The Reaper Comes in Silence
Su-hyeok slipped toward the gang’s hideout as smoothly as a red line cutting through the night air.
The scooter’s engine sounded lonely in a way that was almost eerie.
The farther he moved from the neon glitter of central Seoul, the more the cityscape took on the color of death.
This was the outskirts, where redevelopment had stalled and rotted in place. After the area had been trampled by monsters during the past Gate Break, nothing had been repaired; no redevelopment plan had ever come, and the district had been left to decay.
Buildings with nothing left but their skeletons stood in rows like enormous gravestones.
Su-hyeok stopped halfway there.
Any more engine noise would be an invitation to the silence.
Pushing the scooter into the yard of an abandoned house, through the waist-high weeds, he drew in a breath.
The stale dust of ruins and the damp stink of mold stabbed into his lungs.
He took Reaper's Robe out of the delivery bag and pulled it on.
The moment the robe touched his skin, he felt a strange chill, as if the temperature around him had dropped by two degrees.
Rather than unsettling him, that coldness sharpened his mind into a clear, dangerous awareness.
The red thread spilling across the ground was no longer just a trail. In the dark, it throbbed like veins under skin.
He began to follow it.
After moving carefully for some time, he found that the end of the thread led into the basement of a four-story building with a crumbling outer wall.
So this is it.
As he descended the stairs, he could hear voices murmuring beyond a heavy iron door that was shut tight.
About ten people.
He slowed his heartbeat and sharpened his senses.
The tension that there might be Awakers among them crawled down his spine, but there was no fear. Instead, a nauseating hunger rose from somewhere deep in his gut, like appetite itself had curdled.
As long as they don't destroy my head, I won't die.
The effect of the Death God Body skill.
A reckless gamble, but a certain one.
Su-hyeok, who had already died once, no longer feared death.
He spread his right hand wide, then curled it shut again.
Between those motions, the Reaper’s Scythe had already appeared in his grip, its edge hidden in the dark with a razor-thin intent to kill.
Let’s go.
He tightened every muscle in his body and swung the scythe.
Thunk!
The explosive physical power granted by Death God Body and the sharpened blade of the Reaper’s Scythe made the heavy steel lock useless.
The vibration of metal shivering through his fingertips felt almost electric.
Su-hyeok slowly pushed the iron door open and surged into the darkness beyond.
What waited inside was grotesque.
Under the fluorescent lights, eight men in gas masks were manufacturing powder.
The sounds he had taken for ten people had only been eight.
Still rough around the edges.
He felt a brief sting of irritation at the fact that his sense had been wrong.
But there was no time to dwell on it.
At the sound of the door opening, the men turned with blank expressions.
“Huh? Why’d the door open by itself? Didn’t you shut it properly?”
“No, I shut it. I definitely—”
Stupid voices, muffled behind gas masks.
The runner Su-hyeok had been following muttered irritably and came toward the door. The red thread tangled beneath the man’s feet looked like a rope waiting for an executioner’s tug.
“I told you to close it properly, you bastard.”
Su-hyeok held his breath and felt the weight of the scythe in his right hand.
The thick blade quivered faintly.
Not from tension.
It was the pleasant vibration of a scythe moments before it severed the thread of life.
“Damn it, I said I shut it!”
The grumbling runner reached out to grab the handle.
Su-hyeok stared at the back of his neck and swung the scythe in a broad horizontal arc.
Swish—!
The first hunt was brutally silent.
The Reaper’s Scythe passed through the cervical vertebrae with no resistance at all.
The man never even realized he had died; before his head touched the floor, his body had already begun to collapse.
“...Huh?”
Blood sprayed across the gas-mask lens of the man beside him in a fountain.
Only then did the basement’s silence shatter.
“W-what!?”
“Hiiik! His head—his head’s gone!”
Terrified screams tore through the basement’s damp air.
The remaining seven men staggered backward in unison.
Su-hyeok adjusted his grip on the scythe.
The first swing had been lucky.
But the next targets would not stand still and wait for him.
“Who the hell are you? Who’s there!”
A big man seized a steel pipe nearby and shouted.
From behind the concealment of the robe, Su-hyeok watched him coldly.
The scythe was not a sword. Its blade curved inward, which meant it was not meant simply to slash; it demanded the feel and motion of hooking and dragging prey in close.
He slipped into the staggering man’s blind spot, drove the scythe low, and hooked the back of the man’s thigh.
Then he yanked.
Fwoosh—!
“Aaaagh! My leg! My leg!”
Muscle and tendon were torn away in one go.
As the man lost his balance and fell, Su-hyeok used the downward momentum to drive the scythe into the back of his neck.
The sharp tip slipped between the vertebrae and cut off his breathing in an instant.
Two.
His movements were still clumsy.
He was putting too much force into it, and his arcs were larger than they needed to be.
Su-hyeok looked at the remaining six and lashed himself inwardly.
Faster. Cleaner.
The Reaper’s Scythe had to be a harvesting tool, not an instrument of slaughter.
A tool for harvesting the necks of sinners.
“Y-you monster! Die! Just die already!”
Three men, frozen with terror, grabbed kitchen knives and blunt weapons at once and flailed wildly as they tried to flee toward the entrance.
Su-hyeok instead drove straight into them.
Using the long shaft of the scythe, he looped the curved blade around their throats.
Crack!
The inside edge crushed the man’s neck bones and dug in.
Su-hyeok spun with the recoil.
The scythe drew a circle through the air.
Swish— thud!
The chest of the man beside him split open diagonally.
Internal organs and blood sprayed over Su-hyeok’s robe, but he did not stop.
His brain was learning the battle in real time, evolving as it went, figuring out the scythe’s center of mass and the angle that would cut bone with the least effort.
Four.
Now only four remained.
They had already lost all will to fight and were pressed into a corner.
“Please. Please, spare us.”
They had thrown off their gas masks and were sobbing snot and tears into empty air, begging piteously.
But what Su-hyeok saw was not their tears or pleas.
It was the black, rotten sin hanging over their heads.
Pathetic bastards.
His eyes sank colder than ice.
He swung the scythe lightly.
The blade traced a crescent in the air and buried itself precisely in the forehead of the man who stood farthest away.
Thwack!
The man toppled without even managing a scream.
Su-hyeok pulled the shaft back and recovered the scythe, then crossed through the space between the last two.
Swish.
Only one horizontal cut.
It was harvest.
Like slicing through ripe barley, Su-hyeok’s scythe passed softly across the two men’s throats.
“Wha—?”
The moment he saw red lines appear across both necks, the two heads dropped to the floor at the same time.
The final man merely curled up, trembling violently.
Su-hyeok sent him on his way with the Reaper’s Scythe without a word.
His breathing after the slaughter of eight was, strangely enough, steady.
Only the blood dripping from the blade filled the basement’s silence.
I have to remember this feeling and get better at it.
He needed to be ready for battle against Abyss Awakers.
He was already far less clumsy than he had been at the start.
The way he held the scythe, the path of the swing—he had grown much more accustomed to it, much more natural with it.
Cleaning up eight pieces of trash had carved the use of the Reaper’s Scythe into his body.
[Sinner Judged]
[Reward for Judgment: 80 Hell Points]
Ten more points.
He was now within reach of purchasing Reaper's Steps, which had been delayed because he’d spent the points on [Thread of Sin].
That was when it happened.
Through the half-open iron door, the last runner came in humming to himself, carrying a delivery container.
“Why the hell is the door left open like—huh?”
The basement was empty. But the thick smell of blood hanging in the air made him stiffen instinctively.
Su-hyeok approached from behind without a sound.
Rather than swinging the scythe in a wide arc, he placed its tip lightly against the back of the man’s neck and gave a small, fishing-like tug.
Swish—
“........!!”
There was no scream.
A moment later, the man’s body crumbled into powder under Sentence of Punishment and scattered away, and a system message appeared before Su-hyeok’s eyes.
[Sinner Judged]
[Reward for Judgment: 10 Hell Points]
“Perfect.”
It was as though the man had walked straight in with both feet just to make it easier for him to buy Reaper's Steps.
He had gathered more than enough Hell Points.
Now all he needed to do was find information and clues.
But there was nothing to find anywhere in the factory.
Only dust and powder drifted endlessly in the air.
The knife-wielder who had killed Su-hyeok. Kim Kyung-su, who had been pulling the strings behind Detective Straw Ichi-sang. Cheol-gamen, the owner of XX Club.
Traces of those three had been cut off completely.
In the end, Su-hyeok had no choice but to return home empty-handed.
* * *
A little later, someone appeared in the factory Su-hyeok had left behind.
“...No way.”
At the entrance to the basement stairwell leading into the manufacturing factory, Kim Kyung-su felt his heart drop the instant he saw the iron door, which should have been sealed shut, hanging open at an angle.
These were men who would normally bolt the door from within and sharpen their nerves at the slightest sign of movement.
Without hesitating, Kim Kyung-su hurried down the dark stairs.
“Where the hell did everyone go!”
His shout echoed through the empty basement.
But the only answer that came back was an unpleasant silence.
The interior of the factory, stormed through the iron door, was a complete mess.
The powder that should have been packed and waiting for distribution was scattered everywhere as though a bomb had gone off, and each step sent white dust billowing into the air like fine ash.
“What... what the hell happened here?”
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