INV 88

“Hey! No! Fall back! Fuck, run away!”

“Not right now! Don’t you see that thing is insane? He’s ready to kill you or anyone else! Hey, Kwon Yihyeon…!”

He let all the shouts go in one ear and out the other. He gripped his sword heavily with one hand, letting it hang. Then, he acted exactly as he had seen and learned. Gathering the energy that was wandering chaotically throughout his body into a single point, he extended it into a thin thread and poured it out in five branches, following the very path his fingers moved.

He didn’t know the detailed theory. He simply struck with the mental image of pouring all the strength he possessed into the hand gripping the sword hilt; from that moment, a golden auspicious energy began to rise majestically from the blade.

“I said run…!”

The sword energy extended to a length about three times that of the standard-issue hwan-do. It looked almost like a wing. However, even so, compared to Jae Angshin’s demonic power, it was less than an acorn in front of a mountain range. If Jae Angshin flicked his fingertip, Kwon Yihyeon would be crushed like an egg smashed against a rock. He would be squashed. He would burst and die. Because he was once a contractor, he’d be let off easy? Risking his life on such a delusion? That is madness! It’s utter madness!

Kwon Yihyeon knew it too. That even if he reached out, he wouldn’t touch him. And how foolish it was to draw a sword despite that. But he had no choice. Kwon Yihyeon simply, truly did not want to let you go like this. Carrying only that feeling, he raised his sword. Even though standing at close range and enduring the demonic power made him want to vomit, made his head throb, and made his arms shake uncontrollably, he swung the sword straight down toward Jae Angshin.

Clang! A sharp metallic sound rings out. The calamity, who had always dealt with humans with mere gestures, drew his sword for the first time. Is that hope? Or is it misfortune?

Between the blades clashing in a cross shape, the former bride smiles.

“The contract is over, Kwon Yihyeon.”

He knows, he feels it. Kwon Yihyeon is feeling the sensation of the demonic power that had permeated him being retracted. It is scattering more and more. It is breaking into pieces, irreversibly.

But you are accepting this sword right now.

You aren’t letting it slide away easily; you’re exchanging words with me.

“Why are you doing this? Why, of all things!”

Why are you acting soft only toward me while trying to leave?

There had been no problem between them. Even if there was some anxiety in Kwon Yihyeon as he looked at Chacha, Chacha had never held a grievance against Kwon Yihyeon until now. At least, that was how it was as far as Kwon Yihyeon knew.

Therefore, it was all the more impossible to accept.

“What is the reason? At least tell me that! Why you’re trying to leave me!”

“I’m tired of you.”

But the words given as an answer were more cruel than anything else.

Chacha was wearing a human skin only because he loved Kwon Yihyeon. If so, then simply by his love for Kwon Yihyeon vanishing, Chacha could become Jae Angshin.

That obvious proposition remained as an indelible scar on his soul.

Kwon Yihyeon crumbled blankly, and the moment his fingertips trembled, Jae Angshin did not miss that opening and surged forward.

Crunch, thud!Spin… He lost his grip on the sword hilt. He committed the worst mistake a swordsman could make. Not only that, but Kwon Yihyeon’s very will to fight was broken and he did not resist, falling over just as he was pushed. Presently, Jae Angshin’s foot trampled his chest. When there was still no defiance, he eventually twisted and snapped his wrist, pulling it upward.

Crack!

The shoulder bone went out just like that. However, Kwon Yihyeon’s eyes were still empty. He was like a hollow doll.

It was just as Jae Angshin, smiling brightly, was about to pull out his nails and stab down into the scruff of Kwon Yihyeon’s neck.

“Dammiiiit!”

Gwak Deukcheon, who had rushed out from the corner, thrust his hwan-do between the two of them. It was an inappropriate intervention derived from the impure intention of somehow trying to save his damn subordinate. However, even if that intent was noble, Chacha had no intention of looking upon it graciously. A powerful grip seized Gwak Deukcheon’s collar and slammed his head into the floor.

Thump!Cr-crack!

Just as Gwak Deukcheon thought his head was going to explode, Myo Woon’s scythe struck from the side.

“Team Leader!”

The scythe broke, and Myo Woon was sent flying back with a broken wrist.

Taking advantage of that gap, Man Juhae’s prayer rang out.

“Our Father who art in heaven, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us… and lead us not into temptation.”

The moment something seemed to flash in the air, a light of healing poured down toward Gwak Deukcheon and Myo Woon, and Lim Muyoung, who had been hiding without a trace like darkness, leapt out from the shadows.

And then his leg was sliced. A long scream followed.

Once more, the sound of a desperate prayer rang out.

“…But deliver us from evil!”

The sight of them charging at Jae Angshin was, even to Kwon Yihyeon, like moths diving into a volcano. Nevertheless, they charged incessantly. They kept shouting something. What was it? Kwon Yihyeon could not hear those words. His ears hadn’t stopped working, but he was dazed in a hazy way and couldn’t hear a thing…

“Run! Kwon Yihyeon!”

…Run? To where?

His dizzying reason was barely restored. He didn’t know why, but he remembered what he had to do.

A strange light returned to Kwon Yihyeon’s eyes.

‘What I’ve been hiding until now.’

What he couldn’t say. What he couldn’t reveal even to his bride, even to his contractor, Jae Angshin.

Kwon Yihyeon grit his teeth. Then he forced his body up and threw himself into the storm-like current of energy.

“Hey, no! Kwon Yihyeon!”

It was no different from a suicide attempt, and in fact, a corresponding recoil attempted to crush Kwon Yihyeon.

Despite that, Kwon Yihyeon finally succeeded in grabbing on.

Specifically, your hand.

‘I… can steal the power of the people I touch!’

The smile that had been mocking him as if he were pathetic right up until their hands were clasped together suddenly stopped.

“You…!”

It was at that moment when a groan like a death rattle filled the gap between the former bride’s teeth.

‘Ah.’

Kwon Yihyeon witnessed a cosmic void.

‘This is…’

From that moment, a murderous intent and pathological madness that felt like they would make him lose his mind began to gnaw at Kwon Yihyeon’s ego.

『Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill…』

An impulse to break and ruin everything.

This was the true form of the void that had seemed so terribly quiet.

And Chacha was always together with that void…

“…You shouldn’t do that.”

Suddenly, a tender voice tumbled into his ear. There was no sense of reality at all, but with that one voice, the floating sensation disappeared. At the same time, the void was retracted, and Kwon Yihyeon was here at this very moment. In the 21st century modern era… Kwon Yihyeon panted while sprawled on the floor. Blood was smeared and mottled in his flowing tears.

No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t believe it.

What on earth was this void that drove a person to the very brink of death just by witnessing it?

More than anything…

“Did you… always live in a world like this?”

But Chacha merely vanished suddenly without a word.

He’s gone; he has left.

When he forced his head to turn, the area was filled with the rubble of broken buildings.

Dust was rising in a haze, and people were pulling their torn, broken, and ruined limbs as best they could, huddling together and trying to pull each other up.

However, Kwon Yihyeon simply could not get up. Even when his superiors, including Gwak Deukcheon, reached out their hands to him.

Until Geom Biyeon approached, holding up a binding rope, he simply stood blankly at the loss that had crashed down upon him.

“I’m going to need you to cooperate with the investigation.”

When things that were thought to be natural are not natural at all, a person sometimes goes mad.

Gwak Deukcheon, feeling that Kwon Yihyeon was on the verge of going insane, followed him closely. To somehow protect Kwon Yihyeon.

“What? Hey, don’t you see the state he’s in?”

However, Geom Biyeon had no intention of backing down.

At least for right now, she had to be that way.

“Are you telling me, sunbae, not to investigate why Jae Angshin terminated the contract—not even that obvious fact? To face Jae Angshin without knowing anything about what happened? Are you telling us all to just die?”

“It’s not that, god damn it! I’m saying do it while looking at the situation…”

“No.”

At that moment, Kwon Yihyeon smiled faintly with a deathly pale face.

And he reached out both hands, preparing to receive the binding rope.

“I will cooperate with the investigation.”

Kwon Yihyeon was already piercing through all the power dynamics. That meant he clearly perceived what it signified for Jae Angshin to be set free.

Geom Biyeon, who had been staring at Kwon Yihyeon in silence for a while, set his dislocated shoulder back into place and wrapped the binding rope around his forearms.

Kwon Yihyeon closed his eyes, feeling the chilling sensation.

That day, what Jae Angshin cut and fled from was not a mere contract.

However, due to the termination of the contract, the only variable that could control the calamity was reduced to uselessness, and an emergency was declared in every realm. A free calamity was unleashed upon the world.

It was only an hour later that news arrived that the Nine Heavens Immortals had burned to death and the Celestial Realm had been annihilated.

When the Celestial Realm falls, yōkai prevail. That was a law of the world that had been natural since ten thousand years ago, and even before then.

The balance of each realm collapsed.

The higher dimensions no longer have the power to keep the occult a secret.

“What is the world coming to…”

Spiritual phenomena that could no longer be hidden had abruptly approached the modern 21st century.