Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System!

The last scream died in the smoke.

Corporal Jae-Min stood in the center of what used to be Forward Operating Base Aegis, his chest rising and falling like a bellows. Blood dripped from his fingertips—not his own. Never his own anymore. The concrete beneath his boots was painted crimson, littered with the shattered remains of two hundred and thirty-seven souls who'd made the mistake of wearing the same uniform as the bastards who'd left his squad to die.

His body had changed.

Where once lean muscle had wrapped his frame, now raw power carved itself across his shoulders and arms.

His biceps had swollen to the size of melons, veins threading through them like rivers of molten steel. His chest had broadened into a wall of muscle, each breath making the slabs shift and flex. His thighs were thick as tree branches, his calves cut like diamond.

He looked like the ancient Korean heroes from the old stories—like Dangun's warriors reborn with divine wrath flowing through their veins.

But it wasn't just size. It was density. Presence. The way gravity seemed to bend around him, the way the air itself grew heavy when he moved. Every step left hairline cracks in the concrete. Every breath came with visible heat despite the summer morning.

He wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and sighed—a sound like distant thunder.

"Finally," he whispered, his voice deeper now, resonating from somewhere in his chest that hadn't existed before. "Finally, you fuckers got what you deserved."

The revenge had been perfect. Surgical. Beautiful.

He'd walked through the front gate at 0300, when the night shift was half-asleep and the day shift hadn't arrived yet. The guards had recognized him—Corporal Kim, survivor of Operation Blackout, the miracle soldier who'd somehow made it back when his entire squad got massacred.

They'd welcomed him with coffee and sympathy.

He'd thanked them by tearing their throats out with his bare hands.

From there, it was systematic. Barracks by barracks. Tent by tent. The more they threw at him—bullets, grenades, RPGs, even a fucking tank—the stronger he became. Each explosion that should have killed him only fed the fire in his veins. Each bullet that punched through his flesh just made him bigger, faster, hungrier.

By the time the sun rose, there was nothing left but silence and the stench of copper.

But now, standing in the aftermath, Jae-Min felt... empty.

Not satisfied. Not complete.

The rage was gone, sure. The need for revenge had been sated. But the hunger—the deep, gnawing hunger for more—that was stronger than ever.

He flexed his hands, watching the powerful muscles in his forearms bunch and shift like steel cables under tension. The power was intoxicating, but it wasn't enough. The bullets barely stung anymore.

The explosions felt like warm baths. His body had adapted, evolved, transcended—but he was still stuck in the middle stages of what the voice had called Primal Tier.

He needed more.

He needed real pain.

The kind of agony that would crack his bones and shatter his soul, only to rebuild him stronger. The kind of suffering that would push him past the limits of mortal flesh and into something... more.

Jae-Min walked through the carnage, stepping over corpses and rubble until he reached the command tent. The computers were still running, their screens casting blue light across pools of blood. He sat down, the chair creaking slightly under his weight, and began typing.

*Search: Mount Baekdu*

*Search: North Korea border conflicts*

*Search: Active volcanic zones*

*Search: Extreme survival training*

Page after page of information flashed across the screen. Geographic surveys. Military reports. Weather patterns. Geological studies.

And there it was.

Mount Baekdu. Heaven Lake. The sacred mountain where Dangun was said to have been born, where the boundary between earth and sky grew thin. An active stratovolcano with a crater lake that never froze, sitting right on the border between North and South Korea where tensions ran so high that a single misstep could start World War III.

The most dangerous place on the Korean peninsula.

Perfect.

But it wasn't just the political danger that made Jae-Min smile. It was the geological reports. The volcanic activity. The sulfurous gases. The sub-zero temperatures in winter that could freeze a man solid in minutes. The thousand-meter cliffs dropping into jagged rocks.

The avalanche zones. The thin air that made breathing a struggle even for trained climbers.

And most importantly—the lava tubes. Deep underground caverns where the mountain's molten heart still burned, where the temperature could melt steel and the gases could strip flesh from bone.

If he wanted pain—real, transcendent, evolutionary pain—Mount Baekdu would deliver.

Jae-Min leaned back in the chair, his massive frame creaking the metal supports, and smiled. It wasn't a human expression anymore. Too wide. Too many teeth. Too much hunger lurking behind his eyes.

He stood up, the computer screen reflecting off his blood-slicked muscles, and walked toward the tent flap.

"Baekdu it is then," he said to the empty air, his voice carrying the weight of prophecy.

He paused at the entrance, looking back at the sea of corpses one last time. All those soldiers. All that death. And still, he wasn't satisfied. Still, he wanted more.

The voice had been right. The more pain he felt, the more he lost pieces of himself. But what it hadn't mentioned was how good it felt. How addictive. How each death and resurrection made him crave the next one even more desperately.

His humanity was slipping away, piece by piece, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

Not when immortality was waiting.

Not when Mount Baekdu promised the kind of suffering that would finally, finally push him beyond the limitations of mortal flesh.

Jae-Min stepped out into the dawn light, his shadow stretching long and dark across the blood-soaked ground.

"Time to transcend mortality," he whispered, and began walking north.

Toward the sacred mountain.

Toward his apotheosis.

Toward whatever waited on the other side of death.