Chapter 33. Bomb Terror
Chapter 33. Bomb Terror
A grand estate in Spain.
Chae Seorin silently followed behind the butler walking ahead.
He was clearly an ordinary human, yet how had this man become the Grand Elder’s right-hand man? The question surfaced.
But it wasn’t something she needed to care about.
What she had been sent to do in China on short notice had been extremely dangerous.
The execution of a blood clan member who broke the rules.
That was the mission of the Discipline Corps under the Blood Clan Council of Elders.
But the China-based blood clan members who had risen in rebellion as a group were so old that even four Discipline Knights working together could barely handle them.
No one knew how many centuries of human blood they had consumed—no matter how much they were carved up, they wouldn’t tire, and they would rise again.
In the end, while fighting them, two of the four Discipline Knights turned to dust and vanished.
Seorin had thought she might die there too, but her stubborn life refused to end, and she completed the mission by the skin of her teeth.
Now, of the seven total Discipline Knights, two were dead, and if she completed just one final mission, she would be freed from the Discipline Corps.
That meant three seats would be vacant.
Who would fill the vacancies of the Discipline Knights?
Seorin thought of the probationary member who had taken over the mission she had been handling before leaving Korea.
Saroki, was it?
A member who used an authority that blended into darkness and shadow.
They weren’t even a hundred years old yet and still very inexperienced, but a child like that might be able to become a Discipline Knight in about a hundred years.
When the butler opened the door, the Grand Elder was seated by the window, staring at the night sky.
He looked like a man in his twenties, but his true age was over two thousand.
Among vampires, a race where age itself represented strength, he was the strongest.
Seorin stepped forward, lowered her head, and knelt.
“You worked hard. I heard of your performance. Thanks to you, a problem that had plagued us for ages has been resolved.”
Seorin listened with her head lowered.
“I heard you only have one last mission. We’ll keep it light. The mission you were assigned before you went to China failed. You will finish it.”
At the Grand Elder’s words, Chae Seorin kept her head down and recalled the image of the man in sweatpants she had seen in Korea.
When she read him through psychometry back then, he had felt like a dangerous man whose level couldn’t be measured.
She’d thought Saroki could at least contend with him to some degree, but it had failed.
Seorin rose, gave a light bow, and left the estate.
It was time to head to Korea.
At last—her final mission as part of the Discipline Corps.
The sun was setting, and Gwanghwamun Square was stained red with dusk.
In front of the square where General Yi Sun-sin stood with a sword at his waist.
Today again, tens of thousands of people were split into two sides, shouting patriotism.
The protest movement, chaotic at first, had now divided into the pro-unification faction and the anti-unification faction.
The government still hadn’t presented a clear stance on unification.
Both sides continued street demonstrations, as well as online demonstrations on YouTube and social media, and public-opinion grifters chasing views joined in, pushing the public further and further into polarization.
The two camps were evenly matched, and every day they came out holding candles and torches, staging burnings where they set the national flag on fire in different places.
This overheated atmosphere worsened after a recent staged self-immolation attempt by the pro-unification faction.
In the heart of Gwanghwamun, it wouldn’t have been strange for bloodshed to break out at any moment.
Lauren was out at Gwanghwamun again today, acting like a tourist while observing the shape of the protests.
The U.S., China, Japan, and Russia—countries with direct interests in the Korean Peninsula—along with Europe and the Arab world, had all sent agents.
Lauren figured a large portion of the “tourists” she could see right now were agents from various countries.
Today again, she had blonde hair, wore revealing clothes, and was disguised as a free-spirited artist.
Then she spotted something suspicious.
He looks like him.
An Asian man about thirty to forty meters ahead, walking toward the Yi Sun-sin statue with a backpack on.
He looked Korean at first glance, but somehow also looked Chinese.
Lauren remembered that face.
A massive Chinese man who had strangled her and knocked her out.
But unlike back then, when he had been over two meters tall, the man now was around 170 centimeters and had a small build.
Only the face was similar.
[Man with a resemblance to a Chinese enhanced soldier. Spotted at Gwanghwamun.]
Lauren immediately sent a message to headquarters.
Then she adjusted the camera attached to her headband and streamed the scene ahead to the operations room in real time.
[Confirmed. Definitely one of the five enhanced soldiers who illegally entered Korea. Extremely dangerous. Maintain distance and observe.]
One of China’s military secrets: an enhanced soldier, artificially given superhuman strength for a limited time through drugs.
The price was a shortened lifespan, but the Chinese government—placing little value on lives or human rights—continued to research and deploy these human weapons in the field.
The most frightening part of an enhanced soldier wasn’t their stronger muscles.
It was their heightened reflexes.
Even if they were strong, modern warfare was basically gunfights.
Unless you were fighting with cold weapons, muscle enhancement wasn’t a huge advantage.
But the enhanced soldiers’ reflexes showed their true value when they held firearms.
With guns, they were monsters who wouldn’t lose even against dozens of soldiers.
Even so, they weren’t a match for the U.S. powered-suit troops.
Powered-suit troops were an upgraded superior version—enhanced soldiers’ strength and reflexes, plus high defense.
No side effects like short lifespan, and broad versatility.
As long as you mastered the suit controls, China’s enhanced soldiers couldn’t compete.
That was why, on that mountain that day, it had been natural for China’s enhanced soldiers to panic and flee when they saw the U.S. suit troops.
[He dropped the backpack in front of the statue and is fleeing at full speed! Danger! All nearby agents evacuate!]
Lauren saw the enhanced soldier set his backpack down in front of the Yi Sun-sin statue and sprint.
She ran too, sending the warning to the operations room.
A bomb attack.
When she ran, tourists who had been sightseeing here and there also began fleeing in all directions.
While running, Lauren looked at the enhanced soldier—he was smiling at her.
“KWAA-KWAA-BOOM!”
A deafening roar that shook the world.
In an instant, Lauren’s vision turned white and went numb.
All sound vanished, and her ears filled with a shrill ringing.
She was about eighty meters from the blast.
Shrapnel reached even here, but she wasn’t critically injured—only small torn wounds on her arms and legs.
Thankfully.
If shrapnel had embedded in somewhere like her abdomen, it would have been dangerous.
In only a few seconds, the scene became hell.
Smoke and scorch blurred everything.
Between the blast center and Lauren, no one was standing properly.
As she fled the square, she wondered how many had died today.
There were thousands of bodies in her sight alone, and the injured would be several times that.
The terror attack with the greatest death toll in human history had been 9/11.
Back then, 2,977 were killed, and thousands were injured.
Lauren was sure what happened today would be the terror attack with the greatest casualties in history.
“Huh!”
Next to me at the counter, Bella—who had dragged an office chair over and was watching YouTube Shorts—suddenly let out a weird exclamation.
By now I was used to this woman’s behavior, so I let it go in one ear and focused on reading as usual.
I felt like I understood the difference between the Hwagyeong and Hyeongyeong realms, and yet I didn’t.
“Chan! Chan! Look at this! They say a ton of people died!”
“What are you talking about, ma’am?”
Guests often flinched when they saw a Russian woman sitting at the counter with her hair twisted into a messy bun, wearing pink sweatpants, sucking on a Chupa Chups.
It wasn’t good for our motel business, where most customers were couples.
But when I told her she shouldn’t sit at the counter, Bella insisted she was fine because Chanhyeok hyung said it didn’t matter.
She held her ground.
I explained, in detail, multiple times, why a guest shouldn’t be sitting at the counter, but Bella just repeated, “Korean hard,” whenever she didn’t want to hear something, and showed no intention of moving her heavy butt.
So I gave up.
If words didn’t work, I couldn’t use force.
And since Bella was a guest, I couldn’t use public authority like the police to stop her either.
I decided it was beyond my ability and cleanly let it go.
But now Bella was saying people had died while watching YouTube.
I looked at Bella’s phone.
It was showing footage of Gwanghwamun Square after a bomb attack.
The horrific scene was being broadcast without filtering—dead and wounded scattered everywhere.
I turned on the TV in the office and saw breaking news.
The confirmed death toll had already exceeded five digits.
The bomb had exploded in the middle of a pro-unification rally, so the damage was massive.
Then the report added that public anger was spreading toward the anti-unification side for holding such extreme protests.
If I’d known ahead of time, I might have been able to stop it.
My telekinetic barrier currently existed only as a wall near the Armistice Line.
To prevent something like this, I would have had to keep all of Seoul constantly covered with my telekinetic field.
No matter who you were, that was hard.
Maybe I could do it for a few minutes, but dividing my mind to track the countless things happening inside it would be difficult.
In other words, unless you knew a bomb was going to go off in advance, stopping it was impossible.
But then an interesting piece of news came up.
With social unrest continuing, Seoul real estate prices were falling.
My interest shifted from the Gwanghwamun bombing to the real estate drop, and I searched related articles online.
If this kept up, I might be able to acquire a 12-billion-won motel much cheaper.
“It’s our analysis that this is definitely a Chinese operation. We must declare martial law.”
One cabinet member broke the silence.
But the President shook his head and snapped back.
“Are we at war right now? Martial law? Don’t create an international dispute based on guesses when we don’t even have clear proof China did it. If our diplomacy with China collapses, it will have a massive impact on our economy. This is clearly a disaster that occurred during violent, extreme protests. Stop talking nonsense and lower the interest rate.”
The President wanted to minimize this as a domestic issue.
But the situation wasn’t that simple—something you could muddle through.
The Vice Minister of Economy cautiously spoke.
“But if we lower rates to the level you want, we’ll trigger a Japan-style asset bubble. You know how badly Japan was damaged by the policies it pursued to stimulate the economy after the Plaza Accord.”
“That’s something that will happen years later, and it isn’t my jurisdiction. I have to stop the crisis hitting today and tomorrow. If we leave it like this, investors will all pull out of Korea. Then the Republic of Korea collapses. Corporations and the wealthy will all flee Korea too. The most important things right now are economic stimulus and public security stability. Lower rates, and pour all state power into the police so they stabilize public order.”
At the President’s hardline stance, the cabinet fell silent.
As if he disliked those silent ministers, the President raised his voice even more.
“Call in all media company presidents and make them cooperate with government policy. And I’ve heard drug crimes are surging lately—mobilize police and root them out on a massive scale. Ah, and promote it like that old ‘War on Crime.’ Let’s sell the image of a strong government that wipes out gangs and criminals causing social unrest.”
At that point, one aide raised a hand and spoke carefully.
“According to the NIS report, after the North Korean nuclear missile incident, agents from all over the world have entered the country in large numbers. They want a clear policy response regarding them.”
“What? Are you kidding me? Isn’t the NIS an institution that works for the country? They should handle it themselves—why are you coming to me whining about doom?”
At the President’s irritation, the aide shut his mouth.
Even though the NIS was openly asking for clear operational direction, the President was already planning how to escape responsibility later and pushing it off onto others.
If the outcome was good, it would be his achievement.
If it was bad, he’d blame the incompetent NIS and shout about reforming it.
To run a country, you needed at least a minimum sense of responsibility, but the President—politics level 12—was doing politics, not governance, despite being the top decision-maker.
Politics, at its core, is blaming others.
“War on Crime! Gang sweeps! Drug criminals eradication! Promote it aggressively, and distribute police performance numbers to the media immediately. And push through rate cuts, and scrap all kinds of regulations so investment doesn’t leave. Real estate must soar too. Even if a bomb goes off, if housing prices rise, the people feel reassured.”
While writing down the President’s words, the cabinet members tilted their heads, wondering if this was really right.
Either way, it was guaranteed that stock prices would rise and real estate would rise.
Soaring prices and unemployment were guaranteed too.
Even as ordinary people died off, they would still believe all of it was the other side’s fault because of differing political beliefs.