Building Alone

Arriving at the building that served as the site of his trial, Si-Hwan stared up at a structure that somehow radiated pure killing intent.

Because this was a trial an S-class Awakened like him was walking into, traps with lethal force were permitted.

Even so, the stench of death pouring off the building was enough to put even a veteran assassin on edge.

As of last week, this place had been nothing more than an ordinary building.

Now the murderous aura was so thick you could almost believe an SS-class dungeon was sealed inside.

"Chief Butler, where is the Gaju?"

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"He's already waiting inside the building."

Si-Hwan, who had been about to casually fish for information on the building's suspicious, sinister atmosphere, lit up.

Jeong-Hoon being inside already was better than he had hoped.

"The timer doesn't start until I go in. Isn't he putting himself through unnecessary trouble?"

"Avoiding contact with you is also part of the trial."

"Oh? Impressive. He's already thought that far ahead."

If Si-Hwan had met Jeong-Hoon before entering, he could have pieced together a rough outline of the traps from the man's speech, gaze, and movements alone.

The fact that Jeong-Hoon had gone in early specifically to deny him that was, without question, better than expected.

"The Gaju spent the entire week studying with real passion."

"Is that so? I'm looking forward to this."

Once Si-Hwan understood that the building's murderous aura was Jeong-Hoon's genuine will to treat him as an enemy and face him head-on, he smiled with genuine delight.

Inside the pitch-dark building.

For a full week, Jeong-Hoon had renovated the place from top to bottom.

First he plastered the entire structure with CCTV cameras so that anything happening anywhere in the building would be visible at a glance.

He hadn't stopped at traps that only triggered when Si-Hwan touched them—he'd installed ones he could activate remotely as well.

All week he had taken Si-Eun's advice, dug up data on hunters with assassination-adjacent abilities, searched and studied, and analyzed their habits.

The answer he arrived at was this.

Carpet the building with traps, then dig in somewhere safe and hold the fort.

In a single week, Jeong-Hoon had turned a building that was little better than a ruin into a fortress.

A fortress designed to clear the trial in one go.

"Gaju, a wise choice. But I am one of the 12 Vassals specializing in assassination. Something of this level…!"

The building was dark and lightless, but Si-Hwan had already noticed the CCTV.

He was deliberately speaking as a warning to Jeong-Hoon when he suddenly stepped wrong and slipped.

It was a mistake he never would have made under normal circumstances, no matter how slick the floor had been made.

But the floor ahead had been covered wall to wall in monster-capture adhesive, then abruptly transitioned into slippery tiles—so of course he slipped.

Monster-capture adhesive was a nuisance even for an S-class like him.

So he had carefully lightened his steps to avoid it.

And because of that, he failed to adapt to the slick tiles.

He didn't actually fall.

Using his acceleration ability, he amplified his subjective time, shot out an arm, and planted a hand on the floor.

Then he pushed hard through that arm and launched his body.

Si-Hwan spun in midair, landed—then realized he had stepped on adhesive and scowled.

It was a childish trap, but one that had carefully analyzed an assassin's habits.

"I see. This is going to be fun."

Smoothing the frown from his face, Si-Hwan looked straight into a CCTV camera and smiled.

Not because of the adhesive. The smile was for how loud the camera noise was.

Without that noise, the way sound carried would have let Si-Hwan pinpoint Jeong-Hoon's location.

Jeong-Hoon had anticipated that and flooded the entire building with noise.

Unless Jeong-Hoon spoke out loud, there was no risk of his position being exposed.

Breathing and the occasional cough were more than covered by the building's ambient racket.

Of course, if he gets this close, even that won't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠be enough.

Muttering to himself, Jeong-Hoon focused on the screen and held his breath as Si-Hwan approached the electrical cable stretched across the stairs.

A wooden board hung from the cable.

Looking at that board, you might have thought it was a joke—but Si-Hwan only shook his head and sighed.

"Gaju, are you trying to kill me?"

It might look like a prank, but the wooden board wrapped in the cable was slowly charring black.

In other words, real high-voltage current was flowing through it.

Powerful enough to kill an ordinary person on the spot—but not an S-class Awakened like Si-Hwan.

There's no way that would kill him.

If anything, Jeong-Hoon figured that level of current was the minimum needed to knock him out, and he watched Si-Hwan's response in silence.

Without dealing with that cable, there was no way up to the next floor.

"Gaju, assassination is something you finish in the preparation stage."

Si-Hwan drew a pistol from his coat and fired at the outlet behind the cable.

BANG—!

The bullet slipped past the cable itself and smashed the outlet dead-on, cutting the power supply.

Confirming the electricity was dead, Si-Hwan pulled out a pair of wire cutters and snipped the cable.

"Which means predicting traps and preparing counters is also essential."

Ah, damn. If he'd gotten careless just because the power was cut, I had him!

Yes, the high-voltage cable had been drawing power from that outlet.

But that was only the primary setup. The moment power from the outlet cut out, a backup power unit was supposed to send current through instead.

That backup current was stronger than anything the outlet could deliver.

The outlet had been a decoy to make him lower his guard. The backup current was the real trap.

But Si-Hwan had simply cut the cable, and the whole thing was dismantled without ever being used.

Still, the traps are only getting started. I can hold out for thirty minutes.

The time it took Si-Hwan to clear the first floor: a mere three minutes.

It was only possible because he hadn't carefully swept the floor and had ignored most of the traps on his way to the second—but it was still far too fast.

A wall suddenly rose behind him while the walls to the left, right, and front closed in. A trap that, the moment you entered a room, forcibly launched you to the floor above.

Flames erupted, the sprinklers kicked on—and then a lethal poison sprayed out.

And on and on. Si-Hwan, an acceleration-type ability user and assassin, found himself sticking out his tongue at traps so relentlessly spiteful he could feel genuine malice in them.

"Under Lord Fernandez's pressure, I had planned to take it easy…"

Fernandez—the Elder Council President and former chief butler who had convened the 12 Vassals.

As the most senior of the vassals, the mere thought of his nagging made Si-Hwan scowl.

Fernandez, whose loyalty could only be called fanatical, was currently drowning in crushing guilt.

Guilt over having convened the 12 Vassals and, in doing so, putting Jeong-Hoon in danger.

So he had been leaning on the other 12 Vassals at every opportunity.

Even the forced resignation of the Hunter Association president had been retaliation under that pressure from Fernandez.

The moment word reached him that Jeong-Hoon had begun Flamma's trial, the pressure started up again.

So Si-Hwan had planned to kill thirty minutes, then skate by with a line like, There was nothing in the terms that said I had to go all out.

But this was nowhere near a level he could take lightly.

It was vicious enough that he found himself wondering what he could possibly have done to Jeong-Hoon to deserve this.

If he hadn't prepared against his own usual habits, he would already have been caught and dropped by a trap.

It was a madhouse of a building—a place that had taken the word lethal and rendered it entirely in traps.

His prediction that time would be plentiful had also been wildly off.

In reality, only five minutes remained.

"I've searched through the fourth floor and found no trace of him. Then it has to be there."

The answer was the first floor he had only skimmed at the start. The rooftop he had ruled out entirely.

If Jeong-Hoon had been hiding on the roof, Si-Hwan would have noticed before he even entered the building.

Jeong-Hoon had meticulously set his traps and then hidden on the first floor, driving a wedge into the blind spot of assumption.

An excellent plan.

And because that excellent plan had given him such a hard time, Si-Hwan intended to find Jeong-Hoon and deliberately not capture him—declaring the trial passed as a small token of respect for the trouble the traps had put him through.

"If you're watching the CCTV and triggering traps remotely, it has to be here."

Nodding, Si-Hwan looked over a room on the first floor, eyes gleaming.

Some of the traps had been activated by Jeong-Hoon's remote control.

And on the first floor, there was only one place where you could set up multiple monitors and the trap-triggering devices.

Si-Hwan had the building's floor plans memorized.

He had dismantled most of the traps already; his steps were unhesitating.

"Gaju, hide-and-seek is over."

He was going to let the trial pass—but he would open the door declaring his own victory. Then Si-Hwan blinked at a sight he could not believe.

Multiple screens. Countless devices. It was unmistakably a monitor room.

But Jeong-Hoon was not there.

Jeong-Hoon's message stuck to the central screen.

The moment he saw it, Si-Hwan laughed hollowly.

He had been completely played.

"Thirty minutes. Trial over. Butler Baek, what is the result of the trial?"

Butler Joo's shout rang out, and every light in the building came on at once.

"…He passes!!!"

As Butler Joo approached, Si-Hwan admitted his defeat at the top of his lungs. Butler Joo nodded and came closer.

"I can tell just by looking. Then let's get the Gaju out of there at once."

"…What do you mean by that?"

"You'll understand when you see."

The talk of "getting him out" left Si-Hwan bewildered, but Butler Joo only smiled at his reaction.

It was the smile of a man who knew Si-Hwan had been thoroughly beaten by Jeong-Hoon on pure skill.

At the building's entrance—the spot where Si-Hwan had deliberately lightened his steps because of the monster adhesive.

Lumen's vassals were gathered there, stripping away the monster-capture adhesive.

"Don't tell me…?"

"Did that adhesive look to you like a trap set merely to make you slip?"

They cleared the adhesive and lifted the tiles—and something that looked for all the world like a coffin emerged.

Inside it, Jeong-Hoon lay with earphones in his ears and a gag in his mouth, staring at his phone.

"Mmmph—sheybup—ah. Pteh pteh!!!"

Talking around the gag, Jeong-Hoon scowled and pulled it free.

He had completely forgotten he was still biting down on it so no sound would leak out.

"Chef Baek, I passed the trial, right?"

Jeong-Hoon waved his phone, making no effort to hide his grin.

He had spent the entire thirty minutes watching Si-Hwan fall for traps on that phone, fighting not to laugh out loud.

"You passed with flying colors."

From the beginning, the adhesive had never been only to make him slip.

Making him slip had been a trap as well.

It was a trap designed so that Si-Hwan would never suspect Jeong-Hoon was hidden underneath.

If Si-Hwan had walked normally, he would have noticed there was space under the floor.

But because he hated the idea of his feet getting stuck in the adhesive, he had deliberately lightened ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his steps.

So he never noticed.

That the space beneath was hollow.

And the monitor room itself had been a time-buying trap.

"I was trapped by my own assumptions."

Monitoring was perfectly doable from a phone. Triggering traps that way, of course, was too.

"Still—you've done something even a special forces unit would struggle with."

From the condition of the tiles, Si-Hwan could tell Jeong-Hoon had been sealed in that confined space for a full day, and he offered genuine praise.

Jeong-Hoon had held out for a day so the tile work would show no sense of wrongness.

"Should I call it the family's technical prowess? The collaboration between Shine Mall and Myeongil Hospital was magnificent."

Jeong-Hoon snapped his fingers, and Yeo Tae-Hyeon and Woo Do-Il appeared, smiling.

Both of them wore the faces of men thoroughly pleased to have been of use for the trial.

Myeongil had provided the necessary pharmaceuticals; Shine Mall had supplied the materials.

That was what had made endurance possible.

"But hasn't it been crushing on your mind?"

"…Honestly, it was incredibly comfortable."

Being sealed in a closed space for a full day without even being able to use a toilet, stuck in one position—it was the kind of thing that amounted to torture.

So Si-Hwan had been worried about Jeong-Hoon's body. Jeong-Hoon only laughed awkwardly and shook his head.

In his entire life, Jeong-Hoon had never had a day where he simply lay there with nothing to worry about and looked at his phone.

It had been a little uncomfortable—but far from crushing him, he felt thoroughly recharged.