Chapter 86

Chapter 86
## Chapter 86: Descendants of Dangun

—

Watching Yoo Chan-seok walk away, Lee Ha-yoon narrowed her eyes and spoke with a sharp edge to her voice.

“That guy is a total ingrate, boss. A literal animal. He’d be rotting right now if we hadn’t stepped in.”

Deep down, Lee Ha-yoon had been secretly rooting for that exact outcome.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” the man wearing the military hood countered. He drew his bow and released a single shaft into the dirt. It landed precisely in the zone where Yoo Chan-seok had been trading blows with the legions of the dead just a few minutes prior.

A dull, heavy vibration pulsed through the air as the impact traveled through the strata.

“…?!”

The second the projectile hit its mark, the crust of the earth in that entire radius gave way.

“The bastard definitely has a survival instinct.”

The man observed that while the warrior didn’t currently possess the raw power to trigger that level of demolition with one strike, the result would have been inevitable had he endured for another half hour.

During the heat of the struggle, he had been systematically driving force into the ground. He wasn’t swinging blindly; he was calculating, rigging the terrain so that a final focused blow on a structural weak point would cause the entire sector to cave in.

It was essentially a man-made sinkhole. Not a perfect replica of the natural phenomenon, but the principle was identical.

If he had finished his work, the swarming undead would have tumbled into the abyss, leaving him a clear path to vanish into the chaos.

“We gave him a nudge, sure, but he wasn’t exactly at death’s door. He’s a resilient son of a bitch,” the hooded archer remarked, slowly turning his frame away. Even backed into a corner, the man had engineered a getaway—and likely would have pulled it off.

Had his resting teammates returned to the fray, they could have bought those extra thirty minutes… and then he would have simply bolted through the ruins of the collapsed earth like a streak of lightning.

“If that’s the case, we didn’t have a single reason to help him,” Seo Yeon-ju snapped.

The leader didn’t miss a beat. “He survives regardless of our presence. But are you suggesting we just surrender Harbin?”

Seo Yeon-ju went quiet. He had a point—even if the man was fine on his own, they couldn’t afford to let Harbin slip through their fingers.

“So… what’s the next move?” Lee Ha-yoon inquired.

The hooded figure ran a hand over his weapon as he responded. “The entire assembly of the Descendants of Dangun has been mobilized in Shenyang.”

Even the foot soldiers of the Immortal Legion had sustained casualties.

“The remains in Beijing might start stirring soon as well.”

“You plan on dealing with that mess too?!” Seo Yeon-ju’s jaw dropped. Saving the prick who had ruined Kim Ji-hyun was already making her blood boil—and now they were expected to go out of their way to stop a secondary threat?

“The authorities have already signed off on this. This is the last time, Lee Ha-yoon. Keep your private grudges out of national security matters.”

“Doesn’t it eat at you, boss?”

The man in the military hood paused. “Kim Ji-hyun was a brother-in-arms who stood by me for years.”

He gripped his bow with such intensity that his knuckles turned ghostly white, the material of the weapon emitting a faint, stressed creak.

“…I’m sorry.”

“We fulfill our duties. Aiming for the perfect moment is a fool’s errand, but forcing a move when the timing is wrong is even worse.”

Without another word, the hooded man started walking. Lee Ha-yoon, Seo Yeon-ju, and the rest of the unit followed him in heavy silence.

—

Regardless of the drama, Harbin was officially under our control. We had scouted it as our primary base from the beginning, so it was a major win.

“So that’s how those players entered the picture. Didn’t see that twist coming,” Han Sang-ah noted, while I rubbed my jaw and messed with my hair.

“In their eyes, their objectives outweighed their hate for me.”

Even considering I had crippled their friend and eventually finished him off.

“It’s standard behavior for a group with a singular, high-stakes goal,” I added.

It’s why people say you have to sever personal ties on the front lines or that enemies today are brothers tomorrow. No matter the level of animosity, if the mission requires it, you provide backup.

“Still, they’re a bizarre crew,” Jung O-hun remarked. He’d been eavesdropping and seemed fascinated by the ideology of the Descendants of Dangun.

“What’s so weird? Never ran into a Korean nationalist cell before?”

He gave me a skeptical look. “Not really. Our country is thriving as it is. Why the drama?”

To be honest, I felt the same way.

“The people who already hold the most always crave even more. Just look at your grandfather,” Han Sang-ah pointed out.

Both Jung O-hun and I shared an “Ah” moment and nodded in unison.

“How dangerous are they?”

“Quite formidable. Their leader could probably wipe out dozens of versions of me without breaking a sweat.”

Jung O-hun let out a low, impressed whistle. “That’s hard to swallow.”

“Doesn’t mean I’d make it easy for him.”

At my current level, I could likely stall him for an hour or so.

Jung O-hun stroked his chin, trying to process the facts. “Okay, so there’s a group called Descendants of Dangun, their boss is a monster compared to you, and you basically destroyed one of their guys before killing him later?”

That was a solid executive summary. The guy was good at cutting to the chase.

“They must want your head on a spike.”

“Pretty much. They were looking at me like I was a piece of carrion they wanted to tear apart.”

Jung O-hun started scratching his head like crazy before letting out a nervous laugh.

“Where can I turn in my two weeks’ notice?”

“Don’t even start.”

He gave a small chuckle before letting out a long, weary sigh. “What a disaster. My life has never been this complicated.”

“What are you whining about? Isn’t your nickname ‘Jung Noon Shit’?”

“Hey!” he barked, though he quickly softened into a grin. “My life might be messy, sure. But tangled? Not until now.”

While we talked, the remaining stragglers of the undead were being cleaned up by patrol teams. Since the word got out that we had secured Harbin, supplies were already flowing in from Vladivostok.

Harbin was just the starting line. Our true objective was Jawun Valley.

Thanks to Jung O-hun’s connections, we had managed to get our hands on a batch of masks crafted from sulfur ferns, which were currently in transit.

“We can’t outfit everyone, though.”

Those ferns weren’t something you could just grow in a backyard. They were rare wild plants from abroad. Even with our resources, there were ceiling limits.

“Half the team getting masks is still a stroke of luck. What’s the status on Adakawa?”

“She’s out cold, resting.”

Expected, given the sheer volume of energy she expended.

“Most of the threats emerging from the mists of Jawun Valley don’t have physical forms,” I warned.

We weren’t dealing with walking corpses there; we were dealing with wraiths. Entities that had shed the limitations of meat and bone. They are masters of stealth and strike at the psyche rather than the skin.

“That’s not a concern for me.”

Physically, my vessel is still a work in progress. It’s not at its peak. But mentally? That falls under the jurisdiction of the soul, and the soul inhabiting this frame is an absolute fortress. Petty ghosts can’t even scratch the surface.

The fog and spirits of Jawun Valley? For me, that’s a casual stroll.

“I’m more worried about the rest of the crew.”

“Why are you staring at me and Sang-ah then?” Jung O-hun asked.

Psychic assaults are a nightmare to deal with. They dig up your buried traumas and force you to relive your worst nights. You can condition your muscles, but you can’t harden the mind the same way. No amount of combat training prepares a person for the psychological fallout of their first kill.

“Well, we’ll see how they hold up.”

Ultimately, mental resilience is a solo journey.

“Can’t you just keep them away with those paper charms of yours?”

“I could try, but it’s not a silver bullet.”

The spirits come from a rank-1 Erosion Core. My talismans might dampen their power, but they won’t act as a total barrier.

“Jung, make sure you don’t get lured away by a phantom.”

He blinked. “What does that look like?”

I gave him a brief rundown, and his response was even shorter.

“A ghost girl shows up looking like a ten, wants to climb into bed and get cozy? Why on earth would I fight that?”

“Just go die already.”

Han Sang-ah had mentioned he tried to flirt with Adakawa Nanami using some weird magical girl routine and ran away when it crashed and burned. Consistency clearly wasn’t his strong suit.

“Anyway, get some sleep today. We move on Jawun Valley at dawn.”

We had zero time to idle.

“Are we moving too fast?”

“The undead we just fought were puppets. They were being steered by a singular, dominating will.”

Jung O-hun’s expression shifted to something serious. “Does that mean Gunsalok is onto us?”

“Almost certainly.”

Whether the Immortal Legion decides to actually commit their forces is anyone’s guess. Maybe they won’t. But even taking Harbin was full of near-misses and surprises.

“But Beijing and Changchun are a long trek from here.”

We need to clear Jawun rapidly and purge the Erosion Zones in this sector. Monsters venturing outside their zones is a rare occurrence, but not impossible.

Han Sang-ah nodded in agreement. “If it were up to me, I’d skip the rest and keep pushing.”

“Everyone is at their breaking point.”

She looked genuinely confused by that.

“You did the bulk of the heavy lifting. The rest of the team just cleaned up the scraps. I don’t see why they’d be exhausted.”

“The journey to get here was a grind in itself.”

Still looking unconvinced, she leaned back against a crumbling stone wall.

“Fine, a day of rest it is.”

“Make sure your gear and your body are ready.”

She gave a small nod.

“Our first priority is locating the Erosion Core hidden somewhere in Changchun.”

Jawun is still uncharted territory; we don’t even have a confirmed location for the heart of it.

Step one: infiltrate and scout.

“It has to be a fast strike.”

If we linger too long, we risk an encounter with the heavy hitters of Gunsalok’s Immortal Legion. If that happens, we’ll have to ditch Harbin and retreat.

I turned to Jung O-hun. “What’s the word on your tracking and that bracelet?”

He thought for a moment. “It’s dependent on the mist. If it’s thin, it’ll work. If it’s thick as soup? I’ll just be staring at the tops of clouds.”

“Worthless. Great.”

He gave me the middle finger. I just yawned in response.

“I’m spent. Get some food and hit the hay.”

My entire body was screaming after clearing Harbin solo.

“You okay? You were coughing up blood like it was going out of style a few hours ago.”

“I’m fine. Try to phrase things a bit more delicately.”

“Look who’s talking about manners.”

He tossed a small sachet of powdered medicine toward me as he walked off.

“What’s the deal with this?”

“A tonic. It’s my personal stash. Works wonders. Just toss it back and wash it down.”

It wasn’t a literal tonic, of course—just high-grade emergency medicine for internal trauma. I downed the powder and chased it with a gulp of water.