Ji-hwan slowly walked to the center of the morgue and planted his bare feet firmly on the cold tile floor.
Before the real fight began, he needed to carve his current physical condition into his body.
"Hoo..."
He let out a light breath, rolled his stiff neck hard from side to side, spread his arms wide, and stretched out the torn muscles across his chest and back. Then he twisted his waist, bent and straightened his knees, and loosened each joint one by one.
Shhk, shh-shhk.
He took a few light steps in place and threw short jabs and hooks at the air. The movement itself was perfect, smooth as a well-oiled machine. No creaking joints, no muscle strain, no pain at all. The external injuries were practically healed. But the more he shadowboxed, the more Ji-hwan’s brow furrowed.
That miracle only went so far.
'So I can't recover my original strength after all.'
Ji-hwan clicked his tongue as he opened and closed the hands that had just sliced through the air.
The fundamental life force he had burned away as fuel for that final, last-ditch strike wasn't something that could be refilled in an instant.
No matter how hard he forced his output right now, he couldn't even reach half the absurd strength he usually had.
He was the definition of a shell that looked fine on the outside but was hollow on the inside, a miserable nerfed state. And yet the faint, feral smile on Ji-hwan’s lips never wavered.
'Yeah, I wasn't expecting it to be easy.'
Only then did Ji-hwan look down at his own body, feeling the cold air against his skin, and realize anew that he was completely naked.
It looked like they had stripped off every piece of gear and clothing he’d been wearing for the dissection.
"Those bastards really did strip me bare."
Ji-hwan muttered with a scoff.
First things first, he had to cover up this naked body. He rummaged through the pile of black body bags stacked in the corner and found the bloodstained combat fatigues and tactical vest of a private security guard who had died with his guts blown out, then pulled them on.
After that, he firmly gripped the black combat knife left at his waist in a reverse hold and finished preparing himself.
Tick- tiriik, clack.
"Hm?"
The sound of a double electronic lock disengaging echoed from outside the morgue.
"Damn it, how are we supposed to drag this heavy coffin back up..."
"Shh, keep your voice down. You know how obsessed the director is with that corpse. Hurry up and bag it so we can get moving."
As the cleanup crew that had come to transport the body stepped inside, Ji-hwan lowered himself silently into the darkness.
Whiiing-.
The heavy bulletproof glass door opened, and two men with irritated expressions rolled in a large cart.
"All right, just load it up and get it upstairs quick... Huh? W-what? Where the hell did the body go?!"
While the startled men looked around, Ji-hwan slipped out of the darkness like a ghost and appeared right behind one of them.
"Looking for me?"
"H-hik...! M-mph!"
At that instant, the man in front flinched and reflexively reached for the stun baton at his waist. But Ji-hwan was faster.
Puk-!
With a merciless tearing sound, the combat knife in Ji-hwan’s reverse grip pierced straight through the man’s jaw and out the top of his skull before he could even resist.
"Kheuk..."
As the man’s eyes rolled back and he collapsed in a frothing heap of blood, the remaining one went white as a sheet.
Ji-hwan brought the dripping knife to the other man’s neck, cold and steady.
"Make a sound, and I’ll turn you into the same thing. Answer only what I ask. Where were you taking my body?"
The man, crushed under Ji-hwan’s vicious killing intent, trembled like a leaf and hurriedly blurted out the answer.
"B-before it gets moved to headquarters... the facility director said he’d dissect it himself, so we were told to bring it to the operating room upstairs...!"
Ji-hwan’s eyes narrowed. Then the terrified man glanced at his colleague’s mangled corpse and, desperate to save his own life, started spilling everything.
"P-please! Please spare me! I’ll tell you everything! I have more information!"
Ji-hwan eased the knife back a little and, as if tossing him a lifeline, prodded him lightly.
"Oh? Let’s hear whether it’s worth your life."
"H-hic... B-before your body was brought down to the morgue, they already drew off a huge amount of your blood! A-and... it’s being stored in Lab One on the first basement level for analysis!"
The instant the man finished spitting out the information, a strange glint flashed through his terrified eyes.
'He's alive...! If I report this upstairs right now...!'
Still begging for mercy out loud, the man secretly reached behind his back to hit the emergency comm switch at his waist.
If he reported that this monster was still alive, he’d save his own skin and probably earn a massive reward on top of it. That was the cheap little calculation in his head. But—
"Y-you’re going to let me live now... Khehk!"
Shhk-!
Before his finger could even touch the comm switch, Ji-hwan’s knife sliced through the air and cut deep and mercilessly across the man’s throat.
"Kheuk... y-you said... you’d... spare me..."
The man clutched both hands over the blood gushing from his neck and collapsed face-first onto the floor, staring up at Ji-hwan with a face twisted by betrayal and despair.
Looking down at that resentful gaze with cold, pitiless eyes, Ji-hwan sneered.
"I can hear your little scheme from here. Spare you? Spare what?"
"You... bastard... cough..."
"And don’t give me that wronged look. All those people you dragged in here... did you let any of them go when they begged for their lives?"
At Ji-hwan’s icy rebuke, the man could offer no reply. He coughed up a mouthful of bloody froth and then went still for good.
"Good information. Nice work."
Ji-hwan searched the cooling body and took the security ID.
After shoving the inconvenient corpses into a corner, Ji-hwan readjusted the knife in his hand, stood still in place, and planted both feet firmly on the ground.
He was going to recreate that fleeting sensation he had used to strike Alpha’s chest, this time in empty air.
"Hoo..."
He focused on the feeling of [Body Enhancement], forcibly stripping tension from every muscle in his body.
Not by tensing up, but by letting the whole body relax like flowing water.
Then he extended his fist with the lightest push, like a shadowboxing jab.
A tiny bit of kinetic energy starting from his toes amplified through the rotation of his calves and waist, then condensed without error into that one point at the end of his fist, where his back muscles whipped it forward like a lash.
Paang-!!
In an instant, a sharp tearing crack split the air from the tip of his fist, like a whip snapping through space.
"Oh..."
Even Ji-hwan let out a dry laugh at his own strike.
Even though he hadn’t actually hit anything, the air where his fist stopped compressed for a split second and then seemed to rip apart, sending a chilling vibration straight back through his knuckles. The martial strike he had only managed to show on the brink of death had become real, bursting out from his own fingertips.
'It was a technique I only imagined... and now this.'
For now, it was still a limited move that only worked if he planted both feet and took the proper stance first.
But what if he could master it completely and fire it from anywhere on his body without a fixed posture?
The moment that happened, he was certain that in close combat, even the legendary monster Adam Smasher could come charging in chrome-drenched and still have his bones and armor smashed to pieces.
'Well, that psycho with his whole body covered in medium and heavy weapons wouldn't exactly be eager to let anyone get close enough for melee.'
Even imagining it made him let out a bitter laugh. It was a painfully obvious, hopeless reality.
Still, in this hellish line where he might die today or tomorrow, the fact that he had gained such a razor-sharp technique capable of piercing an enemy’s throat made Ji-hwan feel strangely proud.
Smiling with satisfaction at the new fang he had forged, Ji-hwan adjusted the stolen ID.
"First I need to burn away my own blood. They said it was in the first basement storage room."
To erase every trace of himself, Ji-hwan slipped into the darkness of the second-floor corridor and moved like a ghost toward the emergency stairs leading down to the first basement level.
As he descended the dark stairwell, Ji-hwan pulled a heavy steel bolt from his pocket.
His target was the surveillance camera on the ceiling at the far end of the first-basement corridor. A thought suddenly struck him: could he mix that [Body Enhancement] feeling from the strike into his throwing technique too?
'Could be worth a shot.'
He stopped on the landing, planted both feet firmly on the ground, and once again took the exact preparatory stance he used when unleashing that explosive burst of force.
He forcibly drew out the sensation of the joints from shoulder to elbow to wrist loosening smoothly like flowing water. Then, with a light spring from his lower body, he flicked the bolt using only the snap of his wrist and all his concentration on that single point.
Ping-! Puk!!
With a sharp crack splitting the air, the steel bolt pierced the camera lens dead center and buried itself deep into the ceiling.
"...Damn. I thought it might work, but I didn’t think it would actually work."
Ji-hwan stared at the fingertips left hanging in the air and muttered in disbelief.
When he mixed [Body Enhancement] into the throw, the trajectory became terrifyingly precise, smooth and subtle enough that an enemy couldn’t predict it.
If he could fully recover his body and combine it with this trick, he was sure he’d become overwhelmingly stronger than he was now.
But this miracle strike had probably only worked because he had just barely survived the edge of death, and the sensation was still vivid in his muscles and nerves.
Before that feeling faded, he had to keep replaying it in his mind and engrave it completely into his body.
This was a one-of-a-kind weapon that no machine could ever imitate, the only thing in this damned chrome world that could belong to him alone.
Even as he walked, Ji-hwan kept turning that cold, razor-sharp flow of [Body Enhancement] over and over in his mind so he wouldn’t forget it.
"...Right, this isn’t the time to stand here grinning to myself."
Ji-hwan slapped his cheek lightly and pulled his overexcited mind back into line.
As he quickened his pace, the faces of the comrades he had sent up through the tunnel at the risk of their lives flashed through his head.
'Dakota, and that netrunner... they got out safely, right?'
He could only hope they had reached the surface unharmed. The only way to raise their chances of survival was for him to make as much chaos as possible down here.
Before long, Ji-hwan entered the inner area of the first basement level and arrived at his destination: Lab One.
Instead of walking straight up, he reflexively pressed his back against the cold corridor wall.
He killed even the sound of his breathing and footsteps, then sharpened his hearing to probe the presence beyond the door.
'One, two... three?'
From the rhythm of footsteps and the murmur of voices, he quickly calculated that there were three people inside. Only then did he lean his head out just enough to peer through the thick bulletproof glass.
Inside, three unarmed researchers in white lab coats were gathered around a hologram monitor, chattering excitedly.
"T-this is a miracle! The extracted blood cells aren’t just rejecting the DNA of that foreign beast—they’re devouring it and taking control! We can close a bio-weapon deal with Zetatech right now!"
"Don’t get excited. This blood sample alone can’t fully control that insane predatory nature. To control the [chimera project], we need the special cortical DNA in its central nervous system—its brain."
"Exactly. And ordinary replacement DNA gets destroyed too quickly... We can only use the original body as a living bioreactor. Now I finally understand why the director made such a fuss about never damaging the corpse’s head or internal organs."
The smallest researcher, unable to contain his excitement, paced in front of the monitor and spat out the words in a frenzy.
"But why the hell is the cleanup crew downstairs so slow? I told them several times to send that corpse up first!"
"Could Alpha have handled it too roughly and damaged the brain or spinal cord? No, no... If even a scratch is on that perfect, pure body, I’ll shove those stupid tin-can mercs into a grinder alive myself!"
"Hurry... ah, I’m going crazy wanting to open that beautiful skull with my own hands. The wondrous fusion that’ll happen when we inject beast genes into that living bioreactor...! Heh-heh, kahahaha!"
The researchers, possessed by madness and laughing with spit flying from their mouths, were practically glowing with ecstasy. Listening from outside the door to that grotesque obsession, Ji-hwan’s eyes cooled.
The moment he confirmed the greedy, disgusting look in their eyes through the bulletproof glass, a calm, matter-of-fact conclusion settled in his head, beyond anger.
'Ah. These guys definitely need to die.'
There was no reason to leave them alive, no value in exchanging another word. Without hesitation, Ji-hwan swiped the stolen ID across the security pad and threw open the lab’s automatic door.
Whiiing-.
"Huh? The body’s finally up..."
The researchers turned around in annoyance, and their faces froze in an instant.
The owner of the "beautiful skull" that should have been locked away in the morgue had walked in on his own two feet, his vicious eyes blazing as though he were alive again.
Three cylinders filled with the red blood drawn from Ji-hwan’s arm were inserted into the special cryostorage unit.
"Hey there, you little dogs."
"H-hiiiiik-!!"
The chief researcher, the first to recover his senses, went pale and stumbled backward, reaching for the emergency alarm.
"Security! Call the extermination unit right now! How the hell is this monster... Kkh!"
Ji-hwan surged in like a ghost and gave him no time to scream. Even as he charged, he forcibly dragged up the feeling of [Body Enhancement] he had just used to tear the air apart.
Ji-hwan’s palm strike shot toward the back of the researcher’s neck as he reached for the alarm.
But the blow, unleashed while moving without a fixed stance, lacked the necessary compression of force by a huge margin.
Puk-!
Instead of a sharp piercing sensation, it felt like something blunt crushing bone. A failure.
In the end, Ji-hwan used the raw strength still left in his hand blade to slam down on the man’s neck.
"Kruk...!"
Still, maybe because even that faint [Body Enhancement] effect had made it through, the thick cervical vertebrae that should have taken two or three heavy strikes to break snapped in one shot with a grotesque grinding sound, and the researcher died on the spot.
'Tch. As expected, it’s still a mess when I try to use it while moving.'
As Ji-hwan clicked his tongue at his incomplete technique, the second researcher crawled through the pool of blood and hurriedly spread his arms, trying to bargain for his life with a panicked shout.
"W-wait! Don’t kill me! We can make you even more perfect! If Zetatech’s technology and our research are combined, we can turn you into the god of this city! Please, whatever you want... Khehkh!"
"A god? You bastards were just talking about using my body as a living bioreactor."
Ji-hwan’s kick slammed into the man’s solar plexus as he tried to bargain.
This time too, he tried to focus force into the tip of his foot and pierce through, but his balance collapsed and it ended up as nothing more than a brute kick.
Crack!
He didn’t blow the inside apart, but it was enough to shatter several ribs and stab into the lungs. The researcher spewed a fountain of blood and collapsed, dead.
That left only the smallest researcher, the one who had been laughing madly about wanting to open Ji-hwan’s skull. Cornered, he flattened himself against the floor and began trembling as he begged.
"P-please! Please, just spare my life! I only did what I was told from above! I have family too, sob... please, just let me live!"
Ji-hwan stepped through the pooled blood, walked up slowly, grabbed the man by the collar, and lifted him lightly off the ground. His black eyes bored into the man’s with no trace of mercy.
"What, weren’t you just saying you were desperate to open my beautiful skull?"
"Hiiik, y-you bastard!"
"The people you split open alive with your own hands were all someone else’s family too."
"How are those people the same as us?!"
Ji-hwan tried once more to pour the flow of force into the hand gripping the man’s collar. But because he had put too much strength into his shoulder, the sensation scattered beautifully.
"Haa, this is annoyingly hard to do."
Crack-!!
Frustrated by a technique that was hard to use in real combat, Ji-hwan finally gave up on it and simply twisted the man’s jaw and skull apart with brute grip strength.
In less than ten seconds, the three mad scientists had become grotesque lumps of meat that matched their greed and madness perfectly, sprawled across the floor.
"Still a long way from being usable in a real fight."
Wiping the blood from his hand, Ji-hwan muttered as he stepped over the sprawled corpses and picked up the three blood cylinders from the special cryostorage unit they had been using.
Even if he dumped this on the floor, guys like them would scrape it up if they had to.
"Well, it came out of my own body anyway. A little fishy for a supplement, but whatever."
Ji-hwan opened the cylinder cap and gulped down his own blood in one shot.
As the blood cells entered his stomach and were absorbed, he could feel the bottom of his emptied life force filling back in, even if only by the tiniest amount.
"Krrr. Tastes like shit."
Ji-hwan tossed the empty cylinder aside and moved toward the large high-voltage generator and gas piping. He had to erase the database and the lab itself without leaving a trace.
Kwajik! Jjeodeok!!
He slammed the gas line with a fist loaded with [Body Enhancement], then hurled the ripped-out high-voltage cable to the floor, sending terrifying sparks flying.
Hwarruruk-!
Fierce flames began devouring the lab interior and the servers in an instant.
It was just as Ji-hwan turned with a satisfied smile amid the chaos.
Aaeeeng-!! Aaeeeng-!!
The entire facility’s lights turned red as the emergency siren began to blare.
Now all the heavily armed forces inside the facility would be converging on this first-basement area and the morgue on the second basement level.
"Burn it all to ashes."
Ji-hwan stepped out into the corridor with the blazing lab behind him, his eyes flashing fiercely.
If all their attention was focused down here, then paradoxically the least guarded place had to be the top floor of the facility.
Now it was time to
"split open the bastard who ordered them to eat my brain and spinal cord."
The corporate executive who had tried to use him as a living bioreactor. There had never been any option to let that bastard live and run.
Ji-hwan crossed the corridor, red warning lights flashing overhead, and moved without hesitation toward the VIP office on the top floor of the security zone.
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