Taeguk Fragment
"We're here. Both of you are impressive. I never thought you'd make it this far without protective suits. Sonya wasn't exaggerating after all—I'm thrilled!"
"Th-thank you."
"……."
I filtered the excessively high-density qi once through my body and exhaled it. The process itself was fairly challenging, but not impossible. The real problem was having to do this grueling task nonstop, without a break. It felt like running laps in a training ground with ten times normal gravity.
And from midway through, Yujin's mental strength gave out, so I had to handle his share too. It was tougher than expected.
"…Sorry. Because of me. I wanted to show off a cool side of myself, but I just held you back."
"Don't think like that. You did great as it is. Just focus on remembering the knack for now. You know opportunities like this—to drill the fundamentals in such a Spartan way—don't come often, right?"
I get the self-loathing from feeling like he's leaning too much on a girl as a guy, but turn all that into fertilizer for the future.
"Ahahahaha!! That's right! Fundamentals are the most important! With a solid foundation, even without a standout unique ability, you can get strong enough to be called one of the Five Heroes! Keep at it!"
Luisin laughed heartily, grabbing Yujin's shoulder and hoisting him up effortlessly to ruffle his hair.
…What can I say? It was a pretty surreal sight.
"Anyway, that's enough training. At your levels, pushing further could actually kill you. Let's suit up in the prepared protective gear and head in."
"Yes!"
Once we donned the protective suits—made on the same principle as the safe zones during gate outbreaks—breathing became much easier. Up until then, it had felt like we'd been surviving by force-feeding ourselves that jelly-like stuff laced with oxygen through our noses and mouths. Now, I finally felt alive.
Luisin opened the steel door, revealing a massive machine and researchers bustling around it like mad. Everyone was in protective suits, of course. Luisin was the only one bare-skinned in the room.
We passed the frantically scurrying researchers, and Luisin showed us the liquid inside the giant machine, endlessly spewing blue qi bubbles.
"That's the heart of this research base: the Taeguk Fragment. You can tell at a glance how extraordinary it is, right?"
She was spot on. Whatever "it" was inside that liquid couldn't be processed visually, for some inexplicable reason. It felt like a higher existence that the human brain could only register as present, nothing more. The only way to grasp it indirectly was through the overwhelming flow of qi it never stopped emitting.
Anyone with even a modicum of qi sensitivity would understand its abnormality.
"This is what gave birth to Geonwang and Gonwang. According to one hypothesis, it wasn't them who wiped out Wonhae City and recreated it—it was this fragment itself. Though that's just a hypothesis."
That hypothesis is spot on, actually. Well, since the qi overflow from the fragment's process of birthing Gonwang and Geonwang caused Wonhae City to vanish, blaming them isn't entirely wrong either.
And it's not just those two. In truth, all eight Palwang originated from this Taeguk Fragment. To the people here, it's still just a hypothesis.
The Palwang—each one a catastrophic threat to human civilization on their own. And this thing birthed them all, yet still relentlessly pumps out qi at a near-lethal concentration. From humanity's perspective, it was an OOPArt that inspired both extreme dread and insatiable curiosity.
"I-is it really okay for academy freshmen like us to see something like this? Isn't it classified?"
"The specifics of our research are classified, sure. But the existence itself? Not really. Can't hide something with this much presence anyway."
The Palwang all knew about the Taeguk Fragment here too. It was their birthplace, after all. They were just leaving it alone for now, since there was no way to exploit it yet.
Humans were trying to unravel the Taeguk Fragment in their own way, but the research was extremely limited. Messing with it wrong could trigger reactions that'd make nuclear weapons look like toys. All they could safely handle were the natural byproducts leaking out.
Until I came along, anyway.
"Suuuuuuck… Haaaaah."
I steeled myself. I knew how to connect to the Taeguk Fragment.
That's what original knowledge is for.
The catch? By this world's common sense, what I was about to do was suicide.
It's a far cry from being a player where your senses are limited to monitor screens and mouse clicks. If some uncontrollable external variable cropped up, would my life be in danger? It felt like crossing a narrow bridge to the abyss—one misstep, and you're gone. Too dark to even make out the bridge's shape clearly, no safety rails on either side.
But it was a path I'd have to take eventually. To see the ending.
"Hey, Hyowon? You okay?"
"Huh?"
"Your hand's been shaking since earlier."
Huh? Have I been holding this guy's hand the whole time? No real need to keep holding on once we suited up, but…
Well, guess it's natural to grab any straw in unfamiliar territory.
Realizing I was holding Yujin's hand eased my mind just a bit. Either way, I wasn't alone. Even if I died, it wouldn't be lonely. Lucky me.
"Hey, Hwa Yujin. You trust me, right?"
Yujin didn't ask why.
"Yeah, I do."
"Then whatever I do next, don't interfere—just accept it as it is?"
"Got it."
You're just agreeing without knowing what I'm gonna do? You're prime flower snake bait, you know that?
Whatever. "Thanks."
Those empty words somehow comforted me deeply. Was this some kind of protagonist buff? An irrational belief that things would work out with him by my side.
I gripped Yujin's hand tight and popped open my suit's lid.
"Whoa! Hold on, Hyowon. You can't just take off the suit here. You might not die, but permanent damage is possible."
Ignoring Luisin's warning, I closed my eyes and expelled every last bit of qi from my body.
An extreme application of Emit Qi. No limit to the amount expelled. Pour out everything you have until nothing remains but emptiness.
My intent wouldn't transmit perfectly, of course. From the outside, this just looked like plain suicide.
Everything—humans included—is ultimately made of qi. Emptying it from your body is a full sprint toward death.
Even I wouldn't normally pull something this insane. But in a space dense with absurdly concentrated qi, right next to the Taeguk Fragment, emptying yourself triggers something extraordinary. I knew that from the original work.
"What the hell are you doing?! You think I'll just stand by?!"
Luisin's angry voice hit the back of my head. She wouldn't kill me, but as the base's safety chief, she had every right to restrain me.
Before she could, though, a researcher's frantic voice stopped her.
The Taeguk Fragment is showing an abnormal reaction!
"What?! Is it dangerous?!"
"N-no, that's… We can't even properly analyze it."
The Taeguk Fragment was starting to respond to me. I cracked my eyes open to check Yujin's face. His complexion was deathly pale, frozen in confusion and fear, not knowing what to do.
Even this guy, who never fled from giant monsters and always held his head high, crumbled in a crisis like this. Adorable.
"I'm worried."
"Huh?"
"I'm really worried about you. Sorry for saying this after saying I trust you. You sure you're okay?"
Aw, he's worried about me? This punk's getting bold. Like I have time to be coddled by you.
And yet, he wouldn't let go of our clasped hands. If it were just his own safety, he'd have yanked away and backed off—no issue there.
…You're a great friend, you know that?
"Good thing we did that dress rehearsal."
"What?"
I kissed Yujin's lips. The tattoo on my lower belly burned hot.
I emptied every scrap of qi from myself, leaving only the handful he'd breathed into me before. In turn, I did the same to him—draining all but the handful I'd given him.
Normally, manipulating someone else's qi like this is near-impossible without being one of the Palwang. But our connection via his Female Trainingunique ability, plus Yujin fully entrusting his body to me, made it possible.
One dot of him inside me. One dot of me inside him.
Yang within yin. Yin within yang.
That was the Taeguk Fragment's activation condition.
The Taeguk Fragment gladly invited the first humans to fulfill its condition into itself.