Chapter 140
Chapter 140
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 140
Chapter Title: Chapter 26: Grudge, and Another Grudge (3)
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Nearly four hours had passed since Yoon Ji-hye had fled with Lee Jun-mo in tow.
Park Chan-young, who had been waiting in the Jangsan area alongside the SDT—Special Duty Team, the military police special forces—ground his teeth with a distant groan.
Just the personnel encircling the Jangsan area numbered close to a hundred.
Yet those hundred had spent the last four hours sucking their thumbs and standing by.
Park Chan-young glared intently at the footage captured by the drone.
On the monitor, between the evergreen trees, there was a peculiar section where the light refracted oddly.
It was a barrier. Roughly two or three meters in size.
That was the primary reason they had excluded regular police and deployed special forces en masse.
It was also the culprit forcing them to waste time without rescuing the hostage.
‘At least the hostage is still alive.’
A barrier couldn’t block thermal imaging cameras.
Thanks to that, they knew Lee Jun-mo was still alive and hadn’t been killed.
All the others had been brutally murdered, so why spare Lee Jun-mo?
‘Is he planning to negotiate using the hostage’s life?’
To secure his own escape, he was destroying what should have been a harmonious family and exploiting someone else’s life.
Truly cowardly and vicious.
Park Chan-young burned with rage at the players’ ruthless behavior.
‘They all deserve to die.’
His animosity toward players as a group was more intense than he realized.
Intense enough to think that executing Yoon Ji-hye on sight wouldn’t be an issue if the hostage could be saved.
He had begun assigning value to lives.
Of course, some minimal rationality remained, so he waited for reinforcements.
But even that forced patience shattered into pieces.
“Gaaahhh!”
After four hours of standoff, a gut-wrenching scream finally echoed out for the first time.
Park Chan-young clenched his fists so hard his knuckles turned white, his body trembling.
In the meantime, the on-site commander reported to superiors via radio.
“Yes, the screams are continuing.”
They asked about entry, but the response was negative.
“Do not enter. Everyone, stand by.”
“Understood.”
The SDT held their positions as before.
Park Chan-young’s face twisted as he watched the entire exchange.
‘The hostage’s life is at stake…!’
The higher-ups kept repeating not to provoke the player, abandoning the hostage.
Was this truly the right call?
Shouldn’t the safety of their own citizens come first?
Once he began doubting and distrusting the superiors’ judgment, what followed was predictable.
He forgot that charging in would mean not just his own pointless death, but those of others too.
He forgot that only a player could catch a player.
All past experiences he’d endured were buried under old emotions, leaving only foolish repetition.
“I need to step away for a moment to relieve myself.”
Pretending to slip aside, Park Chan-young detoured through the woods toward where another unit was standing guard.
The SDT members immediately went on alert when he appeared.
But Park Chan-young flashed his name tag proving his affiliation and gave an awkward smile.
“One of our drones went down. I’ll go retrieve it.”
Confirming his unit, the SDT members nodded and stepped aside.
“We’ll accompany you.”
Of course, they didn’t let him go alone, but it wasn’t a big issue.
“Gurk!”
Because he strangled the accompanying SDT member into unconsciousness.
It was thanks to the furious training he’d done during his leave, anticipating field duty.
The ally, caught off guard by the surprise attack, slumped immediately.
Then Park Chan-young began stripping the unconscious member of his gear.
He’d only been authorized a single pistol himself.
‘Not enough.’
Plenty dangerous for civilians, but insufficient to kill a player.
So he took the field operative’s weapons.
Rifle, magazines, smoke grenades, and frag grenades.
Having meticulously gathered the gear from the fainted operative, Park Chan-young broke into a run.
Clear insubordination and defiance of orders.
But Park Chan-young didn’t think he was wrong.
He was no longer in a state to make such judgments.
The gunshots from the past rang in his ears, and the blood that seeped no matter how he tried to staunch it flickered in his mind.
‘Have to kill her.’
Before another victim appeared, he had to kill the player.
As he raced toward Yoon Ji-hye’s position, Park Chan-young’s eyes turned bloodshot.
Quickening his pace, it didn’t take long to reach the destination.
But the moment he arrived and witnessed what was happening inside the barrier, Park Chan-young froze in place.
“Kraaah!”
Lee Jun-mo, tied to a tree trunk; Yoon Ji-hye, who had severed all his fingers.
What was unfolding inside the opaque barrier was clearly torture.
Of course, that wasn’t why Park Chan-young froze.
The reason he halted abruptly was the emptiness emanating from Yoon Ji-hye.
‘Her eyes…’
They were hollow. Just like his own when he’d lost his wife.
“S-Stop! I was wrong! Spare me!”
“Don’t worry, you won’t die.”
Yoon Ji-hye’s voice was so flatly calm it didn’t match the blood.
“You have to live like me and see hell. Can’t die on me now.”
She didn’t stop there, even patting Lee Jun-mo’s cheek soothingly, as if consoling a crying child.
“Stay still. That way it’ll end quicker.”
You wasted so much time by passing out.
Gotta finish fast so you and I can both rest, right?
Yoon Ji-hye murmured softly as she raised her right hand.
Lee Jun-mo, who had been sobbing and catching his breath, paled and screamed.
“Stop, please, don’t do it!”
Because a transparent awl began protruding from the index finger of Yoon Ji-hye’s raised right hand.
“Fingers are done. Now it’s time for the eyes.”
Only then did Park Chan-young snap to his senses, raising his gun barrel and shouting.
“Stop right now!”
But Yoon Ji-hye didn’t even glance at him.
Instead, she deliberately gripped Lee Jun-mo’s jaw with her left hand and pressed the mysterious awl against it.
Utter disregard.
A presumed silver badge player wouldn’t have missed Park Chan-young’s arrival in the first place.
She knew and didn’t care, letting him be.
To Yoon Ji-hye, Park Chan-young was an existence she could ignore.
Insignificant, unable to influence anything, whether present or not.
Humiliation flushed Park Chan-young’s face beet red as he raised his gun again and stepped forward.
At that perfectly absurd timing, the barrier began to fade.
Only then did Yoon Ji-hye’s gaze shift from Lee Jun-mo.
“Oh… Has it already been four hours?”
Unlike her languid mutter, as if out for a stroll, her fingertips were coated entirely in red.
“Hic, hk…”
As Lee Jun-mo convulsed without even managing a scream, Yoon Ji-hye said calmly.
“Don’t get blood on you for nothing. Just go down. I’ll turn myself in later…”
“S-Spare me, please…”
Then someone interrupted Yoon Ji-hye.
Lee Jun-mo, one eye gouged out, weeping blood tears.
Seeing his bloodied cheek automatically replayed a past moment.
- I-I’m scared, I don’t want to die, save me…
His wife’s voice growing fainter, her pupils finally dimming.
Fully immersed in that past instant, Han Chang-sik’s face—the man who killed his wife and fled—overlaid onto Yoon Ji-hye’s.
No more thinking. Park Chan-young pulled the trigger.
“You demon bitch!!!”
But it was futile.
The air around seemed to freeze, then ting-ting-ting—the bullets all ricocheted.
Because sharp ice chunks had sprouted before Yoon Ji-hye and Lee Jun-mo’s feet.
『What was that gunshot?! Who is it?!』
『Check what’s happening immediately!』
Commotion erupted from the radio in his ear, but Park Chan-young didn’t hear it.
He was reaching for the grenade on his vest.
Of course, that too was pointless.
Before he could pull the pin, an ice blade flew through the air.
“Huaak!”
As a result, Park Chan-young’s hand clutching the grenade was severed at the wrist.
Immediately after, with a crumbling parsa-sak sound, Yoon Ji-hye emerged from behind the shattered ice, frowning.
“This is annoying.”
For the first time since Park Chan-young appeared, her expression changed as she extended her hand and muttered.
“What… one more death won’t make a difference, right.”
A chill filled the air, and a tiny ice crystal formed in midair.
No, tiny wasn’t the word.
The ice began expanding at tremendous speed.
In just a few seconds.
The time it took for spear-like ice chunks the size of human limbs to densely surround Park Chan-young.
Ice everywhere he looked. No escape.
- I-I’m scared.
His wife’s final whisper—I don’t want to die, I’m scared—pierced him heartbreakingly.
Death closing in relentlessly, without room to flee, was terrifying.
But facing the ice growing to impale him any second, all he could do was freeze.
“Uh…”
It was only a bit later, when the ice touched his skin from all sides—forehead, cheek, neck, chest, lower abdomen, side, lower back, thigh—that his rigid body finally loosened, allowing him to thrash.
“Uwaaah!”
That thrashing amounted to nothing but a dying scream, which was pathetic.
But for the man who had crawled here on his own, that was all permitted.
‘I’m gonna die.’
Minutes or seconds passed, and that certainty fully dominated Park Chan-young.
Pajijijik, boom-!
Sparks bloomed before his forehead, cheek, neck, chest, lower abdomen, side, lower back, thigh, coalescing into a sphere and exploding.
The shockwave repelled or snapped all the encroaching ice targeting him.
“Kraaak!”
Of course, Park Chan-young wasn’t spared the blast.
Skin tore, and he suffered burns from the intense heat.
But it beat being shredded by a dozen ice shards.
The latter might leave him injured but alive; the former was near-certain death.
‘I-I’m, alive, still…’
Tumbled to the ground by the explosion, Park Chan-young groped his trembling body.
He couldn’t yet believe he was alive.
As he repeatedly confirmed it by touch.
“Whew.”
A long sigh and presence came from behind.
Park Chan-young creakily turned his head, which felt alien, and looked up.
There stood a white man in a black puffer jacket and jeans.
Even bulky clothes couldn’t fully conceal his intimidating build.
Park Chan-young, trained militarily, felt intimidated.
With legs crossed, arms folded, and a fierce scowl on that frame, ordinary people wouldn’t dare approach.
As Park Chan-young stared dazedly.
The man roughly swept back his curly brown hair.
Then sighed deeply, muttering in a voice thick with irritation.
“Always something, seriously.”
He wagged his fingers downward.
“When I say nicely, drop that thing right now.”
The cold, firm tone made Park Chan-young’s shoulders shrink instinctively.
But soon he realized it wasn’t directed at him.
Only then did he recall what had just transpired.
Park Chan-young turned his still-unresponsive head.
There was Yoon Ji-hye, holding Lee Jun-mo’s neck with one arm and a dagger to his throat.
Damn System