Chapter 24: The Escapee (1)

─ An inmate has escaped from Gangwon Northern Correctional Institution in Sokcho, Gangwon Province. The fugitive is believed to be a climber, and confirmed casualties inside the prison have now exceeded thirty. In response to this unprecedented emergency, the government has deployed military forces to assist in the search...

It was a bright Monday morning, and the moment I woke up, the news was already spewing something insane.

“What the hell?”

A prison break?

By a climber?

The escapee’s face and personal information had already spread across the entire internet.

Seo Dong-woo.

The important part was that he still hadn’t been caught.

There had already been several cases overseas where climbers committed serious crimes, but now something like this had happened in Korea as well.

Good lord.

Thinking about what a complete mess the world had become, I opened the Communication Channel out of habit.

Somehow, it was just as chaotic over there.

[So-yeong: You get power this incredible, and you idiots still live such boring lives? You should learn from me.]

[So-yeong: By the way, everyone’s working really hard to find me right now, aren’t they? Curious where I am? Not telling! Good luck~]

“What the hell is this now?”

The Hard difficulty Communication Channel.

Some lunatic was posting nonstop and drawing every bit of attention imaginable.

***

“This guy is completely out of his mind. We need to find him quickly.”

Kang Ju-hyeok drove while struggling against the nausea still churning in his stomach.

They had just finished inspecting Gangwon Northern Correctional Institution, the site of the previous night’s gruesome massacre.

The acrid stench of blood that had saturated the prison still seemed to cling to the inside of his nose like a phantom.

Shin Su-jin sat silently in the passenger seat, apparently lost in thought.

Kang Ju-hyeok spoke to her.

“What do you think, Team Leader? How high do you think his Level is?”

The man had torn a cell door straight from its frame and simply walked out.

Calling him abnormal would have been a profound understatement.

Seo Dong-woo.

He had been sentenced to life imprisonment for murder ten years ago, which meant he must have become a climber while incarcerated.

There had previously been three cases in South Korea of prisoners becoming climbers.

Any inmate who voluntarily reported their status could receive a pardon in exchange for submitting to special supervision, and all three had accepted that arrangement.

Seo Dong-woo, however, had concealed the fact that he was a climber, secretly entered the Tower without authorization, and eventually broke out of prison through the most brutally direct method imaginable.

There was only one reasonable conclusion.

The man was insane.

How he had managed to enter the Tower without being discovered remained unclear, but the current theory was that he had forced his cellmates to remain silent and entered during the night.

The average clear time for Hard difficulty was approximately ten minutes.

As long as the other inmates kept quiet and he avoided the guards during their patrols, slipping into the Tower was not entirely impossible.

Of course, since Seo Dong-woo had murdered every last one of his cellmates before escaping, there was no longer any way to confirm what had happened.

The most difficult question was his Level.

“Team Leader?”

“...Hm? Did you say something?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just wondering what Level Seo Dong-woo might be.”

“Right. I would estimate somewhere around Level 20.”

They had reviewed the prison’s CCTV footage and collected testimony from the guards who had survived direct encounters with him.

Even bullets had barely affected the man.

That meant his Level was extremely high, or he possessed a skill that reinforced his physical durability, or some form of defensive ability.

At least one of those had to be true.

Seo Dong-woo had used his overwhelming physical strength to break through the armed guards, scale the prison walls, and disappear.

Investigators believed he had entered the mountains after leaving the prison grounds, and the military was currently searching the Seoraksan region.

The Tower Monitoring Division of the Tower Climbing Special Agency had also been mobilized in response to the unprecedented crisis.

There had been a handful of minor incidents involving violent climbers before, but nothing remotely approaching this scale.

Even so, there was little they could do at the moment.

All they could manage was receive updates from the search units and move toward one of the fugitive’s predicted escape routes.

And even calling them “predicted” routes was generous.

The entire operation seemed to be running into one dead end after another.

For all they knew, Seo Dong-woo might already have left the mountains entirely.

The abilities of a high-level climber far exceeded the limits of ordinary common sense.

Rugged mountain terrain would be no more difficult for him to cross than his own living room.

“Even if we do find him, couldn’t he just escape into the Tower? As long as he isn’t in the middle of combat. God, how does something like this even happen...”

As though the situation wasn’t bad enough already, the lunatic was also causing havoc on the Communication Channel.

A climber using the nickname “So-yeong” had appeared in the Hard difficulty Communication Channel.

Find me already.

Climbers should all run wild together.

Let me explain why killing is so much fun.

He kept posting every variety of deranged nonsense imaginable, like a textbook psychopath.

There was no definitive proof that “So-yeong” was Seo Dong-woo, but given the circumstances, the probability was extremely high.

Kang Ju-hyeok glanced at Shin Su-jin.

She had been unusually silent the entire time, staring fixedly at empty space.

“Is something wrong? Did that guy post something else?”

“...No. It’s nothing.”

Her expression had sunk into a strangely dark stillness.

Reading the atmosphere, Kang Ju-hyeok decided not to press her.

‘Maybe she’s just furious.’

More than twenty prison guards had been killed by that man.

It would have been perfectly understandable.

Kang Ju-hyeok had not worked with Shin Su-jin for very long, but there was one thing he knew about her.

She despised evil people.

She practically loathed them.

Shin Su-jin was one of the few climbers in South Korea above Level 20.

As competition between the climbers of different nations intensified, high-level climbers had effectively become national assets.

And Shin Su-jin was one of them.

Despite his young age, Kang Ju-hyeok respected her deeply.

She could have enjoyed far greater wealth and prestige if she had wanted.

Instead, she served as a climber within the chronically understaffed Tower Climbing Special Agency, devoting herself to national duty...

“There’s a rest stop coming up. Should we pull over for a while?”

“Sure. You don’t look well. I’ll drive afterward.”

“What? No, I’m fine!”

Kang Ju-hyeok answered quickly.

She was even considerate toward her subordinates.

A truly admirable superior in every respect.

While Kang Ju-hyeok privately found his spirits lifting, Shin Su-jin turned her gaze toward the window.

Still staring into the Communication Channel with icy eyes, she clenched her teeth hard enough that they nearly cracked.

***

Kim Seong-ho had been feeling uneasy lately.

He had raised two children, and throughout his life, the younger one had always been the only source of concern.

Yet now, completely out of nowhere, his eldest son—who had never once given his parents any reason to worry and had always handled everything by himself—had suddenly announced that he had become a climber.

It had struck like a bolt from the blue.

After hurriedly researching the matter, Kim Seong-ho had learned that the first floor of Easy difficulty was generally not considered dangerous.

Repeat Clearing also allowed a climber to leave whenever they wished.

Even so, worrying was simply what parents did.

He trusted his son, who had never once caused the family trouble, to take care of himself.

That was why Kim Seong-ho had been unable to oppose him outright.

His son always listened to his parents, but Kim Seong-ho also understood his personality.

Once the boy made up his mind, he became stubbornly immovable and would not change course.

“Section Chief Park, your son is two years old now, correct?”

“Yes, sir. Fifteen months.”

“How would you feel if he told you one day that he had become a climber?”

Section Chief Park tilted his head before answering.

“My heart would probably drop. It’s dangerous, after all.”

“Right? Then what if he received Easy difficulty?”

“Easy difficulty... I suppose I would worry a little less. As long as he didn’t climb to the higher floors, I hear hardly anyone dies on Easy.”

Kim Seong-ho immediately felt the urge to object.

“No. Once it actually happens to you, don’t you think you would feel differently? That is simply how a parent’s heart works.”

“Ah, yes... I suppose that may be true.”

Section Chief Park gave an awkward smile.

“Still, I would have thought you had very little to worry about regarding your children, sir. Your son is a medical student at Seoul National University, after all. Ha ha.”

“...Right. Well, we should get going. You too.”

Kim Seong-ho sighed inwardly and prepared to leave.

On the way home, he found himself craving a beer.

He stopped at a convenience store and bought a can for the first time in quite a while.

Sitting in one of the chairs outside, he sipped it while scrolling through the news on his phone.

─ The whereabouts of escaped prisoner Seo Dong-woo remain unknown at this time...

“Tsk, tsk. How have they still not caught him?”

Seo Dong-woo.

The climber who had massacred prison guards and escaped.

Even after the military had been deployed, three days had passed without his capture.

Public anxiety was soaring, and an uneasy mood had settled over the entire nation.

Thinking that the world was truly falling apart, Kim Seong-ho drained the rest of his beer in one long swallow.

Slightly tipsy, he decided to get some fresh air and took a longer route home.

He was walking through a quiet, deserted alley illuminated by orange streetlights when a man approached from the opposite direction.

The stranger wore a cap, a hood pulled over his head, and a mask covering his face.

He was broad and powerfully built.

Kim Seong-ho subtly shifted to one side, giving him plenty of room to pass.

“Hey, mister.”

The man suddenly called out.

Kim Seong-ho flinched and stopped.

“How do I get to Yeongdeungpo Station from here? I’m just asking for directions.”

“...Yeongdeungpo Station? You need to go that way...”

Kim Seong-ho carefully explained the route.

Something about the man felt dangerous, and tension hung heavily in the air.

“Ah~ So it was that way. I was going in completely the wrong direction. Thanks.”

Fortunately, the stranger listened and continued on his way.

Thinking privately that the young man’s manners left something to be desired, Kim Seong-ho turned to leave.

“Oh, but hey, mister. Hold on a second.”

Kim Seong-ho looked back.

At that exact moment, the streetlight flickered.

His gaze briefly rose to the unstable light before returning to the man.

“Wh-why? What is it?”

The stranger approached and studied Kim Seong-ho’s face from several different angles.

“...You look like him.”

“Like... like who?”

“My old man. The one who beat the living shit out of me and abandoned me when I was ten. You’re not actually him, are you? Heh heh.”

The man’s eyes were dangerous.

Whatever nonsense he was muttering, he clearly wasn’t sane.

Kim Seong-ho’s heart hammered violently as he shook his head.

“I-I have a proper family. You have mistaken me for someone else.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m joking. But you really do look like him.”

The man smirked.

“It pisses me off, that’s all.”

He pulled one hand from his pocket and waved it casually.

“So let me hit you just once. You were kind enough to give me directions, so I’ll take it easy, all right? If you die, well... nothing I can do about that.”

WHAM!

Kim Seong-ho’s body flew across the alley.

He struck the wall with tremendous force and crumpled to the ground.

His consciousness vanished instantly.

The man continued walking in the direction he had been heading, whistling a cheerful tune.

***

“...What did you just say?”

Late at night, a phone call from my father’s number struck like a thunderbolt.

My family and I threw on whatever clothes we could find and rushed to the trauma center.

“If he had arrived even a little later, the situation could have been extremely serious. Fortunately, the surgery went well. His life is no longer in danger, so you may rest assured.”

“Th-thank you, Doctor. Thank you...”

My mother nearly collapsed as she wept.

My sister burst into tears as well, leaving me to hold both of them together.

My father lay unconscious on the hospital bed after emergency surgery.

I stared down at him, my face rigid as stone.

They said nearly all his ribs had been shattered, as though he had been struck by a truck.

By some miracle, his internal organs had suffered very little damage, and the surgery had been completed without major complications.

“Are you the patient’s family?”

The police arrived and explained what had happened.

My father had not been involved in a traffic accident.

He had been assaulted.

“Assaulted? He was injured this badly, and who in the world would...?”

“...You are aware of Seo Dong-woo, correct? The climber who recently escaped from prison. Nothing has been confirmed yet, but we are investigating the possibility that he was involved.”

The prison escapee?

Seo Dong-woo?

None of us—not me, not my mother, not my sister—could make sense of what we were hearing.

“There is CCTV footage. We can show it to you, although...”

We watched the recording provided by the police.

An alleyway.

My father was walking when he appeared to exchange a few words with a man approaching from the opposite direction.

They were about to go their separate ways when the stranger turned and approached my father again.

What happened next was horrifying.

My mother and sister gasped sharply.

The man suddenly threw a punch.

My father’s body flew across the alley, struck the wall, and collapsed.

“...”

The instant I saw it, something inside my head snapped.

“Now that he has exposed his location, we will most likely be able to apprehend him soon. The police are mobilizing every available resource to trace his movements...”

If he were the kind of person they could catch that easily, wouldn’t they have caught him already?

The thought flashed through my mind.

In any case, the police finished their explanation and left.

It was well into the early hours of the morning when my mother finally spoke.

“You two should go home. I can look after your father by myself.”

“I want to stay too.”

“There’s nowhere for you to sleep here. I’ll be fine, so go home and rest. You have school tomorrow.”

I took my stubborn sister with me and returned home.

Even after we arrived, my head still felt as though it were burning.

It was anger.

I didn’t think I had ever been this furious in my life.

“Hoo...”

I sat down at my desk and opened the Communication Channel.

The bastard who had spent the past several days spewing every imaginable kind of garbage into the Hard difficulty Communication Channel.

He was almost certainly Seo Dong-woo.

[So-yeong: The world is so beautiful. That’s why I want to kill everyone, you know?]

[So-yeong: Anyone want to start a revolution with me? Climbers could take over the world. Wouldn’t it be great to live however you want and kill whoever you feel like killing?]

[So-yeong: You’re all slaves. Pathetic slaves who don’t even understand what freedom is.]

I found the messages he had left behind.

I stared at his nickname until my eyes burned.

Then I sent him a Whisper.