Perfect Ambush
Su-hyeok’s cold gaze swept over the twenty-one gang members hurrying around inside the hospital.
Before Kim Kyung-su and Kim Tae-su arrived, he planned to cut the throats of everyone in this abandoned hospital and harvest their Hell Points.
To prepare the perfect graveyard for their welcome, he moved forward at an unhurried pace.
Whenever the bleak night wind slipped through the shattered windows, strange cries seemed to echo through the building, almost like something lamenting in the dark.
One of the men carrying supplies shivered hard as he readjusted a box filled with heavy surgical equipment on his shoulder.
Crushed by the damp, chilling atmosphere that felt as if a ghost might burst out at any second, he leaned toward the coworker carrying the load beside him and whispered cautiously, “Hey, did you hear that? They say this hospital is haunted...”
“Ah, shit. Don’t say crap like that. The vibe’s already so fucked up I can feel my spine freezing.”
“No, seriously. They say the spirits of people who died here used to wander the hallways at night. I’ve been getting this cold feeling at the nape of my neck ever since a while ago, and it’s seriously creeping me out.”
Just as the two of them slowed their steps and glanced warily into the thick darkness around them, a voice as cold and sharp as ice came stabbing in from behind.
“Stop spouting useless crap and hurry up. We don’t have time.”
It was Team Leader Park, striding along with a haughty expression while carefully checking the equipment inventory sheet.
At the flat, frosty tone of her voice, devoid of even a shred of emotion, the two gang members flinched and froze in place.
“Y-yes, Team Leader!”
With a twitch of irritation, Team Leader Park flicked her pen and gave them a chilling glare.
“You do know the boss and his younger brother are on their way right now, don’t you? We need the operating room fully set up before they arrive. Unless you want to die at the boss’s hands.”
“S-sorry! We’ll do it properly!”
After Team Leader Park’s sharp reprimand, the men who’d been babbling about ghosts shut their mouths tight.
They no longer dared to loaf around and instead broke into a sweat as they hastily headed for the third floor.
Just as Team Leader Park was glaring after them irritably and turning her gaze back to the middle of the first-floor lobby, Su-hyeok moved without the slightest hesitation or strain.
He knew there wasn’t a single Awaker among the twenty-one people in this hospital.
What was more, under the excuse of security, the bastards had sealed off every possible route except the hospital’s one and only entrance.
You made the fatal mistake of sealing off your own escape route.
In the darkness, a merciless blade split the air.
Swish— slash!
“...Huh?”
Both of Team Leader Park’s wrists, along with the smartphone she’d been holding, dropped cleanly into the air.
With a shriek that seemed to tear her throat apart, Team Leader Park rolled across the marble floor.
Su-hyeok picked up the smartphone that had fallen to the ground and quietly slipped it into his pocket.
“Team Leader! What happened!”
“It’s the first floor! There was screaming in the lobby!”
At the sound of that horrifying death cry, the men scattered throughout the building came rushing in from all directions.
Each of them had grabbed a steel pipe from somewhere.
But what awaited them in the first-floor lobby was only Team Leader Park, writhing madly in a pool of blood and clutching her severed wrists.
“W-what the hell! Why are the Team Leader’s wrists like that?”
“Get a bandage! Stop the bleeding first!”
“Someone’s definitely here!”
“Come out right now, you fucking bastard!”
As they cursed and wildly swung their steel pipes into empty air, Su-hyeok casually swept the scythe of the Grim Reaper through the darkness.
Swish— thud!
“Ghk...”
“H-hiiik!”
The necks of the two men at the very front, the ones shouting the loudest, were neatly severed, blood spurting in a crimson spray.
Blood erupted into the air, and a comrade’s head rolled across the floor.
At the impossible slaughter created by an unseen killer, the men’s fighting spirit shattered in an instant.
“H-his head just fell off by itself...”
“A ghost! The rumor was real! It’s a ghost!”
The unknown terror completely shattered their reason.
The men, having lost all will to fight, threw down their weapons and tried to run for their lives, but the only exit was already perfectly blocked by Su-hyeok’s body.
Even those clawing desperately to survive, even those stumbling backward with tears and snot streaming down their faces, were not spared.
He hooked the scythe through the thigh muscles of the ones trying to flee and sliced them open, then in turn severed the throats of the screaming men who crumpled to the floor.
Every time the scythe cut through the air, fountains of blood burst in every direction, and no one made it past the entrance alive.
In just a few minutes, twenty mangled corpses lay strewn in ruin at the entrance to the hospital lobby.
All that remained in this hellish space was Team Leader Park, face-down and groaning with both wrists cut open.
“Uuugh... uugh... h-hh...”
Her eyes had gone completely mad with terror as she crawled across the floor.
She had watched twenty of her subordinates turn into slabs of meat in the blink of an eye, and all that remained in her now was the blind instinct to survive and escape this hell.
Su-hyeok shook the blood from his scythe and quietly watched her desperate struggle.
He could have cut her throat then and there, but instead he chose to put the scythe away.
Kim Kyung-su and Kim Tae-su. I don’t know their exact ranks, but they’re both Awakers at least E-class or above.
It would not be an easy fight to take on two Awakers, either of whom might be stronger than he was, at the same time.
Before a direct clash, Su-hyeok needed the perfect stage setting to shatter their reason and composure completely.
Would a gang underling whose wrists have been severed and who’s crawling around in blood still be able to keep his cool?
That was exactly why he hadn’t killed Team Leader Park right away.
It was a calculated move, designed to instill unimaginable fear and tension in the two men who would soon arrive.
A cruel welcome, carved deep into their bones.
“Hahh... ugh...”
As though she no longer even had the strength to scream, she clamped her lips shut and crawled through the wild grass in the yard, tears streaming down her face.
Blood dripped steadily from both wrists, cut bluntly off, leaving long, horrifying crimson streaks across the dirt.
Clomp. Clomp.
Su-hyeok revealed his presence little by little and followed behind her.
Clomp. Clomp.
At the cold, heavy footsteps trailing her from behind, Team Leader Park’s body stiffened like a frog’s.
She instinctively realized that a vast, invisible death had closed in right behind her back.
Vroooom—!
Then, not far down the mountain road, the low roar of a heavy engine cut through the still night air.
Su-hyeok’s mouth curved into a dark smile.
Perfect timing.
Blinding headlights swept across the front gate of the abandoned hospital, and soon a black SUV rolled smoothly to a stop in the middle of the yard.
Click.
The car door opened.
Someone who stepped out saw the long trail of blood stretching across the yard and Team Leader Park lying at its end, and spoke in a voice thick with disbelief and shock.
“...Team Leader Park?”
* * *
We drove up the dark mountain road by the light of the headlights.
“Damn, it’s fucking dark. Shit.”
My brother gave a short warning at my muttering from the driver’s seat.
“Watch the road. There’s a cliff beside us.”
“Got it, hyung.”
Not long after, the abandoned mountain hospital we’d planned to move into came into view.
Passing through the crumbling front gate that looked ready to collapse at any moment, we reached the yard choked with weeds.
The moment the headlights stretched all the way to the hospital entrance, something wriggling and crawling across the ground came into view.
“What the hell is that?”
With the dark night and the harsh headlights overlapping, its shape was faint and indistinct.
I immediately opened the car door and got out.
Frowning, I looked closer and saw something like a corpse with both wrists severed, crawling through the dirt and bleeding all over the ground.
For a second, I thought it was a monster.
I figured maybe a gate break had erupted nearby.
But the name that came out of my brother’s mouth was completely unexpected.
My brother, who had gotten out from the passenger seat, stared at that grotesque sight and, after failing to find the words, finally managed to say, “...Team Leader Park?”
That pile of meat was Team Leader Park?
She should have finished helping us move and been waiting for us in one piece—so why was she crawling around like that with her wrists cut off?
Instinct honed through experience kicked in, and I quickly drew the vicious dagger with a serrated blade and scanned the surroundings.
Then, beyond Team Leader Park’s miserable groans, I caught a faint trace of presence.
The presence was right behind her.
Something nasty. Could it be an invisible boss monster, like a Phantom Stalker?
But the suspicion that flashed through my mind was immediately replaced by certainty.
No.
The aura the bastard gave off was completely different from the feral, brutal power unique to boss monsters like a Phantom Stalker.
It was faint, sticky, and eerie.
It was unmistakably the presence of a sentient human, an Awaker, and yet there was something indescribably unpleasant about it.
I’ve never felt a presence like this before... Who is it?
Without hesitation, I hurled the dagger in my right hand with all my strength toward the empty space where I sensed the presence, then kicked off the ground like a bolt of lightning.
Whether Team Leader Park lived or died as she crawled on the ground was none of my concern.
All I cared about was cutting down the bastard who had dared to mess with Cheolsu-pa.
In my left hand, I was already gripping another dagger I’d taken from my back pocket.
Using my momentum, I slashed brutally toward the place where I’d felt that presence.
Whoosh—!
But all my fingertips found was the hollow, futile sensation of cutting empty air.
At that exact moment, the presence that had been straight ahead only a second ago suddenly appeared behind my back.
“Hah!”
I could feel a chilling blade of killing intent slicing through the night wind, closing in on my throat.
Like an animal, I ducked my head and barely avoided the blade.
At the same time, I flipped the dagger in my left hand up into the air, caught it again with my right, and twisted my body hard to slash behind me.
With my now-empty left hand, I activated a skill directly into the void.
Dagger Retrieval!
Fwoosh—! The dagger I’d thrown straight ahead a moment ago tore through the darkness in a trail of mana and flew back, wrapping perfectly around my empty left hand.
Evading the enemy’s strike, adjusting my grip, counterattacking, and then using my free hand to activate a skill and reclaim the weapon once more.
Everything had happened in a single breath, smooth as water, in the blink of an eye.
If I did say so myself, it was a flawless flow.
Slash.