For soone like —an ordinary person—to kill an Awakened above level 10 is, in truth, nearly impossible.
There’s a reason why they didn’t even search before letting et Kang Han-min alone, despite our very far-from-amicable history.
Even Kang Han-min’s most loyal zealots must have concluded that the chance of killing him was absolutely zero.
An Awakened like Kang Han-min possesses not only all the powers the Nesis Type had displayed, but also other, unobserved and likely unique abilities.
Kang Han-min’s power is absolute.
I know this firsthand. I saw it with my own two eyes. I experienced it myself—back when I was still at the top.
If he so chooses, I’d be literally torn apart on the spot.
I an it literally. No taphor.
But Kang Han-min is still human.
He can let his guard down. He can make mistakes. He can act foolishly.
Humans are surprisingly persistent, but also surprisingly easy to kill.
The heart stops—and that’s it.
Look at anyone who dies in a hospital. The list of causes is long, but in the end, it all terminates in one thing: cardiac arrest.
It only takes one.
A single swing of the axe—and Kang Han-min would die too.
I’m not soone who enjoys killing. I avoid it when I can. But the truth is, I’ve killed many people with cold weapons.
Choosing to include “killing Kang Han-min” as one of my options after this eting was not based on logic or evidence.
Just hazy mories. Suspicious circumstances. A gut feeling I couldn’t shake.
And yet, Kang Han-min is more dangerous than any person I’ve ever known.
It’s not because he’s greedy or vile.
It’s not because he’s cruel or obsessed with power.
It’s because he believes.
He believes—truly believes—that he alone is the only answer capable of saving the world.
And for that one singular answer, he will do anything.
Anything.
The problem is that no one knows what it is he wants.
I know he once held the sa fla of hatred I did—back in school, and during our ti in China.
But human hearts change. And they change easily.
Maybe he’s already begun walking the sa path as all those dictators we’ve seen before.
“...Is that so?”
Of course, I could always turn my back on his actions.
I could go back to my bunker and watch the world end from the comfort of that dark hole I once called a friend.
But I’ve seen hope.
The Nesis Type.
By killing that thing—my nesis—I saw the possibility of killing them too.
It’s still vague and murky. But it’s certainly better than wandering blind in fog like I once did.
“Why do you think it’s heaven?”
Kang Han-min is perhaps the only one who can carry out the solution I’ve yet to resolve.
That’s right.
The best option is to talk to him. To negotiate. To find common ground.
That’s the real reason I ca to et him.
I do think it’s possible.
If the fire of hatred he once held hasn’t gone out, we can still talk.
The odds are fifty-fifty.
As I felt the familiar weight of the axe on my back—like an extension of myself—I waited for his answer.
After a mont, Kang Han-min asked :
“Have you ever thought about particles?”
Particles.
In the dictionary, they’re defined as entities that have both physical and chemical properties. But for us Hunters, “particles” refer to the light particles that appear when monsters are destroyed.
It had to be. There were far too many competing nas for those particles that appeared at the mont of monster annihilation.
Just the ones I rember: Capel particles, Xiao-jun–Maolai particles, Nomura particles, Tyuren–Savoy scattering particles... the list goes on.
Each country tried to stake its pride on naming them, so up until the war, the world never agreed on a standard. They just called them “particles”—vague and utilitarian.
“Particles, huh.”
As for —I never had any special thoughts about them.
What’s there to say about a phenonon we can’t analyze, that just exists?
“I don’t know. Never really thought deeply about it.”
Kang Han-min smiled faintly.
Then he clasped his hands behind his back and slowly turned away.
The axe strapped firmly between my lower back and waist grew heavier in my awareness again.
“...”
I was gauging the distance between us when Kang Han-min spoke.
“You see...”
I don’t make a habit of predicting what others will say, but I expected this to be one of those long-winded, convoluted spiels.
It couldn’t be helped. Trying to explain the inexplicable inevitably led to a flood of words.
But Kang Han-min was different.
“You see...”
He didn’t twist his words. He didn’t ramble.
He asserted, with conviction.
“They’re information.”
For the briefest mont, the weight of the axe I’d been feeling nonstop seed to blur.
I asked him:
“...Information?”
Still facing away, Kang Han-min nodded.
“The first interdinsional lifeforms discovered inside the Rift and the monsters that ca afterward are treated as completely different. But they share one key trait. Particles. Both vanish without leaving behind a corpse and transform into light particles when their life activity ceases. And those particles...”
“They return to the other side of the Rift?”
“That’s right.”
He turned around.
“Monsters aren’t just tools of erosion.”
His eyes were alight with certainty.
“All their activity gets recorded into the particles—much like how our DNA encodes information. When that data is cleared, it returns to the Rift in particle form.”
No one’s ever made such a claim.
Because we don’t know.
We can’t know.
So we bickered about petty things like naming rights.
anwhile, the light in Kang Han-min’s eyes was sothing no ordinary person could ever comprehend.
“...And the Rift uses that particle-borne information to create sothing newer and stronger. As you know, the monsters we face aren’t independent entities like humans. They’re more like extensions of a larger organism—cytoplasm of so vast being.”
It’s not a completely novel theory.
You’ll find it floating around in obscure corners of academia, or as anonymous submissions to fringe journals.
But what sets Kang Han-min’s version apart is certainty.
“In other words, by killing monsters, we’re feeding data to the Rift. Helping it upgrade them. Helping it create new ones.”
His voice and eyes were filled with nothing but conviction.
Not a sliver of doubt or hesitation.
“...So that’s why you called it heaven?”
I asked.
Kang Han-min nodded with a soft smile.
“Isn’t that what souls do? They go to heaven.”
If that’s what he ant, I suppose I can temporarily set aside the murderous intent I’d felt.
The “heaven” he ntioned wasn’t so ideal utopia.
It was a server. A place where monster souls—information and data—were stored.
That doesn’t an I’ve abandoned the idea of killing him.
Just that one misunderstanding has been cleared.
Ti to move on.
“Do you know how to destroy that heaven?”
Kang Han-min looked at .
We stared at each other for a mont.
But there wasn’t much we could read in one another’s eyes.
Eventually, Kang Han-min nodded.
“To so extent.”
“Can I ask what thod?”
I didn’t expect a full answer.
But—
“Adam and Eve.”
He declared it without sha.
“Adam and Eve...?”
The first man and woman of Christianity.
According to scripture, all of humanity are the vast descendants of that one pair.
“Sorry, Aniki. That’s all I can say for now. It’s not a full plan—just an idea.”
“...Are you Adam?”
I asked, half-jokingly.
Kang Han-min responded in an unexpected way.
With a sheepish grin, he scratched the back of his head.
“I might be. Or maybe not. But probably.”
Then he looked straight at .
“Of course, if you’re qualified, I’d gladly give you that spot.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because you’re my Aniki!”
For a fleeting mont—I felt sincerity in his words.
He’s always been a strange guy. But when it ca to , he always spoke from the heart.
“It’s not so grand plan. I got the idea from sothing you once said. That observation gave a spark, and that spark turned into a half-baked outline.”
“Can you give the rough sketch?”
“...Well, if it’s you, I don’t see why not.”
Kang Han-min slowly walked toward , completely unguarded.
He stood beside .
Together, we looked out over the ash-gray canvas mimicking the world beyond the Rift.
“You said you saw a boy in the hallucination after defeating the Nesis Type, right?”
I nodded.
“I think I saw him too.”
“Really?”
“Not in this world. On the far side of the Rift.”
“...You serious?”
That’s a hard claim to accept.
I spent nearly a month beyond the Rift.
What I saw there was infinity. Stillness. Eternity.
“There’s a place where the particles gather.”
Sothing stirred in my mind.
A mory I hadn’t yet unwrapped.
Yes.
In that massive data dump I’d received after killing the Nesis Type—there was sothing like that.
A similar place. A similar sensation.
“You’re planning to do sothing there?”
Kang Han-min slowly nodded.
And suddenly, I saw it.
He was unguarded.
Right now, I could swing the axe into his neck or the back of his skull.
There would be no mistakes.
I’ve never made a mistake. Never failed.
Especially not against a human.
The weight of the axe on my back grew rapidly—devouring my focus.
And then Kang Han-min spoke again.
“I can close the Rift.”
His voice was low, but resolute.
“I can kill them—the monsters—permanently.”
I looked into his eyes.
And beneath the soft glow, I saw a fla.
That fla wasn’t all that different from the one burning in my chest.
*
“Woo Min-hee is under house arrest. Awaiting trial,” Gong Gyeong-min said, offering a cigarette.
As always, I refused.
“They’re slapping her with abuse of authority, embezzlent, all kinds of charges—but really, it’s because she pissed off the wrong people. She was one of us, but she helped build New Seoul against our wishes. And now she’s speaking for them.”
Gong Gyeong-min understood exactly what I wanted to know and discuss.
His rise in the Gukwiwon wasn’t just luck for being an early Awakened. His knack for handling paperwork—and people—was well-known.
“She’ll be left alone, that boy of Kim Daram’s. Just like you asked. I heard Kang Han-min gave the okay, but really, his okay ans nothing. He always shoves the dirty work onto his goons and floats above it all like so holy figure.”
“Yeah? Well, that’s one less headache.”
“For you. For , it’s hell from here on out.”
“Why?”
“The Aricans have all kinds of annoying demands, and now I have to integrate the Jeju faction with the old Seoul guys.”
“Can’t you keep them separate?”
“Separation breeds conflict. We don’t have the resources to build a wall around all of Seoul like Jeju did. If we’re going to manage a city with over a million people, it’s better to concentrate them. A few scuffles? Sure. We’ll just have to count on Korean warmth and community spirit to hold things together.”
Spring is coming.
The typhoon has passed, and the ti for rebuilding is here.
We don’t know when the next storm will hit—but those who survived are all preparing for the future in their own way.
As for , there’s just one thing I have to do now.
“Sunbae. Long ti no see. How’ve you been?”
In her prison without bars, Woo Min-hee looked thinner than usual.
It wasn’t because she was being mistreated.
It’s just that on the sa day I killed the Nesis Type, she ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) used her power too.
Rumor has it her side saw intense combat as well.
Makes sense. Over ten Executioner Types had sward in.
“Anyway, I heard you t Kang Han-min?”
She may be under house arrest, but news travels fast.
Standing in front of the ornate wallpaper, Song Yoo-jin smiled awkwardly at .
Looks like we’re still using her after all.
Maybe that says sothing about who Woo Min-hee really is.
She’s hard to understand, unpredictable, selfish—but sowhere deep down, she’s kind.
She cherishes her people. Tries to protect them.
It’s just that the armor around her emotions is hideous and thorny. Her thods clumsy and crude. So no one sees it.
“There’ll be a trial, I guess. But it’s all for show. I’m planning to retire.”
“What’ll you do after?”
“Beats .”
Woo Min-hee flexed her claw-like fingers and fell into thought.
Then she stared at .
That mischievous smile crept back onto her face.
“Maybe I’ll go visit your bunker, Skeleton sunbae.”
“What?”
“What? Am I not allowed? Doesn’t seem like the entry bar is too high. I could go, right?”
“I—it’s not that you can’t co, it’s just... so sudden, you know?”
Surely she’s not serious?
I’ve been thinking it’s about ti to return to my bunker too, but Woo Min-hee showing up there?
That would be a bigger storm than any we’ve had so far.
Though, to be fair, the folks in my domain have all been properly split up by now.
“Just kidding.”
Woo Min-hee chuckled.
“Right.”
“By the way, sunbae.”
She looked at , eyes glowing softly.
“Did your talk with Kang Han-min go well?”
“That talk, huh...”
I thought for a mont, then answered with a bitter smile.
“Didn’t exactly go the way I wanted.”
There were things I wanted to say—but didn’t.
Maybe it was the atmosphere. Maybe I was short on ti.
But most of all—I didn’t fully understand the information I had.
Still, that wasn’t the main reason.
“...In more ways than one.”
I could’ve killed Kang Han-min.
There was one opportunity.
But I didn’t take it.
I couldn’t.
Because I saw it.
He, too, is moved by a fla of hatred—just like .
Its color may be different, sure. But the outco we seek—
Is the sa.
Kang Han-min.
I’ll keep watching him.
To see if he truly is the Savior.
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