Convict Unit: Black Parade

“Callsign Pathfinder. An old man they usually just call ‘the Guide.’”

Jae-hee tilted his head at Ghost’s explanation. “The Guide?”

“Just what it sounds like. His ability is optimized for navigation. His Awakened rank is D, but his ability is so useful he’s been on enough missions to rank up to B.”

Hunters were given a chance to rank up for every ten Gate-related missions they completed.

For the Guide to have climbed from D to B meant he was a veteran who had successfully returned from over twenty missions.

“Wow, twenty times. That’s amazing… Wait, how are these missions counted? Aren’t ours unofficial?”

“They’re unofficial, but they have a magical way of making the numbers go up in the system.”

After all, they couldn’t let the experience of a skilled Awakened go to waste. 

Whether you served as a Hunter, a soldier, or a prisoner, as long as you were deployed on a Gate mission, the count was faithfully recorded.

Ghost shrugged, remarking that it was the kind of administrative prowess you’d expect from the country that perfected the national ID card.

“Hmm…”

Just then, wandering in circles with his dowsing rod, the Guide muttered to himself. “Here, too… the water veins flow…”

Jae-hee just blinked. “Wha?”

Well, of course there’s water… We’re on the ocean…

“I must find a place without water veins… Oh, my aching bones…”

Waving his dowsing rod, the old man shuffled toward a corner of the commander’s office.

Jae-hee watched him, his expression deeply skeptical. “Can we trust that guy?”

“Appearances aside, he’s damn good at finding paths.”

“Ah!” Jae-hee shot his hand up. “I’m good at finding paths, too!”

“Your ability is for finding escape routes, kid,” Ghost said coolly. “The Guide can locate a target.”

“A target?”

“The location of a Boss Monster, a Gate Core, a kidnapped hostage… If you designate a target, he can pinpoint its exact location.”

Ghost propped her chin on her hand. “Speaking of which… if he’s coming along, we must be headed somewhere with pretty confusing terrain…”

The Guide, having given up on finding a spot free of water veins, thumped his knees with his fists.

“Oof~ My knees… it’s these water veins, I tell you…”

“…”

An old man with bad knees, deployed only on missions with complex terrain that required finding a path with a dowsing rod.

Is this Guide geezer gonna be okay?

Then there was the second new prisoner.

He was a man bundled in a thick, fireproof suit.

Flickering red flames licked the top of his head instead of hair. He wore a gas mask that completely concealed his face, and every so often when he coughed, a burst of flame and ash shot out from the exhaust port.

“Callsign Firestarter.”

Ghost’s voice contained displeasure as she scowled in his direction. “AA-Rank. An inmate from Deck 0.”

“Wow, his callsign is Firestarter? That sounds kinda cool,” Jae-hee said innocently.

Ghost clicked her tongue. “Cool my ass. It’s because he’s an arsonist.”

“Ah.”

Coolness aside, it clearly wasn’t a callsign with a positive meaning.

Jae-hee scratched the back of his head, embarrassed. “I’m really not good with words.”

“And yet you seem to understand Hanja.”

“The place I grew up… well, let’s just say they were big on the whole ‘defend our traditions, reject foreign influence’ thing.”

Ghost’s curiosity was piqued, and she was about to ask about his past when a heavy tread approached.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The man in the fireproof suit—Firestarter—was walking toward them.

A wave of heat washed over them as he drew near, and Jae-hee felt beads of sweat form on his forehead.

After a few ragged breaths from behind his mask, Firestarter muttered, “You… must be ‘Wind.’”

“Huh?” Jae-hee blinked in surprise, then clapped his hands together. “Oh, how’d you know? Hello, Mr. Fire-Head! My callsign is Boy, and my ability is wind!”

“Of course I know. Fire and wind have good synergy.”

Firestarter let out a hearty laugh. With each chuckle, puffs of ash billowed from beneath his mask.

“All evil must be judged by pure flame…” he muttered, then nodded. “You should be able to lend a favorable wind to my flames. I look forward to working with you.”

“Hehe, same here!”

Firestarter and Jae-hee clasped hands, pumping them up and down with vigor. 

After the greeting, Firestarter lumbered back to his spot.

Jae-hee watched him go, beaming. “Mr. Firestarter seems like a good guy!”

“You think?” Ghost clicked her tongue again. “Do you really think a guy with the callsign ‘Arsonist’ is a normal person? He’s a complete madman who sets fire to everything, friend or foe.”

“Ah, right. He’s an arsonist.”

“As long as he’s wearing that fireproof suit, he can more or less maintain his sanity. But if that suit ever comes off, he goes into a rampage and just burns everything. I’d bet he’s killed more innocent people who got caught in the crossfire than monsters.”

Jae-hee’s face paled at the terrifying description.

Ghost added coldly, “And he’s from Deck 0. Remember this: there are no good guys on Deck 0. They’re all the worst of the worst, the craziest of the crazy.”

But you live on Deck 0, too, don’t you?

Instead of voicing that thought, Jae-hee asked a different question.

“By the way, about the callsigns. Why do some sound more like codenames and others like street nicknames?”

Barber? Tat Rat? The Guide, Pathfinder? The Arsonist, Firestarter?

What exactly was the standard?

“Well… the only rule is whether people hear it once and immediately think, ‘Ah, that bastard.’ Beyond that, it’s whatever sticks. Don’t go looking for hidden meaning in a damn convict’s callsign.”

Ghost flicked her eyes toward Jae-hee. “If you want, you can change yours too.”

“Eh! Really?”

“You can’t be ‘Boy’ forever. It sounds too weak.” Ghost glanced at Jae-hee’s face, still soft with youth. “And it suits you now since you still look like a kid, but you’ll get older eventually. It’ll be weird if you’re still ‘Boy’ when you’re thirty or forty.”

“I-I’m gonna be released before I get that old, you know!” Jae-hee shouted indignantly, then propped his chin on his hand and fell into thought. “Hmm, what should I change it to, then…”

Just as Jae-hee was pondering his new callsign, the door to the commander’s office clanked open.

Commander Seo returned from her short trip outside. Following behind her were Grease Gal, the Doctor, and even Rabid Dog.

Heck… Three more?

Jae-hee was inwardly horrified.

A moment ago, there had been ten prisoners gathered in the room. With the addition of Grease Gal, the Doctor, and Rabid Dog, the total had swelled to thirteen.

“All right, everyone’s here.”

Hae-eun surveyed the faces of the prisoners crowding her office and clapped her hands. “This time… we’ve received a rather tricky mission.”

The veteran inmates flinched in unison. They knew all too well that when Commander Seo said “rather tricky,” she really meant “horrifically difficult.”

“The operation area is Gangnam Station.” Hae-eun aimed a beam projector at a large wall and pointed to a map. “A Gate opened inside the subway, and, well… it’s currently undergoing a Dungeon Break.”

If the veterans had flinched before, now everyone was horrified. Even Ghost’s expression hardened.

Jae-hee, looking around, cautiously asked, “What exactly does ‘Dungeon Break’ mean?”

“If you can’t close a Gate in time, the Dungeon connected to it starts to ‘overwrite’ our reality,” Ghost explained in a low voice. “The world inside the Dungeon spills out and starts overwriting our own. That phenomenon is called a Dungeon Break.”

“What happens when the Dungeon’s world overwrites our reality?”

“The area is terraformed into that monster legion’s home world. It’s not our territory anymore—it’s theirs.”

Using the Foghowlers as an example, it meant the fog would grow thicker and spread. The monster legion would grow even more powerful. The area would become a hellscape where ordinary humans could no longer survive.

“So it’s like a turf war?”

“Something like that. Except we’re the ones stuck playing defense.”

Coincidentally, the data Commander Seo was displaying on the screen showed a chart of the changes over time since the Gate opened. Jae-hee read it.

0–72 hours: Relatively stable state. Gate closure possible via Core Breach (Core destruction) or Core Extraction (Core retrieval).

72–96 hours: Boss Monster appears, or Lord Monster descends. Gate closure possible via Final Strike (Boss kill).

96–120 hours: Dungeon Break begins. Realm Erosion accelerates. Final Strike is possible, but the Boss grows progressively stronger, causing mission difficulty to skyrocket.

120+ hours: Dungeon Break complete. The area is no longer Earth but the territory of the monster legion.

This was information he would have learned had he properly completed the six-week basic military training, but Jae-hee hadn’t received it, and most of the prisoners had slacked off during training and forgotten the theory.

That was why Hae-eun was reviewing it once more.

After reading the chart, Ghost nodded. “There are occasional exceptions, like in Daejeon where the boss showed up in thirty-six hours, but most cases follow that formula.”

“So a total of one hundred twenty hours, with forty-eight hours given from the moment the Boss Monster appears.”

“And fighting a Boss Monster in the first twenty-four hours is completely different from fighting it in the last twenty-four. During a Dungeon Break, the area transforms into the monster legion’s home ground, and the Boss just keeps getting stronger.”

Jae-hee briefly recalled the events in Daejeon. They had taken down Miss Hellth right after she became a Boss Monster.

But what if twenty-four hours had passed and the Dungeon Break had begun? If the zombified Boss had grown even stronger in her zombie territory… gotten bigger, sprouted more tentacles…

“Ugh.”

“And right now, we’re in a Dungeon Break situation. In other words, the final twenty-four hours.” Ghost ground her teeth. “She’s planning to throw us into a place that’s well and truly fucked.”

Hae-eun was continuing her explanation. “The monster species that has appeared in the Gangnam Station Gate is the Blood Clan.”

The commander gave a bitter smile. “They’ve been almost nonexistent in Korea, but they’re the same vampire bastards who’ve devoured half of North America and Asia.”

Perhaps because it was a backwater in the Far East, they had never graced the Korean peninsula with their presence. But the Blood Clan was currently the most powerful of all the monster legions invading Earth.

“Unlike most otherworldly monster legions, which are built around a single Lord, these bastards are an alliance of dozens of Lords.”

A complex family tree unfolded on the screen.

It was the blood lineage connecting the Lords of the Blood Clan.

“True to their bloodsucking nature, they form blood pacts and call themselves a ‘family’… They're, well, insane monsters playing house.”

Jae-hee couldn’t contain his curiosity and raised his hand. “So they have intelligence?”

“They’re known to be capable of conversation. Not that there’s much point in talking to a monster…”

Hae-eun tapped the very bottom of the family tree with her cane. “In any case, one of their Lord-level monsters has infiltrated Gangnam Station alone.”

Far from the center of the family tree, where all the big-name vampires were gathered, was an isolated name on the outermost edge.

Hae-eun slowly read it aloud. “Her designation: ‘Rose Princess.’”

Then, she looked around at the prisoners and grinned.

“She’s the monster we have to kill.”