I'll Go Easy on You
The failure of the pistol shooting, compounded by the vassal's demand for an even more difficult technique, left Jeong-Hoon feeling bleak.
Simply put, the requirement was to launch a surprise attack out of nowhere—but on an open ring with only the two of them present, a surprise attack was all but impossible.
So, half in resignation and half to gauge the basic physical abilities of an A-class Awakened, Jeong-Hoon charged in… and it ended with a single body slam.
"Are you all right?"
"The suit and the floor absorbed the impact, but my eyes are still spinning."
Thinking it fortunate there was no limit on the number of attempts, Jeong-Hoon shook his head.
Unlike Shine Mall, Apollon had no attempt limit—yet no opening for success was in sight.
Watching him, Jeon Mun-Jae shook his head, cupped his hands like a megaphone, and called out.
"If it's too hard, you can give up and try again later."
"Giving up is allowed?"
"It was nearly impossible from the start, so we're pretty flexible. Don't feel pressured."
At Jeon Mun-Jae's kind explanation, Jeong-Hoon shook his head.
Even if he gave up now and tried later, unless he suddenly Awakened and gained tremendous superpowers, success would remain impossible.
But given the nature of the seal, Awakening itself was as good as impossible.
Therefore he had to make maximum use of every resource available right now.
"Ah, right—Shine Mall."
"Have you thought of something?"
"Something worth trying just came to mind."
Recalling the first trial at Shine Mall, Jeong-Hoon thought of Yeo Tae-Hyeon and snapped his fingers.
"You called, Gaju?"
"Uh, so… do you have submachine guns and rubber bullets?"
"About two thousand rounds."
Non-lethal weapons were permitted, and no one had ever said he could use only pistols. The moment he asked for a submachine gun and rubber bullets, Yeo Tae-Hyeon pulled them straight out of his subspace as though they had already been prepared.
"President Jeon! Can I rechallenge right now?"
"You can. But it would be a problem if you rely too heavily on the guns."
The vassal he had faced earlier had merely caught the rubber bullets to demonstrate that it was possible; against a Non-Awakened like Jeong-Hoon, he could read the trajectory and dodge before the shot even left the barrel.
The warning was given, yet Jeong-Hoon returned to the ring as if it were no concern at all, a drum-magazine submachine gun in each hand.
"Rate of fire isn't what matters."
"Well, I've got my own idea for that. Let's start."
Letting the vassal's polite words wash over him, Jeong-Hoon offered a slight smile.
The instant the start signal sounded, he squeezed the trigger of the submachine gun in his right hand.
Rat-tat-tat! A chattering roar accompanied an enormous volume of rubber bullets streaking toward the vassal.
The vassal neither blocked nor swatted them aside; he simply slipped sideways to evade.
But once he was pinned against the edge of the ring, he charged straight at Jeong-Hoon.
Seizing the opening, Jeong-Hoon dropped the right-hand submachine gun, drew the pistol from his waist, and fired.
If the vassal dodged sideways his balance would break; if he raised an arm to defend it would count as a hit and cost him a point.
Unlimited retries were allowed and points could accumulate, so to avoid surrendering a point the vassal reached out and caught the rubber bullet.
"Bingo."
That had been Jeong-Hoon's aim. For the briefest instant the vassal blocked his own field of vision with his own hand and arm.
In that flash Jeong-Hoon discarded the pistol, gripped the left-hand submachine gun with both hands, leapt sideways, and indiscriminately squeezed the trigger toward the vassal.
The result was Jeong-Hoon circling round and round with the vassal fixed in the center, spraying a continuous stream of fire.
Even an A-class Awakened could not catch every rubber bullet from a fully automatic submachine gun.
One missed moment of opportunity was enough; defeat was inevitable.
There exists a submachine gun once called the Chicago Typewriter.
Favored mainly by American mafias, it offered no hope of accuracy, so it was used by simply hosing down a target until the job was done.
The most reliable assassination method was to place the target in the center and rapidly circle while spraying—an effective tactic precisely because the weapon itself was inaccurate.
What Jeong-Hoon employed was an application of that principle.
The logic was simple: if they try to catch or dodge, dump such an overwhelming volume of bullets that neither catching nor dodging is fully possible.
"Of course, even so, I could have succeeded just by drawing their attention to the pistol."
It was a tactic possible only because the fight was confined to the ring.
Spray the machine gun and the opponent's options shrink until the only remaining choice is to charge Jeong-Hoon.
Especially if only the right-hand submachine gun is firing, the left-hand weapon becomes impossible to ignore.
Thus the vassal is forced into the direction most thoroughly covered by the right-hand gun—so that the left-hand gun cannot be brought to bear—i.e., toward the right-hand corner from Jeong-Hoon's perspective.
Once cornered, the only option left is a charge.
Matching that charge, Jeong-Hoon deliberately forces the vassal to catch the pistol bullet.
While catching it, vision is blocked and the vassal ends up standing in the center of the ring.
At that precise moment Jeong-Hoon completes the tactic by spinning around the vassal at the center and spraying without pause.
"But it won't work a second time. Do you have a next move?"
When the chief butler, who had accurately dissected the tactic, asked about the plan going forward, Jeong-Hoon nodded.
He had a method that would suppress at least the next opponent.
And for that method he had quietly conferred with Yeo Tae-Hyeon and obtained a secret weapon.
"I really think it's fortunate I passed Shine Mall's task first."
Watching from a distance, Jeon Mun-Jae frowned the moment he saw what Yeo Tae-Hyeon handed over.
"Isn't that against the rules?"
"Non-lethal weapons are okay, right?"
It had been passed over with some attempt at secrecy, yet it was far too conspicuous and was spotted at once.
"It's fine, but that… No. All right. Use it. We'll respond in kind."
Having received the gas mask and CS rounds, Jeong-Hoon nodded at the resolve in Jeon Mun-Jae's voice.
"This means the other side will come out wearing gas masks too. Will you be all right?"
"Of course."
This time a hulking man over two meters tall, already wearing a gas mask, stepped onto the ring.
Seeing that referee Jeon Mun-Jae, the chief butler, Yeo Tae-Hyeon, and every other vassal present had all donned the identical gas masks supplied by Yeo Tae-Hyeon, Jeong-Hoon broke into a bright, energetic smile.
Everything was going according to plan.
"Then—Apollon second task, begin."
Just as prepared, Jeong-Hoon—gas mask on, CS rounds ready, submachine gun slung—detonated the canisters the instant the word "start" left the referee's mouth.
These were not ordinary munitions; they had been manufactured to deal with monsters. Even for an Awakened, without a gas mask the gas was powerful enough to burn the throat.
But because gas masks were worn, the opposing vassal took no damage. His movements, however, grew cautious.
The CS rounds had already been revealed, so he had to assume some further scheme existed.
That very caution became poison.
Jeong-Hoon smiled with his eyes at the gas-masked vassal and drew his next weapon.
Then he closed his own eyes and threw it.
Boom—!
An explosion of light flooded the space.
"F-flashbang?!"
Blinding radiance that stole sight blanketed the ring. Immediately afterward came the continuous chatter of the submachine gun.
Jeon Mun-Jae, who had shut his eyes to protect his vision from the flash, decided the match was lost and raised his hand.
"Good. Gaju's victory!"
"W-wait a moment, Steward Jeon!"
"What is it? Are you disputing the call?"
The flash had barely faded and vision had only just returned when Jeon Mun-Jae declared Jeong-Hoon the winner, yet the vassal who had faced him protested at once.
"I-I wasn't hit by Gaju's gun!"
"Then you caught or blocked it?"
"No. I wasn't hit at all!"
"I clearly heard the impact sounds."
The spray of the submachine gun had been accompanied by distinct impact reports, yet the vassal insisted he had not been struck. Jeon Mun-Jae wondered whether this particular opponent possessed unusually stubborn pride.
He had appeared to be sent up at random, yet he was carefully selected personnel.
Someone who should have known how to accept clean defeat—yet the expression on his face was one of genuine grievance.
"Gaju, do you have anything to say?"
"…Uh, no."
"Really?"
"My vision was blocked by the flashbang too, so I just sprayed randomly. President Jeon knows that better than anyone, right?"
When Jeong-Hoon shrugged, Jeon Mun-Jae sensed a trick.
But the trick had been covered by the flash.
He might have thought he misheard—yet Jeon Mun-Jae himself was an SS-class Awakened. By sound alone he could distinguish exactly where a bullet struck.
Unless his ears were blocked, the conclusion was certain. At that thought he became aware of the gas mask he was currently wearing.
Recalling that the mask was not a simple face covering but a full protective hood that enclosed the entire head, he nodded.
"Even if the flashbang left my ears ringing, I wouldn't mishear… Ah. So that was the method. I'll acknowledge it as three points scored."
"Steward Jeon!"
At Jeon Mun-Jae's declaration of Jeong-Hoon's victory, the vassal who had faced him shouted.
It was not that he refused to acknowledge Jeong-Hoon; it was that he himself had not been defeated.
"…Gaju's victory."
At the declaration of the man who had now seen through the trick, the vassal still could not understand why he had lost and looked around in confusion.
Then he understood. Everyone was wearing the exact same gas mask.
From the very beginning this match had been lost to Jeong-Hoon's design.
Having already been defeated in strategy before the fight even began, he nodded and accepted defeat.
"Hey, can we do the third after lunch?"
"As you wish, Gaju."
It was nearly midday; Jeon Mun-Jae readily agreed, then stuck out his tongue at the sight of Jeong-Hoon pretending perfect nonchalance.
Jeong-Hoon's trick had been quite simple. The core was not the CS rounds. It was the gas masks.
To free themselves from the influence of the CS gas, everyone had put on gas masks. From that moment their vision was restricted. Every mask was identical, covering the head completely.
In that environment the CS rounds burned and poured out smoke, while the flashbang delivered both deafening noise and searing light.
Vision and hearing were both extremely compromised.
Under those conditions Jeong-Hoon simply closed the distance while spraying the gun at himself.
The impact sounds were the sounds of Jeong-Hoon being hit—not the vassal.
He had done it entirely trusting the bulletproof function of his suit.
Even at close range, because he himself could neither see nor hear, he had no confidence he could actually land a hit.
That had been the entire trick of the victory.
"Phew—President Jeon seemed to notice, yet he still acknowledged it?"
"He acknowledged victory because even after you closed to that distance the opponent still didn't realize."
And once the opponent himself understood, he accepted defeat at the end.
"Then do you have a plan for the final opponent?"
"I have to think of one. That's why I said I was eating lunch—to come up with the next plan."
Somehow he had beaten two opponents with surprise tactics, yet there was no guarantee the same approach would work on the last.
A-class Awakened were not opponents to be taken lightly. From the outset they had been facing the Gaju under restrictions; they had gone easy, and only then had the plans succeeded.
"Any good ideas?"
"Just as you handled the first two so well, I believe you will handle the last equally well."
Under that gaze of boundless trust, Jeong-Hoon felt the pressure and looked down at the jjamppong bowl that now held not a single drop of broth.
An ordinary neighborhood Chinese restaurant. Yet eating such an ordinary meal for the first time in a long while somehow felt special.
"No, that's not it…"
"Huh? Were you escaping reality?"
"The jjamppong here is delicious."
He had scraped through twice with clever schemes, yet with no idea for the final method, Jeong-Hoon kept drifting into unrelated thoughts.
"No—firepower isn't the issue; accuracy is…"
If he could form a fire net by himself it would not be a problem.
After all, he only needed to land three hits.
But unless he grew four hands, it was impossible.
"Shall we try improving the second strategy?"
He had no concrete idea how, yet he muttered the thought as it surfaced, then quickly shook his head.
"First the weapons are a problem—I can't bend a gun to shoot around corners…"
Anyone who could bend a gun to shoot like that was an Awakened. There were techniques for ricocheting bullets into a target, but he had never learned them, and even if he could use them they would be nearly impossible inside the ring.
"Ah, Representative Yeo."
"Yes, listening."
"Do you have any medicine that blocks pain?"
"If it's ordinary painkillers I have them, but for something like that Steward Woo Do-Il knows better than I do."
He had won twice by surprise. For the third, no sharp method presented itself.
Then only one approach remained.
The direct method. But his physical ability was inferior, so a frontal contest was impossible.
Betting on a single possibility, Jeong-Hoon snapped his fingers.
The vassals, after all, were reluctant to inflict direct harm on him as Gaju.
In other words, if he could simply manage the impact from throwing techniques such as body slams, he could cling tenaciously and force a decision.
And that calculation—
"I'll take the last one myself. Ah, I'll go easy, so don't worry."
—crumbled the moment Jeon Mun-Jae, the vassal in charge of Apollon, stepped onto the ring himself.