Chapter 90 – Change (1)

Even Sun-woo found his own face suspicious, so Caroline being suspicious was natural. Moreover, even his physique changed and his height grew, so there was no reason not to be suspicious.

But Sun-woo’s characteristic atmosphere hadn’t disappeared, and since all sorts of things had happened since becoming a summoner, Caroline had no choice but to be uncertain.

Fortunately, her suspicion was cleared after checking Sun-woo’s phone. Because Sun-woo’s phone couldn’t be used by anyone but him.

After that, Sun-woo had to explain the last mission content to her for a long while, and after hearing all of Sun-woo’s words, Caroline poured out nagging at Sun-woo.

“How can you immediately swallow such a dangerous thing! You have to be careful and careful again!”

Sun-woo couldn’t rebel against Caroline’s nagging. Because everything she said was right point by point.

He tried blocking her words with the excuse that he wasn’t fully recovered, but his face that seemed to glow even in appearance made such excuses meaningless in one shot.

“Whew, now it’s finally less unfamiliar. I was so startled several times.”

Not answering the phone continuously and coming to the house to see his appearance completely changed, Caroline had emotionally burst.

After pouring everything out, she seemed to finally calm down.

“The method Sun-woo-ssi thought of itself wasn’t bad. If you keep being dragged around by the Summoners, who knows what will happen. Increasing strength first is the right answer.”

Once the excitement subsided, Caroline also agreed with Sun-woo’s thinking. But she glared at Sun-woo until the end.

“Even so, you could have spent points to make it portable then slowly looked into it. Unnecessarily dangerously eating it on the spot.”

Of course, Sun-woo ate it on the spot because points were precious, but knowing what would happen if he brought that up now, he had no choice but to keep his mouth shut.

“Anyway, everyone will be startled seeing Sun-woo-ssi’s face. Even if the Association or summoners understand the situation, how will people around react…”

At the talk of people around, Sun-woo made a faint smile. No family, one close friend, and the rest were people who only met face to face. Sun-woo had no choice but to feel his bleak interpersonal relationships once again.

“Well, should I say I had plastic surgery?”

“As if they’d believe that. Your height shot up considerably and even your physique changed.”

Caroline had an expression saying that made no sense, but for Sun-woo who only needed to make friend Min-seok understand, he wasn’t worried at all.

Rather, he was only worried about how to deal with Wang Mun-pung’s pestering when returning to the murim world.

“Sigh, then I’ll go back. I left work behind and rushed over, so I have to go back in.”

Apparently Caroline had left everything aside and rushed here out of worry for Sun-woo. Come to think of it, her face was soaked in fatigue with dark circles heavily cast.

The landmines those contaminated summoners left behind. Thanks to the brainwashed people, the Association was hit with another big blow.

Not only Korea, but thanks to strongly spreading intense hatred toward the Association in companies and government organizations in various countries, collisions with companies and governments occurred everywhere. Some countries even had no choice but to withdraw branches.

Fortunately, Korea discovered it early and could block it with few sacrifices, but they still hadn’t filtered out all the brainwashed people, so they couldn’t proceed with work as comfortably as before.

In the midst of that, since the new branch manager was a foreigner from headquarters, summoners didn’t listen well, so Caroline caught in the middle suffered tremendously.

“Will you be okay?”

“Then will you join the Association and help?”

He offered words of comfort to Caroline getting up with a tired face and was immediately counterattacked, but Sun-woo had no intention of granting just that.

The current relationship looked best. Whether it was just a passing remark, Caroline only greeted Sun-woo and returned to the company.

“Then, I should check it out?”

Sun-woo also went outside following Caroline.

Sun-woo half-ran to the warehouse being used as a training ground. His body was definitely different from before. To avoid people’s gazes, he didn’t use internal energy at all and didn’t run very fast, yet he could keep running to the training ground at the speed of a short-distance track athlete.

Without even breathing hard, Sun-woo who arrived at the warehouse in an instant stood in the center of the empty warehouse and took a deep breath.

It was the first time raising internal energy since his body changed. He had smashed the living room in a frantic state, so he couldn’t raise internal energy recklessly.

Sun-woo began releasing the blocked internal energy bit by bit.

Heavy energy starting from the dantian above the navel spread throughout Sun-woo’s entire body through blood vessels and nerves.

‘Damn, as expected it won’t be easy.’

The energy was like a runaway locomotive. Energy more than twice as powerful as before ran wildly through his body.

Fortunately, since his body changed from before, it ran smoothly, but if it were yesterday’s body, it wasn’t a level he could withstand.

Sun-woo barely moved the energy according to Wheel-Turning Divine Demonic Art’s flow, and at the same time, a voice he heard often was heard in his ears.

[Internal energy has explosively increased. Wheel-Turning Divine Demonic Art’s rank has risen.]

But Sun-woo had no capacity to pay attention to the voice. He had to concentrate all his nerves on controlling the energy running like an unruly colt.

The energy continued circulating inside his body following Wheel-Turning Divine Demonic Art’s flow.

As time gradually passed, Sun-woo who had been frowning while observing internally gradually changed to a more comfortable face.

A bridle was put on the wildly rampaging internal energy. The energy rapidly circulated his body according to Sun-woo’s instructions and Sun-woo’s mood was greatly elevated.

He took out a sword from his phone and began unfolding Wheel-Turning Sword Technique one by one. Though only internal energy became strong, all the parts that had felt frustrating until now seemed to be released.

The increasingly faster-moving sword began emitting red light as internal energy flowed in, and as time passed, the inside of the warehouse was filled with glowing red lines.

And once again a voice was heard.

[Wheel-Turning Sword Technique’s realm has risen. Please check the skill window.]

But Sun-woo who fell into a state of total absorption couldn’t hear at all.

In the past when Three Disaster Sword Technique grew into Wheel-Turning Sword Technique, he had fallen into total absorption, but this was a different situation from then.

For the first time, Sun-woo was swinging the sword not according to Wheel-Turning Sword Technique’s outer appearance, the form, but according to the meaning.

Sun-woo who learned the sword through skills could perfectly follow all martial arts and could modify and use them to fit situations.

With just that, he could sufficiently face martial artists of the same level and even completely overwhelm them using other skills… But with that, escaping the early stage of absolute level wasn’t easy. Though Sun-woo hadn’t noticed because there were many incidents until now, recently Sun-woo’s martial arts was stagnating compared to the absurd growth until now.

Thanks to the fights and training until now, internal energy strong enough to handle sufficiently advanced sword techniques, and lastly a body optimized for martial arts, Sun-woo finally came to understand proper <Wheel-Turning Sword Technique>.

Now Sun-woo could use not one skill but proper martial arts.

But there was something to resolve before that. Before the eyes of Sun-woo emerging from total absorption, the warehouse that was randomly cut and about to collapse was unfolding.

“Why is this place like this again!”

Sun-woo had merely swung the sword in place.

And his sword filled with internal energy shot out sword energy filled with red heat in all directions, and thanks to that, the warehouse walls were randomly cut and became one step away from collapsing.

Creak! Crash!

The warehouse couldn’t last long. Because even the pillars weren’t intact. Startled by sounds from the walls and roof, Sun-woo ran outside, and not long after, the warehouse collapsed with a loud sound.

“Good heavens, now I can’t even train freely?”

Though it was a prefabricated steel structure building so the cost and time to remake it seemed not to take long, even if remade, training here was unreasonable.

Until now it was a situation where complaints came in about noise, but having smashed the warehouse like this, the people around wouldn’t stay still.

Sun-woo first took out his phone and checked the skill window. Since he heard the sound that <Wheel-Turning Divine Demonic Art>’s rank went up, he had to check.

<Earth Spirit. Rank 7> Rank Up: 400p

<Illusion Technique. Rank 5> Rank Up: 200p

<Wheel-Turning Divine Demonic Art. 7 Stars> Rank Up: 1,000p

<Wheel-Turning Sword Technique. 6 Stars> Rank Up: 500p

<Seven Star Steps. 6 Stars> Rank Up: 400p

<Physical Enhancement. 3 Stars> Rank Up: 100p

<Water Magic. 3 Circles> Rank Up: 200p

<Fire Magic. 1 Circle> Rank Up: 200p

Wheel-Turning Divine Demonic Art changed from 5 Stars to 7 Stars and Wheel-Turning Sword Technique also rose to 6 Stars. Sun-woo made a puzzled expression that even sword technique went up. He had fallen into total absorption and hadn’t heard the voice saying sword technique went up.

Anyway, Sun-woo was satisfied to pull up the two martial arts that were hard to raise due to insufficient points all at once.

But more joyful than skills going up was that he finally properly realized what martial arts was.

Such cheerful feelings of Sun-woo soon sank to the bottom. Hearing siren sounds from afar, it seemed a report went in as expected.

Sun-woo looked at the warehouse building that became a trash heap and sighed while taking out his phone. It seemed Caroline’s help would be needed.

***

Several days later,

Dimension Beta.

The western frontier of the Empire. The western fortress Gibraltar.

The giant fortress that showed majesty until recently was now reduced to ruins and only spewing smoke here and there.

And human corpses and corpses of contaminated and transformed animals and monsters were abandoned everywhere.

In a trench on one side of the ruined fortress, one officer still clinging to life was giving a cough-mixed greeting toward a young officer who appeared before him.

“Still, there are people going around rescuing. Cough!”

He looked unable to live longer. The chest wrapped in bandages had blood spreading so the entire bandage looked red, and one leg seemed cut off and wasn’t visible.

“I’m in this shape so it’s hard to live, and are there by any chance other people who survived in this fortress besides me?”

On the fateful day when the sky turned red, the Empire military’s command system collapsed and animals and monsters in the forest transformed and rushed at humans.

The soldiers withstood despite paralyzed communications and sudden attacks by crazed animals, but couldn’t block the following change of comrades.

Contaminated soldiers began attacking their own comrades in turn, and units where mutual distrust began were shattered to pieces.

At least elite units with superpowers withstood contamination, but blocking the increasingly growing contaminated humans was too much even for them.

They gradually became isolated from each other and some had no choice but to escape the fortress.

The officer lying here was also one such isolated superpower user.

“Including you, sir, five people were alive.”

Empire military new officer. Lieutenant Hayden answered the dying officer’s question.

“Are the others okay?”

“There’s no danger to life.”

Though only two people could participate in combat, anyway four people seemed able to be taken to the underground city in Stuttgart.

“In the end, the contamination of the New Continent spread even here?”

As expected, elite unit officers seemed to know about the New Continent situation to some extent.

Hayden nodded at his words.

“In the end, it became this shape. It was an Empire already on the decline. I really didn’t expect it to fly away in one shot like this.”

Hayden quietly listened to the officer’s lament.

Rescuing this officer was too late because of rescuing others. As an apology, listening to his story wasn’t difficult.

“Still, it seems the higher-ups were preparing. Sending a rescue team too.”

Unfortunately, his prediction was wrong. The rescue team wasn’t sent by the Empire but sent by the resistance forces. The people who came here besides Hayden were only mutants and scavengers.

They were running around like this to rescue surviving superpower users.

“Cough, I’m holding up a busy person. I have many curiosities, but a human about to die doesn’t need to know. Any questions?”

“By any chance, do you know which way the people who escaped the fortress went?”

“Kek, still helping at the end. I know that. They went to the Baron territory in the north. The final goal is the capital, but before that they seem to be holding out at the Baron territory. I heard there’s a quite sturdy castle there.”

Fortunately, he could hear news from the last person. Hayden urgently asked toward the opponent whose voice was gradually becoming quieter.

“Then, is there a spatial ability user among those who left?”

“Ah, there was. A quite pretty sergeant. Thanks to her, they could escape. As for me, I fell in the lottery and remained here. Well, luck was bad, you could say…”

His words gradually became quieter and eventually his breathing stopped. Hayden raised his hand to close his eyes and snatched the dog tags on his neck and put them in his pocket.

“Finally found it.”

The eyes of Hayden turning his body and exiting the trench shone strongly. He finally barely found another spatial ability user.