Chapter 270: Last Stronghold
"A family issue···."
Baek Woohyun thought of Jeong Beomu—the commander from 'that side.'
He had never once ntioned his family. Not whether his parents were alive or dead, not whether he had siblings or not. The only thing Baek Woohyun could vaguely guess was that he was not one of the Avengers.
The question of 'how can you not know sothing like that if the Avengers were like one family' was nothing but ignorant nonsense from soone who knew nothing of the research facility. Would those bastards have left the families of their abduction targets alone?
Sotis they abducted the families alongside their targets. Other tis they eliminated them entirely. The more desperately a family tried to find the person who had been taken, the higher the proportion of the latter. The fact that a family was close and loving had co back to bite them.
And so—having been kidnapped and subjected to horrific human experintation by oneself, while one's once-close family had collapsed entirely—how thoughtless an act it would be to prod at that.
For that reason, within the Avengers, questions about family were treated as taboo—and about Jeong Beomu's family in particular, there was not a single piece of information.
'He himself never breathed a word about anything family-related.'
"That's the only cause that cos to mind right now. Hmm—shall I think on it a bit more?"
"No, it's fine. I was thinking along the sa lines."
To Jeong Nayeon's question, Baek Woohyun gave a faint smile and shook his head. Even though it must have been a completely out-of-nowhere topic and question for her, the fact that she had taken it seriously was sothing he genuinely appreciated.
But the mont Jeong Nayeon turned her head to attend to sothing else, that smile vanished without a trace. What settled on his face in its place was a cool, expressionless calm.
"Let's get going."
"Sure!"
Baek Woohyun—wearing a mask to forcibly contain the emotions seething inside him like lava—rose to his feet.
To confirm whether his suspicion was correct.
***
Since deciding to enter the Avengers and change the future—even if it was nothing more than his own private solace—Baek Woohyun had made various efforts.
Wary of approaching Jeong Beomu too hastily and raising his guard, he had participated in their missions and built a rapport, while also steadily feeding them information related to the research facility.
Most recently, he had tipped them off about the Otherworld Managent Bureau's large-scale facility extermination operation, preventing them from getting needlessly caught up in it.
At the sa ti, he had even opened a path for them to take their revenge outside the operation's scope—so much so that Jeong Beomu had gone out of his way to send him a text of thanks. A sign that considerable trust had been built.
'So by now···.'
Was it not enough to dig a little deeper?
Baek Woohyun's eyes grew heavy as he confird the ssage from Kim Youngjun—his comrade who had stood by him the longest in 'that side.'
He weighed it from every angle, then gave a small nod. He had judged that their relationship had grown sufficient to move things more or less as he intended.
Contributing to this judgnt was the fact that the research facility—the Avengers' object of revenge—had been scattered by the Bureau's large-scale extermination operation, leaving only remnants behind.
Even if he showed more interest in the Avengers, and in Jeong Beomu specifically, from here on—at the very least, he would not be suspected of being a tail of the research facility.
'What kind of tail would remain after the facility has already fallen.'
On the flip side, the question of whether Jeong Beomu's betrayal simply wouldn't occur now that the research facility had crumbled was truly a shortsighted line of thinking.
Not knowing the reason for the betrayal, there was no basis for certainty that the betrayal wouldn't happen just because the place he could have defected to no longer existed. The result only disappears when the cause is removed.
Moreover, strictly speaking, Jeong Beomu had not defected to the research facility itself. He had rely beco an instrunt of the Corporate Alliance—the backers who funded the research facility.
Baek Woohyun knew this with absolute clarity, having personally driven a Hellhound badge into Jeong Beomu's heart. Therefore, the possibility of Jeong Beomu's betrayal still existed.
[Sender: Kim Youngjun
Got a pretty good job this ti too
Call if you're in]
Ring ring ring─
Having bought the studio ti to check Kim Youngjun's ssage, and with his thoughts still turning, Baek Woohyun naturally pressed the call button.
After roughly three dial tones—the sa default ringtone as before—Kim Youngjun's voice ca through on the other end of the phone.
It was the phrase Kim Youngjun had always said whenever he picked up Baek Woohyun's call in 'that side.'
["Yo, brother!"]
"······."
Baek Woohyun fell silent, phone held to his ear. The emotion surging up inside him made it impossible to open his mouth.
A turbulent flood of feelings that defied any words churned through his mind. As if urging him to wander between this side and 'that side,' between present and past.
The weight of everything lost bore down on him in the effort to recover what had been lost. Heavy enough to make his legs tremble.
Even having already steeled himself for this. Most likely—no, certainly—he would carry a weight like this for the rest of his life.
'But.'
He would do so gladly.
For this weight was all that they had left behind.
["What, wrong number?"]
"···No. Right number."
Baek Woohyun answered with a short exhale.
It had happened enough tis since returning from 'that side' and starting Reverse Planet that he could overco it relatively quickly.
Pulling himself together, he followed up fast so the other person wouldn't sense anything off.
"You said you had a pretty good job?"
["Yes!"]
"I'll do it."
["Still so decisive! Brother! I'll send you the address, so co over there!"]
"Got it. I'll head over now."
["Okay!"]
Baek Woohyun felt sothing almost like warmth in the exchange with Kim Youngjun. Every back-and-forth brought mories of 'that side' flooding back.
Kim Youngjun was the very person who proved that the sa person is the sa person—whether the world is different, whether split into reality and virtual reality.
Accordingly, whenever he beca entangled with Kim Youngjun or the Avengers, Baek Woohyun also felt himself drawing closer to 'that side.'
["Oh, this ti it's just the two of us! The rest are a bit too busy right now!"]
"Is that a problem?"
["Of course not! See you later then!"]
The call ended, and the text from Kim Youngjun that arrived imdiately after contained nothing but a single line—an address. Exactly the sa as prior missions.
It was likewise the sa that, after reading the address-only text, a system ssage notifying him that a new mission had begun scrolled across his vision.
Casually dismissing them, Baek Woohyun looked up the address on a map and confird it was a park in Anyang City.
The reason a regular park rather than the basent of an abandoned building like last ti served as the eting point was likely because there was no need to gather in large numbers.
'With just two people, eting sowhere doesn't attract attention.'
The number of people who had participated in the [The Avengers' Resistance] mission at the ti was four in total, including Baek Woohyun.
The objection of 'that's not even many people, would eting really draw attention' was easily refuted by a single reply: recall their individual personalities.
A reclusive hermit who talked to himself was one thing—but soone with Intermittent Explosive Disorder who picked fights from the mont they arrived would draw attention anywhere, wouldn't they?
'Let's go.'
Shaking his head, Baek Woohyun moved swiftly to the park marked in the address.
He could run there himself, but given the distance, this ti he used a thod that made slight use of Reverse Planet's system.
It was a convenience feature provided by Reverse Planet—one he almost never used—that sharply reduced travel ti if no particular incident occurred during movent to a specific location.
The last ti he had used it was returning from the [First Real Combat] mission.
"······."
"Yo."
How long had Baek Woohyun been sitting on a park bench, leisurely taking in his surroundings?
At so point Kim Youngjun had appeared beside him and plopped down on the remaining bench with a thud—tacking on a greeting that could only have co straight out of a comic.
To an ordinary person it would have looked as if he had materialized out of thin air. Baek Woohyun hadn't been surprised, as he had already sensed him through the force field spread around himself.
As an aside, when using the Telekinesis build, Baek Woohyun always kept a faint force field deployed around himself. This was to compensate for the senses of the Superhuman build.
The range of the deployed force field was precisely his range of perception—within it, a surprise attack against him was impossible. Conversely, he could use it freely for offensive purposes.
This was a counterasure for the Telekinesis build, which was comparatively more vulnerable to ambushes than the Superhuman build, which could be compensated for with raw physicality.
"You've been making quite an impression lately, haven't you? Enough that the commander was praising you to ."
"······."
It was a remark that proved all the things Baek Woohyun had done to solidify his standing within the Avengers had worked properly.
After all—he had joined after annihilating a research facility, completed a fairly difficult mission flawlessly, and even saved them from being unnecessarily swept up in danger. That rited it.
Falling sowhat behind only in sheer ti served, the achievents he had accumulated thus far were at a level that ranked within the top ten across all mbers.
"I've only done my best for the sake of revenge."
"Hah. Modest on top of everything. Very admirable."
Kim Youngjun shrugged conspicuously.
It was more of a playful gesture than anything sarcastic.
A stranger might have misread it—but Baek Woohyun knew him very well.
"The more impressively you carry yourself, the more it reflects on my eye for talent—for having proposed recruiting you at our very first eting."
"······."
"No fun! You're allowed to brag at a ti like this. What era do you think we're living in? Self-promotion is a basic."
"···So, what's the mission this ti?"
At Baek Woohyun's question cutting off the nonsense, Kim Youngjun shrugged once more—then shifted the mood entirely and showed a vicious grin.
A cruel and wicked smile spread across his lips that was hard to believe belonged to the sa man who had been wearing a playful expression just monts before.
The only curious thing was how perfectly it suited him. As if this had always been his default from the very beginning.
"You know how when the Bureau drew their sword this ti, the research facility bastards scattered and fled in a panic."
"Yeah, they did."
"Those bastards—even while fleeing with their tails between their legs, they were thinking about coming back. They tried to gather up the bulky items they couldn't carry off and hide them all in one place."
"The fact that you know that ans─"
"─That's right. I've tracked down the location of their last stronghold—the one they were trying to hide."
"Oh ho."
Before long, a smile had spread to Baek Woohyun's lips as well.
A smile that mirrored Kim Youngjun's before him—the smile of an Avenger welcoming the cruel deaths yet to co.
"And this is unconfird intel, so I didn't report it to the commander separately—but people from the Corporate Alliance, the ones backing the research facility, might be staying at the place we're heading."
"Why would they be there?"
"No idea. Maybe they wanted to salvage sothing? They invested an enormous amount, and then the research facility bastards ran off to escape the Otherworld Managent Bureau. From their perspective."
It was a fairly plausible theory.
All the more so because Baek Woohyun knew very well just how obsessively the Corporate Alliance calculated profit and loss.
On top of that, based on his experience from 'that side,' there was also a strong possibility they had wanted to obtain at least a fragnt of Project: Transcendence.
Despite suffering enormous losses at his hands, the Corporate Alliance had continued attempting to persuade him—that was how intensely they fixated on the results of that project.
'Even thinking about it again now, it's strange. Why was the Corporate Alliance so obsessed with the project?'
***
"Honestly, at 'yo'─ I thought 'oh wow!' I'll be honest."
"Oh."
"···?"
—'Oh wow' lmao ㅋㅋ
—Can't lie, I thought the sa ㅎ
—Of all places, they're eting on a bench again ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
—What does that even an, you otaku!
***
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