Silence.
After his desperate scream, only the silence of the strange forest remained.
Silence, and the sound of his ragged, painful breathing.
Tak... Tak... Tak...
His teeth were still chattering.
I can't stand.
The simple, cruel truth settled over him like a lead blanket. He had survived the monster, but he had been rendered a cripple.
He turned his head.
There it was. Forty feet away. The rippling blue tear. The Gate.
Home.
Forty feet.
I can do it. He thought, despair creeping in. I can crawl there. Just forty feet. Go back through the Gate. Live. I can find... I can...
To what?
The cold voice of reality interrupted him.
Go back to Baek? Tell him "I failed, got bit, and now I owe you 20,000 Won for this broken helmet"?
He'll laugh. The bastard will laugh, then break my other leg for non-payment.
Fleeing now, going back through that Gate empty-handed, wasn't an option. It was just... postponing death. A slower, more humiliating death in a cold Seoul alley.
No.
If I'm going to die, I'm going to die trying.
He turned his head, ignoring the alluring blue glow of the Gate.
The cave.
The gaping black mouth. It was twenty feet in front of him.
The bodies... the three goblin bodies... they have to be there.
I killed the guardian. (He looked at the Shadow Goblin's corpse). The inside must be safe now... right?
Baek lied about the "Safe Zone." Would he lie about the "Remaining Bodies"? What if the cave is full of more of those things?
No. Don't think about that. You can't think about that.
One task at a time.
Task one: The weapon.
He looked at the rusty crowbar, still embedded to the handle in the dead Shadow Goblin's throat.
"Ghgh..."
He started crawling.
The same motion he used to reach the other corpse. Push with the good leg, drag the dead leg. Shhh...
The pain. It was back, burning and sharp. But he ignored it. It was just background noise now.
He reached the dead creature. The smell of its hot, thick blood was revolting.
The damned blue window was still floating there, illuminating the disgusting scene.
[Skill Acquired: Shadow Step (Rank F)]
"Get out of my face," Ji-Won whispered, filled with spite.
Ting.
The window vanished.
Good.
He grabbed the handle of the crowbar. It was slippery. Covered in blood and saliva.
He closed his eyes. "Sorry, Mom..." (A strange thought, why think of his mother now?)
And he pulled.
Schhh-lurp!
A sickening, wet sound of suction and flesh as he pulled the cold metal from the creature's throat.
He almost gagged. He coughed, spitting bitter bile onto the moss.
But he had it.
The crowbar. His weapon. His crutch.
He looked from the bloodstained crowbar... to the dark cave entrance.
Twenty feet.
For Hyun-Soo.
For the 72 hours.
Ji-Won stabbed the blunt end of the crowbar into the blue moss in front of him. Thunk.
He used it as an anchor, and pulled his broken body forward.
One inch.
AAAAAH! (A silent scream in his mind, as his destroyed leg dragged on the ground).
Again.
Stab. Anchor. Pull.
Another inch.
Away from the safety of the Gate. Away from the corpses.
Kang Ji-Won was crawling, agonizingly slowly, toward the dark.