Chapter 139: The Truth Is Revealed
The ache from the night before still lived in her muscles, bruises blooming under skin as Yu-na cut through the city. Morning light chased her along the streets, catching flashes of her as she moved at full stride.
Memories surfaced without warning, heat rising in her face and settling low. It had caught her off guard. Every other time they'd ended up together, she'd been the one steering, Seo-jin trailing after her, eager and clumsy. Last night broke that pattern. Last night was unfamiliar ground.
Being pressed down. Being guided.
The mix of teeth and pressure, pain folded tight with pleasure. Even when her hands brushed the strange ridges along his back, it didn't kill the moment. It sharpened it. She told herself it had to be the Fae, time spent warped and twisted, but the reason mattered less than the result.
She wanted it again.
'He waited too damn long to show me that.'
[I never thought I'd see you like that. Yu-na listening. Following. Interesting.]
'Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up. I've had plenty that knew what they were doing, but that? That was different.'
She hit the city center at speed, streets thin with early foot traffic. A few stragglers bled out of the night, others stepped into their routines. No one spared her a glance. Sitting solidly at high C-Rank, there weren't many outside corporate circles who could slow her down. Let alone track her at these speeds.
Now she knew one more name belonged on that list. The surprise hadn't just been in how he handled her. Feeling him sit right at the edge of B-Rank had been the real shock.
She slowed only when the tower came into view.
Woon Tower.
She craned her neck to take in the glass face, polished and flawless, the reflection doing nothing to quiet the tight knot in her chest. The place still felt wrong. Always had.
She shoved the feeling aside and stepped inside. Staff moved immediately, trained and silent.
"Good morning, Mistress. Your father requested you be sent directly to the resource hub."
She didn't bother masking the look she gave them. Turning without a word, she headed for the elevators. Behind her, the woman at the desk kept her smile fixed and her eyes lowered, posture bent into practiced submission.
[When are you planning on leaving?]
'Not sure. I still have loose ends. Supplies to gather. And I need to contact someone.'
Beyond Shatterbay, what remained of old Korea was broken ground and dead stretches. A few settlements clung to existence, scattered and thin, none of them worth stopping for. That left only King-controlled territory.
The nearest option was the Cultivation King, his domain stretching north across what had once been China. But among all of them, only one held a contact she trusted even slightly, one that stood a chance of gaining her entry—the Tech King, whose territory still carried the old name: Japan.
The thought of crossing open water tightened her chest. Abyssal dungeons had haunted her since she was young. The sea itself felt like an extension of that fear, deep and hungry, and imagining days spent on it carved a hollow in her gut.
She stepped into the elevator and let the doors seal shut. Leaning forward, she shut one eye as the scanner passed over the other.
"Woon Yu-na. Resource Hub."
A flat mechanical voice answered.
"Voice authorization confirmed. Hub access approved."
The elevator dropped. Past the public levels. Past the storage floors. Numbers slid away, then vanished entirely as it sank deeper, the air cooling with each silent second.
When it stopped, the wall opposite her slid aside. Not the door, just smooth metal pulling back to reveal a short chamber and a single reinforced entrance beyond.
She stepped out and waited until the wall sealed behind her. As she turned to move on, her reflection caught her.
Right. Still dressed for last night.
With a flick of her fingers, black system light washed over her body. Fabric shifted, reforming into a dark-purple pantsuit tailored and clean. A pair of chopsticks appeared in her hand, and she bound her hair back with quick, practiced motions.
[Careful, Yu-na. Don't let him push you. Something about him's been off lately. Try not to provoke him.]
'He can choke on it. If he keeps himself in check, so will I.'
[That's… reassuring.]
She caught the edge in Jude's tone. He'd been with her since childhood—the only thing her father ever gave her that felt worth keeping. An A-Rank shard. Proof her potential was high enough to gamble on the World Dungeon someday.
A truth she never shared with anyone lingered beneath that. She didn't crave power. Didn't want a throne, or territory, or a name carved into history.
She wanted enough strength to stay standing. Enough that no one could force her to kneel.
Freedom, not rule.
The door slid open as she reached it.
The man she wanted freedom from most stood waiting on the other side, positioned like he'd been there the whole time, watching, anticipating, already ahead of her next move.
She dipped into a sudden bow, spine straight, tone level.
"Good morning, Father. Did you need something?"
His gaze dragged over her, stalled at the marks along her neck, then slid away. Without answering, he turned and started deeper into the hub, his voice light, almost pleasant.
"Walk with me."
The onyx suit he wore was flawless, cut perfectly, untouched by the filth surrounding him. The fact that his presence drew every drop of her attention, even here of all places made her jaw tighten.
Against her instincts, she straightened and followed. Her eyes refused the walls. Refused the shapes bound there.
The Resource Hub was one of the most secure sites in Shatterbay. Today, it was full. Six thousand, six hundred and six living bodies. All Users. All reduced to cargo.
The chamber swallowed sound. A single suspended steel walkway ran forward to a central platform, with branching paths splitting off toward banks of containment rigs. Every route led to flesh.
Rows climbed the walls to the ceiling. Naked bodies, slack and unconscious, locked in place. Tubes pierced skin and muscle, feeding, draining, recycling waste without pause.
She had always known they existed. Knew the corporation stockpiled Mules. They were income. Experience harvested, refined, sold. That was the public truth.
But standing here, she felt it. This wasn't storage. This was preparation.
Her father stopped at the center platform and waited until she stood beside him. When he spoke again, the words slid into her ears like venom.
"I want honesty. No politeness. No hedging. Just the truth. Can you manage that, Yu-na?"
The surprise lasted half a breath. Then it curdled into tension. Into heat. Into the familiar pull of anger.
"When have I ever lied? Kept things from you, sure. But lying—that's your specialty."
A laugh almost broke free, caught at the edges of his mouth.
"What do you think of me? Say it. Don't filter it. Tell me exactly what you see when you look at your father."
She blinked, once, twice, her jaw slack. The moment was so absurd she couldn't find footing in it.
"Since when do you give a shit? If this is why you dragged me down here, I'm done. I'm not starting my morning with another fucking argument."
She turned away. A hand clamped onto her shoulder, firm enough to halt her. When she looked back, what she saw made her stomach dip. Not rage. Not calculation. Something softer, buried shallow but real. Compassion, thin and frayed, clinging to the edges.
"No argument. I swear it. Say anything you want and I won't get angry. Just be honest…please."
Her body went still. The word hit colder than any threat.
"That's the first time I've ever heard you say please. What the fuck is happening? You losing it?"
She pulled back, expecting resistance. There was none. The lack of force nearly sent her stumbling. Then his next words landed and knocked the air from her lungs.
"Would you deny your father a final request before you leave? Is what's between us truly that broken?"
[How? Does he read minds now?!]
She ignored it, because the thought had already clawed its way into her chest. Her legs weakened. The feeling was wrong, like being caught mid-crime with no idea how. Words scattered as she reached for anything solid.
"Leaving? I fucking wish. Where would I even go? This is stupid. Next time you need someone, call Hye-jin, she—"
"Yu-na!"
His voice detonated across the chamber, rolling through metal and flesh. Fear flared, then burned away into heat. Her hands clenched as she spun to go. The instant she moved, he was in front of her again.
"Move."
"You forced this."
"Wha—!"
He crossed the distance in a blink and pressed his palm to her forehead. The moment skin met skin, her body seized.
The world vanished as images tore through her mind.
Her vision filled with her father's life.
Not stories. Not fragments. Days lived raw. Youth spent scraping survival from the freelands. His smile cut through the shock first, sharp and out of place. A version of him she'd never known. Running hard. Fighting harder. Laughing. Touching warmth. Loving. Then the weight followed. Death stacked on death. Friends. Strangers. Enemies. Lovers. All of them gone.
A pattern took shape fast. Everyone near him died. Over time, the light behind his smile thinned, then dulled. The edge in his voice sharpened into something colder.
A dungeon break wiped a settlement he'd called home. Later, high-rank Users stripped what little peace remained. They burned negotiations. Took supplies. Took people. Monsters weren't always the threat. Humans filled the gap just fine.
Then the memories narrowed, gripping her hard enough to drown thought. An ancient ruin buried in the wastes. His entry. His descent. Shadows tearing through his allies one by one. Blood soaking the stone. Screams fading until only he remained.
Just him and the demon.
The thing loomed like horror given shape. A corpse stretched upright, hide pulled tight over ruin. Horns shattered. Black blood pouring in thick sheets. It reeked of old death and hunger.
Opposite it lay her father, severed at the waist. Guts spilled. Breath shallow. Neither moved. Neither could. A stalemate measured in heartbeats. In that stillness, a voice sounded, layered deep, ancient, soaked in malice.
"Do you accept? Or was all your suffering meaningless?"
Her father answered without hesitation. Young. Broken. His voice burned with hate.
"I accept."
Dark light detonated. Flesh collapsed into slurry. Demon and man dissolved together, bodies reduced to bubbling filth. The pools dragged toward each other, boiling and smoking, until the mass churned and something pulled itself free.
Her father rose from the muck. Whole again. Reforged.
She followed his movements. Saw the wonder take hold. Saw the moment he discovered the Blind. She somehow understood what it was before he did. Not the one she knew, not the controlled shell buried beneath Woon Tower.
That one was small. A tight field hugging the building. Powerful, but contained. What he held was something else entirely. When the scene switched and she watched him use it, light surged outward in a vast dome, expanding until it seemed to swallow the horizon. It hardened, stabilized, then faded, leaving space rewritten behind it.
A city slowly began to take shape. She watched him bring people in. Watched him spend them. Win their trust. Bend them. New Hope rose from bare ground and raw labor. No children at first. None allowed. Only after the foundation held did pregnancies follow. Those children became the first true citizens.
The adults carried corruption from outside. Histories. Habits. Weaknesses. He didn't trust them. The feeling bled into her, sharp and absolute. These weren't her thoughts. They were his. She wasn't watching anymore. She was inside it.
It took time. Care. Quiet work. Stealth and patience ground away the old generation. One death at a time. One disappearance. One reassignment. Until only the children remained. Clean. Untouched. He raised them carefully, with help from those he deemed worthy. Faces she recognized. Men and women who would later wear Woon Corporation badges.
She saw them harvest shards. Saw them seize Shatterbay. Saw Mules rounded up and processed. Their purpose laid bare. Fuel. Experience stripped and fed upward. Levels grown without dungeons. Without bloodshed inside the dome. Without the Network's reach.
The lives inside looked unreal to her. Laughing children. Schools. Lovers holding hands in open parks. A softness that didn't exist even in King territory. A place untouched by constant threat.
Then everything went dark.
A woman's voice replaced the silence. Unknown. Familiar. Her mother's.
Vision seeped back in pieces. Not the ones she wanted. A woman she didn't recognize lay broken on the floor, body reduced to bone and skin, eyes dimmed to near nothing. Yet even like that, Yu-na could see it—the echo of beauty that had once been there. Standing over her, unmoving, expression stripped clean, was her father.
Her mother's voice came thin and cracked, each word dragging itself out.
"Keep the girls away. Don't let them grow up in this nightmare we built. Please, Joon-Woo. Don't raise… them… here..."
He didn't answer. Didn't kneel. Didn't cry. He simply watched as her mother died. Then the images collapsed, the pressure lifted, and his hand withdrew from Yu-na's forehead.
He stepped back, granting space as if this had been a business exchange. His face didn't shift. Not a flicker of remorse. Not a crack.
Yu-na was the opposite. Her body shook hard enough to rattle her teeth. Arms locked around her torso like restraints, trying to keep herself from coming apart. It was too fast. Too much. The memories stacked on top of each other until thought became noise. And still, when she looked up at him, she saw something new in his eyes. Not just cruelty. Not just control. Purpose.
Words refused to form. Logic scattered. She forced out the only thing she could.
"Explain."
He waited. Let the silence stretch for her to regain herself. Then he spoke. From the beginning. No omissions. No lies. He laid out his life piece by piece, answered every question before she could ask it, filled in every blank she didn't want filled. Hours passed. The day bled away. By the time he finished, there was nothing left unsaid.
It didn't steady her. It hollowed her out.
And when she was at her weakest, when her thoughts could barely hold shape, he delivered the final blow.
"There's only one reason for all this, Yu-na. I need a successor. I'm running out of time. When I die, the demon will surface. I need you to kill it when that happens. I need you to carry on my will after my death. Of all my daughters, you're the only one capable. Will you accept?"
The weight hit her like a collapsing building. The night before vanished. The heat, the bruises, the pleasure—all of it erased under the sheer mass of what he'd placed on her shoulders.
The room seemed to shake as his presence surged in her mind, pressure building, waiting.
And despite everything breaking inside her, despite the fear and anger clawing at her chest, her answer came out steady.
"Yes...I accept."