Fifteen minutes had passed since the fight in the warehouse, but the suffocating tension hadn't lifted.
Min-Jae sat slumped against the cracked concrete wall in the corner. He had pulled his knees to his chest, his body still trembling with violent, irregular shivers. His face was as pale as a corpse.
Jin-Woo stared at the flashing interface in the corner of his vision.
[Sub-Authority Link: Unstable][User Condition: Critical Fatigue]
Jin-Woo gritted his teeth. He couldn't just spam this system like a weapon. Every use didn't just burn away a permanent piece of his own soul; it pushed Min-Jae's human mind closer to the brink of complete fragmentation.
Seo-Ah gripped the handle of her metal bat, looking at Min-Jae with poorly concealed dread. "He almost died," she whispered, though the words echoed in the empty warehouse.
Jin-Woo didn't look away from the boy. His eyes held no pity. When he spoke, his voice was as cold and hard as the concrete beneath them.
"He didn't."
Leaving Seo-Ah in a stunned silence, Jin-Woo focused his mind and summoned the system. A translucent, blue map materialized in the air between them. The city streets glowed like digital veins.
[Potential Nodes Detected: 3][Sync Compatibility: Low / Medium / High]
Tae-Soo immediately stepped up, his analytical eyes narrowing behind his cracked glasses as he dissected the map.
"Three targets," Tae-Soo muttered. "Node A is close, isolated, and the signal is incredibly stable. High Sync. Node B is... moving. Constantly shifting locations. Medium Sync, but highly unpredictable. Node C is stationary, but the signal is heavily distorted. Low Sync." Tae-Soo looked up, his expression grim. "This isn't recruitment, Jin-Woo. This is selection."
Seo-Ah stepped closer. "We go for the safest one. Node A. We're too battered to push our luck."
"High Sync means the best return on investment for the system," Tae-Soo agreed. "It's the logical choice."
Jin-Woo remained silent. His eyes were locked on the distorted, static-filled blip of Node C. The system in his head demanded efficiency. But after the plaza, Jin-Woo knew the 'safe route' was an illusion.
"No," Jin-Woo said with absolute finality. "We go where it's unstable."
The streets were abandoned, but they weren't entirely empty.
The city felt like an organism rotting from the inside out. Streetlights and massive digital billboards glitched in chaotic flashes of red and blue, humming with raw static. There were people hiding behind dumpsters and in dark alleyways. Some looked at Jin-Woo with pure, instinctual terror. Others looked at him with a desperate, sickening hope. Faith had descended upon the city like a suffocating fog.
As they walked, Min-Jae suddenly stopped. He blinked, turning his head toward a dark side street.
Jin-Woo paused, looking at the boy. "You can feel it, can't you?"
Min-Jae was breathless, pressing a hand to his chest. "It's... pulling me. Something is there." The tether had become a physical compass.
Miles away, standing behind the floor-to-ceiling glass of the city's highest tower, the man in the spotless suit gently swirled a glass of wine. He could see the invisible threads of faith weaving through the grid below.
"He chose instability..." the man whispered to himself. A cold, predatory smile stretched across his face.
Beside him, a blood-red interface pulsed: [Subject Growth: Irregular]
As they descended the stairs into the abandoned subway station, the air grew too heavy to breathe. The tiled walls were cracked, and the floor was coated in a thick, dark grime.
[Node Detected][Sync: Low][Condition: Corrupted]
Seo-Ah gripped her bat with both hands, her voice trembling. "This doesn't feel right..."
Min-Jae suddenly took a step back, his eyes wide with horror. "That's... that's not a person."
A low, guttural wheeze echoed from the darkness. The footsteps weren't rhythmic; they sounded like dragging meat and scraping bone. The thing that emerged from the shadows was a mass of flesh that had tried to maintain a human form and failed. Blue and red code bled from beneath its skin, and half of its face was completely replaced by a glitching system interface.
It was a failure.
The entity convulsed. Its jaw dislocated at an unnatural angle, emitting a blood-curdling sound—like broken radio static mixed with a looping human sob.
"C-core... reject... pa... pain..."
The moment the words hit the air, the creature shrieked and lunged directly at them.
In that exact second, Min-Jae screamed and dropped to his knees. The corrupted frequency radiating from the creature violently struck Min-Jae's link to Jin-Woo. The boy couldn't breathe; his mind was being shredded by the creature's agony.
"It's already gone!" Tae-Soo yelled, scrambling backward. "Kill it!"
"No...!" Min-Jae cried out, clutching his head. "It's still there! I can feel it!"
Jin-Woo had seconds. As the creature leaped at him, he thrust his right hand forward, forcing his invisible network to hook directly into the creature's fractured consciousness.
[Forced Link Attempt][Risk: Severe Backlash]
BAM.
A flood of pure, agonizing memories violently crashed into Jin-Woo's mind. He saw it. He saw another 'Authority' forcefully injecting its power, the indescribable burning as human flesh was rewritten into digital code, and the cold indifference of the system tossing the broken result aside like garbage. There was no saving it. The system had already eaten it alive.
Jin-Woo opened his eyes. He mercilessly severed the connection, channeled all his strength, and delivered a lethal, bone-crushing strike directly to the creature's glitching skull.
The entity slammed into the concrete. As the corrupted digital aura slowly faded from its body, its one remaining human eye looked up at Jin-Woo.
"Th... ank..."
Then, it went entirely still.
As the heavy breathing of the team echoed in the dark station, a blue screen flashed before Jin-Woo's eyes.
[Corrupted Node Eliminated][Authority Fragment Recovered: +1%]
Jin-Woo froze. The one percent fragment he had lost... the piece of his soul he thought was gone forever... had returned.
Tae-Soo read the screen reflected in his own glasses. All the color drained from his face. He swallowed hard, looking at Jin-Woo with pure dread.
"...You can farm them."
Jin-Woo remained silent. A cold, alien calculation settled in his chest. He could repair his own power by hunting down these suffering, broken things. It was a horrifying, sickening cycle.
The system interrupted the silence with a new prompt.
[New Classification Unlocked][Failed Nodes]
But the true terror was the warning right below it. On the map, the unpredictable 'Node B' had suddenly changed direction.
[Next Potential Node Updated: Moving][Warning: Velocity Increasing]
Jin-Woo looked up toward the dark stairs of the station. The target wasn't running away; it was coming straight for them.
"We're not the only ones hunting," Jin-Woo whispered.