The Collapse of the Secret Realm
What I gained was a tang. A death cry like a thunderbolt descended upon my ears and went forth to greet the wicked beings before me. Of course, those bastards had no intention of dying quietly and were putting up resistance.
“Fuck! Why the hell are these guys’ bullets— Aaaaargh!!!”
The man firing a pistol complained mid-sentence as a bullet tore through his arm. With a scream he dropped the gun. Serious wound. Since his right arm was hit he could still shoot left-handed, but the way he clutched the limb and thrashed made it clear he would be out of the fight for a while.
Bullets fell like hail—no, like a downpour. I walked through that storm without an umbrella, moving like someone hurrying through rain. In reality I simply endured the irritation of soaked clothes and kept walking in silence.
Chak!
Like a child idly snapping reeds with a toy sword, I sliced through the wrist of the man aiming at me. Sometimes I cut bellies, chests, legs. With every stroke the blood mist grew thicker, yet it froze before touching my skin and fell to the floor.
“Clear… moving to the next sector.”
“Three coming from the right. They’ve got protective barriers up and three spell traps between us and them.”
“Copy. Lynx One, Three—suppressive fire.”
Two operators, half-hidden behind cover, poured rounds into the three men who had just rounded the corner. The protective barriers they carried shattered under bullets infused with my qi.
…Strange. They looked far weaker than their outward appearance suggested. And that chill running down my spine refused to fade.
「Rapid Paywall」
「Prize Barrier」
The barrier erased the bleeding, collapsing humans from our sight. Immediately, ominous violet flames hammered against it and began toppling the walls on either side.
Good thing I had prepared an ice wall behind the barrier just in case.
“Decoy,” one operator muttered. “They probably thought their own barriers would hold.”
“Yeah. Didn’t look like they were on a suicide run.”
“…You can tell that?”
“January eleventh. Half his waist and face blown off, yet he still charged into the monsters to self-destruct. I remember the expression.”
“My condolences.”
An unpleasant, unforgettable memory surfaced.
“Focus,” I said.
Being trapped in this maze that reeked of a seedy karaoke parlor was not on my list of preferred outcomes. The moment a secret realm appeared, this operation had already failed.
“We still have enough ammo?”
“Plenty. At least enough to finish the mission.”
The special forces had come prepared for a prolonged engagement; they had brought generous loads and so far had never used more than three rounds per target.
“Good. Then let me explain again. A secret realm is an Eastern technique that expands space through a special formation. Honestly, I didn’t expect to see one at this stage.”
But we couldn’t pull out. The moment we decided to run this operation we had crossed a point of no return. Its purpose was to show criminals just how sharp the government’s blade could be. In that sense, these drug-addled police officers would never give up. And we had to capture the one operating in the shadows who could already wield a secret realm.
“So this secret realm… it just makes space? No power boosts or guaranteed hits or anything?”
Good question. The Japanese server had something similar, and people had complained about why we didn’t.
“It’s purely space. You can use it as shelter or storage, but it has no homing or auto-hit effects.”
“Just space, then. Still, it takes enormous effort and skill to create, and you can set traps or station equipment and troops inside, like we’re seeing now.”
In other words, a dungeon. Another advantage: once created, it maintains itself.
“It’s not infinite, though. The troops inside, the caster’s qi, and the caster himself are all limited. If you encounter the one who made this realm, do not attack first.”
“Not attacking first puts us at a disadvantage.”
“Anyone capable of creating this is already among the top five Awakened in Korea. If a real fight starts, you will die. Do not strike first. Absolutely not.”
Even with my protective talismans, I couldn’t guarantee their safety in a full engagement. The caster was almost certainly a pure sorcerer; the fact that every trap here was spell-based confirmed it.
I dispelled the prize barrier to enter and examined the blast marks. No bodies—everything had burned away the instant the explosion occurred, leaving only shadows.
“Hm? Well, nothing’s perfect at this stage.”
“Did you find something?”
Perfection would have been suspicious. Even if he had made a deal with ghosts, the sorcerer executing it was only two months into this new world. He couldn’t be flawless.
“We can reach the center.”
I smiled in victory and clapped the captain on the back.
“Everyone, follow me and the captain.”
“Fuck! You said you’d provide support!”
“Is there more support than this? I brainwashed the Incheon gangs, took their guns, and even gave you the location. What else do you need? …Though something sweet might be nice.”
The man in his fifties with messy hair was nearly panicking, but the figure draped in a cloak of white talismans covered in large red characters spoke in a mocking, irritating tone.
‘How the hell did it come to this?’
Cha Deok-chang, the branch leader of Gongseongchupa who had been running a protection racket in the countryside, sank into thought. Two months ago monsters appeared; he didn’t understand the principle, but he understood the world had gone to shit. So he robbed and stole to survive… and then…
“Huh?”
Cha Deok-chang sensed something wrong. He knew he was the very picture of the strong preying on the weak. So why had he suddenly decided to deal drugs in this era? And that talisman ghost…
“You… who the hell are you?”
“Aah, reached your limit already? You still need more training.”
“Who the fuck are y—”
Puuk!
A bony, awl-like arm pierced straight through Cha Deok-chang’s face. From eyes to brain to the back of the skull. The man’s body went limp, exactly as common sense dictated. The talisman-clad figure shook the corpse off his hand like wet tissue paper and tossed it aside.
“You son of a bitch!!!”
The gangsters who had followed Cha Deok-chang drew knives in shock, but at a gesture from the talisman ghost the guns of the men behind him swung toward them. There was no hesitation before the triggers were pulled.
Thunderous gunfire and cordite smoke mocked the red blood pooling on the floor. Once silence returned, the talisman ghost finally focused on his real task.
“Now then, where is our leashed puppy… hm?”
The talisman ghost’s gaze shifted to the crystal ball and his composure cracked. The marker that should have shown the intruders’ location inside the secret realm now indicated they were in the exact same place as him.
—Kwaaaang!
Tok! Roll…
Flashbangs bounced once off the ground and rolled toward the talisman ghost and the stunned gangsters still holding their guns.
“Haha, faster than I expected.”
—Puh-buh-bung!
Flashbangs erupted with light and sound while red muzzle flashes bloomed from the smoke, punching through arms and legs. The operators surrounded the talisman ghost, muzzles glowing hot.
“Drop the catalyst and raise both hands where we can see them!”
Unlike the gangsters, they did not fire without warning. They still needed information from him, and if a real firefight began someone was going to bleed heavily—though that someone would be Dowol and the talisman ghost, not the police.
“Surrender quietly.”
Dowol’s sword, cold as her expression, pointed at the talisman ghost. The spell-laden talismans around her fluttered, awaiting orders.
“From ancient times, being multi-talented meant one of two things: mediocre or reaching the peak. You seem to be the latter.”
“Stop talking and disarm.”
“Before that, one question. How did you ignore sixty percent of our forces and come straight here? Tell me and I’ll agree not to attack right now.”
The talisman ghost extended a hand black as ebony. A qi-mediated contract between individuals. Ghosts would stand as guarantors; breaking it would bring appropriate punishment.
Just as the contract was about to form, the operators’ eyes turned to the talisman ghost and Dowol.
Nod.
An unspoken agreement passed between them. Dowol sheathed her sword and talismans and stepped forward. The moment she came within handshake distance—
—Tang!
A gunshot rang from Dowol. More precisely, an explosion erupted from the sheath itself, launching the sword. She caught the flying blade in a miracle of timing and slashed at what should have been the talisman ghost’s neck.
‘It actually worked…’
Even Dowol herself hadn’t expected the technique to succeed. After all, she never imagined a skill from the game would manifest in her own hands. The sheath was completely destroyed, of course, but it was only a sheath.
The operators immediately poured merciless gunfire into the headless body and torso. Dowol swung again, carving the corpse into pieces. When she cut the final section, the sensation at the tip of her sword felt different—not hardened talismans, but living flesh.
Trusting her instincts, she cut deeper.
Chak!
Blood gushed from the pile of talismans. The moment she saw it, Dowol knew victory was hers—until something else came out with the blood and her brow furrowed.
—Pajik!
The instant she severed it, cracks began spreading through the air.
“Damn it! If you want to live, get over here now!”
Dowol gritted her teeth, drove her sword into the floor, and poured every ounce of qi into the formation. Seeing the cracks widen, she urgently called the operators to her side.
Then the world began to shrink. Not metaphorically—the space expanded by the secret realm was contracting as the realm collapsed, compressing everything inside.
“Nngh…!”
Dowol desperately maintained the formation. An instant that felt like a hundred kalpas passed. Darkness and silence followed. The operators slowly turned on their lights.
“…Looks like a cave.”
Captain Lee Gwan-ho gave a short assessment of their surroundings. An artificial rectangular cavern, neither too large nor too small. If the walls had been concrete instead of earth and stone, anyone would have thought they were inside a building.
“We were had.”
Dowol spoke while holding the blood-soaked bundle of talismans.
“You mean it was a fake and we walked into a trap?”
“A fake… it’s ambiguous. This is a clone made using his own organs as a medium. You could call it a clone.”
When Dowol peeled away the talismans, a slice of liver roughly half the size of an adult male’s palm lay split inside.
“Still, all we accomplished was making a few hundred Incheon gangsters disappear.”
“…What do you mean?”
“Do you see those holes over there?”
Following Dowol’s gesture, Lee Gwan-ho looked at the floor. Countless holes the size of ping-pong balls dotted every surface except the formation itself.
“Those… were probably people. And everything else that was inside the secret realm.”
“…Hah.”
Captain Lee Gwan-ho’s shock transcended into something close to enlightenment. He had seen plenty of corpses, but never people dying like this. In the end, the only thing gained from this operation was that hundreds of Incheon criminals had met their end in a single moment.