"Let them come," Jin-Woo whispered into the cold basement.
The words were spoken with the absolute, unshakable authority of a War God. But the second the adrenaline of the battle finally left his bloodstream, the illusion shattered.
Jin-Woo's eyes rolled back. His knees violently buckled, and he collapsed onto the shattered concrete floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
"Jin-Woo!" Seo-Ah screamed, dropping her bent bat and rushing to his side.
He couldn't answer. He couldn't even breathe. It felt as if a thousand burning knives were twisting inside his chest. He gasped, choking up a thick mouthful of dark blood that splattered against the floor.
[CRITICAL: Vessel Integrity 41%][Internal Bleeding Detected.][Divine Overload Recoil Active.]
"Tae-Soo! Call an ambulance! We have to call an ambulance!" Seo-Ah panicked, pressing her trembling hands against his chest, trying to stabilize him.
"We can't," Tae-Soo said, his voice surprisingly steady, though his hands were gripped white-knuckled around his keyboard. He wasn't panicking; the sheer terror of the night had pushed him into a state of hyper-focused analytical survival. "What do I tell them, Seo-Ah? That he's dying from 'divine recoil'? A mortal hospital will just hook him up to machines that won't understand what's killing him. Look at the logs."
Tae-Soo spun his monitor around. "The Faith we gathered... it's not a battery. It's an engine, and it needs a spark to run."
Tae-Soo pointed at a specific line of golden code. "Having thousands of Believers doesn't mean Jin-Woo gets a constant stream of unlimited power. The power only spikes when the Believers feel a massive surge of emotion."
[System Rule Confirmed.][Peak Output requires: Emotional Synchronization.]
"When you swung that bat at the Execution Unit," Tae-Soo looked at Seo-Ah, his eyes dead serious, "you didn't just distract him. You synchronized with the Sanctuary's core emotion: Defiance. That gave Jin-Woo the exact power spike he needed to strike back. Random faith is just noise. Directed emotion is a weapon."
Jin-Woo groaned, forcing his right hand to grip the edge of Tae-Soo's desk. He dragged his broken body up, trying to stand. But his mortal legs betrayed him. He violently stumbled, nearly crashing back to the floor, his vision swimming in black spots. He caught himself at the last second, leaning heavily against the wood, his chest heaving as he fought just to stay conscious.
He looked at Seo-Ah, his golden eyes dim but fiercely sharp.
"If you hesitate," Jin-Woo breathed, his voice ragged, "you die. And so do I."
Seo-Ah swallowed hard. She looked at the bent aluminum bat on the floor. She picked it up. Her hands were still shaking, but she stood in front of him.
"Show me," she said.
Jin-Woo let out a weak, painful breath that might have been a laugh. "Your stance is terrible. Your feet were too close together. You swung with your shoulders, not your hips. That's why the recoil knocked you to the ground."
With agonizing slowness, Jin-Woo tapped the side of her right knee with his boot. "Widen your base. Lower your center of gravity. You aren't trying to hit a home run. You are trying to break a physical structure. The power comes from the earth, through your legs, out through your hands."
Seo-Ah adjusted her stance. She lowered her hips, gripping the bent bat tight. She swung at the empty air. It wasn't perfect, and she was far from a master, but this time, her feet stayed planted. She didn't lose her balance. It was a tiny, microscopic step, but for a girl who had spent her life shrinking away from violence, it was a massive leap.
"Better," Jin-Woo muttered.
Suddenly, Jin-Woo violently clutched his head, dropping to one knee again. A blinding migraine pierced his skull. It wasn't physical pain this time. It was a chaotic, deafening roar of fifty thousand voices echoing directly inside his brain.
Who is he? Is he a monster? Save us. Kill them. Punish them. Help me.
[Faith Flow: Unstable.][User Mental Load Increasing to Critical Levels.]
"Ahhh!" Jin-Woo gritted his teeth, his scars burning as the sheer mental weight of the masses threatened to crush his human mind.
"I got you! Hold on!" Tae-Soo shouted, his fingers flying across the keyboard. A new set of notifications had unlocked on his admin dashboard.
[Sanctuary Functions Unlocked:]- Live Chat Filter- Faith Channel Stabilization- Command Relay (LIMITED)
"I'm engaging the filters!" Tae-Soo yelled, sweat dripping down his face. "I can't filter all of it! It's too much raw data!"
[Stabilization: 23%... 41%...]
Tae-Soo slammed his fist onto the desk. "Come on, work! Lock the channel!"
[Stabilization: 58%... 74%... Channel Locked.]
Instantly, the deafening voices in Jin-Woo's head dialed down to a manageable, quiet hum. Jin-Woo let out a long, shaky breath, opening his eyes. He looked at Tae-Soo. The terrified IT student hadn't just watched; he had actively saved a War God's sanity.
From the dark corner of the room, Yoo Na-Ri watched the entire exchange.
"You're using it wrong," Na-Ri whispered softly.
Jin-Woo turned his head to look at the Goddess of Misery. "What do you mean?"
Na-Ri didn't blink. Her dark, abyssal eyes stared right through him. "Faith isn't power, Jin-Woo-nim."
She paused, the temperature in the room dropping a few degrees.
"It's a door."
Before Jin-Woo could ask what that meant, the real world outside the basement was already shifting to accommodate the new reality he had created.
Deep in the secure, subterranean levels of the National Awakened Bureau (NAB) in Seoul, the atmosphere was absolute chaos. Analysts were screaming over ringing red phones. On the massive central screen, a frozen, high-definition frame of Jin-Woo's glowing golden eyes looked down at them.
The Director of the Bureau slammed a classified folder onto the table. "I don't care if people think it's a CGI marketing stunt!" he roared. "Our seismographs registered a Class-A kinetic detonation at the exact coordinates of that IP address. The concrete actually exploded. Whoever this 'Baek Jin-Woo' is, he is unregistered, heavily armed, and currently commands an audience of fifty thousand people. Find him before the media does. If he's a rogue Awakened, we contain him tonight."
But the Bureau was the least of Jin-Woo's problems.
High in the pristine penthouse, Kang Do-Yoon watched his Sanctuary dashboard. He wasn't deploying a single, isolated scout this time. On his screen, three separate white signatures began to pulse.
[Execution Choir Deployed.][Synchronization Confirmed. Lethal intent locked.]
Back in the basement, a piercing, blaring red alarm suddenly erupted from Tae-Soo's speakers.
[Emergency Signal Detected.][Believer Candidate Under Threat.][Distance: 3.2 km.]
Tae-Soo quickly pulled up a map. "Jin-Woo! It's that delivery boy from the PC Bang! The one who helped us! The system is detecting a massive hostile spike right at his location!"
Jin-Woo gripped the desk, his knuckles turning white as he forced his broken body to stand fully upright. His ribs screamed. His lungs burned. He was in no condition to fight a stray dog, let alone a synchronized divine threat.
But a War God does not abandon his soldiers.
"We move," Jin-Woo commanded, grabbing a dark hoodie from a chair to cover his bloodstained clothes and scarred arm.
"Jin-Woo, you can barely walk!" Seo-Ah pleaded.
"If I don't go, he dies. And the Sanctuary loses its first Apostle," Jin-Woo said, walking toward the stairs.
As he placed his boot on the first unbroken step, a new warning flashed in his vision.
[Warning:][Multiple Hostile Signatures Detected at Target Location.][Synchronization Confirmed.]
Jin-Woo paused. If they send something like that again... this body won't survive, his mortal mind screamed. I'm not ready for this. But there's no choice. He looked back at Seo-Ah, who was gripping her aluminum bat, her eyes filled with fear but her feet firmly planted.
"Stay behind me," Jin-Woo said.