“……Huh. How did you get that?”
Lee Juwon’s jaw dropped at the unbelievable sight. Ignoring Juwon’s stunned gaze, Yihyun started walking.
The moment the door opened, he was hit by damp air, a nose-stinging stench, and the musty smell of mold.
“Ugh, urgh……!”
Suppressing a gag, Yihyun hurriedly raised a hand over his mask and covered his nose and mouth. Baek Yihyun’s body reacted sensitively to even the slightest irritation.
“Hyung…… are you all right?”
Startled by Yihyun’s unfamiliar reaction, Juwon repeatedly glanced at his face.
“I’m fine. Keep going.”
At Yihyun’s icy response, Juwon’s broad shoulders drooped as he took the lead.
As they ventured deeper down the dim corridor, the doors of sealed cells made from the same special alloy as the entrance began to emerge on either side.
It was unnaturally quiet in every direction, with only the lights hanging precariously from the corridor ceiling flickering with an unpleasant buzz.
Only Yihyun and Juwon’s footsteps added a heavy noise to the empty corridor.
The underground chill brushed against their skin with an eerie coldness.
“What the hell did these crazy bastards do down here?”
At Juwon’s teeth-gritted words, Yihyun followed his gaze. The scene beyond the bars was nothing short of grotesque.
In one room, a man stared blankly into space with unfocused eyes, endlessly laughing as though he had lost his mind. “Hehe, hehehe…….” In another, a woman drooled as she stared vacantly at the floor. Their human dignity had long since been stripped away, leaving them barely breathing as nothing more than test subjects.
Taking in the horrifying scene, Yihyun couldn’t move for a long while. His gaze remained fixed beyond the bars, and he even forgot to breathe.
No words came out.
The back of his throat burned hot. An emotion he couldn’t swallow down lingered on the tip of his tongue.
Forcing that emotion down into the deepest part of himself, Yihyun took a long breath.
He tried to start walking again, only to stop almost immediately. He simply couldn’t tear his eyes away from the people who had been so brutally destroyed.
“Hyung… we have to go.”
Even at Juwon’s urging, Yihyun only took a slow step after engraving the sight of them into his memory. But the footsteps echoing through the dark corridor had become much heavier than before.
At the end of the corridor was the isolation zone in the deepest part of the detention wing.
An isolation cell sealed behind thick alloy.
A surveillance camera in front of it rotated with its red eye gleaming.
“Juwon.”
Before Yihyun could even finish speaking, Juwon wrapped both hands in mana.
Creeeak―.
The heavy iron door opened, and the corridor light spilled through into the room beyond.
Inside the solitary cell was a boy.
An A-Rank hacker Esper known as ‘Ghost.’
Between his wildly disheveled locks of hair, his bloodless, emaciated face gave him a sharp appearance.
Ghost sat bound in the center of the isolation cell, his eyes closed and his body completely motionless.
“……This bastard isn’t dead, is he?”
Juwon’s voice dropped as he approached. The boy’s skeletal arms were covered in needle marks.
“What the hell… They did this to a minor…?”
“Juwon, untie him first.”
The instant Yihyun gave the short command, Juwon grabbed the ability-control restraints fastened around Ghost’s wrists and ankles.
Crack, crunch—!
With the brute strength of an S-Rank Esper combined with his metal-control ability, the thick ability-control restraints that had suppressed Ghost’s mana for three years crumpled like paper and snapped apart.
Yihyun grabbed Ghost’s wrist and began guiding him. The moment he pushed guiding energy into him, it was like pouring water into a bottomless pit.
‘……He’s on the verge of overload.’
Yihyun frowned and increased the guiding waves.
“Urgh, ughhh……!”
Ghost’s emaciated body arched like a bow and began trembling violently. His dried-out, shriveled mana cells devoured the guiding energy and started rampaging wildly.
Not long afterward, the boy’s closed eyes opened.
Ghost’s unfocused, wavering gaze slowly settled on Baek Yihyun.
“What the hell…. Why is this hallucination so high-quality?”
Frowning, Ghost looked Yihyun up and down as though trying to distinguish reality from hallucination.
“How’d they even figure out my type?”
His cracked voice echoed through the dark underground prison.
“I’ll get you out of here. So help me.”
“Who the hell are you to tell me to help you?!”
“You said you wanted to go to DUST, didn’t you? Help me and I’ll send you there.”
“How am I supposed to trust you? Even if you’re not a hallucination, this could be something the Ability Bureau cooked up to trick me.”
A vein bulged on Yihyun’s forehead at his surly response.
“You sure as hell had no problem gobbling up my guiding, so why are you suspicious now? You want to fuck over the Ability Bureau too, don’t you? Then cooperate without making a fuss.”
“No.”
Ghost refused flatly without a moment’s hesitation.
“Yeah? Then keep living here.”
Yihyun released the wrist he had been holding without the slightest reluctance and stood up.
“I came all this way to rescue you because I needed a useful hacker, and all you do is doubt me. Well, I understand. I can just find another way without you.”
The moment Yihyun turned to leave, Ghost urgently grabbed his wrist.
Ghost’s gaze shifted toward the open isolation-cell door.
He had to choose whether to remain here until his mind was destroyed or follow people he couldn’t trust outside.
“You’re prickly. I like your personality too. Fine. Whether I trust you can come later. For now, let’s make a deal.”
Ghost’s eyes curved as he let out a light laugh.
Then his gaze abruptly changed, and Ghost tightened his grip on Yihyun’s wrist.
At that moment, he began pulling the guiding energy in reverse.
A huge chunk of guiding energy was sucked out from deep inside Yihyun’s body in an instant, and his vision immediately went black.
Ghost’s pupils contracted unnaturally.
Blue streams of digital data code swept across his eyes like a storm.
[Unique Ability: ‘Code Eye’ activated.]
[Unique Ability: ‘Digital Ghost’ activated.]
“…They sure implanted a lot of weird shit in my body.”
The moment Ghost muttered those words, his body convulsed violently.
His brain had initiated a reboot.
Veins bulged frighteningly around Ghost’s temples. The brainwashing and unidentified drug compounds implanted by the Ability Bureau researchers began to be forcibly expelled under the pressure of his mana waves.
Ghost suddenly vomited dark red blood onto the floor.
Yihyun also lost his balance and staggered from having his guiding energy forcibly stolen.
“What…… what the fuck did you do, you bastard!”
Lee Juwon caught Yihyun as he collapsed toward the floor and roared like a beast.
“I erased and reset all the brainwashing and drug codes they planted in my head.”
Ghost coughed up another mouthful of blood, casually wiped the blood from around his lips, and answered as though it were nothing.
“That’s not what I’m fucking asking about, you son of a bitch! You wanna die?! Hyung! Hyung, are you all right?”
Yihyun tried to answer Juwon’s frantic question, but when no voice came out, he grabbed his own throat. The metallic taste of blood spread through his mouth.
“You said you needed my help, didn’t you? How am I supposed to help you with a brainwashed body addicted to drugs?”
“You fucking bastard, seriously……!”
Booooom―!
Behind Juwon, razor-sharp swords erupted into existence and surged toward the back of Ghost’s neck. The instant an S-Rank Esper unleashed genuine killing intent, the air inside the underground prison froze.
Just as it seemed the swords would sever Ghost’s neck at any moment—
“……Juwon. Stop.”
At Yihyun’s faint voice, the swords halted just below Ghost’s neck.
Juwon ground his teeth and withdrew them, though sparks still seemed to blaze in his eyes.
Held in Juwon’s arms, Yihyun frowned and slowly closed and opened his eyes.
His vision wouldn’t return properly.
Only after blinking a couple more times did his eyes finally manage to focus. This was the price of pushing his body far too hard today.
Yihyun barely managed to get himself upright and glared at Ghost.
“You. Come here.”
“Hm? Why?”
Ghost approached and leaned his face closer.
Smack!
Yihyun slapped his palm hard against Ghost’s forehead. Then he pulled a Mana Supplement from his inventory and drank it. Only then did his dulled senses gradually begin to return.
“Ow! Why’d you hit me?!”
“Who told you to take my guiding energy like that?”
“I’m only normal while I’m rebooting. If I don’t do it, I’ll end up like those people outside.”
Yihyun could only shut his mouth at Ghost’s words.
The horrific sight he had seen earlier came back to him.
“Hey, can you do that reset thing to other people too?”
“No. It only works on me.”
“…That’s a shame.”
If that ability worked on others, they might have been able to save the people outside too.
Yihyun couldn’t help feeling disappointed.
“……Ah, fuck. I finally feel alive again.”
Ghost cracked his neck from side to side and glared into empty space.
“First, I’ll shut down all the CCTV cameras in this building and permanently erase the data. There won’t be any records of you coming in or leaving.”
The instant Ghost finished speaking, the red lights on the surveillance cameras blinking at the end of the corridor all went dark at once.
Watching it happen, Yihyun couldn’t help but be impressed.