The Highway Inferno
The convoy's route was a scar across the city—a six-lane highway flanked by derelict overpasses and abandoned tollbooths. Min-jun crouched atop a rusted freight truck, binoculars trained on the horizon. Beside him, Soojin traced heat patterns in the air, her gloves smoldering.
"Five armored trucks," she said, squinting at the thermal imprint. "The prototype's in the middle. Sensors say it's… 'alive'."
Kang Ji-woo adjusted her frost-coated rifle, her breath visible in the predawn chill. "Hanwool calls it *Project Goliath*. A biomechanical hybrid. Aurora cores fused with military tech. Once it's active, it'll level districts to build new dungeons."
"And you helped design it," Min-jun said flatly.
Ji-woo's knuckles whitened. "I didn't know what it was 'for'."
Soojin ignited a flame in her palm, its light reflecting in her narrowed eyes. "Doesn't matter now. We melt it."
[Quest Activated: Destroy the Convoy]
[Optional Objective: Salvage the Prototype (High Risk)]
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The convoy roared into the kill zone at sunrise. Min-jun struck first, collapsing an overpass with a concentrated firestorm. The lead truck swerved, crashing into a concrete barrier.
Hanwool enforcers poured out, their armor resistant to conventional gunfire but not to Soojin's thermal-kinetic onslaught. She tore a guardrail free, superheated it to molten slag, and hurled it like a javelin. It pierced two enforcers, their screams drowned by the roar of Min-jun's flames.
The prototype erupted from its transport—a towering monstrosity of flesh and steel. Its torso was a pulsating Aurora core, its limbs grafted with artillery cannons. A guttural roar shook the highway as it locked onto Soojin.
"Draw its fire!" Min-jun barked, diving behind a wrecked sedan.
Soojin sprinted, weaving telekinetic shields as cannon blasts cratered the asphalt around her. Ji-woo's ice rounds peppered the beast's joints, slowing but not stopping it.
Desperation ignited Soojin's breakthrough. She 'pulled' heat from Min-jun's flames, the air around her warping into a shimmering vortex. The prototype's next blast ricocheted into the vortex, magnified tenfold, and seared through its core.
[Thermal-Kinetic Vortex → Lv. 2]
[Collateral Damage: Highway Section Destroyed]
The beast staggered, its Aurora core cracking. Min-jun lunged, fire-wreathed fists plunging into the fissure. The explosion flung him backward, his world reduced to white noise and the metallic taste of blood.
---
Smoke coiled from the prototype's smoldering carcass. Deep within its chest cavity, a smaller core pulsed—a stabilized Aurora battery, undamaged.
"We take it," Ji-woo urged. "It's the key to shutting down Hanwool's other labs."
Soojin knelt beside Min-jun, her gloves glowing as she cauterized his burns. "It's a weapon. We destroy it."
Min-jun's gaze flickered between the core and the horizon, where guild sirens wailed. "We're out of time. 'Move'."
He crushed the core.
[Reward: Hanwool's Network Disrupted (Temporarily)]
[Penalty: Guild Retribution Imminent]
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The black market burned. Hanwool's purge left stalls smoldering, bodies hanging from lampposts as warnings. Jae-hyun's stall was ash, his cybernetic eye glinting amid the debris.
"They took him alive," Soojin whispered, kicking aside a charred guild insignia. "Why?"
"Information," Ji-woo said grimly. "He knew their secrets. Now they'll rip them from him."
Min-jun stared at the ruins, flames reflected in his eyes. "We hit back harder."
[New Safehouse: Abandoned Church]
[Supplies: Low | Morale: Fractured]
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That night, Soojin's control snapped.
Practicing in the churchyard, her thermal vortex spiraled wild, igniting a nearby tenement. Min-jun tackled her mid-scream, smothering the flames with his body.
"I'm a monster," she sobbed, clawing at her gloves.
He gripped her wrists, his voice steel. "Monsters don't care who they hurt. You do. That's your control."
[Soojin's Resolve: Mental Fortitude → Lv. 2]
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Ji-woo intercepted a guild transmission at dawn. "They're culling the slums. Turning Block 7 into a dungeon farm."
Soojin stood. "We have to stop them."
"You'll die," Ji-woo said.
"Then we die fighting," Min-jun replied.
[Quest Activated: Save Block 7]
[Risk Level: Maximum]
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