# Chapter 31
After connecting the goggles to the powered-on computer, Hyegang fell silent, saying to wait a moment. Watching him boldly attempt to hack, Jaekyung asked incredulously.
“You’re really casually hacking in front of a former employee. What if I report you?”
Iyeon blinked and turned to look at him. The content of his nonchalant tone was excessively honest.
“You can’t.”
“What?”
“Could you possibly win against him, Jaekyung-ssi?”
The pale fingertip was pointing at Sano. The cold gaze, which had been doing something else all along, turned to Iyeon.
“You really order him around like a subordinate.”
“Hey, administratively you’re the part-timer.”
“Without even paying me.”
“…Want to sign a contract?”
Iyeon’s face quickly turned obsequious. His expression showed he was seriously considering whether it was acceptable to offer minimum wage to the number one ranker.
“Not necessary.”
“By the way, you need to carry money. Why don’t you have a wallet?”
“Someone might think you pay for everything.”
The cold eyes traced somewhere on Iyeon’s person.
“You received my card, didn’t you.”
“…”
Goosebumps spread all over him. Since when did he know? No, I didn’t think Jonghee-ssi was like that, but did she hastily rat me out? So petty… How much could I have spent anyway… Various irrelevant thoughts flashed through Iyeon’s mind.
Surely she didn’t show him the credit card bill? What did I buy? It was probably over eight figures… was it over nine figures too? Is that why he’s giving me the eye? As Iyeon fell silent, holding a mental budget confession session, Sano looked at his pathetic head and then turned his gaze to Jaekyung.
“I’m not interested in your stupid mutant preference.”
The tone of his quiet words was so cold that Jaekyung unwittingly flinched.
“Explain what you did here, unless you want to be buried at your former workplace.”
The gesture of his slight nod was light, but his eyes were terrifying. This was the man who had shattered Jaekyung’s only weapon, his hand blade, without moving a finger. Whatever ability he had, he was most likely a ranked superpowered person. Following his survival instinct, Jaekyung stammered and began to speak.
It was just a few months ago that Jaekyung, who had been spending his time idly, received a scouting offer from the club.
The club was perfect for him. According to his supervisor who scouted him, it was a place researching how mutants could live together with humans. They could only handle low-level mutants for now, but their goal was to gradually develop research to communicate with middle and high-level ones as well.
It wasn’t a legally registered research facility—though it wasn’t completely illegal either since regulations regarding mutants were still inadequate—but it was research in the direction he wanted. Jaekyung immediately took the job at the club. To be precise, it was an unregistered research facility disguised as a club.
Jaekyung’s job, as a bottom-tier employee, was to initially classify the mutants that club members brought in. It was the very first stage of a process called ‘education.’ It was an insignificant job compared to their grand ambitions, but as he gained experience, his job responsibilities would also advance. Thinking this, he silently carried out his duties.
Mutants that had been entrusted to the laboratory and completed ‘education’ became docile to human touch, as if they had truly become friends with humans. This was true not only for species known to be non-aggressive but also for notoriously aggressive mutant species without exception.
Moreover, there were mutants that developed what they called ‘bonuses,’ a side effect. This meant the mutant gained an additional ability they could handle. The bonuses manifested differently for each mutant and weren’t particularly strong abilities, but what mattered was that they became special.
“Bonus mutants?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Nothing. Please continue.”
The light in Iyeon’s eyes darkened as he fell into thought. This, could it be… Jaekyung was momentarily puzzled by Iyeon’s reaction but continued his explanation without making a big deal of it.
Not only taming mutants but also developing new abilities in them. Jaekyung became even more curious about the rest of the education process. And he worked that much harder. He too wanted to contribute to this experiment soon. He wanted to know more about mutants, an area with many unexplored aspects.
“I said I wasn’t interested in your mutant preference. Want your tongue cut off?”
“No, no… this is somewhat necessary information.”
“Jaekyung-ssi, why are you only using formal speech with him?”
“Want me to cut off your tongue too?”
…It, it was recently that he felt something was strange.
Mutants that had received ‘education’ kept returning to the research facility. Regardless of species, the returning mutants became more aggressive and reached levels that couldn’t be controlled. Such mutants were beyond Jaekyung’s ability to handle and were immediately moved to different laboratories.
And they never returned.
“Probably, with high probability, they…”
The latter part of Jaekyung’s heavy addition didn’t need to be heard to understand.
The corpses of mutants turn to ash and disappear. How convenient this phenomenon is—after experimenting to their heart’s content, even if they die by mistake, the evidence of their existence vanishes.
Whether the research facility killed the mutants or not, the owner couldn’t know unless they saw it with their own eyes. Moreover, the owners waited in a dark club, drinking and partying wildly. If a brief deception worked, then the whereabouts of the mutant afterward became entirely the owner’s responsibility.
In this city full of superpowers, deceiving drunk people was easier than eating cold rice.
After hearing the explanation, Iyeon’s gaze went directly to Jaekyung’s stomach. Though hidden by clothes, when he saw it that morning, it was clearly a stab wound.
Something smelled. A very, very foul smell.
“That’s related to this place, isn’t it?”
At his confident tone, Jaekyung smirked.
“It looks that way, doesn’t it?”
Jaekyung tried to focus only on the tasks assigned to him, but curiosity, especially the curiosity of someone who is a researcher, was uncontrollable. He gradually began to expand the radius of his casual wanderings.
However, a research facility isn’t so easy to navigate, and Jaekyung, who hadn’t received proper orientation, couldn’t learn much. He couldn’t spend too much time searching because he couldn’t arouse suspicion, and there were limits to the areas he could access. He could roughly understand places like cages where mutants were confined or sterilization rooms, but there were numerous laboratories whose purposes he couldn’t figure out no matter how much he looked.
Still, thinking he might understand if he kept looking, Jaekyung diligently wandered around. This dawn, too, he had been peering around here and there.
At the end of the corridor, something like a box covered with a white cloth was being transported. The box was quite large for containing a low-level mutant. Jaekyung, who quickly hid before people came, followed those carrying the load.
The transport group stopped in front of a laboratory. Just before the box was taken into the laboratory, Jaekyung inconspicuously peeked under the cloth.
“What do you think it was?”
Iyeon rolled his eyes and answered glumly.
“Uh… a middle-level mutant?”
Jaekyung shook his head.
“It was a person.”
Whether unconscious or dead, inside what looked like a cage typically used for mutants, a person was lying completely motionless.
“You.”
At that moment, Sano, who had been silently listening all along, spoke.
“How did you do that without getting caught?”
Even the corridor they were currently walking through had nowhere to hide. All the laboratory entrances seemed to be hidden, and it was hard to understand with common sense how Jaekyung, who was in the lowest-level laboratory, could freely access other laboratories.
To that question, Jaekyung smiled faintly.
And then his figure disappeared.
“That’s my superpower.”
The voice hadn’t disappeared. Only then did Iyeon realize what Jaekyung’s ability was.
“Invisibility…”
“Well, it’s only Tier 1, so it’s not that great. It breaks easily if my concentration drops.”
That was the beginning of all the problems. Jaekyung’s superpower had broken because he was too shocked to see a human being transported while unconscious.
“Still, I was an employee here, but they were merciless~ They immediately pulled out weapons, you know?”
While running away from people trying to catch him, he was stabbed, and in mortal danger, Jaekyung jumped into any room he could.
There he found a portal.
“…There’s a portal here?”
Portal. A rechargeable machine that allows direct movement to a designated space, requiring the energy of a teleportation ability user. It was as expensive as the rare teleportation ability users. There wouldn’t be more than ten in the entire city combined. He had heard that even the Superpower Management Office had only two.
“Fortunately, it was in a charged state, and I thought anywhere would be better than here, so I jumped in.”
And the place he was transported to was Iyeon’s neighborhood.
