The southern bank of the Han River was wrapped in a suffocating shroud of heavy, purple mana mist. In the distance, the corporate towers of Gangnam glead like cold neon monoliths behind their shimring blue defense grids, but down in the riverside park of Banpo, the world belonged to the dark.
The wide concrete plazas, once filled with night markets and bicycle paths, were completely deserted. The river itself was abnormally still, its water thick and oily under the curdled red sky.
Step.
Min-jae’s bare foot touched the damp concrete of the pronade. He didn't make a sound. With his Agility now sitting at a massive 55 and his golden Core Engine acting as an immovable internal axis, his physical presence was entirely decoupled from the environnt. He didn't displace the air; he didn't trigger the grass to bend. He was a ghost walking through the wreckage of a modern civilization.
He stopped beneath the rusted iron fra of an overturned spectator grandstand, his eyes narrowing as he looked across the mist-covered grass.
"The air is bitter," Min-jae murmured, his voice a low, internal vibration.
With his Perception at 35, he didn't just sll the damp river mud and ozone. He detected a faint, sweet scent—like overripe plums rotting in the sumr heat. It was a scent he knew intimately from his previous life.
Viper’s Breath Blood-Poison.
It was a specialized, system-synthesized alchemical toxin utilized exclusively by the Black Viper Syndicate. It was designed to coat modern steel blades, bypassing conventional physical armor by vaporizing upon contact and entering the target's bloodstream through their pores. A single scratch from a weapon coated in this venom could reduce a Level 20 Tanker’s Constitution stat by half within sixty seconds.
Shhh.
The sound of the grass parting was microscopic, less than the rustle of a mouse's tail, but to Min-jae, it sounded like a tearing bedsheet.
To his left, to his right, and directly behind him, the shadows beneath the trees began to distort. The space rippled unevenly, five silhouettes manifesting from the darkness as their active Stealth skills deactivated. They were dressed in tight, dark gray leather armor reinforced with shadow-core plating, their faces hidden behind matte-black respirators. In their hands, they held dual, curved daggers that dripped with a viscous, glowing green liquid.
"Look what we found tracking the core signatures," the hunter in the center whispered, his voice distorted by his respirator. He was a Level 26 Shadow Stalker nad Kang-hyun, the vanguard captain of the Busan syndicate. "The ten-billion-won prize, sitting alone in a Gray Sector without a single piece of gear. The Chairman must be losing his mind to put a bounty this high on a stray dog."
The four rcenaries surrounding him let out low, muffled chuckles. Their universal interfaces were currently scanning Min-jae, but because his body didn't conform to the World Tree’s paraters, their screens simply displayed a row of confusing, unreadable question marks.
"Captain," the Mage in the rear muttered, her hand gripping a short, twisted wooden wand that pulsed with a dark, purplish mana light. "The system won't lock onto his vessel. I can't read his Level or his Class. The data is completely corrupted."
"It doesn't matter," Kang-hyun snarled, his curved daggers tracing a wicked, crisscrossing pattern in the air. "An unarmored commoner has no defensive modifiers. Even if he has an illegal high-tier attribute buff, his flesh will still lt when the Viper's Breath hits his veins. Cut his tendons first. We need his head intact to claim the cores from Lee's office."
Min-jae didn't turn around to face them. He remained standing with his back to the captain, his long, lean arms hanging loose at his sides, his shoulders completely relaxed. Inside his chest, his golden Core Engine didn't accelerate; it spun with a smooth, heavy montum that kept his internal temperature perfectly regulated.
"Busan dogs," Min-jae said softly, his voice cutting through the damp river air with a cold, tallic resonance. "You really haven't changed. In my past life, you used these exact sa daggers to slaughter a squad of level-12 refugees in the Daegu sub-station just to steal three bags of instant ramyun and an F-Rank agility ring."
Kang-hyun froze, his yellow eyes narrowing behind his black visor. "What nonsense are you babbling about, kid? Daegu? We haven't even deployed to the southern sectors yet."
"You haven't," Min-jae said, slowly turning his head to look over his shoulder, his golden-ringed pupils flaring with a predatory, tallic brilliance that caused the rcenaries to collectively take half a step back. "But you will. Or rather... you would have. But since the tiline is broken, I think I'll close your ledger a few years early."
"Arrogant piece of trash! Kill him!" Kang-hyun roared.
[Skill Initiated: 'Shadow Lunge (B-Rank)'.]
[Your movent speed is increased by 120% while traveling through obscured territory.]
[Next strike applies a 200% Critical Bleed modifier.]
The three front-line rcenaries vanished instantly, converting their physical bodies into three distinct streaks of dark, liquid shadow that zipped across the grass at a speed that transcended modern human perception. They targeted his throat, his liver, and his left Achilles tendon simultaneously, their poison-coated daggers cutting the air with a high-pitched, venomous hiss.
Min-jae didn't use True Ki to form a barrier. Against an alchemical poison that targeted the blood, an external shield was a waste of resources.
He didn't move his torso. He didn't drop into a defensive horse stance. He simply waited until the three green-glowing blades were precisely two inches from his skin—the exact distance where their system-generated movent modifiers reached their peak velocity and could no longer change their trajectory.
"Too rigid," Min-jae whispered.
[Active Skill Initiated: 'Formless Step'.]
With his Agility sitting at a massive 55, his execution of space didn't just blur—it fractured their logic. Min-jae didn't dodge the blades; he simply shifted his center of gravity by a re two inches to the left, using the natural chanical leverage of his [Jade Bone] hip joints to twist his entire fra out of the crossfire.
The three curved daggers sliced through empty air, the rcenaries’ montum carrying them forward into the space he had occupied a millisecond prior.
Before they could reset their stance or activate a secondary evasion skill, Min-jae drove his left foot firmly into the concrete pronade.
Perfect Alignnt.
The raw kinetic force of his 50 Strength traveled up through his leg, locked through his core, and spiraled into his right arm. He didn't close his hand into a fist; he kept his palm open, his fingers locked together like a solid iron wedge.
Formless Style: Cleaving Mountain.
He delivered a brutal, lateral open-palm strike straight into the side of the nearest rcenary’s neck armor.
CRUNCH.
The sound was horrific, like an industrial tal press crushing a vehicle fra. The carbon-core shadow plating of the leather armor didn't just cave in; it disintegrated into dust. The unyielding chanical force of the blow traveled entirely through the hunter’s cervical column, pulverizing his vertebrae into powder and disconnecting his nervous system instantly. The rcenary collapsed into the grass like a sack of loose stones, his curved daggers dropping into the dirt.
[You have defeated a Level 25 Shadow Stalker.]
[The Overmaster System converting entity's vital essence...]
[You have gained 5 points of 'True Ki'.]
The remaining two lunging rcenaries gasped, their respirators rattling as they frantically tried to leap backward to establish distance. But Min-jae was already inside their guard. He didn't look at their faces; his Perception tracked the precise location of their internal organs through the vibration of their breathing.
He reached out with both hands, his bare fingers catching the iron wristguards of both hunters with the absolute, unyielding grip of a vise.
"Your venom is sweet," Min-jae said, his golden-ringed eyes locking onto theirs. "But your bones are very, very soft."
With a sudden, effortless twist of his hands, he didn't just disarm them—he rotated their wrists by a full 360 degrees.
CRACK-CRACK.
The sound of shattering bone echoed across the quiet riverside park as both rcenaries let out a high-pitched, strangled scream, their shattered arm bones piercing through their leather sleeves as they were brought to their knees by the sheer, multi-ton downward pressure of his grip.
Min-jae stood between them, his posture flawlessly straight, his bare chest completely unstrained as the remaining two rcenaries in the rear—the Captain and the Mage—dropped their weapons into the grass, their system interfaces flashing with a frantic array of crimson warning codes that they could no longer understand.
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