Thread of Sin
“From now on, answer my questions quickly and accurately. Unless you want to die from blood loss. Keep in mind that I don’t have time to waste.”
Han Suhyuk had no intention of letting this bastard live, not even the tiniest shred.
Whether he died from blood loss or was dragged down to hell by a sentence of judgment and punishment, the end was the same.
But to Ichisang, that warning seemed to be the only rope hanging over the abyss.
“Y-Yes!”
The answer came out fast, almost groveling.
The pride of a detective had long since been thrown to the dogs in the face of any hope of survival.
“I already know you were backing Cheolsu-pa. Bribery, leaking official secrets, aiding murder, aiding drug distribution, concealment of a crime, abuse of authority. Those are all your crimes.”
Ichisang’s eyes twitched wildly.
This was a man who had already finished investigating him.
Ichisang swallowed hard.
“Tell me everything about Cheolsu-pa. Leave nothing out.”
“I-I don’t know much about them! They’re such a cell-based organization… I only helped because Kim Kyung-su threatened me! He used my family as leverage… If he’s in the Abyss and goes after my family, I can’t—”
When the disgusting excuse threatened to drag on, Suhyuk cut him off.
“Enough. How do you contact Kim Kyung-su?”
“He contacts me first. There should be an old phone in the console box of my car. I only use that—”
He cut him off again.
“Where do you meet?”
“It changes every time! I only know after I get instructions!”
He asked about Cheolsu-pa’s boss and their manufacturing site after that too, but Ichisang was nothing more than a low-ranking errand boy handling the cleanup.
Nothing of value came out.
“Useless. Go rot in hell.”
“What? N-No, you said you’d let me live! You said if I told you everything, you’d spare me!!”
Suhyuk answered with a sneer.
“I never said I’d let you live. I said to answer quickly and accurately.”
He took the car key from the bastard’s pocket and activated judgment punishment.
When black energy surged up from the floor and began gnawing at Ichisang’s body, Suhyuk found the old phone inside the SUV and checked the text history.
[Our guy got tripped up by a rat while working yesterday. Check whether a tip’s come in from the narcotics unit.]
[Found him. Name’s Han Suhyuk. OO Villa, Unit 302.]
[We’ll handle our guy and Han Suhyuk ourselves. Just bury it properly.]
[Got it.]
His pupils trembled.
His name, and his exact address.
Behind the knife that had killed Suhyuk, there had been information supplied by this detective who lived off the people’s taxes.
“...Bastard.”
His vision turned red with rage.
Suhyuk charged at Ichisang, who was still screaming while being punished from behind, and kicked his head hard as if he were driving a soccer ball.
Crack!
The monstrous strength enhanced by the Hell Reaper Body crushed Ichisang’s skull.
With a grotesque crunch as his skull caved in, Ichisang died instantly without even managing a scream.
A black shadow greedily spread over the corpse.
Before long, Ichisang’s form crumbled away into black specks of light and vanished without a trace.
He said Kim Kyung-su is in the Abyss.
Suhyuk skimmed the chat logs left on Ichisang’s phone, gauging Kim Kyung-su’s presence.
He couldn’t tell what rank of Abyss he was, but he was obviously on a completely different level from Kim Jongchan, who had only been doing guard duty at the club entrance.
A man who pulled the strings of a narcotics detective like a piece on a board and engineered the whole game.
Suhyuk had the strong feeling that this bastard would be several times stronger and far more troublesome than Kim Jongchan.
At that moment, a clear system message appeared over his retina.
You have judged a sinner.
You have gained 10 Hell Points as a judgment reward.
[Achievement Unlocked: Total Hell Points Surpassed 100]
Total accumulated Hell Points have reached 100.
New items have been stocked in the Hell Shop.
New items?
Suhyuk immediately summoned the Hell Shop.
Red and black energy swirled as the product list updated.
[Items]
— Reaper’s Robe
— Reaper’s Scythe
— Compass of Lost Souls
— Locked
— Locked
[Skills]
— Reaper’s Steps
— Thread of Sin (NEW)
— Locked
— Locked
Suhyuk’s eyes narrowed as he read the explanation for the newly added skill.
Thread of Sin
Leaves a red trace of sin along the path taken by a sinner targeted through the Reaper’s Eye.
The trace will not disappear until the sinner dies or the caster dismisses it.
Required Hell Points: 50
This came at just the right time. Fifty Hell Points, huh… I’ll have to hold off on Reaper’s Steps for now.
There was no urgent need to buy it right away, so Suhyuk closed the window for the moment and finished what he’d been doing.
At his fingertips, clutching the phone, Ichisang’s disgusting trail of corruption scrolled past line after line.
The more he read, the deeper his disgust for the man grew.
He wasn’t some victim who had been forced to help, as he’d claimed right before dying.
[This Thursday, we’re going to flood the area with “Candy” in bulk. Clear out the district that day.]
[Thursday’s a bit tight. I’ll find an excuse with a company dinner and slip away. If something blows up, I know nothing about it.]
[Don’t worry. My guys are clean when it comes to their work. I’ll leave the agreed amount at “the spot.” Take it. 8 p.m.]
[Okay.]
[The guy you handled last time was found dead. I’m covering it as a hit-and-run for now, but people upstairs keep getting suspicious. Lay low for a while.]
[Detective, watch your mouth. If you take the money, you move according to the money. If you don’t want you and your family found as corpses, then keep it in mind.]
[...Got it. I just meant we should be careful. Sorry.]
Suhyuk’s eyes sank coldly.
Ichisang was skillfully selling out public authority.
He was more than willing to drag his team off with the excuse of a company dinner so they’d miss the crackdowns, and he was just as aggressive when it came to pocketing the money.
Kim Kyung-su’s threats were nothing more than rough blows between partners, telling him to earn his keep for the cash he’d taken.
Ichisang had even been turning that fear into a fee and enjoying it.
[At 1 a.m. tonight, triple the usual drop quantity. Keep the patrol team from coming over there.]
[I moved every patrolman in that jurisdiction over to the opposite eating district. They won’t be going that way for two hours.]
[The bribe money was put in the laundromat locker.]
[Just checked it.]
[One of our guys touched a civilian at the entertainment district yesterday, and it looks like it was caught on the convenience store’s exterior CCTV. Delete it before a report comes in and things get messy.]
[Tell them to be more careful. It’s been handled.]
So they really were all in on it.
The image of an active-duty cop selling out a tipster’s information, then snickering as he collected bundles of cash from a laundromat locker, made bile rise deep in Suhyuk’s stomach.
Just as Suhyuk was focusing on finding a lead on Kim Kyung-su, the phone in his hand vibrated again.
Buzz, buzz, buzz.
A message had arrived in real time.
[2 a.m. tonight. We’re dropping double the usual load in OO-dong as planned. The mood around here’s bad today, so lock it down for sure.]
2 a.m.…
If he caught and shook down the runner, he could learn the location of the factory.
Suhyuk wiped the fingerprints clean off the phone with meticulous care and shoved it back into the console box.
If the police found this phone later, Ichisang would be branded not as a missing person, but as a shameless bastard who had taken bribes and fled.
Suhyuk pulled the memory card from the SUV’s black box and tucked it away before getting onto his scooter.
On the way back, he tossed the memory card into a sewer opening swallowed by deep darkness.
After getting home and settling for a late dinner, Suhyuk immediately bought Thread of Sin from the Hell Shop.
Skills weren’t delivered like items.
The moment he pressed the confirmation button, a faint black gleam flashed through his body and disappeared.
[Name] Han Suhyuk
[Class] Hell Reaper
[Level] 3
[Status] Mark of Hell
[Skills]
— Reaper’s Eye
— Judgment Punishment
— Hell Shop
— Hell Reaper Body
— Thread of Sin
[Hell Points] 10
He still had to gather Hell Points to buy Reaper’s Steps again, but he didn’t feel especially regretful or disappointed.
2 a.m.
Suhyuk rode his scooter to OO-dong right on time.
In a sprawling neighborhood like this, trying to find a runner with no idea where he was going, simply by cruising around on a scooter, was nearly impossible.
But Suhyuk had the Compass of Lost Souls.
All I have to do is find him. The tailing part will take care of itself with Thread of Sin.
Watching the compass needle tremble beside the dashboard, he combed through OO-dong as if hunting for a rat in a grain bin.
How long had he been circling like that? A delivery rider flashed past from the opposite direction at high speed.
For that brief instant, the compass needle spun like mad and pointed straight at the man’s back.
“Damn it, I couldn’t check with the Reaper’s Eye.”
Suhyuk twisted the handlebar at once and made a U-turn.
He barely narrowed the distance with the old scooter coughing out smoke and screaming in protest, then fixed his gaze on the top of the man’s head.
— Drug transport
— Drug manufacturing
Found him!
He wasn’t just a simple courier.
If he was involved in manufacturing too, then he would definitely know where the factory was.
The problem was the noise.
The rattling clatter of the cheap old scooter Suhyuk was riding tore through the silent predawn air.
If he tailed the man too closely, he’d be found out in no time.
But Suhyuk had a new skill now.
Thread of Sin.
Then a blood-red line began stretching from the rear wheel of the man’s scooter, trailing along the ground.
Suhyuk parked at the curb and waited until the engine noise disappeared entirely beyond the alley.
The man was gone from sight, but that didn’t matter.
In the darkness, the thread glowing red like a serpent was drawing a clear path straight to its destination.
Suhyuk lowered his helmet shield and slowly twisted the throttle.
It’s better to take my time than to rush in and get caught.
With Chicken Gangjeong, Kim Jongchan, and Ichisang already gone, the mood inside Cheolsu-pa had likely gone poisonous.
He was finally narrowing the clues down one by one, and if they cut their tail and disappeared now, he’d be left chasing after a chicken.
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