The Weight of Hidden Sin
In the past, he would have had to ride his scooter around the neighborhood, wasting time combing the area inch by inch.
But not anymore.
Within a radius of one kilometer, he only had to follow the needle and close the distance in a straight line.
Before long, he was slowing his scooter in an affluent residential district just beyond the busy commercial streets.
It radiated a completely different level of wealth from the clusters of multifamily villas.
High walls, a massive iron gate kept firmly shut, and CCTV cameras installed everywhere with no blind spots.
It was an ironclad fortress no ordinary person would even dare approach.
The compass needle, now almost glowing red-hot, pointed stiffly over the wall of that enormous mansion.
What kind of sin did this bastard commit?
Suhyuk parked the scooter in a shadowed alley near the mansion wall.
He took the Judge’s robe from the pocket of the dead man and slipped it on, then vaulted the high wall soundlessly and with ease.
A wide courtyard spread out before him.
Expensive ornamental trees had been meticulously tended, and elegant outdoor lighting cast a soft glow across the grounds.
At the center, sprawled across an outdoor sofa as if he were the king of the world, was a man smoking a cigar.
He held a smartphone in one hand and was on an irritated call.
“So? Did you erase the dashcam footage?”
“⋯⋯.”
“Ah, damn it. You people are useless. How much money did I shove at that cop, and you still can’t keep his mouth shut?”
“⋯⋯.”
“Hey. Double the consolation payment to the old man’s family. People shut up when they smell money.”
“⋯⋯.”
“And if they still make a fuss? Hah. Then drown them yourself, you idiot! Do I have to spell out every single thing for you?”
The man’s venomous shout boomed through the quiet garden.
Suhyuk opened the Eye of Judgment with a cold gaze and swept over the top of the man’s head.
- Drunk driving
- Hit-and-run
- Destruction of evidence
- Bribery
- Embezzlement
- Abuse of power and assault
Perfectly matching the conversation, the nauseating text had pooled there like black smoke.
The needle had every reason to burn red.
Suhyuk’s eyes sank into something glacially cold.
An Awaker?
Magic power flowed faintly, but unmistakably, from the man’s body.
He wasn’t an ordinary civilian.
He was an Awaker.
From the density of the magic pouring off him, Suhyuk made a quick guess at the bastard’s rank.
B-class? C-class? Probably around B-class. Feels similar to Cheol-gamen.
He didn’t have enough experience yet to be sure.
But what he did know for certain was that the man wasn’t A-class, and that a single sweep of the Judge’s scythe would separate his head from his shoulders.
As Suhyuk summoned a massive scythe into his right hand and moved to slip silently behind the man, who was spewing curse after curse into the phone, the smartphone suddenly rang out harshly.
The man exhaled a long stream of cigar smoke and answered with obvious annoyance.
“What now!”
After listening to the report for a moment, his brow furrowed with irritation.
“What the hell are you talking about? How the hell did a reporter catch wind of it?”
“⋯⋯.”
“Shove money at the reporter. I don’t care how much. Can’t even handle one simple thing? Why do you think I pay for an expensive secretary?”
He cut himself off in exasperation, then added in an icy voice, “Anyway, make sure there isn’t a single article by tomorrow. If you can’t do that, consider yourself dead.”
Click.
He hung up unilaterally.
Not a shred of guilt or hesitation stained the voice that was burying a hit-and-run case that had taken someone’s life.
It was the same dry, irritated attitude someone might have while dumping a bothersome stack of paperwork on a subordinate’s desk.
Lightly, Suhyuk’s grip tightened on the scythe in his right hand.
Swish.
The blade was just about to fall toward the man’s neck without delay when—
At that very moment—
“Dad!”
The massive front door of the mansion opened, and a little boy in pajamas came running barefoot across the courtyard.
“Dad!”
The man’s face changed in an instant.
The arrogant, contemptuous expression from just a moment ago, when he had weighed a human life against money, vanished without a trace.
He hurriedly stubbed out the cigar in an ashtray and smiled brightly, spreading both arms toward the child.
“Oh, there’s my boy. Why are you up? Shouldn’t you be asleep?”
“You weren’t coming inside.”
“I was outside taking a work call. Come on, let’s get back in. You’ll catch a cold.”
Suhyuk’s feet stopped dead.
The child knew nothing.
He didn’t know that the father smiling so warmly at him had killed another family with his car, or that he was trying to cover death with pitiful scraps of money.
And he had no idea that, right there in the courtyard, a reaper stood behind him, ready to take his father’s head at any second.
In Suhyuk’s mind, the pale face of Lee Si-hyun flashed through his memory.
Even after she had seen the filthy crime scene with her own eyes—her father, pants off and drenched in blood—she had still cried and begged him not to kill him.
Lee Si-hyun had seen and understood every horror, yet she had not been able to watch the blood relative she had called Father her whole life die before her eyes. She had begged Suhyuk to spare him so she could rot him away in prison instead.
But this child knew nothing.
Not even that the man he loved most in the world was trash worse than a beast.
If Suhyuk cut the man’s throat here and now, or delivered the judge’s punishment and turned him into black spark-dust through agony, that horrific sight would become an unerasable trauma carved into the child’s soul for the rest of his life.
Suhyuk’s gaze lingered for a moment on the man’s back as he moved to scoop the child into his arms.
A bitter, filthy feeling stirred from the bottom of his chest.
But soon enough, it sank into something icily cold.
Be grateful. Even if you fall into hell the same as everyone else, I won’t send you there in front of your son.
Suhyuk moved behind the man.
Then, instead of turning the sharp edge toward him, he gripped the weapon so that the heavy blunt side faced out.
Swish. Swish. Swish. Swish.
Almost brushing past him, he swept the blunt edge across the man’s arms and legs in a single rapid succession.
That was enough.
“Ugh—?!”
The man, smiling brightly a moment ago, froze.
The arms he had been lifting to hold the child suddenly lost all control and dropped limply through the air.
His legs gave way, and his knees buckled to the ground.
And then, the next instant—
“Aaaaaaagh!!!”
A desperate scream tore the peaceful courtyard of the mansion to shreds.
“A-ah! Aaaaaah!”
The man clutched at his limbs and rolled frantically across the courtyard.
There was no visible injury.
Not a single drop of blood had been spilled.
But the wound the Judge’s Scythe had carved directly into his soul left behind pain far deeper and more dreadful than any physical injury.
The sturdy body and magic resistance of a B-class Awaker were meaningless against pain that struck the soul itself.
“D-dad! Dad, what’s wrong!!”
The child, terrified, burst into tears and collapsed beside the man.
The man knew in his head that he should pick the child up and calm him down, but the pain, as though his very soul were burning, had him so crushed that he couldn’t even move a finger.
“S-sir! Madam! The boss has collapsed!”
“Call 119 now! Get an ambulance!”
Servants and the wife, having heard the commotion from inside, rushed out in a panic, and urgent voices calling for an ambulance filled the courtyard.
Suhyuk watched the scene of chaos from a step back, expressionless.
Before long, an ambulance screeched to a stop in front of the mansion.
After confirming that the man had been loaded onto a stretcher and taken into the ambulance, Suhyuk mounted the scooter he had left in the alley.
Following him was no difficulty at all.
The Thread of Sin was lighting the way wherever the man had gone.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
By the time he reached the hospital, the man had already been rushed into the emergency room.
The medical staff swarmed him like a hive of bees and carried out a full battery of tests.
X-rays, CT scans, brain wave analysis, and neurological exams were all performed in rapid succession.
Wearing the Judge’s Robe, Suhyuk passed silently down the emergency room corridor and slipped into the space behind the curtain around the man’s bed.
The man was still screaming as if he were a beast being butchered alive.
“It hurts! It hurts like hell! My arm! My leg feels like it’s burning to ash!”
“Please, calm down, sir! You mustn’t move. We’re checking your test results now!”
A nurse frantically injected a sedative into his vein.
But it was useless.
Far deeper than the speed at which the sedative could flow through his blood, pain that was tearing his soul apart had taken over the man’s brain.
“Doctor! The sedative isn’t working at all! Should we add more painkillers?!”
“Can we push it to the limit on dosage?”
“Try it for now! The patient is on the verge of shock.”
The staff moved in frantic circles, pumping him full of drugs.
They even administered morphine, but the man’s screams showed no sign of fading, not by even one decibel.
Painkillers could only block the pain of the body.
The wound of judgment carved into the soul lay in a realm no modern medicine could ever touch.
“What on earth is going on? There’s no external injury, and the bloodwork is all normal.”
The attending physician wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and glared at the monitor.
“Can you hear me, sir? The test results are in. No trauma, no fractures, no neurological abnormalities. Every single number is perfectly normal. Medically, there’s no sign of any problem at all!”
The attending physician’s verdict: pain with no identifiable cause.
The moment those words ended, Suhyuk, standing quietly by the bedside curtain, recited the skill in his mind.
Requiem of Retribution.
“Aaaaagh!”
The man, who had only been gasping a moment earlier while listening to the doctor, suddenly twisted his body as though seized by a fit and reached out toward the empty air with both hands.
Following the pain in his soul, a horrific hallucination slammed into his brain.
“Doctor! The patient’s vitals just spiked!”
“Restrain him! Grab his arms and legs, now!”
The staff hurried in horror and threw themselves on his limbs, pinning them with their body weight.
But there was no way ordinary medical personnel could contain a struggling B-class Awaker.
“More sedative! Now!”
“We’re already at the maximum dose! If we give him any more, he could go into cardiac arrest!”
“Then call anesthesiology immediately! We need to put him under, even if it’s general anesthesia!”
Inside the curtain of the hospital room, it became a chaotic, uncontrollable mess.