almost at once.
"Team A enters with me. Team B spreads wide and cuts the escape routes. The cliff path with the gentle slope gets sealed. No exceptions. Understood?"
Meanwhile I watched the ground ahead in silence. Below a steep cliff, an abandoned factory—something that had once made things—sat alone and hollow.
The shell looked so flimsy a single decent impact would bring it down. But the exterior wasn't what mattered. Something was wrong. The feeling hit hard, and a chill slid down my spine.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Black marks: 10+
Center: ● Orange — 1
What waited inside that abandoned factory was not seven Awakened. One wounded man, unconscious and bound to a chair. And around him, ten corpses sprawled where they had died.
A trap?
I studied Wi Kang-jun. A tracker-type Awakened. An outside freelance hire—accomplice was a real possibility. But it was too soon to be sure.
The whole way here, my own tracking skill had pointed at this exact factory. I couldn't hang suspicion on him from a vague hunch alone.
Someone means to lure the mercenary team into that factory...
The reason for the lure. Maybe they meant to wipe the company out. Maybe they meant to pin a crime on them.
But how?
My detection skill swept the area. A forest teeming with life, and within the skill's limited range, nothing registered. After a moment's hesitation I pushed my mental power outward. A light dizziness came with it, and the skill raked everything inside a three-kilometer radius in an instant.
......
There. Exactly opposite us. On the far side of the abandoned factory, facing our position, a single gray dot had appeared.
I could feel his movements as clearly as if I were watching from arm's length. A hand, trembling faintly. A small object clenched in it.
A remote.
An explosion.
By then the mercenaries had finished their briefing. At a light signal from Son Soo-min he leapt for the cliff, and his team followed. The presence beyond the cliff tore its attention off me and locked onto them. The tremor in the hand holding the remote stopped. A thumb began to move, slowly.
The blast would go off the moment they entered. Should I stop the team? If I did, the man might sense something wrong and run.
Before the mercenaries reached the factory, taking him out was the best option.
What mattered was speed. And precision.
"Our job here is finished now, isn't—?"
I ignored Wi Kang-jun's voice at my back, reached into the air, and seized the Red Arrow hovering there.
"M-Mage...? What are you—?"
Red Arrow
A flame-wreathed arrow, loosed faster than the eye can follow.
I swung my arm. A single red point seemed to flicker past—and vanished beyond my sight in the same instant. An arrow of flame, moving too fast to even register, punched clean through the man's skull.
He dropped.
No time to dodge. The enemy collapsed with his head run through, and the Fire Demon that burst from the shot ground his torso to powder. I felt every last motion of it, perfectly.
His end, burning away to nothing. And the movement at my back.
Thwuck!
"Gyaaaaaaaah!!!!!"
The scream tore out almost in the same breath as the sound of something punching through. I turned and looked at Wi Kang-jun.
Before his chest, an Earthen Spear had thrust up through the ground. Beside the keen blade, something long and thin drifted in the air.
"Y-you insane—!!!!!!"
Two of Wi Kang-jun's fingers, seized by Telekinesis. Thumb and index, still clamped around something. A small, round piece of plastic. A detonator.
Wi Kang-jun's face twisted like a vengeful ghost.
"You son of a bitch!!"
He flailed, trying to snatch the detonator back. Useless. It slipped his grip, drifted lightly through the air, and dropped at my feet with a soft tap. I wanted to ask him something. The situation wouldn't allow it. My voice wouldn't come out properly.
In the end there was only one choice. Subdue him first.
Shhhhhk—
Eight hundred mana threads ringed Wi Kang-jun in an instant. His face went white. I seized the head of the man whose mouth was working, trying to speak, and drove it straight down.
At the same moment a blunt pillar of stone surged up to meet his skull.
Thud! Thud!
THUUUD!!!!
Son Soo-min reached the abandoned factory with his presence killed. Nothing stood out. He didn't feel exposed in the slightest.
He checked the interior through a gap in the outer wall. Darkness, wall to wall, and no particular movement. His brow tightened. He had expected something to be in there. He felt no sign of life at all.
A flick. Another.
At the light crook of his fingers, the team took position at a measured distance. Five of them pressed to the outer wall. On his hand signal they smashed through it and stormed inside.
BOOM!!
They were in within a heartbeat. The men searching for someone to subdue froze. The factory was empty. Not the faintest trace of a presence.
"What the—?"
Son Soo-min's eyes widened. Only then did the faint scent of blood reach him. And one thing more.
The smell of gunpowder.
"E-everyone, fall back out—"
Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.
Son Soo-min, about to pull his men clear, stopped short. A mechanical sound rolled loud from the ceiling. When he looked up, he saw the great lights coming on, one after another.
And only then did the state of the wide, abandoned factory become clear at a glance.
Corpses, sealed and strewn across the floor. A blood-soaked man bound to a chair. And piled all around him, a heap of bombs.
"Wh-what is this—!!"
"A trap."
A rough voice carried through the space. Son Soo-min's head snapped around, eyes wide. The owner of that voice was just passing through the factory entrance—the flame mage they had been introduced to at the office, approaching with hundreds of mana threads unfurled.
His finger lifted. Son Soo-min's gaze followed it up. Hundreds of mana threads writhed through the air like tentacles, and they were holding something.
None other than Wi Kang-jun. The man who had led them here.
The team's eyes turned to the Mage. In a silence that choked, he spoke.
"Open your mouth."
The mana threads flung Wi Kang-jun down hard. He coughed as if the impact had jarred him awake, and the Mage looked at him and said, voice cold,
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