NOVEL WEB Chapter 24
Once the hostages’ safety was secured, the soldiers unsheathed their swords without hesitation.
The masked ghosts desperately fired their guns, but it wasn’t very effective.
The bullets firing from the muzzles looked somewhat different from what I knew.
A bullet grazed my cheek, transmitting a searing heat.
I moved about, aiming for the criminals’ chests or necks with my daggers.
The situation where the soldiers quickly eliminated the criminals.
Just as I thought we had the upper hand, there was another large explosion at the train station.
“Evacuate the people first!”
The soldiers guarded the entrance to the train station while quickly ushering the hostages outside.
Kwaang!
Jjeog!
Cracks ran along the floor, and in an instant, the ground beneath my feet collapsed.
Before I could react, I plummeted into the abyss.
Ploosh!
The place I fell into had pooled water that cushioned the fall, but some soldiers landed directly on the hard ground.
As I regained my senses and checked on the surviving soldiers,
“It’s just a kid?”
“Who is he?”
“He doesn’t even seem scared in this situation.”
Out of the darkness emerged a figure wearing a golden mask.
“Are you a ghost too?”
“Of course. A ghost that will make you all tremble with fear.”
I gripped my dagger tightly and slowly took a stance.
“I can see everything.”
I quickly moved behind him, but before I knew it, I was face-to-face with the golden mask.
Flash!
“Ugh!”
A brilliant light blinded me, and my body’s movements significantly slowed down.
“To withstand a lightning strike… you’re not an ordinary kid.”
Although I didn’t feel pain, it was surprising that the bright light I just saw was, in fact, lightning.
The opponent distanced himself from me, extending his hand and firing something.
Click!
I felt a jolt of static electricity, as if it grazed my shoulder.
In that instant, I lost consciousness.
I came to with a dizzying headache and nausea.
“Ugh!”
“Are you awake?”
I was in the backseat of a carriage, my whole body restrained.
My hands and feet were bound behind my back, leaving me unable to move.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To my laboratory. You’re quite fascinating. You survived a lightning strike and only fainted from a powerful current. You’re a very interesting specimen.”
As the fellow slightly lifted his mask, revealing the lower part of his face, he wore a satisfied smile.
“What’s your purpose?”
“To cleanse the world.”
“What nonsense.”
“Do you believe in angels?”
He seems properly mad.
He removed his mask, placing it inside his coat, and stared at me directly.
“I believe in angels.”
“So, you also believe in God, right?”
“There is no God. There are only angels!”
This fellow doesn’t seem capable of a normal conversation.
I attempted to talk a few more times, but he kept going on about angels.
His face without the mask could be described as quite handsome.
His silver hair and pale complexion were so white and translucent, it seemed like he had never properly been under the sun.
“Once I offer a thousand more sacrifices, I’ll be able to touch the hands of the Angel.”
At some point, this fellow cheerfully started a one-sided conversation with me.
I was already experienced in listening to one-sided stories, so it was easy to let them slide.
The only painful part was when I didn’t focus on his words, he would send an enormous electric current through the chains that bound me.
Even I couldn’t easily withstand that kind of power.
“Focus on what I’m saying. Don’t you want to see the Angel?”
“Mm… Not really.”
“There’s no need to be ashamed. The Angel understands everything.”
In the middle of our conversation, the carriage stopped somewhere, and the fellow took me out of the backseat.
“This is my laboratory.”
“Is it wise to show your hideout to the enemy like this?”
“Enemy? You will soon become my fellow who worships the Angel.”
The fellow carried me into the laboratory like a piece of cargo.
At first glance, it appeared to be an ordinary small cabin.
Once inside, there was another door. When he unlocked the system, the interior revealed itself to be an elevator.
He pressed the button for the lowest floor.
“Are you the boss of those ghosts?”
“Ghosts?”
“Did you order the attack on the train station?”
“What nonsense. I was merely walking, thinking about the Angel.”
Walking aimlessly in the dark underground doesn’t make much sense.
“You have others wearing the same mask as you, right?”
“This mask is given by the Angel. There are no others like it.”
The elevator arrived and the doors opened, revealing a brightly lit hallway.
The fellow stepped out of the elevator and released the bindings on my hands and feet.
“From here, you can walk by yourself.”
With both feet restrained, my steps became significantly shorter.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re here.”
As I staggered forward, the next door opened, revealing a room within.
The room displayed several cylindrical tanks used for experiments, but they were all empty.
“Ah… Angel! I’ve returned!”
When the fellow addressed one of the tanks, I shifted my gaze.
I thought it was the head of some woman.
The face of the unconscious woman floating in the tank was called the ‘Angel’ by the fellow.
“This is the Angel.”
He smiled brightly as he introduced the ‘Angel’ to me.
There was no way this could be described as alive.
The fellow sat me down on a regular chair and seated himself across from me.
“I should introduce myself first. I’m Jere.”
“Ririan.”
I briefly considered giving a different name, but seeing the many tools beside him, I revealed my real name.
“Let’s start with opening your mouth.”
Jere pulled out a thin, flat metal tool from the side and carefully examined the inside of my mouth.
“You don’t have any cavities, your teeth are clean. Any special care?”
“None at all.”
Afterward, Jere thoroughly observed my body.
He carefully examined horns, wings, and tails, taking notes on a piece of paper.
“I’ve never seen a creature like you before. Are you a demon? You don’t seem to be a werewolf either.”
“I’m a demon.”
“Really?”
Jere closely inspected my tail, repeatedly trying to peel off the scales.
The Demon King easily peeled them off, but despite his effort, Jere couldn’t accomplish it.
“Your skin is incredibly tough. Is this why my magic didn’t work on you?”
“Eventually, you caught me with that strange lightning.”
“Ah, that’s my ultimate magic. I compressed eight attributes into one.”
Even though his mind seems a bit off, his magical prowess seems quite exceptional.
“After all this research, can you let me go?”
“Just a little more.”
Jere’s hands moved busily back and forth between the paper and me.
“Look, it turned out great, right?”
“It did.”
Excluding the transparent glass wall, it felt like I was a trapped lab rat in a full-blown laboratory.
“Now, it’s time for a reaction test.”
He pulled out a syringe and approached my arm with a needle.
With a ‘thud,’ the needle broke immediately, and Jere discarded the syringe.
“Your skin is too tough. I can’t do this one. Let’s move on to the next.”
As strange glowing patterns appeared on the floor around the chair I was sitting in,
“I’ll let you go once this is over. Just wait a little longer.”
A buzzing sound filled the air, and drowsiness began creeping upon me.
In my dream, Jere kept asking me various questions.
Where I came from, who I was – it was all light questioning, but the answers coming out of my mouth were:
“Park Chul-Min, South Korea.”
When I woke up, Jere’s expression seemed a bit dazed.
“You lived beyond the Gate in your past life.”
“How do you know that?”
“I used a hypnotic spell. It’s magic that extracts memories from the subconscious…”
Jere launched into a lengthy explanation about the hypnotic magic.
“There are people beyond the Gate who handle abilities similar to magic.”
He seemed to be talking about awakened humans.
But I had never awakened, so I didn’t possess such abilities.
Jere expressed his desire to study awakened humans while untying the chains that bound me.
“Well, that’s the end of the research. What exactly are you?”
“Didn’t the so-called research finish quickly?”
“With the needle not entering, I can’t perform dissection, so my options for research are limited.”
Although he said the needle couldn’t penetrate, I do get injured.
If there were no way to hurt my body, I would have dominated Juan easily in battle.
Maybe Jere either doesn’t or can’t take it further in his experiments.
“The way out is to the left.”
“Hey, did you ever study the Angel?”
“By the way, the Angel is not human.”
“Nor a demon?”
Jere nodded slowly as he glanced at his papers.
“Only as an Angel can it be explained. Once I find the rest of the body parts, it’ll be able to resurrect.”
Clearly, when he mentioned sacrifices earlier, it was about this.
“Many will die for the resurrection, I presume.”
“No need for killing. Just drawing blood will work. For one thousand portions.”
Jere’s choice of words could easily be misunderstood.
“So where’s the rest of the body parts?”
“They should be somewhere in this world. Seeing how curious you are, you’re also interested in the Angel, right?”
“Just curious since you said ‘neither human nor demon.'”
Jere didn’t pay any attention to me as I left, fully absorbed in his work.
Having left Jere’s laboratory without any major issues, my first task was to figure out my location.
The carriage ride didn’t take too long.
By now, everyone must be worried about me.
I have wings, but I’ve never used them.
Whenever Jema flew in the sky, I thought about trying it myself.
I was slowly testing the movement of my wings when Jere came up from the laboratory.
“Hold on.”
“Why?”
“Thinking about it, I technically kidnapped you, so I’ll take you back to the city.”
It was an opportunity to try out my wings, but I couldn’t refuse his offer of kindness, so I got into the carriage.
Differently from my capture, being treated with some respect on the way back felt not so bad.
“When we first met, you called yourself a ghost, right?”
“Yeah. There was a group at the train station doing hostage-taking.”
“You shouldn’t assume they’re all part of the same gang just because they wear masks.”
It’s not good to judge someone based on appearances, but the circumstances that day left me with no choice.
It was a situation ripe for misunderstanding.