The ventilation shaft of the Myeongdong departnt store was cramped, slling of rusted galvanized iron and ancient dust. For a normal human, crawling through a two-foot-wide sheet tal tunnel would be a claustrophobic nightmare of scraped elbows and echoing clatter.
For Min-jae, it was as effortless as sliding through water.
With his body now firmly anchored in the [Mortal Flesh (Stage 2): Iron Skin] realm, his physical control had transcended standard human biochanics. His muscles flattened and shifted against his skeletal fra, suppressing the natural sound of his breathing until he was nothing more than a silent ghost drifting through the building's infrastructure.
Below him, through the tal slats of a ventilation grate, a harsh beam of high-intensity LED light sliced through the darkness of the sub-level loading bay.
"Clear! The core area is clear!"
"Sir, you need to see this. We have a massive biological signature, but... the data doesn't make sense."
Min-jae paused, peering down through the grate.
A squad of eight hunters clad in high-end, matte-black carbon fiber armor had flooded the basent. They moved with the crisp, synchronized precision of military professionals, their assault rifles modified with glowing blue mana-cores beneath the barrels. These were the elite vanguard of the Miracle Guild, the absolute apex of South Korea’s corporate military complex in the early days of the Convergence.
In the center of the room, standing over the massive, dissolving corpse of the Shadow Orc Ironmonger, was Choi Sung-min.
The 'Iron Wall' looked exactly as Min-jae rembered him from his first life. He was a broad-shouldered man in his late forties, his face weathered by years of conventional military service before the sky tore open. He wore heavy, chanical power-armor that humd with a dense, white mana current. In his left hand, he held a tower shield thick enough to stop an anti-tank missile, its surface pulsing with a protective magical array.
"Report," Choi Sung-min commanded, his voice deep and raspy, echoing off the damp concrete walls.
A female hunter holding a glowing, holographic tablet stepped forward, her fingers flying across the blue interface. "The B-Rank Elite Anomaly, the Ironmonger, has been confird terminated. The spatial rift it was feeding has collapsed. But... Director, there are no traces of magic signatures on the corpse."
Choi Sung-min’s heavy brows knitted together. "Explain. Did a high-tier Mage execute a silent chant from the entryway?"
"No, sir," the analyst said, her voice trembling slightly as she re-read the data. "The system log for this sector shows zero ambient mana expenditure during the combat window. The Ironmonger’s throat matrix wasn't pierced by an ice spear or a light blade. The structural damage... it indicates a high-velocity, blunt-force kinetic thrust. It looks as if soone drove a solid titanium rod straight through its leather hide using pure chanical pressure."
The room went dead silent. The hunters looked at each other, the psychological weight of the statent settling into their minds.
To the World Tree System, a B-Rank Elite possessed a passive physical defense modifier of over 200 points. A normal human swinging a steel sword with all their might would simply see the blade shatter against the monster's skin. To pierce that hide without using a mana-infused skill ant the attacker’s raw, unbuffed Strength attribute had to transcend the biological limits of the current human epoch.
"A Hidden Class," Choi Sung-min muttered, his grip tightening on the handle of his tower shield. "Or a high-tier Awakened from another sector who chose to ignore the governnt registration protocols. Did the exterior caras catch anything before the grid failed?"
"Only a single silhouette exiting the Gwanghwamun sector five minutes before the military blockade was established," she replied, bringing up a grainy, heavily distorted image of a lone teenager in a torn black t-shirt. "The facial recognition matrix failed because the individual's facial structure was... unreadable by the system's tracking data."
Of course it was, Min-jae thought from the darkness of the shaft, a faint, cold smile touching his lips.
Thanks to the [Perfect Alignnt] condition and his current [Iron Skin] realm, his physical body no longer conford to the standard, inefficient spatial data that the World Tree System used to track human entities. To the digital eyes of the world, he was a walking blind spot—a glitch in the matrix that refused to register as an orderly asset.
"Director," another hunter called out from the edge of the magma crater. "We found sothing else. Traces of a secondary impact on the monster's smithing hamr. The four-hundred-pound iron head was sheared off its handle by a lateral palm strike. The bone fragnts left behind in the residue... they aren't monster bone. It’s human skin tissue. But it didn't leave a single drop of blood."
Choi Sung-min walked over to the shattered iron hamr, his heavy boots splashing through the remaining puddles of black water. He touched the indented tal surface where Min-jae’s palm had connected. His eyes widened slightly as he felt the smooth, cold precision of the indentation.
"This wasn't done by a weapon," the Iron Wall whispered, a rare flash of unease crossing his hardened face. "This was a bare hand. Soone fought a B-Rank blacksmith in close-quarters lee, absorbed its white-hot heat mana with their bare flesh, and then broke its weapon with a slap."
He stood up, turning back toward his squad. "Issue an imdiate Class-1 blackout on this sector. I don't want the Helios Guild or the governnt factions knowing a rogue variable of this caliber is roaming Seoul. If he's a human, he has to eat, he has to sleep, and he has to have a baseline identity. Find him. Offer him whatever he wants—shares in the guild, mythic-grade gear, immunity from the state council. If he refuses..."
Choi Sung-min didn't finish the sentence, but the cold, heavy white mana pulsing from his shield spoke for him. In the new world, an unregistered god was a threat to the state's stability. If a power couldn't be caged or bought, it had to be deleted before it could rewrite the hierarchy.
"Understood, sir!"
Min-jae quietly retracted his gaze from the grate. He didn't feel anger or fear toward Choi Sung-min’s declaration. He had spent ten years watching these corporate entities build their empires on the bones of common at-shields; he knew exactly how they operated. They thought they could control the chess board because they had the biggest pieces.
But they didn't realize that Min-jae wasn't playing their ga. He wasn't trying to climb their ladder. He was burning the ladder down.
He slid backward through the ventilation shaft, moving toward the rear exit of the building that led toward the residential alleys of Central Seoul.
[Your understanding of the 'Pure Martial' path has accommodated the intent of the hunter.]
[The Overmaster System has processed the local environnt data.]
[To maintain the 'Iron Skin' perfection against high-density mana weapons, a structural tempering of the core is required.]
[Next Goal: Establish a 'Martial Sanctuary' to cultivate the Stage 3: 'Jade Bone' threshold.]
Min-jae popped the external grill of the exhaust vent three stories above an empty side street, dropping silently onto the asphalt below without making more than a faint tap with his bare feet. His shoes were gone, his clothes were tattered remnants, and he was currently the most hunted man in the city.
Yet, as he drew in a deep, crisp breath of the afternoon air, his lungs operating in perfect, unbroken harmony with his new ridians, he had never felt more alive.
"Let them look," Min-jae murmured, his eyes reflecting the deep crimson glow of the artificial red sun above. "By the ti they realize where I am, a tower shield won't be enough to save them."
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