Infiltration (6)

Cognitive dissonance occurred.

Sure, let’s say Shin Kang-ho managed to infiltrate the detention center. He’s an assassin, so it’s plausible.

But what were the guards at Cheongmyeong Detention Center doing while he made his way to the director’s office?

Even if we generously assume he made it to the office door, are we supposed to believe no one noticed him going inside?

Even if we give a thousand more allowances and assume that went unnoticed too, someone as skilled as Jo Hwan-seong would’ve definitely fought Kang-ho.

And yet, no guard in the entire detention center noticed anything—until they saw a severed head?

“So what you’re telling me now is… Jo Hwan-seong died without even getting the chance to hit the alarm, all the guards are dumbasses, and the security systems were total trash. And I’m just supposed to accept that?”

“……”

The subordinate said nothing.

Offer some clumsy comfort and you die at Kang Dong-hyun’s hands. Speak honestly and you still die. Silence was the only answer.

“Ha……”

A long sigh carried all of Kang Dong-hyun’s emotions.

There was no denying what had happened. The situation and evidence at the scene were clear.

They hadn’t just been caught off guard—they’d been gutted.

He thought Jeon Se-hyuk wouldn’t bother with Cheongmyeong Detention Center.

With his forces, even breaching the front gate would’ve been hard.

But never did he imagine Lee Ye-rin’s Cheong-an Mercenary Corps and Heuksaja would get involved.

Especially since those two groups weren’t exactly on friendly terms—certainly not allies.

Is this the classic “enemy of my enemy is my friend” move?

Three factions he never thought would unite had teamed up, and Kang Dong-hyun’s calculations were shattered.

But the real issue wasn’t the alliance.

It was that just one person—Shin Kang-ho—had completely breached the facility’s defenses.

And yet, he had managed to deliver the detention center director’s severed head.

“Fuck…!”

Kang Dong-hyun couldn’t bear the shame.

Was he really supposed to admit that a single assassin had completely broken into the detention center?

It would go down as one of Eclipse’s darkest humiliations—he couldn’t shake off the disgrace.

“Shin Kang-ho, you son of a bitch…!”

Kang Dong-hyun’s enraged cry echoed throughout the entire Cheongju Liberation Area.

Even though Cheongju was nearly under his control, his mood had gone stone cold.

To put it plainly, it was one step away from a funeral atmosphere.

Meanwhile, Kang-ho was keeping a cool head and acting strategically.

He had achieved his goal by hanging Jo Hwan-seong’s head in the most visible spot in the detention center.

The death of the director, a man who didn’t seem like he’d bleed even when stabbed, shocked the guards deeply.

But the more level-headed guards didn’t let the shock overwhelm them.

They recognized that someone—namely, Kang-ho—had killed Jo Hwan-seong and pursued him.

The problem was that Kang-ho was now stirring up the central area of the detention center, drawing a ton of attention.

Some of the forces that had been heading toward the front gate from deeper inside the center got caught up.

Why?

If they ignored Kang-ho and moved on, they’d be exposing their rear to him and had to keep glancing back.

But if they focused on Kang-ho, reinforcement at the gate would only be further delayed.

Response had already been late, and with the defenses knocked out, the need for support had grown urgent.

But stuck in this indecision, the guards were tearing their hair out in frustration.

The person who should’ve coordinated all this was the director—but his head was already gone.

And there was a bigger problem.

If Kang-ho had taken them head-on, they could’ve used sheer numbers to overwhelm him somehow.

After all, the guards had overwhelming manpower—sacrifices could be made.

But instead, Kang-ho would let them get close, then slip away again.

If they tried to ignore him and retreat, he’d use his “Kidnap” skill to snatch away low-level guards.

As a result, the guards who were considered small fry by Kang-ho kept dying one by one.

“Screw it, let’s just rush him!”

“Yeah! Let’s just smash him!”

Fired up by the deaths of their comrades, three hot-headed rookie guards all charged at Kang-ho together.

Some of the sharper guards could already foresee the outcome—but said nothing. Miracles do happen, after all.

However, when the three saw the shadow suddenly appear in front of them, they flinched.

Shwik! Sseog!

Whiiik! Swaak!

Ssut! Phusssht!

Kang-ho shifted positions like stepping stones, slashing their necks mid-move—killing them all.

Their deaths were so pitiful that no one even sighed. It was a foregone conclusion.

“Argh! What the hell is this?!”

One of them was a magic user, but when he saw Kang-ho’s corrupted form, he panicked in fear.

He ended up flinging magic wildly into the air, completely missing his mark.

‘Exactly what I wanted.’

Kang-ho was satisfied.

From the start, his goal wasn’t to go full rampage mode and wipe out low-level guards.

If the enemy regrouped and charged all at once, even he couldn’t withstand a war of attrition.

Just delaying their movements was a huge strategic win for him.

So he played an extreme “tease and bait” game.

He kept just enough distance to provoke them—knowing some guards wouldn’t be able to hold back.

Once distracted, those guards kept stopping and restarting, losing momentum and delaying progress.

Thanks to that, bottlenecks started forming on the main path to the front gate.

For the frontline guards waiting for reinforcements, it was a hair-tearing situation.

Then—

A man arrived at the scene late and shouted.

“What are you idiots doing?! Ignore that guy and block the front gate! What the hell are you doing?!”

A furious roar followed.

It was a new face, but judging from his uniform, he seemed to be third or fourth in command in the facility.

He held a fairly impressive shield—likely a swordsman specialized in defense.

He already had several guards following him like a personal escort, so Kang-ho didn’t push it.

Instead, he picked only those guards who had no known constellation info and targeted them with “Kidnap.”

With no knowledge of the skill and no way to resist, they were helplessly dragged in.

Of course, being kidnapped without realizing it only led to one outcome: death.

After a few of these deaths, a constellation Kang-ho had nearly forgotten about quietly revealed itself.

Kang-ho, who had both stat types, received dual benefits. His Dark Energy reached 465, and Divine Power hit 125.

‘F*** off already.’

Kang-ho flung a harsh curse toward Frenzied Murderer, who was likely watching from the Celestial Arena.

He wasn’t going to refuse free stats—but no way was he formally partnering with such trash.

Kang-ho’s “market value” was too high now to be tied to such a low-grade constellation.

Just then—

Clank clank! Clank!

A squad of guards suddenly emerged from a blind spot behind the nearby guard quarters.

The man—an officer acting in place of the late Jo Hwan-seong—grinned triumphantly and shouted.

“You think you can block bullets too, you bastard? Good times are over. Get ready to die, punk!”

Kang-ho was just glad that the ‘gunner’ guards and this officer didn’t recognize him.

They could only act so brazenly because they didn’t know. They could’ve run—but didn’t.

Kang-ho scattered shadows all around, but none of them even blinked.

More precisely, they didn’t react because they had no idea what kind of skill “Shadow Step” actually was.

“Fire!”

Bang! Bang! Bang!

At the officer’s command, the gunners opened fire all at once.

Ten gunners fired magic bullets from their rifles in unison, and the scene was quite a spectacle.

Each shot varied slightly in color depending on the mana concentration, making the colors visually stunning.

If there was one problem—it was that the situation itself was anything but beautiful.

Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!

“W-what the hell?!”

The officer jumped in shock as their magic bullets bounced off an invisible wall.

Kang-ho, on the receiving end, had been confident from the start that the bullets would be stopped by the Wall of Purity.

That was because the gunners either had no constellation or were contracted with insignificant ones.

Which meant their level was low, and their firepower would stay within predictable limits.

The moment they needed to recharge mana—was when Kang-ho’s turn began.

Sssht! Sseog!

Ssshhk! Swaak!

Each time Kang-ho swapped places with a shadow, another gunner clutched their throat and fell.

It happened with such eerie consistency that even the officer watching felt the scene was surreal.

Ssshhhhh.

The rain had turned into a heavy downpour, further clouding vision as gunners collapsed, bleeding helplessly.

Just a few seconds were needed to recharge for the next volley, but for them, that was far too long.

By the time Kang-ho had finished his deadly dance, all ten guards had become lost souls, never to return.

A single assassin.

And yet, the guards’ forces were melting away like ice cream under the sun.

Unfortunately, the end of that melting was… eternal death. A one-way trip across the River Jordan.

“Se-yeong.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t you think Kang-ho is causing major chaos inside the detention center?”

“…I was thinking the same thing.”

Around the same time, Jeon Se-hyuk had already grasped the situation, noticing that Eclipse’s response wasn’t as fierce as expected.

The front gate fell earlier than anticipated.

Sure, the defense systems were neutralized thanks to help from the insider and the allied forces’ concentrated assault.

But more than that, Eclipse’s reinforcements were smaller than predicted.

There was no reason to hold back in such a critical, time-sensitive situation.

So if support was delayed, there had to be a clear cause.

That could only mean something was wrong inside the detention center—and the only likely reason was Kang-ho.

Right then, he received a message from the insider.

It was a Hunter Jeon Se-hyuk had planted inside long ago—an old friend, someone like a younger brother to him.

“Hey, Dae-yong. It’s been a while. I finally get to hear your voice. Couldn’t call before due to security.”

—Good to hear you, Se-hyuk hyung. By the way… you really sent a monster into the detention center. That guy, Shin Kang-ho, right?

“Yeah, Shin Kang-ho.”

—He’s wreaking havoc right in the middle of the route to the front gate. It’s completely disrupting force movement.

“Knew it…”

—The body count’s already over thirty. This guy’s insane! Is he really an assassin?

The question everyone new to Kang-ho always asked, as if it were a rite of passage.

Even the insider wasn’t immune to asking whether Kang-ho was truly an assassin.

Having spent so long inside the facility, cut off from outside news, the insider was only now realizing Kang-ho’s true power.

Outside his window, the scene in the detention center’s central area consisted of one man—Kang-ho—standing alone in silence.

And around him, the corpses of guards lay scattered, growing cold.

And even now, the death toll from this lone assassin continued to rise.

“Ugh!”

—That’s thirty-four.

Another guard collapsed, spurting blood—a meaningless and valueless death.