Chapter 52

“Hah…!”

A ragged gasp tore from Myeong-joo’s chest.

A shallow cavern was hollowed into the rock face just above the ledge, and the creature had tossed him squarely inside. The moment his body slammed onto the stone floor, a profound rush of relief washed over him along with cold goosebumps. Panting heavily, he shook his head from side to side in an effort to clear his doubled vision.

Despite the brutal mountain cold, patches of the cave floor were damp and fetid. A sickly sweet stench of recent decay mingled with the metallic tang of dried blood. Beneath his trembling hand, something brittle snapped with a dry crunch. Glancing down in a daze, he recognized the fragmented remains of bones. Nausea roiled through his gut, forcing him to clutch his throbbing temples as dry heaves wracked his chest.

Meanwhile, the demonic fiend crawled slowly up the rock face and poked its head through the cave entrance. Rather than entering fully, it simply rested its snout at the threshold, watching Myeong-joo with glossy, unblinking eyes. Its thoughts remained completely inscrutable, exposing Myeong-joo to the terrifying curiosity of an apex predator. That unnerving stare washed over him repeatedly until one of the creature’s ears suddenly snapped backward.

A heartbeat later, its head swung around in the direction its ear had twitched. Casting one last sidelong glance at Myeong-joo, the demonic fiend turned and vanished from the mouth of the cave. The scrabble of its claws faded swiftly into absolute silence.

On trembling, unsteady legs, Myeong-joo pushed himself upright and staggered toward the threshold, battling another surge of vertigo as he reached the edge.

“Ugh…”

Stepping to the entrance, a fierce gust of wind nearly blinded him. The cliff dropped sheer and terrifying, and the beast had vanished so thoroughly not even a speck remained in sight. The vertical drop was completely impassable by human hands. Just peering down made his senses spin, forcing him to step back. If he remained stranded here after nightfall, hypothermia would claim his life within hours. Were the scattered bones deeper in the cavern the remains of poor wretches who died the very same way?

A wave of raw panic surged within him.

“Bloody hell…” Myeong-joo muttered under his breath.

A sudden shiver of dread had wrung the curse from his lips. Biting down hard on his inner lip, Myeong-joo stood with his eyes tightly shut before slowly opening them again. Keep calm. Even if carried off in the jaws of a tiger, there is always a way to survive.

At that moment, the words Hee-wan had shouted—previously muffled by the roaring wind—echoed clearly in his mind: “Broadcast your harmonization! That’s the only way the platoon leader can track—!”

“Radiant harmonization…”

Left entirely alone on the sheer cliff, Myeong-joo paced about in a murmur.

Broadcast harmonization resembled remote harmonization, but covered a vastly wider wavelength radius. Consequently, the actual force carried by the matter wave was severely dissipated, meaning that even if it reached Yi-tan, the signal would be extraordinarily faint. It was difficult to believe Yi-tan could ever locate him through an energy wavelength smaller than a single grain of rice, but just as Hee-wan had shouted, he had no choice but to try.

Slowly, Myeong-joo coaxed the harmonization outward toward his fingertips. Though his knees buckled and trembled, he braced himself with the strength of his thighs, moving with meticulous care. Desperate as he was, an instinctive premonition warned him that rushing even slightly might trigger severe internal hemorrhaging.

“Urgh…”

A violent spasm wracked Myeong-joo’s stomach.

Despite his caution, his first attempt brought a violent heave. Ever since the demonic fiend’s deafening screech had assaulted his ears, relentless vertigo had plagued him, and now he vomited bile onto the stone floor. When he finally lifted his head, his face was ashen. The harmonization swirling wildly inside him seemed to have been waiting for any chance of release, raging violently through his bloodstream and slamming against his internal organs like heavy fists.

“Huuu…”

Yet he could not afford to stop. His faith that Yi-tan would come find him remained unshakable. Whether he loved the man or loved him no longer, that made no difference. Even with everything in his life twisted and derailed, his faith in Yi-tan remained absolute.

Myeong-joo willed the boundless reservoir of harmonization lodged deep within his solar plexus to stretch wider, reaching further into the distance. Spreading it as thin and far as possible, he strained to extend the field even a fraction of an inch more. It demanded an astronomical volume of energy—yet strangely, he felt it was entirely possible.

Long yearning for an escape hatch, the accumulated energy surged out of his body in a swirling vortex. Transmuted into microscopic particles, it dispersed sporadically into the frigid mountain air. The question was when that steadily advancing wave would finally reach Yi-tan. Knowing he was racing against time made his heart pound with acute anxiety.

All the while, the torrent of energy poured forth without end. Myeong-joo realized with sudden clarity what harmonization saturation truly was: when an overabundance of energy surged toward an Aberrant upon leaving a Harmonizer’s body, the bottlenecked rush ruptured the entire vascular system. Barred by limited physical conduits, the trapped energy turned inward to destroy the Harmonizer’s own vessels.

“Kgggh…!”

A strangled groan tore through his clenched teeth.

Were it not so, the agony would never be so unendurable. The pain arose not from the accumulation itself, but from the scarcity of pathways through which it could exit the body. Because it was an exceedingly rare affliction with scant research, much of the disease remained shrouded in mystery. Perhaps no one in the world understood what Cha Myeong-joo had just realized.

In the light of that realization, Myeong-joo squeezed out another wave of energy. Sending the signal further left him no other choice. A tremendous resistance pushed back, as though an entire lake were being forced through a single kitchen faucet, threatening to blast the pipes apart. The pain felt as if every blood vessel in his body were being torn to ribbons. Capillaries burst beneath the skin of his fingertips, dark bruises creeping up his forearms like climbing ivy. At last, slowly yet unmistakably, he felt the particulate wavelength spread across the mountain range.

“Haaah—! Damn it all…”

Yet Mount Gaema was vast enough to be called an entire mountain range. Attempting to blanket the territory with energy brought such excruciating agony that Myeong-joo’s knees gave way beneath him. Collapsing onto the frozen earth with both hands planted, the pain burned so fiercely he could not even feel the icy bite of the stone.

“No matter how vast the distance between us, you always channeled your harmonization to me. Even across several leagues, it was ever the same. As long as you were aware of me, Instructor, I could always receive your harmonization.”

Yi-tan’s past words echoed in his memory. Sending energy across leagues was not the issue; blind to the young man’s whereabouts, casting energy outward was like pouring water into a bottomless jar. Without perceiving Yi-tan’s presence, Myeong-joo had no idea how to direct the flow. Shaking his head several times until his blurred vision slowly stabilized, he exhaled a ragged breath and pushed himself up onto unsteady legs.

Just then, a presence stirred near the entrance of the cave. Having stepped back from the sheer precipice, Myeong-joo stared blankly toward the threshold as a sudden flare of hope sparked in his chest.

Could it be Yi-tan?

Quite some time might have passed while he had been doubled over in agony. Hee-wan had said Yi-tan would be able to trace him through broadcast harmonization. Because the movement was so quiet and deliberate for a demonic fiend, Myeong-joo took it for a human presence rather than a monster.

Parting his dry lips, he managed to squeeze out his voice: “…Second Lieutenant? Is that you?”

He prayed for an answer, yet only a harsh, metallic rattle responded. Icy chills cascaded down his spine. The demonic fiend was chittering, as though attempting to communicate. Lacking any knowledge of the monsters’ tongue, he could not tell whether the sound was a warning or the herald of an impending slaughter. Myeong-joo’s eyes collided directly with the creature observing him.

It was the very same beast that had dragged him up the cliff. This cavern was apparently its personal lair.

Despair washed over him.

The creature’s glossy black scales and vertically slit pupils belonged to neither man nor beast, revealing not a shred of emotion. As Myeong-joo gasped in terror and moved to retreat, the demonic fiend bounded forward with terrifying speed. Before Myeong-joo could scramble backward, the monster dropped something heavily at his feet, a thick stench of gore assailing his nostrils before his eyes could even register the shape.

“Ugh…!”

The sight stole the remaining breath from his lungs. What he had mistaken for a ragged black blanket between its jaws was the slaughtered carcass of another demonic fiend, still radiating faint residual warmth.

Staring fixedly at the petrified Harmonizer, the beast nudged the carcass with its snout. Even without great force, the dead monster slid closer to Myeong-joo’s feet. When Myeong-joo recoiled with a startled gasp, the creature tilted its head and shoved the kill toward him once more.

Confronting the monstrous predator face-to-face, Myeong-joo was so paralyzed with terror he could form no coherent thought. Even when being abducted earlier, he had not experienced such blinding panic; but exhausting himself to broadcast harmonization had left him trembling from head to toe, scarcely able to keep his balance. How on earth was he supposed to flee from this sheer precipice? His mind went entirely blank. Having kept his eyes wide without blinking for so long, tears spilled unbidden down his reddened cheeks.

Skrrk, krrrk…

Watching him intently, the demonic fiend raised a blood-spattered foreleg toward Myeong-joo’s cheek.

In that harrowing split second, a tremendous boom shook the cavern. Losing his footing on the trembling rock, Myeong-joo collapsed onto the floor. Yet before his hips even hit the stone, his eyes flew toward the entrance in overwhelming shock and joy.

“Instructor!”

Yi-tan roared as he breached the entrance.

It was Yi-tan. Around him, the jagged boulders and gravel littering the cavern floor levitated into the air all at once, hovering in absolute silence like a regiment of cavalry awaiting the command to charge.