Preparations for the Fundamental Quest were made in an electrical tension, with double relaxation. On the surface, Kim-Do had to behave like a leader preparing for a factional war, the final confrontation with Park Jin-Ho. In the shadow of the Convent, it was a question of calibrating the most delicate assault ever imagined: a psychic raid on a dimensional prison.
Choi Yu-Ra and the remaining members of his faction, unaware of the Mirror, saw their boss change again. The nervous fatigue was palpable, but it was mixed with a determination of steel, cold and unshakable. He gave brief orders, planned defensive and offensive maneuvers with unusual, almost detached clarity. It was as if a general had replaced the gang leader.
"Boss," Yu-Ra dared as they inspected the vacant lot chosen for the confrontation - an industrial site in wasteland, a labyrinth of concrete and scrap metal. Jin-Ho gathered almost all the White Tigers. We're outnumbered."
Kim-Do looked at the long shadows of the abandoned structures. It was the perfect place. Open enough for a pitched battle, complex enough for ambushes. And most importantly, isolated. "Numbers aren't everything, Yu-Ra. Sometimes you just have to hit the right place."
She did not understand the subtext, but confidence in her voice reassured her. She thought old Kim-Do was reborn, the ruthless tactician.
Meanwhile, in the digital bowels, Lyra and her team were forging the tool of liberation. The "grace code" was not an aggressive virus, but a key to dissonance. Its purpose was not to corrupt, but to introduce a perfect logical impurity into the mirror's thinking process: the idea that the reflection could choose not to be a reflection. That the copy could break the glass. It was a forbidden thought, a paradox that, injected at the right time, had to implode the simulation loop from within.
"The critical point will be at the height of the confrontation," Lyra explained to Kim-Do on the eve of D-Day. "When your emotional commitment, survival instinct and will to win are at their peak. The flow of data between you and the Mirror will be a tumultuous river. That's where we'll inject the code. You will then, immediately afterwards, have to turn inward. Not towards the quest system, but towards the sensation of the gaze that weighs on you. And you'll shoot."
"How will I know it's him?" asked Kim-Do, clammy-handed.
"You'll know," said Joon, who had joined them. "His presence is unlike anything else now. It's an anchor of distress in a sea of cold data. You felt it. You will recognize his hand."
The night was short and restless. Kim-Do did not sleep. He saw the sunset in the park again. Not as a peaceful image, but as an enigma. Was this the last memory of peace of the real Kim-Do before his fall? His ultimate regret? This image was the key to the Mirror, but also, perhaps, the key to the man himself.
The next day, a heavy screed of threats weighed on Ganguk High. Everyone knew. The eyes were fleeting, the conversations whispered. Park Jin-Ho, at the head of an imposing column of his supporters, had dropped an ultimatum: hand over control of certain territories, or meet at the "Factory" to decide once and for all. Kim-Do agreed without hesitation.
As he walked to the site, flanked by Yu-Ra and his most loyal men, Kim-Do felt Lee Min-Ji's gaze on him. She stood at the entrance of the school, her expression indecipherable. He held out his gaze for a moment, unable to guess whether she saw madness, courage, or anything else. Then he averted his eyes. There was no more room for the mysteries of this world. He faced a much bigger one.
The Factory was a perfect nightmare place. Daylight filtered through the collapsed roofs, drawing dust rays into the thick air. The sound of their footsteps echoed between the huge rust tanks and the silent conveyors. Park Jin-Ho was waiting for them in the center of a concrete esplanade, surrounded by at least three times as many men. A cruel triumphal smile stretched his lips.
"So, Kim-Do? Did you come to sign your surrender in person? It's noble."
No speech. No unnecessary provocation. Kim-Do felt the blue window of the system materialize in his field of vision, brighter, more solemn than ever.
"'
[FUNDAMENTAL QUEST: LEVELERSHIP CRISIS - ACTIVE]
[COMMINCEMENT PARAMETERS: MAXIMUM]
[SCANNING ENVIRONMENT HOSTILE...]
[Primary Objective: NEUTRALY PARK JIN-HO.]
"'
That was the signal. Somewhere in the Convent, Lyra and Joon had to see the same thing, their fingers hovering over the triggers.
"We do as we said," Kim-Do whispered to Yu-Ra. Let them come."
The battle began with a roar. The White Tigers charged with the force of numbers. Kim-Do's tightly formed group absorbed the first shock. The blows rained, metal and wood against flesh and bones. The screams, the grunts of pain, the smell of sweat and dust rose quickly. Kim-Do fought with mechanical efficiency, paring, striking, using the surrounding structure to divide his opponents. He no longer felt fear, only acute concentration. Every second that passed brought him closer to the moment.
He spotted Jin-Ho standing back, leaving his men to do the work of usury. Their eyes met through the melee. The hatred was pure, simple. A hatred that Kim-Do could understand, almost preferable to the tortuous complexity of his own fate.
Suddenly, an opening was created. One of his men fell, breaking the line. Jin-Ho saw the fault and rushed, a flash of savagery in his eyes. It was time. The focus point.
As Jin-Ho rushed at him, Kim-Do let down his guard - a calculated, suicidal move. The giant's fist sank into his belly, taking his breath away. The pain exploded, white and blinding. The survival instinct screamed in him, demanding a reaction, a counter-attack. His emotional commitment, his fear, his rage to win rose to an absolute peak.
VZZT.
A different vibration went through his skull, not the system, but something more subtle, something deeper. The code. Lyra had just injected him.
The quest window blurred, pixelated. For a second, everything seemed to hesitate - the sound of fighting muffled, Jin-Ho's movements seemed to slow down. It was now.
Ignoring the heartbreaking pain, Kim-Do closed his eyes. He turned away from the fist that was rising to hit him again, with Jin-Ho's grimacing face. He plunged into himself, away from the factory, away from the pain.
He found himself in the stream. The torrent of quest data was there, furious, loaded with the raw emotions of combat. But beyond that, he perceived something else. A bank. A quiet and terrifying place at the same time. The Mirror. And on this bank, a silhouette. Blurred, trembling, but present. The real Kim-Do. He wasn't watching the battle. He was looking at Kim-Do. His eyes, in the reflection, were widened with horror and sudden understanding.
Now! he thought, or perhaps it was Joon who cried out in his mind.
Kim-Do held out a psychic hand, not forward, but to the side, breaking the "fourth wall" of his own perception. He wasn't trying to grab. He offered. He offered the hand that had stolen his life.
In the Mirror, the silhouette shudders. For a tiny moment, the terror in his eyes turned into something else. Surprise. Misunderstanding. Then, a glow. A fierce glimmer of decision, that of the fighter he had been.
A hand went up into the reflection, breaking the smooth surface of the simulation as one breaks a window. She closed on Kim-Do's psychic wrist.
The contact was a cataclysmic shock. It was not a fusion, but a collision. Two consciousnesses, two sets of memories, two pains that collided. Kim-Do saw flashes of each other's lives, fast, chaotic: a sick mother, debts, ruthless training, a thirst for recognition turned poison. The other, in turn, was overwhelmed by fear of the imposter, the struggle to survive, the weight of lies, the revelation of the system, rebellion.
It was untenable. Kim-Do's mind cracked, ready to break under the weight of two existences.
Shoot! It was the voice of the real Kim-Do, not a sound, but a raw, hoarse will, forged in much older trials.
With all his might, Kim-Do fired. It was no longer a question of freeing a prisoner, but of rescuing a castaway from a sinking ship - and the ship was the Mirror itself.
With a silent crackling sounded in each neuron, the silhouette broke off the shore of reflection. It was snatched from the simulation and thrown into the torrent of the quest.
At the same moment, in the real world, Park Jin-Ho's fist crashed into Kim-Do's cheek. The impact caused it to rotate, sending it crashing into a rusty pipe. The physical pain, real and sharp, was an anchor. She brutally brought him back to the factory.
He opened his eyes, his mouth full of blood. Jin-Ho stood above him, triumphant.
"It's over, imposter," he scolded.
But something had changed. In Kim-Do's eyes, there was no longer just pain and fatigue. There was another presence. A new density. As if two superimposed eyes stared at Jin-Ho through the same pair of eyes.
Kim-Do (which one?) Both?) He smiled a twisted, bloody smile.
"No," said a voice that sounded slightly different, deeper, imbued with an old bitterness and new determination.
In a fluid and unpredictable movement, he got up, dodging Jin-Ho's next move with an ease he had never had. It wasn't his awkward technique, nor was it the cold precision of the system. It was something wild, refined by years of street fighting, despair and sheer will.
The battle in the factory had just taken a radically new turn. And in Kim-Do's mind, another, quieter and more fundamental battle began: that of sharing a single existence between two shipwrecked souls.