The silence that followed the collapse of a B-Rank Gate Master was different from the quiet of the residential alleys. It was an artificial, pressurized silence—the sound of an entire district’s network infrastructure stalling as it tried to reconcile its automated trics with a clean, unrecorded deletion.
Min-jae walked northward, away from the titanium borders of Gangnam, his bare feet tracing a path through the cooling soot of the Mapo Gray Sector. With his Agility sitting at 55 and his internal Core Engine locked into a solid-state axis, his weight didn't register on the cracked asphalt. He passed a shattered electronics store, its display models flickering with the crimson ergency broadcast layout of the state council.
[ALL CITIZENS RE-ROUTING TO DISTRICT 3 SECURE CORE.]
[HELIOS AND MIRACLE COMBINED VANGUARD REPORT 94% NEUTRALIZATION.]
[DO NOT APPROACH THE UNRANKED IRREGULAR.]
Min-jae didn't look at the screen. He turned his focus inward, examining the interface of the Overmaster System that sat behind his eyelids like an etched brass plate.
[Current Status:]
Realm: Mortal Flesh (Stage 3: Jade Bone - Saturated)
True Ki Pool: 50 / 200 (Transcendence threshold unlocked)
Next Evolution Tier: Realm of True Ki Circulation (Stage 1: ridian Ignition)
[System Notice: The user has filled the physical fra to its current maximum structural paraters. To progress, the internal engine must transition from passive force delivery to an active, continuous circulation cycle across the major internal pathways.]
"Circulation," Min-jae murmured, his voice a low, dry vibration in the empty avenue.
In his first life, the concept of a circulation loop was sothing the rare Murim migrants had guarded behind ancient blood oaths. They used to say that a commoner’s body was like a shallow clay bowl—it could hold a specific amount of water, but if you tried to pour a river through it, the clay would simply dissolve back into mud. To transition from Mortal Flesh to True Ki Circulation, the energy couldn't just sit in the lower abdon like a heavy stone. It had to move constantly, spinning through the channels until the pathways themselves hardened into solid tubes of conductive gold.
Step.
Min-jae stopped at the base of the Mapo bridge. The smoke from the military blockade was still thick here, slling of burned copper and plastic.
"Target sighted! Three hundred yards out, walking north along the pronade!"
A harsh, tallic voice cut through the fog from the upper deck of the bridge. Min-jae didn't lift his chin. His Perception stat of 35 caught the sound of three heavy sniper rifle bolts cycling simultaneously from the steel girders above. These weren't standard military weapons; they were mana-fused long rifles, their chambers packed with high-density kinetic crystals that could pierce a Level 20 Tanker's shield from half a mile away.
Click-clack.
"He’s completely unarmored," a secondary voice crackled through a short-range radio frequency. "The Sovereign Bounty remains active. Fire on my mark. Aim for the joint matrix."
They were independent rcenaries—Level 20 to 22 Marksman and Assassin classes who had stayed behind after the military retreated, desperate to claim the ten billion won price tag Chairman Lee had placed on Min-jae's silhouette. To their system interfaces, a bare-chested teenager without a single glowing piece of gear was nothing more than an easy payout that would set them up for life in the inner sectors.
BANG-BANG-BANG.
Three supersonic, mana-reinforced tungsten slugs tore through the purple mist, their trajectories calculated by the system's automated tracking algorithms to hit Min-jae’s left shoulder, his throat, and his right knee simultaneously. The air behind the bullets shrieked as the kinetic data compressed the wind resistance into fine lines of blue static.
Min-jae didn't activate Formless Step to dodge.
With his Perception at 35, the high-velocity trajectories were transparent, their paths fixed the mont the rcenaries pulled the triggers. He took half a step forward, his weight settling into his rear heel, his Jade Bone fra locking into an immovable column. He didn't raise his hands to deflect them.
Thud-thud-thud.
The three heavy tungsten slugs struck his bare chest and leg simultaneously.
The rcenaries through their high-magnification optics expected to see a shower of red blood and shattered flesh. Instead, they saw a flash of golden sparks. The bullets didn't pierce the skin; they flattened instantly against the translucent, jade-like surface of his [Iron Skin], their kinetic force completely neutralized by his 60 points of Constitution before the tal could even dent his muscular tissue. The flattened slugs dropped into the soot at his feet like useless pewter coins.
"What... what kind of defense modifier is that?!" the sniper on the left scread, his voice cracking as his user interface flashed an error log. "The armor-piercing calculation was over four thousand units! It didn't even leave a scratch!"
Min-jae looked down at the three grey marks on his chest, then up at the dark silhouette of the bridge girders.
"Your weapons are very clean," Min-jae said, his voice carrying that deep, tallic resonance that caused the sniper's scopes to vibrate. "But your intent is very slow."
[Active Skill Initiated: 'Formless Step'.]
With his Agility now sitting at 55, his movent crossed the three-hundred-yard gap before the sound of his voice could fully fade from the pronade. He didn't run up the steel stairs of the bridge; he simply drove his bare foot into the concrete wall of the support column, launching himself twenty yards into the air in a single, vertical leap that bypassed their line of sight entirely.
He landed on the upper steel girder right beside the lead sniper.
"Hi," Min-jae said softly.
"Ah—Gah!" The rcenary tried to draw a secondary sidearm coated in shadow-mana, but Min-jae’s hand was already there.
He didn't use a fist or a nad technique. He simply caught the heavy iron barrel of the sniper rifle with his bare fingers, his [Jade Bone] joints locking with the absolute leverage of a hydraulic press. With a casual twist of his 50 Strength, he didn't just disarm the rcenary—he bent the two-inch-thick steel barrel into a neat, tight knot, rendering the rare-grade item completely useless.
CRACK.
The chanical backwash of the iron twisting violently shattered the sniper's gauntlets, the feedback throwing him backward off the girder to land heavily on the asphalt thirty feet below, his life force instantly snuffed out by the system's fall damage calculation.
[You have defeated a Level 22 Marksman.]
[The Overmaster System converting vital essence...]
[You have gained 3 points of 'True Ki'.]
[Current True Ki: 53 / 200]
The remaining two snipers on the opposite girder didn't attempt to fire a second shot. They dropped their rifles into the river below, their legs shaking so violently they couldn't even execute a standard retreat command, their interfaces flashing a single, red warning: [UNREADABLE TARGET. FLEE IMDIATELY.]
Min-jae didn't pursue them. He stood on the high steel girder, his bare chest completely still against the cold night air, his golden-ringed pupils tracking the deep crimson light of his internal engine as it smoothly absorbed the new essence.
The bounty list was active, and the corporate guilds were still looking for a ghost. But as he looked toward the northern mountains where his sanctuary sat, he knew that the ti for hiding his data was coming to an end. The boundary of his vessel had been reached, and the next hour would require him to ignite the entire network within.
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