Bait
Pyongyang, the former capital of old North Korea.
Once the seat of a vast dictatorship, the place was now little more than ruins.
That was only natural, of course.
North Korea had ultimately failed to control its Awakened, collapsed into civil war, and perished when monsters overran the capital.
And in this ruin that had become little more than a den for monsters, certain people were present.
Their names were—
“Haa, Reika… I told you not to go to weird places. What if monsters attack us…?”
“Eeh, the ones here won’t even scratch me, Dohui-chan~”
Cha Dohui and Reika.
No—truth be told, even if the place was ruins, there weren’t many people who could stroll so casually through a monster den.
Anyway, the reason the two of them were walking through the heart of Pyongyang was this:
“Dohui-chan~ Why’d we come here~?”
“Haa… I already explained. The government asked us to catch a criminal group manufacturing drugs in Pyongyang.”
“That’s not all of it, is it?”
“…They said those guys are likely connected to a religion tied to the Outer Gods.”
Precisely because it was a matter deeply linked to the Outer Gods.
“Then we definitely need to be the ones who came~”
“Yeah. It’d be a hassle if anyone got hypnotized or brainwashed.”
“We could get hit by that too~ Fufu.”
“Even as a joke, say something that actually makes sense.”
She dismissed Reika’s words as nonsense and calmly continued walking through the ruined downtown for a while.
“Looks like that’s the place.”
Her gaze landed on the massive mansion that had once housed the old North Korean leader.
“These criminals have some guts~ Living in a building like that.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
Agreeing with Reika, Cha Dohui studied the structure.
It seemed they had repaired and were using a half-ruined building. Compared to the outer grandeur, the rest of the place showed clear signs of neglect.
Cha Dohui and Reika walked slowly toward it.
And just as they neared the mansion’s entrance—
“Stop!”
“Do you know where this is…?”
Fierce-looking Chinese men with braided hair stood guard at the gate.
Cha Dohui gave no answer to their words.
She simply approached. The moment the suspicious woman drew near and they pulled weapons to attack—
—Tak.
She flicked her fingers as if annoyed, and both men’s movements froze.
No. More precisely—
“Just freezing their brains and hearts? Aren’t you being too kind~”
She had frozen the very parts a human needed to function, leaving them unable to move.
“Even that much is enough to kill a person.”
“If they were mages they’d have protection~”
“Mages of that level would be in China, not here.”
“Fufu, true enough.”
After freezing the entrance guards, they moved to enter the mansion—only for a sound to ring out.
—Aaaaaaaang!!!
A massive wartime-style siren blared across the entire mansion grounds.
Cha Dohui let out a deep sigh.
“Haa. Reika, kill every last one trying to escape.”
“Eeh—that’s way too much of a hassle~”
“…Then just grab the ones among the escapees who look like they can be interrogated, and kill the rest.”
“Hai~ Ryoukai~”
Grinning brightly at her words, Reika vanished into the shadows. Watching her go, Cha Dohui thought:
She’s not a bad kid, but I still don’t really get her.
Originally she had ordered them all killed.
There was no way civilians would be among those who had come this far. Even if there were, the odds of escaping outside safely were almost zero. So the ones fleeing could safely be treated as related parties.
That was why she had said to kill them all—yet Reika had refused. More precisely, she was following orders after receiving a toy.
Clearly she didn’t enjoy murder or true evil, yet she loved tormenting people.
If one had to put a name to her behavior—
Pure evil.
Like a child crushing ants under a finger or stomping them to death. A pure action born of curiosity.
That was why Cha Dohui found Reika unsettling yet could never quite distance herself. For now she was acting for humanity’s sake, and only occasionally slipped into such deviations.
Anyway, after fretting over Reika for a moment, Cha Dohui set the stray thoughts aside and decided to focus on the mission.
“Do you sense the Outer Gods’ energy?”
[Many Constellations report sensing an unpleasant power.]
“Looks like this is the place.”
It seemed this was a den of the Outer Gods’ apostles. Otherwise the Constellations would never have reacted like that.
Thinking so, Cha Dohui stepped inside the mansion.
The moment she entered—
“Kill her!”
“If we kill that bitch, the Cult Leader Comrade will send us to a higher realm!”
“I’ll kill you!”
Chinese, North Korean dialect, even Joseonjok accents mixed into pure chaos.
Cha Dohui looked at them with cold eyes and murmured shortly.
Stop.
The criminals felt something strange—as if the sound had been delivered straight into their brains—and tried to rush her at once.
“W-what is this…!”
Until frost began forming on their bodies, that is.
“If it’s already like this out here, the inside is going to be even more of a hassle.”
Watching them, Cha Dohui casually walked past.
And every time she passed someone, behind her—
—Crack.
With the sound of ice shattering, the frozen bodies broke apart like glass panes.
“Ice Empress!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Those who realized something was terribly wrong tried to resist somehow.
“This way, maybe.”
Cha Dohui didn’t even glance at them as she walked on. Behind her, only ice-shard corpses remained.
Cha Dohui’s moniker: Ice Empress.
It was a title born because her power went beyond mere freezing—even death itself required her command before it could claim someone.
Ugh, why are they shouting my moniker and making a fuss…
Of course the person herself was embarrassed by it. No matter how you looked at it, “Ice Empress” at her age was mortifying.
After wandering the mansion for a while in a state of suspicion—no, confirmation—that these were Outer God apostles—
“This way.”
Frowning at the increasingly gloomy energy the closer she drew, she smashed through a wall.
“These kinds of guys are always so obsessed with basements.”
Stairs leading downward appeared. More precisely it was a corner as if one opened a door from the second floor, but still.
Walking down the stairs, a stench rose to meet her.
Suspecting the worst, she descended further.
“Hehe. You’re quite late.”
A middle-aged man with a kindly face greeted her. Below him—
“…You killed them all.”
Blood, flesh, and some unidentifiable sticky substances filled the space.
“Killed them all? We have simply all returned to His embrace.”
“Spouting cultist nonsense so casually.”
“Hehe. Isn’t it only natural?”
At the sight, Cha Dohui frowned as she spoke. The man only smiled and answered that way.
His words seemed to irritate her further.
“Then I’ll send you along too.”
As if everything until now had been a joke, she released cold air powerful enough to freeze the entire mansion while addressing the man.
At Cha Dohui’s action, the man said—
“I still have much to do before I can go to His side—”
He opened the eye-covered ancient tome in his hand.
“It seems I must struggle to the very end.”
He uttered incomprehensible words.
Then, astonishingly, space itself twisted—and the cold air she had scattered vanished somewhere. The corpses too.
“Spatial refraction, is it.”
Despite the bizarre situation she remained calm as she continued.
Ice Explosion
She stretched a hand into empty air and instantly created freezing—then at the same moment—
—Kwaga-ga-ga-gak!!
Moisture compressed by the cold air in an instant could not withstand the internal pressure and exploded.
Cold air scattered from the blast swallowed the man, covering him completely.
No—tried to cover him.
“Haha. That stings a bit.”
Until the man’s hand transformed into black liquid and blocked her attack.
At that sight she immediately gathered the moisture hanging in the air, shaped it into a drill, and drove it at him.
—Shwiik!
Holes punched through the man’s body in an instant, yet Cha Dohui continued piercing ice through him several more times afterward.
When his body had become a porcupine of ice—
“You of all people should know attacks like that don’t work, so why keep attacking…?”
The man, seeming to grow irritated, spoke in a slightly angry tone. To him Cha Dohui answered:
“They don’t work. But there is a way to make them work.”
And with those words the man realized something was wrong—yet—
“Guh! W-what…?”
It was already far too late.
The ice embedded in his body melted and was absorbed into him.
It was pushing out His power and trying to remake the body as her own.
It was absurd. How could anyone do that to His perfect, flawless power!
“You think this is the first or second time I’ve dealt with guys like you? Just looking at you, you haven’t even trained to handle the power—let alone protect someone else’s power—so it’s like this.”
“Gyaaaaaah!!”
“Once it infiltrates a little inside and then pushes out, the power disappears.”
In the end the man could not endure. He rolled on the floor in agony, and soon—
“N-no…”
With those short words as his last, his body froze solid.
“Looks like he was just a new convert.”
Well, the power had been far too weak.
Thinking so, Cha Dohui pondered how to clean up this mess.
But even Cha Dohui did not know one thing.
That even the highest person in charge of this place—
“Your father.”
—had been bait all along.