The First Ariel Everray
"P-Professor."
"Shh."
As Ariel tried to speak through trembling lips, Professor Oh Ji-seok gently brought a single finger to his mouth.
Tap, tap...
Without a word, he began rapidly tapping away at his smartphone screen.
A moment later, the message buzzed on her screen, and Ariel looked up at him with terror in her eyes.
Before she could even process the words, Professor Oh Ji-seok slipped his arm smoothly around her waist, pulling her flush against his side.
Under normal circumstances, such sudden intimacy would have made her flush with mortification. But with her very life hanging in the balance, she hardly had the luxury to care.
"Yes, five hundred thousand! We have five hundred thousand dollars—ah, just as I speak, six hundred and fifty thousand! The heat in this room is truly magnificent, ladies and gentlemen!"
Especially not when the surrounding crowd was teeming with monsters who wanted nothing more than to buy her and carve her open.
Watching in stunned horror as the bids climbed without pause, Ariel frantically typed out her question with trembling hands.
Ariel gasped silently.
Reading the glowing screen, Ariel felt a cold, sickening shock take root in her chest. Even here, in the place where the greatest number of heroes gather in the entire world, an atrocity like this is taking place... What in the world goes on behind the scenes every other day?
Ariel, like the vast majority of ordinary citizens, had believed this to be an era of peace. Even after the world had shuddered under the death of Rank 1 Hero Justia, hero activities had seemed more vibrant and reassuring than ever.
What has happened to this world?
According to Professor Oh Ji-seok, the entire society of heroes she had revered was a total sham. She desperately wanted to believe it was a lie. Yet here she was, standing in the beating heart of the International Hero Seminar, listening to people barter for human flesh. Unless this were some colossal, sickening prank, his words were undeniable truth.
Suddenly, words her sister had spoken months ago resurfaced in her mind.
'Ariel.'
'Hmm?'
'No matter what happens... promise me you'll never become a hero.'
It had been the first time. Justia, who had always smiled and encouraged her, who had always told her she had the makings of a great hero, had told her never to walk that path.
'What are you talking about, Sis? I told you already, I'm not becoming one anyway.'
'Right... Good girl. That's my sweet little sister.'
Justia had been terribly drunk that night. When Ariel asked her about it the next morning, her sister had had no memory of the conversation at all.
Did she know all along?
Only a few days after that night, Justia had perished fighting a Non-standard Grade Calamity—or rather, fighting the true identity of the villain Trauma, Kang Haneul.
Did she know this was happening to the world?
Ariel still remembered it with crystalline clarity. The exhausted, deadened gaze in her sister's eyes as she uttered those words. The crushing, suffocating weariness that had bled through her expression—so vastly different from the invincible pillar of strength and radiant cheer she presented to the public.
"One million dollars! We have one million dollars! The sister of Justia shatters today's highest record!"
As she gritted her teeth against the memories, the auctioneer's feverish screech rang out from the distant podium.
"Starting the countdown! Three, two, one... Sold!"
A low, predatory murmur rippled across the floor.
"Tsk, what a shame. I wanted to keep her as a display piece in my parlor."
"Too steep for my blood."
"I can't wait to see what kind of Mystery they extract from Justia's sister's heart."
Hearing the casual, gruesome banter about her own butchery at the price of a million dollars, Ariel drained of all color and buried her face into Oh Ji-seok's chest.
"Now then, ladies and gentlemen! We have at last arrived at the grand finale of the evening!"
As Oh Ji-seok quietly stroked her back in reassurance, the stage curtain parted. Several attendants slowly wheeled a pedestal onto the center platform.
"Ooh..."
"At long last."
"I knew saving my credits was the right move."
Sensing the sudden shift in the atmosphere, Oh Ji-seok gripped Ariel's hand tightly. Glancing around at the excited crowd, he leaned toward an attendee standing beside them. "...What is that?"
A brief exchange passed, and in the next second, Oh Ji-seok clamped his mouth shut, his entire frame going rigid as stone.
"Allow me to present to you all!" the auctioneer bellowed, arms flinging wide as his voice boomed over the speakers. "None other than the battle relic of Justi—"
Standing motionless beside him, Ariel felt a gentle, deliberate warmth cover her ears. Oh Ji-seok's soft hands cupped her head, trying to muffle the sound.
"...Professor?" Ariel looked up in confusion, her brows knitting. "What are you..."
Her eyes drifted past his shoulder, catching sight of the glass display case illuminated beneath the spotlight on stage.
Her expression went completely hollow.
There, resting upon velvet inside the shatterproof glass, were the gauntlets Justia had treasured throughout her life. The very same gauntlets she had worn until her dying breath—still spattered with dried, dark blood.
All around them, attendees raised their bid paddles with crazed, bloodshot eyes, shouting out astronomical sums like wild beasts scenting entrails.
Crackle...
The moment a solitary tear broke free from Ariel's frozen gaze, a suffocating, scalding aura detonated from within her.
Bzzzt... crackle...
It felt as though her heart were being incinerated from the inside out. Yet even amidst the agonizing fire scorching her marrow, Ariel did not retract her power. Her eyes bulged, fixed entirely on that stage.
Why?
A venomous resentment devoured her reason.
Why does this only happen to me? Why do they take everything from us?!
She wanted to unleash every single drop of torment, fury, and grief that had been festering inside her soul.
Fwoooosh!
In an instant, the aura she unleashed turned the surrounding air searing hot. The hue of the radiating energy was no longer her gentle, familiar pale brown—it was a vicious, blinding crimson, dark as pooled blood. A color of violence that defied comparison.
Creak, crackle...
As Ariel clenched her fists, the terrifying grip strength caused the knuckles and bones of her hands to groan under immense pressure.
It doesn't matter anymore. Nothing matters.
If left alone for just a few seconds more...
Just let it all burn...
She would have gone entirely berserk, crossing a threshold from which her body and mind could never return.
"Ariel."
A voice cut through the roaring flames in her ears.
"Calm down."
"Ah, ugh..."
Oh Ji-seok pulled her fully into his arms, squeezing his eyes shut as he began actively drawing her raging, chaotic aura into his own body.
"...G-Get away..."
His suit began to char and smolder, the skin beneath blistering into angry red welts.
"Get away from me... please..."
Gritting her teeth, Ariel struggled wildly against his grip.
"I'll handle this myself...!"
She had experienced this state once before in her childhood, and she knew the terrifying truth all too well: once her concept ran rampant, no one on earth could restrain her except Justia. Anyone foolish enough to try would be turned to ash simply by touching the fringe of her aura.
"Having the will to solve your own problems is an admirable virtue," Oh Ji-seok said, his arms locking around her with unyielding strength, refusing to let her break free.
"Let go—!"
"But that doesn't mean you have to shoulder everything entirely alone."
He deployed an absolute barrier, sealing the two of them within a tight, protective cocoon.
"Until you can stand upon your own feet, you are allowed to lean on someone else as much as you need."
Ariel's eyes widened in sheer disbelief.
KABOOOOM!
Her crimson aura finally breached its limits, erupting outward in a blinding storm of scarlet shockwaves.
"What—what is that?!"
"Is it an ambush?!"
"Damn it, of all times—!"
Screams erupted as the auction house descended into complete pandemonium. Yet in the midst of that burning hell, as the agonizing sensation of having her body consumed by fire slowly sapped her consciousness, a quiet thought surfaced in Ariel's mind.
Somehow... it doesn't hurt nearly as much as it did back then.
She remembered the unbearable, lonely agony of her childhood rampages, marvelling at the strange warmth sheltering her now.
Cough!
A spray of fresh blood suddenly hit her collar as the man holding her coughed violently.
"Pro... fessor?"
Only then did Ariel notice that more than half of her rampaging energy was actively funneling into Oh Ji-seok's right arm, tearing through his flesh. She called his name in a shaking whisper, but he merely offered her a faint, gentle smile.
"Rest for a little while."
Reaching into his coat with his trembling left hand, he drew out his smartphone and whispered softly.
"What do you..."
"I swear, I will save you."
She desperately fought to keep her eyes open, but as a soothing, tranquil light washed across her vision, her mind succumbed to a heavy, inescapable haze, silencing the unbearable burning in her veins.
"Ah..."
Her head fell limp against his chest.
A silence settled between them.
Ariel was fast asleep in his embrace.
"...I was going to let this pass quietly if I could," Oh Ji-seok muttered quietly.
Holding the slumbering girl securely in his left arm, he slowly straightened his posture. Around him, the ruined venue was filled with VIPs and armed guards recovering from the shockwave, their glaring, venomous gazes locking onto him.
"You've crossed the line twice now."
A voice dropped over the hall—frigid, dead, and utterly devoid of the warmth he had shown the girl.
"Come at me all at once."
"Ngh..."
Struggling against the weight of her eyelids, Ariel slowly pushed herself up, rubbing her temples.
"...?"
She blinked dazedly at her surroundings.
"Where... am I?"
She was sitting on the cold floor of a dark, unfamiliar corridor. Cradling her throbbing head, she tried to piece together her fragmented memories. What was I doing...?
"Ah."
Her eyes snapped wide as she spotted Oh Ji-seok slumped against the wall right beside her.
"P-Professor!"
The walls and tiles around them were drenched in gore. Further down the hall lay the mangled, pulverized carcasses of countless magical beasts and aberrations. And slumped right before her eyes was Professor Oh Ji-seok, battered, covered in wounds, and gasping for ragged breaths.
"N-No... Please, don't die..."
Piecing together what must have happened, Ariel scrambled toward him with tears welling in her eyes—only to freeze in utter horror.
His entire right arm was charred black as charcoal, withered and horribly shriveled.
"Y-You didn't have to do this..." she stammered, staring at the ghastly limb in stunned disbelief. "I should have been the only one hurt! You had no reason to end up like this, Professor... none at all!"
Cough, cough...
Through his labored breaths, the battered professor looked up and offered her a faint, weary smile. Raising his uninjured left hand, he held something out toward her.
"You really are... just like Justia, aren't you?"
"...That's..."
"Even so, you don't need to sacrifice yourself to save everyone the way she did."
Held firmly in his hand was the pair of bloodstained gauntlets that had belonged to Justia.
"There is no need for you to destroy yourself trying to become a second Justia."
"Professor..."
"Being the first Ariel Everray is more than enough."
Ariel stared at the gauntlets, and the dam broke. Hot, heavy tears spilled over her cheeks, running down her chin in an unstoppable flood.
"Because you'll both be the greatest of heroes all the same."
"Ugh... *sob*... *hic*..."
Her weeping echoed softly down the ruined hall as the shadows of night closed in around them.