Fall into Hell
Fall into hell.
Tap-tap-tap.
Choi A-rin sprinted down the long corridor, gasping for breath.
Fewer people than I expected.
At most, three people trailed behind her. She had tried to free the captives with the master key Park Yeon-chan had given her, but even that had proven far from simple.
"Eek! What are you doing?! Close it already! I didn't do anything — what if they think I'm involved because of you?!"
"It's already over. I'm fine. Just go save the others."
"You're all going to fail anyway! I'd rather stay here and live!"
The terror etched into them over so long had sunk its roots too deep. A threadbare sliver of light was no longer enough to illuminate the way out.
I couldn't gather many, but at least these people…
If her memory served, a door leading outside should appear just a little farther ahead. Just a little farther…
That was when she heard it.
Thud.
"…!"
Choi A-rin and her companions froze in an instant before the man blocking the long corridor. Standing in their path was an Awakened who held authority and power second only to the branch manager himself.
"The vice-manager…"
The words left Choi A-rin's lips in a low murmur — and then,
Rumble-rumble-rumble—!
The entire underground base began to shake.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Not long after Choi A-rin escaped the laboratory, the place filled with a thunderous racket like a fireworks display going off.
"Hahaha! What's wrong? You looked so full of yourself earlier — where'd you sell off that attitude?!"
The branch manager, Seong Yeong-geon, drove fists the size of Park Yeon-chan's head and twisted out a vicious grin. In his mind, the image of victory was already painted clear — and for all his brute appearance, the thought came from his own brand of analysis.
The state of his subordinate when he'd arrived at the lab. Still breathing, yes, but only just. Studying that wreckage, Seong Yeong-geon had concluded that his opponent was less a power-type and more someone who controlled force. Arms twisted into grotesque angles. Legs shattered with what looked like raw violence but was, in truth, precise. Not the kind of craft a monstrous strength-type like himself could pull off.
And so he had been certain.
There's no way I lose.
He was a power-type — a pure muscle-type among them — boasting dozens of times the bulk of an ordinary man. Manipulation-types might give him trouble, but this guy? Bad matchup for the other side.
He had walked in certain of victory.
Something's off.
Seconds of throwing punches had stretched into minutes. In a fight, a minute was the equivalent of double-digit hours on the job.
And yet nothing's changed.
Whatever tricks the kid was pulling, Park Yeon-chan hadn't deflected a single one of Seong Yeong-geon's fists. He had taken every blow head-on. That alone was startling, but Seong Yeong-geon had still figured it wouldn't last long.
It was lasting longer than he thought.
Another few minutes passed.
"Hah… hah! Hah!"
It was Seong Yeong-geon — the one raining down uninterrupted punches — whose stamina drained first. And that wasn't all.
His breathing hasn't even hitched?
While Seong Yeong-geon was heaving for air, Park Yeon-chan looked exactly as he had at the start — not a single bead of sweat on him.
"Hey."
Thud. Thud.
"Having fun?"
"…!"
He hadn't noticed it while throwing punches, but looking at Park Yeon-chan's face now, the kid's mouth was stretched wide in a bone-chilling grin. The sight made Seong Yeong-geon instinctively try to step back — and he clamped down hard on his own legs to stop them.
I'm… scared? Of a brat like that?
Grit.
His teeth ground together of their own accord. He was just thinking he had to wash away this humiliation somehow when—
"My turn now, right?"
Park Yeon-chan's voice. Flat as before. The only difference was where it came from.
Right in front of him.
He'd lost track of the movement for a split second, but Seong Yeong-geon decided it was an opportunity instead.
I just haven't landed clean. One solid hit and I put him down.
The power hadn't been weak by any means, but Seong Yeong-geon had already tanked Park Yeon-chan's fists once.
I'll counter and finish him.
A vision of victory bloomed in his head, and he was already imagining how he'd toy with this arrogant kid — when,
CRAAACK!
"Guhhk!"
The body that had been lining up a counter crumpled without strength.
"Hah… hah!"
As he gasped for the breath that had momentarily left him, a cold voice drove down into him.
"Keep your guard up properly."
In that fleeting glimpse of Park Yeon-chan's face, Seong Yeong-geon felt terror seize him all over again.
That face…
He knew that face. The face of a child brimming with curiosity about how best to play with something next. No — something far closer to pure madness than that.
Whooosh—!
The moment he confirmed it, Seong Yeong-geon curled up without hesitation and raised his guard as high as it would go.
And then—
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
A racket like a machine gun opened up, and heavy fists poured down onto Seong Yeong-geon's guard.
"Khgh!"
It's fine. I can take this…!
They weren't punches he could casually stop without a guard, but the force was just barely within what he could endure.
A barrage this intense can't last long.
So Seong Yeong-geon clenched his teeth and weathered the storm of brutal fists.
Another few minutes. Barely one or two, but for Seong Yeong-geon it was a long ordeal — and then it ended.
THUD!
The final punch shoved his body back, but he had blocked it successfully.
"Kh… hahahaha! That it?! Why don't you try that 'my turn' crap again?!"
"Getting excited, are we?"
The same expression. The same unbroken breathing. A presence utterly unchanged from the start. Seong Yeong-geon's brow furrowed.
"You know,"
Park Yeon-chan closed the distance again, slow and deliberate.
"I'm really curious."
At those approaching footsteps, Seong Yeong-geon shrank back without meaning to.
"When that fun you always feel turns into pain — what kind of face will you make? What kind of sound will you cry with?"
And with that—
Whoosh—!
"…!"
Park Yeon-chan closed the gap in an instant, same as before, and Seong Yeong-geon raised his guard on pure instinct. The same pattern as a moment ago.
But then—
Crack-crack-crack-crack!
"AAAAAARGH!!"
His arms — thick, arms he had believed could never break — were twisted into a shape as grotesque as his subordinate's. No. Worse.
Through the surging agony, Seong Yeong-geon couldn't stop the question.
Why?
He had reinforced that massive muscle with mana. The drugs Lilis had given him should have made the muscle even harder.
As if reading the thought clean through—
"Want me to tell you?"
A bright, cheerful voice, a wide grin, and Park Yeon-chan snapped the other arm.
"GYAAAAAH!"
Park Yeon-chan dug a finger in his ear as if the noise annoyed him, then opened his mouth.
"Even Awakened are human at the base. The components that make up a human body don't change that much."
He added that there were occasional special cases, then continued.
"Human muscle is just meat in the end. If you want to tenderize tough meat, what do you do?"
At those words, Seong Yeong-geon remembered the barrage he had blocked with his guard raised.
"Right. You pound it until it's soft."
Goosebumps crawled up his skin. That desperate, all-or-nothing barrage he had weathered had been nothing more than a process to tenderize his muscles.
"Harder than you'd think, actually. Killing you wouldn't have been that difficult."
Tap.
Park Yeon-chan's foot lightly nudged the kneeling Seong Yeong-geon's shoulder.
Pop.
"Ghhhhaaagh!"
With that casual motion, Seong Yeong-geon's shoulder dislocated as if someone were popping a joint off an action figure.
"But I've got the hang of it now."
Pop.
"AAAAAGH!"
He set it back.
"From here on, I'll do it properly."
That mouth still stretched in the same eerie grin. Behind that face, Seong Yeong-geon's eyes suddenly caught the floor where Park Yeon-chan had been taking his attacks.
It was clean.
The ground where Seong Yeong-geon himself had stood throwing punches was cratered and wrecked in every direction. The spot where Park Yeon-chan had stood looked as pristine as freshly laid tile.
I see. From the very beginning…
This man had never been thinking about winning. Only about how to inflict more pain.
That was Seong Yeong-geon's last coherent thought before the screaming began in earnest, drowned in unbearable agony.
"Ghhhaa… aah…"
It hadn't even been that long, but Seong Yeong-geon's body was already a ruin — barely clinging to life, no longer able to scream properly.
In the corner, the researchers who had been trembling now lay with their eyes rolled back, the same syringes they had always stuck into their test subjects jammed into their own arms.
"Boss, you okay?"
"…"
"…Haa. You always say this is how you blow off steam, but honestly? I'm not a fan."
"Drop it and just move your hands for now."
Park Yeon-chan had switched off the camera attached to him before entering combat, but Park Jae-hyun — who could already guess his condition — had a fair idea of what had happened even without the feed.
"Haa… Fine, fine."
With the branch manager and the researchers all dealt with, what Park Yeon-chan was doing now was copying the data stored in this research facility. Lilis's security was tighter than expected, and the two of them were struggling with it—
"Boss, this is…"
"…We're fucked. Shit."
Rumble-rumble-rumble!
The underground base suddenly began to shake. Lilis's information control was harsher than Park Yeon-chan had anticipated. If anyone tried to access data beyond their clearance — even with a researcher's ID — the self-destruct system kicked in.
What Choi A-rin knew about the vice-manager was extremely little. That he handled administration here in place of the branch manager, whose brain was apparently packed with muscle. That he enforced the branch's regulations with iron strictness. That was about it.
Choi A-rin swallowed hard and looked at the man before her. Black horn-rimmed glasses. Neatly kept hair. A slender build — the opposite of the branch manager. At a glance, a clean-cut middle-aged man with a tidy impression.
Can I do this?
This wasn't some ordinary Awakened. This was the vice-manager. Could she really hold off someone second only to the branch manager himself?
Carrying that unease, she reached for her pendant—
Hummm.
A vibration rippled out from around the vice-manager in an instant. The problem was—
Huh…?
The shockwave she had expected to target them rode along the walls instead and took out the Awakened who had been trying to ambush them from behind.
"Go. The exit is straight ahead from here."
He adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses as he spoke, and Choi A-rin's group made no effort to hide their suspicion. But—
Rumble-rumble-rumble!
In a base that had already started shaking, they couldn't stay forever. So they passed carefully beside the vice-manager without dropping their guard — and even after a considerable distance opened between them, he never once raised a hand against Choi A-rin's group.
Left alone in the long corridor, the vice-manager spoke.
"At the very least, I'll die living like a human being."
He clenched the photograph in his pocket and turned to face the Lilis Awakened flooding toward him.
Lilis's vice-manager, Im Hui-seop, had once been a hero of the Hero Association. A fairly outstanding one, trusted by those around him, and he himself had taken pride in a profession that meant saving people.
A peaceful home. A satisfying job. Everything had been flowing along quietly — until one day, caught in an attack by Freedom, his wife was killed and his daughter fell into a coma with no telling when she might wake.
Choked with rage, he had insisted they had to hunt Freedom down somehow. Upper management only cautioned that facing an organization as large as Freedom required careful deliberation. Seething, Im Hui-seop quit being a hero on the spot. Wanting the power to wipe out Freedom even if he had to do it alone, he joined Lilis.
But his original, unyielding sense of justice hadn't gone anywhere. Witnessing Lilis's utterly inhuman acts, he tried to leave the organization — only to be stopped cold.
Your daughter's hospitalized, isn't she?
Threatened with his own child, he had no choice but to obey, and he took part in countless crimes.
"Thank you for listening to my story."
Around Im Hui-seop, soaked in blood, countless Lilis Awakened lay fallen. Park Yeon-chan stood before him as he slumped against the wall.
"I won't comfort you by saying you had no choice, or that it's all right."
Looking down at him, Park Yeon-chan bent one knee and met Im Hui-seop's eyes. Im Hui-seop smiled weakly and nodded. He had sinned. Whatever reasons he piled on, he had ultimately inflicted wounds on others that could never be washed clean.
And yet — at the words Park Yeon-chan added next, Im Hui-seop's closing eyes opened again.
The words, delivered so matter-of-factly, somehow felt like comfort.
"Ah, right. Would you take what's in my inner pocket?"
At that, Park Yeon-chan rummaged through the pocket and pulled out a USB drive. Everything Im Hui-seop had scraped together on Lilis during his time as vice-manager.
"I'm glad… the last person to hear my story was someone like you…. Thank you."
And just like that, as if drifting into peaceful sleep, Im Hui-seop closed his eyes. Still clutching his family photograph tight.
"When everything is over… I will too."
Without finishing the sentence, Park Yeon-chan bowed his head slightly and turned away.
Beep.
"Boss, you scared the hell out of me. If you're gonna cut the line, at least say so."
"Had my reasons. More importantly — look into the daughter of a guy named Im Hui-seop who used to work for the Hero Association."
"Coming to me with more pointless errands again. Haa… Fine. It's not like you'd do it yourself if I said no."
"'You'? You little shit… Come to think of it, your navigating was garbage earlier, wasn't it? When I get back, I'll personally escort you to the afterlife."
"Hello? Kssshhh— Boss, the signal's kssshhh. Can't hear you? Oops."
Bickering with Park Jae-hyun and his nonsense, I made my way out of the collapsing Lilis branch.