Chapter 4: The Assassin's Nightmare
Do-Hyun sat in his tiny, drafty apartment, shivering under a thin blanket. He had finally made it home with his instant ramen, but he was too scared to eat. The cup sat on his small table, forgotten.
'The news… they said a 'God' appeared at the gate,' he thought, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. 'If that God finds out I was there, he'll think I was trying to steal his kill! He'll hunt me down! I'm going to be erased by a deity for a pack of noodles!'
As his paranoia spiraled, the very air in his room grew still and heavy. A patch of darkness in the corner of the room seemed to deepen, detaching itself from the surrounding shadows like a drop of ink in water.
It was Viper, the world's most feared S-Rank assassin. For the right price, he could step into a king's throne room, slit his throat, and leave without so much as disturbing a candle flame. He had been hired by a rival guild to "eliminate the anomaly" known as Han Do-Hyun.
Viper was a living ghost, a master of the [Absolute Stealth] skill. He could stand an inch from a target's ear, and they wouldn't feel his breath or hear his silent heart. He raised a needle, its tip coated in a neurotoxin that could kill a dragon in three seconds, and aimed for the exposed nape of Do-Hyun's neck.
Do-Hyun's POV: 'Wait… did the temperature just drop? Is there a ghost in here? Oh no, oh no, oh no! First a God and now a ghost?! I'm going to die in my sleep!'
In a fit of pure, unadulterated cowardice, Do-Hyun let out a squeak. He grabbed the nearest object—his pillow—and began to thrash around wildly, squeezing his eyes shut as he tried to "scare away" the spectral intruder.
[Skill Activated: The Shivering Mountain (Passive)]
Effect: Your overwhelming fear creates a high-pressure mana vacuum in your immediate vicinity, pulling all unsecured objects and entities toward you with irresistible force.
Viper's POV: 'What… what is this gravitational field?!'
Viper's [Absolute Stealth] didn't just break; it was ripped from him like a cheap coat. He felt as if he'd been teleported from the quiet room into the crushing gravity of a collapsing star. He saw the boy "thrashing," but to his S-Rank senses, each wild swing of the pillow was a master-class martial arts technique, bending space and generating waves of pure kinetic force.
'He's toying with me!' Viper realized, his face turning blue as the pressure mounted. 'He knew I was here the moment I entered the building! He's pretending to be scared to utterly humiliate me before he ends my life!'
One of Do-Hyun's flailing, eyes-closed swings accidentally connected with Viper's chest. To Do-Hyun, it felt like swatting a mosquito.
To Viper, it felt like being struck by a freight train forged in the heart of a sun. There was a moment of absolute silence as the impact compressed the air in his lungs into a solid. His bones, reinforced with mana, turned to dust.
He flew backward, not just through the window, but through reality itself. He smashed through the apartment wall, sailed silently across three city blocks, and embedded himself in the side of a distant skyscraper, forming a human-shaped crater forty stories up.
The Aftermath
Do-Hyun sat up, panting, clutching his pillow like a holy relic. "I… I think I scared it away? The ghost is gone." He felt a cold breeze on his neck and looked over. His window and a large portion of the wall were missing.
"My window is broken!" he wailed, fresh tears welling up. "And the wall! I can't afford the security deposit, let alone the repair bill!" He started to cry, mourning his lost money.
A mile away, Viper—a broken and bleeding ruin of a man—managed to activate his emergency communicator with a shattered finger.
"Abort… abort mission," he rasped, coughing up blood and fragments of his own pride. "The target is... a monster. He didn't even use a weapon. He beat me with a pillow. And then… then he had the audacity to weep… not for me, but because my blood stained his floorboards." A final, shuddering breath escaped him. "He is not just an anomaly. He is a psychopath… a primordial entity of absolute cruelty."