"Sir, we're going to conduct an inspection."
A checkpoint request tinged with that distinct Busan lilt.
"Hm, hm...."
He prided himself on speaking standard Korean flawlessly thanks to near-obsessive practice, but the accent was another matter.
"Wh-why are there so many inspections? If you stop folks at every alley, how are people supposed to get anywhere?"
With that, Park Gwangrim handed over his ID.
"There was a terror warning. And a protest...."
"Terror?"
"Yes, terror. That weirdo cultist called Kim Sinhwa is stirring everything up. Here you go."
The person checking the ID wasn’t police.
Reinforced suit from Yeonam Industries with bulked shoulders, elbows, and waist, and a drug-injection socket mounted at the nape.
A combat civil servant from the Foreigners Administration.
"Busan’s population has already hit fifteen million. All sorts of things come in by boat, so if we don’t do at least this much, we can’t keep it under control. Control. Strange things keep slipping in and then we get earthquakes."
Park Gwangrim felt a flicker of irritation at the nuance baked into that. "All sorts of things"? Are earthquakes the foreigners’ fault now?
"Off you go."
The combat official all but tossed his ID back and hurried him along, and Park Gwangrim, half-shoved, crossed beyond the inspection line.
"Son of—"
A word starting with a double s stuck in his throat. I flew here, damn it. Let it go. Let it go.
A bit farther on, he grumbled while checking the map on his phone.
"They said Songjeong—should’ve ridden one more stop and gotten off."
Kim Sinhwa casually called it Songjeong, but Park Gwangrim’s destination was Gijang County.
You could see the sea here too, but this spot was about seven kilometers east of the Haeundae tourists picture when they hear "Busan."
"In this heat, and the place is packed...."
Police everywhere.
Combat civil servants from the Foreigners Administration stood out even without uniforms.
"Explain yourselves!"
"Explain it!"
Noise rolled in from a distance.
"A protest? I really do get to see everything."
For a moment he watched the demonstrators with the look of someone taking in a curious sight.
Protests—unthinkable in Paju.
If people gather and make a ruckus to vent a particular emotion—in Paju, that can trigger anomalies.
Something you can only do in cities far from the Great Defensive Wall... Sejong is nice, but maybe Busan really is the place to settle after retirement?
Entertaining a vague envy toward Busanites, he soon shook his head.
"Back to work. Work."
After a cautious look around, he took a pendulum from his coat.
Like a snake lifting its head, the pendulum began to slide into motion.
‘I’ve got the direction... why that way of all ways?’
Despite the heavy atmosphere, people thronged every street.
A snarl of cramped back alleys.
Cluttered signs jammed on every building.
"In this sprawling Busan you want me to find a goblin, not even a human...?"
Sighing, he blended into the crowd and slipped into the backstreets of Busan.
The Busan Special Autonomous Government announced the city had passed fifteen million people, but the actual number of humans—no, humanoid intelligences—living in Busan likely exceeded twenty million.
Busan, by all accounts the largest city in the Republic of Korea, was heaving.
"Explain yourselves!"
"Explain it!"
Protesters occupying the boulevard shouted toward a colossal building directly ahead.
This too was one of the ripples caused by an incident Kim Sinhwa had set in motion.
Not only had he punched a vast hole in the mid-slope of Chilgapsan, causing casualties in the hundreds and direct and indirect victims in the thousands—
He had also put down Yang Seoho of the Foreigners Administration and abducted Dokgo Gyeom of the Mannse Ilwon Church—
A monstrous man who’d accomplished feats at a surreal level, Kim Sinhwa had paired that incident with a shocking proclamation.
"Come to Busan in six days."
"On that day I will open the lid of the Bottomless Pit together with Cure Medical Care. From that pitch-black abyss will pour beasts like swarms of ravenous locusts."
Angered by this bizarre declaration that spread with the surrounding scandal, Busan’s citizens took to the streets.
Faces flushed with excitement and fury, they shouted:
"What on earth is Cure Medical Care hiding?"
"Explain your relationship with Kim Sinhwa right now!"
"What are you plotting to do in Korea?"
"Reveal what caused last night’s anomaly!"
"Cure Medical Care—tell the truth!"
A nasty mood.
It looked ready to boil over even if left alone—when, at a suspiciously perfect moment, a suspiciously perfect event occurred.
Rrrrrrumble—
A light quake that shook the ground.
"Uwahhh!"
It wasn’t the kind of quake that made you scream.
On any other day it would have been a brief tremor that made you blink and move on.
But of all times, now.
"Hey!"
A random bellow from somewhere.
"What is this quake!"
"Did those bastards cause the quake!"
"Right—ever since this research park went up, we’ve had quakes!"
"What’s the cause of these repeated tremors!"
The roar tangled into a blur you could hardly parse, swelling into a vast, awful howl.
"Reveal it!" "Explain it!" "Get out of Busan!" "What are you doing in our neighborhood!" "Hey!" "You son of a bitch!" "Explain!" "You bastard!" "Akiyama!"
The protesters’ snarling clamor pounded the windows of the massive research complex Cure Medical Care had built in Gijang.
Cure Medical Care Research Facility, Main Building, 13th floor.
"We’ve already held two press conferences—what more am I supposed to explain?"
Palms on the humming glass, the man looking down at the crowd outside grumbled.
To describe his appearance, you’d have to repeat the same adjectives.
Long, slender arms and legs, and long, slender fingers that moved with delicate precision. Strangely thin, red lips and, as if to mirror his excessive self-confidence, eyebrows... long and slender, shooting toward the sky.
Every part of him was long and slender.
It could have felt awkward, but the way those long, slender parts were assembled was tight enough that this long, slender man made for a strikingly attractive sight.
Akiyama Yoshinori.
CEO of Cure Medical Care, and a cultist who serves the [Source of Life].
"What do you think? Is it because I’m not Korean that I find this hard to understand?"
Wild Guns Security’s Go Gyeongsu answered with a wry smile.
"If you’d like, we can make them quiet."
Akiyama seemed pleased, then shook his head.
"No, no, no. I didn’t pay for a first-rate fixer to do scut work."
He clicked his tongue.
"Scream and make a fuss and they’ll feel better. By this evening the protest organizers will likely change their minds."
This evening, certain "guests" would be paying the presumed ringleaders a visit.
"The favor I need is separate. How’s the oni?"
"We’ve set the dogs to run it down."
He hadn’t expected to get this tangled up in an occult mission.
Thinking that, Go Gyeongsu gave a brisk report on last night’s results.
Around 03:00 last night.
From the south of the lab wing... they spotted a "goblin on a burning motorcycle" flying in.
With help from their in-house occult specialist, they engaged for about forty minutes.
They dealt damage but failed to capture.
Unlike past engagements, this time they assessed it had taken a critical hit.
However, as the target is a surreal entity, they were proceeding with caution, considering every possibility.
"Tracking? I thought you said that was impossible until now."
"Last night we landed a sure blow. Thanks to that, our occult specialist was able to secure the target’s spirit body."
Akiyama chuckled and patted Go Gyeongsu’s shoulder.
"Excellent. As expected—good dog. Or was it Gun Dog?"
"Either works."
Go Gyeongsu accepted being called a dog without a blink.
"That Ki— Ki— Sinhwa? The day he proclaimed is tomorrow. It’s about time we had results."
"We’ve almost cornered it. We’ll have results soon."
No—he would have results, whatever it took.
His anxiety wasn’t because he feared Akiyama.
Kim Sinhwa—whatever that madman was scheming, if this dragged on, they might end up facing not just the goblin but Kim Sinhwa as well.
Of course, if Kim Sinhwa ran into Go Gyeongsu in battle-ready form... the one screaming might be Kim Sinhwa.
After all, Go Gyeongsu’s moniker was Gun Dog.
You don’t get called "the dog of the battlefield" for nothing.
Combat civil servants from the Foreigners Administration sighed ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) with sickly faces.
Busan is a city ringed by mountains and sea.
Controlling the roads alone won’t solve the problem.
Worse, the opponent can fly—and is a mage who can change his appearance at will.
That wasn’t the only problem.
"We’ve captured nonhumans attempting to slip in through Busan Port."
"We arrested an ability user who hid weapons in the back seat. Probably fixers who smelled the case and came to play."
"At the toll-gate inspection we grabbed around sixty suspicious individuals presumed to be organized crime, but with no priors on record it’s hard to detain them."
"That Black King bastard seems to have chartered a tour bus and sent his kids."
"About forty cultists flagged at checkpoints are fleeing toward the city."
Shady forces surging into Busan.
"A mercenary group hired by Cure Medical Care had a chase with some ability user in the alleys near Songjeong Port—orders?"
"Thugs from the New World Crew brawled with a Korean-Chinese ability user. Check it out?"
Incidents exploding on all sides.
Listening to the stream of reports, Yang Seoho frowned and asked:
"Who the hell is the New World Crew?"
"An organized crime outfit active around Songjeong."
"Ah, local kids?"
"Yes."
"Tell the local cops I don’t want to see a Busan citizen dead by my mistake, so they should go rough them up as needed."
"...Understood."
A new problem burst before they could solve the last.
"Thirteen armored vehicles are barreling down Riverside Boulevard! Requesting the riot unit’s support."
"...God, this is annoying."
Crack—crunch—
Ominous sounds came from the ends of Yang Seoho’s fingers.
Combat civil servants glanced at him with uneasy faces.
"Let’s just declare martial law and lock everything down."
Faces around him went pale.
Because it was Yang Seoho saying it. If he says he’ll do it, he does it.
No one could stuff those words back into the jar—well. Not no one.
All eyes swung to one person. Feeling the stares, Shin Woojin blinked, sighed, and spoke.
"Team Leader, please say something that makes sense."
"No?"
"It’s not that I dislike it—it can’t be done."
"Want me to make the situation fit, so it can be done?"
Groooan—
The floor under Yang Seoho’s feet buckled with an ominous sound.
"Uwah!" The combat officials around him yelped and jumped back all at once.
"What’s wrong with the floor? Hey. You. Yeah, you. The tall one. You."
The "tall one" standing too close pointed at himself, going, "Huh? Huh?"
"Yeah, you. What’s your name?"
"I—I-I-I’m Im Heeyoung."
The combat civil servant answered, teeth chattering.
"Okay, Heeyoung. Call the mayor of Busan and tell him the ground’s about to cave in—declare martial law and shove all the humans back home. We’ve had quakes since a while ago—someone’s going to get hurt."
"Huh? H-huh?"
At the same time, Shin Woojin sprang up with a growling beastlike sound.
"Team Leader, I told you to stop doing that!"
He grabbed for Yang Seoho, yelling his head off.
"Ugh, you’re a pain. Drop it. Hey, Heeyoung, don’t."
"Y-yes, sir!"
"Team Leader, you keep doing that so now everyone’s copying you! Do you know what the mayor said the other day?"
Half listening, Yang Seoho squinted one eye and, without thinking—
"Yeah, yeah, move—"
He reached toward Shin Woojin.
A light motion to push the other’s chest back.
Casual, ordinary contact anyone might make toward someone close—
"Argh!"
Even though the hand hadn’t touched him, Shin Woojin jerked two steps back.
"Hmm...."
Yang Seoho’s hand hunched awkwardly in midair.
An awkward silence.
Everyone in the emergency response room stared at him.
Bewilderment in their eyes.
Fear.
A gaze reserved for something not quite human.
"Uh, no, Team Leader? That’s not what I—"
Shin Woojin approached with an awkward air.
"Hmph."
Retracting the hand, Yang Seoho turned to a nearby official.
"Where along the riverside was that again?"
"Sir?"
"You said there were street racers. Where along the riverside?"
"R—Riverside Boulevard."
"Do we have a riot unit to spare for that? I’ll go grab them—tell the riot boys to keep doing whatever they’re doing."
"Team Leader. I..."
"Enough. Watch the kids."
"...Understood."
