Chapter 41
Pursuit
Baek Saebyuk turned his head toward Jang Mokhwa with a hint of surprise.
“Team leader, you look really good. You don’t seem down at all.”
They were being chased by a terrifying robot monk. Normally they should have been filled with tension, stress, anger, or anxiety.
“Compared to being caught by Jeongbeop, this is much better. Shouldn’t we be feeling happy or at least relieved?”
Jang Mokhwa kept scanning their surroundings as she spoke.
“If Geonwoo hadn’t been there, we wouldn’t have escaped just now. By now we’d have suffered a horrible end at the hands of that twisted pervert. I’ve never seen, with my own eyes, a woman killed by Jeongbeop, but I’ve heard about it from others…”
At that, Jang Mokhwa’s expression — which had been upbeat until then — darkened slightly.
She didn’t go into grisly detail about the state of those corpses she’d heard about. She was worried it might affect Baek Saebyuk, Seong Geonwoo, and even Yong Yeohong.
By then Seong Geonwoo, who had already finished equipping the military exoskeleton, moved his lips a few times and finally spoke.
“Generally, one Awakened has only three abilities.”
Turning the steering wheel to avoid a tree growing in the middle of the road, Jang Mokhwa answered.
“Three, huh. Jeongbeop had the ability to make people not know who he was, and he had Agwido… So what’s the third?”
Yong Yeohong, who’d been listening beside them, suddenly remembered the answer.
“Tasimtong! That’s what Jeongbeop had. He could hear the voices in other people’s minds.”
“So that fills out the three. Maybe with that information we can find a way to counter Jeongbeop. Oh — we should also remember that the range of an Awakened’s ability can have limits. That’s something to consider.”
Jang Mokhwa drove while speaking more to herself than to anyone else. But her voice was too loud to be just a mutter, so everyone in the team heard it clearly.
Seong Geonwoo, lost in thought, answered.
“When he used the Tasimtong and the ability that interferes with self-awareness, he got within one meter of the target. I can’t tell the maximum range, though.”
Jang Mokhwa thought for a moment and smiled.
“But we can make a rough estimate. When he attacked us from a distant tree he chose to use Agwido. From that choice we can confirm a few things: the effective range of the ability that interferes with self-awareness is much narrower than Agwido’s, or it can affect only one person at a time. In contrast, Agwido can affect everyone within a certain area.”
Baek Saebyuk chimed in, recalling the scene.
“I remember. When those starving spirits appeared around us, Jeongbeop had just leapt from that faraway tree — he was twenty meters, maybe more, away from us.”
She knew the monk order’s doctrines, stories and legends even better than Jang Mokhwa did.
“Right, let’s remember that. Agwido’s effective range is at least twenty meters.”
Jang Mokhwa spoke a little louder.
Seong Geonwoo, who had been quiet for a while, finally spoke.
“He’s stronger than me.”
“And he may have lived many times longer than you. He must have become Awakened a long time ago.”
Jang Mokhwa said this in a consoling tone.
She didn’t know when Jeongbeop had awakened. From previous remarks he’d made, she only guessed that after becoming Awakened his consciousness had been uploaded into a robot’s body and he’d become something like an immortal — the robot monk Jeongbeop had been active since the chaotic late era before the advent of divine power.
Meanwhile, Yong Yeohong was only now accepting that his close childhood friend Seong Geonwoo had become an Awakened being with frightening, uncanny powers.
At the same time he couldn’t forget the scene from moments before: the robot monk Jeongbeop, who’d radiated murderous intent and a hardened will, suddenly becoming extremely kind at a single word from Geonwoo — even shaking his hand and bidding a regretful farewell.
Everything Yong Yeohong thought he knew was turned upside down in that instant.
Staring at Geonwoo, he couldn’t help asking.
“When did you become Awakened?”
After a short pause, Geonwoo answered.
“Not long ago.”
Yong Yeohong wanted to ask more, but felt it would be like prying into someone’s secret, so he stopped.
A brief hush settled inside the jeep.
To break the mood, Jang Mokhwa looked forward and smiled.
“Should we keep that part a secret, then?”
“Thanks.”
Seong Geonwoo exhaled slowly.
Baek Saebyuk and Yong Yeohong also agreed to keep his secret.
Geonwoo was about to ask what they were referring to when he saw Jang Mokhwa’s expression shift slightly.
At the same moment she jerked the steering wheel hard and the jeep swerved sharply.
Even though Baek Saebyuk, Seong Geonwoo, and Yong Yeohong were wearing seatbelts, they all felt themselves tilt abruptly to the right.
A grenade whooshed through the air and slammed into the spot where the jeep had just been.
KRAK!
A burning burst of flame and a fierce shockwave spread out, making the ground tremble faintly.
Jang Mokhwa turned the jeep and floored the accelerator; the vehicle shot forward like an arrow.
A red laser beam clung to the ground and hissed as it melted a strip of earth. Beneath the melted surface a seemingly bottomless hole formed.
“Eleven o’clock!”
Taking this chance, Baek Saebyuk shouted directions to Jang Mokhwa. Without that guidance, the jeep would have sunk slowly into a bog.
Jang Mokhwa, who seemed very used to taking such directions, twisted the steering wheel without a second calculation.
Then she called low, “Seong Geonwoo!”
Geonwoo inhaled silently, threw the jeep’s door open, leaned out and rolled off.
Given the jeep’s speed, doing that in normal circumstances would have guaranteed injuries. But he was wearing the military exoskeleton.
He bounced up, supporting himself lightly with his arms, and moved in a zigzag to avoid incoming grenades and lasers.
He didn’t have a rifle or a submachine gun. Those were useless against the robot monk.
What he could rely on were the grenade launcher and the electromagnetic weapon mounted on the exoskeleton itself.
Boom, boom, boom.
Not conserving battery, Geonwoo sprinted. Through his metal helmet and crystalline goggles he could see the shabby monk’s robe and red kasaya worn by Jeongbeop.
But at the next moment Jeongbeop changed direction as if to circle around Geonwoo, exploiting the exoskeleton’s inferior reaction speed and agility to widen the distance.
At that rate Geonwoo would lose sight of Jeongbeop.
The exoskeleton’s integrated alert system detected nothing either. It seems Jeongbeop had an ability that could neutralize alarms.
Unable to catch up, Geonwoo backtracked along the route the jeep had taken, following its tracks to find Jang Mokhwa and the others. He managed to catch up with the moving jeep and clambered back inside.
On his way back he deliberately erased the tire marks and left fake tracks in a different direction, hoping to confuse Jeongbeop.
“He missed me.”
Once inside and with the door closed, Geonwoo briefly explained what had happened.
“Is he afraid of you? Did you use your ability to subdue him?” Yong Yeohong blurted out, revealing his wishful thinking.
“No. Jeongbeop’s ability has a fairly wide effective range.”
Geonwoo stated the fact without reservation.
Jang Mokhwa, who was about to speak with a slight frown, suddenly swerved again.
KRAK!
Another long-range attack from Jeongbeop struck.
As the exoskeleton-clad Geonwoo leapt from the jeep and ran, Jeongbeop again backed off, keeping distance and giving him no chance to fight.
Once, twice, three times…
Similar situations continued intermittently but without pause.
“What on earth is his scheme?” Yong Yeohong muttered, sensing something suspicious.
Jang Mokhwa curled her lips and said, “He’s probably waiting for the battery in our exoskeletons to run out. He’s as persistent as the rumors said.”
“But he can’t have that many grenades to keep using them until then,” Yong Yeohong reflexively replied.
Baek Saebyuk glanced at the rearview mirror and answered.
“He used grenades only the first few times. Now he’s using only the laser weapon.”
Feeling a wave of worry, Yong Yeohong asked, “Team leader, what do we do now?”
Jang Mokhwa, who’d clearly already thought about the problem, smiled and pretended to be relaxed.
“It’s not that bad. In that case I’ll put on an exoskeleton and use the suit’s integrated alarm system and my own ability to detect electrical signals to give Jeongbeop a surprise.
If the ambush succeeds, we might be able to seriously injure him.”
“He’s an Awakened,” Seong Geonwoo pointed out.
Jang Mokhwa clicked her tongue and laughed.
“I’m not an idiot. I’ve suffered enough. Do you think I didn’t take that into account? I’ll keep my distance from him — at least fifty meters. No matter how wide Agwido’s range is, it shouldn’t reach that far. If his power could affect us from more than fifty meters, he would have used it before he leapt from the tree earlier. And at that distance my hit rate— even using the grenade launcher — won’t be low.”
After some thought, the others were ready to accept Jang Mokhwa’s plan. But Baek Saebyuk raised another problem right away.
“If team leader and Geonwoo swap roles, who will drive? There’s no one who can detect Jeongbeop’s long-range attacks in advance and dodge them.”
Jang Mokhwa drew in a breath.
“That’s a problem. How to solve it…”
After two seconds of silence, Seong Geonwoo stepped forward and spoke.
“I’ll do it.”
Jang Mokhwa almost answered her own question.
“If you step up, we’ll have to change the plan. Compared to Jeongbeop, you’re a total rookie with no experience. If I leave the job of surprising and seriously injuring him to you, I’d be worried you might make a mistake or a wrong choice under that huge pressure.
So — here’s what we’ll do. Since Jeongbeop is playing hide-and-seek with you, you should play along as much as possible and lead him farther away. We’ll drive the jeep toward the area of the Black Swamp where people pass by most often. There will be many tire tracks and footprints there, enough to hide our traces. Then Jeongbeop won’t be able to find or follow us.
Yes, yes — I know what you’re thinking. There’s a problem: if you, the one who’s supposed to lose Jeongbeop, can’t find us afterward, that’s an issue. From that far away you won’t be able to contact us by radio.
Think. Think… Right — we’ll agree to meet at a relatively well-known landmark in the wasteland.”
