“…Mr. Eun Seo-jin… is that correct?”
Her voice dropped by an octave. The gazes of the guards nearby all turned toward Song Ji-hu at once.
“Yes.”
Song Ji-hu calmly nodded. After hesitating for a moment, the employee picked up the internal phone.
“I will… check whether a visit is possible. Please let me confirm your identification.”
When Song Ji-hu presented his Hunter license, the employee checked his name and picked up the receiver as if surprised.
“Could you wait in the seating area?”
When the employee pointed to the lobby chairs with an awkward expression, Song Ji-hu nodded and moved over.
“…Please connect me to the doctor in charge of Isolation Room 13. A visit request has come in.”
A voice came through the employee’s receiver.
– Room… 13, correct?
“Yes.”
A short silence.
– …I will check. Please wait a moment.
Leaving behind the employee checking whether the visit was possible, Song Ji-hu leaned back in his chair and recalled the figure of one man who had shone most dazzlingly across his six lives.
Eun Seo-jin.
An unmatched genius. The finest swordsman in South Korea, who had awakened as an S-rank Hunter in his mid-twenties and earned the alias ‘Frost Swordmaster’ in only two years.
He had heard that the cold Eun Seo-jin released from the swords in both hands froze not only his enemies’ movements, but even their souls.
But because he was so blindingly brilliant, he was the first to be consumed by the abyss. He was stronger than anyone, but collapsed under mental contamination faster than anyone.
Just like that, the world was in the middle of forgetting yet another genius.
‘If….’
Song Ji-hu recalled the final, hellish battlefield of his sixth life. The Abyssal Monarch harvesting his comrades’ souls with overwhelming power.
‘If Eun Seo-jin had been with us on the battlefield.’
If the mad genius blacksmith Ryu Jin, who had appeared with burns covering his entire body, had been by his side in an intact state.
It was not only those two. The names of countless Hunters, not just from Korea but from all over the world, rose and sank repeatedly in his mind.
‘The ending would certainly have been different.’
They were not simple S-rank Hunters. They were the most important ‘variables’ for opposing the abyss and breaking this damned loop.
“Then it is not possible… Yes, yes… I will tell him the patient’s condition is unstable.”
When the rejection reached his ears, Song Ji-hu closed his eyes and activated [Residual Thought].
Fragments of emotion scattered throughout the hospital building surged in like waves.
Fear. Despair. Pain. Madness.
Amid the negative emotions covering the entire hospital, he felt a single energy that was particularly cold and sharp.
Song Ji-hu steadied his breathing and pushed [Thought Projection] to its utmost limit. Pain rushed in as if his soul were being torn apart, as though he were trying to surpass the limits of C-rank, but he clenched his teeth.
‘Basement 2… No, around Basement 3?’
Toward that place, particularly frigid amid countless fragments of emotion.
‘Reach him.’
A wave as thin as a thread stretched out from Song Ji-hu’s mind. It was not speech. It was not a sentence, either. It was only a projection of emotion.
Warmth.
Light.
Hope.
Trust.
Salvation.
The most primitive and pure Morse code of emotion, capable of melting a frozen soul.
***
Basement 3, the deepest part of it, Isolation Room 13.
Inside a room triple-sealed with reinforced glass and magic circles. It was closer to a grave than a hospital room or an isolation room.
There was no bed, no window, no furniture of any kind. Only white walls and floor, and one man sitting on his knees in the center.
Eun Seo-jin.
The present state of the man who had once been brilliant was wretched. His silver hair, close to white, hung limply and covered his face, and even his straitjacket could not hide how gaunt his body had become.
Around him, thin ice crystals were constantly forming and vanishing.
Uncontrolled cold, and physical mutation from mental contamination that had already encroached nearly to his eyes. They were proof that the power of an S-rank Hunter had reached the brink of going berserk.
But what was most terrible was his eyelids, which had not opened even once in three years, yet moved constantly.
He was not here right now.
***
A courtroom made of ice.
The endless nightmare created by Eun Seo-jin’s trauma.
BANG-!
“Defendant Eun Seo-jin. You betrayed your comrades and endangered the lives of your party members. Do you have any defense regarding this?”
At the highest judge’s bench. The body was a black shadow, but the face was that of Eun Seo-jin’s master, Baek Mu-jin.
“…No.”
Bound to the defendant’s seat by chains of ice, Eun Seo-jin weakly shook his head. Even his voice would not come out properly. Only his mouth barely moved.
“Liar!”
On the opposite side, five shadows stood. They were all Eun Seo-jin’s former party members. No, dolls wearing their appearances.
“You abandoned us!”
“…No! I… I wasn’t trying to….”
The moment Eun Seo-jin opened his mouth, trying to make some kind of protest.
“We died because of your mental contamination!”
“Traitor! Traitor!”
“It’s all your fault! If it weren’t for you, we’d still be alive!”
“You murderer!”
Eun Seo-jin’s lips trembled faintly. But his voice still did not come out. Here, deprived even of the right to defend himself, he was a sinner who could only wait for the endless guilty verdicts.
BANG!
“Guilty. Eun Seo-jin, you are guilty!”
The judge’s gavel struck down. Then the courtroom collapsed. The walls fell, the ceiling dropped, and everything was covered in ice.
Then, exhausted in both body and mind, an endless battle began. And began again.
The same courtroom. The same trial. The same guilty verdict.
Three years.
1,095 days.
26,280 hours.
An endlessly repeating hell.
Eun Seo-jin had now given up even resisting. He did not protest, did not cry, did not rage.
‘This… is right. Because I put my comrades in danger.’
Like a frozen doll, he merely accepted the guilty verdict that repeated endlessly like a refrain.
“I… I….”
The final verdict. This time, it was truly the end. Eun Seo-jin’s entire mind collapsed completely.
Just before the judge’s gavel rose and the Abyssal Monarch harvested his soul.
BANG-!
“Warmth…?”
Literally at the threshold of death, something warm seeped into Eun Seo-jin’s chest.
A warmth that could not be explained in words, the first warmth he had felt in years.
“Ah… aah…!”
A groan mixed with that warmth burst from Eun Seo-jin’s mouth.
“What… is this?!”
The courtroom shook. The shadow at the judge’s bench distorted, and the jurors collapsed while screaming.
Eun Seo-jin’s eyes snapped open.
***
Isolation Room 13.
“U… ugh…!”
Eun Seo-jin’s body convulsed. His closed eyelids trembled, then slowly opened.
A pure white ceiling. A cold and sterile isolation room. But that warmth still remained in his chest.
‘Who… are you…?’
Everything inside the isolation room froze in an instant. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, the surveillance cameras, the magic circles, everything was covered in thick ice.
Someone was calling him.
GRRRRRR-!
In that instant, uncontrolled cold exploded from Eun Seo-jin’s body.
“Graaaaaaaaaagh-!”
The uncontrollable cold began expanding its territory more and more.
“Warning! Isolation Room 13 is going berserk!”
“Vitals changing rapidly! Cold output has exceeded the threshold!”
“He is on the verge of rampage! Mental collapse confirmed!”
“Prepare the Calamity designation protocol! Emergency report to the Association!”
“If an S-rank goes berserk in the middle of the metropolitan area… this place will become the second Guangzhou!”
The control room turned into utter chaos in an instant. The monitor screens went dead one by one, and the alarm blared as if tearing through their ears.
“Sedatives! Inject sedatives!”
“They are not working!”
“The entire patient room is frozen!”
Ice spread even into the corridor. Climbing the walls, climbing the ceiling, cold and sharp ice thorns stretched out in every direction.
“Dispatch the suppression team! Right now!”
“Activate the security protocol! Evacuate the patients!”
“Evacuate! Everyone evacuate!”
Medical staff and guards screamed as they ran for the stairs. The entirety of Basement 3 turned into an ice cave in an instant.
And at the center of it.
Eun Seo-jin knelt, clutching his chest with both hands.
The first interference from the outside he had felt since imprisoning himself, and the warmth contained in that one thread. It was a single ray of hope that might be salvation at the end of pain.
***
First-floor lobby.
A thin stream of blood trickled from between his tightly clenched lips. But the corner of his mouth was raised faintly.
‘…It reached him.’
At that very moment.
RUMBLE-!
The entire building shook.
WEEEEEE-!
The siren began ringing through the building like mad, and ice crystals burst up from the floor.
“Kyaaaaah!”
“Run!”
The entire building fell into panic. People screamed and ran toward the exits.
As everyone panicked and rushed toward the entrance, Song Ji-hu did not move. Wiping the blood running down from his lips with the back of his hand, he walked toward the stairs leading underground.
“Sir! It is dangerous! You need to evacuate…!”
Ignoring the employee’s shout, Song Ji-hu began descending against the flow of the stairs. Basement 2, Basement 3. The lower he went, the more sharply the temperature dropped.
Basement 3. Even the security devices were frozen solid, crumbling with a CRACKLE from nothing more than a little force.
On Basement 3, the walls, the floor, the ceiling, everything was covered in blue ice.
[Target Detected]
[Mental Contamination Level: 98% (Late Stage)]
[Mental Dive Danger: S]
The compass kept spitting out information, warning him in red light that it was dangerous.
But Song Ji-hu laboriously advanced down the corridor one step at a time.
At the end of the corridor was Isolation Room 13, its door half open. Through that crack, flesh-biting cold was constantly leaking out.
Song Ji-hu flung the door open without hesitation.
WHOOOSH-!
A fierce blast of cold surged in like a storm. Song Ji-hu’s hair, his clothes, everything was covered in frost in the blink of an eye.
Song Ji-hu did not stop and approached Eun Seo-jin one step at a time.
Eun Seo-jin, who was sitting on his knees, slowly raised his head.
Silver hair. A bloodless face. Eyes that looked empty, yet still held a faint light within them.
Their gazes met.
At that moment, Eun Seo-jin’s lips trembled.
“…Was it… you?”
Eun Seo-jin’s voice, squeezed out after he worked his mouth for a long while, was badly cracked.
Song Ji-hu slowly approached him. Ice thorns aimed at him from all directions, but he paid them no mind.
Then, when he knelt before Eun Seo-jin, the two of them were at the same eye level.
Song Ji-hu’s ash-gray eyes looked straight into Eun Seo-jin’s empty ones.
‘He’s right before the end… The timing was good.’
Then Song Ji-hu opened his mouth.
“I intend to drive that bastard out of your mind.”
A short silence.
“Will you consent?”
Eun Seo-jin’s eyes shook. A complex mix of emotions: hope and fear, trust and doubt. Instinctively, he knew. If things continued like this, it would not be long before he disappeared.
And he knew that the man before his eyes might be his final hope.
And Eun Seo-jin….
‘I want to live.’
When Eun Seo-jin nodded ever so slightly, the corner of Song Ji-hu’s mouth rose coldly.
“Good.”
With the compass in one hand, he reached his other hand toward Eun Seo-jin’s shoulder.
At that very moment.
WHOOOM-!
A defense mechanism exploded from Eun Seo-jin’s body.
The entire isolation room turned into a colossal lump of ice in an instant. Song Ji-hu, Eun Seo-jin, everything was trapped inside the ice.
But Song Ji-hu’s hand had already touched Eun Seo-jin’s shoulder.
VMMMMMM-!
The compass vibrated violently.
“Entering.”
The world flipped upside down.
Inside the ice, their consciousnesses connected.
And Song Ji-hu smiled faintly within the ice.