A community, huh…… There used to be something like that back then, too.
Even during Seunghyun’s days as the number two ranked esper, guides would run secret message boards where they shared gossip about espers and information on dangerous gates. Seunghyun hadn’t wanted to invade their privacy, so he’d turned a blind eye — but he’d at least known how to access it. Yihyun skillfully traced the roundabout route and logged into the guides’ own clandestine sanctuary: “UnderArc.”
[Current users online: 1,402]
The board was more active than he’d expected.
[Gate C-14 sector is in absolute shit condition today. Mana contamination over 40%. Watch yourselves out there.]
[Ranking #5, ㅇㅇㅈ, that bastard twisted a guide’s wrist again. Everyone be careful.]
[Rumor going around the rebel side: guiding allowance is actually double?]
└ Yeah
[[Long post/GIF] The Commander’s visuals while working hard today are absolutely insane… (cardiac arrest warning)]
Yihyun’s brow furrowed. Sandwiched between grim, serious posts was a completely out-of-place worship thread. He clicked on it — and sure enough, there was a string of high-quality stills and GIFs of Han Taeyun, clearly taken by someone who’d risked their life to get the shot in rebel-occupied territory.
[Wait, is that actually a human face? Why does he have to be the rebel commander of all things? Come back. Actually, no — I’ll go to you.]
└ Our Commander looks even better in person, they say.
[With visuals like that AND good treatment for guides… I’m packing my bags and defecting tomorrow.]
[You should’ve taken me with you if you were going to leave. Taeyun, why did you go without saying a word.]
└ Why would he take you?
[Even just one second would be enough — please, I just want to be guided by our Commander once. I’d give up ten years of my life.]
└ Get in line. I’m first.
“Ha, for fuck’s sake. Same as ever.”
Yihyun let out a hollow laugh and pressed a hand to his forehead. It had been like this back in the days of the Ability Authority, too. The moment Han Taeyun set foot in the training grounds, the guide quarters were already in a festival frenzy. There were guides who openly formed fan clubs in his name, and more than a few who’d been caught trying to steal the man’s ID photo.
But the one at the center of all that chaos — Han Taeyun himself — had been utterly indifferent. Countless guides had vied for the position of his dedicated guide and thrown themselves at him, yet he had never once allowed it. He always kept his distance, accepting only radiative guiding before stepping away.
Back then, Seunghyun used to tease him about it. “Hey, you planning to become a monk or something? Why are you so stingy?” Taeyun would answer not with words but with a cold, sharp glare — drawing those handsome brows together without mercy before turning and walking away. Watching his retreating back, Seunghyun would click his tongue and mutter, “Prickly bastard.”
“Tone down the face a little. Dramatic as ever, then and now.”
Among all the scattered chatter, what caught Yihyun’s eye was a post titled [Current Map of Occupied and Destroyed Zones]. It was a map marking in red all the areas that the rebel forces — Han Taeyun’s faction — had swept through.
“……?”
Yihyun’s eyes narrowed sharply. To guides with no combat background, it would have looked like nothing more than the trail of destruction left by a tyrant — but to Seunghyun, who had commanded thousands of operations, the map told an entirely different story.
That’s strange. Why go all the way out there just to destroy it?
Resource supply lines, military bases, and tucked between them at precise intervals — research institutes directly under the Allied Nations government, positioned as if someone had deliberately placed dots on a map. Yihyun mentally connected the coordinates of the red markers in three dimensions. There was one chilling commonality threading through the center of all three points.
Every single one of these places…… used to have a high-grade gate managed by the World Allied Forces.
Han Taeyun wasn’t simply destroying cities. He was clearing specific gates. When a gate disappears, the mana field around it collapses as a matter of course — and it seemed he was razing entire cities to the ground in order to leave no trace of even that. Han Taeyun appeared to be trying to slash apart the very mana structure of the world. As if desperately picking out misfit pieces from an enormous puzzle.
“What on earth are you thinking?”
Yihyun fixed his gaze once again on Han Taeyun within the screen. Beyond the collapsed gate entrance, beyond the white-crumbled ash, Han Taeyun stood. He wasn’t looking back at the rubble he had just destroyed — his eyes were fixed on the distant sky.
That hollowness Yihyun had seen in the news clip came through just as vividly on the screen.
“Han Taeyun. What are you erasing right now? Or…… are you searching for something?”
Those red dots he had torn through seemed to speak directly to Yihyun. Han Taeyun was not insane.
The bell signaling the start of the afternoon guiding session rang. Yihyun absently tapped the tablet on his desk. The faces and names of the espers he was assigned to see that afternoon materialized on the screen.
[14:00 — C-Rank Esper Kim Idan]
[14:30 — B-Rank Esper Song Yeongcheol]
A brutal schedule — two espers per guide, every hour. Yihyun frowned and scrolled through the small system log that had appeared at the bottom of the tablet.
……?
Without warning, a red error message began blinking across the screen, and his assignment list went blank. Someone had used their authority in the central control room to forcibly wipe Yihyun’s guiding list. He didn’t need to look to know who was behind it. It was plain to see what kind of revenge Jung Yura — who had retreated after being shut down in the cafeteria earlier — had chosen.
Clang—!
The waiting room door flew open as if it might break off its hinges. An unofficial visitor appeared, one whose name and rank showed up nowhere on the tablet.
Built like proof of his telekinetic-force type at a glance — a massive frame and a menacing expression. What made Yihyun’s brow knit wasn’t the man’s appearance but the savage waves radiating off his body. The cold pressure prickling against his skin put the rank at S-Rank at minimum.
Jung Yura had sent him, so there was no way he was an ordinary person. Not someone here for guiding — this was a beast that had come to devour a person whole. Reading the crude, low lust lurking in the man’s eyes, Yihyun clicked his tongue inwardly.
“Hey, Baek Yihyun. Heard you’re something special these days.”
The man — Kang Jindu — rolled his grotesque muscled body forward, leaned over the desk, and reached for Yihyun’s jaw.
“Heard you died and came back and now your guiding is to die for, so I came to see for myself. How about you take off your clothes first? Gotta warm the body up before guiding takes effect properly, right?”
With a phlegmy rumble, Kang Jindu’s large hand closed around Yihyun’s jaw. Yihyun’s eyes flashed cold.
Big body, empty head. What a fool.
Espers tend to let their guard down in front of guides. Yihyun instead pressed into the man’s space and sprayed the pepper spray from Baek Yihyun’s inventory directly into Kang Jindu’s eyes.
Tsssss—!
“AAAARGH!”
Kang Jindu screamed. Before he even had time to blink, the caustic liquid drove straight into his eyeballs, and the massive frame staggered, both hands flying up to cover his face. Yihyun didn’t waste the opening — he compressed guiding energy into his two slender fingers, sharp and hard as a blade’s edge.
Pak, papak—!
Drawing on the combat techniques he had honed against countless fighters during his life as Lee Seunghyun, he struck precisely — below Kang Jindu’s collarbone, under his armpit, and near his solar plexus — hitting the mana pressure points exactly.
“Wh……?”
Kang Jindu’s bloodshot eyes went wide with shock. His arm froze mid-air before it could so much as brush Yihyun’s collar. Paralysis spread through his body, and the massive S-Rank mana that had been surging inside him hit a block at a specific point and began to flow in reverse.
“Kh, hk—! Wh, what is——!”
“You won’t be able to move a finger for the next twenty-four hours. Don’t try to force your mana through. Your circuits could burn out permanently.”
Yihyun gave the now-rigid Kang Jindu a light push on the chest. The frame well over two meters tall toppled backward like a felled log and hit the floor with a crash. Yihyun dusted off his hands without expression and pressed the emergency bell.
Click — the door opened, and the expressions on the security team members who came rushing in were a sight to behold. The moment they took in the scene inside the room, they all, as if on cue, turned toward Yihyun with a look that said: Again?
The shock of the morning’s incident — espers being carted off to the medical ward one after another — hadn’t even had time to fade. Now the sight of S-Rank Kang Jindu sprawled flat on the floor like an upended frog sent the security team leader’s eyelid twitching.
“……Guide Baek Yihyun, what happened this time?”
“As you can see. This one’s mana got a little tangled up. Self-induced paralysis, so please remove him quickly.”
At Yihyun’s shameless reply, the color drained from the security team members’ faces. They looked at Kang Jindu’s massive frame, rigid as a log on the floor, and, as if on cue, reached for their radios.
“Requesting additional personnel. The subject is Esper Kang Jindu. A stretcher won’t cut it.”
A moment later, the reinforcements swarmed in. Two burly security team members per arm — four in total — latched onto Kang Jindu and began dragging him across the floor like a piece of luggage. To the rhythm of grunted “Heave — one, two!” the S-Rank esper was hauled out with the back of his head scraping the ground.
Yihyun watched the spectacle with something like idle curiosity, then called out to the security team leader’s back as he was heading for the door.
“Oh, and — could you close the door gently on your way out? Everyone who’s come in today has been taking their frustrations out on it. I’m worried it’ll break.”
The security team leader couldn’t even manage a response. He shot Yihyun one last fear-stricken look over his shoulder, then hurried out of the room.
Click — the heavy door shut, and silence settled over the room.
“Ugh……!”
Yihyun’s knees, which had been holding him upright with such composure, buckled without warning. It was the price of forcing guiding waves into combat techniques his soul remembered. His vision strobed white, and his fingertips, going ice-cold, spasmed out of his control and crumpled the documents on the desk.
