Chapter 31 – Inspection Office (1)

The hand placed on Stein’s head emitted a faint light, and a groan flowed from Stein’s mouth.

But trusting the woman, he endured the pain to the end.

“It’s done. These mental ability users are stronger than before. It seems to be getting more difficult.”

When she lowered her hand, Stein opened his eyes. All his memories had returned.

“Did things proceed as you wanted?”

“Yes. Thank you. Thanks to you guiding the people well, it was handled properly.”

After Stein met Sun-woo’s group, he had guided Sun-woo’s party to the gathering area according to the telepathic ability user’s orders that had been transmitted into his head.

“But why did you tell me to inform them? Is it okay to be exposed?”

Stein still couldn’t understand the reason for the instruction to tell them their secrets.

“The disease has suddenly increased a lot lately. Thanks to that, we’ve had to send many more up to the surface.”

Having experienced it firsthand, Stein nodded at her words.

“But when we investigated, we found that someone was deliberately creating the disease. We couldn’t identify the exact opponent, but we concluded that it’s become difficult to handle everything internally anymore, so we need to create connection points with outsiders.”

‘Someone deliberately?’

Stein remembered the woman who had fallen into the water earlier.

“The prophet gave a prophecy that this group of outsiders would be the best, so we had you leak our story to them. Thanks to that, we seem to have caught a glimpse of the tail of those spreading the disease.”

While she was explaining, other scavengers were preparing to transport the corpses and rats.

The bodies had to be buried deep before they rotted, and the rats had to be used as food.

“By the way, how is she? Is she acceptable?”

At the woman’s words, Stein thought of the fire ability user who had traveled with him.

“She seems fine. She still can’t control her abilities, but her heart is very kind and she doesn’t seem to harbor any other intentions.”

“Well, the ability problem can be solved slowly. Then I’ll report it as is.”

When the conversation was somewhat finished, Stein frowned and stood up. Until now, he had rarely felt pain thanks to his strong body, but this time the shock to his mind was quite difficult.

“I’ll return to my group.”

“Then please take care of things until the next regular rotation.”

The woman and other scavengers said goodbye to the departing Stein, and Stein also bowed his head in response.

Now it was time for Stein to return to his original duties.

Most of the mutants in these sewers belonged to the Scavenger Union that ruled this entire underground.

The mutants and ability users in the sewers served as scouts and also filtered out people who came in from the outside.

Stein was also doing work to verify the character of the female ability user traveling with him and to select people to recruit from other civilians.

But lately, one more task had been added. The role of guiding outsiders who dealt with people infected with the disease.

After he left, the woman and other party members lifted the dead bodies and rats with telekinesis and entered the passage they had come from.

The maze-like tangled passages continued downward.

Blocked walls opened, and after crossing waterways and moving for quite a while, they were finally able to reach a huge plaza.

It was a massive plaza that couldn’t exist underground. It was a huge plaza with a wide area of several kilometers in all directions and a height of hundreds of meters.

The plaza was unexpectedly not dark. Countless stones emitting soft light were embedded in the plaza ceiling.

And there were numerous buildings in the plaza, and countless windows, doors, and stairs lined the walls of the plaza.

Among the buildings all made of stone, numerous people were moving about busily.

Here, mutants, superpower users, and ordinary people were passing by without any prejudice.

This was the underground city. Paradise of mutants and anti-Empire people. Deringuyu.

The scavenger party began walking into the city.

***

Korea was still not free from the aftermath of the gunfight.

Due to the gunfight and grenade explosions that occurred in the process of eradicating the drug organization(?), the Seoul area was under alert, and public sentiment was very bad even after several days had passed.

Since they had thought it was a country completely unrelated to terrorism until then, the shock seemed even greater.

In such an atmosphere, Sun-woo, who had returned to his private training ground, had no choice but to stand at the entrance of the training ground with a troubled expression.

The vacant lot that had only had no-entry signs until then was now completely surrounded by barbed wire and CCTV cameras were installed everywhere.

Of course, everything was installed after the gunfight, and it was installed because of the commotion Sun-woo had caused last time.

Sun-woo scratched his head. Anyway, since it had come to this, it was impossible to use it anymore.

Since things had turned out this way, he decided to visit the association first. He had arranged to meet Caroline yesterday during the mission.

“But I want to try using lightness skills once.”

Sun-woo opened his phone and checked his skill window.

<Spirits of the Earth. Grade 6> Level Up: 400p

<Illusion Arts. Grade 4> Level Up: 100p

<War Wheel Divine Demon Art. 3 Star> Level Up: 700p

<War Wheel Swordsmanship. 1 Star> Level Up: 200p

<Seven Star Steps. 1 Star> Level Up: 50p

Current points: 490 points

Sun-woo poured 200 points into Seven Star Steps and 200 points into War Wheel Swordsmanship. The general skill Seven Star Steps rose to 4 stars, but War Wheel Swordsmanship barely became 2 stars.

At the same time, he felt the sword techniques becoming more familiar, and his foot movements naturally began to follow the Seven Star Steps.

Seven Star Steps referred to seven stars. It was a footwork method and lightness skill that moved feet according to the position of the Big Dipper. Though it was a basic and ordinary movement technique, like how the Three Talents Swordsmanship he had before had changed, he couldn’t tell how it might change due to the War Wheel Divine Demon Art.

Sun-woo, who was moving his feet according to Seven Star Steps, began to get more and more excited as his energy circulated.

“Should I run home?”

He began running down the mountain while following the Seven Star Steps. His movement became faster and faster, and the sound of cutting through wind grew louder in his ears.

He arrived home in an instant, but Sun-woo’s excitement wouldn’t subside easily.

After changing into the uniform given by the association and leaving home, he was walking through an alley to catch a bus when he finally decided to run a bit more.

“Let’s just run for a few stops.”

He thought his excitement would subside if he ran a little.

But Sun-woo couldn’t stop running at the next stop or the one after that.

The footwork and internal energy interacted, continuously accelerating his movement.

The more Sun-woo became familiar with Seven Star Steps, the faster he became, and when he finally began to reach speeds at which humans couldn’t run, he started running in places other than roads to avoid people’s eyes.

He climbed onto nearby rooftops using city gas pipes and continued running toward the association building in Incheon, leaping between rooftops more than 10 meters apart.

Though he wasn’t photographed due to his extremely fast movement, his appearance jumping between buildings was witnessed by several people, creating another urban legend in Seoul.

Sun-woo ended up running all the way to Incheon. Though he had been running for almost over an hour, Sun-woo still didn’t feel tired. Instead, Seven Star Steps and War Wheel Divine Demon Art harmonized, feeling like martial arts of the same lineage.

The stable Seven Star Steps and the ultra-high-level mental cultivation method War Wheel Divine Demon Art had harmonized with each other.

Unfortunately, unlike swordsmanship, no new martial art was created, but running faster than when he came by car was quite satisfying.

Sun-woo brushed off the dust he had picked up while running and entered the <Clean Earth> building. This time he had the access card Caroline had given him, so he could enter directly.

Caroline was on the 19th floor, directly below the 20th floor where the branch manager was located.

The 19th floor had several offices, and among them, the office where Caroline was located had a nameplate reading <Strategic Support Office>. The nameplate gleamed brightly, as if it hadn’t been hung long ago.

From inside, English and Korean could be heard mixed with laughter.

When Sun-woo entered, he saw female office workers who appeared to be civilians and foreigners in suits talking with them.

The foreigners were men Sun-woo knew. Summoned with memory deletion abilities. Caroline’s subordinates.

When Sun-woo entered, the female office workers hurriedly sat down, and the summoned greeted Sun-woo familiarly.

Sun-woo also bowed silently to them, and they contacted Caroline’s personal office inside to let her know Sun-woo had arrived.

The personal office attached to the main office was the room Caroline used. There was a sofa in front, bookshelves on the walls, and a spacious desk by the window. It was like the office of an executive at a large company.

She was sitting at the desk, working hard on paperwork.

“Ah, she really is a director of a big company.”

Sun-woo chuckled quietly and sat on the sofa to wait for her work to finish, as Caroline asked him to wait a moment.

“Phew. Somehow there’s more paperwork than actual work. At this rate, I’m going to develop a belly.”

Caroline shook her head and stood up, personally made coffee and handed it to Sun-woo.

“But strangely, the coffee is delicious. It’s one of the pleasures of being in Korea.”

“Are you staying in Korea permanently?”

“The matter from that time is still ongoing. Plus, headquarters thought this was a good opportunity and issued orders to the Korean branch. Headquarters had wanted to monitor the inside of the Korean branch for a while, so they probably thought this was perfect timing.”

It seemed they would continue to see each other’s faces outside of missions.

“You came wanting to hear the story, right?”

Sun-woo nodded.

“Where should I start? First, I should reintroduce myself. I was Major Caroline von Spey of the Empire Ability Unit, 5th New Continent Occupation Force.”

She was indeed from the same world as Hayden.

Questions about how someone from another world came to be here, how she knew the spatial teleportation ability user, continued to arise in Sun-woo’s mind, but Sun-woo quietly waited for Caroline to continue.

“The Empire, which had conquered the entire Eurasian continent, wanted to conquer more land. So after sending numerous exploration ships, they learned of a new continent across the sea.”

Caroline sighed quietly. She seemed to feel bitter while reminiscing about the past.

“For decades, the Empire had been creating large fleets and continuously sending them to the New Continent to obtain it. But the fleets kept losing contact after reaching the New Continent, and four years ago it was my unit’s turn.”

Caroline’s unit, which arrived at the New Continent, was soon attacked by the New Continent’s monsters. Red eyes and murky-colored skin. They were all contaminated creatures.

“The New Continent was already contaminated entirely. The people who had departed for the New Continent earlier had all been killed by contaminated creatures or become new contaminated creatures.”

Caroline’s unit was also killed or contaminated by the contaminated creatures.

“But since the entire unit consisted of ability users, there were some summoned among us. Eventually, the summoned had to step forward. Though there was no difference in abilities, the difference between being contaminated or not was too great.”

The summoned fought hard, but the ship was already sunk by the contaminated sailors, and they were eventually pushed to a dead end by the contaminated creatures.

“Not only ordinary ability users but also summoned died, and the few remaining summoned eventually had to choose between death and escape. Fortunately, having learned about other dimensions through summoning, we were able to cross to this dimension with the help of spatial teleportation ability users.”

Since the Empire believed the unit had been annihilated, they couldn’t return to the Empire either.

As the story progressed, her expression gradually became more melancholic.

“But the spatial teleportation ability users who used power beyond their abilities to open dimensions couldn’t cross over. So we thought she had died. But to think she is still alive and hostile toward us…”

It seemed the spatial teleportation ability user they met before was probably a member of her unit.

Though he had heard the story, many questions still remained. But it seemed there was no more content he could hear from her.

***

Having finished their conversation, the two left the office. As they left the office, Caroline, who had recovered her mood, continued to entice Sun-woo to become a full member of the association, but Sun-woo kept asking her to wait a bit longer.

While walking down the corridor having such a conversation, the two stopped upon seeing a man coming from the opposite direction.

Caroline stopped because she knew the person, and Sun-woo stopped his movement to resist the aura emanating from the opponent.

He showed interest in Sun-woo’s appearance of not backing down, but after giving a small silent bow to Caroline, he walked past the two toward the back.

“Who was that?”

Caroline, unaware of the battle of auras between the two, looked puzzled at Sun-woo’s tense expression but soon shared what she knew.

“He’s an ability user from the Inspection Office. Some ability users with excellent skills and high levels are assigned by Summoners to combat teams and other organizations different from regular ones. They sometimes participate in large-scale operations, but what they do in normal times isn’t known.”

It seemed there were secrets even within the association.

Sun-woo glared at the retreating man. He felt like they would meet again soon.