An Age of Chaos
There was a standard for strength.
The standard varied from person to person, but at least for Choi Hyun-seok, it was simple and clear.
To know himself exactly.
That was why he liked the phrase know thyself.
The maxim carved into the pillars of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, made famous by Socrates.
It was said Socrates had used those words to mean that once a man understood the limits of his own ignorance, he should go forth in search of truth anew.
Well, people were always free to interpret a sentence as they pleased, but at the very least, Choi Hyun-seok had never taken it that way.
He took the words at face value and kept them etched in his heart.
Only when I know myself properly, inside and out, can I fix my flaws, prepare for what’s coming, and grow stronger.
Choi Hyun-seok analyzed himself, piece by piece.
What was weak, what was lacking, what could be made into an advantage.
That was how he learned to hide the weaknesses that might otherwise show.
When he brought the bureaucrats under his influence, he cultivated enough charisma that none of them would dare challenge his authority.
Little by little, he filled in the gaps.
But that alone wasn’t enough.
It wasn’t something he could solve through effort.
Raw talent. Choi Hyun-seok had always believed he possessed a fair share of skill, but Meteor was different.
He had the right amount of pride, and the right amount of weakness.
There were even things that could be used against him, things that could be held over his head.
And yet, rather than exploit that, Choi Hyun-seok had somehow ended up meeting him on equal footing.
He had wanted to treat them as equals while quietly gaining the upper hand beneath that surface, but with him, that had been impossible.
Yoo Sung-jun is far too unusual.
That was the problem.
Or to put it another way, because he was an irreplaceable man, even the smallest opening he showed became a gap no one could ever pry open.
The only player who could raise the success rate of the Muaz subjugation operation more than anyone else.
An irreplaceable existence even in this middle subjugation campaign.
His already extraordinary adaptability and combat ability were what supported that uniqueness.
That was why he had become an utterly unreachable being, and the only person Choi Hyun-seok had never been able to control.
Still, I learned a lot from him.
Choi Hyun-seok accepted that fact calmly and kept spending time with Yoo Sung-jun.
He stayed at his side, observing him, searching for things he could apply to himself.
Even now, Choi Hyun-seok still didn’t know himself completely.
There was surely some hidden talent buried inside him that he had not yet uncovered.
He worked relentlessly to find it.
And Yoo Sung-jun, perhaps without even realizing it, had played the role of a good teacher for him.
How to use one’s nature correctly. The relationship between one’s nature and one’s conviction.
He had caught hold of a few clues.
Now, to yank on those clues hard enough to pull out an answer and take it in his hands, he needed a few things prepared first.
How to use one’s nature. Calm.
He needed to understand both.
But he never managed to figure them out before the day of the middle subjugation dawned.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
"Heh, you figured it out? Figured what out? That I’m the real one? No? I’m not the real one, you know."
A hole gaped in the chest.
He saw someone staggering backward, pressing down on it to stop the bleeding.
At least, that was how it appeared in Choi Hyun-seok’s blurred vision.
Another of those fanatics vanished before his eyes.
Thinking of the storm of attacks that would come crashing down on him next, Choi Hyun-seok checked the condition of his body.
His whole body ached.
A thick metallic taste coated his mouth.
He glanced at the awl he had pulled back out after so long.
The tip was a little dulled from blocking scythes, stabbing, and slashing.
We’re about on the same level.
The bastard, one of Evolve’s followers, wasn’t that strong.
That had been true even when they came at him in numbers.
It was strange. He should never have been able to detect them, and yet, even without seeing them, his body had moved.
Strange indeed.
Because I wasn’t reading it through touch, but through the prelude.
Choi Hyun-seok’s wave detection was a talent rooted in sensation.
The breathing of a target, its heartbeat, its movements, and so on.
Even the faintest, most trivial stirring became vibration, and vibration gave birth to waves.
But the bastard had evaded that.
Anti-Sense. The Omega Suit’s power to absolutely evade detection abilities had been more than enough to drive Choi Hyun-seok into a corner like this.
It was no different from meeting a natural enemy.
The situation was desperate, but Choi Hyun-seok remained calm.
In fact, he saw it as an opportunity.
If Sung-jun were here, how would he break through this?
He kept asking himself the question.
He kept substituting Yoo Sung-jun into the equation.
If it were him. If it were his ability, his nature, his talent…
How would he have executed this fanatic?
Shwaaik!
Even as his body dragged with exhaustion, his mind raced, and a slicing wind sounded through the air.
Yes, he heard it, and lifted the awl.
This wasn’t something he accomplished purely through heightened physical senses.
I can hear it.
He was using his nature.
Choi Hyun-seok’s wave detection had three applications.
But none of them were useful in this situation.
What he needed now wasn’t an application, but a way to use it.
He turned his head. A scythe grazed past by the width of a sheet of paper, scraping his visor.
Nanoparticles flew, and nothing caught on his exposed cheek.
He wasn’t affected by Anti-Sense, and he hadn’t used his nature externally.
Yes, externally.
Turn it inward.
Choi Hyun-seok used wave detection to observe himself.
More precisely, he focused on one of the human body’s most vital organs: the heart, which beat more than a hundred thousand times a day.
The vibration born from the pounding heart became a wave.
The waves flowing out through his body spread in all directions.
If there had been nothing around him, the waves would have struck the nearest left wall first and rebounded from there.
But the first point where the wave returned was not the wall to his left, nor his own back near it, but the right Achilles tendon.
Ka-bang!
Looks like even he hadn’t expected Choi Hyun-seok to kick out with his foot.
With a heavy impact, he heard a body go tumbling.
But that wasn’t enough.
He had to go further.
The fanatic from a moment ago. That bastard was the real one.
He had to identify the real one.
He couldn’t let himself be worn down, trapped by these split-off imitation dolls.
Now that he knew how to deal with them, it was time to move.
Thump.
The heart, kicked up to its limits, brought back information.
Right shoulder. Straight ahead, solar plexus. Crown of the head.
Pak-pak-pak! Knowing the exact points, deflecting them was easy as pie.
He knocked them away with the awl, then stabbed.
The three ripping sounds came almost at once.
The nanoparticles cloaking the bodies of the fallen figures scattered.
The black dust quickly turned transparent and disappeared.
It was heading for the main body. To the right.
Choi Hyun-seok opened his mouth.
"You know why I named the clan Blood Rain?"
No answer came.
He hadn’t expected one anyway. That woman was just looking for a chance to assassinate him; he didn’t expect a reply.
Still, he kept talking. Whether the other side could see him or not didn’t matter—conversation stirred the mind of whoever was listening.
"There was this one day. I was clearing a mission alone when I ran into some PK players, probably."
When a scythe aimed for his temple, he swept the awl around.
The area near the grip knocked the blade aside.
The awl in his other hand moved like a snake climbing a tree, arcing violently.
The fragmented copies were too rigid to stop that irregular motion.
They couldn’t adapt.
Thwip!
The sensation was vivid, that feeling of flesh being split, bone pierced, and the inner organs reached at last.
Before he had time to savor the sensation traveling up through his hand, Choi Hyun-seok moved again.
Fuck.
He had only ever felt this kind of bastard sensation in a game; that was enough.
It was an awl he had never dared use in reality, precisely because he didn’t want to experience it for himself.
But in a situation like this, the weapon he knew best was still the awl.
So he swung it. He counterattacked, one by one, against the waves he felt at close range.
Even then, he didn’t stop talking.
"They were vicious bastards who liked to ambush people from the air. They’d hide themselves and wait until the player finished the mission and was completely wiped out."
His breath was climbing all the way to the back of his throat.
He wanted to collapse right now and just enjoy the comfort of it.
"They don’t give you a second to breathe. They send in the weakest guy first to test the waters. To them it’s just that—testing the waters—but to me, it was enough to drain me dry."
He kept stabbing. Puk, puk, puk, puk. Every weapon was ruined, so he made use of the awl, the only thing left.
"I stabbed him until he died. The human body’s surprisingly fragile, you know. And this is supposed to be the most realistic game of all. Touch a major blood vessel or a nerve, and they just go down."
Like your copies do.
Choi Hyun-seok wiped the blood splashed on his visor and scanned the corridor.
He could see the dull, unfocused pupils of the clones.
Blood from their bodies had stained the hallway red.
He smirked and drove the awl upward from below.
Kwaaang! Sparks flew beyond the explosion. They settled into the air.
Choi Hyun-seok’s awl shot toward the place where the sparks had fallen faster than ever before.
Then, just as it seemed about to pierce that spot, it suddenly dipped downward.
The blurred figure moved at the sudden strike aimed not at the front, but from below. It had slipped the attack with fluid grace.
There.
This one was different from the usual split-off beings that couldn’t cope with change.
Choi Hyun-seok deliberately quickened his breathing.
It was the perfect way to raise his pulse.
The heart beating even more violently sent waves even faster.
It turned Choi Hyun-seok into a walking radar.
It showed the real one’s movement route with perfect clarity.
"Once I’d taken them down one by one, I eventually reached the end of it. I met the leader of the PK group."
Remembering how he had first come up with the clan’s name, Choi Hyun-seok let out a low chuckle.
But all of this had been deliberate.
Calm. The mindset he had always kept in his heart was making him cold and clear in this moment.
"That bastard’s final airborne assault began. The high-elastic rope woven from steel wire started twisting from the middle."
And that was how he ended up getting bitten by his own heels, trusting only his comrades and his equipment.
"What a ridiculous sight, dangling right in front of my face. He was screeching above my head, so… I swung."
He flicked the awl. He ducked, and two scythes sliced past over his head out of sync.
"The blood. It poured down. More than you’d ever imagine could come from a human body. It looked like rain."
When he first founded the clan, Choi Hyun-seok had wanted a name that sounded as imposing as possible.
That scene was still burned deep into his brain. Blood Rain.
So.
"I’ll kill you the same way."
"That’s my line!"
The fanatic who broke the silence rushed him.
The exposed Omega Suit shimmered pitifully.
It looked like the power supply had run dry.
The same seemed true of the other clones.
They seized every direction and swung their scythes.
Their attacks came all at once, but now he could see them.
And Anti-Sense… was gone.
"I feel like I can breathe again."
The hair on Choi Hyun-seok’s skin stood on end.
In an instant, that change brought his third application into being.
The result of spending hundreds of thousands of points to buy Death Spoil’s brain.
Precise detection. The spread of the waves he felt became finely woven, dense.
Even the tiniest waves, far beyond anything he had normally been able to perceive, now registered clearly on the fine hairs of his body, on his skin.
At the same time, an enormous wave of fatigue crashed over him.
I have to end this here.
Choi Hyun-seok felt it immediately—this was his best chance.
If he couldn’t finish it here, there would be no next time.
He thrust the gun he was holding forward.
"What are you trying to do, shoving in a gun you already used up cutting the corridor with!"
So she knew too. Kagagak! A scythe sliced horizontally across the muzzle and came in.
He let the attacks that surged at him from all sides slip past with the minimum movement possible.
The dizziness from fatigue made the world spin before his eyes.
Still, one line came out without difficulty.
"Do you really think so?"
"What?"
Her face, wet with confusion, came into view.
Before her scythe could fully cleave through the muzzle, he pulled the trigger.
Through the gun barrel, in the chamber staining red, the Auxiliary Bishop Amia’s eyes widened.
She tried to twist the gun’s aim using the scythe in her other hand.
The combat sense is impressive, but I’ve won.
The penetrating wound had long since healed. The direction of the weapon still charged with killing intent was straight and true.
So everything would be decided in this one exchange.
And yet, what was it? This unease.
The red glow in the chamber began to fade.
At the same time, a mocking word spilled from Choi Hyun-seok’s crooked mouth.
"Bluff."
"You bastard…!"
Choi Hyun-seok let go of the gun.
At the same time, the awl he had so cleverly hidden shot forward.
Exactly where the two scythes crossed against the muzzle.
Cold sweat ran down Amia’s back as she realized her mistake.
Had he calculated all of this and acted accordingly?
As the remaining awl flew toward her heart, Amia felt a chill of horror.
So she twisted her body at the last instant, and the awl…
Thuk!
…pierced her heart вместе with the sacred object she had kept tucked against her chest.