Chapter 58 - Summon (1)

Summon (1)

Il-Hyun opened his eyes.

He stayed asleep for a long time, but he looked around and saw a different atmosphere than usual.

The place where he was lying was inside a hospital room that looked neat, and outside the window, he was able to see the busy Aegis headquarters.

It was the same scenery he saw when he was admitted for the first time here, and Il-Hyun remembered what he had experienced.

If he’d think about it now, it was his chance to get into Aegis, and he believes it was a good thing, but at that time, he was honestly afraid of what would happen.

While looking outside and staying awake for some time, Il-Hyun turned his gaze and looked at the door, muttering, “The doors will open now.”

At that time, Lee Soo-Yeon came in shortly after she got up.

Snick!

And the door opened as if it were a perfect fit.

As if she had just been fighting, Lee Soo-Yeon appeared wearing a frozen-blooded coat.

Despite the mess on her face by filled with the dust, her beauty still remained, but her eyes seemed to have accumulated fatigue.

“How are you feeling?” Lee Soo-Yeon said in a slightly hoarse voice.

After returning from a single mission, she heard that Il-Hyun was awake and immediately went up to the medical room.

The medical staff was checking his physical condition 24 hours a day, so she could know immediately when he woke up even if no one was in the room.

“Ah… I think I slept a little longer… How long has it been?” Il-Hyun, who still has no sense of the situation, said slowly.

“One week.”

His mind flashed.

“Did I hear something wrong?”

Asked Il-Hyun, whose eyes were round with her words.

“No. Your ears seem fine.”

Il-Hyun only touched his body here and there to see if there were any abnormalities.

The limbs remained intact, and moving on everywhere else was also excellent.

He inspected the injured part of the previous battle and stroked the bottom of his face.

A thin scar that started from one side of his left jaw was drawn down to the bottom of the bone.

“I cured it right away, but it didn’t heal everything. I think the monster you dealt with has the ability to hinder healing. It was a Nightmare.”

Nightmare.

It was the codename of the guy who got attached after the killing of Chaser’s mutated monster.

Whether there was any ability to prevent the wound from being healed, all the injuries suffered from the monster were healed.

It was that the body itself had a tremendous amount of self-healing power and that only one faint little scar remained because the world’s best medical staff took all the measures they could do.

Il-Hyun, who touched his cheeks, turned his legs and tried to descend from the bed.

But Lee Soo-Yeon pushed his forehead with one finger, and his head got wrapped in a fluffy pillow.

“You absorbed too much Ether, and it was a big strain on your body. It was inevitable, but you should be careful,” said Lee Soo-Yeon.

Il-Hyun’s body, which ate a considerable output of the A-rank core in an indirect absorption method, had an intense overload, and eventually passed out.

Even after a week or so, it felt like he had a large stone on his body.

“Is the situation over?”

“Thanks to the Nightmare, we finished without any damage after that. Your parents are safe,” Lee Soo-Yeon said slowly, and Il-Hyun sighed with relief and closed his eyes for a moment.

But soon, his face became dark again.

“Tae-hee is…”

Lee Soo-Yeon couldn’t find anything to say with what Il-Hyun had said.

There was silence in the room for a moment.

The sound of the clock’s second hand on the wall clicked, and Il-Hyun looked blankly at the ceiling.

“Would you like to see…?”

Lee Soo-Yeon broke the silence and opened her mouth.

“What?”

“Taehee.”

* * *

Last week, Il-Hyun solved the scene and collapsed.

A blood-stained Christmas day brought many things.

A huge station that can be seen several kilometers away, the A-ranked gate that appears in it, and over 100,000 people trapped together.

The deaths of famous awakened people and the massive damage.

As such, the scale of the incident was so grand that the government was limited in hiding it.

The best thing the government could do right now was to bring out other topics while reducing the amount of disaster known to people as much as possible.

Even so, people’s attention was all over the gate.

Also, as this happened in Korea, which was considered the safest gate safe zone so far, it has been widely reported to foreign countries.

One of the reasons for this is the mutant monster Nightmare, nicknamed the White Nightmare that appeared alongside the gate.

It overturned common sense.

The considerable force field surrounding it prevents outside intervention.

This kind of ability was the first to appear ultimately.

This time, a lot of damage had been reduced because of the miraculous performance of Il-Hyun, who was there by chance, but the chances of knowing where it would appear again are slim.

No matter how strong the Awakeners power, it was useless if you couldn’t approach and remove the monster.

If you don’t have a level of Awakener in the station to solve the gate, then you’re done.

It was a Korean city with a high percentage of Awakeners, but the problem was even worse if it appeared in another country.

From the citizens’ point of view, if they were caught without luck, they couldn’t even run away, and it was just that they had to die.

Besides, another reason for the topic was the death of Lee Tae-hee, the world’s best prospect, and the emergence of Il-Hyun.

Lee Tae-hee’s death, which was more popular than the Aegis’ team leader and prominent government people with promising and outstanding ability, was a huge shock among the public.

She was expected to take charge of Aegis’ future and was unexpectedly killed.

Moreover, at the moment of crisis, Lee Tae-hee killed Chaser, an A-ranked monster, by herself.

It would have been more regrettable that she would have been an A-class awakener if she returned safely this time.

Of course, that part was thoroughly disclosed only to the person concerned.

On the other hand, in the case of Il-Hyun who came back from the gate, it was the complete opposite.

No one didn’t know that Il-Hyun caught an A rank mutant monster.

Even at this moment, what truly happened to him was full of stories here and there.

Il-Hyun is almost approaching the ability of a team leader, speculation about his ability to summon, and his stories continued to pass even among those who weren’t interested in them.

He was a miracle hero who saved millions in desperate situations.

While he fell, there were all kinds of public comments from the broadcaster, and articles continued to appear.

As such, the media focused on surfacing one side.

Focus on new hopes or gossip rather than the fear of gates.

So Tae-hee Lee’s death flowed little by little. It was as quiet as possible so that it’s gradually forgotten.

It’s only been a week, but there has already been a lot of reaction from the public.

The governments weren’t doing the right thing, but they were really desperate in this way.

The car stopped when they arrived at the destination.

Il-Hyun and Lee Soo-Yeon were riding in the back seat.

Both of them were casual—not too casual for they were Awakeners of the awakeners who have lived hidden in the past few weeks.

Il-Hyun shook his arm.

“Are you okay?” Lee Soo-Yeon asked.

“I had a wound… I’m a little stiff, but I’m okay,” he replied.

Lee Soo-Yeon, who was trying to go ahead, looked at Il-Hyun as if she had thought of something.

“Oh, right. The president invited you once to come to the event. How about that?”

“No, thanks. What would I do there?” Il-Hyun shook his head violently.

When she went out for his absence, she had to take a commemorative photo while shaking hands and smiling at the president.

It was useless because it was a vain political show.

Even more so in this situation.

“Yeah, I knew it and I refused it three days ago.”

Lee Soo-Yeon took the lead, and Il-Hyun walked along.

When they reached the entrance, they removed the hats they were wearing in the crowds and then stepped in.

They arrived at the National Cemetery in Seoul.

This was where the body of Lee Tae-hee was buried.

Even if the awakened people who saved many lives were buried in a national cemetery, it was almost impossible because the government won’t easily acknowledge it.

In the past, the government wanted to keep the awakened as a famous star rather than making a life-saving hero.

However, this time, due to the buzz of the enormous incident, they had no choice but to act quickly.

“Is it here?”

Il-Hyun asked in front of the small tombstone, and Lee Soo-Yeon nodded.

They were in a small cemetery less than 1 pYeong.

It was quite different from the 8-pYeong grand cemetery where general-level officers he didn’t even know the name of were buried.

He didn’t know if it’s cleaned up often or not, but several flowers were placed in front of her tombstone.

Il-Hyun, who watched for a moment, put a white chrysanthemum flower in front of the tombstone.

Although she was a temporary colleague, considering the length of his entry into Aegis, he spent a long time together with her—they were together on the scenes of life and death.

As a promising senior Awakener, she was humble, and she seemed to be an immature student of her age at times, sometimes doing adult behaviors.

This is the second time an acquaintance of mine has gone to the cemetery because of a monster.

The first was his sibling.

As a child, Il-Hyun lost his younger sister in the gates and barely survived.

And since that time, his dream was to become an awakened man who can save the weak and face the gates.

In fact, it seemed like he was going to fly with joy when he knew he had the ability to move small objects.

At that time, all of the past, such as the flimsy training he followed, came from his desire to become awakened and defend innocent people.

The small ability was no longer able to progress but he was not throwing away expectations.

Then, at the age of 20, he was able to resign altogether only after undergoing probation tests that had been failed.

When he lived like that for a few years and then forgot all about it, he accidentally awakened the predatory instinct and became an Awakener.

In the end, however, he couldn’t defend his colleague.

The figure of Lee Tae-hee, who had collapsed without power, overlapped with his younger sister—and after all this time, she still passed away.

He was an SSS—a Nabal and was still a weak Awakener.

At that time, the receiver in Lee Soo-Yeon’s arms rang.

A gate was created with 30 minutes of activation time left, and it was left to her.

“I have to go first. I told the CEO it will be hard, but I’m taking a break for a while.”

“No, it’ll be easy enough,” Il-Hyun said as he looked straight at her.

While he was coming here, he heard all the details.

It has been more than a month since the cycle changed and the gates were pouring, but there was no sign of improvement, unlike the expectation that it would stabilize soon.

Instead, the number of mutant monsters surged, and the frequency of threatening gates increased.

Among the officials, there was even a ridiculous joke about worries that the world was ruined.

There is no time to play comfortably.

Even at this moment, many monsters were creeping into the world.

“I will go right away.”