By Zephyria With such a loud noise, the helicopter that flew off soon arrived at Yeouido. The helicopter surveyed the rooftop of the broadcasting station building and stopped in the air a few meters away. Lee Hyun-muk gestured.
― Let’s get off, Yohan.
It’s dangerous, so they’re not landing. After all, in a world like today where even bullets are used sparingly, helicopters are truly precious resources. As Yohan took off his headset and stood up, Lee Hyun-muk unhesitatingly reached out his arm. Soon after, he pulled Yohan tightly into his embrace and leaped out of the helicopter. After a brief fall, Lee Hyun-muk landed on the rooftop with a heavy thud. Somehow, Yohan felt almost no impact.
“I can get down by myself….”
As Yohan said sheepishly, Lee Hyun-mook gently set down his lover, whom he had been holding as if he were a precious gem, and replied.
“For now, you’re nominally Low-grade.”
“Ah, right. That’s true.”
Yohan, who understood immediately, nodded and followed him closely. The helicopter hovered in the air until Lee Hyun-mook tore open the locked rooftop door and entered. Only after they went inside did the sound of the helicopter fade away. Yohan asked with concern.
“Will there be many people trapped here?”
“I’ll check.”
Lee Hyun-mook spread out the Electric Field, which he had also used to find Seo Yakrin in the Reed Sea. A strange, itchy sensation, like static electricity, brushed against his body. After a moment, Lee Hyun-mook nodded.
“There are a few people who couldn’t evacuate, so let’s deal with them first.”
“Yes!”
Yohan, who had answered stoutly and started to enter, faltered. Only after the light from the rooftop door receded did he realize the broadcasting station’s interior was completely dark. He reflexively tried to summon Light but stopped. He was pretending not to be a Purifier, so he couldn’t walk around summoning Light. The area below the emergency exit stairs was extremely dark and eerily gloomy….
“It seems the power is completely out….”
Whether it was deliberately cut or cut because of monsters, he couldn’t tell. Swallowing dryly, Yohan turned on the lamp attached to his uniform. It was much better with a light source, but the surroundings were still dark. As a High-level Awakener, identifying his surroundings was not a problem. Something else was.
Ironically, Yohan was not immune to such dark situations. Even when wandering the Abyss, if it felt even a little dark, he would always summon Light first. In other words, because he was a Purifier, he hadn’t encountered dark spaces often.
The broadcasting station was completely dark, and the sound of a dropped cell phone vibrating occasionally echoed from somewhere. Along with various other noises, Yohan felt an unpleasant sensation and flinched.
“There are Parasitic Polluters nearby. There seem to be more than ten of them….”
Yohan’s instincts as a Purifier sharpened, and he looked around. Lee Hyun-mook, looking at his tense young lover, said.
“I brought Yakrin here because he was at the Rift Management Agency, but maybe I should have just sent him with you….”
“No! I’m not scared at all…?”
However, as if to mock his claim of not being scared, the next moment he let out a shriek. A person was hanging from the ceiling. No, to be precise, a human-shaped figure was hanging upside down from the ceiling, swinging its arms. As they looked, they stretched down, dragging on the ground. Bony fingers fumbled along the floor….
Yohan realized then. He thought he had built up considerable resistance to monsters in the Abyss, but he actually had very little resistance to human-shaped monsters.
Come to think of it, looking back now, Joo Ho-young and Lee Hyun-mook, who were always heavily Corrupted, had always been the scariest to Yohan….
Eliminating the Corrupted hanging from the ceiling like ghosts was easy. Lee Hyun-mook lightly pierced it with his sparking spear, and it fell to the floor with a scream. Lee Hyun-mook pushed it with his foot into an adjacent room and locked it in.
“Are you okay?”
“Of course…!”
Yohan, his eyes already a little moist, glared. But then, each time a Corrupted suddenly appeared in a form straight out of a horror movie, he would clamp his mouth shut and jump back quietly. He tried his best to endure so as not to interfere with the work, but Lee Hyun-mook turned around with a smile.
“Here.”
He then spread his arms. Yohan hesitated, then quickly scrambled into Lee Hyun-mook’s embrace. With strong arms around his shoulders and waist, he felt much better. Lee Hyun-mook leaned down towards Yohan and said in a subtly eerie tone.
“Actually, I’m the scariest thing here, Yohan.”
“No, you’re not….”
Yohan immediately denied it and pressed himself close to Lee Hyun-mook. He suddenly recalled the incident in the Abyss that had made Lee Hyun-mook, the Madman, make bleating sounds. He felt like he could now produce a realistic bleating sound, like “Baaaaa.”
While neutralizing the Corrupted, they found civilians who had been hiding everywhere. The trembling civilians, upon seeing Lee Hyun-mook, cheered. The two then escorted all the civilians to the rooftop. After confirming they were being airlifted by helicopter, they descended again. With no more civilians to rescue, Yohan was finally able to scatter some Light Particles.
Just as they thought they were finally going to hunt monsters, Lee Hyun-mook inexplicably went around opening doors, peeking inside, and then pilfered bread from a desk drawer in an office. Before Yohan could stop him, he tore open the bag. Yohan stared with wide eyes at the sudden theft. Lee Hyun-mook took out a wad of bills from his pocket, placed it where the bread had been, and said gently.
“I heard your stomach rumble earlier. Let’s make do with this for now, and we’ll have a delicious dinner after we finish here.”
It was his first time stealing and eating someone else’s bread. Yohan hesitated, unable to say anything. He was a little worried that Lee Hyun-mook’s sense of morality might have faded after spending too long in the Abyss. Moreover, since the bread was already opened, he hesitated before accepting it.
“Yes, thank you for the meal…. But you don’t have to do this next time, it’s really okay!”
Yohan, embarrassed by having let his stomach rumble, replied in a voice that seemed to crawl into itself, and split the bread in half, offering it to Lee Hyun-mook. Still, his conscience pricked him, so he left a note apologizing for eating the bread without permission. Having roughly appeased their hunger, the two moved on. Yohan, sensing the presence of Corrupted crawling nearby, muttered.
“It’s strange. Why are those Corrupted gathered here so specifically?”
The Parasitic Polluters, which had first appeared during the recent Homecoming Celebration, occasionally appeared near Rift zones. So, even though it was near a Rift zone, it was strange that so many were gathered specifically inside this broadcasting station.
“Well, I’m curious about that too….”
Lee Hyun-mook muttered in a chilling tone and finally stopped in front of a door. Yohan, who had been marveling at the maze-like structure of the broadcasting station, tensed up. The sign above the door read [Music Icon Performance Hall]. Lee Hyun-mook, having scouted the interior with his Electric Field, informed him of the situation.
“There’s one Level 8 from earlier, and four smaller ones besides that. It could be dangerous, so wait outside the door for now.”
Yohan, tense after a long time, nodded resolutely. Lee Hyun-mook then opened the door. Immediately, a hazy smoke billowed out from inside. Sensing the toxicity of the smoke, Lee Hyun-mook flinched and immediately turned back, but Yohan quickly shouted.
“I’m fine!”
As soon as the smoke touched him, a faint light flowed over Yohan’s body. He had been unfazed by Yoon Seung-ryong’s potent toxic miasma, so there was no way a High-rank Purifier like Yohan would be affected by this poison. Nevertheless, Lee Hyun-mook felt extremely displeased. He realized that this toxic smoke was not simply a monster’s ability but an artificial phenomenon.
Lee Hyun-mook slowly walked into the performance hall studio. The studio, which had once broadcast a popular music program, was now desolate from disuse. On the stage was a monster emitting a chilling metallic sound. Lee Hyun-mook’s gaze swept over the monster’s body, adorned with steel frames and various metal fragments.
The source of the toxic smoke was here. Several Metal Gas Canisters were attached to the monster’s body. The floor was so thick with smoke that it was almost invisible, and dark shapes lay scattered on the ground.
“Shall we purify it first?”
As Yohan asked anxiously, the monster crouched on the stage stirred and rose upon seeing Lee Hyun-mook.
In this situation, Lee Hyun-mook’s abilities could not be used. The moment his electricity sparked, a massive explosion would occur here. It was a remarkably coincidental timing. Thinking so, Lee Hyun-mook scanned his surroundings instantly with a sense that humans could never possess. He recognized that the fallen figures were in military uniforms and thus carried ignition tools, and that sparks could fly when the monster’s metal parts collided strongly.
“No, Yohan.”
As he spoke, the eerie shadow that had been spread beneath his feet was already engulfing the performance hall. The Level 8 monster, which had lunged with monstrous roars, suddenly sank into the floor. The dense poisonous fog flowed down into the pitch-black darkness that covered the floor and disappeared, leaving only the soldiers who had been there.
“This is how you do it.”
The floor of the performance hall, covered by Lee Hyun-mook’s shadow, was an unnatural darkness, as if artificially deleted by a program. It was an unreal phenomenon….