Gong No-sa Is Coming [6]
Deep in the night, a black shadow clung to Kim Yi-yeon's heels as he slipped out of his one-room apartment alone.
Yet no one around them noticed the shadow's existence. The sorcery it had laid out in advance severed the gazes of everyone nearby and even dulled the senses of its target, Kim Yi-yeon himself.
The shadow kept its distance as it trailed him. It had layered concealing sorcery over concealing sorcery, masking its presence and blocking detection — but its quarry was a top-tier master of the highest grade. Close the gap too far, and the odds of being noticed rose sharply.
And so the shadow simply waited, following along until Kim Yi-yeon passed through some deserted, unpopulated stretch where an ambush would be easy.
Then the opportunity came.
Kim Yi-yeon turned into a sparsely traveled alley — most likely a shortcut leading out to the main road, judging by its position. The moment the shadow rounded the corner behind him, inwardly cheering—
"Peekaboo."
"!?"
The woman in her early twenties — the Yeouido Muryeong Society assassin — found Kim Yi-yeon standing there, waiting for her, and her eyes flew wide open. But only for a moment. Proving her professionalism, she reacted instantly.
Shk.
The instant her hand seals locked together, the yokai she commanded rose up behind Kim Yi-yeon. The moment he sensed its presence and turned to look, the thing swelled in size at a terrifying rate.
The bigger it grew as he looked up, the bigger it kept growing — the wall-crushing yokai, Eodukshinee. In the blink of an eye it had ballooned to monstrous proportions, and it toppled down onto Kim Yi-yeon's head.
But that massive body press was stopped dead by a single hand Kim Yi-yeon casually extended.
"What!?"
An Eodukshinee's weight scales with its grown size. At its current dimensions, standing over three meters at the shoulder, its weight was easily in the tons at minimum. And he was blocking that with one hand?
But the Yeouido Muryeong Society assassin wasn't given the leisure to gape in peace.
Shwaaaaaaak!
Water droplets materialized behind Kim Yi-yeon's back and tore into the air like buckshot.
"Crazy—!"
She reinforced her body with spiritual power and darted clear just in time.
Puk-puk-puk!
Whatever else could be said about them being "mere water droplets," the sight of the nearby wall turned into a honeycomb sent cold sweat running down the assassin's forehead.
She had already known Kim Yi-yeon was a considerable master. But she had assumed that strength was the strength of an exorcist. Practitioners gifted at driving out spirits were usually poor at fighting people, and those strong against human opponents were inevitably weak against exorcism.
Kim Yi-yeon in front of her was neither.
Shwaaaaaaaaaak!
Even now, double the number of water-droplet rounds from before came streaking after her.
'That's no simple sorcery — is he commanding a spirit... no, a fairy?'
The Yeouido Muryeong Society assassin clicked her tongue. Summoning magic was notoriously finicky to handle, which made it an exceptionally aggravating art to face when someone truly mastered it. The driving force behind the power wasn't the practitioner themselves but the summoned entities, meaning the summons used their abilities on their own initiative, without the caster even concentrating.
'Weren't Kim Dosa's specialties supposed to be Daoist arts and esoteric sorcery!?'
Unexpected abilities. Unexpected strength. But a variable of this degree was well within her capacity to handle.
FWOOOOOOROSH!
A blaze of scarlet flame streaked in and vaporized the water bullets mid-flight.
"Doesn't seem like the moment to be debating turns."
The man in his early forties of Middle Eastern descent who had spat that fire — the Star of Zarathustra — emerged from the alley on the opposite side.
"Tch. A third, then."
Right behind him, a powerfully built East Asian man in his early thirties — the Dragon of Shanghai — stepped out from yet another alley.
Kim Yi-yeon looked them over and clicked his tongue.
"You all gathered this many people just to gang up on little old me? Guess Gong No-sa that old hag spent some money, huh? You sure that's wise? I've got exactly one neck, and there are three of you."
"What, surprised that several of us showed up at once?"
The Yeouido Muryeong Society assassin sneered at him.
"Slice off your head as well, and the take comes to exactly thirty billion won each. Easy to divide, so there's no real reason to squabble."
"Well, in that case, I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that Deadman didn't pick up the call."
"How are you people who kill for a living this damn reasonable?"
Kim Yi-yeon burst out laughing at the unexpected rationality.
And then—
"If that's how you want to play it, I'll be reasonable too."
The words were barely out of his mouth when Kim Yi-yeon vanished.
"What the—!?"
"...Fled into an Inner Space, you mean? You knew we were going to ambush you here and prepared one in advance?"
"Well, whatever. A rat in a poison jar is still a rat."
The Yeouido Muryeong Society assassin pulled a bottle from her coat and poured it out onto the ground. The blood that flowed from it traced a ritual circle across the pavement as if it were a living thing. The instant she stomped her foot at the circle's center, the empty air split open.
"That's the way with man-made Inner Spaces."
Unlike the Inner Space of a rumor-bound urban legend with Narrative Coercion behind it, or the domain of a mighty yokai or high-ranking entity, an Inner Space created by human hands was comparatively easy to pry open.
And the Yeouido Muryeong Society assassin, a professional who had murdered countless practitioners over the years, had long since mastered the techniques for killing a shaman who hid behind one.
"Let's go."
The three assassins leapt through the fissure into the opened Inner Space.
And waiting for them there was—
"Oh, you made it."
"What!?"
"The hell!?"
Kim Yi-yeon, every single member of the Anomaly Suppression Squad — and Yoon Soo-ah.
The instant the three assassins froze in shock, Kim Yi-yeon snatched up the Star of Zarathustra with his Environment Transformation Art and hurled him away.
"Ugh!"
Where the man went flying, a door already hung open in midair, waiting.
"You handle this one, Minseo, Hansoo, Ha-ram."
"Yes, sir!"
"U-uh, I'm nervous..."
"We'll do our best!"
The moment the three of them followed the Star of Zarathustra through the door, it vanished. At the same time, Kim Yi-yeon lunged, seized the Dragon of Shanghai by the collar, and dove through a second door.
"This one's yours."
That naturally left the Yeouido Muryeong Society assassin as Tsukumo Momo, Yoon Soo-ah, and Choi Eun-ha's share of the work.
The private chamber Kim Yi-yeon dragged the Dragon of Shanghai into resembled nothing so much as the training hall of a martial arts novel.
"Let go!"
"Whoops!"
Dragged helplessly into the chamber by the suddenness of it all, the Dragon of Shanghai counterattacked. Lightning erupted from his body, and Kim Yi-yeon released his collar and sprang backward immediately.
But the counter had come one beat too late.
Yeouido Muryeong Society. Star of Zarathustra. Dragon of Shanghai.
The three who had joined hands to kill Kim Yi-yeon had already been split completely apart.
"You...!"
"Is there a law saying only you get to dogpile someone?"
Kim Yi-yeon looked at the Dragon of Shanghai with a faint smirk.
"...You knew we were coming today... Deadman... was it that bastard?"
"Who knows?"
"Well. Doesn't really matter who it was."
Thud!
"This works out fine, actually. Now I get to claim the whole bounty for myself."
The Dragon of Shanghai squared his stance and thrust out his fist.
Crack-crack-crack!
Lightning spat from his fist once more.
"Gal Eung of the Shinxiao Sect. That is the name of the man who will kill you."
"Kim Dosa, self-taught internet master. That is the name of the man who's going to kick your ass."
"...You ill-mannered bastard...!"
"Says the guy who kills people for money."
BOOM!
In place of an answer, Gal Eung hammered his foot into the ground.
The Shinxiao Sect was a Daoist lineage that specialized in lightning arts built around the Jade Pivot Scripture. It had flourished during the Northern Song dynasty, but had all but vanished in the modern era, with only fragments of its sorcery surviving in other schools.
Gal Eung was one of those who had, by sheer chance, acquired a portion of the Shinxiao Sect's arts intact. His original technique — the Thunder Duke Fist, channeling the Jade Pivot Scripture's sorcery through a body reinforced by spiritual power — was an assassin's strike in the truest sense: one blow, one kill.
'Drag it into a pure fistfight, and even a Special-Grade dies!'
Gal Eung was confident he could beat even the likes of Baek Gong-ju or Gong No-sa — Special-Grades both — in a bare-knuckles brawl. And Kim Yi-yeon, the fool, had walked straight into the exact range where the Thunder Duke Fist unleashed its greatest power.
'Die!'
KWAAAAAAAAAANG!
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
A single strike of thunder and roaring detonation!
Gal Eung's all-out blow was caught in Kim Yi-yeon's outstretched palm.
"...What?"
"Lightning arts out of the Jade Pivot Scripture? Impressive. So it can be used this way, too."
Kim Yi-yeon calmly analyzed the Thunder Duke Fist he'd just caught. At the sight, cold sweat ran down Gal Eung's back.
Through the trapped fist, he could feel the sheer, monstrous scale of his opponent's spiritual power. A boulder — no, a cliff face of raw stone? Even that wasn't enough. It was more like—
'A mountain...!'
Both the quality and quantity of the power were beyond absurd.
And it could hardly be otherwise. Kim Dosa had long since consumed an elixir brewed from the Fighting Flowers of the West Sea flower field, received as payment from Lady Baek Gong-ju for a commission. The effects of an elixir made from a legendary herb were staggering, inflating Kim Yi-yeon's already considerable Do-ryeok to absurd heights.
Measured purely by the output and volume of spiritual power, Kim Dosa was already virtually indistinguishable from a Special-Grade.
"So you do it like this?"
That instant, Kim Yi-yeon clenched his other fist.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
Lightning danced up from that hand — just like Gal Eung's own.
"...That's impossible..."
"Impossible, huh."
Kim Yi-yeon swung his fist, copying the Thunder Duke Fist stroke for stroke.
"Doesn't look impossible to me."
KWAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG!
CRAAAAACK-CRACK-CRAAAAACK!
Gal Eung was blasted off his feet by lightning at least twice the size of his own.
His face utterly wrecked, he lay sprawled on the floor and managed to lift his head just enough to ask:
"Hah... you're tougher than you look."
"Why... why the hell did you even bother with this roundabout nonsense? With your skill, you could've handled the three of us alone, easy...?"
He wasn't wrong, strictly speaking. If Kim Yi-yeon had been ambushed with no warning, things might have gone differently. But knowing what was coming, he was more than enough to take on all three at once.
"Now that I've been teaching people, I've come to appreciate something all over again — real combat experience matters a lot."
"What...?"
"And then some decent-quality killers show up saying they're going to murder me. You think I could just let that slide?"
"So you... used us to give your disciples live combat experience...?"
"That's about the size of it."
Kim Yi-yeon smirked and walked toward Gal Eung.
Time to finish this.
Watching Kim Yi-yeon close the distance, Gal Eung thought:
'That lying son of a—!'
Gong No-sa had sworn up and down that Kim Yi-yeon wasn't a Special-Grade.
She was wrong. The monster in front of him had already crossed into a Special-Grade's domain. He simply hadn't yet achieved the spiritual "blossoming" — but in both body and soul, he already stood upon that exalted ground.
"Sleep."
'Damn it all.'
That thought was the last one Gal Eung ever had, as his consciousness went dark.
I let out a breath of relief at the victory declarations from Minseo and Momo. I'd calculated that three-on-one odds were more than enough for a win, but once I'd actually sent them in, I'd been anxious anyway — like parents leaving a child at the water's edge.
All that remained was handing the subdued assassins over to the Paranormal Administration Bureau, and this whole affair would be closed.
"Gal Eung of the Shinxiao Sect versus Kim Dosa — the master-versus-master bout goes to Mr. Kim Dosa, it seems."
A tall beauty with long black hair in a perfect hime cut walked into the private chamber where Gal Eung and I lay sprawled.
Sugawara Ryuko. Momo's relative, and the Deadman who had tipped me off about this ambush.
"Thank you for the heads-up."
"Think nothing of it. It's simply what any fan would do."
"Then let me repay you properly — I'll keep this Inner Space stocked and ready for your use. Any location you'd prefer?"
"Oh, I only said that so you wouldn't feel awkward if I told you outright, Mr. Kim Dosa."
"No, no — give and take has to be clear-cut. Besides, are you going to be okay with this?"
"Okay with what?"
"You betrayed your client. I don't know much about your world, but isn't trust supposed to be everything in the underworld?"
"It's perfectly fine. 'Deadman' is just one of the many identities I cycle through for work anyway."
What on earth did she do for a living, that she'd need an assassin identity? I was curious, but I decided it wasn't worth prying.
"Still, that Gong No-sa woman is a Deva executive, though..."
"You really needn't worry about that. Because I'm a Deva executive too."
"......"
Hmm. Should I be happy that my fan is a Deva executive?
Fey whispered into my ear just then. But apparently her attempt at a hushed voice carried — Sugawara Ryuko heard every word.
"What an honor, to be spoken of by the Lady of the Lake herself."
Apparently the word "witch" had struck a nerve. A thick rope of water began spiraling up around me.
"Enough, both of you. No point fighting each other for nothing."
Sugawara Ryuko had only ever been a help to me, never a hindrance. There were things about her that rubbed me the wrong way, but there was no reason to pick a fight over nothing.
"If Mr. Kim Dosa insists, then of course. So — what will you do going forward? As your fan, I could always negotiate with Gong No-sa on your behalf..."
"No."
I shook my head firmly. I had far too much left to do; I couldn't afford to let Gong No-sa keep tying my legs. And accepting help from Sugawara Ryuko or Baek Gong-ju wasn't the right answer either — knowing Gong No-sa as I'd come to, she'd simply retreat for a while and wait for another chance to kill me.
Which meant—
"You said if Gong No-sa brings you my severed head, she gets a bonus hundred billion won, right?"
"Yes, that's right."
"Then take it."
"I beg your pardon?"
"My head."
To catch a tiger, you have to walk into the tiger's den. To catch the tiger named Gong No-sa, I threw out my trump card.