King Kong and the Hybrid Clash (5)

The terrorists were looking at him as if he were a madman. No—the look was fear.

How was he even meant to put it? They were the terrorists. And yet he had the distinct sensation of having become the terrorist who terrorizes terrorists. The feeling sat strangely in him, and would not settle.

…I'm really allowed to do it like this, aren't I?

Inwardly, Lee Han was rattled. Even he could tell this was starting to look like the wrong shape of answer. But what else was there? The rule was that you don't negotiate with terrorists. That had been his sister.

She had said it. If—

If the place had been seized by the enemy, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠then the contents of the mission were irrelevant. He was not to mind a single person's eyes. He was free to wipe the whole of it away. All that mattered was his own safety, and the enemy's annihilation.

Even so, if it truly came to that, a place gathered out of nothing but prisoners would still mean far too many dead. He had raised a small objection. Listening to the answer made his mind go faint.

Even so, Lee Han had no wish to become a mass murderer. He had thrown out a last defense, almost in rebellion. What were they going to do for fertilizer after this? One misstep and an enormous chaos would break over the kingdom. He had aired a great many opinions of that kind. None of them moved her.

If his past life had contained even one superior of that caliber, he suspected he would have become a fervent supporter. A fan, even.

And now—

"Instructor, no, what is this supposed to—"

"It's fine. The person who gave me the job said I could do it this way."

"R-really?"

"Yeah. She said it wouldn't matter if I buried the Tunnel prisoners alive along with this lot. The whole mess of them."

"……"

"Not that I'm a madman. I'm not actually going to bury them alive. For now I'm just putting a scare in them."

"……"

"Well. If it starts looking like too much of a crisis, I may have to become a bit of a madman."

"Th-then we…"

"You'll have to survive. Skillfully.Well. What else is there?"

"……"

"Hey. Don't swear at me with your eyes."

"I wasn't swearing. I just…"

He had only thought that the man looked like a fish that had found water. Lee Han himself had no idea, but his face was the face of a terrorist, pure and simple, and he was in the middle of displaying a talent people would have called inborn.

He was showing Derek an easy face, but that was only to settle him. Lee Han's own tension was climbing, and inwardly he was swallowing on a dry throat. My mouth ran ahead. Still a crisis, though. It is a crisis.

He had told them he had buried a hundred scrolls in every zone. That was not true. Not that he hadn't wanted to. He had wanted it the way a chimney wants a fire. Ah. They cannot find out there's only a hundred in all…

The scrolls he had actually planted were, in truth, not many. Which stood to reason. A scroll was a precious article to begin with, and the number a private person could lay hands on was small. That even he had been able to obtain them at all was—

It had been thanks to the slave. But Lee Han's magic slave, Odwal Bernard, was incompetent. He had been given three whole days, and he had produced a bare hundred scrolls. And with that record behind him, he had still wailed as if he were grieving.

To Lee Han, every word of it sounded like an excuse. A useless man, in any case.

And so the number of scrolls was extremely small, and all he could do was regret it. Still, since he had brought them, the moment he was shut inside the Tunnels he had moved fast, sticking scrolls here and there, and in that much they were a help. The reverse, however, was equally true. The moment the bluff was seen through, it would be a crisis all the same. They don't have the power to blow the whole of the Tunnels…

He had tested them. What a scroll put out was a little weaker than dynamite. A few zones could be brought down. The whole of the Tunnels could not. Lee Han could not afford to loosen.

…Can I actually finish all of these bastards?

Somewhere past several hundred, they had him surrounded, and a bitter smile touched his mouth. Prisoners, every one of them looking as if they had learned Fighting Art. Some pulled a full man's weight, the way Roy Bant did. A good number were half-portions, the way those brats of the Silver Lion Knight Order were. The skill ran wild and uneven.

And yet they had something the Silver Lions did not. They can work together. Half Demon People, and still they showed an orderly discipline and were drawing themselves into formation. They knew tactics. This was the detail that told him they were not an outfit in which every man played his own game, but an organization trained like a single army.

Lee Han knew. He knew how terrible the force became when people who possessed tactics and coordination put their strength together on a field. He had faced the knights called the Scarlet Eagle, and so he had no choice but to know that intensity. Man for man, these were nothing beside those eagles. That more than several hundred of them had all learned Fighting Art was, even so, a threat. Nobody wins against numbers.

I can probably drag more than half of them down the road to the dead. The rest… Especially the killers wrapped in black. A little over thirty, if he was guessing, and their presence alone was enough to tell him. Each of them had the caliber of a vice-captain. Meet that lot head-on and he would be paying in arms and legs. And besides— I might be all right. Taechang's going to die, isn't he?

For Taechang, still clumsy in every direction that mattered, survival really would be hard, and the bind of it was complete. Nothing's easy. Not one damn thing… Realizing anew, with a humility that almost surprised him, that nothing about living came easy, Lee Han looked at the priest.

Low in martial power. Highest voice in the place. And also—

"Hey. You."

"Wh-what is it…"

"Your mouth is filthy."

"…Why do you say so."

"Ha. And you're not even Geumjjoki Number Two."

"……"

"Forget it. What would I even say to a man like you. I'll ask one thing. What's your relation to the Blood Cross Army?"

"!!?"

"Hmm. So there is a relation."

"Y-you—how do you know our name…! A t-traitor, perhaps…!"

"…Mm."

An acquired sense for sorting lies from truth. On the strength of it, Lee Han drew no fewer than four pieces of information out of a short exchange. The Blood Cross Army existed. That was one. They were confident their existence would not be exposed. That was another. He could not have said why, but they seemed sure they possessed a means of remaining unseen.

Then what was that means? A Mystery. Or a collaborator with power… Only a prediction, but either a Mystery capable of hiding a secret, or else a backer on the order of a great noble, or of royalty itself. In other words, the kingdom had a traitor.

And the last thing he had taken from them: These bastards are not all on the same side. The moment the name of the Blood Cross Army left his mouth, that man had spoken the word traitor without a heartbeat of hesitation. It left room to read a split of opinion inside the organization—or, if not that, factions already divided.

"Hoo…"

Perhaps because he had overused a head he did not ordinarily use, his skull had heated until it throbbed. But information bought with a hot head ought to mean something. And so—

Timid.

Y-yes?

Get ready to bolt.

R-right now?

I've learned what there is to learn. Evidence would be nice, but whatever. We just take the priest.

……

Hurry!

A-ah, yes!

At the urging, Derek went for his clothes, meaning to pull a smoke bomb. Historically speaking, nothing had ever beaten one of those for a getaway—

A hiss of air. Steel rang on steel.

"What are you playing at? Volunteering to die?"

"We were about to ask what you are playing at."

"……"

"Do we look easy to you?"

"Yeah. Easier than shit."

"…!"

Fooling men who could read a room—no. Fooling men who had skill was a difficult business. The instant Lee Han and Derek set their weight to move, one of the black-clad sent a dagger at Derek, and Lee Han took it from the front.

"Hurts…"

Even having spread Diamond Body to stop it, the impact had not all been spent. Among the black-clad, that one was probably the best. And that same man went on, calm as a verdict.

"The buried scrolls are real enough, I'll grant. But I cannot believe you hid away enough of them to bury the whole of the Tunnels. …Not unless you know the secret passages, as we do."

"Ohhh. So there really are secret passages? You fine just handing that out?"

"It doesn't matter. You won't be leaving alive anyway."

"Wow. Listen to the confidence."

"It isn't confidence. I'm stating a result. You will absolutely not leave this place alive."

A pressure that was nothing ordinary spread. The priest's order had not fallen, and still the black-clad had already settled into a stance to attack, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in time with them the prisoners poured out killing intent. It was the base, filthy will to kill of people who had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠harmed a human being at least once, circling the air as if to explain why a prisoner is a prisoner.

"Wh-what is the meaning of this! I—I have not even given an order!"

Dropped into the suddenness of it, the priest went straight to anger, as if furious at a black-clad man who dared to challenge his authority.

"You mean to challenge the authority God bestowed upon me?!"

"Hardly."

"Then wh—"

A soft, wet punch of steel.

"Ghhk—!?"

"But you are not a god. I have no reason to take orders from a useless thing like you. Tch. Idiot. Falling for the enemy's empty bluff…"

The dagger was in the priest's back, and the priest went down as he was. A decisive hand, without a moment's hesitation.

"A split in the ranks?"

"I merely removed a man with no use."

"Hmm."

Lee Han could see at a glance that the act was a man's own, taken alone. And so—

"Right. Of course. The Black Moon only joined the Blood Cross Army a little while ago."

"!!?!"

"So you were absorbed in a merger? Or were you equals once, until somebody beat you to paste and this is what was left?"

"Y-you—!"

While the black-clad stammered, thrown, Lee Han was already moving.

"Save it. I'll ask later."

He kicked, and the kick found exactly the handle of the dagger that had come at him. Control of the finest kind, and a clean transmission of force.

With neither spear nor log, the power was absurdly thin beside the art's true measure. Even so, it was not thin for the work of punching through the bellies of trash like these.

In a single instant, the two black-clad who had thrown themselves forward to shield the man who looked like their captain died where they stood. They dropped with a wet weight, and seeing them fall, he—

"I'll kill you!"

He could not swallow the rage, and he charged.

Wondered who it was. Number Four.

From a little while ago, looking at the black-clad man, Lee Han had felt a familiarity. A familiarity he had seen somewhere. And now, watching the cruelty that killed a priest on impulse, the stupidity of it, the way the body moved, he succeeded in calling up a single person.

Number Four. Back when Lee Han himself had been Number Eight, the Black Moon's candidates for the executive ranks had existed through Number Twelve. Was the man an executive by now?

He was strong, that one. In the old days Number Four had been simple to the point of stupidity, his temper like a fire, and underrated for it in a dozen ways. Even so, the potential had been tremendous. The talk had been that he was a barbarian half-blood, an experiment into whom an ogre's tendons had been grafted, the better to remodel the traits the barbarian race already possessed. They had given ogre tendons to a barbarian half. It was the same as giving a tiger wings. In strength and in potential he had been greater than anyone, and the young Lee Han had been reluctant, on a number of counts, to clash with Number Four.

…When he was young.

The impact landed like a boulder dropped on stone.

"!"

"I'll give you this. Your strength is good to the point of stupidity."

Number Four, having crashed into him, wore a blank shock. He was not being pushed back at all. It felt like a fool who had run headlong into rock. As if this were the first time in his life he had lost a contest of strength.

But Lee Han was not even stopping him by strength, not really. It was only the harvest of effort and technique, learned while he pulled two hundred trees out of the ground. And so—

"If I lost to someone like you, all those days I worked would feel like too much of a waste."

He lifted the man as he was and floated him into the air. He had torn up that many trees. How hard could it be to put one person in the sky?

And then he threw him.

The ground took Number Four with a crack like splitting timber. He had not even managed to resist on the way down.

"Ghk—!?"

He did not look badly hurt. A modified man, sure enough. By all rights a concussion ought to have arrived, and this was nowhere near enough for that. Lee Han had wanted to land something larger. Unfortunately—

"I-Instructor!"

"We run."

Watching the enemy come on, he decided there was no need to pick a hard fight for the sake of it.

"You! I told you not to run!"

"What's he on about."

Now that he thought of it, there was one more difference between these men and the Scarlet Eagle. Those had been enemies, but they had been worth respecting, and they had clearly been excellent warriors, the kind it was worth meeting fair and square.

"You aren't."

He flicked the last two scrolls out of the pocket where they had been sleeping, and let them fly.

"I don't think you'll die. I do think it's going to be very hot."

They struck. He triggered the medium without a moment's hesitation.

The detonation roared, and a monstrous sheet of flame swallowed everything around them. Hundreds of prisoners went into the fire. Watching it happen—

"See? Firepower really is the best."

"……"

"Am I wrong?"

"…Ha. Ha."

Blood doesn't wash out. Reborn he might be, but he was still a son of Hwanung, the sky-god of the old homeland, and no son of that line had ever climbed free of a love for firepower. He confirmed it all over again, with something close to reverence: overwhelming fire was the one true law of the world.