The Neck-Cutting Ghost
Tower of Trials, 1st Floor Residential Zone — Jin Hong's House
Yeon Cheong and Jin Hong sprinted to her house before the sun dipped below the horizon.
Stepping inside, they found the place surprisingly tidy for a home that clearly hadn't seen a proper cleaning in ages. Dust drifted in constantly from the streets, so there was no stopping it from settling. Neatly folded blankets and bedding lay stacked beside an assortment of odd trinkets she must have scavenged from the alleys whenever something caught her eye.
"Did you have any cleaning to do?"
Jin Hong hesitated at the question.
"It's dirtier than Halmae's place."
"That's because Halmae isn't normal."
Comparisons only worked when the baseline made sense. Chunja Halmae had lived on the first floor several times longer than Jin Hong. That kind of experience brought its own survival tricks. Keeping any space clean in a district where dust storms rolled through regularly was no small feat.
"Anyway, you're in my house now. What do you want to do?"
Jin Hong asked with a bright, playful grin. Yeon Cheong glanced around. He hadn't come here to play. He knew the murderer would target her next, so he'd deliberately followed her home.
"You locked the door properly, right?"
"Yeah. Uncle Ben told me to."
Creak.
"This lock is ridiculously loose."
One solid kick or a heavy blow would snap it clean off. Yeon Cheong frowned at the flimsy mechanism.
"I asked the guards about it before. They said they'd replace it, but they never did."
"..."
"Uncle Ben even went and complained. They told him no one on the first floor would bother with a little kid like me anyway."
Yeon Cheong doubted those words had come from any real guard. Leaving a young girl alone without even a decent lock was absurd.
"This is the best he could manage after begging them."
"No wonder the size looked wrong."
Yeon Cheong studied the lock. It didn't match the door's fittings at all—like someone had forced a storage shed padlock onto a locker hasp. A grown man could probably snap it with one good shove.
"Cheong, you're really staying with me?"
"I don't have anything else to do."
Kim Taegil would come tonight. He had no choice but to stay.
"Then… can I ask you something?"
"What?"
"The deliveryman exam is coming up soon, right?"
Yeon Cheong paused. Time had slipped by faster than he'd realized. The training period had already shifted into the cleaning week, and once that ended, the exam would follow immediately.
"You're really going to take it with me?"
He nodded. Becoming a deliveryman offered a legal path to grow stronger inside the Tower, but that was secondary. The real reason he wanted the role now was the same reason he was here: to keep Jin Hong alive.
In the original timeline, she would pass the exam and become an apprentice deliveryman. Their first outing together would end in her death. Too many factors had stacked against her, and this night might have been one of them.
Jin Hong lost three fingers to Kim Taegil.
Her left index and middle fingers, plus the ring finger on her right hand. A single slash from his blade had severed them cleanly, blood spraying across the floor. Yet she hadn't panicked. Whether it was the desperate strength of a cornered animal or simply Jin Hong's own resilience, she had fought back for dozens of minutes despite the massive gap in size and power. The noise eventually drew the guards, who arrested him.
"That's a relief. You're staying, after all."
Jin Hong let out a small sigh of relief, clearly glad he would accompany her.
"Still, you know you don't have to force yourself, right? I hate when people—"
"I know. I want to be here too."
Yeon Cheong smiled as he answered. Jin Hong smiled back and nodded.
As twilight deepened into full darkness, Jin Hong reached for a candle on her bedding.
"Where did I put the matches…?"
Yeon Cheong caught her hand, stopping her.
"Why?"
"It's better without light. The darker, the better."
"...What are you planning?"
"Nothing in particular. Still…"
He looked at the locked door. It barely qualified as locked.
"It's too dark, though."
Jin Hong blinked. The sun had fully set; heavy silence and pitch-black shadows filled the room.
His night vision must be excellent. That explains why he operates at night.
Information on Kim Taegil was scarce, so most of Yeon Cheong's knowledge was guesswork. Still, he had to align every detail he could.
His skill is butchery. He'll carry multiple blades.
He probably wouldn't bring a large cleaver against a small girl—it would be inefficient. At most, a thirty-to-forty-centimeter butchering knife. And given his methods, he would also carry a smaller knife.
Kim Taegil's killing style was vicious. First he would stab the victim's chest or stomach repeatedly with the knife to incapacitate them, then finish by sawing off the head with his butchering blade—whether the victim was already dead or still gasping.
Thanks to the Concentration Artifact, Yeon Cheong finished organizing his thoughts in seconds. He covered Jin Hong's mouth and whispered.
"I sense someone."
"..."
Her expression asked whether it was the guards. He shook his head.
"Just one. If it were the guards, they'd come in a group."
The door rattled violently before he finished speaking. At first it sounded like someone testing it casually, but the force quickly escalated.
Thud! Thud!
On any normal night the weak lock would have given way instantly. Tonight it held—for now.
"Cheong…"
Jin Hong's eyes widened as she looked at him. If she'd been alone, the terror would have been hers to bear. But her closest friend stood beside her.
"The lock's about to break."
"What do we do?"
"We watch. First, find somewhere to hide."
Jin Hong nodded. Even with the lock shaking like it might shatter, she followed his calm instructions without panic. She wasn't ordinary either.
Crash!
The handle snapped. The lock clattered to the floor. A man stood in the doorway, breathing hard, a roughly thirty-centimeter butchering knife in his grip.
"I heard you never bother locking up."
His deep voice echoed softly through the room. Yeon Cheong used Yeongdeung to mask his presence and slipped deeper into the shadows. Jin Hong crawled under the table, swallowing hard and curling up like a quiet cat.
"Doesn't matter."
The man stepped inside and shut the door behind him. He believed the game was already over.
"I know you're hiding."
He smirked and pulled a small lantern from his coat. Fueled by monster oil, it flared to life and lit the room.
Yeon Cheong darted into deeper darkness. Jin Hong flinched under the table as the light swept over her. The man noticed the movement, planted his cleaver in the floorboards, and spoke.
"I have a little routine before I work."
He began explaining his murders as though lecturing students.
"I like to tell my poor friends why I do this."
"..."
"Aren't you curious?"
Curious? It was obviously just a sadistic hobby.
"Every day, heads hang from the Tower gates. You've seen them."
Kim Taegil addressed Jin Hong directly. She stayed silent, calculating her options. Light now filled the room, and the door was blocked. What could she do?
"Every time I see those heads, I wonder what their faces looked like up close. But they're always too far away."
His monologue continued in the heavy silence.
"So I decided to see for myself. I cut their heads off with my own hands and look each one in the eye."
"Ugh."
Jin Hong gagged. Her stomach was still weak; the mental image had hit her hard. Taegil flipped the table over.
"Found you."
Jin Hong scrambled backward at the chilling words. Taegil grinned with satisfaction.
"Maybe that's why cutting things feels so natural now."
Among his butchery skills, dismemberment was his specialty—literally, he excelled at severing flesh.
"For some reason, people started calling me the Neck-Cutting Ghost."
He sounded genuinely pleased. The urban legend had boosted his ego.
"But damn, it pisses me off when some other bastard steals my nickname."
The rumor had spread because of incidents in the black market. Similar killings had happened before, but smaller ones were quietly buried by the guards. When a criminal syndicate's beheaded corpses surfaced through official channels, the legend took root.
"So this time, I'm going to create something different."
He smiled darkly at Jin Hong.
"I wonder what face you'll make when your head comes off."
The moment he raised his knife to stab her, Yeon Cheong lunged. His first target was the cleaver still embedded in the floor.
Thud!
As the blade came free, Taegil spun around. His reflexes were sharp—he reacted instantly to the presence behind him.
Should I go for the lantern or strike first?
Yeon Cheong accelerated his thoughts. A straight charge would work, but Taegil's knife would likely reach him first. The cleaver was heavier and slower to swing than the smaller blade.
At that instant, Jin Hong threw herself at Taegil's back.
"Don't touch him!"
The impact knocked Taegil off balance. He snarled at her.
"You little bastards!"
But with his stance broken, he had no chance. Yeon Cheong pivoted and cleanly severed his neck.
Slice!
One precise strike. Kim Taegil's head rolled across the floor while his body gushed blood. Jin Hong caught her breath and looked at Yeon Cheong. He nodded in acknowledgment of her timely help.
The Neck-Cutting Ghost, huh.
Yeon Cheong dropped the cleaver and muttered with a scowl.
"That nickname suits me even less."