His gaze dropped to the high-end laptop his administrative team had already pre-booted and synchronized to the global corporate network.
A fraction of a second later, a low, controlled breath filtered through his teeth.
“Haah…….”
It was the very first time all morning he had permitted himself to display a distinct physical reaction.
Exactly as he had felt inside the cabin of the sedan, Gi Junghyuk’s internal equilibrium remained profoundly compromised.
A severe, localized migraine was systematically clawing at his temporal lobes, causing the crease between his brows to tighten into a deep, painful indentation.
Raising a perfectly manicured hand, his fingers applied a heavy, rhythmic pressure against the bridge of his nose in a futile bid to dull the neurological noise.
After maintaining that static posture for a few silent minutes, Gi Junghyuk reached forward, unlatching a hidden compartment embedded within the inner architecture of the marble desk to retrieve a miniature, dark-tinted pharmaceutical vial.
He inverted the container, dropping two small, solid tablets directly onto his tongue before swallowing them dry.
The substance he had just ingested was a highly refined, chemically processed compound derived explicitly from ‘Aether Core’—the volatile, supernatural gemstones harvested from the depths of high-tier Gates.
Aether Core constituted the singular material resource on the planet capable of providing even a microscopic dampening effect against the rapid progression of Esper cellular corruption.
Exactly sixty seconds after consuming the dosage, Gi Junghyuk manipulated the digital interface of his silver timepiece, bringing up his real-time biological metrics.
[Core Corruption Metric: 77%]
The metric had experienced a pathetic, completely negligible decrease of exactly 1%.
Gi Junghyuk didn’t even bother to exhale a sigh.
The baseline data point was entirely aligned with his previous medical tracking; he was completely numb to the reality.
A flash of cold, deeply habituated resignation flickered behind his dark irises for a fraction of a second before being systematically locked away behind his usual clinical detachment.
It was an existential exhaustion that every single Esper operating on the planet eventually internalized.
Re-shelving the pharmaceutical vial back into the hidden compartment, Gi Junghyuk adjusted his posture and began to process his corporate data lines.
He maintained an efficient, unbroken rhythm for the next ten minutes, his eyes seamlessly jumping between the laptop interface and high-priority physical contracts.
A crisp, dual knock broke the silence, and the Executive Secretary who had accompanied him during the transit stepped back inside the office.
Extending a sleek electronic tablet toward his superior, the aide began to methodically outline the chronological data blocks for today’s corporate schedule.
Gi Junghyuk absorbed the data lines in absolute silence, offering zero verbal input.
Darting a cautious, highly vigilant glance at his superior—verifying that the man’s biological equilibrium had failed to achieve any meaningful recovery—the secretary took a subtle breath to steady his pulse before choosing to speak.
“……Um, Executive Director Ki.”
Faced with a vocalization that sharply deviated from standard corporate protocol, Gi Junghyuk lifted his chin, fixing the aide with a freezing, unblinking gaze.
Meeting that razor-sharp stare head-on, the secretary discreetly regulated his breathing before advancing his point.
“Your physical metrics appear exceptionally compromised today, sir. Shall I initiate a high-priority dispatch to bring Director Han of the Medical Research Center straight up to your office?”
“Do not waste the resources. It is an entirely futile exercise, is it not?”
Gi Junghyuk cut the aide down with a ruthless, zero-tolerance dismissal, flatly rejecting the concern.
What practical utility was there in drag a High-Healing class physician away from his laboratory?
At their absolute best, those medical anomalies could only accelerate the superficial recovery of his physical vessel; they possessed zero systemic capability to neutralize the underlying, structural catalyst driving the destruction of his psychic core.
The cellular decay was a permanent, non-negotiable tax he had been paying for years.
There was absolutely nothing novel about the sensation.
‘If the metrics refuse to stabilize, I will simply hit my breaking point and die.’
Gi Junghyuk entertained the fatalistic calculus without a single shred of emotional resistance.
He had been forced to coexist with this grueling, agonizing neurological white noise every single day of his life—tracing directly back to the catastrophic afternoon the first Gate fractured reality, forcing his awakening as an S-rank anomaly.
He was fundamentally incapable of erasing the data points of that afternoon from his memory.
It had begun as an entirely conventional, high-stakes corporate workday.
Trapped beneath the suffocating, non-negotiable pressure of his father—the absolute Chairman of the conglomerate—he had been forced to attend a formal arranged-marriage screening.
The woman selected as the prime bridal candidate had proven entirely indistinguishable from the endless line of aristocratic socialites who had preceded her.
The moment she laid eyes on Gi Junghyuk’s striking, elite aesthetics, she had instantly launched into a torrent of breathless, hyperbolic praise—showering him with superficial adulation until her own vocal cords grew fatigued from the exertion, prompting her to relapse into a tense, calculated silence.
From that point onward, she had adopted the persona of a petulant, wronged princess, anxiously waiting for him to extend a single shred of validation.
Gi Junghyuk had experienced absolutely zero emotional resonance during the encounter. If anything, a deep, mocking sneer had formed internally.
Long before he ever stepped foot inside the restaurant, his private intelligence network had already delivered a comprehensive background dossier on her extracurricular activities.
The document detailed exactly how violently unhinged and degenerate her private conduct was behind closed doors—noting a profound dependency on illicit narcotics and high-frequency group sex circles.
The stark reality that his biological father would aggressively force an alliance with a parasite of that caliber simply to consolidate corporate shares filled him with a profound, bone-deep disgust.
The Chairman was a thoroughly rotten piece of filth down to his genetic baseline.
Gi Junghyuk’s father had spent his entire marriage systematically disrespecting his legitimate wife—Gi Junghyuk’s mother—by maintaining an endless, highly public roster of mistresses.
The man navigated his existence like a base, primitive beast driven entirely by his lower anatomy, littering the corporate landscape with bastard bloodlines and concubines without a single shred of restraint.
He was an organism completely enslaved by his own base urges.
Even now, with his vessel rapidly accelerating into advanced senility, the old bastard was actively undergoing high-risk, experimental medical procedures simply to force his limp, shriveled genitalia to achieve an erection.
Leaving the candidate to continue her performance at the table, Gi Junghyuk had simply risen from his seat and exited the establishment without offering a single word of farewell.
Though the outdoor climate was crisp and temperate, the refreshing air had done absolutely nothing to cleanse the sheer toxicity fouling his internal state.
Acting on a sudden, uncharacteristic impulse, he had flatly ignored his secretary’s frantic calls, boarding his vehicle completely unassisted and launching himself down the highway.
Exactly two hours later, his coordinates intersected perfectly with the rupture zone of the planet’s very first Gate.
It was an unvarnished, apocalyptic slaughterhouse.
Horrific, non-terrestrial monstrosities that had previously existed exclusively within the realm of dark cinematic fiction began to hemorrhage from the tearing spatial rift in an endless, suffocating wave.
Trapped inside his stalled vehicle, Gi Junghyuk had been forced to look through his windshield as human civilians were systematically torn apart and devoured alive by the beasts.
He watched with crystalline clarity as a massive predator greedily crammed three screaming bodies into its maw simultaneously, the sheer crushing force of its jaws causing a severed human eyeball to violently pop out of its socket and wetly hit the asphalt.
Even for an individual like Gi Junghyuk, who had never once lost his clinical equanimity since his youth, the raw, visceral terror of that cataclysm had completely bleached his cognitive functions.
His mind was rendered entirely hollow.
What baseline of logical calculus could a human mind possibly maintain while trapped in the center of a literal slaughterhouse?
