Outside the police headquarters, massive destruction had already taken place, yet Victoria arrived just in time—before Cheng could harm Marcus. From the window of his cabin, Marcus watched everything unfold, trembling. He had never imagined that the man he had intended to make a scapegoat would return as a lion.
"Stop!"The Secret Admiral's voice cracked like lightning.
Cheng froze on the second floor, just as he was heading toward Marcus's cabin. He turned around. Bathed in a blue glow, the Admiral stood before him.
"You…" Hatred filled Cheng's voice. "You're the one the world calls the Messiah, aren't you? Where were you when my mother was dying outside the hospital? Where were you when this system was crushing me to dust?"
The Secret Admiral replied gently, "Cheng, I understand your pain. But this path leads only to destruction. I truly grieve for your mother's death, but if she were alive today, she would want you to let the law do its work and prove your innocence. You are forgetting the lessons your mother taught you."
"At this moment, Secret Admiral, there is only one thing I know," Cheng screamed, and the moment his voice rose, the ground split apart. "My mother is dead! She was killed by your so-called path of justice and the greed of this system! Now only one path remains—revenge. I will punish every guilty one with my own hands!"
Cheng hurled a sphere of black energy toward the Admiral. She raised her shield, but the impact was so powerful that she was thrown backward, crashing into a pillar.
The Admiral was shaken. Never before had any enemy struck her with such force. She realized that behind Cheng stood the hand of an ancient, dark power, and she knew—somewhere, somehow—that this black force had to be connected to Aethna.
A terrifying battle erupted between them. On one side stood the Secret Admiral, guardian of justice; on the other stood Cheng, consumed by pain and hatred.
Cheng's power was growing with every passing moment. He shook the entire headquarters building, turning the atmosphere inside into something like an earthquake. Because of this, Marcus was forced to leave his cabin and come face-to-face with Cheng. Marcus—who, intoxicated by his own arrogance, had long forgotten his true duty and responsibility as a police officer—now began to beg before Cheng. But at that moment, dark forces and vengeance had completely overtaken Cheng, and so he lifted Marcus with his black smoke and dragged him out through the window.
"No! Cheng, please forgive me! I'll give you a lot of money, I'll withdraw all the cases!" Marcus begged desperately.
Cheng let out a bitter laugh. "Money?" he said, staring at Marcus with fury. "Can your money bring my mother back?"
The Secret Admiral rushed forward, trying to save Marcus, but Cheng raised a wall of black energy. "No one will be spared today, Admiral. Today this city will learn that when an innocent man is turned into a monster, even God begins to fear him. Today I will punish every single person who, driven by greed and abusing their power, killed my innocence and my mother."
The Admiral gathered all her strength and unleashed a Sonic Blast, shattering the dark wall. In the very next moment, the Secret Admiral flew forward at full speed and seized Marcus, pulling him away from Cheng. Though she managed to free Marcus from Cheng's grasp, in that instant Cheng struck her shoulder, carving a deep wound—one burned not by light, but by the fire of dark powers.
Cheng stepped back slightly. He could feel that his body was no longer able to withstand the rapidly growing power within him. He realized that he could not completely destroy the Admiral yet, because his new body was still not capable of fully handling this immense force.
"Today, you saved him, Admiral," Cheng said as he vanished into the air. "But remember this—I exist in every corner of this city where darkness lives. Until I have punished every person responsible for my mother's death, I will not rest, and I will return. Next time, this pretense of goodness and righteousness of yours will not save anyone's life, and even your powers will fall short before my vengeance."
When the chaos ended, the Secret Admiral sank to her knees on the ground. Her suit was smeared and heavy with dust. Just then, Gairy, who had been hiding in a corner, ran toward her.
"Admiral! Are you all right?" Gairy asked as he reached her.
The Admiral gave no reply. She gestured for Truth to come with her and, moving swiftly, headed toward her home.
Elsewhere, in an old factory on the outskirts of the city, Cheng sat in the darkness. Aethna appeared before him.
"Very good, Cheng. On the very first day, you wounded the Admiral badly. Now the entire city will tremble at your name," Aethna said, laughing.
Cheng opened his glowing red eyes. "I don't want destruction alone, Aethna. I want revenge. Everything that pretends to be 'right'—I will burn it to ashes."
But then, before Cheng's eyes, his mother's face appeared. That old bench, the stale, cold bread she used to feed him with so much love, and her final promise echoed in his mind—"Cheng, never let your heart turn dark, and never abandon the path of goodness."
"Be quiet!" Cheng screamed, clutching his head with both hands. Two voices were battling inside him—one was his mother's love, the other his own hatred and the fire of revenge. But hatred was winning, because his pain was still raw.
Elsewhere, Victoria had returned to her room. By then, her parents were already asleep in the house, but the Secret Admiral was utterly exhausted. The Truth Fairy sprinkled her golden dust over the wound.
"Victoria, this Cheng is not just a villain," the Truth Fairy said with concern. "He is a demon born of hatred and vengeance, and Aethna is supporting him. He cannot be stopped by your cosmic powers alone. You must destroy his hatred—only then will he find peace, and only then will Aethna's dark control over him come to an end."
"How do I do that, Truth?" Victoria said, tears filling her eyes. "He hates me. He believes I wasn't there when he needed me. And he isn't wrong… I can't be everywhere. But how is a son supposed to understand that when he has lost his mother?"
Meanwhile, Aethna was fueling Cheng's fire and vengeance even further. She said to him, "If you couldn't punish Marcus yet, what will you achieve by sitting here with your head bowed? Don't you want revenge against those hospital people who, out of greed, refused to treat your mother and threw her out of their ward?"
Hearing Aethna's words, Cheng's blood began to boil once again, and the desire for revenge inside him grew even more intense.
"You're right, Aethna. I had forgotten that I still have to avenge my mother's death against those hospital people as well," Cheng said as he rose to his feet.
A short while later, that very night, Cheng attacked the city's largest Metro Hospital—the same hospital where his mother had breathed her last. He wanted to kill every doctor and officer there who, driven by greed, had refused to treat his mother.
"Tonight, no files will matter here! Tonight, only death will be accounted for!" Cheng's roar shattered the hospital's windows.
The hospital corridors, once filled with the hope carried in patients' breaths, now echoed only with the terror of death. In the very center of Metro Hospital's grand reception hall, Cheng stood. Dark waves of energy surged around him from all sides.
"Where are all those doctors and merchants of death? Where is the administrator who threw my mother's file away simply because I didn't have one hundred thousand dollars to deposit?" Cheng's voice cracked through the hospital like lightning.
Terrified, nurses and ward boys began to run in every direction, but with a single sharp motion, Cheng raised his hands into the air. Every door and exit point in the entire hospital sealed shut with dark energy. No one could escape now.
Cheng stepped forward. The hospital's gleaming floors began to fracture under the weight of his dark power. He saw the two guards seated at the reception desk rushing toward him with electric stun guns. Cheng did not even move a finger—black smoke poured from his eyes, reached their throats, lifted them into the air, and slammed them into the ceiling.
"Pain…" Cheng murmured softly. "All of you will feel the same pain my mother endured in her final moments."
Cheng pointed toward the building's Advanced Surgery Wing. The massive glass doors shattered into pieces. He reached the doctors who were drowned in the arrogance of their massive machines and AI technology.
A senior surgeon, who was preparing for a robotic surgery at that moment, began to tremble when he saw Cheng. Cheng asked no questions and gave no chance. Using his power, he hacked all the surgical robots and machines in the hospital. The machines that were meant to save lives now became instruments of death. The robotic arms began to move on their own and strapped the doctors to the beds.
"No! Don't do this—we're innocent! We didn't kill your mother!" one doctor screamed.
There was no mercy in Cheng's red eyes. He poured his dark energy into the robotic arms. The machines began carving laser cuts into the doctors without any anesthesia. He was not killing them—he was making them suffer, exactly the way his mother had been left to suffer without treatment.
But what Cheng did not know was that news of his arrival at the hospital had already reached the Secret Admiral, who this time was determined not to let him harm innocent people under any circumstances—and was not going to let him escape.