The golden pixels of the shattered hound faded into the damp air, leaving only the smell of ozone and blood.
Jin-Woo lay on his side on the cold, dusty floor of the gym. The adrenaline was rapidly draining from his twenty-two-year-old body, replaced by a suffocating, blinding agony. His left arm was a mangled mess of torn flesh and fractured bone.
System Warning... the blue text flickered weakly in his fading vision. [Mortal Vessel Integrity: 28%. Severe blood loss detected.]
"Hey..."
A trembling voice broke the silence.
Jin-Woo cracked his heavy eyelids open. Yoon Seo-Ah was crawling toward him. Her school uniform was ruined, her knees scraped, and she was clutching her bruised ribs with one hand. But she wasn't crying anymore.
She reached him, her eyes widening at the sight of his ruined arm. Without a second thought, she ripped the long cloth tie from her uniform collar.
"Hold still," she whispered, her hands shaking as she quickly wrapped the tie around his upper arm, pulling it tight to create a makeshift tourniquet.
Jin-Woo let out a sharp hiss of pain, his golden eyes locking onto her. "You are reckless, Yoon Seo-Ah."
"You lost your arm saving me," she shot back, tying a harsh knot. Her voice was trembling, but her gaze didn't drop. "Gods aren't supposed to bleed like this."
"This body isn't a god," Jin-Woo muttered, letting his head fall back against the wooden floorboards. "It is just a fragile, cracked cup... trying to hold an ocean."
Seo-Ah finished the knot, her hands stained with his blood. She sat back on her heels, looking at the young man who had just defied a monster for her.
"You told me to stand up," Seo-Ah said softly. "I did. Now what?"
Before Jin-Woo could answer, the heavy metal doors of the gym burst open again.
"Jin-Woo!"
Han Tae-Soo sprinted into the gym, completely out of breath, his glasses sliding down his sweaty nose. He was holding his glowing laptop open in one hand like a pizza box. He took one look at the shattered concrete, the blood pooling on the floor, and Jin-Woo's mangled arm.
"Holy crap!" Tae-Soo shrieked, dropping to his knees and sliding next to them. "I tracked your phone! What the hell happened to you?! Did you get hit by a truck?!"
"We met the landlord," Jin-Woo coughed, a weak smirk playing on his pale lips. "What are you yelling about, Tae-Soo?"
"The website!" Tae-Soo ignored the blood for a second, violently spinning his laptop screen toward Jin-Woo and Seo-Ah. "When you killed that... whatever it was, the site code went completely insane! I didn't write this!"
Jin-Woo's mind swam in a blinding haze of pain. The gym spun sickeningly around him. He blinked hard, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from passing out, and forced his heavy eyes to focus on the screen.
The dark, cheap interface of www.shrineofwar.com was gone. In its place was an archaic, glowing golden UI that looked like it was carved from digital marble. But it wasn't just a visual update. A massive system window was hovering directly over the laptop screen.
[Territory Established.][The domain 'www.shrineofwar.com' has absorbed ambient Faith and is now recognized as a Level 1 Virtual Sanctuary.][Passive Effect: Believers connected to the Sanctuary gain +5% Courage in the physical world.]
Jin-Woo's eyes widened slightly. A sanctuary. He didn't need a physical temple made of stone and wood anymore. His temple was in the web.
"That's not even the crazy part!" Tae-Soo panicked, his hands shaking so hard the laptop rattled. "Look at the admin notifications!"
A flashing, blood-red envelope icon pulsed ominously. Tae-Soo clicked it.
[Incoming Raid Alert.][The God of Victory has noticed your domain.][Victory Faction has declared a 'Digital Holy War' on your Sanctuary. High-tier Ghouls and opposing Believers are mobilizing.][Time until server breach and physical location exposure: 72:00:00]
The gym fell dead silent.
Tae-Soo looked at Jin-Woo, his face completely pale. "Jin-Woo... we have three days before an army of whatever-the-hell-that-was finds our basement and kills us."
Jin-Woo stared at the glowing red countdown ticking away on the screen. He looked at his broken, useless arm, then up at Seo-Ah.
Her jaw tightened. Fear still clawed visibly at her chest, her breathing shallow, but as she looked at the red numbers, her bloodstained fists didn't tremble. The contrast was stark: the mortal who knew nothing was panicking, while the mortal who had just faced death was bracing for war.
A dark, terrifying smile slowly spread across Baek Jin-Woo's bloody face.
Three days to prepare an army with a broken body? Not nearly enough. But it's all I have.
"Seventy-two hours," Jin-Woo whispered, the golden light in his eyes flaring to life against the encroaching darkness. "That is plenty of time to build an army."