The First Hunt
“...?!”
So he could instantly move to any point within ten meters?
Good.
It was definitely a frighteningly useful skill.
But its priority still fell below the Grim Reaper’s Robe.
For one thing, the Hell Points required were ten times higher.
“So skills are ranked above items.”
Well, it didn’t matter either way.
The conclusion was already clear.
He bought Grim Reaper’s Robe and Grim Reaper’s Scythe.
Dong-dong.
At that very moment, the doorbell rang.
“Who is it? I wasn’t expecting anyone.”
For an instant, a thought flickered through his mind: had the tattooed punk died and been found out?
But he quickly shook his head.
There was a chance, but he knew better than anyone that it was practically impossible.
Even knowing that, he found himself moving toward the front door without realizing it, lowering his footsteps and straining to listen beyond it.
But there was no sign of anyone outside.
When he carefully opened the door, a delivery box was sitting right there.
“...?”
He hadn’t ordered anything, so where had it come from?
Two boxes.
There wasn’t even a common shipping label on them.
Instead, there was a familiar red symbol: two crossed scythes.
It was the emblem he’d seen at the Hell Shop.
“No way.”
So this was how items bought from the Hell Shop were delivered?
He carried the two boxes inside and opened them at once.
Inside were the Grim Reaper’s Robe and Grim Reaper’s Scythe he had just purchased.
The robe looked like a long, ragged coat, old and threadbare as if it had been dragged through the gutters, while the scythe was no different from an ordinary farming tool.
“...Right. Who cares what it looks like? As long as the effect is good.”
He put on the Grim Reaper’s Robe.
Despite the item description claiming it concealed his appearance, he couldn’t really see any change.
“Is it even hiding anything?”
The item said invisibility, so he had expected to become a transparent man, but no matter how he looked, his body was still plainly visible.
Yet when he stood before the mirror, he knew for certain.
“...!!”
There was nothing in the mirror.
Not even the shadow cast by the fluorescent light was there.
That uncanny sight hit Suhyeok like a fresh, electric shock.
Grinning with fierce delight, he lifted the Grim Reaper’s Scythe to inspect it.
It was unimpressive at first glance, no more than a common farm tool, but contrary to its appearance, the blade was exquisitely sharp.
As a test, he brushed it lightly against a plastic bottle full of water, and the blade sliced clean through without any effort at all.
He got so carried away testing the scythe on one thing after another that he forgot even to wipe up the water that had spilled onto the floor, and after reading the item description, he ran a few more experiments.
After a long while, the results told him that the Grim Reaper’s Scythe could be summoned and unsummoned.
It only unsummoned if his hand, or some part of his body, was in direct contact with it. Summoning, on the other hand, always placed it in his hand.
“There are limits, but it’s definitely useful for hiding a weapon.”
It was optimized for nothing more complicated than concealing a weapon and then summoning it instantly to attack.
In other words, he could hide the murder weapon used to kill his enemy.
“If I’ve got the Tribunal of Punishment and the Grim Reaper’s Robe, there won’t be any way they can catch me.”
There was still plenty he would have to learn, but for now he intended to start his revenge with what he had.
“The Cheol-su Gang... where do I even start looking?”
Until recently, Suhyeok had been nothing more than an ordinary civilian utterly ignorant of crime.
He knew nothing about gangs, drugs, any of it.
All he knew was the one name the man who had killed him had spoken: the Cheol-su Gang.
So he tried searching online, but he couldn’t find even that name.
“Ah...”
Then a thought suddenly occurred to him.
“There was that junkie. Right.”
Among the guys he’d caught during that drug deal before, the junkie was probably living somewhere in this neighborhood.
Even if he broadened the search a little, it would still only be the next neighborhood over.
“If I sweep the area with the Reaper’s Eye, he should show up.”
Then something caught his eye: a motorcycle helmet.
“That’s it.”
He had taken a part-time delivery job while preparing to look for work.
It was easy to ride a scooter around the neighborhood, and nobody looked at him strangely.
Besides, delivery riders didn’t just wear helmets; they also put on balaclavas or masks underneath, so their faces were almost never visible.
It was a convenient means of transportation, and at the same time, he could earn money doing it.
He had already dealt with the tattooed punk, so the time limit from Mark of Hell was more than enough for now.
He planned to search slowly, riding around with the Reaper’s Eye.
He was the type to act immediately once he made up his mind, like pulling out a horn from an ox the moment he had hold of it.
His deliberation was cautious and deep, but once he decided, he moved without hesitation. That was Suhyeok’s strength.
Without delay, he started the delivery job.
For hours, he moved only within the nearby area, refusing long-distance orders and taking only calls that kept him close.
He spent a long time roaming every alley and wasting time, but finding the bastard was not going to be easy.
Still, he learned one new thing.
“I’m not tired.”
Maybe there was a psychological effect too, but long hours of delivery weren’t exactly easy on the body, and yet he didn’t feel tired at all.
For Suhyeok, who had never properly managed his physical condition in all his life, it felt strange and new.
Thanks to that, he was able to keep delivering for another five hours.
Then, as he turned into one narrow alley, he saw a man staggering through the dimness between the buildings, and out of habit, Suhyeok looked at the top of his head with the Reaper’s Eye.
- Drugs
- Drunk driving
- Prostitution
Three sins.
The rest didn’t even register.
All Suhyeok could see was Drugs, searing itself into his vision.
“Found you.”
The man looked vaguely like the one Suhyeok had glimpsed receiving drugs in the car passing by earlier.
He might be wrong, but instinct and gut feeling were pointing straight at this man.
Telling him this was the bastard he’d been looking for.
He turned off the scooter and parked nearby.
For exactly this kind of situation, he had already packed the Grim Reaper’s Robe in the delivery bag.
He headed into the dark alley and threw the robe over himself as he put it on.
Almost instantly, Suhyeok’s figure vanished completely, leaving only the staggering sinner behind in the alley.
“Ugh... where was my house again?”
Reeking of alcohol, he lurched along with his tongue thick and tangled.
He was walking with the unmistakable gait of a man dead drunk.
No one gave him a second glance.
He was just another person you might commonly see late at night.
Suhyeok kept close behind him in the Grim Reaper’s Robe.
The reason he wasn’t using the Tribunal of Punishment or killing the bastard with the Grim Reaper’s Scythe right away was simple.
Information about the Cheol-su Gang.
The sin hovering above the man’s head was a clue that he might possess information about the gang.
If he wanted that information, he had no choice but to go through this tedious hassle.
And soon enough, the bastard entered an old apartment complex.
He took the elevator and arrived at the front door at the end of the corridor.
With trembling hands, the punk staggered as he punched in the password and opened the door.
At that moment, Suhyeok shoved him in from behind with a kick.
“Whoops!”
The man, too drunk to even understand what had happened, rolled across the floor and flung himself out in a starfish sprawl. He waved his arms in the air and struggled to pull himself up.
“Heh-heh. I fell over again.”
Apparently used to this kind of thing, he crawled toward the living room.
Suhyeok quietly closed the door and stepped inside, glaring at him in disbelief.
How much has he been soaking himself in liquor?
The living room was littered with empty bottles, and the table reeked of spoiled side dishes gone moldy and rank.
He slowly looked around the inside of a home that seemed dirtier and less sanitary than a pigsty.
As expected, no one else lived here with him.
If anyone did, he wouldn’t be living like this.
The bastard was crawling toward the sofa, getting ready to drink again.
The sight of the house made Suhyeok’s disgust surge harder.
He swallowed back the nausea threatening to rise in his throat and darted forward, snatching the junkie’s wrist.
“Eh?”
That was all the junkie managed.
Since he couldn’t see Suhyeok in the Grim Reaper’s Robe, he only flailed at empty air.
“Heh-heh.”
He looked like he was about to ignore it and reach for the bottle with his other hand.
Suhyeok twisted the wrist hard and wrenched it out of place.
“Eh? Aaaagh!”
At first the pain didn’t register through the alcohol, but when it finally did, the junkie let out a shriek.
Suhyeok shoved some filthy rag from the sofa straight into his mouth.
“Keep quiet. You’re noisy.”
The junkie’s strength as he thrashed in pain was freakishly strong, but even so, he was still just an ordinary human.
Awakened bodies were superior to ordinary ones, and Suhyeok’s own strength had exploded under the effect of the Reaper Body.
His grip was so overpowering he didn’t even need to pay attention to whether the man struggled or not.
He searched the bastard’s body, pulled out his phone, and unlocked the screen with his fingerprint.
“These days, things are really convenient. Right?”
He asked the man with the rag stuffed in his mouth as he bawled and flailed, but the only answer he got was pathetic thrashing.
He hadn’t asked because he wanted an answer anyway.
Crack!
He finished the broken wrist off completely and let it go.
“Mmm-mmm-mmmmmm!!”
Ignoring the man clutching his wrist and howling, Suhyeok started digging through the phone.
He went through every app with messenger functions until he found one that required fingerprint access.
He grabbed the man’s wrist again, used fingerprint recognition to get in, and tapped the message at the very top.
As expected.
It contained the details of a drug deal.
“Hmm.”
The contents of the deal weren’t information Suhyeok needed.
What he needed was information on how to make contact with these guys.
He scrolled up through the conversation.
After a while, he finally found it.
“I’m the guy who got your business card at XX Club last time.”
The rest of the conversation was just about arranging the transaction, so it wasn’t needed.
The only thing Suhyeok cared about was the phrase XX Club.