## Chapter 233 – Bait (3)
A loud explosion-like sound erupts, and a powerful gust of wind spreads outward from the center.
The dust cloud created by Nigum’s massive body slamming into the asphalt is swept away by the wind,
and the black smoke rising from the wrecked vehicles clears, providing a clear view.
I look down at Nigum, who collapsed onto the ground without even a short groan,
lightly landing on the cracked asphalt road from the impact, and approach him.
“…..”
“Uwaaaaaaah!!”
Nigum, realizing he’s fallen as his gaze points to the sky, clenches his fist,
lets out a roar filled with nothing but rage, and immediately starts swinging the sign like an axe again.
It’s a simple attack, like a child wildly swinging a wooden stick,
but I can’t get close. Even a slight graze by mistake would instantly cut my body in half.
“…Ugh…!”
I backpedal, matching his steps as he swings the sign around and approaches me.
Each time the sign, spinning with tremendous force, hits the ground, it creates sparks,
and it pushes forward, turning passing cars into rags. This is a complete bulldozer…
Fragments of the cars destroyed by that human bulldozer graze my shoulder, creating a long wound,
and the distance between me and Nigum, and the citizens who haven’t managed to escape yet, narrows.
“Uwaaa!! You, you, I will definitely tear you apart and kill you!!”
And Nigum, already losing his mind and spewing only hatred towards me, moves faster and faster.
Now the sign is close enough to split my body in half at any moment. But-
“…..!”
“Ugh?! Wh, what-”
Nigum’s simple movements, only swinging from right to left and left to right.
Now that I’ve completely memorized the trajectory of the sign spinning around and spewing out strong winds,
I take advantage of the gap when he raises his hand high for the next attack and instantly leap into his arms.
Nigum seems flustered when he doesn’t see me, who should have been hit by the axe he swung,
but it’s already too late when he hurriedly lowers his head to look at me.
“You little rat…. Ack!!”
I immediately wrap my fist in golden light and punch the center of Nigum’s solar plexus right in front of me.
With a sound of something breaking, Nigum lets out a groan of pain and kneels down.
“I’m in a hurry right now. I’ll only hit you enough not to kill you.”
“Hu, hurk…!”
The sudden shock delivered to his lungs instantly disrupts his normal breathing,
and I grab his head as he forcibly pushes oxygen into his lungs, which aren’t inhaling air as he wants.
Even though he’s kneeling, I grab the hair of his head, which is taller than me, and drag it right in front of my face,
then break his nose bone with my fist wrapped like a knuckle.
“Keuak?!”
From the shock, Nigum clutches his nose, from which blood is gushing out, and pulls his head back, but…
“Eugeuk?!”
“Where are you going?”
I wrap a tree root made of blue energy around his neck and drag him back in front of my face again.
He opens his mouth slightly, looking up at me with a momentarily bewildered expression, but I don’t listen.
I smash my fist into the center of his face again, which he revealed in front of me, and Nigum writhes in pain.
He pulls his head back again, but I pull the root wrapped around his neck to drag him back this way again.
And once again, I smash my fist into Nigum’s nose, which has been finely shattered, and pull the root again.
“U, uwaaaa!! Something like this…!!”
Nigum, not even tired, shouts loudly again with his face covered in blood and raises his arm high.
He tries to tear off the root binding his neck and immediately tries to crush my head.
“Eugeuk?!”
“Aaaaaaaah!!”
Too close, and I couldn’t avoid it because of the nearly twofold difference in size, so I got caught.
I’m blocking his hands, which are trying to crush my head like a tomato, with a green magnetic field.
Certainly, Nigum was simple and stupid, as Sister Iran and Theresa said.
Easily swayed by provocations with attacks that are easy to avoid, a hot-tempered person who gets angry quickly.
As they said, in some ways, Nigum is a much easier opponent than Keen, Piadels, and Theresa, but…
“Ugh…!”
His strength alone is something that can never be ignored. The pressure transmitted even though I’m blocking it with a magnetic field,
I instinctively knew that if I let go of my strength even a little, my head would be crushed immediately.
Simple attacks, Nigum, whose thoughts are easy to read. But if I get hit once, I’ll die.
“…Ugh, keueueue…”
My vision starts to spin from the strong pressure coming in even beyond the magnetic field.
Nigum is giving even more strength even though the magnetic field made of high-voltage current is burning his palms.
Just how good is this bastard’s endurance? I thought he’d stop moderately and fall off…
At this rate, I’m going to die. The breathing that was gradually blocked is weakening the magnetic field.
I quickly turn my head and start looking for a way to escape this situation. What, what is there?
“…Eugeuk?!”
That’s it.
I gather golden light and red on my right foot and stomp the ground with all my might with my heel.
Then, with the shaking ground, the road starts to crack, centered on my foot.
Cracks in the ground crumbling like a cookie, and dust spewing out from between the cracks.
“What other tricks?!”
Underneath shaking feet, the stream of cracks that were splitting meets and interlocks with other cracks.
This road that Nigum and I are standing on is now like standing on cracked glass.
“U, aaaaak?!”
“Puhah!”
In the end, the weakened ground couldn’t withstand Nigum’s massive body and weight and collapsed,
and Nigum, whose balance was broken by his legs falling into the ground, had no choice but to release the hand holding me.
Like that, time slowly flows around us for a moment. Citizens screaming at the shaking of the earth,
police officers watching this absurd fight while sitting down, fluttering flames,
and beyond the flickering of those flames, blood clumped like raindrops and me and Nigum floating in the air.
In that fleeting moment, I made eye contact with Nigum in the center of my vision filled with confusion.
He was looking up at me, who was falling with blood falling like the summer monsoon, and shouting,
but his voice wasn’t heard in the cool yet noisy surroundings, like the sound of rain in the monsoon.
I immediately create roots and tie up his arms and legs that are falling,
create a spider web in the shallow pit I made, and climb on top of it.
“Y, you human!!”
When Nigum, who could finally be heard, tries to tear off the roots that bound his limbs once again,
I jump up and approach him, immediately kicking him in the face.
“Keuheok?!”
“I, said, I, don’t, have, time, you, lump, of, shit.”
I sit on top of that huge man as is and punch him in the face with my fist.
The blood spewing out from his already crushed nose flutters like sleet,
and only the loud sound of my fist and his face colliding is heard on the now quiet road.
“Damn, damn it… Damn it!! This humiliation, this disgrace…! Why am I in this state… Hurk?!”
“I told you to shut up, you son of a bitch.”
“Haa… Haa, why… How can a mere human… A human who only received Hir’s power…
Have this kind of power… Cough, cough! Ah, I can’t accept it…! I will definitely… Kill you with my own hands!!”
“That’s…”
Nigum, spitting out the pooled blood along with his anger, took something out as a last resort.
A device that looked like a syringe containing an unidentified liquid. A device that looked familiar from somewhere. This is…
“Prepare yourself! It will be different from just now…?”
“…Do you know you’re stupid? What kind of idiot does doping right in front of the enemy?”
Nigum’s hidden trump card hidden in his wrist. The moment he tried to stick the needle of that device into his body,
I crushed his face once again and used roots to wrap around and snatch the device floating in the air.
“Gi, give it back…! Ukeut?!”
“Just shut up for a bit. This is definitely…”
I go back through my memories to recall the familiar shape of the device that I’ve definitely seen before.
It was when I was fighting so hard that blood was splattering everywhere, just like now. That’s when I first met Theresa.
In the fight with her, when I barely managed to gain the upper hand, she took this out.
After injecting this liquid, Theresa’s appearance changed and her power became stronger.
The man who made this introduced it as a ‘masterpiece created to evolve humans,’
and the long, bitter relationship with that man ended in that dark, dark laboratory.
“…Laboratory?”
The puzzles that started to fit quickly in my head. Everything starts to connect.
The place where I first met Theresa was a laboratory in Seoul. And Jung Ah-un was hiding there.
Nigum has this unpleasant-looking device that should have been buried in that laboratory with him.
“…..”
I quietly looked down at Nigum, who was spitting out blood and breathing heavily.
These bastards went to the laboratory in Seoul. To Jung Ah-un’s secret laboratory, that is.
They must have seen this syringe device that was there, and the various files that Jung Ah-un left behind.
Especially Keen, there’s one piece of data that would make that man go crazy.
The location where Iria’s body is hidden, the blueprint containing that.
Now even an idiot could understand the situation that’s going on.
Keen still hasn’t shown himself, and this guy was rampaging alone.
These guys discovered the Seoul laboratory, Jung Ah-un’s laboratory, and found out the hidden secrets.
“…This was bait, wasn’t it?”
Keen, I was tricked by that man. He threw his comrade, who trusted him, as bait and ran away.
To his base. To get his hands on Iria’s body that’s there.
“…Le, et, go…”
“…..”
Nigum, unaware that he was being used, continues to show only hostility towards me.
Even though he’s become such a rag, can’t he even suspect anything? The fact that he was abandoned by a friend he trusted so much.
“…That doesn’t mean I’m going to let you off easy?”
“…Eugeuk?! T, he, re…. sa…..”
I pierced Nigum’s abdomen with a giant tree spear made by gathering golden light and blue.
Then Nigum writhes his huge body like an earthworm, then his eyes widen and he hangs limply.
I don’t particularly feel guilty. Even if he was ignorant, this bastard is still a son of a bitch now as he was then.
Leaving Nigum, who was hanging limply like that, I turn around and climb up the shallow pit I made.
“D, don’t move!!”
“Ah, yes. I wish I could, but I don’t have time right now.”
I pass by the young police officer who is aiming a taser gun at me with trembling hands.
Even as I brush off the dust on my clothes and pass by the police officer, he doesn’t pull the trigger.
And I cross the fence that I crossed before the fight and head back the way I came.
The citizens who were watching the fight between me and Nigum from behind the fence split to the left and right to make a path.
Walking through them, I rub the wound on my shoulder and look down at the device in my hand.
“…I really feel like shit.”
