FLIA 149

The helicopter soon arrived at Yeouido. It scanned the roof of the broadcasting station and stopped in the air a few meters away. Lee Hyunmook signaled with his eyes.

–Let’s get down, Yohan-ah.

So it didn’t land because it was dangerous. In times like this when even bullets had to be saved, a helicopter was a precious resource. Yohan took off his headset and stood up, and Lee Hyunmook reached out his arm without hesitation. He pulled his lover tightly into his arms and then jumped out of the helicopter. After a short fall, Lee Hyunmook landed on the roof with a heavy noise. Yohan felt almost no shock at all, though he didn’t know how.

“I can get down alone….”

When Yohan spoke awkwardly, Lee Hyunmook gently set down the lover he had been holding as if he was handling a precious jewel and spoke.

“For now, you are nominally lower rank.”

“Ah, right. That’s true.”

Yohan accepted, nodded, and then followed behind him closely. Until Lee Hyunmook forced open the locked roof door and went inside, the helicopter circled in the air. Only after they went inside did the helicopter sound grow distant. Yohan was worried, so he asked.

“Do you think there are many people trapped here?”

“I will check.”

Lee Hyunmook spread out his electric field widely, the same as when he searched for Seo Yakrin in the Reed Sea. A subtle tingling sensation like static brushed across his body. Soon after, Lee Hyunmook nodded.

“There are some people who failed to escape, so let’s resolve that side first.”

“Yes!”

Yohan answered briskly and stepped in, but then he stopped moving. Only after the light streaming through the roof door faded did he realize the inside of the broadcasting station was completely dark. He instinctively tried to use his power as light but stopped. He couldn’t do it and walk around since he was pretending not to be a purifier. The stairwell below the emergency exit was very dark and peculiarly eerie.

“It seems the power is all cut off….”

He couldn’t know whether someone had cut it on purpose or whether it was because of the monsters. Yohan swallowed dryly and turned on the lamp attached to his uniform. With a light source, it was much better, but the surroundings were still dark. Since he was a high-level awakener, there was no problem identifying the area. The problem was different.

Ironically, Yohan had no immunity to such darkness. Even when he went around the Abyss, whenever it got even a little dark, he always used his power. In short, because he was a purifier, he hadn’t often encountered dark spaces.

In the completely dark broadcasting station, the vibration of a phone someone had dropped sometimes sounded from somewhere. In addition to that, there were various noises, and Yohan felt an unpleasant sensation and hunched his body.

“There are parasitic corrupted nearby. I think they are easily more than ten….”

Yohan, whose nerves as a purifier were instinctively on edge, looked around. Lee Hyunmook looked back at his young lover who was nervous and spoke.

“Since Yakrin is at the Rift Management Bureau, I brought you, but maybe it would have been better to send you with her….”

“No! I’m not scared at all…?”

But his denial was hollow, because in the next moment he screamed. A human hung from the ceiling. No, to be exact, a human-shaped figure hung upside down from the ceiling, swaying both arms. When they looked up, it sagged and dragged down to the floor. Its bony fingers groped the ground.

Yohan only then realized that he had thought he had built resistance to monsters in the Abyss, but in truth he had almost no resistance to human-shaped monsters.

Come to think of it, the ones Yohan always feared the most were Ju Hoyoung and Lee Hyunmook when their corruption was severe.

The removal of the corrupted that hung like a ghost on the ceiling was easy. Lee Hyunmook only thrust with his spear that sparked, and it screamed and crashed to the floor. Lee Hyunmook stomped it with his foot and shoved it into a room nearby and locked it inside.

“Will you be okay?”

“Of course…!”

Yohan opened his already damp eyes wide. But whenever corrupted suddenly jumped out in shapes fit only for horror films, he shut his mouth tight and jumped silently. He tried his best to endure so as not to disturb the work, and Lee Hyunmook turned with a smile.

“Come.”

He spread his arms. Yohan hesitated and then quickly climbed into Lee Hyunmook’s embrace. When the strong arms wrapped around his shoulders and waist, he felt he could finally live. Lee Hyunmook bent down to Yohan and spoke in a deliberately eerie tone.

“The scariest being here is me, Yohan-ah.”

“No way….”

Yohan immediatly denied and hug him closer to his body. Suddenly, he remembered the time in the Abyss when madman Lee Hyunmook had made him bleat like a sheep. Now it seemed he really could make a trembling sheep sound, a very real baa.

As they neutralized the corrupted, they found civilians who had been hiding in various places. The civilians who had been shivering cheered the moment they saw Lee Hyunmook. The two of them thus found all the civilians and sent them up to the roof. After confirming that the helicopter carried them away, they went down again. Since there were no civilians left to rescue, Yohan could finally scatter a few grains of light.

Just when it seemed they would finally go to hunt monsters, Lee Hyunmook suddenly went around flinging open door after door and looking inside, and then he plundered bread from a desk drawer in an office. Before Yohan could stop him, he tore the bag. Yohan stared wide-eyed at the sudden theft, but Lee Hyunmook pulled out a wad of bills from his chest, set it where the bread had been, and spoke gently.

“I heard your stomach growling earlier, so for now fill up with this, and when we finish here let’s have a good dinner.”

It was the first time he ate bread stolen from someone else. Yohan hesitated, he was about to protest but stopped, because he felt troubled thinking maybe Lee Hyunmook’s sense of morality had grown faint from staying in the Abyss too long. And since he had already ripped the bread open, Yohan hesitated further and then accepted it.

“Yes, thank you…. But next time it really is fine not to do this!”

Ashamed that his stomach had betrayed him, Yohan answered in a small voice, and he split the bread in half and handed it to Lee Hyunmook. Still pricked by conscience, he also left a note of apology for eating bread without permission. After roughly filling their hunger, the two moved again. Yohan felt the presence of corrupted people crawling nearby and murmured.

“It’s strange. Why are those corrupted gathered only here?”

The parasitic corrupted that first appeared during the ceremony sometimes showed up near rift zones. Even so, for so many to gather only inside this broadcasting station, even if it was near a rift zone, was strange.

“Well, I also wonder that….”

Lee Hyunmook muttered in a cold tone, and he finally stopped in front of a certain door. Yohan, who had been astonished at the labyrinthine structure of the broadcasting station, grew tense. The sign above the door read [Music Icon Concert Hall]. Lee Hyunmook used his electric field to probe inside in advance and relayed the situation.

“There is one rank 8, and besides that four small ones. Since it can be dangerous, wait outside the door first.”

Yohan, tense for the first time in a while, nodded. Soon Lee Hyunmook opened the door. A cloud of smoke immediately poured out from inside. Feeling the toxicity of the smoke, Lee Hyunmook flinched and immediately turned back, but Yohan quickly shouted.

“I’m fine!”

As soon as the smoke touched him, light surrounded Yohan’s body. Even Yoon Seungryong’s dreadful acid had done nothing to him, so this poison couldn’t possibly harm a high-level purifier like Yohan. Nevertheless, Lee Hyunmook was very displeased. He realized this toxic smoke wasn’t simply a monster’s ability but an artificial phenomenon.

Lee Hyunmook slowly advanced into the concert hall studio. The studio, once home to a popular music program, had long been unused and was desolate. On the stage, a monster gave off a shrill metallic scrape. Lee Hyunmook looked at the monster’s body covered with steel frames and all kinds of metal fragments.

The source of the toxic smoke was right there. Several metal gas canisters were fixed to the monster’s body. The floor was so choked with smoke it was almost invisible, and dark shapes lay on the ground.

“Shall I purify them first?”

As Yohan asked nervously, the monster that had been crouching on stage twitched and got up to its feet when it saw Lee Hyunmook.

In this situation, Lee Hyunmook couldn’t use his power. If his electricity sparked, there would be a massive explosion here. It was an uncanny coincidence. Thinking that, Lee Hyunmook swept the area instantly with senses no human could possess. He recognized that the figures wore soldiers’ uniforms and carried ignition tools, and that when the monster’s metal struck hard sparks could fly.

“No, Yohan-ah.”

The moment he said so, the sinister shadow already spread under his feet and blanketed the concert hall. The rank 8 monster, which had charged with a roar, suddenly sank into the floor. The dense poisonous fog slid away under the abyssal darkness and vanished, leaving only the soldiers untouched.

“This is how it can be done.”

Only the floor beneath Lee Hyunmook’s shadow was swallowed in darkness, like it had been cut out by a program. The sight didn’t seem real.