Chapter 49
Chapter 49
The smile I'd plastered on nearly shattered in an instant. Crazy.Crazy.Crazy! How the hell did he figure it out? Where did I slip up?
That thought lasted only a moment. I sneaked a glance at Kim Jung-heon's face and realized it right away.
‘No, he hasn't figured it out.’
It was just a hypothesis pieced together from guesses and predictions. No evidence.
With my judgment made, I opened my mouth at once to answer him.
“While it's true I called Young Master Hyun-woo to that building... I didn't lay a hand on him myself.”
“......”
It wasn't a lie. Mu-young was the one who killed Jo Seong-hwan, not me.
Kim Jung-heon didn't seem to catch my line of thinking. He furrowed his brow slightly and pressed.
“Why did you drag Hyun-woo into it?”
“Because of Young Master Hyun-woo's order to report Young Master Jo Seong-hwan's corruption.”
“A lie.”
The blunt declaration came with his gaze piercing right through me.
“Hyun-woo knew nothing—not that Jo Seong-hwan was breeding monsters, nor that he'd opened a rift. He merely raided the lab on your word and detected the rift there.”
“......”
“But our clan's informants uncovered that you'd been doing Jo Seong-hwan's dirty work right up until then, playing the dog. It was the perfect setup to orchestrate all this.”
A faint aura began pressing down on my body. As if this were my last chance, Kim Jung-heon stared at me and demanded again.
“Speak. Why did you plot this?”
Here we go—the real test.
I steadied my mind, on the verge of collapse, and faced him squarely.
“Because I knew the Pungyang Jo Clan was plotting a purge against the main house.”
“Civil war?”
A crack finally appeared on Kim Jung-heon's impassive face.
I'd chosen "civil war" over "treason." Simple reason: executing rebels was just a pretty excuse. What mattered most to him was the clan's safety.
“Jo Seong-hwan was running a lab in Hanseong, refining monster cores in secret from the court. He armed his guards with weapons made from those cores, plotting to break through the Capital Guard and raid the main house.”
This was intel I hadn't even shared with Kim Hyun-woo. My final contingency, prepared in case this all blew up.
“Do you have proof?”
“I do.”
I pulled out one of the monster cores I'd prepared beforehand. One of the 120 stolen from the Pungyang Jo Clan's lab.
Kim Jung-heon took it, examining it closely for a moment.
“A monster core without a serial number.”
Sensing the aura emanating from it, his face darkened.
“Jo Kang-un. Scheming this far, was he?”
“I know clashes between noble houses should be avoided at all costs. But...”
“If they struck first, that's a different story. Your actions weren't wrong.”
He sank into thought for a long while, silent.
But only briefly.
“Was war with the Pungyang Jo Clan inevitable?”
He set the monster core on the table and spoke.
“I won't ask why you didn't report this directly to me. No doubt Hyun-woo silenced you. He's obsessed with curbing your influence.”
“My apologies.”
I bowed my head in response, but he brushed it off, continuing indifferently.
“Have you sworn loyalty to Hyun-woo's faction?”
“I have no backing in the clan. To serve at his side would be the greatest honor.”
“I see.”
What the hell was he thinking? His inscrutable eyes fixed on me before he slowly spoke.
“How old are you this year?”
He didn't even know his own son's age?
Swallowing a hollow laugh, I answered.
“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen... Fifteen.”
He repeated it like he was mulling something over.
Then, as if he'd decided on his own, he nodded and rose.
“Perfect timing.”
“Pardon?”
I barely had time to blurt my confusion.
“In three months, I'll send word.”
“......”
“When it comes, don the official robes I'll provide and enter the palace.”
My mind reeled at the curt command. Enter the palace? What nonsense was this?
As I stood dumbfounded, he regarded me coolly and explained.
“I'll petition His Majesty to grant you an official post.”
Bwoooong—!
The large-caliber minigun mounted on the gunship roared to life.
Tracer rounds poured down amid crimson flames. The target weathering that barrage of armor-piercing hell was no creature you could call human.
“Krraaaah—!”
An exoskeleton of jet-black chitin. Claws that sliced third-grade cybernetic implants like tofu. Eyes devoid of reason.
The culprit behind the rift catastrophe three centuries ago, which had ravaged seventy percent of the world: a monster.
“Fox-3 has suppressed the monster swarm in the vanguard!”
“Regroup the line! Evac the wounded—the rest, follow me! No second chances!”
Monsters surging forward. Heavy weapons holding them back. Augmented soldiers plated in cybernetics.
Not one without scars. Not one with an intact body. Steel humans patched with mismatched implants and wounds.
Yet they moved as one, their flawless coordination and division of labor herding the monster horde into a kill zone.
And in the next instant—
“Spotter!”
“Target designated! HQ artillery inbound! Three... two... one...!”
No sooner had the spotter called it than cluster munitions slammed into the packed monsters.
KABOOOM—!
Deafening blasts, choking smoke, live duds scattering—a scene of utter peril.
Yellow ichor and shrieks filled the gaps as monsters were pulverized.
This was the Northeast Front. The frontmost line blocking monsters rampaging from Manchu's contaminated zones into Joseon.
“Is it true? That boy from Hanseong orchestrated the whole incident...?”
In a makeshift command post amid the frontline, Yu Sang-hyun peered at the battle map and asked the voice crackling from the radio.
—It was Young Master Kim Chang-un and us. Thanks to the monster the Commander sent, we pulled off something big.
“Huh...”
An eerie voice modulation, each syllable warped by a different tone.
Hearing it, Yu Sang-hyun swallowed a disbelieving chuckle.
“So a single surplus female monster from the Northeast Front smashed the mighty Pungyang Jo Clan to pieces.”
—We were shocked too. Didn't expect it to blow up this big.
“Well, thinking back... he did the same when he saved me and A-rin.”
Muttering to himself, Yu Sang-hyun recalled the boy from Hanseong.
Moving pieces like a Go master, wielding everything at hand. Unshakable conviction, boldly diving into the fray with his life on the line.
In a lifetime on battlefields, he'd never met anyone with such qualities.
‘No—quite the opposite.’
Kim Chang-un. What that boy wielded was conspiracy. Every action laced with meaning, smiles hiding his true self, words sharpened like daggers.
A skill no lifelong warrior like him could ever possess. He was a fighter, not a schemer.
—General?
“......Ah, forgive me.”
Yu Sang-hyun snapped back at 'Imetal's' voice from the radio.
—We'll contact you with fresh news from Hanseong. Holding the line too long is risky—we'll sign off.
“Very well. It was a pleasure chatting.”
Comms ended.
Staring at the Chorangital in his hand, Yu Sang-hyun turned to his adjutant.
“Where's A-rin?”
“With 3rd Battalion, inserted into the contaminated zone. Dropped at core coordinate 310. Combat should be underway by now...”
The adjutant was unfolding the tactical map to elaborate when—
Boom—!
A seismic thud shook the tent. An impact rippling across the entire front.
An explosion from aura.
“Combat... over.”
Yu Sang-hyun recognized it instantly. The adjutant, gaping at the map, muttered.
“Rift reaction at that coordinate—completely gone.”
Hearing it, Yu Sang-hyun flung open the command tent flap, eyes on the smoke rising beyond the defensive line.
Past the monster lines, where the infiltration team had gone. The rift's core—and A-rin's battlefield.
“Rift core stone destroyed deep inside! Monster legions retreating! We won!”
“Yaaaah—!”
The comms officer's shout ignited cheers from the soldiers holding the line.
Rift-spawned thunderheads parted, revealing the piercing blue of afternoon sky.
Cloudless, pristine. A vista impossible in Hanseong—the Northeast Front's rare beauty.
“I told you to raise her strong.”
Gazing toward the horizon where A-rin fought, Yu Sang-hyun murmured low.
“So no one can harm her. And one day, so she can change her world herself.”
Blue sky, clouds banished.
A transport chopper slicing through it.
Feeling A-rin's aura aboard, Yu Sang-hyun thought.
Power to push back an entire front at twelve years old. Real combat from the Northeast's brutal forge, plus his teachings.
If she absorbed it all...
“It'll happen as you said.”
The boy who saved her.
She'd become the hero to change Joseon.