The Infinite Labyrinth of Blood and Shadows
The Wish Power was exactly as its name implied—a force that granted desires. Of course, it could not be called omnipotent; "versatile" would be the more accurate description.
It could generate fire or wind, form protective barriers, heal injuries and illnesses, and even turn the user transparent for stealth.
Yet the most efficient application was purely enhancing the body's strength and speed while amplifying the destructive power of cold weapons.
Kwa-ga-ga-gak—!!
Ever since he had developed a deep understanding of his awakening ability, he had wielded the sword as his primary weapon. Until today, he had rarely felt any deficiency in that choice or in his own power.
But today was markedly different.
A sword wreathed in multicolored light moved at blinding speed. The person holding it darted forward so quickly that afterimages lingered, relentlessly slaughtering the surrounding ghosts.
Whenever several straight lines of light flashed, the ghosts caught in their path were sliced and severed, scattering darkness and blood. Once they fell, they rarely recovered. They twitched helplessly before going limp and dying.
He deflected the fearless counterattacks of the ghosts with natural ease, then swung his blade again. The chilling sound of steel cutting air was followed by heads and limbs tumbling across the floor.
Strikes that could only be described as lightning rained down in succession. Three or four charging ghosts were carved into more than a dozen pieces where they stood.
It was an unstoppable, one-man-army momentum. Yet the sheer number of ghosts surrounding him was overwhelming.
Truly, absurdly, impossibly vast.
“Aaaagh…!”
“Save me…! Please, save me…!!”
Screams and terrified cries echoed from every direction.
The ground was already littered with corpses, strewn across sidewalks and roads alike. Spiritual remains left by slain ghosts covered the area in equal measure. Cars had long since become wreckage from accidents or stood as obstacles with dead drivers still inside.
And above all, ghosts continued to pour forth without end. There were now more of them than people.
Naturally, the creatures swarmed toward Han Yujin in a frenzy, drawn to his dazzling display of power.
He had initially moved to save others. At some point, however, he had become desperate simply to save himself.
Cutting, kicking, dodging, blocking—and then cutting and splitting again.
It looked as though more than a dozen razor-sharp rays of light flashed endlessly around him before vanishing. Any ghost caught in their path was instantly torn apart, gushing darkness and blood.
- Kiiiaaaak…!!
Such sharp screams would normally shake even an awakened person’s mind, but Han Yujin, shielded by his Wish Power, merely frowned slightly and remained unaffected.
I need to get out of here. Right now.
This was no disaster one man could handle alone.
Having made his decision, he began moving to escape. He still saw people dying everywhere, but to help others, he first had to preserve his own life.
Fortunately, no ghost here could stop him once he resolved to flee. He did not run in a straight line but changed paths constantly, moving like lightning. The ghosts could not keep up.
Yet no matter how many he cut down while running, the same horrific scenes unfolded everywhere. It was as inescapable as the black sun and blood-red sky overhead.
Right then—
Kwaaaang…!!
An explosion rang out from afar, so massive and violent that he instinctively whipped his head toward it.
What he saw was a pillar of ominous black-red light shooting into the heavens. Before he could even register his shock, two more similar detonations occurred, and identical pillars rose from two distant locations.
- Kyaaaa—!!
“Get lost!”
He cut down the ghost that charged him during that brief pause and realized instinctively.
This insane ghost flood and those light pillars were undoubtedly connected.
Perhaps heading there was the only way to end this catastrophe and save the people.
But it would clearly be dangerous.
So he kept shifting positions while staring at the origin of the pillars, torn by indecision.
Suddenly, he realized the direction was familiar. Focusing harder, his heart nearly stopped.
It was the direction of Yeongwon High School.
The moment he recognized it, he was already sprinting that way.
Until now he had moved at a measured pace to conserve stamina. This time, he ran at full power.
Boom! Boom!
Every time he changed direction, the air exploded and violent gusts erupted. Long tails of multicolored Wish Power trailed behind him, leaving lingering afterimages.
The fact that Lee Won-hee was an S-class hunter far stronger than him did not even enter his mind. All he felt was fear that she might have been swallowed by that sinister black-red pillar.
The current situation was clearly a supernatural disaster similar to a dimensional collision event.
Even an S-class hunter would naturally be at risk.
Though strong, Lee Won-hee was neither faster nor more physically resilient than him. She might need help.
While running and eliminating any ghosts that got in his way, he soon arrived.
The unidentified pillar had indeed risen from Yeongwon High School.
But he could not simply leap inside.
Guuuuung…!!
A heavy resonance he had not heard from afar now vibrated through him, accompanied by an overwhelmingly ominous and spine-chillingly powerful mana wave that hammered his entire body.
The light was so dense that he could not discern what was happening inside, and no one emerged.
He circled the area for several minutes, hoping to find escapees or clues, but it was futile. His anxiety grew with every passing second. The endless waves of charging ghosts finally made his irritation and rage explode.
She has to be in there…!
Only minutes before the disaster erupted, he had confirmed via messenger that she was at the school. There was no room for doubt.
In the end, he bravely experimented on the pillar—inserting and withdrawing objects, trying every urgent test he could think of.
After confirming a minimum of safety, he gritted his teeth and leaped into the black-red light.
The choice to abandon her and flee never once crossed his mind.
After a sensation like being violently sucked inward passed, the interior revealed itself.
It was far too quiet.
Han Yujin suppressed the constant goosebumps rising across his skin and hid his presence using his Wish Power. In that state, he began searching the eerily transformed school.
Horrific sights greeted him even before he reached the building.
Students lay dead with crushed skulls or broken necks, as if every one of them had jumped from the windows. Some had apparently survived the fall for a while; the ground around them was soaked in blood.
The strangest part was that none seemed to have tried to flee. The only traces were of them endlessly circling the same spots, drawing circles with their own blood.
With no time to linger, he hurried inside the building. An even more nightmarish scene unfolded.
Floor, walls, ceiling—every surface was drenched in blood. The bodies of those who had not managed to jump outside were brutally torn apart and scattered like garbage. Their heads, grotesquely twisted in extreme agony, had been neatly arranged upright as if someone had carefully organized them.
“......”
He barely swallowed back the bile rising in his throat.
He had thought himself long desensitized to brutality from his work as a hunter, but this kind of horror was new.
Won-hee…?
It was unbelievable that such a massacre could occur with an S-class hunter like Lee Won-hee present—an individual treated as a strategic weapon.
He moved quickly, concealing his presence so thoroughly that even another A-class hunter would struggle to detect him. Searching a high school building was not a long task for him.
Were it not for the thick, cloying darkness inside and the corpses and blood everywhere, it would have been even faster.
In an environment like this, ghosts are inevitable.
And judging by the situation, these were no ordinary ghosts. They would require his full power.
Yet the more critical fact was that he had nearly searched the entire building and still found no trace of Won-hee.
Surely not…
Cold sweat broke out. His heart pounded violently.
Even as he told himself it was impossible, his eyes kept drifting to the scattered corpse fragments and the neatly arranged heads with their vivid expressions of agony.
It can’t be… It can’t.
There was no way an S-class hunter would die like these ordinary students. No matter how powerful the enemy, she should have endured at least this long.
He searched the building again, moving frantically.
Then, without warning—
He had definitely passed the fourth floor on his way to the rooftop, yet he realized he had somehow “climbed” to the first floor.
The bloodstains and corpse fragments were completely different in shape. Had the floor number not been marked on the stairwell wall, he might have mistaken it for a nonexistent fifth floor.
…What is this?
Feeling another wave of spine-chilling dread, he raced up the stairs at tremendous speed.
Once again he climbed past the fourth floor, and once again a “new first floor” appeared. The bloodstains and remains were in entirely different positions and forms.
This time he tried the opposite direction.
He attempted to descend to the basement, but the fourth floor appeared. Descending another level toward the first floor brought him to the fourth floor again.
He repeated the process several times. The result was the same.
This is impossible.
He hurried back to the original floor where he had entered and headed for the entrance. There he stopped dead, staring in blank shock at the opposite side.
Where the outside world should have been visible, he saw instead the interior of the “opposite school building,” reflected as perfectly as if a mirror had been placed there.
Though the structure was identical, the corpse fragments and bloodstains were all different. This was no simple illusion or spatial fold.
He had been trapped in an unexplainable supernatural labyrinth.
The moment he realized it, his gaze snapped to the windows.
He had thought he could escape through them since the outside scenery was visible. Then he remembered the students who had all jumped to their deaths outside. A chill ran down his spine.
Moreover, the instant he drew close to a shattered window—
Even though no visible anomaly appeared, his instincts screamed in warning so violently that he stepped back involuntarily. The alarm was too powerful to ignore.
This intuitive danger sense was a property of the Wish Power. It had saved his life more than ten times. Its reliability was absolute.
Leaving through the window meant death.
I have to find Won-hee.
He had come to help, yet now he was the one who needed saving.
Believing she was still alive somewhere in this bizarre, horrifying maze, he began moving quickly once more, presence still concealed.
Certainly, the Wish Power was not omnipotent, but it was truly versatile.
Following a certain sense that even he could not accurately explain—too subtle to call it smell, yet nothing else fit—he traversed the school building without pause.
What struck him anew was just how impossibly vast the quantity of corpses and blood truly was.
Even killing the entire student body could not account for the volume he had witnessed. This too was clearly the work of the supernatural maze.
How long had he been moving?
Only after repeating the cycle of climbing stairs, crossing entrances, and climbing again for well over an hour did he finally sense Lee Won-hee’s presence.
Bang…!
Boom! Boom…!
The welcome sound of battle reached him. He accelerated further and entered the third-floor area.
There he saw a familiar, even denser darkness tearing apart, devouring, and crushing every charging ghost. At its center stood a pale-faced Lee Won-hee in her school uniform.
“Won-hee!”
When he called out joyfully, the girl—who had been filled with anxiety, fear, and dread—flinched and turned her head.
“S-Senior…!”
Instead of replying with equal relief, she whispered urgently, eyes darting around as if preparing for something utterly terrifying. She hurried toward him.
Her behavior alone was enough to tell him something was terribly wrong. He immediately concealed his presence again and moved to meet her.
After cutting down the obstructing ghosts and clasping hands, the wave of relief lasted only a moment.
“Senior… w-we have to run. We have to hide…! As fast as possible…!”
With those words, Lee Won-hee forcefully manipulated the darkness and eliminated every remaining ghost. Then she grabbed his hand and began to run.
“Wait—if I hide our presence…!”
He had believed it would work, since the method had kept him from encountering any enemies on the way here. She should have understood, yet she only shook her head frantically and kept running.
Then, at some point—
Both of them stopped dead at the same instant.
Not just their bodies but their breath caught in their throats. Their eyes widened and every hair on their bodies stood on end.
A sense of crisis far stronger than the one he had felt near the window—indeed, the strongest he had ever experienced in his life—screamed through his mind like a siren.
In the center of the dimly lit corridor ahead, a woman stood elegantly, watching them.
Her skin was a dark blue-black. Her features were exotic. The clothing she wore resembled something from a fantasy film. In one hand she held an object adorned with countless precious metals and jewels that resembled an ornate censer.
She simply stood there gazing at them with eyes that swirled with darkness and blood-red. Yet both Han Yujin and the S-class hunter Lee Won-hee froze like frogs before a snake, trembling uncontrollably.
The longer her gaze lingered, the more it felt as though their souls were being crushed and distorted beneath some colossal weight.
“N-no…!”
As if sensing death itself, Lee Won-hee groaned and tightened her grip on his hand.
In that instant, the unknown woman’s gaze seemed to brush across their joined hands.
The woman smiled faintly and turned with leisurely grace.
The moment they perceived her turning, she vanished without a trace. Only then could the two escape that overwhelming presence and draw breath again.
Yet they could not stop themselves from collapsing.
“W-what… was that…?”
When the stunned Han Yujin asked, Lee Won-hee shook her head rapidly and forced herself up on trembling legs.
“I don’t know…! We have to run…! We have to hide, quickly…!”
Han Yujin, half-dragged along for several seconds, finally shook off the lingering pressure and began moving under his own power.
“I’ll help you.”
He used his Wish Power to conceal both their presences while supporting Lee Won-hee so she could move faster. Together they ran.
The plan was to find a suitable hiding place first, then speak properly and devise a strategy.
And so, for a full fifteen days and more, the two continued to hide and flee without any outside help.
They found no hope of escape whatsoever.