The morning after the blackout, Hangook City was still reeling from the shock of the previous night. The city's lights, though back on, had not regained their former vibrancy. Online communities and 24-hour news channels were flooded with speculation about the connection between the massive power outage and the serial thefts amounting to tens of billions of won, filled with the empty analyses of experts.

  People talked about it on their way to work on the subway, in cafes during their lunch breaks, and over drinks in the evening. An unseen culprit, a crime of unimaginable methods.

  The city had reclaimed its physical light, but a shadow of invisible anxiety loomed dark in people's hearts.

  I left the house early in the morning. GNOM's warning from last night echoed in my mind.

  "This one won't be someone you can talk down."

  It was time to find out for myself what that cold, heavy statement meant. I could feel shards of a cold, hard malice, different from Kim Min-jun's sorrow, scattered throughout the city.

  ##########

  Police tape still chaotically cordoned off the area around Gangnam Station. Investigators bustled in front of the luxury goods store, the first crime scene. Their exhausted faces showed not only the fatigue of an all-night investigation but also a sense of powerlessness, having failed to find even a trace of the culprit.

  I took a seat by the window in a second-floor cafe nearby. It was the perfect position to overlook the city's chaos.

  With a cold coffee in front of me, I pushed the abilities of the Intelligence Fragment to their absolute limit.

  As I closed my eyes and focused, all the city's information began to unfold in my mind like a three-dimensional hologram. But this time was different. It wasn't a simple list of data.

  Within the city's vast data network, I sensed a 'flow' with a cold, artificial texture. Like a shard of ice flowing through a warm vein, an alien trace that didn't mix with its surroundings.

  CCTV footage from each crime scene, security system log files, the radio records of dispatched police, testimony data from hundreds of witnesses, and real-time videos uploaded to social media.

  Hundreds of millions of information fragments poured into my brain like a massive waterfall. A normal mind would have been overloaded and burnt out in a second.

  I started by analyzing the CCTV footage.

  In the footage, the space in front of the luxury store's show window momentarily shimmered like a heat haze. In the next instant, one of the expensive bags on display vanished without a trace. All that remained was a faint spatial distortion.

  Witnesses pointed at the empty air, aghast. Their pupils were filled with terror and disbelief.

  The incidents at the bank and the jewelry store were the same. Everything happened in the blink of an eye, in less than a second.

  But this opponent was on a different level than Kim Min-jun.

  'Strange... There are no digital footprints at all.'

  Using the Intelligence Fragment's power, I delved into the deepest corners of the internet to find the culprit's trail. I breached the police's internal network, the National Intelligence Service's database, and even the secret networks used by overseas hacker groups. But there was nothing.

  No clues to identify the culprit emerged. His online activity records, financial transactions, communication logs—everything was perfectly blank.

  It was as if he were a ghost who had never existed in this world in the first place. A thorough and perfect anonymity that even the immense hacking power of the Intelligence Fragment couldn't penetrate.

  This wasn't the work of a simple hacker. This was a technology or an ability on a level I couldn't even imagine, capable of erasing one's own existence from the digital world.

  I changed my approach. I began to focus not on the 'dot' of the culprit's identity, but on the 'line' of his behavioral patterns.

  First, all the incidents occurred in Gangnam, the symbol of wealth and power, specifically in its most glamorous locations. This revealed a clear animosity towards a specific social class.

  Second, the damages increased exponentially, as if by design: 500 million, 2 billion, 30 billion won. This suggested that money wasn't the goal; it was a well-scripted play to show off his power and gradually escalate the tension.

  Third, the consistent witness testimony of him "disappearing in an instant." This was clear evidence of an ability related to space.

  Fourth, last night's massive blackout. I analyzed the city's entire power grid data. The outage wasn't a simple overload. It was the result of someone simultaneously and minutely disrupting the controls of dozens of the city's substations. It was a warning that he could stop the city's heart, a clear declaration that his power could affect not just individuals, but the entire social system.

  When all the pieces came together, a chilling picture emerged.

  'This... isn't about money. This is grand showmanship. A perilous theater with the whole of society as its audience. He's flaunting his power, and at the same time, mocking everything we've built.'

  I gave this unknown culprit a moniker: 'The Phantom of the Opera.' A being who directs a tragedy on a grand stage but never reveals the true face behind the mask.

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  What could be his next target, the climax of this play?

  GNOM's voice resonated heavily within me, laced with a new kind of tension.

  "Kang Chul, this opponent is truly dangerous. He's thoroughly hiding his existence while simultaneously revealing himself in the most spectacular way possible. Such contradictory behavior... usually appears when hiding a much bigger plan. In all my countless years of existence, beings of this type have always brought about the greatest destruction. The serial thefts and the blackout might just be the prelude. Before the real curtain rises..."

  ##########

  It happened at that very moment.

  All the news sites and portals open on my laptop screen simultaneously turned black. Then, every TV screen in the cafe and the smartphone screens of the passersby outside all went black in unison. The entire city's digital screens had been seized.

  After a moment of silence, a white opera mask icon slowly materialized in the center of the black screens. Then, with the sound of typing, a single line of text appeared.

  [Tonight, I will take the brightest star in Hangook City.]

  Below it, a glamorous image of the 'Eternal Heart' diamond, known as the Queen of Jewels, was displayed, along with a time and place: 'Tonight at 10 PM, Gangnam Convention Center.' The Phantom of the Opera was personally announcing his next performance to the world.

  "This is... his real target?"

  I was confused. For someone who had hidden himself so perfectly to suddenly reveal his target? It was an overly blatant and theatrical provocation that didn't match his meticulous nature.

  The entire city was in an uproar. The news media was ablaze with competition for breaking news, and the police commissioner held a press conference, vowing to "arrest the culprit at all costs." SWAT teams and anti-terrorist units were deployed to the exhibition hall, and news helicopters swarmed the sky like bees.

  Everyone's attention was fixed on one place: the Gangnam Convention Center. With a single message, The Phantom of the Opera had drawn the entire city into his theatrical stage.

  GNOM warned me inside my head.

  "This is too obvious, Kang Chul. It's like shining a spotlight on center stage and shouting, 'Here, look at me!' A true hunter doesn't hunt like this. This isn't a hunt; it's a lure."

  'I know. But I can't ignore this announcement. Countless people are watching. Thousands of visitors, reporters, and police will gather there. If he really shows up and takes hostages... It's an obvious trap, but I have no choice but to walk into it.'

  My resolve hardened. I had to step onto this spectacular stage myself and unmask The Phantom of the Opera.

  But there was a problem. The enemy wore a mask, but I was bare-faced. The risk of my identity being exposed was too great.

  'A place watched by countless cameras and people. The police, the media, and maybe even another being like me could be watching. If I go as I am, my life as Kang Chul, my family, my everything will be exposed.'

  I got up from my seat and left the cafe. To face The Phantom of the Opera, I too had to wear a mask.

  ##########

  My mind was a tangled mess on the way home.

  'How do I hide my identity?'

  A hat or a mask wouldn't be enough. This stage was too grand, watched by too many eyes. A clumsy disguise would be like trying to fool myself, the one with the Intelligence Fragment.

  I hurried to my room. Standing before the mirror, I began to carefully review the subtle changes that had occurred in my body after absorbing the Intelligence Fragment.

  My mind had become sharper, of course, but my entire nervous system felt incomparably more sensitive and refined. It was a sensation of being the absolute master of my own body, as if I could issue direct commands to every single cell and muscle fiber.

  'That sensation I felt back then... The feeling that I could control not just my brain structure, but the entire neural network, even the minute movements of my facial muscles... Could it be...?'

  I closed my eyes and concentrated, trying to understand the mechanism by which the Intelligence Fragment had changed my nervous system. I explored the changes in my body systematically, as if analyzing a complex computer program.

  I felt the flow of nerve clusters extending from my brain down my spinal cord to the rest of my body, and imagined the movements of the dozens of muscles in my face connected at their ends.

  I started by changing my voice tone. By minutely adjusting the muscles around my vocal cords, a voice, deeper and thicker than my own, flowed out.

  It was a success.

  I resolved to go further and change my entire face.

  The muscles in my face, reflected in the mirror, began to tremble minutely. At first, it was like a small, unintentional spasm, but as I focused my will, it transformed into an increasingly precise and controlled movement.

  My jawline began to subtly square. My cheekbones rose just a little. The skin around my eyes tightened, creating a sharper impression, and the muscles in my forehead relaxed, forming a wrinkle as if in deep thought. The shape of my nose also subtly changed.

  I couldn't change my bone structure, but just by manipulating the surrounding muscles and cartilage, my entire impression was transformed. The youthful face of a man in his twenties was completely changing into the sharp, cold face of a middle-aged man in his forties who had weathered the storms of the world.

  I checked my transformed appearance in the mirror. A completely different person.

  I looked straight into the eyes of the stranger in the mirror. Even knowing it was just a temporary mask, the feeling was strange. The reality of having to wear a mask myself to catch a monster.

  The weight of it pressed down on my shoulders, but at the same time, a cold resolve surged within me.

  I even adjusted the muscles around my spine to change my gait and posture. My slightly stooped back straightened, and my steps now carried the weight of experience.

  I looked like a veteran actor in elaborate special-effects makeup, but this was my actual body, my real face.

  'I'm a completely different person. It's like wearing a sophisticated mask.'

  My transformed face, that of a middle-aged man in his forties, was unrecognizable as Kang Chul. With this ability, I could meet The Phantom of the Opera while keeping my identity completely hidden.

  'Now I can step onto the stage of this play with my identity concealed.'

  After a final look at the stranger's face in the mirror, I left the house, heading for the exhibition hall.

  ##########

  At 9 PM, the area around the Gangnam Convention Center was swarming with people. As the time announced by the culprit drew near, the tension reached its peak.

  With my transformed face and calm gait, I naturally slipped past the crowd of visitors, reporters, and police, and through the tight security into the exhibition hall. Just like a VIP who had been invited from the start, no one suspected me.

  The inside of the hall was a truly magnificent sight. Hundreds of diamonds sparkled dazzlingly under special lighting, and behind that splendor, a suffocating tension hung in the air.

  I positioned myself near the main exhibit, the 'Eternal Heart,' in a CCTV blind spot and waited for the culprit. My Intelligence Fragment was analyzing everything inside the hall.

  Time passed. 9:30 PM, 9:45 PM...

  The announced time of 10 PM was approaching, but The Phantom of the Opera did not appear.

  I closed my eyes and expanded my senses. I filtered out the loud voices of the reporters and the murmuring of the crowd, focusing on the 'noise' beyond.

  The heartbeat of a guard desperately feigning composure was racing. The subtle vibrations of the air conditioner were irregular. The collective unconscious of thousands, a mixture of anxiety and expectation, pressed down on me like heavy air.

  All of it was screaming one thing: nothing was going to happen here.

  'Strange... It's too quiet. This isn't his style.'

  If his goal was to show off, now was the perfect time for a spectacular entrance. But nothing happened.

  An unnatural calm, like the quiet before a storm, weighed on me. I grew more and more certain. This wasn't the real stage.

  At that very moment, I released my focus on the exhibition hall and expanded my consciousness to the entire city.

  The data flows of each district, the status of security systems, traffic information, power consumption, transactions on the financial network... Billions of pieces of information were redrawn in my mind as a massive network.

  Perceiving the entire city as one giant organism, I began to search for anomalies.

  And then I found it.

  While all eyes were on the diamond exhibition in Gangnam, on the opposite side of the city, in the least conspicuous place, a faint but critical anomaly was being detected.

  It was like a small cancer cell found in a healthy body, silently but fiercely distorting the surrounding data.

  Among the noise of countless data streams, it was the single, discordant note.

  ##########

  'No... this is a trap! This diamond... all this commotion... it was just a giant smokescreen to cover people's eyes and ears!'

  Leaving the clamor of the exhibition hall behind, I immediately traced the source of the data. The anomaly pointed to a single location.

  The Hangook City Bank Central Vault.

  GNOM's voice, filled with alarm and urgency, cried out.

  "Kang Chul, that bastard's real target wasn't the jewel! That place is the heart of Hangook City's monetary system! It's the physical heart of your economy! If the physical currency stored in that vault disappears, the digital numbers on the bank servers will lose all meaning overnight, and the city's economy will collapse! This is a catastrophe!"

  A chill ran down my spine. The Phantom of the Opera was no mere thief or a show-off with an ability. He was an intelligent and meticulous terrorist aiming to destroy the very foundation of the social system.

  The real stage for his play wasn't the diamond exhibition, but the economy of Hangook City itself.

  This massive city was now nothing more than a hostage in his hands.

  I ran out of the exhibition hall, my face still transformed. Pushing through the chaotic waves of police and reporters, I ran toward a single objective.

  As I sprinted through the streets, I gathered all the power within me. The Power Fragment turned my leg muscles into steel, and the Intelligence Fragment calculated the shortest route to the bank in real-time.

  The first act of the play, performed on the most glamorous stage, was over.

  Now, it was time to go behind the scenes, where the real tragedy was about to begin, to the deepest, darkest heart of the city.