Chapter 10
The first thing that came to mind was the fight with the Awaker Kim Jong-chan in the alley behind the club.
Back then, even though Suhyuk had been wearing the Reaper's Robe, the faint trace of his presence had still been exposed by the sharp senses Awakers possessed by nature.
It had been a painful lesson in the limits of stealth alone: no matter how low-ranking the Awaker, you could never fool one completely.
‘But if I have this skill, that changes everything.’
A cold smile spread across Suhyuk's lips.
No matter how keen an Awaker's senses might be, if you skipped the very process of approaching, they had no way to react.
He pictured the sequence in his mind: erase himself with the Reaper's Robe, wait in their blind spot, then close the ten-meter distance in an instant with Reaper's Steps and leap behind his target.
After that came the final stroke—the Reaper's Scythe cutting through their throat before they had time to raise a defense.
“A perfect assassination combo.”
He still didn't have much real combat experience against Awakers, so he would have to keep training, keep studying, and build up a true body of know-how.
For three days, he sweated to grow even more familiar with Reaper's Steps and the Reaper's Scythe.
Every bead of sweat would be an investment carved into his bones and muscle.
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After three straight days devoted to training, Suhyuk decided the first thing he needed to buy was the Pouch of the Dead.
the Reaper's Scythe was already a bound item, something he could summon and resummon at will, so he had no reason to worry about hiding it.
But the Reaper's Robe and the Compass of Grudges strapped to his scooter were a different story.
He had to keep stuffing them into the delivery box or carrying them in his hands, which was a nuisance, and there was always the risk of losing them.
the Pouch of the Dead was the perfect convenience item—basically an inventory straight out of a game—that would solve all of that at once.
Besides, among the newly unlocked goods, it was the cheapest thing available at 200 Hell Points.
That alone made it even more appealing.
‘I already got 100 Hell Points from the achievement for buying every item in the Hell Shop, so I just need to save up another 100.’
Sitting back deep into the sofa, Suhyuk reviewed his current situation and began drawing up his plans for the future once more.
The one he most wanted to rip apart and kill was clear.
The knife thug who had stabbed him in the stomach, Kim Kyung-su—the one who sucked up to Inspector Lee Chi-sang, the iron-masked bastard Cheol-gamen who gave all the orders at XX Club.
‘And the other one who was supposed to be above that iron mask. The boss of Cheolsu-pa.’
There were four key members of Cheolsu-pa who absolutely had to be sent to hell, but right after he had raided the manufacturing plant, every lead and scrap of information pointing toward them had abruptly gone dead.
To solve this hopeless situation, he either had to wander the streets again like before, riding his scooter around to shake loose clues by brute force, or learn the skill Echoes of Hell from the Hell Shop and extract information directly from the souls of the men he killed.
‘Echoes of Hell costs 400 Hell Points. That’s not happening any time soon. If I want the Pouch of the Dead first, I’ll need to save up a total of 600 Hell Points.’
That was a staggering amount—so huge that if he only hunted the neighborhood trash, petty thugs, or marijuana couriers one by one, there was no telling when he’d ever collect it.
They said a gentleman’s revenge could wait ten years and still not be late.
Even if it took a detour, he had no intention of wasting endless time searching for Cheolsu-pa after they had erased their traces and gone into hiding.
‘Let’s wipe out criminal organizations.’
It wasn’t as if Cheolsu-pa was the only rotten criminal syndicate in this country.
‘Where would be good?’
Just as Suhyuk was thinking about his next hunting ground and idly flipping through the channels with the remote, a breaking news alert on the living room TV caught his eye.
In a parking lot swallowed by darkness, Kim Kyung-su and Kim Tae-su sat silently inside a black sedan with the engine off, waiting for someone.
Breaking the silence, Kim Tae-su, seated in the passenger seat, spoke in a short voice.
“Hyung, he’s here.”
With the glare of headlights behind it, a luxury foreign car slid into the lot.
The prey they were after was Cho Tae-jun, the second-in-command of the Black Moon faction.
He was the real number two of Black Moon Entertainment, a man who made his living through illegal prostitution and human trafficking.
“Move.”
At Kim Kyung-su’s curt command, both men slipped out of the car without a sound.
The moment Cho Tae-jun finished parking and opened his door, the two of them closed in from either side and struck without hesitation.
Cho Tae-jun had once worked as an E-class Awaker before retiring and throwing himself in with a criminal organization.
Instinctively sensing the cold murderous intent rushing toward him, he twisted back in a hurry.
“Who the hell are you!”
Cho Tae-jun shouted warily.
When the faces of the two men surrounding him emerged beneath the dim parking-lot lights, his eyes widened.
“Kim Kyung-su from Cheolsu-pa?!”
They were faces he knew all too well.
Cho Tae-jun cried out in a voice tangled with confusion and rage.
“What the hell is this all of a sudden? You trying to start a war with us Black Moon bastards?”
“Come quietly. If you don’t want to get hurt.”
Kim Kyung-su murmured in a voice stripped of all feeling.
Something was off.
There was no way anyone would meekly go along with this kind of savage ambush.
Cho Tae-jun immediately drew up his mana and searched for an escape route.
“You crazy bastards. You think I’m just going to go along with you?”
“For an old E-class loser, you sure like hearing yourself talk.”
Snickering, Kim Tae-su pulled a vicious dagger with a serrated blade from his coat.
His opponents were two Abyss dogs who had spent their lives hunting people, not monsters.
Kim Kyung-su and Kim Tae-su were D-class and C-class, a step or two above him.
With a body that was already old and dulled, he had no chance of standing up to the brothers’ brutal combined assault.
After a brief struggle, Cho Tae-jun’s knees buckled and his face was hammered in; before long, he had passed out and was dragged away.
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In a basement thick with the stink of blood and dampness, Cho Tae-jun, who had lost consciousness, opened his eyes to unbearable pain and found himself staring into Kim Kyung-su’s cold gaze.
“Ghh… where… am I?”
“Awake now, are you?”
Kim Tae-su seized Cho Tae-jun by the hair and yanked his head up.
Tied to a chair and covered in blood, Cho Tae-jun faced Kim Kyung-su through a blurred haze.
“I know Black Moon attacked our side. If you tell me the truth, I’ll let you live. Why did you do it?”
Kim Kyung-su asked, emotionless.
Cho Tae-jun spat out the blood that had dribbled down to his chin and scowled.
He had no idea what the hell they were talking about.
“Tch. What bullshit is that? We attacked your Cheolsu-pa? You’ve got the wrong people. It wasn’t us.”
“It was you. No one else could have done it.”
Kim Kyung-su wasn’t asking a question.
He was declaring a conclusion.
The torture began.
Kim Kyung-su kept asking the same thing over and over, and Cho Tae-jun desperately kept shaking his head.
“I’m innocent! Manager Kim, I swear I’m innocent. I don’t know what happened, but we had no reason to touch your Cheolsu-pa, and no room to either! What, Cheolsu-pa, the bunch of pathetic losers who do nothing but drag children in and sell marijuana? Why the hell would we attack you?”
“Ah, shut up. You talk too much.”
Thud.
The razor-sharp dagger Kim Tae-su was gripping plunged deep into Cho Tae-jun’s thigh.
The serrated edge savaged the flesh cruelly.
“Aaaagh!”
“What matters isn’t whether you actually did it or not.”
As Cho Tae-jun screamed, Kim Tae-su whispered into his ear with mockery in his voice.
“What matters is finding some bastard we can pin it on and dragging him to the boss. Whether you did it or not, it has to become your crime if we want to stay alive. Get it?”
The moment he saw that cold, deranged look, Cho Tae-jun understood at once.
‘Those bastards… are crazy enough to kill me.’
Something had happened that dealt a devastating blow to Cheolsu-pa, and these two were so desperate to find the culprit that they were on the verge of being driven mad.
The promise to let him live if he told the truth was an obvious lie.
This torture wasn’t about uncovering the truth.
It was nothing more than a scheme to hitch someone to their fate and make them the sacrificial lamb so they could keep their own lives.
Cho Tae-jun was furious and sick with frustration, but in that damp, sealed basement, there was no one to hear him insist that he truly didn’t know.
“You did it. That’s final.”
Kim Kyung-su’s cold verdict echoed through the basement.
The deadline Cheol-gamen had set in his final warning was only one week.
Finding the real culprit, the one who had erased every trace of themselves, within that time seemed nearly impossible.
The only way Kim Kyung-su and Kim Tae-su could survive Cheol-gamen’s wrath was to brainwash someone and offer them up as the criminal.
Three days.
For three endless days, the torture and brainwashing were repeated, flesh torn away again and again.
During that time, the Kim brothers sent people out to scour the streets and desperately search for clues to the true culprit, but in the end they failed to find the hand behind the incident that had vanished without a trace.
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With Black Moon’s second-in-command, Cho Tae-jun, gone missing, the Black Moon faction naturally exploded into chaos.
But they had no way of knowing that all of it had been the work of the Kim brothers from Cheolsu-pa.
The crude traces Kim Tae-su had left behind while kidnapping Cho Tae-jun, the traces of a man who handled all the dirty work, became the decisive factor that made Yacha-pa look like the culprit.
And so, on that pitch-black night, Black Moon’s sudden knife attack descended upon Yacha-pa’s businesses.
Yacha-pa had been helplessly beaten down without ever understanding why, and if the police hadn’t intervened in the middle, the entire organization might have collapsed completely.
Because it was a clash between two of the most notorious groups in Seoul’s OO District, even the police failed to wipe them out in one sweep and only managed to haul away the small fry left on the scene.
The surviving Yacha-pa members were enraged.
They still had no idea why Black Moon had attacked them in the first place, but that no longer mattered.
“If a war starts, then we finish it.”