Chapter 51

Chapter 51
## Chapter 51: The Pierced Avenger

—

Practical drills can never truly replicate the chaos of a life-or-death struggle. Regardless of the intensity one pours into practice, certain plateaus remain unreachable within a controlled environment.

Growth earned through repetition has its merits, but there are specific evolutions that only the heat of real combat can forge. Our specialized training regimen had been underway for approximately six weeks.

“You’ve finally reached a point where you’re actually useful,” I remarked.

Han Sang-ah had officially made the cut. At her current proficiency, she wasn’t going to be a punching bag for every adversary she encountered.

“I… I don’t feel like I’ve gained an ounce of power,” Lee Se-eun grunted, her voice strained as she snapped her popped shoulder back into its socket with a sickening pop.

It made sense that she felt stagnant. She wasn’t the only one evolving during this month and a half—I hadn’t exactly been sitting on my hands while she toiled.

“Well, your talent for gauging others’ strength is still more polished than mine, even after all this,” I teased.

“Shut it! What’s that supposed to mean?”

Lee Se-eun snapped back instantly, snatching a wooden chopstick from her instant noodle cup and whipping it at me with lethal intent. I tilted my head just enough to let the projectile whistle past; it thudded deeply into a nearby wooden utility pole.

A direct hit would have landed me in a surgical ward. The sheer kinetic energy required to embed a blunt piece of wood into a pole like that was honestly impressive.

Still…

“Has my dear sister finally snapped? Launching lethal weapons at people now?”

“Oh, stop whining. It was a joke.”

After spending so much time in close quarters, Lee Se-eun’s idea of “playful banter” had escalated into various forms of attempted manslaughter. She might have viewed it as lighthearted, but for the person on the receiving end, it was impossible to ignore the danger. It was like being tackled by a grizzly bear that just wanted a friendly hug. I took one last look at the chopstick buried in the wood before turning my attention to Han Sang-ah.

“You haven’t hit the target yet. You’re aware of that, right?”

Her current margin of error in execution was hovering around 0.4. On her peak days, she could narrow it to 0.3, but since the objective I set was a precise 0.2, she still had a significant gap to close.

“I know,” she replied simply.

She had successfully identified her peak output and brought her physical mechanics under strict, conscious regulation.

“If I face someone at my own power level, I’m certain I won’t be defeated.”

I offered a brief correction. “It’s not just people at your level. Even if an opponent is twice as powerful as you, you have the tools to win.”

“That seems unlikely,” Han Sang-ah said, her voice laced with doubt.

But I wasn’t exaggerating. The path I was forcing her down was the same one I had carved for myself, and I had been forced to fight enemies vastly more powerful than me far too many times to count. The entire philosophy of this training was centered on overcoming superior force. She’d realize the truth of it once she actually stood across from a monster, so I didn’t push the point.

Han Sang-ah settled onto the ground, shutting her eyes to focus her energy on knitting together the bruises she’d sustained during our sparring.

“My shift,” I noted.

I checked the clock and moved to the communication station. The speaker emitted nothing but a wall of white noise—no signal, no voices. I scowled.

“Did I walk under a ladder or something? Why is it always my luck?”

Of course, the equipment would fail precisely when I was the one on duty. I leaned out the window and shouted to the others.

“The radio is dead! Looks like we’ve got a technical glitch that needs a field check!”

At the signal, Han Sang-ah’s eyes snapped open as she rose to her feet. Lee Se-eun tossed her empty soda can aside without a word. Duty was calling, whether we were ready or not. We piled into the parked military transport, with Han Sang-ah taking the driver’s seat.

Having experienced her “dynamic” driving style back on Gyodong Island, I tightened my seatbelt until it bit into my chest and offered a silent prayer that we’d actually reach Dover in one piece.

—

Inside the central hub of Dangun’s Heirs, Kim Ji-hyun stood with vacant, hollow eyes, watching a heavy punching bag drift back and forth.

“…”

It was futile. She had clawed her way back to a baseline of physical functionality, but despite the agonizing effort to rebuild the muscular strength that bastard had incinerated, she had hit a ceiling. She lashed out with a powerful kick, but the impact was pathetic—no better than a fit civilian.

“Dammit!”

The frustration boiled over. She began a desperate, frantic assault on the concrete wall with her bare knuckles. Under normal circumstances, her fists would have turned the stone to powder, but the wall remained unblemished.

The power she had spent a lifetime accumulating had vanished in a heartbeat. Her instincts told her the bitter truth: in this diminished state, she would never be anything more than a mediocre Hunter. The organization’s leader stopped by occasionally, offering hollow platitudes about how “mere effort” would be enough as long as she stayed loyal.

She couldn’t accept that. Effort wasn’t going to bridge this gap.

“How… how am I supposed to…”

The stress had eaten away at her sleep and appetite. The medics kept lecturing her that overtraining was destroying what was left of her body, but she couldn’t stop.

“Still punishing yourself?”

The question was punctuated by a loud, wet belch. Kim Ji-hyun turned to find Seo Gyon-u standing there, lazily scratching at the rolls of fat on his stomach.

“What do you want, Seo Gyon-u? Come to gloat?”

The doctor grinned, showing a row of teeth at her hostility. “What would I gain from mocking a fallen star? No, I’m here about… well, my private little side projects.”

“We all know you’re a creep. Get to the point.”

Dr. Seo Gyon-u, a high-ranking researcher for Dangun’s Heirs, was notorious for his questionable experiments. He operated under the leader’s protection, often pursuing “independent” goals that went beyond his official duties.

“I’ve been doing some fascinating work on biological remains from the Erosion Zone. Heh-heh.”

With a wet, nasal laugh, he produced a small glass cylinder. Inside were jagged fragments as dark as the abyss.

“What am I looking at?”

His eyes, nearly hidden behind folds of skin, locked onto Kim Ji-hyun with predatory intensity. “The solution to your problem, Kim Ji-hyun.”

“My problem? You know exactly what I want.”

Seo Gyon-u tapped the glass and patted his stomach with a satisfied air. “With that broken shell of a body, all the training in the world won’t get you your revenge on Yoo Chan-seok. Even someone like Seo Yeon-ju couldn’t take him down.”

“Keep Yeon-ju’s name out of your mouth. She did everything she could.”

Seo Gyon-u made a dismissive clicking sound with his tongue. “The trials are complete.”

He called them “clinical trials,” but everyone knew that meant human subjects had been sacrificed. He pulled up his phone and played three recordings: two were horrific failures, one was a success.

“Getting the chemistry right was a nightmare. Heh.”

In the videos, the black shards were pressed into human flesh, where they began to squirm like hungry insects. In the failures, thick black veins erupted across the subjects’ skin before their bodies hit a critical mass and detonated into a red mist.

Kim Ji-hyun recoiled in disgust, but Seo Gyon-u just scratched his head. “The cleanup was a disaster. Nobody wants that job.”

Ignoring his rambling, she focused on the success. In the final video, the black veins appeared but then settled, merging with the host.

“What’s the power increase?”

“Physical output surged by roughly 7.6 times. More importantly, the subject was a non-combatant with zero mana sensitivity. Now? They’ve developed a massive internal reservoir.”

Artificially induced mana? Kim Ji-hyun stared at the vial, her mind racing. “You’re saying we can just manufacture Hunters now?”

Seo Gyon-u snorted, wiping a smudge of mucus onto his lab coat. “To get these kinds of results, you need high-quality ‘raw materials.’ Base-level subjects don’t turn out this well.”

“It feels wrong… using parts of those monsters.”

“You ever hear about the synthetic protein made from waste?”

She glared at him, wondering why he was bringing up something so revolting.

“Japan pioneered it. Now, Korea mass-produces protein supplements for the entire region using the same process.”

She was familiar with the story. Food waste processed into dry powder and shipped off as humanitarian aid—essentially a way for the country to monetize its trash.

“The source material is irrelevant if the final product is superior, wouldn’t you agree?”

“…”

The logic was cold, but sound. He shook the vial, and the gems inside made a sharp, rhythmic clicking sound.

Could she ever reclaim her status—or exceed it—without this? The answer was no. Could she spend the rest of her life as a shadow, never settling the score with Yoo Chan-seok? That was a fate worse than death.

Her hand trembled as it moved toward the glass.

“Will it kill me?”

“You’ll survive. And you’ll be a god compared to what you are now.”

The black shards rattled against the glass. As if under a spell, she took the vial.

“I just… put them in?”

“Yes. I’ll monitor your vitals until the integration is complete.”

She uncapped the vial and shoved the shards into the skin of her forearm. They didn’t just sit there; they dug in like parasites seeking a host. Within seconds, her body began to thrash, her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she collapsed into a violent seizure.

Dr. Seo Gyon-u looked down at her, his face twisted into a mask of scientific glee.

—

Lee Se-eun and I were once again in awe of Han Sang-ah’s terrifyingly efficient driving. I’m sure the engine was enjoying the ride too; why else would it be screaming so loudly as we tore down the road, the exhaust pipe practically begging for a quick death? Meanwhile, Han Sang-ah sat like a stone idol, her expression as calm as a mountain lake despite the breakneck speed.

“Target in sight.”

Ahead of us, massive plumes of dark smoke were rising from Dover—it looked like the entire area was being razed by a firestorm.

“Even with a functioning government,” I muttered. The audacity to trash someone else’s territory so brazenly was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid.

“Look up there—!”

Suddenly, something tore through the thick smoke canopy. It was Kim Ji-hyun, but her body was now encrusted with black piercings that looked like jagged barnacles on a shipwreck.

—*I’ve found you. You’re finally here, Yoo Chan-seok. Today, you die.*

She was suspended in mid-air. With a sharp thrust of her arm, the black smoke hanging over Dover surged toward her, coalescing into a pair of massive, shadowy wings.

“You two deal with the collateral damage and containment,” I ordered.

The freak with the tattoos and piercings was back, and she’d brought an upgrade. She looked like she was ready to tear me apart regardless of the chaos she left behind.

“I’m jumping out!”

I threw myself from the moving transport. Kim Ji-hyun spotted me immediately. With a powerful beat of her wings, she dove, trailing a wake of soot as she slammed into the ground in front of me.

The smoke bloomed outward like ink in water, briefly obscuring her form. But through the haze, a pair of glowing crimson eyes locked onto mine.

“Back for seconds? I thought you’d have learned your lesson,” I said with a smirk.

“Every waking moment since then has been a living nightmare,” she hissed.

Heavy, metallic footsteps crunched through the debris as she stepped out of the fog. I let out a low whistle.

“Wow, you look terrible. Did you lose half your face in a bet?”

It wasn’t a joke. One side of her face was relatively normal, but the other was a nightmare of exposed bone and raw tissue, as if the skin had been surgically peeled away. Yet, floating above her head was a shimmering, pitch-black crown shaped like a laurel wreath.

She wasn’t even pretending to be human anymore. This was something entirely different.