Chapter 16 - The Practice (1)

The Practice (1)

“Hey…!” Kim Byung-cheol and Kwon Se-hyeong called out to Il-hyun.

“I’m sorry, I need to go.” Il-hyun replied.

Leaving his friends, Il-hyun followed Lee Soo-yeon, who was already opening the door.

He left the building and his newly-acquired coat started swaying in the wind. The sword swung loosely on his waist. It would take a while to get used to that.

Il-hyun felt stern eyes pressing into his neck as he boarded the plane.

The inside of the aeroplane, quite unlike its exterior, was cleaner and less sparse than expected.

It was like something out of a war movie. It seemed to be full of messy and weird equipment. There was a seat at the back and a monitor on the side of the door.

The plane soon rose. The take-off was almost silent.

As a vertical launch and landing aircraft, it soared up rapidly without the need for a runway.

Il-hyun looked out through the open hatch and could see the world from above.

He had had a fantastic experience on the back of the falcon before, but the feeling here was quite different.

While he was staring blankly, the door hatch automatically descended from above and closed.

Lee Soo-yeon, sitting a couple of meters away, called out to Il-hyun:

“Hey, I know I told you this before, but now that I’m a team member, it’s gonna be a lot easier. Here’s Ghost.”

“Good to see you again. Ha.”

Ghost, held out his hand for the handshake, and took off his mask, much to Il-hyun’s surprise.

There was a secret lying behind Ghost’s mask. Anyone was likely to think that, but Il-hyun knew it for certain.

Now the secret was revealed. Il-hyun looked bashfully at Ghost’s face while the latter took off his mask.

Contrary to the rumors, there were no colossal burn marks or scars on his face. Il-hyun looked intensely at Ghost’s face and considered it neither ugly nor handsome. The secret after all was that there was no secret.

It was the face of a very ordinary young man.

“Oh… It’s very different from the face I imagined.”

“I hear that often.”

“Do the rumors not get to you?” Il-hyun asked. “Why are you even covering your face? If you didn’t cover it, people wouldn’t be trying to guess what’s behind the mask.”

“I can’t tell you. It’s a very complicated situation.”

“What’s complicated about it?”

Lee Soo-yeon, sitting on a seat with her arms folded, started laughing. The hilarity of Ghost’s concept of “complicated situation” had really tickled her.

Ghost took no notice, or at least pretended not to notice. He decided to change the topic.

“Il-hyun, do you mind if I call you brother?”

“Huh? Ah… sure.”

Il-hyun wasn’t quite sure how to reply to this request.

The tone of Ghost’s voice wasn’t exactly earnest when he had asked the question. Ghost came off as pretty smug.

“How did you manage to break the core again?” Ghost asked.

“Oh, that.” Il-hyun looked incredibly satisfied with himself.

The revelation of Ghost’s face was something of a miracle, and at first Il-hyun had considered it a very pleasant surprise. Now though, he was finding his personality unbearable. Il-hyun couldn’t help but think that Ghost would’ve been more likeable with a ravaged face and an agreeable easy-going personality.

Before, Ghost had been the masked man with the low booming voice, and there had been a gravity about his person whenever he had been wearing the mask.

Now though, Il-hyun felt the urge to remark how wrong he had been with these first impressions. He suppressed the urge to speak.

Meanwhile, Lee Soo-yeon looked at her watch, looked up, and decided to put a stop to what she saw as a possible argument in the making.

“Look, it’s all well and good to get along well, but we can talk about this later. We’ll arrive soon. I need to explain the operation to you before we get there.”

“But how did you know where I was?” Il-hyun asked, his curiosity burning inside him.

“You said you were using location information during the operation” she said, pointing at a cell phone sticking out of her pocket.

He remembered that he had signed a contract and had been told to plug something into his cell phone. Of course, this was the tracking device.

Using that device was standard procedure, designed to prevent hacking, look up location information, and prove an individual’s identity.

“Maybe you’re just a little surprised because I’m monitoring you, no? Privacy is a

bit of a false construct.” Lee Soo-yeon saw no reason to beat around the bush.

Team members, as well as team leaders, including her, all went through the same vetting process.

A small company comprised of unimportant individuals wouldn’t know anything about monitoring. But the end result was, if anyone tried anything in Aegis, the meeting place of the senior Awakened, they certainly wouldn’t last very long.

“Where did the other two go?” Ghost, once again wearing the mask, asked with a flutter.

He saw only three people, including himself, and other team members.

Jeong Jin-sung, famous for teaming up with Lee Soo-yeon, and Seok Pil-jun, had already been and gone.

He remembered that his first impressions of Seok Pil-jun had not been very good.

“They applied to another team. What would you have done if you were playing here?”

“Yeah, but now the foreign side is busy again.”

“Only because the cycle is coming.”

Lee Soo-yeon sighed.

He had heard from the awakenings that the cycle of active gate generation was an ongoing nightmare.

Many ordinary people thought that it was not right to increase their income to take advantage of the situation.

“Do you know how to use the equipment?”

Lee Soo-yeon turned and asked. Il-hyun nodded.

He had memorized his guidebook two days ago.

He had learned how to use the equipment for his mission. He knew how the coats with their various functions worked. He knew how to use them to purify contaminated air, carry out temporary hemostasis to stop blood loss; and thermostasis, maintaining body temperature.

Lee Soo-yeon passed him the white transceiver.

Il-hyun took hold of the transceiver. It was about half the size of the regular ones he’d seen. He plugged it into his left ear.

He felt like a true Awakener.

When he first awakened, it felt similar to when he wore a fake coat.

Of course, unlike last time, everyone was in a real situation on a real machine, so he felt more important.

“We got you a sword. Try it: it’s pretty decent.”

Il-hyun gave it a whirl.

Overall, the sleek blade was very sharp, and the design was neat.

He wasn’t an expert, but he realized that this was different from the temporary sword he had made using his instincts.

The Aegis AT Sword and the Defensive Court he received were all monster-like objects made from an entire B-class ether.

Aegis was the only place to acquire this kind of equipment without meeting any special conditions or going through special procedures.

“OK. New intel. It’s from the analysis team.”

Lee Soo-yeon pressed the monitor screen.

3D graphics appeared on the monitor, and the surrounding structures appeared along with place-names.

The surrounding streets and target buildings were visible.

“An hour ago, a double gate appeared inside the hotel in Ulsan. The government response team in Korea is taking care of the other matters.”

When Lee Soo-yeon touched the screen once more, the map zoomed in, revealing the interior structure of the hotel building in detail.

Within the image, two gates could be seen on different floors, both highlighted in red.

“There are two rooms on the 17th and 5th floors of the hotel hall with a B5 grade gate. The remaining time until activation is 15 minutes. B-rank ace monsters will only appear on the 5th floor, so you can block them on the 17th floor. Remember — the monsters spawn pretty fast.”

Lee Soo-yeon and Ghost discussed the strategy calmly, but in his corner, Il-hyun was sweating slightly and listening anxiously.

“I expected it to be different this time, but…”

Il-hyun knew that the gates that Aegis dealt with would be above B rank.

For the veterans, B rank scenes were nothing special.

Il-hyun had never been to even a D rank scene, but he took comfort in knowing that Lee Soo-yeon was more than capable of taking care of B-ranked ace monsters.

If it were a base monster, it would be E rank even though it could well be much stronger than usual. E ranks were easy to think about it.

“The owner of the hotel has asked for no damage to the property, but honestly, it doesn’t matter. This is a B-ranked gate, and it’s full. He can’t expect miracles. Well?”

Lee Soo-yeon looked at Il-hyun, who seemed to be staring intensely at the monitor.

Il-hyun, who had been studying the display while listening to Lee Soo-yeon, now looked at the phrase ‘base monster-D rank’ and his eyes widened.

He thought it was wrong, but it was correct. It was still correct when he closed his eyes and opened them again.

“I think something is wrong there…”

“Where? I can’t find anything wrong. “

“No… Isn’t D rank an ace monster?”

“Oh, normally it is. That’s the standard, and it’s the base for the B-rank gate.”

“Huh…”

Il-hyun scratched at his forehead.

It was unfortunate that there were dozens of ace monster-class D-rank monsters at the gate.

He was expecting trouble ahead.

Il-hyun was a little nervous, to say the least.

“Well, you don’t need to feel any kind of anxiety because you don’t need to do anything heroic right away” said Lee Soo-yeon.

It wasn’t dangerous because he would have Ghost with him, and wouldn’t be right at the gate when the ace monster came out.

It was an ideal task to test how much power he had.

Il-hyun felt the aircraft going down.

Lee Soo-yeon pushed a button with her fist and the door-hatch of the aeroplane opened slowly. They overlooked a bright street at night.

A large hotel and a barricade spanning the surrounding area caught Il-hyun’s eye.

“Already…? It is time already?”

From Seoul to Ulsan, he felt like he had taken a bus and gotten off after just two or three stops.

The development of ether and related technologies made even ordinary passenger planes several times faster.

Plus, the V-74 Whisper, a model developed by Aegis, used a high-grade ether core to achieve tremendous high-speeds.

Because of the nature of Aegis’ work, they had to travel the world in the shortest amount of time possible. This was vitally important.

The aircraft was almost silent in its descent, and made a smooth landing near an empty parking lot.

Three Awakened got off the plane.

A police officer who was standing around was waiting for something to happen.

His face was full of excitement.

“Good morning! Are you here to…?” the police officer was feverish in anticipation.

“Is the civilian evacuation over?” Lee Soo-yeon asked, ignoring his irrelevant and unfinished question.

“Yes, control is over. Internal power’s still the same though.”

“Please keep a safe distance as the building may break, and debris may scatter.”

The police officer’s excitement got the better of him and he burst out in a rapture.

“Yeah! Okay. Champions! I’m a fan!”

Lee Soo-yeon and Ghost were accustomed to familiarity, but Il-hyun struggled to hold in his laughter over the starstruck police officer.

The remaining time until activation was 12 minutes.

They entered the hotel through the front door.