---
When silence meets noise, the world fractures.
Jin-Soo had spent weeks as a shadow—slipping through systems, disassembling evil, liberating the buried. His enemies feared him.
But these five weren't afraid.
They were watching.
And now?
They were closing in.
---
[Daegu – 3:12 AM]
Rain fell.
Fine, icy threads sliced through neon glow.
Jin-Soo moved through the industrial district like a wraith—barefoot, cloak soaked, essence core tucked deep inside his coat.
He paused.
The alley was empty.
But his system whispered—
> [Alert: Detection wave triggered.]
[Sound suppression breached – Directional Echo Sweep from above.]
[Origin: 32.7 meters, North-East rooftop.]
He looked up—
And then dove aside.
A flash of crimson lightning lanced through the air where he stood, cracking the concrete like thunder.
A voice echoed from above:
> "You're fast. That's good.
I like when ghosts run."
Ha Yun-Sil, teleport assassin, had arrived.
---
[Simultaneously – Rooftop: Blank Watches]
Blank, the silent tracker, crouched behind a water tank, nose flaring.
No one had ever seen his real face.
He didn't speak.
He didn't need to.
He saw trails of intent—not scent, not mana, but the memory of motion.
And Jin-Soo was weaving through shadows like a serpent made of smoke.
Blank raised a long, rifle-like object—not a gun, but a trace anchor, meant to pin a living target in place by disrupting shadow flow.
He fired.
---
[Street Level – Reaction Time]
> [System: Foreign object detected – Pattern disruptor class.]
[Dodge trajectory calculated – Counter-cast enabled.]
Jin-Soo spun mid-dash and threw a dagger made of crystallized silence—one of his system's crafted skills.
It collided midair with the anchor shot.
BOOM.
Shards of mana splattered in a ring of sparks.
A scream came from behind a dumpster—a low-ranked scout, hiding nearby, caught in the residual blast.
Jin-Soo's eyes narrowed.
"They're using civilians as bait," he murmured.
That changed everything.
---
[Warehouse – The Trap Closes]
Jin-Soo entered a wide steel structure. Dark. Abandoned.
But he knew the layout from the map he'd memorized.
He slipped behind old forklifts, into shadows.
The moment his foot touched the floor—
> CLANG.
A pulse wave erupted.
A giant shape smashed through the far wall.
Nam Dae-Gi, the strength-boosted tank of the unit, bellowed:
> "NO ESCAPE NOW!"
He hurled a slab of reinforced plating directly at Jin-Soo.
The impact cracked support beams.
Dust and smoke filled the room.
From the right, a blinding light sliced through the dust—
Kwon Shade, using mana decay magic, dissolved a ten-meter path into the ground.
"Run, ghost!" she cackled. "Run like prey!"
---
[Stillborn Realm: Instant Cast]
Jin-Soo's system responded.
> [Stillborn Realm – Flash Compression, Radius 3m]
[All spells, vision, and mana links inside zone… canceled.]
He vanished into black silence again.
From outside, it looked like a pocket of nothing had erupted in the center of chaos.
And then—
> One of them screamed.
It was Seon Ji-Hoon, the holy knight turned torturer.
His armor cracked from within.
His vision went dark.
His holy flame flickered… and died.
"I—I can't hear my own prayers—!"
---
[Behind the Battle – A Stranger Watches]
From the far end of the ruined block, someone else stood watching the battle.
He wore a long beige coat, face half-covered, holding an old coin.
He flicked it once.
> [Coin Flip: Tails.
Predators win.]
He frowned.
Then flipped it again.
> [Heads.
Ghost survives.]
He smirked.
"Interesting."
Then vanished into the wind.
---
[Back to Battle – The Turning Point]
Within the Stillborn field, Jin-Soo moved like death.
He left no wound that would bleed.
Only slashes that silenced the soul—crippling pressure points, mana nodes, will.
He didn't need to kill.
Not yet.
But he needed them to understand.
> "You think I'm prey," he whispered into Dae-Gi's stunned ear.
"But I'm the grave you're walking into."
And with that, he activated:
> [System Skill: Void Brand]
– Tags enemy's mana signature.
– Cannot cast above C-rank spells for 24 hours.
– Vision impaired in shadow-rich zones.
One by one, he branded them and fled.
He didn't fight to kill.
Not tonight.
He fought to show them fear.
---
[Predators – Post-Battle State]
The team gathered in the ruins of the warehouse, bruised, bleeding, and shaken.
Kwon Shade swore. "What kind of freak makes silence a weapon?"
Yoo Gun-Ho's voice came through their comms.
> "Did you see his system?"
None answered.
Seon Ji-Hoon finally croaked, "No.
We only saw what happens when silence becomes war."
---
[Jin-Soo – Safehouse Outside City]
He stitched a wound silently under moonlight, biting into leather to keep from groaning.
A notification blinked across his vision.
> [Enemy Skill: Predator Mark – Tracking: Interrupted]
[Elite Hostiles Marked – System adaptation logged]
[Analysis underway.]
But what froze him wasn't that.
It was the new message blinking under the system logs.
A message he hadn't seen before.
> [You have been detected by another system bearer.]
[Warning: Unknown System – Classified "Dead Class"]
[Approach Level: Friendly / Curious]
> [A message has been left for you:]
"I was like you. Once."
---