The thing that had once been nameless staggered through the back alleys of Hongdae, rain mixing with blood and melted skin. Its face was a battlefield — patches of Kang Tae-min's sharp jawline melting into the rounder cheeks of the younger agent, with raw, original flesh bleeding through in weeping sores. One eye still wept human tears. The other had turned glassy, reflecting neon like a broken mirror.
Every step sent fresh cracks through its stolen bones. The void in its chest no longer gnawed — it feasted, swollen and warm with the three tiny fragments it had devoured.
[Assimilation overload detected. Stabilizing… 71% complete.]
The System's voice was silk over broken glass, intimate and mocking.
[You're leaking, little god. Three hosts in under an hour. Most vessels last days before their first real taste. You're special. Hungry. Or maybe just stupid.]
It — he — slammed a mutating hand against a graffiti-covered wall to stay upright. The bricks cracked under fingers that were too long, then too short, nails splitting and regrowing in seconds. In the distance, sirens wailed closer, ordinary police now drawn by the gunshots and screams.
He needed power. Real power. Not these pathetic scraps that left him a melting freak.
The System sensed the thought and purred.
[Echo Sight upgraded with triple fragment gain. New function unlocked: Fragment Forge.][Forge basic divinity into temporary attributes. Strength. Speed. Perception. Healing. Choose wisely. Every point forged costs one permanent personal memory — not borrowed ones. Yours. What little is left.]
A new panel flickered in his fractured vision, edges bleeding red like infected code.
[Fragment Forge – Available: 0.0051%]Allocate to:
Strength (Melee/Physical dominance) Agility (Escape/Speed) Insight (Deeper understanding = faster Assimilation) Regeneration (Repair this broken vessel)
The hunger roared approval. The void wanted more. Always more.
He chose.
First, Regeneration.
He focused on the melting face, the cracked bones, the leaking skin. He understood what a healthy body should feel like — seamless skin, steady heartbeat, bones that didn't fight each other.
The fragments burned.
Pain exploded as divinity surged through him like molten glass. Skin knit violently, bones snapped back into alignment with wet pops. The mismatched faces smoothed — not into his original blank features, but into something new: a colder, sharper version of a Korean man in his late twenties, high cheekbones, dark eyes that held no light. Almost handsome. Almost human.
But the cost hit like a blade to the skull.
[Memory lost: The smell of rain on asphalt after your first breakup. The way it felt like the world was washing you clean. Erased.]
He gasped, doubling over. Another piece of his own emotional history — gone. He no longer remembered why rain sometimes made his chest tighten with something like relief. The feeling had never existed.
The System laughed softly, pleased.
[Good boy. Look at you. Almost pretty now. But prettier vessels break prettier.]
Power thrummed in his veins — not godlike yet, but real. The wounds had closed. The leaking stopped. He stood straighter. Muscles felt denser, reflexes sharper.
He tested it.
He sprinted down the alley. The world blurred. In three heartbeats he covered what should have taken twenty seconds. He leaped — clearing a chain-link fence topped with razor wire as if it were a curb. Landed silently on the other side, boots barely splashing.
[Regeneration allocated: 0.002% used. Remaining: 0.0031%. Agility unlocked as secondary effect.]
The sirens were louder now. Blue police lights painted the buildings at the alley mouth.
He could run forever like this. Or he could stop hiding.
The void whispered its own suggestion, and the System gave it voice.
[Next logical step: Insight. Understand the city itself. Become the eyes that watch everything. CCTV. Traffic cameras. The surveillance grid that owns Seoul. Take it. Become the god that sees all.]
He hesitated for one fractured second — the last fragile scrap of caution that still felt like "him."
Then the hunger won.
He pressed his newly healed palm against a security camera mounted on the alley wall. Cold metal. Glass lens. Wires humming with electricity and data. He understood it — the constant feed, the silent judgment, the way it reduced eight million lives to pixels and timestamps.
He became the grid.
For one infinite, terrifying moment he was Seoul's eyes.
Thousands of camera feeds flooded his mind at once. Every alley, every convenience store, every subway platform. He saw drunk salarymen stumbling home. He saw a girl crying in a noraebang bathroom. He saw black vans with no plates circling the Hongdae area, hunting.
And he saw himself — or what was left of him — standing in the alley, palm on the camera, face now unnaturally still and perfect.
The overload was ecstasy and torture.
[Insight forged: 0.001% used. Temporary omniscience active for 9 minutes.][Memory lost: Your grandmother's voice singing you to sleep when you had nightmares as a child. The exact lullaby. Gone forever.]
The erasure was deeper this time. A foundational piece of comfort ripped out. He no longer remembered why the dark ever felt safe. It never had.
He screamed — a sound that came out of his new, perfect throat like shattering glass.
The omniscience showed him the black vans turning toward his location. It showed him a hidden shamanic ward pulsing faintly under a nearby officetel building — a safe house, maybe. Or a trap.
Nine minutes.
He tore his hand from the camera. The connection snapped. The world narrowed back to one bleeding body in one rainy alley.
But the power lingered in his blood like a drug. He felt faster. Stronger. Sharper. The void in his chest pulsed with approval, larger now, teeth glinting.
He looked at his reflection in a puddle — the new face staring back was flawless on the surface, but the eyes were wrong. Too ancient. Too empty. A god wearing stolen skin.
The System whispered, almost tenderly:
[First taste of godhood, my sweet fragment. How does it feel knowing every step toward power takes another bite out of whatever was left of the boy who once needed lullabies? Run to the shaman ward. Or stay and let the vans dissect you while you're still deliciously half-human.]
He ran.
Not as prey this time.
As something that was learning how to hunt.
The rain kept falling, washing blood from perfect, borrowed skin.
End of Chapter 4