TFN C9

Chapter 9

He slammed into it hard, eyes stinging with tears as he scowled at the thing blocking his way.

There was nothing there.

Wonhyo extended not-yet-hardened claws and raked at the air. It felt like touching a sheet of clear plastic—nothing visible, yet something solid.

When he tapped it, it wobbled slightly.

Each time, a trickle of mana shifted.

Is this a skill…?

“Grrr!”

Wonhyo glanced back at the man standing beside his mound of clothes.

Dressed head to toe in black, as if any other color were forbidden, the man watched him with an unreadable gaze.

When the left iris seemed to flash gold for an instant, Wonhyo quickly averted his eyes and summoned his equipment from inventory.

Unlike the bells and fan he’d taken out earlier, this was literally an equipment item.

Production-type awakeners lacked only offensive skills; they could still use items suited to their role.

In his case, upon awakening, he had received, via quest, an item named “Gimyeong”—literally “ritual implements”—a collective term for all tools used on a gut ritual floor.

True to “all implements,” it could transform into many shapes; he kept it as a fan in ordinary times, but at a thought, its form shifted in an instant.

Clamping in his jaws the deity-knife the Gimyeong had become—its hilt seamless from end to end—Wonhyo stared down the wall blocking him.

In beast form, he couldn’t draw fully on divine power, but unlike in human form, working energy was somewhat easier.

Because it bore the form of one of the Twelve Zodiac guardians?

In any case, Wonhyo chanted a protective charm over himself and lunged headlong at the transparent wall.

“Cracked.”

Cheongmun’s eyes tracked the small creature that had shattered his skill.

He hadn’t set any special defensive conditions, and its durability wasn’t something that should break easily—this was the first time it had broken from the inside.

There was no popup saying the skill had been canceled by another skill, either.

Cheongmun weighed his options.

Should he catch it, when it was all nerves and flight, scrabbling to escape with its whole body?

But the near-orange yellow fur striped with moving black made it clear: he had to.

He twitched his fingers.

A gun stored in his glove dropped neatly into his palm.

Forged only from metal brought out of the Tower, it was virtually weightless in his grip. Without hesitation, Cheongmun curled his finger on the trigger.

He fired in the direction the tiger cub was fleeing.

It wasn’t a powder weapon, so there was no sound.

Like tracer smoke, the bullet shed the skill’s trademark black current as it flew.

When the comet-like shot reached the right spot, Cheongmun set the parameters.

He’d keyed the bullet for offense; left alone, it would kill—he needed to temper it.

He closed then opened the hand not holding the gun; the thin, temporary cube he’d summoned swelled to triple thickness into a semi-transparent block.

Not just one—nine barriers in all.

“Block.”

He didn’t know what had hit the earlier cube, so he shut out elemental and most skill attributes and reinforced the strength.

If a cube could be broken by a knife-sized slug of metal yet still withstand an explosion, then it probably wasn’t purely physical power—but he accounted for that too.

He waited a moment as the cub, fleeing in panicky clumsiness, bumped its nose again and let out a guttural cry.

It clenched the knife in its teeth and tried some unknown force again.

This time, however, the cube didn’t so much as twitch.

“If it’s not an enhanced version, it can’t be contained, huh.”

A first-time-seen ability called for care.

Those dark eyes, which had glared earlier, now skewed toward cute rather than fierce—but tiger was tiger, large or small.

It wasn’t a species he could leave loose in a residential area without safeguards, and even if it seemed a human turned beast, the result was the same.

There had been such cases before; some lost reason and became threats. Internal guidelines mandated immediate tranquilization with a dart, then restraining suit and transport in a cage upon discovery.

Delicate claws scraped the ground.

While he weighed procedure, the other side kept trying—tapping the barrier a few more times—then shifted its gaze nearby.

Cheongmun watched the furball dart under a car he’d included within the cube’s boundary.

If he couldn’t see it, who knew what it would try; better to pull it out.

He lowered the muzzle and walked unhurriedly.

He compressed the cube to trap only the car the cub had dived under; the compressed walls darkened, rendering the inside hazy. All the denser, all the tougher—no easy escape.

He considered cutting off oxygen.

It would pass out in seconds, making capture easy, but that left no good next step.

Standing by the car into which the tiger had slipped, Cheongmun lifted his gun hand and rubbed his temple.

The long-ailing headache abated for a moment.

For a hunter’s body, which bid farewell to most ailments upon awakening, to retain a headache was absurd—but this, he could not help.

Touching the sore left brow ridge, he stared into space and moved.

He would lift the car and pull out the shaman crouched hard beneath it.

There would be resistance, but dragging it out further wouldn’t help.

Just as his hand reached for the car, Cheongmun froze and turned his head.

“I’m telling you, someone came this way.”

“Are you sure they came out of the apartment?”

“Yeah. It was this way.”

Seven of them?

Cheongmun narrowed his eyes at the thudding soles—sneakers and harder-lugged work boots—hammering the paving stones.

“There, there—oh…”

The lead runner tried to brake hard, but couldn’t avoid colliding with those right behind, and stumbled forward in a tumble.

Locking eyes with Cheongmun, their faces drained of color as if dragged into a dungeon at midnight.

Bags slung over shoulders and backs. Action cams in hand, with separate mics for external recording.

Charging like wild boars without sense said “reporters,” but he didn’t recognize any faces.

They, however, seemed to recognize him, darting their eyes around with a puckered look like they’d bitten a bitter persimmon.

Cheongmun checked their outfits.

Under the revised media law, filming a controlled scene required visible company IDs; none wore any.

The dark circles and the grimy shirts and pants that looked long unwashed begged for leniency, but he couldn’t oblige.

He tilted his head.

Then, as the headache worsened, he put a cigarette to his lips.

He asked no who or where from; he kept silent.

So did the reporters.

They presumably knew who he was; there was nothing to add.

They were already setting their cameras gently on the ground.

As Cheongmun stood his ground, the reporters edged backward, gauging him. But as always, one found useless courage.

“There are claims Hunter Kim Jeong-hee was killed by a villain(hostile awakened person)—is that true?”

Perhaps because the scene had been streamed online, all sorts of claims had stuck in a short time.

Cheongmun removed the cigarette and looked at the reporter who’d asked him.

“The investigation is ongoing.”

They hadn’t expected him to answer; the questioner’s eyes gleamed.

“Are you concealing the truth?”

“The investigation is ongoing.”

“Don’t do this—tell the people the truth…!”

Black current licked across Cheongmun’s hand—and the reporter’s eyeglass frames popped.

“Ah, pardon. Tried to wipe the camera data and obliterated the camera too. Incidentally, Special Agency staff can’t be filmed without a court-cleared consent order. Which outlet are you with?”

At his level, even voice, the reporter who’d been about to claim intimidation swallowed quietly.

“Leave a contact number; someone will reach out. Even if you don’t, someone will, so don’t worry about that. Eyeglass-type micro-cameras have been banned for sale and use domestically since the sex-crime special law was applied—tell us where you obtained it, too. Ah, and we’ll compensate for the damage. Must’ve been hard to get.”

“…No, I—”

The surrounding reporters prodded their colleague’s side—brave enough to bring an illegal device.

Had they withdrawn quietly, it would’ve been fine; instead, the needless stir could earn disciplinary sanctions for illegal recording—resentment made their jabs sharper.

Watching them drag the troublemaker away, Cheongmun took another drag, pulling smoke deep and exhaling.

A few pulls and the headache eased a bit. He dropped the half-burnt cigarette into a newly summoned cube and dissolved it.

As the nearby presence receded, he recalled the small beast under the car, monitoring him.

Anyway, it had been a person—call it a man?

Who knew what he’d prepared in the moments Cheongmun’s eyes were elsewhere; he overlaid another layer of cube atop the one still in place.

Only then did he bend at the waist.

In the dark, a beast’s eye-glint flashed.

Recognizing the nocturnal sheen common to night creatures, Cheongmun gripped the car’s underside and lifted it like a sheet of paper into his palm as he stood.

The fur puffed like dandelion down, startled that a ton-class vehicle could be lifted by a human hand.

Footnotes:

• Gimyeong (“ritual implements”): A collective, transformable toolset referencing the diverse equipment used by Korean shamans; here it can assume forms like a deity-knife for severing or warding.

• Deity-knife (shinkal): A traditional shamanic blade used to repel malign entities; its adapted item-form reflects ritual authority over hostile forces rather than mundane lethality.