The Name Lee Dogyum
"You don't know?"
"I—I'm telling you, I don't. First time I ever saw the guy was in there."
The Tattooed Pig nodded so hard and fast his neck looked ready to snap. Blood mixed into his sweat in a way that made the sight revolting. Lee Sia stood a full step back from him, brows drawn tight.
"I clearly heard you all planning to meet up inside."
He flinched. Because that was exactly the kind of scheme they had cooked up.
"That was just… we thought we could squeeze him for money…"
The Tattooed Pig cast around for an excuse, eyes darting. Luxury Guy—the one Sia had nicknamed for the way he draped himself head to toe in designer brands—had already been caught. Compared to the Thug and the Tattooed Pig, he was a different breed of garbage entirely. He had trained a stealth-type skill and used it to go around committing random murders. The number of people his dagger had found was seven.
Thanks to nearby civilians and SID's rapid response, most of them had lived. But—
In the end, one of them died.
A mother on her way to a daycare center to pick up her son. The bastard's sudden strike put a blade through her chest, and she collapsed in the middle of the street. Instant death. Neither the help of the people around her nor SID's quick intervention could save her life. Six seriously wounded. One dead. In broad daylight, in the heart of Seoul.
"And?"
"We never found him. So me and that bastard Tae-seong were out looking when—"
"Tae-seong?"
"Ah—well."
The way he hesitated told her everything she needed.
"The thug I killed was Tae-seong, then."
"…Y-yeah."
The cold sweat on his face was pouring now, a flood.
"Anyway, so you were wandering the village and ran into me."
"That's right."
"And that other bastard's name?"
"Huh?"
"The one who goes around stabbing people."
The Tattooed Pig's eyes spun in his head.
"Hey, Tattoo Pig. Keep rolling those eyeballs like that and I might just pluck them out."
"H-hiiik!"
The tip of Black Wing [B] touched the corner of his eye. The sheer terror on his face was almost funny. That a piece of trash like this had dared threaten her family—and Ji-hoo's—made the fire she had barely banked in her chest flare up all over again.
"So don't try to be clever. Spit out everything you know."
She gave Black Wing [B] the smallest twitch. He jolted like he'd been shocked and blurted it out at the top of his lungs.
"Lee Dogyum! That psycho bastard said his name was Lee Dogyum!"
"Lee Dogyum."
Sia rolled the name over her tongue like something bitter.
"And you really have no idea where he is."
"I—I don't!"
His frantic nodding flung sweat in fat drops. This time Sia didn't step aside. She simply stood there and let it hit the top of her foot. The Tattooed Pig tensed. His body locked up; the color drained from his face. In an instant the Tattooed Pig became a Tattooed White Pig, and he started easing his hips backward, little by little. He had caught the wrong kind of atmosphere in the air.
"Tattoo Pig."
Sia walked forward slowly—exactly as far as he had retreated.
"W-what?"
"What was it you said to me outside?"
Of course he had no answer. He remembered perfectly well. What he had said to her, and how. And what that had earned him in return.
"You mentioned Tae-seong, right? That new friend you made outside."
"…He wasn't a friend."
His tone changed all by itself. Oh Tae-seong was dead—cut down by the black blade this woman was holding right in front of him. The fear that he might end up the same way rose in his throat like bile.
"I—I told you everything I know! You said you'd let me live!"
He went all the way down to his knees. After everything it had taken to climb this far—he had no intention of dying to some blue-haired little girl who wasn't even a monster. The thought rolled off him in waves.
"I did? To you? I said I'd let you live?"
His eyes rolled wildly as he scrabbled through his memory. But there was nothing to find. Lee Sia had never once said she would spare him.
"So then…"
The Tattooed White Pig fidgeted, and then he made the worst possible choice. As if kneeling had only been a way to coil for a spring, he exploded upward and threw a punch.
"Die, you fucking bitch!"
One Strike [E]
A skill most fist-fighters carried—the most basic of the basics.
"Honestly."
A cheap skill for a cheap character and a cheap move. Sia didn't so much as blink. She hadn't expected him to charge her, and it still didn't matter. Toward a punch so slow it could have put her to sleep, she simply raised her arm.
Ffft—!
Black Wing [B] left a long afterimage in the air—and a spray of red with it. Level twenty at best? After everything she had endured, she was not about to take a hit from trash like that.
"AAAAAAAGH!"
The Tattooed White Pig screamed. His arm had been split lengthwise—from fist to elbow. His right arm had become two. Through the waterfall of blood, Sia's face showed no emotion at all. The same terrifying expression she had worn through the rain of dirt not long before.
"People like you never once manage to surprise me."
Done. There was nothing left worth hearing. Sia swung her sword the way someone swats a fly. That was the end of it. Same as the thug called Oh Tae-seong—she took his head. The scream cut off with a wet thunk, replaced by the sound of boiling blood. Unlike Lee Dogyum or Oh Tae-seong, the Tattooed White Pig died without even leaving a name behind.
"It's over, Unnie."
Sia sheathed her blade and stepped clear of the spurting blood, turning toward Vivian, who had been watching from behind. For all how grisly the scene was, Vivian wore the same expression she always did—unlike any other NPC or player.
"You."
As Sia came up beside her, Vivian spoke.
"I'm really fine, you know."
Sia offered a bright little smile, just in case Vivian was fretting over nothing. But what came out of Vivian's mouth was nothing like what Sia expected.
"You take after Seong Yujin."
"…What?"
"You're like him."
Sia froze mid-step. This Unnie was seriously—
That is way too far.
For the first time, something less than warm stirred toward Vivian.
Time passed.
The small, lively town of Pine Breeze emptied in an instant, becoming a hollow, quiet village. Players who had witnessed Sia's rampage had wasted no time charging the boss, desperate to climb to the sixth floor. The only players left in Pine Breeze were Lee Sia and Vivian.
"What do we do?"
Lee Dogyum was not inside the village. Sia had poured every scrap of her sensory focus into combing the place and hadn't felt a single player's presence. And Vivian had the item Hyper Spatiotemporal Information Swarm [C]—a nanometer-scale magical machine colony scouring everything within a hundred-meter radius. No matter how good his stealth skill was, at that level, stealth and the grandfather of stealth both would have been useless. Hiding was simply impossible. Unless the skill was A-grade or higher.
And there's no way.
Even that lunatic Seong Yujin didn't have an A-grade skill. She had heard it from him directly—his highest was B-grade. He hadn't told her what it was, but it was surely something that suited a maniac like him. Which meant—
He already left the village.
That made things inconvenient. The fifth floor was relatively small compared to the others, but it was still an entire world. Two people walking it on foot would need more than a week to search it properly.
"The stairs."
"What?"
"Go to the stairs. For now."
Vivian was looking off in one direction as she spoke.
GROOOOOOAR—!
From far away, a roar thick with mana drifted thinly across the air.
"The Green Dragon?"
"That's right."
The boss monster guarding the stairs of the fifth floor. Sia had never actually fought it. Back then, Yujin's punch had punched into the Green Dragon's skull like it was tofu. Fight or no fight—one hit, and it was finished. Which was how Sia had been forced up onto the sixth floor she had dreaded so much. Just remembering it made her body tremble on its own.
"That's the most likely place."
He wasn't in the village. If he hadn't already climbed to the sixth floor, the odds were highest that he was over there.
"We should hurry, then."
The two of them launched themselves without hesitation. A fierce battle was clearly underway—waves of mana scraped at their skin without rest.
How the hell did that crazy old man kill something like that in one hit?
The more she thought about it, the more it scared her. Of course, she could probably manage it herself now. Back then, she and Park Ji-hoo had both been only level thirty. At level sixty, she felt certain she could take it. But Seong Yujin had been in the thirties too. How he had been that strong still made no sense.
Later. Think about it later.
KRAAAAAAANG—!
A massive explosion rolled out, and a scorching wind slammed into them. Not a player's skill—the Green Dragon's breath, most likely. Sia poured on even more speed. Cutting through the air, she was a single sharp line of wind.
There.
At last the Green Dragon came into view. The wounds across its body looked deep. The injured monster was thrashing like a mad thing, but to Sia's eyes it looked like it was fighting for its life. It had reason to. Boss monster or not, the players facing it numbered well over a hundred. Most of the fifth floor seemed to have flocked here. They were only around level twenty, but numbers on that scale changed the equation.
Where is he?
Sia's eyes swept the players at speed. Nothing. Lee Dogyum did not appear to be mixed in among them.
"Don't be disappointed."
As if she had read Sia's thoughts, Vivian spoke.
"What?"
"Stealth. He could be using it."
Right. Of course. Lee Dogyum's specialty was stealth—hiding his body was what he was good at. In a Pine Breeze emptied of players, spotting him would have been easy. Now it was different. A hundred-odd players in plain sight, and a boss fight whipping the mana into a storm. Finding a stealth skill in the middle of that was never going to be simple.
I really should learn a detection skill one of these days.
With one of those, finding him would have been faster and cleaner. Sia clicked her tongue and closed on the battlefield at speed.
"Stop."
Vivian's hand caught her shoulder.
"Huh? Why?"
Sia halted and turned her head, about to ask what was wrong—and something razor-thin skimmed past her cheek.
Pahk—, then a thin trickle.
A red thread opened across her face, and blood welled up.
"Tsk."
A tongue clicked from empty air where nothing could be seen.
"…Lee Dogyum."
She knew by instinct. Who that voice belonged to. Sia wiped the blood away with the back of her hand and bared her teeth.
"Lucky me."
She had been worried he might already have climbed higher. That bastard was still right here.