Weak Class of Anti-Hero
Chapter 15: The Hunt Begins

Chapter 15: The Hunt Begins

Min-Soo took a step back, as if he had just touched something scorching hot.

"Ji-Hoon, don’t do this. This is what they want. They want to break you completely. They’re going to kill you."

"Let them try," I replied, my voice as calm as ever.

I sat down on the bed and started checking the functions on my terminal.

Min-Soo paced restlessly around the small room. "This makes no sense! What’s your plan? You can’t face them head-on. There are too many of them, and they’re too strong. Yoo-Na is an A-rank monster. You don’t stand a chance!"

"I don’t need a plan," I said, not looking at him.

I stopped on one of the terminal’s functions. My skill interface. Most students had pages and pages of descriptions, stats, and levels.

Mine was almost empty.

[Skill: Summon - Dagger]

[Rank: F]

[Description: Summons a small dagger.]

That was it. But since the confrontation with Choi’s group, a new line had appeared, grayed out and unreadable.

[Seal Release Condition: 1/3 Met - Desire for Domination]

[Seal Release Condition: 2/3 ??? - Pending]

[Seal Release Condition: 3/3 ??? - Pending]

Desire for Domination. That was the day. The day I decided I would no longer be a victim.

Min-Soo stopped in front of me, desperate. "So what are you going to do? Just tell me something!"

I looked up at him.

"Tonight, I’m not going to the Pit to fight. I’m not going there to survive."

I summoned my dagger. It appeared in my hand. In the dim light of the room, it seemed darker, hungrier than ever.

"I’m going to kill."

Min-Soo stared at the dagger in my hand, then at my face. The argument left his eyes, replaced by a slow, horrified understanding. He realized that words were useless now.

He stopped pacing. He sat down on the only chair in the room, looking utterly defeated.

"Killing someone in the academy..." he whispered. "Especially a member of the Ivory Circle... They won’t just kick you out. They’ll make you disappear."

"I know."

The rest of the day passed in a heavy silence. Min-Soo stayed. He didn’t try to reason with me. He just took out his terminal and started working, his fingers flying across the screen.

He was compiling information. Blueprints of the basements. Guard schedules. The known powers of every Ivory Circle member. Their weaknesses. Their habits.

He wasn’t telling me to stop. He was giving me ammunition.

When evening came, he handed me his terminal.

"Here. Everything I could find. Memorize it."

He pulled something from his pocket. Two small, black capsules.

"They’re ’Aura Smoke Bombs.’ One of my inventions. They don’t make normal smoke. They release a cloud that disrupts Aura-based senses and scanners for about thirty seconds. It’s not much, but it might give you an opening."

I took the capsules. They were cold to the touch.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked.

He looked at me, and for the first time, there was no analysis in his eyes. Just loyalty.

"Because we’re partners," he answered. "And because those monsters deserve to pay."

"Be careful, Ji-Hoon."

"You too," I said.

It was time. I left the room and headed for the basements. For the Pit. For my destiny.

The descent to basement level 7 was different this time. I was no longer a curious lamb walking to the slaughter. I was a wolf returning to the fold to burn it down.

Every step was calculated. Every shadow was a potential ally. I memorized the blueprints Min-Soo had given me. The emergency exits. The ventilation shafts.

I arrived at the large steel door. The sound of fighting and cheering was already audible.

I didn’t wait for an invitation. I pushed the door open and walked in.

The scene was the same. The circle of spectators. The brutal fights in the center. The smell of sweat and blood.

And, sitting on their armchairs like gods on Olympus, the Ivory Circle.

Yoo-Na saw me enter. A satisfied smirk appeared on her face. She was expecting to see a beaten dog, crawling back to her feet.

"Ah, my punching bag has arrived," she announced to the crowd, her voice full of amused contempt. "Right on time."

Laughter rippled through the assembly.

I walked toward the center of the circle. Slowly. Calmly.

The guy running the bets, the one with the scar, stood in my way. "Came back for another lesson, bottom-ranker?"

I took out one of the black capsules Min-Soo had given me.

"I came for Yoo-Na’s quest," I said, my voice echoing in a sudden silence.

Yoo-Na laughed. "Good. You’ve finally learned to obey. Park, go warm up with him. But don’t break him too quickly. I want to get my money’s worth."

Park stood up, cracking his neck, a sadistic grin on his face.

He walked toward me. "So, shall we do this again?"

I looked at Park. I looked at Yoo-Na. I looked at all their arrogant faces.

"No," I said.

I threw the capsule on the ground.

It burst with a small "pop." No visible smoke. But an invisible wave spread through the room.

For a split second, everyone was disoriented. Their Aura-based senses, which all Awakened used subconsciously, were scrambled. It was like suddenly going deaf and blind to the energy around them.

Thirty seconds. That’s all I had.

Park was the most surprised. He was right in the middle of the effect zone. He blinked, lost, trying to sense my Aura, but there was nothing.

I didn’t wait.

I summoned my dagger.

But I didn’t attack Park. He was a waste of time. My target was elsewhere.

I sprinted. Not toward the Ivory Circle. Toward the far wall.

Min-Soo had shown me something on the blueprints. A detail no one ever noticed.

Behind a rusty old electrical cabinet was a main junction box. The control panel for the entire power supply of basement level 7.

I reached the cabinet and kicked it open.

I plunged my dagger right into the middle of the control panel.

There were no sparks. My dagger simply erased the energy.

And the Pit was plunged into absolute darkness.

The work lights died instantly. The terminals went dark.

Screams of surprise and panic erupted in the total blackness. No one could see a thing. Chaos.

It was exactly what I wanted.

In the complete darkness, panic reigned. Students bumped into each other, yelling, trying to activate their powers to create light, but their scrambled senses made their movements clumsy.

But I didn’t need to see.

I knew their positions by heart. I had memorized them before throwing the smoke bomb.

The Ivory Circle. Sitting in their armchairs. A perfect target.

I pulled my dagger from the electrical panel. The darkness was my ally. My dagger was my scalpel.

I moved, silent as a shadow.

My first target wasn’t Yoo-Na. It was too soon for that.

My first target was a skinny boy, an illusion specialist, who sat on the outer edge of the group. Min-Soo had told me he was the physically weakest.

I came up behind his chair. He was trying to stand, calling Yoo-Na’s name, his voice filled with fear.

He never knew what hit him.

I wrapped my arm around his mouth to stifle his scream. And with my other hand, I drove my dagger into his back, right between the shoulder blades.

I felt the resistance of flesh, of bone. Then the warmth of blood.

This wasn’t like erasing Aura. This was real. Brutal.

I felt the life leave him, his body going limp in my arms.

I let him slide to the floor without a sound.

One down.

My interface lit up with a blood-red glow, visible only to me in the darkness.

[SYSTEM ALERT: Academy Code of Conduct Violated - Homicide]

[Seal Release Condition: 2/3 Met - Transgression of Life]

A new wave of cold, dark energy surged through my body from the dagger. A power I had never felt before.

The fog from the smoke bomb was beginning to clear. People were starting to regain their senses.

I threw my second capsule into the middle of the room, prolonging the chaos.

And I turned toward my next target.