[The Old Industrial Zone – Midnight]
The black sedan's tires screamed as they slid violently across the gravel, leaving behind a cloud of dust and sparks, before coming to a sudden halt in the middle of a vast yard of an abandoned factory. The colossal iron structures, coated in layers of rust, rose toward the black sky like the ribs of mythical beasts that had perished centuries ago. The wind howled through the gaps in the dilapidated walls, emitting a sound like the wailing of ghosts at a forsaken funeral.
I stopped exactly ten meters behind them. My boots carved a small trench in the dirt ground from the sheer intensity of my sudden braking, which defied the laws of physics. Everything stopped. A heavy, viscous, and suspicious silence prevailed... a silence preceding the storm that would erase the features of this place. The doors of the black car remained shut like a tomb. The engine died, and the darkness was pitch black, broken only by the sound of my furious panting escaping as white steam in the biting cold, and the sound of my blood boiling in my ears like the roar of a cascade of lava.
"Get out." I growled in a voice I no longer recognized. It was a demonic, raspy voice, emanating from the deepest point of Hell. "Get out so I can tear you apart... piece... by piece."
Suddenly... "Click!" The sound of a massive electrical breaker being thrown in the distance.
"Bzzzzzt!" In a fraction of a second, the pitch-black night turned into a painful, blinding white day. Dozens of massive industrial floodlights, mounted atop cranes and the roofs of the decaying buildings, were focused on me all at once. I felt the light penetrating my pores, so I raised my arm to shield my glowing eyes from that optical siege which made me a clear target in a circle of white.
And from the heart of the surrounding shadows... the ground began to shake. It wasn't just three of them. From behind the rusty containers, from the broken doors of the factory, and from the high rooftops... they emerged. An entire army of human scum. Gang members with faces disfigured by scars and tattoos, mercenaries in filthy military fatigues reeking of death, and hitmen wielding cleavers glinting under the light, iron clubs, and crude firearms. I couldn't count them; there were hundreds... a sea of merciless faces, their eyes shining like hyenas that had cornered prey they thought was wounded.
[THE MASSACRE BEGINS: DANCE OF DEATH]
I didn't wait for them to initiate. I no longer had the luxury of defense. I exploded toward them like a projectile.
The beginning was bloody beyond imagination. The first man who tried to intercept my path wielded a rusty cleaver. Before his slow human brain could comprehend the distance between us, my open right hand was already buried in the center of his chest. I felt my fingers piercing through flesh and ribcage, exiting his back with a sickening crunch. I ripped out his pulsating heart, frozen in fear, before the pain signals could even reach his brain. I used his limp corpse as a human shield to block a treacherous club strike, then hurled the body with force that crushed three men running behind him, turning them into a mass of broken bones and mashed flesh.
I was moving at speeds imperceptible to the naked eye. I was a red shadow cutting through the black. I grabbed one by the head, and with a simple flick of my wrist, smashed it against the concrete floor as if it were a fragile egg. Blood sprayed into the air like fountains, dying the dirt ground a crimson red, covering my face, hair, and clothes which had turned into tattered rags saturated with the smell of death.
"Open fire! Kill that demon!" The sound of gunfire erupted. "Ratatatata!" Bullets pierced my body with regularity. I felt them tearing my flesh in my shoulder, thigh, and abdomen. But I... didn't stop. The pain was there, but it felt distant, as if it were happening to someone else in another world. I looked at a hole in my arm; the bullet didn't stay inside. The muscles contracted on their own and pushed it out, then the wound closed, emitting thick white steam.
The killers began to scream in terror. They retreated, watching bullets fall from my body like rain without slowing my movement. "He doesn't die! He's not human!" one shouted, dropping his weapon and fleeing. But I was faster than their fear. I leaped high into the air and landed in the center of their gathering, striking the ground with my fist. "BOOOOM!" A shockwave shattered the bones of everyone in range and threw them like torn ragdolls.
Amidst this pool of blood and gore, the panicked rear ranks split, and "Kang" appeared. He was running erratically, his face pale as death, the bandage on his nose soiled with dirt. He wasn't walking with arrogance this time; he was trembling as he witnessed the massacre I had committed.
When his eyes fell upon the corpses, then upon my glowing red eyes, he didn't scream. He froze in place, as if Death had touched him before I even reached him.
He fell to his knees, and whispered in a voice trembling with terrifying honesty: "I swear to you... I didn't know it was your house."
I stopped in front of him, blood covering my blade. I looked at him coldly. "What did you say?"
Kang raised his pale face, his eyes wide with a horror that wasn't just for me: "He appeared to me from nowhere... in the dark... I didn't see his face, I only saw a hand extending with a flame."
He swallowed hard and continued breathlessly:
"He pointed at your house... and told me one sentence:
'Burn it with everyone inside... and leave no trace.'"
Kang wept hysterically: "I looked at him in fear, and he continued sharply: 'Do it now... or you will take their place in the fire.'... I was terrified, Ray!! I executed it and ran!!"
A heavy silence fell.
The absurdity of it... My parents didn't die out of malice, but as a "random target"? They died because this coward feared a shadow in the dark? The rage inside me turned into frost.
"You burned us... because you were scared of him?" I asked in a faint voice.
Kang nodded frantically: "I had no choice!! I'll give you anything... just let me go!!"
I took one step toward him. "Those who are forced don't throw the torch with their own hands, Kang."
"Ray! Wait! It's..."
"CRACK."
I closed my fingers around his throat slowly... not to break it instantly, but to crush it. Kang's eyes bulged, and he began to pound my hand with his weak fists, kicking the air with his feet like a hung sheep. He tried to scream, but his voice came out as an ugly, humiliating rattle, and the sound of his neck cartilage grinding slowly filled the air.
I brought my face close to his and whispered with cold contempt as I looked at his tears: "You lived as a cowardly tool... and you died as a silent insect."
"Gggh... khhh..."
I tightened my grip further until the blood vessels in his eyes burst. Then, with a single humiliating motion, I didn't throw him away... instead, I slammed his face into the sticky ground with force, burying his head in the mud of blood while he was still twitching.
I left him kicking the dirt, choking on his blood and the mud, dying slowly and in shame, his face buried beneath the feet of those he killed.
The moment Kang fell, I felt the universe spinning around me. The massive doses of adrenaline, the continuous regeneration of hundreds of holes in my body, and the draining of psychic energy... all demanded their price now. The searchlights in my eyes extinguished, and I felt a fatal weakness invading my limbs.
My knees hit the ground sticky with the blood of the slain. I fell on my face into the crimson swamp. I no longer had the strength to move a single finger.
"Raaaaaaay!!"
A distant voice... familiar... filled with genuine terror. I tried to open my eyes, glued shut with dried blood. I saw rotating blue and red lights—police cars—filling the place with their ominous flash. And I saw "Jin" running toward me madly, leaping over torn bodies, indifferent to the blood staining his clothes. Behind him, heavily armed police officers stopped dead in their tracks, bending over to vomit from the horror of the scene that no human mind could comprehend.
Jin reached me, sliding to his knees in the middle of the pool of blood. "Ray! Oh my God! What have you done?!" he screamed, shaking me, tears pouring from his eyes profusely. He placed his hand on my torn chest. "The pulse... the pulse is fading!! Your wounds aren't closing!! Help him!! Please!!" he shouted at the police in a torn voice that ripped the heart.
I looked at Jin's weeping face... he seemed to be fading into the mist. "Jin." I tried to move my lips, but no sound came out. I wanted to tell him I wasn't the person he knew. I wanted to tell him I was sorry for making him see this ugliness. But... the darkness was faster. My eyelids closed, and everything stopped. The pain... the sound... existence.
My consciousness awoke in a strange place. There was no hospital, no blood, no police. I was in an absolute black void, limitless, with no ground and no sky. I was just a "point of consciousness" floating in nothingness.
"Is this the end?" I thought with cold peace. "Finally... I will rest."
But... suddenly... a bright electronic blue light pierced the darkness. A massive square window appeared floating before me in the void, radiating an aura both technological and holy, and terrifying all at once. Words written in glowing white script:
PHYSICAL BODY: FULLY DESTROYED
RANK: INCOMPLETE PERFECT CANDIDATE
And beneath the table, a single question flashed in gold, waiting for my answer to determine the course of my next existence:
[EMERGENCY PROTOCOL: DO YOU WISH TO INITIATE "TRAINING MODE" TO RESTORE PHYSICAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND POSSESS ABSOLUTE POWER?]
[ YES ] / [ NO ]
I looked at the word. I remembered Jin's tears... I remembered my parents' burning bodies... I remembered Kang's cowardly justification. If this world is ruled by power and blood, and if I have to stop being human to achieve justice in the jungle of humanity... then so be it.
I extended my hand—which was now formed of blue light—toward the word [ YES ].
[ACCEPTED. TRANSFERRING CONSCIOUSNESS TO: "THE SIX GATES".] [NOTE: ONCE ENTERED, YOU WILL NEVER BE THE SAME... EVER.]