The two surviving hunters from the Miracle Guild did not look back as they scrambled down the steep, stone steps of Ihwa-dong. They tripped over their own heavy boots, dropping their tactical gear, their status screens flickering frantically as their panicked minds struggled to maintain a stable connection to the World Tree Network. To them, the teenager standing in the courtyard wasn't an Awakened; he was a natural disaster wrapped in human skin.
Min-jae watched them vanish around the bend of the terraced alleyway. He didn't pursue.
Killing them would provide nothing more than a couple of miserable units of True Ki. Right now, his newly forged [Jade Bone] matrix was like an empty furnace—imnsely durable, but lacking the internal fuel needed to sustain a prolonged engagent against a true corporate army.
He turned back toward the derelict Hanok house, his feet pressing against the cold granite of the courtyard.
[Your 'Martial Sanctuary' domain has stabilized.]
[Current True Ki: 4 / 50]
[The local atmosphere is fully filtered. The environntal density of Mana within the 15-ter radius is 0.00%.]
Min-jae sat back down on the wooden veranda, crossing his legs as he slipped effortlessly into the Breathing of the Primordial Core rhythm.
Inhale for four. Hold for two. Exhale for eight.
With his skeleton now transford into a crystalized matrix, the internal sensation of his breathing was fundantally altered. In his previous life, breathing was just a chanical movent of the ribs and lungs. Now, every deep inhalation felt like a heavy iron piston compressing inside a sealed chamber. The air entering his lungs didn't just oxygenate his blood; the sheer structural leverage of his Jade Bones squeezed the ambient atmospheric pressure, extracting the raw, baseline vitality of the earth and converting it into tiny, highly concentrated drops of golden True Ki.
Drip. Drip.
Inside his lower abdon, the empty space around his Core Seed began to fill once more. The gold was denser now, less fluid, moving through his Iron Thread ridians with the heavy, unhurried weight of liquid gold.
"Four units... five units," Min-jae calibrated, his internal vision tracking the numbers as they steadily climbed. "To fully master Stage 3, I need to cultivate until the Core Seed stabilizes into an immovable axis. A pure, self-sustaining internal engine."
anwhile, at the base of Mount Naksan, the interior of the black armored SUV was suffocatingly tense.
Choi Sung-min, the 'Iron Wall', stood beside the open door of the vehicle, his massive tower shield resting against his thigh. His heavy, weathered face was dark as he listened to the trembling report of the two returned hunters. The Mage was still pale, his hands shaking so violently he couldn't hold his water bottle.
"He... he didn't use a skill, Director," the Mage stamred, his eyes glassy with lingering terror. "Chang-wook activated Frenzied Lunge. The system paraters calculated his forward kinetic impact at over three thousand pounds of force. But the boy... he just raised two fingers. He caught the blade like a falling leaf."
Choi Sung-min didn't interrupt. He reached down, picking up a fragnt of the shattered iron haft that the hunters had brought back. The tallic surface wasn't cut or lted; it was pulverized, the structural molecules of the mythic-grade iron literally shaken apart from within.
"A lateral kinetic vibration," Choi Sung-min murmured, his voice sounding like grinding stones. "He didn't just block the attack. He used the weapon's own montum to shatter its internal density. This isn't the work of a Vanguard Class. This is pure Internal Force."
"Director," the female analyst from before stepped out of the vehicle, her face pale as she looked at her holographic tablet. "The State Council has just issued a priority alert. The Helios Guild... Park Jin-woo has recovered from his injuries using a high-tier elixir. He has just filed an official declaration with the governnt, claiming that an 'unregistered villain' attacked his squad during the Gwanghwamun raid and stole a C-Rank anomaly core."
Choi Sung-min let out a harsh, mocking laugh. "Jin-woo is a child who can't handle losing. He wants the state military to do his dirty work because his pride was broken in front of his vanguard."
"But sir," she continued, her fingers trembling as she pulled up a secondary screen. "The governnt has approved the deploynt of the Iron Vanguard Regint. They're moving three chanized battalions and a tactical squad of Level 30 Awakened toward this sector. They aren't trying to capture him anymore. They're going to declare Ihwa-dong a 'Calamity Zone' and flatten the entire hill with mana-artillery."
Choi Sung-min turned his gaze back toward the silent, dark peak of Mount Naksan.
He knew what the governnt was doing. It wasn't about Park Jin-woo's pride. The corporate leaders and the state ministers who had awakened high-tier classes were terrified. The World Tree System had given them a new hierarchy where they could rule like gods over the unawakened masses. But a rogue variable who could slaughter C-Rank anomalies and break Level 19 Berserkers with his bare fingers was a threat to the foundation of their new empire. If humanity realized that a man could beco a god without bowing to the blue screens, the corporate network would collapse before it could even fully manifest.
"Tell the vanguard to stand down and withdraw from the periter," Choi Sung-min commanded, his white mana barrier suddenly flaring around his shield with a blinding, heavy intensity.
The analyst blinked, stunned. "Sir? We're abandoning the search?"
"No," Choi Sung-min said, his eyes narrowing into two sharp, cold slits as he adjusted his heavy gauntlets. "The military's artillery will do nothing but waste resources. A man who can erase ambient mana won't be killed by a flashy spell. I'll go up there alone."
"But Director—!"
"I am the 'Iron Wall'," the middle-aged man interrupted, his voice carrying the absolute weight of a Level 28 Guardian Class. "If his fist is truly as perfect as you say... let's see if it can break a shield that has absorbed the data of a hundred dungeons."
Back in the courtyard of the Hanok, the wind had completely died down.
Min-jae slowly opened his eyes, his gaze turning away from his internal status screen and locking directly onto the wooden gate. His Perception stat of 28 caught a massive, heavy vibration approaching the base of the terrace staircase.
It wasn't the erratic, scattered energy of a military squad. It was a single, dense, and incredibly focused mass of white data—a wall of pure, system-generated defensive mana that was moving up the hill with the slow, unhurried certainty of a glacier.
[Warning: A High-Density Mana Vessel is approaching the 'Martial Sanctuary' domain.]
[Entity Identity: Choi Sung-min (Level 28 Guardian).]
[The domain's 'Absolute Severance' protocol is initializing...]
Min-jae slowly stood up from the wooden veranda, his bare feet touching the cracked stone tile. He didn't drop into a defensive stance. He loose-jointed his shoulders, his arms hanging casually at his sides as his Jade Bones humd with a quiet, crystalline readiness.
"The Iron Wall," Min-jae murmured, a cold, sharp smile breaking across his face. "Perfect. I was wondering when the first real anvil would show up to test these bones."
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