TTOA Chapter 152

“I’ll go first. Since you’re a Defense Type, you’ll be useful.”

At that moment, Ma Tae-o interjected, abruptly extending his hand. His eyes gleamed with fervor. Kwon Jae-jin took his hand.

“Is there anyone else?”

“…The attempt is only once. If it fails, Seo Eui-woo will be immediately neutralized. Everyone from the 1st Special Task Force, over here!”

Lieutenant Colonel Jang swallowed a curse and issued a mobilization order to his team. He couldn’t help but feel like he was leading his subordinates to their deaths, yet his intuition screamed the opposite with unwavering certainty.

Lieutenant Colonel Jang’s innate and exceptional intuition had proven correct once again. The keen sense that had repeatedly put Seo Eui-woo in awkward situations was now, more clearly than ever, siding with Kwon Jae-jin.

“Remove one glove and hold Kwon Jae-jin’s hand. Guide him. Then, fall back and form a line.”

Under Lieutenant Colonel Jang’s command, members of the 1st Special Task Force grabbed Kwon Jae-jin’s hand and began Guiding. Some of the other Espers watching also joined in.

There were practically no Espers who would refuse Guiding from an S-rank Guide.

It was only natural to be drawn in.

Kwon Jae-jin finished Guiding in an instant. It didn’t take long, as he only briefly held their hands before letting go. An ordinary Guide would have been depleted and collapsed long ago, but Kwon Jae-jin was still brimming with energy.

When his Core was small and incomplete, he didn’t know his own limits.

He didn’t even know what Guiding depletion meant.

Nor did he know exactly what the act of Guiding itself entailed.

‘It’s okay.’

He could understand now. If Kwon Jae-jin Guided Seo Eui-woo until he was depleted, he could bring him back. He could suppress the twisted ability back to its original state and resolve the imbalance. It was what he had always done. For four years. Even longer than that. With Seo Eui-woo.

“Bring me to him.”

In the meantime, Seo Eui-woo had grown even larger.

He floated at the center of a sphere of swirling ability.

His face, except for one eye, had turned almost completely black, and his uncontrolled power was even injuring himself.

The ground was overturned, and the barrier wall crumbled. Ground-up concrete rained down like hail.

“Come this way. Stick close behind.”

Lieutenant Colonel Jang used his Enhancement Type ability to become a human shield. A bubble-like shield spread out in front of them. It was Ma Tae-o’s ability.

In addition, several other Espers specialized in defense clung close. Attack Types were divided into two groups, close-range and long-range, to clear a path.

In reality, not all the Special Task Force members intended to follow Kwon Jae-jin’s plan. Most of them were only thinking of getting close enough to Seo Eui-woo to destroy his Core. They had different agendas, but Kwon Jae-jin didn’t care. If he could just get close enough to Seo Eui-woo, the situation would become clear.

“Advance!”

Kwon Jae-jin stepped over the corpses of creatures.

With each step, he felt like the gravity was increasing. It felt like he was wading through a heavy downpour with shackles on his legs. Seo Eui-woo was still far away. He hadn’t even gotten close when cracks started to appear on the shield.

“…Is he a monster?”

The more he hesitated, the stronger he became.

This was nothing compared to when the runaway reached its peak. In fact, the early stages of a runaway were the weakest. All the Espers knew this, so they moved forward quickly without delay.

The shield shattered and crumbled, and Lieutenant Colonel Jang took the brunt of the ability with his body. His body, hardened more firmly than steel, withstood it for a time.

At some point, even Lieutenant Colonel Jang reached his limit and stopped. The Espers who had pushed their abilities to the limit fell back, and only Kwon Jae-jin remained, continuing to advance.

He had to grab Seo Eui-woo.

Jae-jin reached out his hand. At that moment, the storm of ability that had been raging out of control momentarily subsided.

Seo Eui-woo was suppressing himself. He was also holding on.

Seo Eui-woo wailed, fighting to control the erupting ability. Kwon Jae-jin seized the opportunity and embraced Seo Eui-woo.

The moment he made contact, countless incomprehensible mysteries were resolved.

Kwon Jae-jin could Guide Seo Eui-woo.

He could see the clearly illuminated path to guide him.

It was as if he had been groping through a twisted maze with his eyes covered, but now he was holding a map and shining a light as he headed towards the exit.

He wondered why he hadn’t known something so easy and simple all this time. Kwon Jae-jin was a Guide.

“Come here.”

Seo Eui-woo. Come here.

Jae-jin held his face in both hands and pulled his chin up.

As their lips met on his face, which was as black as darkness, their two Cores resonated as one.

The raging waves merged and calmed.

Like an ocean after a storm, the powers under his control returned to their rightful place.

The monster in the unfathomable abyss, which could not be tamed, became docile, and the coiled, sinister power scattered. The power, scattered like flower petals, surged into the sky and pierced the clouds. The ability that stretched out like thunder in a clear sky plunged down in various places.

And when he opened his eyes,

Seo Eui-woo’s face was white…

Gradually turning white…

Returning to a clear, innocent, pure, and beautiful appearance.

He thought the color of his eyes was a little darker, but when Jae-jin stared intently, it returned to its clear gray color as if nothing had happened.

Kwon Jae-jin looked at Seo Eui-woo, and Seo Eui-woo also looked at Kwon Jae-jin.

“Jae-jin ssi…”

Seo Eui-woo and Seo Eui-woo.

Seo Eui-woo, who possessed both the memories of the last 4 months and the memories of the past 4 years, had returned to Kwon Jae-jin.

There was nothing more to wish for. In perfect form.

*

After that. Seo Eui-woo’s runaway was concluded to be a disaster caused by Brigadier General Oh and other conservative generals’ independent attack orders.

To those who didn’t know the circumstances, it seemed that Seo Eui-woo had run away due to an attack by bodyguards.

As a result, a public hearing was held, and Lieutenant General Hwangbo Gi-cheon, the Chief of the Central Military Command, and Brigadier General Oh Seong-hwa at the end of the chain of command were severely punished. As the head of the conservative faction was removed, the generals who had been resisting change began to take notice and change their stance. Some voluntarily resigned, while others defected to the progressive faction.

Change occurred rapidly and uncontrollably, and in line with the trend, news of the Center’s reorganization plan naturally began to be heard sporadically.

The perception of mutants was completely reversed, and the emergence of an S-rank Guide was widely publicized and even reported on the news to the general public.

For the general public, Espers were celebrities, so it was easy to imagine how great Kwon Jae-jin’s impact would be. Broadcasting stations were flooded with requests for interviews every day, and Kwon Jae-jin’s footage was broadcasted incessantly, with hundreds of millions of won being deposited into his account just from the Esper-only information transmission usage fees.

As a result, the existence of mutants, beings who transformed from ordinary people into Espers, became widely known to the world.

The Center officially established the treatment of mutants and promised to improve the insufficient awareness. General Choi stepped forward to apologize to the mutants who had died in vain and their bereaved families, and humanity was finally able to move on to the next paradigm.

“Originally… that wasn’t the intention.”

One afternoon in the middle of spring. Seo Eui-woo and Kwon Jae-jin were at the Military Strategy Headquarters.

The person sitting in front of them and speaking was surprisingly General Choi Yul.

And it was a living, breathing human, not a hologram.

General Choi’s private room. Seo Eui-woo and Kwon Jae-jin were secretly summoned to a room hidden deep within the Military Strategy Headquarters.

“The efficiency-focused Guiding that you call inhumane Guiding. The original intention was not like that at all.”

General Choi Yul held a cup of strongly brewed green tea and blew on it. A fleeting trace of nonchalant regret crossed his face.

“Actually, it was implemented to safely protect the Guides.”

“Protection, you say…”

“Yes, you probably don’t believe it. You can’t understand it.”

“…”

“Guiding, you see, is not an infinitely flowing resource. If a Guide excessively Guides, they can easily become depleted. They need to rest until they recover. In this situation, what would happen if an Esper instinctively and indiscriminately craved Guiding without regulation?”

Jae-jin, who had been sitting in front of the low table, slowly raised his head. His dark eyes changed their light.

A brief silence flowed, and General Choi continued to speak as if to himself.

Like a neighbor telling the young people in the neighborhood about his military days and past glory in a simple way.

“The Guides chose it themselves. Since Guiding through mucous membrane contact is efficient. Rather than suffering and struggling with depletion, a way to Guide efficiently and quickly and then end it. In the early days of the New Military, this was an innovation.”

“Is that so…”

“Well, it’s all just a thing of the past. Back then, as you said, Guiding replacement drugs hadn’t been developed yet. And the number of Espers was woefully small. Even A-rank Espers were as rare as hen’s teeth.”

“…Yes.”

“They did mucous membrane contact, and then more and more, and eventually Guiding became established in this form. In the end, the Center’s atmosphere also solidified with a focus on efficiency, and finally, the current system was completed, which unnecessarily controlled and isolated Espers and blocked information.”

“…”

“It’s not that the ancestors did everything right, but at least the beginning wasn’t done out of malice without logic. I, too… I didn’t intend to blindly go along with the flow. I didn’t intend to lose my humanity.”

The change of paradigm is organic, and the era is a living thing. It should not be overlooked that the old-fashioned of this era was the enlightenment of the previous era.

“I think I’ve overlooked for a long time that there is no eternal good, no complete justice.”

The pagoda built today will also be a monstrosity tomorrow.

Sacrifice is inevitable and should be mourned and honored so that it is not in vain. Humans, humanity, were merely living in line with the endless progress forward.

Without being arrogant, without being overconfident, and sending our minds into the passing days.