Baek Sorin — Part 1
The wall crumbled.
With just a few swings of the pickaxe, a dark hole opened up, large enough for two people to pass through shoulder to shoulder.
A chilling wind blew out, bringing with it an ominous, black energy.
Baek Sorin shivered.
“I-It’s really here.”
“I told you, didn’t I?”
I glanced at Baek Sorin.
Her equipment was simple.
A full-body anti-blade suit and a longsword. On her head, she wore a military helmet with goggles.
They were clearly secondhand, judging by how worn they looked, but I didn’t mention it. It was obvious this was the best Baek Sorin, who had once been a low-level employee at the Superhuman Tower, could manage.
Clatter.
As I slung the golf bag over my shoulder, Baek Sorin eyed it curiously.
“Teacher, you always carry that with you.”
“Better to be prepared.”
In my golf bag were a rifle, a shotgun, and even a grenade launcher.
Several types of grenades were thrown in for good measure.
I’d packed plenty of other supplies too.
Honestly, I was over-armed for this place.
Especially considering the boss that awaited us on the lowest level.
But it’s probably a trauma from that time I was ambushed by Roe Deer.
I couldn’t feel at ease unless I had everything with me wherever I went.
Even when I visited Seo Woojin’s house, I had this with me.
“Those goggles—do they have night vision?”
“Yes. Of course. You told me to make sure to buy ones with night vision.”
“Good. Next time, when you can afford it, get a mask with both gas protection and ear protection. It’s not necessary for fighting monsters, but it’s a must when you’re fighting people.”
“People…”
“The scariest thing out there is people. People are far more dangerous than monsters.”
“Once I become a Superhuman, I’ll have to fight people too, won’t I?”
“Obviously.”
I pulled my helmet down and stepped forward.
Baek Sorin quickly followed behind me.
The holy sword clinked at my waist, but I only drew my magic gun.
We finally stepped inside.
The atmosphere shifted. The eerie energy clung to my lungs as if trying to sink into my chest.
A musty stench tickled my nose.
The air tasted heavy, like something damp and metallic was coating my tongue.
The mana of death.
This was the kind of magic you’d only find in graveyards, and it lingered throughout the entire Forbidden Zone.
“Teacher? Why is there a Forbidden Zone in the middle of the city? Didn’t the city’s public works team destroy all the ones like this?”
“They covered it up.”
“Why?”
“Galaxy Mall is practically the one that developed this area. It wasn’t part of any city plan. They were supposed to purify the zone, but that costs money.”
“You’re telling me they just buried it because they didn’t want to spend money?”
“Do you know how much purification costs?”
“I don’t know… maybe ten billion won?”
“Hahaha.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at how far off her guess was.
“The cost is in the hundreds of billions.”
“H-hundreds of billions? No way!”
“Exactly. That’s why they buried it. It takes hundreds of billions of won for someone to want to bury both people and secrets.”
What I was doing was sealing it up.
Much cheaper.
The risk is that you might end up buried here yourself.
I sharpened my gaze into the darkness ahead.
[Bright Eyes]
Equipped with a rarely used trait, combined with the goggles’ enhancement, I could see clearly into the distance.
I spotted something moving.
Shhhh.
A slow figure dragging along, almost scraping the floor as it moved.
Baek Sorin looked at me, confused.
“What is it?”
“Look ahead.”
“Huh? Oh… Oh my god!”
Baek Sorin jumped back in surprise.
She finally noticed the figure in the darkness.
Still, as expected from an SSR-tier character, her reaction wasn’t like that of a normal person.
Instead of screaming or running behind me, she gritted her teeth, drew her sword, and adopted a fighting stance.
Without any guidance from me, she naturally prepared for combat.
Her form wasn’t bad. She gripped the sword in both hands, aiming it forward with a decent posture.
“A zombie? Is that a zombie?”
The figure came fully into view.
Its body was rotting, with flesh hanging off in pieces. It was somewhere between a skeleton and a decaying corpse.
It was hard to classify it as either a zombie or a skeleton.
The creature creaked forward, clutching a heavily rusted sledgehammer.
“Take it down.”
“Huh? Me?”
“I told you, you need combat experience.”
We had talked a lot while at Seo Woojin’s house.
Especially about Baek Sorin’s growth path and the method she should take.
Baek Sorin had been anxious, but after watching me treat the other students, she seemed to trust me.
I gave her a clear warning, though.
“Sorin, you know my style, right?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“I’m a Spartan teacher. You’ll suffer a lot if you want to become a Superhuman, maybe not as much as those kids with Divine Fever, but still. A zombie like that isn’t even Level 1. One shot to the head and it’ll go down. You should be able to handle a single zombie on your own.”
Baek Sorin gulped.
We were in a dark cave.
Surrounded by the eerie glow of deathly mana.
Facing a grotesque, advancing corpse.
She was definitely feeling the pressure.
Spitting into her hands and rubbing them together, she gripped her sword tightly and spoke with determination.
“I’ll do it. I didn’t become a Superhuman, but I’ve trained hard, and I’ve practiced my swordsmanship. I can take down a zombie.”
That’s the spirit.
“Yaaaah!”
With a battle cry, Baek Sorin charged forward.
Her posture was well-aligned.
The zombie sluggishly swung its sledgehammer, but it didn’t land.
Baek Sorin dodged smoothly, then lunged with a light thrust.
Thunk!
The sword pierced its head.
But that was all.
The blade didn’t penetrate all the way through, getting stuck partway.
Baek Sorin looked panicked.
“Huh? Wh-What?”
Movies and reality are different.
She lacked strength, and she had no real combat experience.
She was now learning the hard way.
Thump!
“Ahhh!”
In her moment of surprise, the zombie swung its sledgehammer again.
She managed to evade, but the hammer still clipped her left shoulder.
Her shoulder joint shattered with a sickening crack.
Baek Sorin screamed in pain, looking to me for help, but I merely crossed my arms and nodded toward the zombie.
It’s only a Level 1 zombie.
If she couldn’t defeat it on her own, she shouldn’t even dream of becoming a Superhuman.
Even if she is an SSR-tier character.
Of course, I knew that a character proven in the game wouldn’t fall apart at this level of danger.
“Iiieeek!”
As I expected, the moment she realized I wasn’t going to step in, Baek Sorin gritted her teeth and pushed through.
She ignored the pain radiating from her shoulder.
Turning her body, she added rotational force to her movements, retrieving her sword and slashing with all her might.
This time, the attack landed properly.
The zombie’s right arm was severed, and the sledgehammer fell to the ground.
With a clang echoing in the background, Baek Sorin began her dance—a desperate, bloody dance as she hacked her opponent to pieces in a fury.
It didn’t take long.
The zombie’s head and body lay separated on the ground.
Baek Sorin collapsed next to it, clutching her injured shoulder, her sword lying beside her.
“It… hurts…”
“How was your first real battle?”
“You’re too much…”
“You shouldn’t have let your guard down. You could have beaten the zombie without taking a single hit.”
“I didn’t know the bones were that tough.”
“The hardest part of the human body is the skull. Even most Superhumans struggle to break through it. If you had an axe or a mace, that’s one thing, but when using a sword, the correct approach is to sever the neck. Disarming it like you did was a good move, though.”
I laid Baek Sorin down and examined her shoulder.
Every time my hand touched it, her body flinched in pain.
She was hurting, but she would need to get used to this if she wanted to become a Superhuman.
Pop.
I pulled a bottle from my golf bag and uncapped it.
After adjusting her shoulder joint, I removed her protective suit and poured the potion over the injury.
The red liquid, reminiscent of blood, seeped in.
Crack, pop, crack.
Bones realigned themselves, and her damaged muscles and swelling subsided as the potion healed her.
“Teacher? What is this?”
“A healing potion.”
“Healing potions are this effective? The ones I’ve seen before weren’t anywhere near this good.”
“They were low-grade. The effects of potions vary greatly depending on their grade.”
“L-lower-grade potion? Isn’t that really expensive?”
“A little pricey, yes. It costs around 10 million won.”
“Hiiik!”
Baek Sorin seemed genuinely shocked.
Her eyes went wide, and her mouth dropped open.
“T-that’s too expensive, isn’t it?”
“If you become a Level 3 Superhuman, 10 million won is nothing. I’d have earned tens of billions if I took payment in cash for this job.”
“S-still… My annual salary was only 20 million…”
“That’s pretty low. Wasn’t the Superhuman Tower a good workplace?”
“I earned more than most of my friends, but it’s nothing compared to what Superhumans make.”
So that’s why everyone’s obsessed with becoming a Superhuman.
She considered 20 million a decent salary… That’s quite the difference from the tens of billions I made from sweeping through the Cleaner Association.
“You can pay me back after you become a Superhuman. Don’t feel too burdened. Just focus on fighting. But don’t think I’m going to step in and help you.”
“Yes. I’ll definitely do it.”
The emergency treatment was complete.
Baek Sorin rotated her arm in large circles, her expression slightly awkward.
It wasn’t a top-tier healing potion, so it was natural for her to still feel some discomfort.
But there was no time for complaints.
We continued our advance.
“Grrahk!”
“Rrrrrk!”
The next encounter involved two zombies.
One was armed with a thick ratchet wrench, and the other had a power drill.
Neither of them was particularly well-suited for use as a weapon.
Because of that, Baek Sorin smoothly dealt with them.
She struck their hands first, disarming them, then delivered a full-powered swing to decapitate them.
I gave her a light round of applause.
“Well done. Your skills are impressive.”
“Huff! Did I really do well?”
“It’s not easy to decapitate something, even if the flesh is rotting. I wouldn’t be able to do it with pure swordsmanship alone.”
“Huh? Even you, Teacher?”
“I’ve never really trained in swordsmanship. My main skills are supernatural abilities, not swordplay.”
“Oh…”
We took a brief rest.
Baek Sorin wiped her sweat, but her expression remained uneasy.
“But something seems strange.”
“What does?”
“These zombies… They seem off. They don’t look like naturally occurring zombies. They’re wearing work clothes, and they’re holding construction tools…”
Baek Sorin began to rummage through one of the zombies.
What was she doing? She pulled off the helmet from the corpse’s head.
The words Safety First were engraved on the safety helmet.
Her pupils shook as she finally pieced it together.
“T-teacher? These people… Could they be…?”
“Yes, you’re right. They were buried by the Galaxy Mall’s representative. All to save money.”
“B-buried alive?”
“Most likely. Whether they were killed and then buried or buried alive, it’s the same. Their grudges merged with the Forbidden Zone’s power, turning them into undead, and the zone continued to expand from the inside.”
“That’s insane… Did he really do that? He seemed like a good person…”
“Just because someone’s a good father doesn’t mean they’re a good human being.”
“That’s… too much…”
Baek Sorin made a horrified face and turned her head away.
“I truly… I really didn’t know. Did you know, Teacher?”
“I knew. But do you think the Galaxy Mall representative is the only one? Everyone involved in that place is either a murderer or a criminal.”
“That can’t be…”
“You know it too, don’t you? You must have seen things throughout your life.”
“I never thought it would be this bad… I thought it was just an urban legend…”
“Becoming a Superhuman means dealing with things like this. As you get closer to the dazzling lights of the city, you inevitably have to step into its shadows. It’s not just physical; you have to be mentally prepared as well.”
Hearing myself speak, I wondered if I sounded too much like an old man.
Fortunately, Baek Sorin seemed to take my advice to heart.
“I’ll keep that in mind, Teacher.”
“Let’s keep going. You’re doing great so far.”
“Yes, Teacher.”
As we descended deeper, the difficulty steadily increased.
Around the halfway point, we started encountering mutated zombies.
These were known as Enhanced Zombies.
They moved faster than regular humans and were stronger too.
Their weapons were mostly powered tools, so they weren’t particularly effective. But occasionally, one would wield a sledgehammer or rebar, forcing Baek Sorin into a tight spot.
“Ugh!”
“Die!”
“Get lost! Just die already!”
“You bastard!”
But Baek Sorin was Baek Sorin.
She had already grown significantly, even after just a few battles.
She was becoming more agile, her strikes more precise, as she severed their necks.
‘As expected, a Heavenly Killing Star.’
And that’s what made it harder for me.
She had naturally been born with the Heavenly Killing Star trait, but the other three traits she needed would be gained here during Episode 2, the zombie crisis.
‘How should I help her acquire the [Indomitable] trait?’
In my case, I had combined six traits to create it: [Contamination Resistance], [Drug Resistance], [Poison Resistance], [Curse Resistance], [Disease Resistance], and [Purification].
If she can’t follow that path, she’ll have to clear an incredibly difficult special quest…
If I took Baek Sorin to that quest location, she’d almost certainly die.
Even in Arcane Seoul, the standard strategy involved pouring real money into paid items.
‘There’s got to be a way.’
Despite my worries, we continued pressing forward.
Kill. Kill. And kill again.
I noticed that Baek Sorin’s eyes were gradually becoming bloodshot.
She was growing quickly thanks to the Heavenly Killing Star’s 1000% combat experience boost, but now the side effects were starting to kick in.
Which is exactly why she needs the [Indomitable] trait.
It grants powerful resistance to all status ailments.
Without it, Baek Sorin will never reach her full potential.
She might reach SR rank with just the Heavenly Killing Star trait, but without [Indomitable], she’d never become an SSR-tier character.
“Ah!”
Just as we’d cleared about a quarter of the Forbidden Zone, Baek Sorin suddenly screamed.
Startled, I looked over at her.
She had just finished cutting down a zombie with an elegant strike.
Her long legs, stretched out like a deer’s, were being clutched by a zombie.
A mangled, half-destroyed zombie, with its arms and legs severed, leaving only its torso and head.
And it had bitten down on Baek Sorin.
The worst part? It had managed to sink its teeth into the one spot her anti-blade suit didn’t protect.
Her heel, where she was wearing nothing but a pair of worn-out sneakers.
–TL Notes–
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