The Age of Chaos
Jeyca had been drunk on happy fantasies until just a few hours ago.
Today was finally the day she would introduce Sung-jun to her father, Tomy, and her mother, Sharen.
"At this point, Chef should be satisfied too."
She had even cleaned everything until it shone, pleased with herself.
She’d finished all the guest-prep cleaning, every corner of the house scrubbed and tidied.
Since Sung-jun had even invited Chef for this occasion, she’d worked hard to scour the kitchen until not a trace of grease remained.
Looking at the neatly organized home, Jeyca felt a little swell of pride for no real reason.
All she had to do now was serve a lovely meal here and introduce Sung-jun to her parents. Perfect.
This was the man who had helped cure her terminal illness, the man she was so grateful to, the leader of the party.
She’d tell them not to worry, because she was together with someone this wonderful and strong.
That was what she was going to say.
"Mom and Dad really are over the top."
Jeyca’s parents had left the residence before she could even stop them.
They said they couldn’t possibly greet the benefactor who had cured their only daughter’s incurable illness with empty hands.
Without a doubt, they were probably busily wrapping up gifts in the shopping district right now.
Just imagining it was enough to make her happy.
The look on Sung-jun’s face when he was overwhelmed by their barrage of presents would be quite a sight.
"Then what should I do to surprise Oppa?"
Jeyca’s gaze moved from her room to the living room.
The VIP residence was a luxurious place with two rooms, a living room, and a kitchen.
Compared with the tent city of the temporary housing area, it was no exaggeration to say it was like heaven and earth.
Since the VIP residence had been created by remodeling the airport’s international and domestic terminal buildings, life here wasn’t especially inconvenient.
But the scenery outside the window was, in all honesty, far from good.
Runways, surrounding rice fields, and even the rough, uneven ground were packed with tents.
The faces of the people moving through that place were filled not with happiness, but with vague fear and suffocation.
"Everyone came here because they wanted to survive, but they look like they’re having an even harder time living."
Jeyca liked the clean sunlight that streamed in through the window, but once life for the people outside became more difficult, she stopped basking in it.
She didn’t want to open the curtains on purpose and face their misery.
Well, among the residents of the VIP area, there were probably people who looked at that scene and felt superior.
She just felt sorry for them.
They were people trembling in fear of some calamity they had never asked for, a disaster that might descend on them at any moment.
Their lives must already have been hell, day after day.
I was lucky.
By becoming Yoo Sung-jun’s party member, Jeyca had become one of the key figures in the bunker’s recapture.
And as her reward, she had gained the right to live in the VIP residence.
So Jeyca thought she was incredibly lucky.
It wasn’t as if she had played Another Earth because she’d known a day like this would come, or thrown herself into a reckless mission just to meet Yoo Sung-jun.
She had simply gotten the best possible result from the things she’d done for herself.
Maybe that was why.
I’m a little... scared.
How long could this luck keep going?
And if that luck ever came to an end, what kind of misfortune would be waiting for her then?
The very fact that good fortune kept piling up was making her anxious.
Maybe that was why she’d been trying even harder to act brighter than usual all this time, just to shake the feeling off.
But Jeyca didn’t want anyone else to know about the uneasy thoughts lurking in her chest.
So today, too, she intended to act the same way.
After all, this was a monumental occasion—introducing Sung-jun.
Then why aren’t they back yet?
Before she knew it, she had been sitting blankly on the living room sofa, sipping tea, and time had slipped away from her.
Jeyca sprang up from the sofa and headed for the door.
She was thinking of going out to find her parents herself and bring them back.
And just as her hand closed around the doorknob—
KWAANG!
The explosion shook the airport building.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
The airport was vast.
That was only natural, since dozens of airplanes had to come and go, carrying and storing hundreds of passengers.
But to Yoo Sung-jun, it was cramped.
The airport felt painfully small when measured against the heightened senses granted by his physical enhancement and the Omega Suit.
So when the blast rang out, his sharpened senses only fed his anger.
They worked more accurately than any radar, hunting down the people who had shattered the peace he’d felt after so long.
"So you were there."
The VIP residence. He could feel the large number of people massed there.
Their movements were frantic, but they weren’t leaving their places.
They were moving something, prying it loose.
The moment he caught the sound and saw the dots stirring, Yoo Sung-jun kicked off the ground.
Broken and half-collapsed tents and the concrete earth itself were shoved aside by the force of the leap.
His arc neatly avoided the injured and the innocent, carrying him straight to the front of the rioters.
"Dig faster over there! We have to grab them before the users get here!"
"Ugh! Just wait a second! If you were gonna blow it up, then do it properly instead of panicking..."
The sign that read VIP Residence had been split clean in two.
Below it, it was the people’s job to expose the debris blocking the entrance.
No.
Are those users?
They were too strong to be ordinary people.
It was one thing to lift a rock the size of an adult man’s torso with some effort.
The people involved in this riot weren’t all ordinary civilians.
Why would users join a riot in the first place?
There was no harm in catching them first and asking later.
"Cut the bullshit and stop right there."
The ones marked as rioters wore red cloth strips around their right forearms.
In a single step, Yoo Sung-jun brought them to a halt and rolled his shoulders loose.
There was no need to bring out Alpha Strike or even the Untouch Shooter.
Military police lay strewn all around them.
It looked like they’d tried to suppress the riot with tanks and failed.
The tank barrel swung toward Yoo Sung-jun.
Along with dozens of gun muzzles.
They were probably relying on the enhanced bodies and instincts of users. Pathetic.
Apparently the laugh on his face showed through the visor.
"Who the hell are you, bastard!"
Yoo Sung-jun glared at the man who spat the curse at him without warning.
He’d start with this one.
And then he would find the one leading this riot.
Crack! Bang!
The sound of a jaw shattering rang out faster than the gunfire.
After that, everything was obvious.
Hands moving faster than fingers could pull a trigger began subduing every rioter around him.
It took only five seconds.
Yoo Sung-jun walked toward the last remaining tank as it desperately tried to swing its barrel, not hesitating at all.
He was honestly curious whether being hit by a shell would leave him alive or not, but this wasn’t the time for that kind of experiment.
No need to destroy the barrel itself, I guess.
There were no soldiers left to defend the tank anyway.
He stepped lightly onto the hatch and gripped the arm clinging to it, then tightened his muscles.
With a groan, the Omega Suit’s power was dragged by brute force, and the steel plate buckled before the hatch finally opened.
Beyond the opening, a flashing muzzle appeared, and he reflexively turned his head aside.
Bang!
Bullets were nothing to him. They were not even close.
He had already perceived them and dodged long before they arrived.
He reached in, tore the gun away first, and then struck the struggling man once.
"Kegh!"
The man who took the clean hit collapsed unconscious with a strange noise.
With a bored expression, Yoo Sung-jun pulled the people out from inside as if they were luggage.
Since he’d already subdued one of them, it didn’t matter if the rest were knocked out too.
"So this place is taken care of?"
Gimpo Airport had a large number of gates.
Which meant the VIP residence created from the remodeled building also had multiple entrances.
Remembering that there had been around ten of them, Sung-jun walked over to the subdued rioters.
Since the explosions were still going off, it looked like their goal had been to break into the residence.
Maybe some of the rioters already got in through another gate.
That meant he couldn’t drag out the interrogation for long.
He’d have to hand this area over to the military forces guarding the outer perimeter immediately.
Before that, he needed the essentials.
"You piece of trash."
Smack! Smack!
He’d only slapped the man with the palm of his hand, and yet there was a sound as if something had split apart.
If he didn’t get up, he’d hit him more.
That was the feeling in his hand, and the rioter had no way to endure it.
"H-haaah! Huhh!"
He trembled all over, tears streaming down his face.
What Yoo Sung-jun wanted was not whining, but a proper answer to the question he’d asked.
"Why did you start the riot?"
"Wh-what?"
He was still dazed.
Yoo Sung-jun swept his gaze around, then lifted a hand.
It was a silent warning: if he didn’t answer this time, he’d ask someone else.
The rioter shrank his shoulders at that.
At least he seemed to understand it now.
The bastard hurriedly opened his mouth.
"Th-they told us to come to another clan, said it was a much wider and more stable place than here... They said if we brought in VIP residence people, they’d take up to ten per person, so, so..."
"Which clan?"
"I-I don’t really... know. Yes."
"Who led the riot?"
"That, too..."
Smack!
"Kehak! It’s true! I’m just a low-level guy, I only know why they had us do this!"
The bastard protested his innocence, but to Yoo Sung-jun’s eyes he looked no different from a bug writhing desperately to stay alive.
"I get it, so shut up."
Was there anything else to learn from this one?
Still, he had figured out the reason for the riot.
Yoo Sung-jun threw the man to the ground and kicked him in the jaw.
After watching the unconscious rioter, he called Choi Hyun-seok.
He answered immediately.
Before Choi Hyun-seok could say anything, Yoo Sung-jun reported the situation one-sidedly.
"An outside clan was involved in this incident. The protest’s already turned into a riot. They’re targeting the residents of the VIP area."
Fortunately, Choi Hyun-seok grasped the meaning quickly and let out a curse.
"...Damn it. They’re planning to use the residents as hostages and forcibly absorb Blood Rain’s core clan members. Sung-jun! Where are you now?"
"I’m about to enter the VIP residence. Start from the outside and crush everything. I’ll take care of the inside."
"Ha. They probably picked this moment because Blood Rain’s forces were tied up with the bunker and the Middle-Stage purge. There might be a spy inside the clan."
"Your clan’s really got a lot of problems, huh?"
He tossed out the sarcasm as he cleared away the debris blocking the VIP residence entrance.
But Choi Hyun-seok seemed too frantic to even recognize the jab properly.
"We planted spies too. Still, I thought we’d prepared pretty well on our end... Shit. Once this is over, I’m going to ask Yoon Choi to make the identity verification system more difficult and thorough."
"Don’t try to patch the barn after the cow’s already been stolen. Let’s go beat up the cattle thieves first."
Yoo Sung-jun ended the call with one foot planted on the opening that was just wide enough for a person to pass through.
He could have kept talking, but rioters were right in front of him.
He couldn’t just stand by while they dragged the residents of the VIP area away by the hair.
Maybe...
Those could be Jeyca’s parents.
Did he really need to keep people like these alive when they were willing to trade human beings for their own benefit?
There was no reason left to show any mercy.
Especially if they were hurting his comrades—or, worse, the people precious to them.
"Hey."
"What the hell is that bastard? Is that Omega Suit?"
"Looks like it, boss. At most he’s only level one. Its output is pathetic. If we all gang up on him, he’s done for."
"Really?"
Broad-shouldered men with Western features approached him.
After tossing people around like sacks of hide, they began to release all sorts of energy.
They were activating their innate powers.
Yoo Sung-jun didn’t bother with Breathing, and he didn’t use the Omega Suit either.
Waste of power. He’d already understood everything from looking.
And they were not people who had joined the riot out of some vague impulse.
They’re tied to the mastermind behind this riot.
At least that was how they looked to Yoo Sung-jun.
They weren’t even wearing red cloth strips, and yet they were giving off a fairly strong presence.
It was hard to think of them as the leaders. They might be the lackeys, though.
Still, if he subdued these guys, he’d learn something.
"Which clan are you from?"
"Which clan? What else would it be? This is Blood Rain, isn’t it? So obviously we’re Blood Rain."
"Does your clan treat VIP residents like this?"
"We needed someone to take out our frustration on. I just couldn’t stand those bastards who weren’t even users living like kings."
"Same here. You subhuman bastards."
"What?"
The man who seemed to be the leader of the group let out a question into the air.
The breath that followed did not disperse into the empty space.
By then, a dull gray visor had already moved in close and blocked it.
Crack!
With a single motion, a chilling sound rang out.
The leader’s face—his facial bones and brain—was reduced to a pulp by a fist that was already being withdrawn.
There had been no chance to respond, no chance to even manifest his innate power.
The predator that stepped into the rabbit hutch had thrown mercy away.
And in the empty space left behind, what filled it was nothing more than murder.
"I’ll spare whoever answers. Which clan is it?"
The cold, desolate voice seized the space completely.