Alexei illustration
First to block Ji-hwan’s path was a massive man over two meters tall, wrapped in layer upon layer of thick blast-resistant armor, swinging a [Thermite Hammer].
The heavy slab of metal, its striking head radiating heat in the thousands of degrees like shimmering haze, came crashing down vertically with ruthless force, aiming to crush Ji-hwan’s skull.
But Ji-hwan didn’t back away.
He made the muscle fibers in his right leg swell as if they might burst, then violently triggered [Instant Strike], a strike technique that exploded with force at the exact instant before impact.
Ji-hwan’s kick, faint red smoke momentarily condensing into a dense blur, shot up toward the hammer now glowing red-hot.
Tatatatang!!
A shriek of metal so sharp it was hard to believe a heavy iron mass and bare flesh had collided shook the underground parking garage. The [Thermite Hammer], carrying tremendous pressure, was cleanly stopped by Ji-hwan’s [Instant Strike]-fueled kick and froze in midair, unable to move an inch.
"Damn it!!"
Stunned that his all-out blow had been blocked, the hulking agent swinging the hammer could hardly believe it.
He forced more output from his exoskeleton, veins bulging as he tried to shove the hammer through by brute force.
But Ji-hwan had no intention of getting into a stupid strength contest with him.
Using the recoil from stopping the hammer, Ji-hwan twisted his body in a grotesque spin like a top and slipped straight into the blind spot under the man’s broad frame.
Then, riding the centrifugal force of his violently rotating body, he drove a vicious rising kick with his remaining left leg straight into the thick mechanical hand gripping the hammer.
Crack!!
"Aaaagh!!"
With a sickening snap of crushed mechanical joints and finger bones, a scream of pain burst from the man’s mouth. Losing his grip as his broken fingers went numb, the hulking agent staggered back and finally dropped the heavy [Thermite Hammer] to the floor.
The very instant the giant lost his balance and opened a gap, the next agent, who had been hiding his blind spot by sticking close behind that broad back, suddenly appeared right in front of Ji-hwan.
"Die!"
The shotgun specialist, whose arms had been modified into shotguns, deployed the vicious weapons at point-blank range and slammed the trigger repeatedly.
Tatatatang—Kwaang!!
A storm of buckshot erupted in a blaze of fire. In a situation where it was already too late to dodge, Ji-hwan immediately cranked up [Body Enhancement] and chose to guard his face and throat with both thick arms instead.
Bang!Bang!Bang!
Ruthless buckshot rained down like mad on Ji-hwan’s torso and arms, and the agent kept blasting away without pause, certain the target would be torn into a sieve and collapse.
How many shots had it been?
Click. Click.
Only the dry metallic sound of an empty chamber echoed through the choking smoke, the weapon no longer able to spit fire.
Through the haze of gunpowder smoke, one of the Hound agents, anxious to know whether Ji-hwan was still alive, swallowed hard and muttered in a trembling voice.
"...Is he... dead?"
But as the smoke slowly cleared, what appeared before their eyes was a grotesque sight that made no sense by any mechanical standard.
Blood was pouring in streams from his entire body, yet Ji-hwan was still standing firm on both feet.
Surprisingly, the shotgun’s merciless metal pellets had not penetrated deep enough to threaten his life, instead being firmly stopped by the thick muscle layers of his body, compressed beyond normal limits.
Thud, thud-thud-thud.
As his muscle fibers contracted and pushed the embedded, crushed pellets back out, the bloodied rounds dropped lifelessly to the floor.
"You don’t need to dodge a gun like that."
The words had barely left his mouth before Ji-hwan kicked off the ground and charged.
The agent tried to scramble backward, but Ji-hwan’s knee shot up like lightning and slammed directly into his face.
Pow!!
"Ghk!"
The agent’s face caved in as he spun through the air and slammed helplessly into an old concrete wall, where he blacked out on the spot.
Seeing his comrade get wrecked right beside him, the hammer agent ignored even the pain from his crushed fingers, raised his [Gorilla Arms], and swung a stupidly heavy fist.
Whoosh!
A motion that tore the air. Ji-hwan simply twisted his upper body a little and let the strike slide past, then immediately inflated the muscles of his still-intact left arm until they looked ready to burst.
A strike technique that turned on and off only for the 0.05 seconds before contact.
[Instant Strike].
Tatatatang!!
With a heavy grinding sound, Ji-hwan’s left fist slammed viciously into the center of the man’s abdomen, right on top of the thick armor.
It looked like a simple hit, but the terrifying shockwave transmitted directly inward through muscle and bone twisted the man’s organs inside out.
"Kuh, hck..."
The man’s eyes rolled back as froth spilled from his mouth, and he collapsed like a dead tree while clutching his stomach.
With two teammates down in an instant, only two remained: the female agent using a monomolecular whip and the one carrying a riot shield.
Even though Ji-hwan couldn’t use his right arm and was effectively fighting one-handed, they could feel the crushing despair of knowing they were nowhere near his level.
"How can a body like that..."
"A flesh body with no parts at all... how?!"
Shattering everything they thought they knew, the two remaining agents blurted out their shock and confusion.
But Ji-hwan had no intention of kindly explaining himself and exposing his weakness to them.
Besides, even if he looked calm on the outside, he was actually exhausted from taking buckshot at point-blank range with his bare body.
Backing away into the deep shadows while keeping the remaining two in sight, Ji-hwan vanished into the darkness in an instant.
"W-Where did he go?!"
The agents watching from behind the shield shouted in alarm.
"That bastard... he’s using our cloak!!"
Ji-hwan had thrown on the stolen military optical camo cloak, even cutting off his body heat, and was now melting completely into the darkness as he moved.
"There! Search!"
Just as the panicked men were turning their weapons and scanning in every direction, veins bulging in their necks, Ji-hwan’s cold voice suddenly drifted out from the dark, sending a chill down their spines.
Crack!!
Right beside the female agent gripping the monomolecular whip and standing on high alert, a horrifying bone-crushing sound echoed heavily.
Startled, the female agent turned her head and saw her partner, who should have been standing firm with the superalloy riot shield, collapse with his neck bent back in a grotesque angle after something pierced the gap in the shield.
"Khk, kuh..."
As her comrade fell to the floor, coughing up dark bloody froth, even the female agent, armed with mechanical killing intent, froze completely before the overwhelming terror in front of her.
"Eek...!!"
Seeing her partner’s neck twisted and his mouth foaming as he collapsed, the female agent stumbled backward in terror, but as a final act of desperation she flicked the red rings on both wrists and kept the monomolecular whip from retracting, readying herself to lash out.
And just as Ji-hwan kicked off the dirt floor, charging in to end her throat without mercy, it happened.
Kwaang—!!
As if to cut between them and the female agent, the thick concrete ceiling of the underground parking garage came crashing down in one merciless explosion.
A massive blast that shook the entire building and a cloud of cement dust swallowed the space whole.
Only a few dozen seconds earlier, on the surface.
Standing atop the collapsed wreckage and sensing the eerie silence and violent aftermath below, squad leader Alexei had urgently ordered the man beside him.
"Break through the floor. Now."
"Boss! If we break it open, the remaining ground will collapse with it!"
The subordinate tried to stop him in panic, but Alexei’s dull gray cybernetic eye didn’t even twitch.
"Better than standing here and watching everyone below die. Break it open. Now."
As a result of that brutal decision, the ceiling of the underground parking garage shattered and a mountain of debris came pouring down. In the middle of the dust, something landed heavily on the floor.
Thud!
The shadow that landed and immediately shot toward Ji-hwan without a single second of hesitation was Alexei, leader of Zetatech’s Hound Team.
Ji-hwan lightly flexed his right arm, which had already fully recovered bone and muscle, and silently watched Alexei approach.
In his hand, gripped in reverse, was the thin, razor-sharp monomolecular dagger he had taken as loot from the sniper earlier.
Clang!!
Blue sparks flew as a heavy metallic ring rang out.
"Hm?!"
Alexei’s dull gray cybernetic eye shook with surprise. He had not expected his draw slash to be blocked.
The draw technique, too fast for the eye to follow, had been stopped head-on by Ji-hwan’s clumsy reverse-grip dagger.
Alexei immediately twisted his wrist and unleashed a furious barrage.
Up, down, and into every blind spot, a storm of vicious steel swept through the underground garage, but only sharp metallic cries rang out: Kagagang!Cheng!
Ji-hwan was barely managing to block every one of Alexei’s slashes.
Seeing his technique blocked, Alexei immediately activated the high-end implant embedded in his spine.
Zzt—!
With a burst of blue sparks, Alexei deployed [Sandevistan] and vanished from sight. Ji-hwan, exhaling faint red vapor, also kicked off the ground and disappeared in a violent burst of high-speed movement.
As the two men entered the world of superhuman speed and vanished, the remaining members of Hound Team followed Alexei through the hole in the ceiling and descended into the underground one after another through the dust.
They scanned the area in all directions, then quickly found their comrades sprawled motionless near the collapsed wreckage and rushed over.
"Check their status!"
One agent hurriedly ran a scan.
The shield bearer whose neck had been bent back grotesquely after something pierced the gap in the superalloy shield, the giant hammer user who had been thrown down with his internal organs shaken by Ji-hwan’s strike, and even the micro-shotgun user who had been knocked flat in the face.
"No way..."
Heavy shock filled the voice of the agent checking the scanner.
"They’re all alive. All of them have weak pulses."
At that, the agents gathered around them sucked in sharp breaths.
Blows that should have been enough to take their lives, yet after checking, their comrades were only lying there barely hanging on.
"That monster bastard... was he playing with us?"
The agents’ gazes shifted to the wide open space in the dark underground parking garage.
Clang—! Kwaang—!!
There, two shadows impossible to follow with the naked eye were colliding with savage force.
The flashes thrown off by the katana and dagger crossing, and the heavy shockwaves bursting the dirt floor apart, were the only proof that a brutal battle was raging there.
Within the blurred afterimages left by high-speed movement, the paths of the two men twisted together as if they were enjoying this suffocating fight itself.
The remaining Hound agents watched in silence, staring at a battle in a realm far beyond anything they could dare join, silently rooting for their boss, Alexei, to cut the enemy’s throat.
After dozens of exchanges, the blue sparks crackling in midair faded and the movements of the two men finally stopped.
Behind Alexei, who had briefly released his [Sandevistan] and slowed back down, hot steam hissed out in rough bursts from the high-end implant embedded in his spine.
Across from him, Ji-hwan also let out a rough breath and withdrew his ability.
His eyes, which had been burning red, returned to their original dark color, and the red smoke wrapped around his body slowly scattered into the air as [Thought Acceleration] and [Body Enhancement] were released.
A tense standoff hung in the air.
Lowering the monomolecular cutter katana at a slant, Alexei pierced Ji-hwan with his emotionless gray cybernetic eye and said in a low voice, "You’re strong..."
It was a dry, honest assessment from a man who had spent his life as an elite Zetatech assassin, cutting down the throats of countless strong opponents.
"You’re nothing like the data from a month ago."
Compared to the combat records from a month earlier, when Ji-hwan had fought Maelstrom executives at the abandoned power plant, it was an unexpected compliment acknowledging how absurdly much he had grown in such a short time.
At the soft praise from the man, Ji-hwan looked a little dazed, still holding his weapon.
"Uh... thanks?"
Ji-hwan answered awkwardly and glanced at the dark ruins around them and the agents sprawled on the ground.
But Alexei didn’t waver at that casual reply. Like a squad leader carrying out his duty, he continued coldly, "In the end, you can’t beat a corporation alone. Surrender."
It was the final push to achieve their employer’s order from Director Carlyle: capture him alive.
Ji-hwan heard that and paused for a moment, rubbing his dirt-streaked chin.
"Even if I do, surrendering just means I end up in a lab, right?"
No megacorp would leave a body like his alone, a body that was stitching its own wounds shut in real time without a single piece of chrome.
He’d almost certainly end up restrained, dissected, and turned into a lifelong test subject.
Alexei didn’t deny that harsh reality.
But as if projecting his own life, controlled by suppressants, he answered in a subdued voice, "Even so... it’s better than dying."
But Ji-hwan answered without even a second of hesitation.
"Then I’d rather just die."
At that firm refusal, Alexei silently stared at Ji-hwan for a moment.
Maybe, in some corner of the emotion he had lost to those drug-like suppressants, a tiny spark of admiration rose for the stubborn man in front of him.
"...Fine."
Alexei gave a short reply and slowly raised the cold blade of the katana he had lowered, resetting his stance and lowering his center of gravity once more.
Ji-hwan also tightened his grip on the sharp monomolecular dagger he had taken from the sniper, exuding a razor-edged killing intent.
Swish, step.
This time, instead of launching themselves at each other with high-speed movement, the two men began to walk forward, step by step, very slowly, as if they had agreed on it.
At a distance so close their breaths could have touched, the two men holding katana and dagger stared at each other with their mouths shut tight, as if by silent agreement.
How many seconds passed? One of the Hound members watching this in silence from behind the collapsed debris swallowed hard.
That tiny friction sound echoed through the dark underground like the starting gun for a round.
Swish—!Clang!
At the same time, the two men sprang apart and once again clashed violently, slashing madly with dagger and katana.
The exchange continued. At first Ji-hwan was cut several times, his skin torn, and pushed back a few steps.
The distance was so close that even evasive movement was hard to pull off.
As if refusing to allow even that tiny opening, Alexei pressed close enough to split Ji-hwan’s waist in two and drove him back with only his own precise assassination swordsmanship.
But as dozens of blades crossed, Alexei began to feel something off.
The enemy in front of him, who had been allowing twenty solid hits out of every hundred swings, was gradually slipping past his lines—nineteen, then eighteen.
"No way... in the middle of this fight?!"
Maybe it was an illusion. Maybe it was coincidence.
But feeling that he couldn’t afford to drag this out, Alexei knocked Ji-hwan’s dagger aside hard, created the briefest opening, and unleashed [Sandevistan] once more in a furious burst of super-speed.
Then a vicious draw slash that surpassed even bullets shot toward Ji-hwan’s throat.
Serrrk—!
Just before the blue blade tore through the air and reached Ji-hwan’s neck, what entered Alexei’s vision was Ji-hwan’s red eyes flashing coldly out of the darkness.
In that instant, Ji-hwan had mixed [Thought Acceleration] and the explosive output of [Body Enhancement] with [Instant Strike], the peak of striking techniques.
A situation that might work, or might fail.
Ji-hwan threw a simple, heavy straight punch, red smoke bursting from his entire body.
Before Alexei’s katana could even touch his throat, Alexei saw Ji-hwan’s fist rushing in to fill his entire field of view, and there was no time left to pull the attack back.
"...!!"
All Alexei could do was twist his body just enough to react.
Tatatatang—!!!!
Alexei’s body bounced across the dirt floor several times before flying back and rolling, then slammed brutally into a thick concrete wall, carving deep cracks into it.
"Kuh, hck..."
As thick dust rose, Ji-hwan stood rooted in place and brushed a hand across his throat.
The katana’s edge had barely grazed him, leaving a single line of red blood running down his neck.
But the satisfaction of blasting his opponent away lasted only a moment.
Crack!Pop!
"Ghh..."
A muffled groan of pain burst from between Ji-hwan’s lips.
It had only worked because [Instant Strike] had barely succeeded; if the timing had been off by even 0.01 seconds and he’d failed to switch it off, the pressure would have rebounded far more violently, and his torso might have literally blown apart by now.
Ji-hwan steadied his aching joints and bent slightly as he looked forward.
Through the thick dust, Alexei, who had just been slammed into the thick concrete wall by that heavy shockwave, was staggering back to his feet.
"Kuh, hck..."
Alexei spat a mouthful of dark blood onto the floor and forced his wildly shaking head back into place.
Part of the armor plating on his military [Gorilla Arms] had caved in and sparks were flying from his body, but his dull gray cybernetic eye was still locked fiercely on Ji-hwan.
Confirming that stubborn vitality, Ji-hwan muttered in disbelief, "What the hell is this guy made of?"
Ji-hwan inwardly admired the man’s toughness and slowly straightened up again.
In the midst of the frantic battle, his damaged body had been stitched back together in real time and was now at least partially patched up.
Of course, he was still weighed down by exhaustion and covered in fresh wounds that hadn’t fully closed, but nothing that would stop him from continuing the fight right now.
Ji-hwan tightened his grip on the monomolecular dagger and lowered his stance again.
Alexei also shook out his creaking mechanical arm once and leveled the remaining katana blade.
Now that they had both shown every sharp technique hidden at the bottom of their arsenals, further probing or talking was pointless.
Tap!
As if by agreement, the two men kicked off the ground at the same time and shot straight at each other.
Once again, in the wide open space of the collapsed underground parking garage, trajectories of high-speed movement invisible to the naked eye began to collide.
Kwaang—! Clang!
The dagger and katana, fists and kicks, tangled wildly in midair and scattered blue sparks everywhere.
But this exchange was very different from the one before.
Ji-hwan’s instinctive sense of combat was absorbing Alexei’s precise assassination swordsmanship and hand-to-hand techniques, which kept coming at him without pause, and growing at a terrifying pace in real time.
Serrrk—!
Ji-hwan slipped past the sharp blade and kicks that Alexei drove into his blind spots.
The one-sided slashing and retreat from their first close-quarters exchange was gone.
With every exchange, the dirt floor burst apart and deep sword marks and cracks were carved into the remaining concrete pillars.
In the middle of that suffocating, super-speed battle, a strange curve formed at the corners of both men’s mouths at the same time.
Grin.
Ji-hwan, locked in the fierce exchange, was the first to let out a laugh he couldn’t hold back.
"Hahaha!"
It was a hearty, clear laugh that shook the underground, as if this vicious fight for their lives was absurdly fun and exhilarating.
And maybe that laughter was contagious. From between the tightly shut lips of Alexei, the corporate hound who had seemed stripped of emotion by drugs, a suppressed laugh mixed with a bizarre metallic rasp burst out as well.
"Kuhh...!"
Whatever was so funny, the two men faced each other, laughing like madmen as they threw heavy punches toward each other’s faces and torsos and countered in kind.
Even amid the horrific melee, where wounds split open and blood sprayed through the air, the struggle of the two men, tangled together in the afterimages of high-speed movement, burned hotter and hotter without end.
When Alexei slipped inside a gap and knocked aside Ji-hwan’s wrist, which had grown just a little weaker from the prolonged fight.
Kagagang!
The monomolecular dagger in Ji-hwan’s hand spun through the air and flew far away, slamming into the ground.
Taking advantage of that tiny opening with Ji-hwan disarmed, Alexei’s katana surged in immediately.
Ji-hwan narrowly dodged the cold blade tearing through the air by a hair’s breadth, then, with a short breath, drove his fist viciously into the back of Alexei’s hand gripping the katana.
[Instant Strike].
Boom!!
"Tch!"
Several of the alloy finger bones in the sturdy military [Gorilla Arms] caved in and snapped.
But Alexei, a veteran of countless battlefields, did not retreat in pain. Instead, he drove his unbroken other fist straight toward Ji-hwan’s solar plexus.
Thud!
As Ji-hwan’s upper body was shoved back with a dull sound, Alexei’s large palm suddenly swept across Ji-hwan’s field of view.
Vision blocked, Ji-hwan reflexively read the surprise attack coming for his abdomen and dropped his arm to defend.
Thud—!
As expected, Alexei’s heavy fist landed exactly where Ji-hwan had blocked.
But had he blocked too quickly? As Ji-hwan staggered from the impact because he had defended in a rushed posture, Alexei moved in. Yet Ji-hwan took one deep breath, held it, and threw a straight punch with all his concentration poured into a single [Instant Strike].
Tatatatang!!
Alexei barely managed to block the heavy blow with his military [Gorilla Arms] as a shield.
The impact was much weaker than before, but it still rang through the bones and traveled through the armor, shaking Alexei’s massive frame.
"Next is mine?!"
The moment Alexei tried to open his guarded arm and counterattack, Ji-hwan’s [Instant Strike] did not end with a single hit.
Boom!Bang!Tatatatang!!
Holding his breath, Ji-hwan’s two fists left invisible afterimages as they began pouring out [Instant Strike] after [Instant Strike] without pause.
Heavy shockwaves kept stacking one after another. The cracking sounds of impact filled the underground parking garage, and Alexei’s stance, unable to endure the endlessly accumulating blows, finally broke apart and sent him flying backward.
"An opening!"
Ji-hwan, seizing the initiative, kicked off the ground and lunged forward, but—
Crack—!!!
"...!!"
A horrifying grinding sound echoed heavily inside Ji-hwan’s body.
Having repeatedly fired off countless [Instant Strike] attacks with pinpoint precision, he had burned through his concentration to the limit, and the final strike had slipped out of alignment.
"Wheek...!"
Ji-hwan vomited a gush of bright red blood from his mouth.
Reeling from the terrible backlash, he steadied himself and wiped the blood trailing down his chin.
Alexei, too, had been pushed back and was breathing hard, his armored mechanical arm hanging low.
In the quiet space as the dust slowly settled, the two men’s gazes locked in the air with a chill.
Before long, Alexei ignored his broken fingers, tightened his grip on the katana again, and reset his stance. Ji-hwan, too, stubbornly steadied his aching body and raised his heavy fist once more.
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