Chapter 83
Chapter 83
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Translator : M.N 1391
Chapter: 83
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The lights went out, and it was time to sleep. Kyung-wan lay down in solitary confinement and drifted off.
It was a narrow room, but rather than feeling stifling, it felt cozy. If you can lean your back somewhere and it’s warm, isn’t that home? In the end, the only land a human needs is a space about the size of a coffin.
Not long after he fell asleep, a thunderous blast echoed from far away.
BOOM!
The blast grew louder. It felt as though whatever was causing it was drawing closer.
With an annoying premonition, Kyung-wan spoke without opening his eyes.
“Fuck.”
Do these bastards not sleep? Even if they don’t, don’t they have the basic decency not to bother others while they’re sleeping?
Keeping his eyes closed, Kyung-wan hoped the blasts would simply pass by.
But as Murphy’s Law would have it, shitty things always have better odds than winning the lottery.
KWA-BANG!
WEEEEEENG!
The guards must have realized that something serious was approaching, because emergency bells rang out and they went on high alert.
Gunshots could be heard intermittently, but it seemed they were completely unable to stop the source of those blasts.
The explosion finally went off right nearby, and the shockwave collapsed the wall where Kyung-wan was. A fist-sized chunk of concrete slammed into the thickly folded blanket before falling away.
Because he had curled up in the corner and wrapped himself in a thickly folded blanket just in case, he was able to protect himself from the concrete debris that flew in from the shattered wall.
Pushing the blanket aside, Kyung-wan stood up and shouted as he stepped through the gap in the broken wall.
“Hey! You sheep bastards! Let a guy sleep!”
And just who the hell are you? Let me see your faces.
But contrary to his expectations, it was hard to see any faces at all.
Under the prison’s searchlights was a mass of thick black smoke. And something hazy kept piercing straight through that massive cloud.
Black Noya and superpowered individuals.
For reasons unknown, the superpowered individuals were targeting Black Noya. Kyung-wan was able to grasp the situation without much difficulty. Probably that old geezer whose kid got killed had hired them.
One thing he couldn’t understand was why, out of all places across the country, they had to pull this shit here.
Why was Black Noya here?
The reason he could ask that question was because, judging by the shape of the clash, it wasn’t Black Noya chasing the hired killers, it was the hired killers chasing Black Noya.
The moment that doubt crossed his mind, everyone became aware of Kyung-wan’s presence. One of the hired killers brushed past him, leaving an afterimage, and whispered a single word by his ear.
“Go away.”
Kyung-wan replied.
“Fuck you.”
Who the hell was he to tell him to go away? The rightful resident of this land was Kyung-wan, and they were nothing but uninvited guests.
There was no response to Kyung-wan’s profanity. Everyone was fully focused on punching through the black smoke.
Multiple afterimages dove into the black smoke at once, then were all repelled simultaneously. And then the fog approached Kyung-wan.
It felt ominous, but he sensed no hostility, so Kyung-wan didn’t avoid the black smoke. Instead, he allowed the fog to envelop him while keeping his sixth sense active, ready to react at any moment.
Within the deepening fog, a single human-shaped figure emerged. It was an old man, bleeding from his eyes, nose, and mouth.
Kyung-wan recognized him at once as the man known as Black Noya. He’d been all over the internet lately.
Black Noya spoke.
“I apologize for causing you trouble like this.”
“Did you come looking for me?”
“If your name is Lee Kyung-wan…”
As expected.
Kyung-wan had a feeling it was something like that. Things like this didn’t just happen around him for no reason.
“Who told you?”
“Your voice…”
At Black Noya’s words, Kyung-wan recalled the telepath from Vigilance.
“What did they say?”
“They said you were the last possibility to fulfill my remaining wish.”
“What kind of wish?”
“Someone who will finish what I started, no, what I dragged back out. Cough!”
Black Noya covered his mouth and coughed violently. Blood spattered from his lips, suggesting his injuries were severe.
Kyung-wan spoke.
“Honestly, I don’t really want to get involved. To you, those people are the bloodline of your direct enemy, but to me, they’re just strangers.”
The affair between Black Noya and the former coup commander was, in the broad sense, a national and historical issue, but in the narrow sense, it was a grudge between two families.
From Kyung-wan’s perspective, someone who didn’t even feel any sense of belonging to this country, it was basically none of his business. Deciding the lives of the descendants of a former dictator, who themselves bore no direct guilt for the past, was nothing but a hassle, one that gave him neither necessity nor motivation to act.
At his answer, the old man looked visibly disappointed.
“I see. Then my lingering regrets end here.”
“Are you just going to die like this, by their hands?”
“Heh heh heh. If I’ve got life left, I might as well struggle.”
Kyung-wan smacked his lips. If this were merely a clash of values, he would have shut his eyes and turned away, but what he was seeing was hired hunters tearing a single man apart for money.
Was the old man in front of him a murderer? Murder is evil, sure, but Kyung-wan couldn’t help tilting his head at that notion.
If killing one person saved a thousand, ten thousand others, would that really be evil? In the past, resolute kings flayed corrupt officials and turned their skins into chairs or effigies to warn countless bureaucrats. Generals who cut down tens of thousands of enemies on the battlefield were praised as heroes.
Wasn’t Kyung-wan himself proof of that?
There were certainly cases where actions that current human rights, common sense, and laws could not tolerate nonetheless produced positive results for the world’s progress and benefit. Conversely, there were countless cases where actions permitted by human rights, common sense, law, and morality led to negative outcomes.
Freedom that idolizes dictatorship, freedom that shields incitement and fabrication, freedom that attacks freedom.
In a system that guarantees individual freedom, attacks on freedom are structurally inevitable. Expanding my freedom inevitably shrinks someone else’s.
That was why liberal democracy emphasized social consensus, to prevent a war of all against all.
But who gave coup forces the freedom to seize power? Communists? Or those who claimed to be defending liberal democracy?
For a liberal democrat, tolerating coup forces was betrayal and corruption of the system itself.
Those who sacrificed themselves to resist such corruption were no different from martyrs who gave their lives for religion.
‘Would you give your life, your very existence, for liberal democracy?’
From Kyung-wan’s perspective, that was the old man’s situation.
Wasn’t it just revenge? If Kyung-wan were in the old man’s position and driven solely by revenge, the former coup commander’s grandchildren would have met their end on the day of that banquet.
“Murder is just murder”? In a society that does not allow collective punishment, Black Noya’s actions were clearly a violation of that social consensus?
So what?
Human life is precious, but Kyung-wan knew from experience that there are humans whose deaths benefit everyone.
The claim that there is no one who deserves to die is a hollow lie. Humanity’s narrow morality and its patchwork, hole-ridden rule of law can neither make the right truly right nor properly correct the wrong.
Those who rape multiple children, then repeat the same crimes after release.
What should be done with those who treat the chance for repentance granted by society and so-called human rights as nothing more than another opportunity to commit crimes?
And so Kyung-wan decided to extend a small helping hand to the old man before him, an old man who was burning the last flame of his life, pitiable as he was.
“Would you like to leave a legacy?”
“A legacy?”
“I mean the power you have right now. You can pass it on to someone who will carry on your will.”
It was one of the abilities of the S-particles that Kyung-wan had glimpsed through meditation.
In the end, a superpowered individual was defined by the density and activity of S-particles. By Kyung-wan’s senses, Black Noya’s S-particle density was extremely high, enough to condense and transfer it to another.
The old man coughed and spat blood.
“Cough! But who would I pass it on to?”
“You’re still connected to the telepath, right?”
Otherwise, there was no way he could have found this place so precisely in the middle of such a fierce battle with the hired killers.
As Kyung-wan expected, the old man nodded, and Kyung-wan spoke.
“Are you listening? Open a channel to me too.”
[It’s been a while.]
“I don’t like feeling like you tried to use me, but it could be a misunderstanding, so I’ll let it slide.”
[It is a misunderstanding. The elder’s situation was so pitiful that when I looked for someone to help, you were the only one who came to mind. Aren’t you the only person who could sneer even if the entire country became your enemy?]
Kyung-wan nodded at the voice’s judgment. Black Noya was currently a criminal who had distorted the rule of law. Even if someone sympathized with his views, no one could openly step forward to help him without committing social suicide.
And it wasn’t just simple public authority, powerful figures had gone so far as to hire superpowered assassins to eliminate Black Noya.
In such a dangerous situation, it wasn’t strange for someone who knew Kyung-wan to judge that he alone might be the solution.
“Enough chatter. Open the channel wide.”
[Um… may I ask what you’re planning to do?]
“I’m going to use you as a radar and transfer this old man’s power to someone who can fulfill his last regret.”
[… Is that even possible?]
“We’ll find out.”
[… I’ll go along with it for now.]
“Old man, give me your hand.”
At Kyung-wan’s words, the man known as Black Noya raised his thin, trembling arm. As if his own words about being near death were true, his emaciated, powerless wrist was clasped in Kyung-wan’s grip.
“It’s going to be tough, so brace yourselves…”
Kyung-wan opened his senses wide. Dense S-particles, so thick they felt almost liquid, oozed outward and enveloped the old man.
Kyung-wan’s S-particles seeped into the old man’s, and under the owner’s guidance, they extended tendrils into the telepath’s channel.
[Ugh!]
[Hold the channel steady and endure it. Unless you want to screw this up.]
At Kyung-wan’s words, the voice gritted its teeth and held on.
Through the channel, Kyung-wan’s S-particles spread across the entire nation, using the telepathic ability as a medium. The sensation from when he had expanded channels before proved useful.
The S-particles scattered across the country received Kyung-wan’s intent and intertwined with one another like a net. If that’s hard to grasp, think of it as something like quantum entanglement.
Anyway, the result was a vast net, Heaven’s Net.
Though coarse, the expansive S-particle net covered everything, serving as both a detector to find those who met the conditions and a single medium. All that remained was to set those conditions and condense the old man’s power into a kind of seed, then bind it to the net covering the nation.
“Old man. What you truly want, is it really his apology and repentance?”
“Cough! What else could I possibly gain?”
Even a dictator worshiped as half-man, half-god couldn’t bring a dead child back to life.
“Then wish for it with all your heart. I’ll engrave that will into your ability. Once that’s done, your power will be passed on to someone who can fulfill that will.”
At Kyung-wan’s words, the old man nodded.
The black smoke surrounding them churned violently. Using Kyung-wan’s S-particles as a medium, the old man’s S-particles condensed into a single point. The black smoke followed the S-particles, condensing into a single point in midair before melting away into nothing, as if dissolving into the void.