Lightning (2)
“Cough…”
The experience of consciousness snapping away and then returning was never a welcome one. For Ha Jinwoo, losing consciousness was a rarity. He had undergone every conceivable brain modification to resist pain and avoid slipping into shock. The fact that even he had fainted proved the injury was so profound that his altered brain could no longer function.
The lingering micro-current seared through his mind and jolted him awake. He gasped, then vomited the blood that had flooded his lungs.
What the hell is this?
The situation made no sense. He had been fighting. His memory had simply cut off—a hazy gap that, even by his own self-diagnosis, signaled critical damage. As if to confirm it, his arm was twisted backward at a sickening angle. Shards of debris jutted from his body. Though they had missed vital organs, the wounds were far too large to shrug off with a smile. Staring at the wooden fragments, he planted his trembling knees on the ground and panted.
Pulling them out now would be suicidal; even his modified red blood cells couldn’t staunch bleeding of that magnitude. His output had plummeted. He couldn’t maintain maximum power indefinitely, but against this opponent he had no choice but to push to the limit. So he had. And this was the result.
A calculated trap.
Even though the distance should have been impossible without a full sprint, the gap had forced him to exceed his limits. His heart convulsed. The arrhythmia sent irregular pulses through him, and his breathing grew ragged as blood failed to circulate properly.
Crackle—!
He forcibly stopped his heart with micro-current, then restarted it. The motion sent the blood pooled in his mouth splattering across the floor.
A single strike. Just one blow, and he had nearly died. The difference in sheer mass was overwhelming. One arm was ruined, and the extreme focus he had used to raise his output left him vulnerable the instant his concentration slipped. It felt as though his muscles were melting. His body was spent, refusing to obey, while his fingertips shook violently.
Yet the battle was not over.
His vision was blurred, his micro-current nearly offline. Even so, the distant scene remained painfully clear. The Holy Knight no longer spared him any attention. One strike had convinced it that he was neutralized. Everyone had believed the same.
He saw Vertea hurling flames like a woman possessed. The Holy Knight dodged every inferno while Vertea burned through her reserves. Mystic arts were physical abilities, after all. A limit always came. She could not spew such firepower forever. Yet she was pushing herself to the brink in response to his crisis. At this rate she would die.
The only reason Vertea still lived was because Jenia stood beside her, desperately cooling her down, and because Maribella was frantically preventing the Holy Knight from breaking free.
Unlike the Blood Clan knights—who were sliced in half, torn apart, or sent rolling after losing a limb with every exchange—Maribella was still standing. But she was far from whole. Her helmet was cracked, her hair whipped wildly, and blood masked her face. Each time the Holy Knight batted aside her greatsword and drove a fist into her, she was hurled backward, only to rise again and charge.
Every retreat left a trail of blood.
Watching it all, Ha Jinwoo clenched his fist. He could not see any future in which they won. After so many battles, he knew how to read the odds of victory. The chances he had been shown were illusions. He had been led by the nose. His mistake had been failing to grasp exactly what a divinity was capable of—and not searching for the woman who had erased her presence midway through the fight. Perhaps that, too, had been part of the plan, keeping him so entangled that he never had the chance to look away.
Struggling to keep his nearly immobile body upright, Ha Jinwoo thought: At this rate, we lose. Yet no path to victory appeared.
The generator that produced his power had been damaged by the maximum output he had forced through it; no current would come. His body felt as if it were melting under waves of delayed paralysis and exhaustion. His mind grew distant beneath a pounding headache and rising fever.
What had been lacking was mass. Raw power. The strength to topple that colossal frame. If he had possessed it, would everything have changed?
When he thought about it, it had always been this way. When his wife died. When his captain died. When the person who taught him how to cherish life while living it was killed. Even on the first day of the war, when falling shells burned his entire existence to ash.
Ha Jinwoo had been powerless. He could do nothing. He had learned, powerlessly and pathetically, to simply accept the outcome and keep living. There was no target for revenge, so he could not even rage. Miserably, he had been forced to chew and swallow the tragedy that befell him. Telling himself this was simply life, he learned how to drag an unsatisfying existence forward one day at a time.
Glancing behind him, he saw the same truth. He carried many regrets—not from actions taken, but from deficiencies. He had mulled over useless emotions that helped no one.
Yet the thought returned: If only I had possessed power. If he had held even a sliver of some miracle capable of blocking those shells. If he could have delayed the moment his family gathered. If he had been strong enough to stop Baek Seolah from being disposed of by the government. If he had found a way to prove his sister’s research. If he could have prevented Captain Gu Sihyeok from sacrificing himself to save him. If he could have stood beside his wife when she fought.
If only. Perhaps. If it had been that way.
He ground his teeth and tightened his fist. He needed power. Always. Without fail.
Protecting anything only worked when one possessed the strength to do so. No matter how hard he tried to be happy, how dearly he cherished his family, how much he simply wanted to live day by day—the world cruelly took everything away in the end.
Ha Jinwoo desired greater power. The kind that could protect everything he wished to protect.
He rose, steadying his trembling knees. The longsword was nowhere to be seen; it had flown off and embedded itself somewhere in the debris. All that remained was the mace tucked at his waist. He drew it. The metal grip felt alien, slick with the blood he had shed.
Exhaling hot breath, he stepped forward. The wind stung his wounds and made his breathing ragged. He stopped beside the girl who was rolling across the ground at that exact moment.
Clang!
With a resounding metallic crash, another Blood Clan knight was hurled backward and tumbled across the floor. Even while coughing blood, Maribella kept her sword in hand. She staggered upright, manually forcing her twisted arm back into its socket.
“Mari.”
“Father?! Your body—”
Maribella closed her mouth. Ha Jinwoo’s appearance was horrific. Shards protruded from his body, blood pouring freely. His arm was twisted so badly it was a miracle it had not snapped. His entire frame shook with every step. Yet he was still moving. Still.
“The corpse walks,” the Holy Knight declared.
Ha Jinwoo gave no answer. He gripped the mace with a trembling hand. He needed power—not mere strength, but a mighty force capable of reversing this tide. The kind of power that could overturn every adversity he had ever faced.
He had lived one hundred and thirty-seven years. After losing his entire family at age ten, his life had never been easy. Not once. It had always been loss, breakage, and the bitter necessity of swallowing grief while standing atop the corpses and graves of everyone around him.
I want it to stop.
Living on only through memories after everyone else had died. Being left alone because he failed to protect what mattered.
The Incarnation of Darkness.
That was what they called him. They said he was special, that something special lived inside him, that he would bring ruin to the world. He had never felt it. Blessings, curses, the power that twisted adventurers into monsters—none of those things had ever belonged to him.
At least, not until now.
Ha Jinwoo turned his gaze inward. Time slowed. Maribella’s shocked, open mouth froze mid-cry. The Holy Knight, sword raised to stab him, halted in place. Everything in the world stopped. Within that stillness, only Ha Jinwoo moved.
He pressed a hand to his chest. Curse or blessing. Its source.
Vertea had once told him: “The Darkness blesses every being that dwells within the labyrinth. It gladly grants change to those who overcome adversity and surpass fear.”
He had overcome more than enough adversity. Most of his one hundred and thirty-seven years had been nothing but. Yet for someone called the Incarnation of Darkness, someone who supposedly possessed only blessings, that power had never manifested.
No.
He traced his body with micro-current and felt the power-generating cells—the first organ transplanted and cultivated. Something a human body should never have endured. Hearts stopped. Muscles collapsed. Every test subject except him had died. Had he simply been compatible? He knew better.
“Those who receive the Darkness’s blessing may become the ideal form they desire.”
As a child, Ha Jinwoo had desired revenge. So he became a super soldier. After the transplant and brain surgery, he gained the ability to sense micro-current. But was it truly only the surgery? He knew it was not.
Something wriggled inside him. An indescribable energy. It was not micro-current, not blood, not muscle. Something else entirely. Something that had been waiting to sprout. Dark clouds swollen to bursting, filled with lightning.
All it needed was direction. And desire—the purest, most primal desire.
If he were to name it, it would be origin.
One hundred and thirty-seven years flashed through his mind. One hundred and twenty-seven years since he had been cast into the world after losing everything. Throughout that long span, he had wished for only one thing.
Life.
Before that bleak word, Ha Jinwoo wrote another.
A happy life.
At last, the lightning fell.
A dying corpse. That was how the Holy Knight saw Ha Jinwoo, and the others were little different. Yet every single person present instinctively understood.
Something was happening.
Shadows lengthened. Blood on the floor and water pooled in the cracked earth began to boil. Something was watching from above. The sky stretched wide and empty, yet between the stars embedded in that void, darkness writhed. Clouds gathered.
Kwaaaaaang!
The Holy Knight moved at the ominous sign. Maribella bared her teeth, gripped her greatsword with both hands, and sprang forward to meet it. The air rang with the deafening clash of metal. Maribella’s body was blasted backward, but she had stopped the charge. The violent shockwave, the roar, the disrupted stance—the Holy Knight realized it could not leap again in time. It twisted its massive frame and raised its shield.
It had to block. It did not know what was coming, but raw instinct screamed that it must.
“Florence—! Strike it down—!”
At the command, the hidden Florence revealed herself. She transformed the light she had gathered into a spear and hurled it. Bishara shot toward her like a bolt of light, but she was too late to stop the throw.
Just as the flying shield and spear of judgment were about to reach Ha Jinwoo, everyone present heard it.
Krrrrrrumble!
A sudden peal of thunder. Dark clouds that had gathered in an instant. An illusory flash rising behind every gaze for no apparent reason. And through that flash, a single streak of lightning struck down.
Kwaaaaaaaaaang!
The shield was hurled aside. The spear of judgment scattered into nothing. For several seconds a blinding white flash poured toward the ground like a pillar of light.
But it was not light. It was not the divinity of light. Even while raising a barrier to block Bishara’s dagger, Florence realized the truth. This was different. It was the complete opposite of light.
It was the power of darkness.
Yet how?
While Florence struggled to fend off the dagger rushing at her in a landscape that contradicted everything she believed, Vertea’s face grew even paler. She clasped her hands and prayed.
Every being in the labyrinth is given adversity, and those who overcome it receive blessings. Change that intertwines with chaos. Blessings that follow hardship. Courage that surpasses fear. Accordingly, the Darkness looks upon all equally. Because the Darkness bestows its blessing fairly upon every being in the labyrinth.
Now, a blessing had descended upon its incarnation. One hundred and twenty-seven years of adversity had earned a blessing to match.
The lightning receded, but not entirely. Crackle. Snap—! Lightning raced across the ground. Even at a distance the sheer voltage made skin prickle. It was an amount no single life should be able to contain. Yet it existed there, undeniable.
Clatter. The wooden shards embedded in his body tumbled to the floor. Melted fragments burned and smoked. The blood that had been dripping steadily turned into lightning the instant it touched the ground, leaping upward in bright arcs.
Merely looking at it made the body go numb. Simply standing nearby forced one to grip their weapon on pure instinct.
Even after the lightning faded and darkness returned, someone still shone. A lantern within the dark. The Incarnation of Darkness. The last survivor of a ruined world, carrying a role he himself barely understood.
Ha Jinwoo opened his eyes.
Lightning blazed where skin should have been. The broken, twisted arm flickered and flowed like living thunder. Merely having electricity run through his body was no longer enough. That would not defeat the Holy Knight. So it had to be faster. Stronger.
As far as Ha Jinwoo knew, there was only one way.
Ha Jinwoo became lightning.