Already Ate It
Humans, in the end, were built to flock together.
The Korean players who'd fallen into this alien world were no different. They entrusted their backs to one another for the flimsiest of reasons — because they'd come from the same country, played the same game, spoken the same language.
At first it was pure survival instinct. They gathered so they wouldn't die alone, ate together, fought together, ran together. But wherever people gather, a pecking order soon forms, and once a group grows big enough, it starts writing rules. That was how packs became guilds. The Korean players' cooperative Cheongmyeong was one of them.
"...Kang Do-seok. Kang Do-seok. We'd heard you were the kind of man words don't work on."
The werewolf's muzzle parted slowly, hot breath seeping out between yellowed fangs. The fireball floating at the mage's fingertips swelled a little larger; the shield gunman eased his iron shield forward. At the sight of it, Kang Do-seok smirked.
"Since you're not rushing in, I take it you know your lives are worth something."
"Don't make me laugh, Kang Do-seok. You're nothing but a strange one — a man who wanders around with a single sword and no guild to his name."
"Then why haven't you charged in yet? Do what you always do. Go on."
His words froze the three Cheongmyeong members' faces cold.
If Kang Do-seok had been an ordinary player, they would have lunged long ago. When an opponent looked weak — when they looked like easy prey — players led with guns and blades first and asked questions never. With a Skill Star on the line, there was no reason to stand around trading words while hiding behind a guild's name. You killed, and sorted out the rest afterward. That the three of them still held back was purely a testament to the weight of his name, and Kang Do-seok knew it.
He lifted his sword and took one step forward. The werewolf's teeth ground together. Kang Do-seok watched him and said:
"If you're scared, fuck off. I'll let you live."
"...You insane bastard. You think we're hesitating because we're afraid of one man?"
"Then what is it?"
"We don't want the hassle."
The werewolf bared his teeth.
"Do you even know what a fight here means? It means making the entire Cheongmyeong Guild your enemy."
"Who gives a damn about that with a Skill Star at stake? You talk too much. Attack if you're going to. Otherwise back off nice and quiet."
"Goddammit, this bastard really doesn't listen!"
The shield gunman roared and hoisted his shotgun, the massive barrel leveling at Kang Do-seok's chest.
"You son of a bitch, you think standing around alone with a sword makes you somebody? We are Cheongmyeong. First-generation guild Cheongmyeong, fuck!"
"So what?"
Around the gunman's bellowing, the mage's fireball had begun to sway restlessly as well.
Morte lay sprawled on the floor, taking it all in. Three players. One more player. And himself. Only now did he understand. Back when he'd first picked up the star, he'd believed a miracle had simply happened to him — a stroke of luck enormous enough to come once in a lifetime. But selling it properly was clearly not going to happen.
Which meant his life was still going to drown in the gutter. Hauling corpses, wiping up rotting blood, feeding nameless bodies into the grinder — that life. The thing he'd believed was his ticket out of that pit was, in truth, a rope for his own neck.
"Fuck..."
The sound leaked out of him on its own. The werewolf's gaze dropped to him.
"You. Shut your mouth."
"Fuck! No! You crazy bastards!"
Morte screamed, spite boiling over.
"Why the fuck is this happening to me?! You're players, aren't you?! You're loaded! You could just pay for the damn thing — so why the fuck are you breaking people's hands?!"
And right at that moment —
Crack!
A single bullet came screaming in from the far end of the passage, splitting the wet darkness along a hair-thin line. In that instant, Kang Do-seok's sword moved.
Clang!
A razor-sharp shriek of metal slammed through the closed collection zone. The swatted-aside round smashed a rusted rail apart. Sparks flew. Morte, startled out of his skin, mashed his face into the floor.
"FUUUUUCK!"
His scream tore across the air. The werewolf's red eyes went wide, the mage's fireball bucked violently, and the shield gunman threw up his iron shield on pure reflex.
Kang Do-seok turned his head slowly — toward the darkness the bullet had flown from. Then he looked back at the Cheongmyeong trio.
"So someone means to have a go at us."
"W-wait, hold on. That wasn't us. That was not us, I swear. The Cheongmyeong here is just the three of us — that's everyone!"
The mage blurted it out on reflex and hauled up a barrier. A film of blue light wrapped around all three guild members. Watching it rise, Kang Do-seok spun his sword loosely by the hilt.
"Then who fired it?"
"How the hell should I know?! Fuck!"
The next instant —
SHWAAAAAA—!
KWABOOOOOM!
A rocket warhead slammed down onto the mage's blue barrier.
Light burst. Flame and shockwave swallowed the closed collection zone whole. Rusted rails groaned and swayed; the work lamps hanging from the ceiling were ripped away cord and all; pooled water was flung in every direction by the blast.
"Wh-what the fuck!"
The shield gunman clamped his iron shield tight against his body. The mage gritted his teeth and drove the barrier's output higher, the blue film rippling savagely. The werewolf dropped low and shielded his face with his arms. The roar of the explosion reached their ears a beat late, splitting them open.
Dust drifted down. Shattered concrete rolled across the floor, and water poured from the ceiling like rain. The space where they had all been aiming weapons at one another moments before was wreckage now, all of it undone in the space of a breath.
"Fuck — what the hell was that!"
The mage screamed. "Over there! It's an ambush! Some lunatic just hit our Cheongmyeong—!"
Gasping, he let the barrier fall. An old ring worn on his finger had been scorched pitch-black.
The werewolf raised his head.
It was the instant after the blast. The dust had yet to fully settle and his ears still rang — and still, instinct moved him to look first at the place where Kang Do-seok had been standing.
Empty.
Where Kang Do-seok had stood, only black water rippled now. The white business card that had lain on the floor moments ago was gone, too. Over the puddle that had caught the gleam of his blade, only the drops falling from the ceiling kept striking the surface.
Drip.
The werewolf's nose twitched. Wet concrete. Powder smoke. Scorched cordite. Stagnant, rotting water. Threaded thin between them ran the scent of Kang Do-seok — and then it simply snapped off. The man who had been standing right in front of him had vanished inside that sliver of time the explosion had opened.
"...So he ran."
The werewolf's red eyes narrowed. His read of the situation was instant.
"Kang Do-seok has taken the seller."
His red eyes swung toward the darkness.
"There's no time to hunt down whoever fired that rocket. We track the seller and Kang Do-seok first. He's the only one who knows where the star is."
"And when we find them?"
At the gunman's question, the werewolf took the lead.
"He touched Cheongmyeong's target. So we do what we've always done."
He bared his teeth and growled.
"We tear them apart. That's all."
Kang Do-seok was in the maintenance passage behind the closed collection station. A cramped, low space — pipes long dead tangled across the ceiling, black water pooled ankle-deep on the floor, a single old warning light blinking on the wall.
Morte lay face-down in that water.
"Khh—!"
The moment he came to, Morte coughed as if wringing the air from his own lungs. Clutching his half-broken hand, he tried to push himself up — then went rigid at the sight of Kang Do-seok standing before him.
"You... you—"
"If you want to live, stay quiet."
"Fuck — why... where even is this? Did you pull me out?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"I told you. I came for the star."
At that, Morte's face crumpled. He tried to force his broken forearm to move and let out a thin groan; the arm trembled without pause. He clenched his teeth.
"If you k-kill me, you'll never find the star."
"That's why I'm keeping you alive."
Cradling his broken arm, Morte looked up at him. His lips fluttered a few times before any sound came out.
"...Money."
Morte said.
"...What about the money?"
"You still haven't figured out your situation, have you?"
Kang Do-seok looked down at him, half in disbelief. When he spoke, his voice dripped contempt.
"The moment you posted that listing, your face, your identity, your workplace, your address, your family — every last bit of it was dug up within five minutes. Cheongmyeong weren't the only ones who came. You just watched one bastard try to blow you apart body and all, and by my count there are more than twenty players inside this facility alone."
Morte's Adam's apple bobbed.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me... twenty? Those monster bastards?"
"The number will only grow. And they'll torture you alive, every last one of them — until they find the star you hid. And once they find it, they'll kill you."
Morte ground his teeth.
"Fuck — so what you're telling me is my life is completely and utterly fucked."
"Sounds like you've finally caught up."
Kang Do-seok said.
"Hand the star over to me."
"...You're not going to kill me?"
"At the very least, I'll get you out of this place. If I get the star."
Morte's face twisted. Right then, the scrape of metal against metal drifted in from somewhere down the maintenance passage. Not far. Cheongmyeong was on the move.
Kang Do-seok didn't so much as turn his head. He simply looked straight at Morte.
"Location."
Morte bit his lip. He was still hesitating — not out of greed. He hesitated because he knew exactly what handing over that star would mean. His life snapping back to its old place.
Corpses. Rotting blood. The grinder. A life that smelled of all three.
He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them.
"The corpse collection room. End of the lower line. The pre-disposal storage. Third bed."
"Lead the way."
Kang Do-seok turned. Morte staggered up and followed; every jolt of his broken hand blanched his face another shade. The two of them made their way through the narrow maintenance passage to the end of the lower line, water dripping between rusted pipes, gunfire and screams rising faint and far off.
A door stood before them.
[ PRE-DISPOSAL STORAGE ]
Morte worked the lock open with trembling fingers. When the door swung wide, cold air rolled out to meet them.
Metal beds stood in rows inside. Bodies lay shrouded in gray cloth, and the cooling unit overhead moaned low, on the verge of giving out.
Morte tipped his chin at one of the beds.
"Third."
Kang Do-seok walked straight to it and drew back the sheet. A corpse with its chest laid open. The ribs gaped apart, and within, blood had dried black and clotted thick.
"It's in there?"
"In the chest."
Kang Do-seok slid his hand in without a flicker of hesitation. Between dried blood and shreds of flesh, his fingertips caught on something hard — a shard of red stone. He drew his hand back. Resting in his grip was a stone glowing crimson. A genuine Skill Star, beyond any doubt.
Right then —
BOOM!
The storage room door blew apart. Wet fur and red eyes shoved into the cold air. The werewolf. The mage and the shield gunman piled in close behind him.
"Kang Do-seok! Hand over the Skill Star."
Kang Do-seok did not answer. The red star glowed on his open palm.
The werewolf's red eyes locked onto that light — and he understood that he was one beat too late.
The instant Kang Do-seok closed his fist, the crimson glow seeped into his palm. A blood-red line spread beneath the skin, raced up his forearm, and poured into his body.
Silence fell over the storage room. The mage's face froze. The shield gunman stopped dead, shotgun still half-raised. Hot breath leaked between the werewolf's fangs.
Kang Do-seok looked down at his empty palm. Then he raised his eyes to the werewolf and spoke.
"Well, this is a problem."
He gave his hand a light shake. The last flecks of red scattered into nothing.
— End of Chapter 6 —