Chapter 6: Wolves and Sheep

The Crimson Wolf Pack operated out of a converted shipping warehouse in the heart of Incheon's industrial wasteland.

Jin observed it from the roof of an adjacent building, his enhanced senses cataloging every detail. Two guards at the main entrance, both Level 45-50. Patrols circling the perimeter every fifteen minutes. Vehicles parked inside that suggested regular traffic—probably transporting whatever merchandise the gang dealt in.

And somewhere inside, information about seven missing defectives.

The folder Sung-joon had given him contained extensive intelligence. The Pack had been operating for three years, recruiting failed E-Rank hunters who couldn't find legitimate work. Their public business was security services for low-end industrial operations. Their actual business was everything else: extortion, trafficking, and—according to the Forgotten's suspicions—harvesting awakeners for parts.

Awakener harvesting was technically illegal but practically unpunished. The organs and blood of high-level awakeners contained mana that could be extracted and refined into enhancement drugs. The process was brutal, fatal, and extremely profitable.

Low-level awakeners—defectives especially—made perfect victims. Nobody came looking for them. Nobody filed reports. They just... vanished.

Jin had read the folder three times, memorizing names and faces, building a picture of the organization he was about to dismantle. At the top was Goh Tae-wook, Level 89, former D-Rank hunter whose license had been revoked for "excessive brutality." Below him, six lieutenants ranging from Level 60 to 78. And below them, maybe forty regular members with levels averaging in the 40s.

A hundred hunters against one.

Under normal circumstances, it would be hopeless. But circumstances had stopped being normal the moment Jin's awakening went wrong.

He dropped from the roof, landing silently in the shadows between buildings, and began his approach.

---

The first guard never saw him coming.

Jin moved through darkness like he was part of it, his Level -47 presence somehow less detectable than an unawakened civilian. He was behind the man before the hunter's senses registered threat, one hand over his mouth and the other applying precise pressure to the carotid.

The guard went limp without a sound.

Jin lowered him to the ground and moved on. The second guard was equally easy—a distracted E-Rank checking his phone, probably thinking that guard duty at their own headquarters was a joke.

He wasn't laughing when Jin put him down.

The warehouse's side entrance was locked but not warded—these weren't high-level hunters who expected magical assault. Jin's inverse strength made the lock irrelevant; a gentle push and the door frame splintered like wet cardboard.

Inside, the warehouse opened into a main floor that had been converted into something between a barracks and a social club. Pool tables, a bar, scattered furniture where gang members lounged in varying states of alertness. Jin counted twenty-three, all armed, none paying attention to the entrance he'd just come through.

He could have attacked. His stats gave him every advantage—speed, strength, durability that would let him tear through these hunters like paper. But that wasn't the plan.

The plan was to be seen.

Jin walked into the center of the room and waited.

It took a full ten seconds for someone to notice him. A woman near the bar glanced up from her drink, did a double-take at his level display, and choked on whatever she'd been drinking.

"What the—"

The room went silent. Twenty-three pairs of eyes fixed on the intruder, processing his impossible level display, trying to reconcile what they were seeing with what they knew about how the System worked.

"Evening," Jin said. "I'm looking for Goh Tae-wook. I have questions about some people he might have met recently."

The silence stretched for another heartbeat. Then someone laughed—a burly man near the pool tables whose Level 52 display marked him as one of the stronger regulars.

"Did he say negative forty-seven? Is that real?"

"Has to be a display glitch. Nobody has a negative level."

"Hey, kid." The burly man approached, pool cue still in hand. "You walk into the wrong building? This isn't a homeless shelter."

"No homeless shelters tonight." Jin met the man's eyes without flinching. "I'm here about the Forgotten. Seven of them disappeared in your territory last month. I want to know where they are."

Another silence, this one carrying a different weight. The hunters exchanged glances—knowing glances, guilty glances.

"The Forgotten?" The burly man's grin widened. "Those worthless defectives? Why would you care about them?"

"Because I'm one of them." Jin's voice hardened. "Defective awakener, negative level, written off by everyone who was supposed to help. The same classification as the people you've been making disappear."

"You're a—" The man's grin faltered, something like unease creeping into his expression. "You're a defective? But your level—"

"My level is wrong. Just like yours." Jin took a step forward, and the room seemed to contract around him. "The difference is, my wrong level makes me stronger. What does yours make you?"

The pool cue came up in a swing that would have crushed a normal person's skull. Jin caught it mid-arc, his inverse strength turning the impact into a tap.

"Thanks for that," he said, and snapped the cue in half.

The burly man's eyes went wide—and then Jin hit him.

It wasn't a fair fight. It wasn't even really a fight. Jin moved through the room like a force of nature, and every hunter who tried to stop him became a lesson in what happened when levels didn't mean what everyone thought.

**[DAMAGE RECEIVED: 89 HP]**

**[HEALING APPLIED: 134 HP]**

**[DAMAGE RECEIVED: 156 HP]**

**[HEALING APPLIED: 234 HP]**

They attacked him with everything they had—swords, clubs, skills that should have been devastating at their level range. Jin absorbed it all, each attack making him stronger, each wound healing faster than it was dealt.

When he stopped, twenty-three hunters lay scattered across the warehouse floor. Most were unconscious. A few were conscious but broken, clutching shattered limbs and staring at Jin with terror that bordered on religious awe.

"Now," Jin said, his voice carrying clearly in the sudden silence. "Let's try again. The seven defectives. Where are they?"

"Downstairs," someone whimpered. "Storage level. They're in the storage level."

Jin looked toward the back of the warehouse, where a reinforced door led to what the folder had identified as a basement complex. "Anyone down there?"

"Tae-wook. And his lieutenants. They're... processing the new merchandise."

Processing. The clinical word for harvesting, for stripping awakeners of everything valuable and discarding what was left.

Jin felt cold. "How many are still alive?"

"I don't know. Three, maybe four. The rest were..." The hunter couldn't finish the sentence.

Jin stepped over bodies and made his way to the reinforced door. It was locked, warded, designed to keep out exactly the kind of assault he was mounting. Mana barriers, physical reinforcement, alarm triggers—a sophisticated defense system that would have stopped most hunter teams.

He punched through it.

The door exploded inward, taking a section of wall with it. Jin descended into darkness that parted around him like water, following the sounds of screaming.

---

The storage level was a horror show.

Cells lined one wall—cages barely large enough for a person to sit, each one containing a prisoner in varying states of damage. Medical equipment dominated the center of the space: tables with restraints, surgical tools, tanks filled with liquids that glowed with stolen mana.

And bodies. Three bodies on tables, opened and emptied, discarded like used packaging.

Jin felt something inside him go very cold.

"Who the hell—" The voice came from the far end of the room, where six hunters were gathered around a surgical table. Their leader, Goh Tae-wook, was exactly as his file described: Level 89, heavy build, face scarred from a career of violence. He was holding a scalpel that dripped with blood.

On the table before him was a young woman, her eyes closed, her chest barely moving with shallow breaths.

"Step away from her," Jin said.

Tae-wook's eyes found Jin's level display, and his lip curled in contempt. "Negative level? Is this some kind of joke?" He gestured to his lieutenants. "Kill this freak and get back to work."

The lieutenants moved with the confidence of hunters who'd never faced a real challenge. They were the elite of the Crimson Wolf Pack—levels 60 to 78, experienced combatants, killers who'd sent dozens of victims to these tables.

Jin killed the first one before he could take a second step.

He wasn't gentle this time. Wasn't careful about disabling rather than destroying. These weren't misguided hunters following bad orders. These were monsters wearing human skin, and Jin treated them accordingly.

His fist went through the first lieutenant's chest. His elbow shattered the second's skull. The third and fourth died so fast they probably didn't even register the attack.

The fifth and sixth tried to run.

Jin caught them before they reached the stairs.

When he turned back to Tae-wook, the gang leader was backing away from his surgical table, the scalpel trembling in his hand.

"What the fuck are you?"

"I'm what happens when you hunt the wrong prey." Jin walked toward him, his blood-covered form casting strange shadows in the surgical lights. "The seven defectives. How many are still alive?"

"Four. Four are still alive." Tae-wook's voice cracked. "The woman on the table and three in the cells. I swear that's all that's left."

Jin glanced at the cells, at the three figures huddled in the darkness. Alive, but barely. Damaged by their time in this place, their trust in humanity probably destroyed forever.

"You're connected to someone in the Association," Jin said. "Who?"

"I don't—"

Jin crossed the remaining distance between them and grabbed Tae-wook by the throat, lifting the Level 89 hunter off the ground with one hand.

"I've killed six of your lieutenants and broken every hunter upstairs. Your operation is finished. The only thing you can offer me now is information." Jin's voice was calm, almost conversational. "So tell me: who in the Association supports this operation?"

Tae-wook's face turned purple as Jin's grip tightened. "Director—Director Kang! Anomaly Division! He buys our product—uses it for research—please—"

Jin filed the name away: Director Kang. The same division that Hwang Ji-yeon had come from. The division responsible for managing anomalies like himself.

"Thank you," Jin said, and squeezed.

---

It took an hour to evacuate the survivors.

The woman on the surgical table was in the worst condition—deep cuts from Tae-wook's scalpel, organ damage from partial harvesting, blood loss that should have killed her. Jin carried her himself, moving through the warehouse like a ghost while the remaining conscious gang members pretended to be unconscious.

The three from the cells were mobile but traumatized. Jin led them to safety, one step at a time, until they reached the streets where the Forgotten's contacts were waiting.

Sung-joon himself had come, bringing vehicles and medical supplies. His expression when he saw the survivors cycled through relief, grief, and cold fury.

"Four," he said. "You saved four."

"Three died before I got there." Jin set the unconscious woman in the back of a van, where a Forgotten healer immediately began working on her. "Their bodies are still in the warehouse. We should retrieve them."

"We will." Sung-joon's voice was thick. "The families—those who still have families—will want to bury them properly."

"The gang leader talked before he died. The Crimson Wolf Pack was selling harvested materials to someone in the Association's Anomaly Division. A Director Kang."

Sung-joon's expression went very still. "Kang Min-su. He's been running 'defective research' for years. The Association claims it's about understanding irregular awakenings, but..." He trailed off.

"But it's about exploitation," Jin finished. "Harvesting people for parts and calling it science."

"Can you prove it? The connection to Kang?"

Jin thought about the warehouse full of evidence—the surgical equipment, the bodies, the confession from Tae-wook. "Probably. But proof doesn't matter if the Association controls what happens to it."

"Then what's our next move?"

Jin looked at the van where the survivors were being treated, at the Forgotten members who'd risked exposure to help with the rescue, at the night sky beginning to lighten with approaching dawn.

"We make it public," he said. "Not just the gang—the whole operation. The connection to the Association, the harvesting, everything. We give it to journalists, to independent media, to anyone who'll listen."

"The Association will deny it. They'll bury the story."

"Some people will believe them. Others won't." Jin's smile was cold. "And every person who doesn't believe creates another crack in the Association's authority. Enough cracks, and the whole thing breaks."

Sung-joon studied him for a long moment. "You're not just fighting for the Forgotten anymore. You're fighting against the entire System."

"The System is what created the Forgotten in the first place. It classifies people as defective and then allows them to be exploited. It labels anomalies as threats and authorizes their deletion." Jin's voice hardened. "The System is the enemy. Has been from the beginning."

"And you think you can defeat it?"

Jin thought of Level -999, of the unknown that waited beyond, of the notifications that spoke of keys and prisons and things the System was designed to contain.

"I think I can break it," he said. "Piece by piece, rule by rule, until there's nothing left but the truth."

He left the Forgotten to their work and disappeared into the growing light. There was one more stop he needed to make tonight—one more thread to pull on before the world woke up and the Association began its damage control.

Director Kang Min-su. Anomaly Division. Connected to awakener harvesting.

Time to pay him a visit.

---

The Association's Anomaly Division occupied a secure facility in the government district, all reinforced concrete and mana shielding and guards with levels that started at B-Rank. Not the kind of place that allowed casual visitors, especially not negative-level anomalies with recent records of embarrassing suppression forces.

Jin didn't go through the front door.

He went through the roof.

The building's defenses were designed for ground assault—the aerial approach was less protected, probably because anyone capable of reaching the roof was assumed to be on the Association's side. Jin's enhanced abilities made the climb trivial; he moved up the exterior like gravity had become a suggestion rather than a law.

The roof access was locked and warded, but the wards were designed for sustained assault, not surgical precision. Jin found the gap between overlapping protections and slipped through, dropping into a maintenance corridor that probably hadn't seen human traffic in years.

From there, it was a matter of following the building's energy patterns. Director Kang's office was on the executive floor, third from the top, marked by a concentration of defensive enchantments that screamed "something important here."

Jin found an access vent and began his descent.

---

Director Kang Min-su was working late.

His office was luxurious by government standards—real wood furniture, artwork on the walls, a window that looked out over the Seoul skyline. He was a small man, thin and precise, with Level 342 floating above graying hair and glasses that reflected his computer screen.

He didn't look up when Jin entered through the vent. Didn't seem to notice the negative-level anomaly dropping silently from the ceiling to land on his expensive carpet.

"I wondered when you'd come," Kang said, still focused on his screen. "The sensors flagged an unauthorized entry three minutes ago. I told security to stand down."

Jin paused. "You were expecting me."

"I was hoping." Kang finally turned, his expression calm despite the circumstances. "After the Crimson Wolf disaster, it was only a matter of time before you traced the connection. I wanted to meet you before the Association's official response caught up with us."

"The official response being?"

"Kill order. S-Rank minimum, possibly SS-Rank if they can convince one to get involved." Kang removed his glasses and began cleaning them. "You've become quite the problem, Mr. Jin. The suppression force was bad enough, but destroying an entire hunter gang and exposing their connection to government officials? That's the kind of thing that requires permanent solutions."

Jin moved closer to the desk, his inverse senses scanning for threats. "You don't seem afraid."

"I'm old enough to know that fear is unproductive." Kang replaced his glasses. "I'm also old enough to recognize when I've backed the wrong horse. The Association has been my home for thirty years, but I've never been blind to its flaws."

"Its flaws? You were buying harvested organs from murderers. Calling that a flaw is—"

"The research was necessary." Kang's voice sharpened. "Do you think I enjoyed it? Do you think I didn't know what was happening to those people? The defective population contains anomalies—errors in the System that could be keys to understanding how the System itself works. Studying them, even through... unpleasant methods... was the only way to—"

"To what? Discover what exactly?"

Kang was silent for a moment. Then he stood and walked to his window, looking out over the city lights.

"You're not the first negative-level awakener, Mr. Jin. There have been others, throughout history. Most died immediately, their existences too contrary to System logic to sustain. A few survived long enough to be studied."

"Hwang Ji-yeon mentioned that. She said the System 'corrected' them."

"That's the official story. The truth is more complex." Kang turned back to face him. "The System doesn't just delete anomalies. It absorbs them. Their negative essence, their inverse properties—all of it gets reincorporated into the System's core, strengthening whatever the System is designed to do."

Jin processed this. "You're saying the System is eating them."

"I'm saying the System is hungry. It needs negative energy to function, and the only source of negative energy is awakeners like you." Kang's expression was unreadable. "Every anomaly that's ever existed, every negative-level awakener, every defective whose existence violated System parameters—they've all been consumed. Fuel for something we don't understand."

"And you were trying to understand it. By harvesting defectives."

"By studying the traces of negative energy in their bodies. By mapping the patterns of inverse function in their cells." Kang's voice carried a note of frustration. "I was close, Mr. Jin. Decades of research, thousands of samples, and I was finally beginning to see the outline of what the System really is."

"What is it?"

Kang smiled, the expression carrying no warmth. "A prison. Not built for criminals or external threats—something older. A prison for something that's been locked away since before humanity existed. Something that would reshape reality itself if it ever got free."

Jin thought of the notification he'd seen during his awakening: **[PRISON STATUS: SEALED - AWAITING DESCENT]**

"And the negative levels? The path to -999?"

"The key." Kang's smile widened. "You're the key, Mr. Jin. Or you could be, if you descend far enough. The System doesn't want to delete you—it wants to absorb you, to use your negative energy to strengthen its containment. That's why it keeps sending hunters after you. Not to kill you, but to weaken you, damage you, make you vulnerable enough for the absorption process."

"Then every fight I've had—"

"Has been the System trying to consume you. And failing, because your inverse nature turns even that process backwards." Kang laughed softly. "You're not just an anomaly, Mr. Jin. You're the anomaly. The one that might actually make it to -999 and find out what's on the other side."

Jin stood in Director Kang's office, processing revelations that reframed everything he'd experienced. The System wasn't just hiding something—it was actively containing it, using humanity as both source and guard for a prison no one remembered building.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because the Association is going to kill me anyway." Kang's voice was matter-of-fact. "The exposure of the Crimson Wolf operation was the final straw. I've been transferred to 'internal review,' which is their way of saying my deletion is being scheduled."

"And you want me to... what? Save you?"

"I want you to use what I know. Everything I've learned about the System, about negative energy, about the nature of the prison—it's all in my research files. I'll give you access. In return, I want one thing."

"What thing?"

Kang's expression became the most genuine Jin had seen. "I want to know what's at -999. I've spent my life studying the System's secrets, and I'll never know the biggest one. But you might. And if you do—if you reach the bottom and find out what's been locked away all this time—I want that truth to be shared. Not hidden, not controlled, not used for power. Just... known."

Jin considered the offer. Kang was a monster—his research had been built on suffering and death, on treating defectives as resources rather than people. But he was also a source of information that could accelerate Jin's understanding of what he was dealing with.

"Share the files," Jin said finally. "And I'll make sure your research meant something other than horror."

Kang moved to his computer, typing rapidly. "I'm transmitting everything to a secure server. The access codes are—"

The window behind him exploded.

Jin moved on instinct, his inverse speed carrying him across the room faster than conscious thought. But he wasn't the target.

The attack—a beam of concentrated light that screamed "S-Rank" in its very nature—passed through the space where Kang had been standing. The Director's reaction was a fraction of a second too slow.

The beam caught him in the chest and vaporized everything it touched.

Jin hit the ground rolling, coming up in a defensive stance as a figure landed in the ruins of the window. Tall, armored, radiating power that made the air itself feel heavy.

Level 678. S-Rank. Association Kill Team designation, if the uniform was any indicator.

"Jin Seong-ho," the S-Rank said, voice distorted by his helmet. "You're under termination order. Compliance is not required."

Jin looked at what remained of Director Kang—ash and scattered papers, a lifetime of terrible knowledge destroyed in an instant—and felt his inverse stats surge with cold fury.

"Neither is mercy," he said, and attacked.

**[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]**

**[COMBAT INITIATED: S-RANK OPPONENT]**

**[THREAT ASSESSMENT: EXTREME]**

**[RECOMMENDATION: FLEE]**

**[NOTE: RECOMMENDATION IGNORED]**

**[NOTE: SUBJECT APPEARS TO BE SMILING]**