The Bullet That Came Back
Name:Kim Han-rim — Unaffiliated Player
Primary Weapon: Anti-materiel sniper rifle, plus a full arsenal of high-yield explosives
He knew exactly what kind of man Kang Do-seok was. An unaffiliated blade for hire — a man who killed for nothing but money, wandering the city alone with no guild to back him.
For a player to survive in Netron City without a guild didn't simply mean he'd been lucky.
It meant he was strong.
Worse still, Do-seok's weapon of choice was a sword. Kim Han-rim knew better than anyone never to underestimate the blademen who lasted long in this trade.
The ordinary playbook wouldn't cut it, and meeting him head-on was suicide. So what then? How was he supposed to take back the star Do-seok had snatched away?
So Kim Han-rim chose the long gun.
He dug up the location of Do-seok's penthouse, set up in the building across the way, and squeezed the trigger.
No matter how impressive a player was, a fifty-caliber round through the temple ended everything. Just like that. At this range, with this much preparation, no one had ever walked away from his shot.
But Kang Do-seok didn't die.
CLAANG!
Through the scope, a blade flashed. The instant the heavy round punched through the window glass, it struck Do-seok's sword and was thrown off line. Kim Han-rim watched it happen with his own eyes and still couldn't make sense of it.
The bullet was coming back.
Tearing the curtain of rain in reverse, following the very trajectory he himself had just fired along. Straight at him.
"What the—"
THWACK!
Blood burst from Kim Han-rim's right shoulder. The impact shoved his body backward, the rifle's stock scraping across the rooftop, and a scream tore out of him before he could bite it down.
"Gahk—!"
He clutched his shoulder on reflex.
A veteran blademan could deflect a bullet — he knew that much. He'd seen a few of those monsters himself: freaks who read the muzzle, raised a blade timed to the instant of discharge, and got lucky enough to shed the round.
But that was only ever batting a shot aside.
Catching a fifty-caliber round from beyond four hundred meters on the edge of a sword — and sending it back down the exact path it had flown — was another animal entirely.
That was beyond swordsmanship. That was the territory of a skill.
Kim Han-rim's face twisted.
'Fucking lunatic.'
Rain ran down his cheek. Blood kept pumping from his right shoulder. His fingers had gone numb and pins-and-needles; he tried to take hold of the rifle again, and his hand simply wouldn't obey.
'He's carrying a skill like that.'
Then—
Through the scope, Do-seok moved.
Beyond the shattered window.
Do-seok was looking at him. Exactly at him. As if he had known from the very beginning where Kim Han-rim was.
Kim Han-rim clenched his teeth.
"Fuck."
He grabbed his shoulder again, reflexively. Blood slid between his palms, scalding hot, chilled by the cold rain, spreading in a thin sheet across the rooftop floor.
Kim Han-rim swallowed a groan and rolled his body. His shoulder felt ready to split open, but he didn't stop.
One shot failed, you abandon the position. That was how a sniper stayed alive.
With his left hand he yanked a small injector from his belt and drove it into the wound. A froth of coagulant flooded into his shoulder. His head spun.
The bleeding stopped for a moment — and in its place came pain like being seared over an open flame.
"Haah... fuck. Piece-of-shit... fuck."
Swallowing down more curses, Kim Han-rim triggered his skill.
The surface of his skin and clothes dulled into the gray of rain-soaked concrete. His outline came apart; the streaks of rain slid over his body and blended him into the backdrop like a painted wall. From a distance, the rooftop would look deserted.
Camouflage — a stealth-type utility skill that blurred the color and contour of the body, even its heat signature, into the surrounding background.
It wasn't perfect. Too much blood had been lost. The right shoulder was ruined, and the rifle would have to be left behind.
Kim Han-rim kicked the gun away and sprinted for the roof's edge, where a wire he'd rigged in advance waited. He clipped the hook to his belt and hurled himself over.
Falling, he caught sight of the penthouse window.
Beyond the broken glass.
Do-seok was watching him.
Through rain, through distance, through the dark, their eyes seemed to meet.
Kim Han-rim bit down until his teeth creaked.
"Great fucking eyesight, you bastard."
The wire snapped taut. His body slid down the face of the building, behind the billboard a few floors down.
From the broken window, Do-seok threw himself out without a second's hesitation.
The street, dozens of floors below, rushed up into view. Rain and neon hammered his optic nerves all at once. Do-seok narrowed his eyes a fraction and looked ahead.
A skycar was drifting between the buildings.
WHAM!
Do-seok's foot came down on its roof. The metal panel caved in, and a scream erupted from the driver's seat.
"What the hell! Fuck!"
The driver's cursing echoed somewhere behind him. Do-seok was already airborne, bounding toward the next skycar.
BAM! BAM!
He vaulted from car to car like stepping stones. The last one — a sagging neon sign — wobbled under his weight. He kicked off its edge, caught the plumbing along the facing building's outer wall, and hauled with all the strength in his arms. His body shot upward.
The next instant, the rooftop railing was at hand.
KRAK!
Do-seok came down through the railing and landed on the rooftop.
The marksman was gone.
The sniper rifle lay abandoned on the ground, its scope shattered, its barrel beaded with rain. Blood was strewn across the rooftop floor.
Kim Han-rim's blood.
Do-seok crouched and touched a fingertip to it.
Still warm. Which meant— Do-seok murmured:
"Blood Tracking."
Sssaaa—
A single thread of red surfaced over Do-seok's palm. Born at the rooftop floor, the line crossed the railing and ran down behind the billboard a level below.
He rose to his feet.
That was when static hissed out of an old maintenance speaker bolted into a corner of the roof.
Do-seok raised his head.
"Kim Han-rim, is it."
"Good of you to show up. Saved me the trouble of hunting you down."
Beyond the speaker, Kim Han-rim's voice was laughing — but his breathing ran ragged beneath it, and his words wobbled at the seams, the shoulder wound bleeding through.
"What was what."
Do-seok gave a dry snort.
"You think ordinary human reflexes could manage that? It's a skill, obviously."
"I don't think either of us has the leisure for small talk."
The speaker went quiet for a beat.
And then—
Tick.
A tiny sound, right beneath Do-seok's foot. He ripped his leg away instantly.
KA-BOOM!
The rooftop floor detonated. Shards of concrete and rebar geysered upward. Do-seok swung his sword and split the debris. Blast smoke and rain mingled and swallowed the roof whole.
Even through it, the red line stayed perfectly clear.
Do-seok went over the railing.
A narrow ledge hugged the wall and wound down behind the billboard below. The route Kim Han-rim had taken.
Do-seok set a foot on the wall piping and dropped. One floor. Two, three. Rain slapped his face, and empty offices flicked past beyond the windows.
The instant his boots landed on the passage behind the billboard—
—three compact turrets mounted on the ceiling swiveled his way.
RATATATATA!
Do-seok dropped low. The blade flashed three times. Two turrets toppled away, cleanly severed, and the last one spat a grenade.
He smacked it skyward with the spine of his blade.
BOOM!
The blast ripped the passage ceiling open. Metal fragments came pelting down like rain.
The speaker crackled awake again.
Do-seok walked the red line.
"You're not some five-year-old brat, so why the hell do you own this many toys?"
At the corridor's end, the stench of blood hit him all at once.
The left wall. The right wall. The ceiling pipes. The cracks in the floor.
Blood coated the entire corridor. This was no mere spatter — someone had burst a handful of blood bags to bury the scent.
Interference, to shake off pursuit.
But the blood Do-seok had recovered from the firing position was Kim Han-rim's, pure and uncontaminated. Once he held a clean sample, there was no chance of mistaking it against anyone else's.
Blood Tracking chased the blood's owner — the living body itself.
Beneath the back of Do-seok's hand, his veins writhed, slow and restless. The red thread above his palm never wavered. The blood on the walls, the blood pooled on the floor, the blood trickling down the ceiling pipes — it disregarded all of it.
The line pointed straight ahead.
Not where blood had been spilled — where blood was still flowing.
Toward the body that was still alive.
Do-seok walked straight on, heading for the elevator shaft at the end of the passage.
Behind the speaker, the breathing faltered.
"Because that's where you are."
Do-seok kicked the shaft door. The panel buckled inward and dropped.
Down into the dark, the red line was sinking.
Kzzt. And the speaker cut out.
Kim Han-rim was tucked away inside the maintenance crawlway running along the elevator shaft.
His breath had climbed to the base of his throat. The right shoulder was going numb; the coagulant was losing its fight. His fingertips kept trembling.
"Fuck."
Kim Han-rim ran Camouflage once more. His silhouette bled into the color of the crawlway walls, dissolving between rusted metal, black oil stains, and wet concrete.
This one skill was how Kim Han-rim had stayed alive so long.
What cannot be seen cannot be killed.
See them first, shoot first, and be gone first — that was the whole game.
He clenched his jaw, fished four small discs from his belt, and lobbed them up the shaft. The discs slapped onto the wall and blinked quiet red dots.
The next moment, Do-seok came plunging down.
Kim Han-rim bit down hard and hit the remote.
Beep.
The discs clamped to the shaft wall flared red in unison.
KA-BOOM!
The blast shook the elevator shaft from the inside. Chains and cables snapped; a stretch of rail blew clear out of the wall. Flame, dust, and iron filings poured into the dark.
Kim Han-rim didn't check the exit. If that blademan had survived, the instant he leaned out to confirm it would be the instant his head left his shoulders.
He shouldered straight through the crawlway's inner door and slipped out. Beyond it lay a shuttered shopping floor — a food court that had died years ago. The signage was dark, and counters and automated cooking units stood in silent ranks in the gloom.
Kim Han-rim melted into it. Reeling as he went, he planted adhesive bombs anywhere his hand could reach.
With Camouflage active, his body had taken on the rusted tones of the cooking units. He bore down hard on his shoulder, pinning the wound so nothing could drip.
He throttled his breathing into silence.
One more.
One more blast, and I can kill him.
SKREEE! KRA-KOOM!
The entrance to the shopping floor tore away whole. Do-seok stepped through.
The rain-soaked coat. The sword in his hand. The red thread running off his palm.
Kim Han-rim clenched his teeth.
'That red line — no. No fucking way.'
Do-seok walked slowly. No hurry at all. Sword tip held low, he threaded his way between the cooking counters.
Kim Han-rim flattened himself behind an automated cooker and eased out nothing but the tip of the muzzle.
Do-seok stopped.
His head turned, slow and smooth.
Exactly toward where Kim Han-rim was hiding.
"Give it up. You're dead either way."
"Go fuck yourself!"
Kim Han-rim pulled the trigger.
CRACK!
The round punched through the cooking machine. Do-seok wrenched his head aside; the bullet shaved past his cheek and blew out the glass door behind him.
Kim Han-rim threw himself away at once.
Toward the emergency railing at the rear.
He vaulted it and dropped — slapping the small charge in his left hand under the rail in the same motion.
Clack.
The charge held fast. Kim Han-rim kicked off the railing and fell. Dropping, he twisted and drew the remote from inside his jacket.
"Get fucking buried under the whole building and die!"
His thumb crushed the button.
The charges under the railing went off in a chain.
KA-BOOOOM!
The adhesive bombs he'd planted on his way in strobed red, all together.
Even in freefall, Kim Han-rim grinned, teeth flashing white.
No blademan was fast enough to live through this much ordnance.
That much explosive inside that cramped shopping floor would leave nothing of a human body. Deflecting bullets with a sword, tracking him by blood, moving like a lunatic — none of it would matter.
When the building came down, it would come down on top of him.
That was the end of it.
The blast went off.
The outer wall of the shopping floor peeled away in one piece. Girders buckled, glass emptied out all at once, and the concrete floor sagged and folded downward.
The shockwave shoved Kim Han-rim's body.
He turned a full revolution in the air. His vision flipped — neon, rain, and the collapsing floor churned into one smear.
Even then, the laugh came first. A drop from this height wouldn't kill him; once he landed he could shake it off, get up, and be on his way.
"Ha, you dumb bas—"
And then—
"Got you."
At the sound of that familiar voice, a line of fire crossed Kim Han-rim's neck.
"Hu—?"
Thump. Thud.
Shkk.
SHRAAAK!
What struck the ground was Kang Do-seok, Kim Han-rim's headless body — and Kim Han-rim's head.
Do-seok looked slowly down at the corpse.
"...Camouflage, then."
Kill a player, and you could claim one of the stars the man had absorbed in life.
Small stars drifted up over Kim Han-rim's body.
One red.
One orange.
And one translucent.
Do-seok studied the translucent one. It glowed the color of a stealth-type utility skill.
Which meant that star was the very skill that had been hiding Kim Han-rim's body until moments ago.
Do-seok reached out.
The translucent star was drawn into his palm. Watching it settle, Do-seok murmured:
"Camouflage."
Skill Acquired: Camouflage
A stealth-type utility skill that blends the body, clothing, and thermal signature seamlessly into the surrounding background.
At once the back of his hand lost its color.
Rain-soaked concrete gray spread over his skin, and the outlines of his fingers drowned in the dark.
The hem of his coat bled into the shadow behind him until its edge went soft.
Do-seok looked down at his own hand.
"So that's how it's used."
Just then, a car passed along the street below.
Its headlights washed over him.
The wet coat read as a gray indistinguishable from asphalt. His face and hands darkened to the same shade as the alley mouth behind him. Even with the light raking him head-on, no human shadow fell across the lane.
The car swept right past, never seeing him at all.
Watching it go, Do-seok gave his verdict.
"...Not bad."
Do-seok turned away.
His figure faded, little by little, into the dark.
Before long, his terminal rang. It was Carvel.
"I dug into Kim Han-rim's back trail, like you asked."
Do-seok walked through the rain, eyes down on the screen.
"He was hired by the Cheongmyeong Guild. Piecing together the timeline, it looks like they meant to have you removed before the contamination storm arrives. Get the details from Amy — she's the one who did the digging."
The Cheongmyeong Guild.
The crew he'd crossed paths with a few days back over a Skill Star.
The mage who'd looked like small fry, the reeking mutt of a dog, the oaf bellowing with his gun raised. The emblem stitched on their shoulders floated up out of his memory.
"And here I thought they'd had the sense to back off..."
Do-seok raised a finger and worked the terminal. An electronic business card surfaced on the screen — a card plastered from edge to edge with pink hearts.
He was still looking down at it, hand already rising to contact Amy, when—
For real, for real♡?
You were about to message me♡?
I'm sooo happy♡♡♡♡♡♡
The messages cascaded up across his terminal.