Chapter 220: Fragment of Emptiness (3)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 220: Fragment of Emptiness (3)
Jung Hae-in sensed something was wrong while he was breaking through alone.
Crossing a road of melted asphalt, he pressed his communication device.
A low voice emerged from beneath a chin slick with sweat and blood.
“Three hundred meters to the bunker. What’s your status?”
He called out through the comms, but…
All that came back was a sharp mechanical tone and crackling static.
– ………….
No one answered.
Not Kang A-rin, not Seong Si-woo.
Usually, premonitions this ominous came true.
And he knew that all too well.
Despite that, he had to make a decision.
The bunker was right in front of him.
Securing it took priority over a faulty comms link.
As he broke through the defensive line alone, he realized the number of monsters and Mines that had reached the bunker was far greater than he had initially anticipated.
In the worst-case scenario, they were already…
Thud!
Jung Hae-in pushed the thought away and drew upon his mana.
His combat boots slid across the ground, stained with the blood of monsters.
He prayed that nothing had happened.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side, in the city’s western sector.
Following Jung Hae-in’s last order, A-rin was breaking through her assigned zone.
But something was strange.
“……”
Far more so than she’d expected…
There were few monsters.
She had predicted the enemy forces would be scattered in a circle surrounding them, but now that she was in the thick of it… she could only see one or two monsters at a time. There weren't many at all.
At this rate, she could break through to the bunker and meet up with Jung Hae-in at the center in no time.
“Faster.”
I have to be quick.
She picked up her pace.
But in a corner of her mind, the sense of unease from this strange… absence of enemy forces was blooming.
It was also true that she moved faster to suppress it.
Just as she was thinking that, she rounded the corner of the next building.
“Oh? Look who it is.”
Swoosh.
Seong Si-woo suddenly popped out from a narrow alley to her side.
He hadn't broken a single drop of sweat. It was doubtful he had even been in a fight.
Kang A-rin stopped in her tracks.
Her red eyes grew cold.
“What are you.”
“There weren’t many monsters on my side. But…”
Seong Si-woo slowly looked around… then slowly opened his mouth.
“Looks like it was the same here. We got lucky, huh? Shall we go together?”
“Ugh.”
A-rin covered her mouth, a wave of revulsion washing over her.
As if he wasn't even worth a reply, she ignored him and started running in the opposite direction.
“Just stay here. I’ll go.”
“…Fuck~”
Seong Si-woo watched her cold, retreating back and muttered a low curse.
Leaving him behind, Kang A-rin turned toward the center, where the bunker was located.
Her steps were faster than before.
A sense of foreboding had taken over her body.
It had already been ten minutes since her comms with Hae-in had cut out.
And, after confirming that Kang A-rin had completely disappeared from sight, Seong Si-woo…
Slowly… relaxed his tense shoulders.
“Let’s see how long you can keep that up.”
The smile on his lips twisted into something serpentine.
His eyes were stained red.
*
Jung Hae-in finally arrived at the bunker entrance.
As he drove his spear through the neck of the last monster that charged him, its corpse scattered into black ash.
Thankfully, it seemed the bunker itself had not yet been discovered by the enemy.
They had merely swarmed the area, apparently failing to realize that the place, which looked like an ordinary stone mound, was their target.
After wiping out every monster in the vicinity, he cautiously approached the entrance.
As a national hero, Jung Hae-in could easily open the bunker’s identification code.
Vwooom….
As he activated the ID code, the blast door hidden within the massive stone mound slowly revealed itself.
It was clear it hadn't been breached from the outside.
A safe space.
Beep… Beep….
A distress signal from inside was still broadcasting continuously.
Once every five minutes. If that signal had stopped, it would have meant something terrible had already happened inside the bunker.
But not yet.
Jung Hae-in slowly opened the door and entered.
The bunker’s maximum capacity was one hundred thousand people.
Considering the population of the district, there were likely more than a hundred thousand people holding their breath inside.
Still, it was a relief he could save them.
He descended the stairs.
The entrance automatically vanished back into the stone mound.
Down the stairs, beyond a thick, massive blast door and security system, was a huge auditorium.
The entire population should be gathered there.
He’d heard it was theoretically the size of twenty soccer fields.
That this many people had survived such an assault was a stroke of good fortune.
He finally reached the last blast door.
Beep.
He opened it with his ID code again.
Krrrrroooom….
The door began to open.
Worried he might frighten the civilians, Jung Hae-in quickly wiped the monster blood from his face with the sleeve of his combat suit.
Then he made his spear disappear into the shadows.
However.
As the door opened, what poured out from the gap was not…
a sigh of relief, nor the terrified cries of the people.
Swoooosh….
What greeted him was… the torrent of blood pouring through the gap in the door like a waterfall.
The blood instantly soaked his combat boots, then his ankles.
“……!”
Jung Hae-in clenched his teeth so hard the muscles in his jaw twitched.
The inside of the auditorium… was completely drenched in blood.
In that vast space, said to be the size of twenty soccer fields, not a single person could be seen.
Not even the body of a civilian.
Just red.
Only red.
The blood… rose past his ankles, reaching his knees.
It filled the entire vast space.
“Who did this!!!”
Jung Hae-in immediately drew his spear and dashed madly across the interior.
This… didn’t make sense.
The signal had been broadcasting continuously.
There had been no external attack.
How? What in the world happened?
Jung Hae-in’s head whipped from side to side.
As if a hundred thousand civilians had simply vanished, nothing remained in this space but blood.
And then.
Soon, something came into his view.
On the massive steel wall of the shelter.
There, clearly visible despite being stained and splattered with blood, was an emblem.
[Glory]
It was the emblem of the very corporation led by Kang A-rin’s brother, Kang Yu-sung.
Under contract with the government, all of the nation’s shelters were constructed under Glory’s supervision.
Their locations…
Their internal structures…
Even the materials used to make this steel door…
Everything.
The fragmented pieces of the puzzle began to click into place in his mind.
There were no signs of external intrusion.
They all died from within.
There wasn't even a trace of screaming or resistance.
It was impossible unless it was teleportation.
And there were only two spatial coordinators in this world with the ability to manipulate space on this scale.
Yoon Chae-ha, the Master of the Magic Tower.
And the Mine.
Balak, the Colossus.
The Mine who, in the original story, had colluded with Kang Yu-sung.
The being who had orchestrated all this destruction from behind the scenes.
“You’re here?”
On the auditorium stage.
Standing where a hero should have been, directing the civilians, was Kang Yu-sung.
He was dressed in a clean, white uniform, without a single speck of dust on it.
The corners of his mouth were lifted in a smirk as he looked down at the red sea.
Splash.
Jung Hae-in stepped through the pooling blood and headed toward him.
He turned his head to look up at the stage.
“What happened here.”
His voice was chilling.
A prickle of fear ran down Kang Yu-sung’s neck, but he didn't let it show as he slowly opened his mouth.
“That’s what I’ve always wanted to ask.”
Kang Yu-sung grasped his trembling left hand with his right.
He was trying his best to act composed.
“How in the world did you know? That I was the traitor.”
The moment Kang Yu-sung’s mask came off.
Hearing those words, Jung Hae-in closed his eyes.
“I didn’t give any hints. I didn’t do anything. But you suspected me from the very beginning. You even tried to kill me. I’m sure of it.”
His voice grew more and more agitated.
“If that bitch Kang A-rin hadn’t protected me, I’d probably be dead by your hand already.”
Kang Yu-sung’s lips curled higher into a sneer.
“Stupid bitch.”
“……”
Jung Hae-in kept his eyes closed.
“The civilians?”
He was a traitor.
Killing him would be simple enough.
But a hundred thousand civilians… that was a problem on an entirely different level.
“The civilians?”
Kang Yu-sung maintained his smile at the question and walked down into the blood-filled auditorium.
Splish.
He stopped, bent down, and dipped his hand, scooping up a palmful of blood from the floor…
Then he licked it off his fingers.
“This is them.”
With a look of pure ecstasy, he tasted the blood on his fingers and whispered.
“The civilians you’re looking for…”
Swiiiiiiiiish!!
Faster than sound.
The process of Jung Hae-in summoning his spear from the shadows and throwing it didn't seem to exist.
The manifested spear flew straight at Kang Yu-sung.
“H-Hieek!”
The leisurely man from a moment ago was gone.
Kang Yu-sung ducked his head, but…
It wasn't a speed he could dodge.
Clang!
The spear stopped with a dull thud right in front of his head.
“That won’t be happening.”
Suddenly, next to him.
Balak was standing there.
A hand made of rock had lightly caught Jung Hae-in’s spear.
“Huu… Thank you, Lord Balak.”
Kang Yu-sung, collapsed on the floor, bowed his head, gasping for breath.
“It is nothing. The Evil God is greatly pleased with the offering.”
Balak’s voice was horrific, like scraping metal.
With a triumphant expression, Kang Yu-sung spread his arms and began to explain.
“Curious? Then I’ll tell you. I set the coordinates. I designed this place, after all.”
He tapped his head.
“He said that for the Evil God to be resurrected… a massive human sacrifice was needed. And as it happens, there were a lot of insects here… so, it all worked out.”
He gazed ecstatically at the blood-filled auditorium.
“But even for Lord Balak, teleporting a hundred thousand humans all at once is difficult. The mana consumption is too great… So.”
Kang Yu-sung then made a motion in the air, as if tightly clenching and wringing his hands.
Squeeeeze.
The onomatopoeia escaped his lips.
“We squeezed them… drained the liquid, and moved only the lightened corpses.”
He was pointing at the blood that now reached Jung Hae-in’s knees.
“Efficient, isn’t it?”
Jung Hae-in hung his head low.
I failed to protect them again.
“And today, you die too.”
With those words, Kang Yu-sung took two steps back.
And in front of him…
Balak filled the space.
“I wanted to test my strength against you.”
The stone colossus approached Jung Hae-in slowly, an expression of calm anticipation on its face.
“I heard Eto is dead.”
“……”
“Show me as well. That power of a mortal.”
Just as the colossus was slowly closing the distance to Jung Hae-in.
Jung Hae-in’s eyes opened, cold and devoid of all emotion.
[Non-Action Non-Form]
In that instant, all sound and light within the blood-filled bunker were sucked into a black hole.
A massive dome formed.
An absolute space of nothingness unfolded, with Jung Hae-in at its center.
It didn't matter if his opponent was a being that transcended mortals.
Everything becomes equal.
Here, you will die.
However.
Jung Hae-in, who had deployed this domain, would also be annihilated with a high probability.
This was one of his methods of taking his enemy down with him.
And all this sound, this despairing sound.
Someone was listening.
– Non-Action Non-Form… chzzzk….
“Aaaaaaaah!!! No!!!!”
Amidst the burning buildings of Busan, Kang A-rin’s rain-soaked scream echoed.
The fires on the buildings were being extinguished one by one by the rain.
Splash! Splash! Splash!
She ran like a madwoman, stomping through the debris of collapsed buildings and over corpses.
At some point, communication had miraculously been restored.
But what came through the comms was no good news.
– Stupid bitch.
– It is nothing. The Evil God is greatly pleased with the offering.
The brother she had trusted and followed.
Kang Yu-sung. He was a servant of the Evil God, the Mine who had engineered this entire tragedy.
“Agh. Aaaaaaaah!”
Kang A-rin ran frantically.
Because of me.
Because of my greed, because of my pathetic faith.
Because of the arrogant desire that my brother, at least, would be different!
Jung Hae-in, who had suspected him, had ultimately missed the chance to prevent this whole tragedy because of her pleas.
She finally reached the bunker.
The moment she opened the door, the smell of blood from a hundred thousand people, enough to paralyze the senses, assaulted her nose.
It was then that Kang A-rin understood.
What is the void?
It is when you feel you can change nothing.
When you realize that because of an irreversible mistake you have made, nothing can be changed.
When you feel that no matter how much you struggle… it is all meaningless in the face of a tragedy already set in stone.
Bang!
“What, what the fuck!”
Kang Yu-sung’s terrified voice came from inside the auditorium.
“Aaaaaaaah!!”
Kang A-rin’s body was faster than sound.
She flickered with a speed akin to light.
And then.
Thud.
Kang Yu-sung’s head, his face frozen in a state of shock, fell to the floor.
“Please… please…”
With her blood-stained hands, she pleaded toward the black space of nothingness that Jung Hae-in had unfurled.
Perhaps her prayers were answered.
The moment Kang A-rin beheaded the traitor, the curtain of darkness began to slowly recede.
Within it, the body of the colossus Balak lay toppled, split in half.
“……”
The problem was…
Jung Hae-in was also lying motionless on the floor beside it.
“Aaaaaaaah!!!! No…! No…!!”
The void.
The despair of knowing nothing will change… yet chasing it anyway, only to lose everything and crumble in the end.
This.
This was.
Kang A-rin’s indelible ‘original sin’.
