FLIA 163

“Don’t destroy the buildings!”

The squad leader’s neck veins bulged as he kept shouting into the megaphone. It wasn’t that he was reluctant to destroy the buildings. Dozens of people were hiding in each one. That was the biggest problem with the Great Rift. Its progression was too rapid, leaving many unable to evacuate.

While Seo Yakrin’s net entangled and restricted the monsters’ movements, the Special Unit quickly broke open a nearby fire hydrant. Water gushed out, flooding the floor. Then, in an instant, it froze solid, pinning the monsters’ feet to the ground. It was Ju Hoyoung’s ability.

A sphere of poison gathered in Yoon Seungryong’s hand, then vanished the next moment. It reappeared inside the monster’s mouth. As the poison spread through its soft innards, not its outer skin, its head slowly began to discolor. The flailing insect’s legs kept stomping down, yet Lee Chanha’s defensive barrier held firm.

“Is that really mid-level…?”

A mid-level awakener from the special forces, pouring all his strength into fixing the harpoon gun, muttered in disbelief. While innate abilities grew stronger with use, mastering them required immense time and effort. It wasn’t for nothing that few surpassed their original rank.

But no matter how one looked at it, Taeyang Team’s power now seemed unmatched among mid-level awakeners. No, it even crossed his mind that they might have surpassed that level, perhaps approaching the strength of high-level awakeners. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how long they had rolled around in the Abyss.

Meanwhile, the monster Jeong Siyoung was facing was nearly dead. Her precognition was unmatched, laid bare every weakness of her opponent. Like an experienced butcher, every slash and thrust from Jeong Siyoung tore flesh and spilled blood, landing fatal blows. The monster let out a howl, attempting a final desperate struggle. But before it could even try, Jeong Siyoung, having read its move, severed its last limb. Simultaneously, a member of the Special Unit Unit shouted.

“Confirmed approach of at least 300 monsters from the north!”

“Multiple approaching from the northwest too!”

“The harpoon’s about to snap!”

Reports came in from all directions. This was another terrifying aspect of the Great Rift. The moment it opened, corrupted monsters swarmed in from every direction like insects drawn to a light. 

When they encountered fleeing citizens, catastrophic casualties ensued.

Just then, Jeong Siyoung sliced open the belly of a colossal monster, killing it. Dozens of people the monster had swallowed poured out in a heap. Severely corrupted and having lost their sanity, they didn’t realize they were being rescued and attacked the Special Unit members.

“Hold on! Just hold on a little longer! Subdue the corrupted, don’t kill them if possible!”

Desperate shouts rang out from all directions. Now they had to fight off the charging corrupted while securing the harpoon cannon. Subduing them without killing them was difficult. Injuries were mounting everywhere.

Yohan watched all this unfold from the highest vantage point. Sweat trickled down his face, dampening the palms holding his weapon.

He wanted to deploy the purification field immediately. But he endured, waiting. Because he was waiting for something. Yohan finally looked away from the battlefield where monsters and people were tangled in combat and looked beyond. It was the moment a distant wail reached Yohan’s ears.

Lightning flashed across the Han River.

With each strike, black lightning, which only served to darken the world, poured down like rain. Heaven’s punishment, falling from the sky to the earth, drove the monsters in this direction. That was why only Ju Hoyoung remained by Yohan’s side now. Lee Hyunmook was forcibly herding the monsters that had been slowly gathering. It was to minimize the damage that would occur due to the Great Rift.

After the Great Rift, all the bridges installed over the Han River had been severed except for one. Even in their frenzied state, the terrified monsters fled toward the sole remaining bridge. To escape the terrifying predator chasing them from behind, and lured by the Great Rift, thousands of monsters crossed the bridge. Normally, they would have advanced more slowly, harming people hiding in each building, but this time, they were fleeing from Lee Hyunmook, they didn’t even have that luxury.

“Ugh, ugh…”

Even though he’d heard beforehand how the operation would proceed, the face of one Special Unit member turned deathly pale as he sensed the approach of hundreds, thousands of monsters surging forward, shaking the ground. His heightened senses, granted by his scouting abilities, plunged him into terror more acutely than others.

Could this operation really succeed? Were the purifier’ abilities truly sufficient for such a reckless plan? There was no retreat now. If things went wrong, everyone here would be wiped out. Sweating profusely, the Special Unit members kept glancing nervously at Yang Yohan standing at the operation site.

Meanwhile, Jeong Siyoung, who had just slaughtered one monster, began damaging the wings of the others. Her intention was to prevent them from taking flight, even if the harpoons snapped.

-Ooooh! Ooooooh!

The monster, its wings torn in half as it tried to take flight, crashed back to the ground, howling in agony. It was a pig-headed monster. Its curled tail thrashed, its wings flapping like dense fur as it writhed. As it opened its mouth, its lower jaw gaped down. From within, hundreds of corrupted pigs crawled out this time. They were once raised on a livestock farm before being captured and eaten alive.

Just as chickens, cows, and swarms of insects poured out of the other monsters’ mouths, Jeong Siyoung, drenched in corrupted fluid, shouted.

“Everyone to the shields!”

The Special Unit members abandoned the fight and threw themselves into the nearest shields. Thanks to that perfectly timed order, every last member narrowly escaped. It was precisely because of such timely commands, reading the battlefield to minimize casualties, that the Special Unit members followed Jeong Siyoung so devoutly.

With all the members releasing their holds, the colossal monsters were soon freed. Four still crawled on the ground, but one stubbornly took flight once more. It soared up, reaching Yang Yohan’s eye level, who waited on the rooftop. Yohan was nervous but didn’t flinch, staring directly at the enormous head. It was a monster with a fly-like head.

-Purifier…

The monster called out to Yohan through a human mouth protruding like a long tube. Something repulsive rippled within its large, bulging insect eyes, opaque as lenses. The will of the Abyss, traces of the Flood. This murderous intent, this desire to somehow eliminate the predator that would one day starve it to death, resembled a survival instinct. At that moment, Jeong Siyoung shouted.

“Now!”

Finally, all the monsters driven by Lee Hyunmook had crossed the Han River. Ju Hoyoung’s buff took effect. The long-awaited light, condensed by Yohan, erupted. A brilliant halo rose behind his head, and a white radiance flowed from his eyes.

A fierce beam of light shot to the sky from the Eternal Stone at the tip of his spear. It then formed a gentle, rounded curve, enveloping the surroundings. A white, dazzling curtain of light unfolded, beginning to encircle the city. Dozens of drones, which had been continuously monitoring the battle, captured this astonishing spectacle without exception.

The fly monster, hit directly at point-blank range, began melting from the head down. It flailed frantically before plummeting downward, powerless. Yet, there was no sound from the impact. Its volume had already diminished to nothingness just before the fall. The last remaining head turned toward Lee Hyunmook.

Strangely, it seemed to be smiling…

‘Smiling? Smiling in this situation…?’

But that couldn’t be. Yohan dismissed it as a hallucination. Soon, the head too melted away.

The hundreds, thousands of monsters Lee Hyunmook had driven in also entered the purification field’s range. The crawling things regained their original forms. Like rain washing away filth, the lumpy, blotchy substances flowed off.

The filthy bodily fluids that had been covering Jeong Siyoung, re-corrupting her body, were no exception. They vanished without a trace, as if she’d taken a shower. The corruption spat out by the monsters, the buildings and streets that had been soiled, all sparkled.

“Hah…”

A soldier who had been staring at the purification field, murmured in awe. Until now, hunting monsters had been an arduous and grueling task, far beyond what 3D could fully describe. It was dangerous, and the greatest drawback was the constant fear that one day, they themselves might become severely corrupted, turning into something no different from the monsters. Though they had carried on with this work out of respect for their superiors, the doubt about how long this could continue was a shared feeling of skepticism among all the members.

The awakeners’ short, short lifespans. The ever-expanding rift eones. The dwindling population. The desperate certainty that one day, all life on this land, this very planet itself, would meet its end. The futility of it all, the feeling that everyone was just slowly, painfully dying. Yet the existence of the purifiers overturned this entire desperate situation…