Chapter 98.1

Chapter 98.1

“I really need you to do this one.”

About four years ago, at a private detention center in Myanmar, Chief Joo Seolheon arrived holding a file with some additional documents enclosed.

At the time, Lee Wooshin had been undercover within the regime, gathering intel as Myanmar’s military dictatorship began stirring once more.

Usually, he finished his assignments by erasing all traces and disappearing, but this time, he was in the detention center, lying low until he received his next orders.

“Here’s your next target. Temporary codename: Owl.”

It was the first time Chief Joo Seolheon had visited him since recruiting him. Wooshin silently ran his hand over his closely shaven head and got into the car.

As he roughly tore open the envelope, photographs of a woman he had never seen before spilled out. He scanned her brief background details, listed in simple text, with a disinterested look.

An orphan, dropped out of school. Ah, and she was young, too.

Most of her days spent at a nursing home with a blank expression, dressed in a neatly ironed white uniform, her gaze shifting between sorrowful and indifferent depending on the angle.

Despite her youth, she had no vitality. She seemed more suited to crying than smiling. The thought crossed his mind abruptly.

“What exactly do you want me to do with someone like this?”

“Marriage.”

He snorted immediately. He’d carried out numerous missions, but being ordered to marry was unheard of.

When he laughed again, this time in disbelief, Chief Joo’s face twisted in irritation.

“No matter how you live, you still understand what it means to be a husband, don’t you?”

“A guy who demands food every time he sees you?”

“….”

Joo Seolheon sighed and handed him one more photo.

A man’s face, lined with wrinkles and an unsettling gaze. Instantly, his expression turned cold.

The man in the photo was someone Wooshin could never fail to recognize—once a widely discussed figure, both in Russia and Korea.

“Rigay Viktor has been granted a special pardon in Russia.”

“…!”

The photo crumpled beyond recognition in Wooshin’s hands.

The Solzhenitsyn family’s tragedy.

He still had nightmares, like a child.

That moment when the grand mansion shattered, utterly destroyed. The screams of the guests were swept away in an instant.

Seventy Russian politicians, thirty-eight Solzhenitsyn family relatives, and over forty employees perished in the flames—a horrific scene.

As he clawed his way through the pitch-black ashes, the ground was littered with bodies, limbs torn apart. The deafening explosions had long since destroyed his hearing, and his blood-and-ash-streaked skin was slick as if coated in grease.

Each time he dragged himself across the ground, something soft blocked his path. It was his grandfather’s flesh, his uncles’ heads, and the shoes of cousins his own age.

Yet the boy neither cried nor stopped. Only the fierce pounding of his pulse beneath his throat kept him moving forward.

Relentlessly, he crawled, stepping over bodies, searching the faces of every guest invited to his birthday party. That baby, where was the baby?

The worst bombing attack struck on his fourteenth birthday. The Winter Castle, once the pride of the Solzhenitsyn family, crumbled.

His grandfather, known as the “Brain of Siberia,” and his Korean grandmother—what they’d built together was ultimately reduced to the tragedy that gossipmongers relished.

A noble family, once supporting the Russian crown, has been turned to ashes.

Only one survivor, the Prime Minister’s young grandson, the guest of honor at the party.

“After his release, he’ll likely begin searching for his daughter.”

“….!”

He hadn’t expected Viktor had a daughter. A pang of unease scraped through him.

After the bombing, the fact that the only heir to the Solzhenitsyn family was underage was as good as a curse. He was left to fend for himself.

Lee Wooshin’s life as a wanderer began then. To escape constant threats, he crawled his way into the hands of South African mercenaries, trading his life for protection and survival.

After leaving Russia, Wooshin’s life became another battlefield of slaughter and survival, yet unresolved grudges continued to pull him back from the brink of death.

“――.”

His icy gaze returned to the woman’s photograph.

The elite terrorist who brought down Winter Castle, resulting in over a hundred casualties—a man currently on death row.

Rigay Viktor, a second-generation Korean and top researcher from Moscow University.

So, this genius monster is looking for his daughter.