The abandoned warehouse smelled of rot, damp concrete, and old copper. Faint, gray morning light spilled through the shattered skylights, illuminating thick clouds of dust dancing in the dead air.
Jin-Woo sat slumped against a cracked, peeling wall in the deepest shadow of the room. He was still weak, his breathing shallow, but his mind was painfully sharp. The crimson warnings from the alleyway had finally faded, replaced by a cold, hollow blue interface.
[Authority Stabilized: 41%][Fragment Loss: Permanent]
Jin-Woo stared at the word Permanent. The 3% degradation wasn't a stamina bar that would slowly refill. It was gone forever. A piece of his soul, burned away to buy them a few more hours of life.
Across the room, Tae-Soo was furiously typing on his cracked phone, tracking local police scanners and trying to map their exact location. He didn't look up as he spoke. "We fight like that again... we die. It's a mathematical certainty. That man didn't even try."
Seo-Ah sat on an overturned crate, wiping dried blood off the handle of her metal bat with a piece of cloth. She paused, her jaw tightening. "Then what? Keep running until one of them catches us? Because they will catch us."
Jin-Woo remained silent for a long moment. The heavy stillness of the warehouse magnified the weight of their despair. Slowly, he pushed himself off the wall, wincing as the torn muscles in his shoulder screamed in protest.
"No," Jin-Woo said, his voice quiet but carrying absolute authority. "We build."
With a thought, he summoned the interface he had unlocked in the alley. The blue light cast an eerie glow over his pale face.
[Sub-Authority Development Available][Select Target: 1]
Tae-Soo pushed his glasses up, staring at the screen reflected in his lenses. His analytical mind immediately began dissecting the mechanics. "You're the core," Tae-Soo muttered, pacing a few steps. "We are the nodes. This 'Sub-Authority' system... it means you can arm your followers. You can grant a piece of your power. But look at the fine print."
Jin-Woo saw it.
[Cost: Authority Fragment][Risk: Link Instability]
Another fragment. Another permanent sacrifice.
"Min-Jae," Jin-Woo said without hesitation.
Everyone froze. Seo-Ah stood up, gripping her bat. "Are you crazy? He's the weakest one here! He can barely stand without shaking!"
"No," Jin-Woo replied, locking eyes with the terrified delivery boy huddled in the corner. "He's the most connected. His Faith Link saved me back there. If anyone's body is ready to hold a fragment of the system, it's his."
Min-Jae swallowed hard, staring at his own trembling hands. He was terrified, but he slowly stood up and walked toward Jin-Woo. "Do it."
Jin-Woo placed his uninjured hand on Min-Jae's shoulder.
[Target Selected: Min-Jae][Begin Sub-Authority Imprint?]
Jin-Woo mentally confirmed.
Instantly, Min-Jae's back arched violently. He let out a choked gasp, dropping to his knees. The invisible tether connecting him to Jin-Woo flared into blinding visibility.
[Imprint in Progress...] [Stability: 62% → 48% → 71%]
Jin-Woo gritted his teeth, holding the connection steady despite the searing pain shooting up his own arm. It wasn't just physical pain; it was absolute sensory collapse. Black spots violently swarmed his vision. His ears rang with a deafening, metallic dial-tone screech, and for a terrifying second, his own heart stopped beating. His lungs seized. The system interface violently glitched in front of his eyes, flashing [CRITICAL FATAL ERROR] warnings, threatening an imminent crash before finally, agonizingly, stabilizing.
The blinding light faded. Min-Jae collapsed forward, catching himself on all fours, panting heavily.
[Sub-Authority Assigned][Type: ??? (Unstable)]
"Min-Jae?" Seo-Ah asked cautiously, taking a step forward.
The boy slowly pushed himself up. He looked at his hands, then at the dusty room around him. His trembling had completely stopped. "I... feel different..."
Before anyone could ask what he meant, a sharp clatter of falling debris echoed from the hallway outside the warehouse doors.
Seo-Ah instantly raised her bat. "They followed us!"
The heavy metal doors groaned, pushed open by two grotesque, twitching figures. They weren't like the masked Execution Choir. These were erratic, feral—low-level thralls twisted by some lesser authority.
They didn't just hiss. As they lurched forward, their jaws unhinged at unnatural angles, emitting a sickening sound that resembled static feedback from a broken radio mixed with a distorted, looped human sob. Their eyes were entirely black, and their pale skin occasionally rippled—literally glitching—as if the corrupted system code inside them was trying to tear through their human flesh.
They lunged into the room.
Seo-Ah swung immediately, catching the first one in the ribs, but the second one completely bypassed her, leaping straight toward Jin-Woo.
Jin-Woo stepped back, but his injured body was too slow.
Suddenly, Min-Jae was there.
It wasn't superhuman speed, but it was perfectly timed. It was as if Min-Jae had moved a fraction of a second before the thrall even jumped.
Min-Jae grabbed a rusted iron pipe from the floor. He panicked, swinging wildly, and missed the thrall's head entirely. The creature snarled, swiping its clawed hand at Min-Jae's throat.
"Focus!" Jin-Woo yelled. "Don't think. Trust the link!"
Min-Jae closed his eyes for a split second. A faint, glitching blue light flickered in his pupils.
Duck left. Strike low. The instinct didn't come from his brain; it came from the tether.
Min-Jae ducked with unnatural, terrifying precision. The thrall's claws missed his hair by millimeters. Without looking, Min-Jae drove the rusted pipe upward, brutally impaling the creature through the jaw.
But the exact moment the creature died, the unstable Sub-Authority backfired. Min-Jae's entire body violently locked up, freezing mid-motion like a crashed program. His eyes rolled back, glowing with erratic, flickering static for a terrifying two seconds. A choked gasp tore from his throat before the system abruptly cut the feed.
Min-Jae collapsed onto the concrete, dropping the bloody pipe as if it had burned him. He clutched his chest, vomiting dryly, his human body completely rejecting the divine code he had just used.
Across the room, Seo-Ah brought her bat down on the first creature's skull with a sickening crunch, ending the fight.
Silence rushed back into the warehouse, save for the heavy, ragged breathing of the team.
Min-Jae wiped his mouth, staring at the dead creature at his feet in absolute shock. He hadn't just survived. He had killed it.
Jin-Woo watched the boy trembling on the floor. A cold, alien calculation settled in his chest, freezing over his remaining humanity.
If he breaks... I'll still use him.
Seo-Ah leaned heavily on her bat, wiping sweat from her forehead. "...We actually won."
"Barely," Tae-Soo adjusted his glasses, his hands shaking slightly from the adrenaline. "But we held our ground."
Jin-Woo slid back down against the wall, utterly exhausted, but a small, grim smile played on his lips.
This is how we survive.
As the dust began to settle, Jin-Woo's interface flickered, bringing new, critical information to light.
[Faith Network Expanding][Potential Nodes Detected: 3]
They had targets now. A way to grow the network. But right below the blue text, the system glitched into a jagged, rhythmic red.
[Observer Status: Active][You Are Being Evaluated]
Jin-Woo looked up at the shattered skylight. For a split second, the jagged, dirty glass reflected a tall, perfectly still silhouette that wasn't standing in the room.
They had won a battle, but the man in the suit hadn't stopped watching.