Chapter 95
Chapter 95
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Translator : M.N 1391
Chapter: 95
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Huh? This isn’t it?
Kyung-wan flailed and raised his voice.
“Hey! Even if you’re going to carry someone off, shouldn’t there be some prior mutual understanding?”
Even when carrying off a widow, it was only polite to at least exchange greetings beforehand.
The man replied.
“Mutual understanding only becomes possible once you face each other, doesn’t it? Let’s go!”
Watching the TV and game console growing distant, Kyung-wan couldn’t hide his regret.
“My game console!”
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t Kyung-wan’s property but the lab’s equipment, but hey, what’s good is good, right?
Just as Kyung-wan was being hauled out of the solitary cell, Nam Donggeon appeared.
“Release the hostage!”
The area was already surrounded in a semicircle by armed prison guards.
But the man remained utterly calm.
“We didn’t take any hostages.”
“Then what is that person?!”
When Nam Donggeon pointed at Kyung-wan slung over the muscular man’s shoulder, the mysterious man answered like this.
“A guest.”
“Bullshit.”
What kind of guest gets carried around like luggage?
But with Kyung-wan captured, they couldn’t easily open fire. In the end, Nam Donggeon had to step forward.
“Hand that guy over!”
Hmm… that guy?
At the word Nam Donggeon used to refer to him, Kyung-wan tried to infer what was going on in his head. And in that moment, a normally built man stepped forward first.
A clash between a hulking super-strength esper and a man of ordinary build looked like it would have an obvious outcome, but things took a strange turn.
The man leaned his upper body slightly back and stretched out his leg.
From inside to outside, from bottom to top, his foot traced a diagonal line, resembling a Taekkyeon kick.
Nam Donggeon saw the man’s instep flying toward his neck, but he didn’t care. What could a kick from such a scrawny body possibly do to him,
“Ghk!”
Nam Donggeon’s thoughts cut off midstream. The kick that looked light carried a weight like a massive lump of lead.
Realizing his mistake, Nam Donggeon tried to abandon his underestimation, but it was too late to undo his lapse. Struck by the seemingly light kick, he tumbled sideways in a full roll.
It was an indicator of just how much momentum the kick carried.
When the trusted tanker(?) went down, the guards panicked. Should they shoot or not?
“Chief! Should we fire?!”
[Wait a second!]
No sooner had Director Hong finished speaking than figures leapt over the prison’s tall wall.
There were five of them.
They were the guards of Ilseong Security, tasked with protecting the affiliated research institute.
“Release the hostage.”
At the demand from the esper guards, the man spread his arms and sneered.
“Oh! Well, who do we have here? Aren’t you the ones who, despite being chosen by great destiny, became slaves to capitalism?”
At that, Kyung-wan asked the super-strength esper carrying him on his shoulder.
“Is that guy going through a middle-school syndrome?”
“...”
The muscular man didn’t answer, simply watching the situation in silence.
The esper guards charged at the man and the muscular brute. They needed to rescue the hostage, and since the muscular one clearly looked like a super-strength esper, one extra person went after him.
But the situation started to turn strange.
When the ordinary-looking man kicked the ground, the surface layer flipped over.
That wasn’t all. Though it wasn’t even that much, four people who got showered with gravel and dirt were sent flying and taken out.
Seeing that sight, the remaining one couldn’t bring himself to rush in.
The man turned back toward Kyung-wan with a proud, triumphant look.
“How is it? Impressive, isn’t it? If you join our group, you could be like this too.”
“I’m not an esper.”
“Still playing dumb? Do you think we’d come all this way without being certain you’re an esper, when we’re gathering espers worldwide?”
“···.”
“Or do you still not clearly understand what your ability is? Don’t worry. We provide ample help so people like you can accurately identify and utilize your powers.”
“You keep saying ‘we.’ Who exactly are you people?”
Had he already forgotten the answer he gave just moments ago? Yet the man showed no sign of annoyance or offense, kindly explaining instead.
“We are the Übermensch. A group that aims for the transcendence of humanity.”
Didn’t you say you aimed for rights before?
As Kyung-wan grumbled internally, the man continued.
Übermensch. A philosophical term from Nietzsche, translated into Korean as ‘superman,’ but it doesn’t carry the same meaning as Superman.
The English rendering of Übermensch is Overman. In Korean terms, it’s closer to ‘one who overcomes.’
Put most simply, Übermensch can be described as ‘one who sheds all constraints and uses their mind freely and creatively.’
In modern terms, it’s like a blend of ‘someone who lives without needing the law’ and an upper-class powerful elite. Realistically, without power, one cannot be free from oppression, whether internal or external.
“Was the person who started that group a philosopher?”
“Who knows. I don’t really know how it began either. I simply joined because I empathize with what they pursue as the future our society, our humanity, should head toward.”
What grand words.
And Kyung-wan was someone who had grown sick of such grandly packaged justifications.
In the distant past, hadn’t he himself spewed countless lofty-sounding nonsense, as if he were some chosen one? Even now, if he could go back to that time, he felt an overwhelming urge to tell his past self to shut up and stuff a grenade into his mouth.
What snapped Kyung-wan out of his brief mental self-damage was the Ilseong Security guard who had regained his footing, along with Nam Donggeon.
“Enough with the nonsense. Why don’t you surrender quietly?”
The man answered.
“You’re too weak to catch me.”
Once again, battle erupted. Nam Donggeon and Ilseong Security rushed the mysterious man.
Facing six alone seemed recklessly bold, yet the man managed it.
He casually deflected flying punches, kicks, and batons, and tossed aside anyone who tried to grab him as if throwing Styrofoam.
“This makes no sense!”
One of the downed guards shouted. He didn’t seem to be a super-strength esper, how could this be possible?
“Telekinesis?”
At a guard’s question, the man shook his head.
“No, not that. It’s my ability. I named it Higgs Field Interference.”
“Higgs field? What’s that?”
“Tsk, tsk. Such poor scientific literacy. You don’t even know the particle that gives matter its mass?”
He bragged proudly about his knowledge.
Listening, Kyung-wan nodded, understanding why the guy would have a middle-school syndrome. Higgs Field Interference, an ability to control mass was powerful enough to justify it.
The Higgs guy continued.
“Impulse is the product of mass and velocity. But before my ability, which makes mass as light as cotton, no matter how hard you hit, it’s like hitting with feathers. Bullets and cannons are the same. If a bullet’s mass is reduced to dust, do you think it could pierce my skin? It wouldn’t even get through my clothes.”
In short, he had physical resistance.
“Taser.”
At the shooter’s command, a guard moved like the wind, distributing tasers to his comrades.
Bullets might be feathers, but electric needles would still sting.
The man admired their judgment.
“As expected of Ilseong Security. You don’t just recruit anyone, do you? But don’t assume I only use this ability defensively.”
The esper guards, fingers on triggers, felt wind rapidly gathering around them.
As a chilling sensation brushed their napes, someone shouted first.
“Get out of there!”
True to their nature as espers, they quickly evacuated, and with a Boom! an explosion erupted where they had stood.
“Fast, indeed.”
The man admired their movements, but didn’t stop attacking. Within a certain range of his vision, air kept compressing and exploding repeatedly. Just dodging was enough to leave them gasping for breath.
Fortunately, the explosions only occurred on the ground. Otherwise, even the agile esper guards wouldn’t have been able to evade the sheer number of blasts.
Watching this, Kyung-wan asked the man, oddly calm for the situation.
“A gravity gradient, or rather, a Higgs field gradient, using a gravity bomb?”
“Oh! You saw through it at a glance! Just what I’d expect from an esper we want to invite!”
The man exclaimed in admiration.
The remote explosions he created involved applying a powerful Higgs field to the ground surface.
Within that area, the mass of air molecules increased, and the heavier gas molecules, aided by gravity, clustered onto the surface. Once enough gathered, he instantly withdrew the Higgs field, releasing the compressed gas and causing an explosion.
A collaboration between the Higgs field controlling mass and Earth’s gravity.
“The limitations are clear, but it’s more than powerful enough to incapacitate people.”
Those limitations were atmospheric pressure and the fixed diffusion rate of gas molecules, achieving sufficient power required time. Moreover, the wind that arose as air gathered revealed the blast location.
But the man covered those limitations with countless explosions. Forming them beneath one’s feet also had the effect of making legs heavy, making it extremely effective.
“Aaaagh!”
A guard who failed to evade a blast underfoot was sent flying high into the air. Because his mass was momentarily reduced, he soared abnormally high compared to the explosion’s scale.
Seeing this, the man laughed gleefully.
“Hahaha! If you can’t fly, don’t dare challenge me!”
The guard who fell from five stories high avoided injury thanks to his comrades working together to catch him. Or rather, the Higgs guy had gone easy on him. Had he increased the falling man’s mass mid-descent, even a body-enhancement esper would have struggled to withstand the impact.
Bang!
A gunshot rang out. A prison sniper fired at the man. But the bullet bounced off without even deforming. No matter its supersonic speed, within the Higgs field he controlled, its mass was so light it couldn’t pierce even thin clothing.
Only the sonic boom from cutting through the air whipped up a fierce gust, fluttering his clothes.
“Now you see? You can’t do anything. So stop interfering. Now then, Mr. Kyung-wan. Shall we go, hmm?”
Satisfied after displaying the Übermensch member’s superiority, the man tried to leave with Kyung-wan, only to be caught off guard by an unexpected sight.
His companion, the muscular man, was being choked by Kyung-wan, eyes rolling back.
Judging by how perfectly the hold was applied, within seconds his eyes rolled back completely and he lost consciousness.
It seemed it happened while the man was busy showing off his ability. Amid the noise of explosions, he hadn’t heard the scuffle, yet in that brief moment, this had happened…
As the muscular man collapsed unconscious, Kyung-wan brushed his hands off and said,
“I told you I’m not going. I’m a busy man.”
It wasn’t that going to the U.S. made him busy. He was busy because Director Kim Maria had provided a new cell along with a game lineup, and he had a clear plan to finish every title.
First, he’d see all the endings. Then, for the fun ones, he’d collect all the achievements. Did he have any room in his ears for Übermensch or upstairs neighbors peeing or whatever?