Alex's First Errand
Meanwhile, while Kim Bada was busy enjoying her game, Alex was out running an errand to the mart.
The mart was barely five hundred meters from Bada's house, so there was no reason the trip should have taken long.
But just as Alex stepped out with pork belly, lettuce, and king oyster mushrooms in hand, a beautiful woman on the run suddenly appeared in front of him.
Four men in black suits were chasing a woman in a white lab coat. Anyone could see this was not a normal situation.
"Excuse me—are you a soldier? Can you help me?"
Alex was wearing a pilot's jumpsuit, so his military background was hard to miss. His affiliation and nationality, however, remained unknown.
Tears welled in the woman's eyes, and a deep shadow of despair hung over her face. She had nowhere left to turn. Grasping at straws, she pleaded with Alex.
Alex answered.
"Well. What if you're the bad one and those men are the good ones?"
"They're running human experiments with potions! I stole the evidence!"
"Good summary."
Alex casually tucked the woman behind his back and stepped forward.
One of the four men in suits spoke for the group.
"Hey, buddy. If you don't want to get hurt, walk away."
His colleague chimed in.
"Looks like a foreigner. Stay out of other people's business."
Alex said,
"According to this woman, you people are conducting human experiments, and she's trying to expose it?"
The men exchanged glances.
"That woman's an industrial spy. We're just honest company employees."
"Hand her over and you can go home in one piece."
"And if I refuse?"
A man standing behind the others, his movements hard to track, quietly drew a pistol and aimed it at Alex.
"People who can't take a hint don't tend to live long."
Phssht.
A silenced pistol spat fire with a muted crack. The man's aim was perfect—if Alex had been an ordinary human, that shot would have killed him instantly.
But before the bullet even left the barrel, Alex was already in front of the man, dropping him with a strike to the jaw. The pistol's trajectory warped uselessly, and the bullet sailed harmlessly into the sky.
"He's an upper-rank Hunter!"
"His physical ability isn't normal! Be careful!"
The men in suits finally went on guard—but it was far too late. Subduing them took Alex less than ten seconds. Every one of them was unconscious before they knew what hit them.
The woman stared in shock at Alex's skill. Alex, for his part, thought it over carefully.
Mother Kim Bada wanted a peaceful life free of trouble. Bringing this woman home for protection would invite a mountain of risk. The answer, then, was simple.
Destroy the source of the threat.
"Who is the mastermind, and where is the laboratory?"
"Who are you?"
"I will not ask twice. Who is the mastermind, and where is the laboratory?"
The woman trembled as she spoke.
"If I tell you, you'll become a target for elimination too."
"I am aware."
Alex's manner was absolute. In the end, the woman opened her mouth.
"The Yiseong Guild. The lab is hidden in the basement of an abandoned hospital on the outskirts of the city."
Alex walked over to the car the men in suits had come from. Using a key he'd already lifted from one of them, he unlocked the door and started the engine.
"Get in, please. Pork belly's freshness is everything."
"Pork belly?"
A plastic bag still dangled from one of Alex's hands—the pork belly and vegetables from the mart. The woman climbed into the car in a daze, then stopped and asked in fresh alarm,
"Don't tell me you're going to destroy the laboratory?"
"That is correct."
"A single Hunter taking on an entire guild?"
"Yes."
"No. Hide me. We should tip off the press. The world needs to know."
Alex looked her straight in the eyes.
"Going to the press instead of the police means the police are already in collusion with them, does it not?"
The woman had no answer.
"Do you know a reliable news outlet that can withstand guild pressure and police collusion? A journalist who will absolutely move for the sake of justice?"
"……"
At last, the woman understood. She had been finished from the start. A lone researcher stealing a little data could never topple a cartel of that size. The only ending permitted to her was death.
"I could leave you behind if you prefer, but your survival rate will be highest at my side."
Alex said it with complete confidence—that even charging into the enemy's stronghold, the seat next to him would be the safest place. The woman had no choice but to believe that absurd claim. Left on the street, she would only be caught by the next wave of pursuers.
Once she was in the passenger seat, Alex said,
"Set the navigation."
"Starting route guidance."
With a feminine AI voice, the car pulled away.
The car glided up to the abandoned hospital and stopped. The moment Alex stepped out of the driver's seat, he used a pistol stolen from the men in suits to neutralize the guards.
The woman climbed out a beat later and hurried after him.
The secret laboratory had roughly thirty security personnel. Alex cut through them without hesitation as he pushed deeper inside.
"There's only two of them! Why can't you stop them?!"
"Aaaargh!"
Along the way, an enhanced test subject that bullets couldn't touch came bursting out—Alex put it down with hand-to-hand combat. A muscle-bound monster over two and a half meters tall, twisted by the side effects of the drugs. Alex dropped that thing and knocked it unconscious in under five seconds as well.
The woman's eyes flooded with astonishment.
What on earth is this man?
She had brought him here, and yet she knew nothing about him. Just a soldier she'd happened to run into on the street. She knew absolutely nothing.
"You're telling me two people broke through the entire lab's security?! Damn it! Wipe it! Delete all the data right now!"
"That will not be happening."
Bang!
Alex killed the lab director and took the USB drive holding the core data. In the meantime, the woman freed every test subject. As a former researcher here, she knew exactly where the subjects were held and how to disable the security.
"Thank you. I thought I was already dead."
"I don't know how to thank you enough!"
"Am I… really alive?"
But when the two of them reached the surface, their escape route was cut off. Dozens of Yiseong Guild members had the abandoned hospital completely surrounded.
Guild Leader Lee Seonghwan sneered at Alex.
"Was playing hero fun, friend?"
He'd received the intel that Alex was an upper-rank Hunter with exceptional physical ability. But there was no way one man could win against this many Hunters. Absolute confidence put an easy mockery in his voice.
Instead of answering, Alex suddenly pulled out a radio.
"Mother, please authorize Zero-One's sortie."
Kim Bada, mid-game at home, was flabbergasted.
"You—I sent you to the mart for meat, how far did you go that it's taking this long? Ah! I'm in the middle of an important team fight! Hang up!"
"Authorize the sortie."
"Fine! Use it or whatever!"
Lee Seonghwan's expression still brimmed with leisure.
"You shouldn't have made that call. Now I have to kill you and hunt down your mother. What a thoroughly unfilial son."
Snap!
Lee Seonghwan flicked his fingers in a signal. His subordinates opened up with machine guns.
Machine guns that normally had to be fixed to the ground just to manage the recoil—but as Hunters, his guild members controlled the kick with both hands and aimed freely. Alex moved fast, weaving through the bullets. Still, the other side had numbers and firepower. Lee Seonghwan did not doubt their victory for a single moment.
Then it came.
The sound of an aircraft from somewhere.
Wheeeeeeng—
At first, no one looked up. Taking your eyes off a fight with Alex was the same as dying. But the engine noise grew louder, and a black shadow swallowed the sky.
"It can't be."
The instant Lee Seonghwan looked up, magic rounds poured from the machine guns under the PA-01.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
The Yiseong Guild members who belatedly tried to look at the sky were all reduced to chunks of meat. Overwhelming firepower. And pinpoint accuracy.
After the aerial bombardment stopped, no one was left alive.
Confirming the situation had been cleanly resolved, Alex went back to the woman.
"Call 911 and have them dispatch units here."
There would be no further threat now.
The black aircraft approached the front of the abandoned hospital at a much slower speed than before. Alex sprinted to the car he'd used to storm the hospital, pulled the plastic bag from the driver's seat,
"Freshness: no abnormalities."
and leapt high onto the aircraft with the bag still in hand. The cockpit opened on its own, making room for him.
The woman watched the departing plane and thought blankly,
A guy who just came to buy pork belly stopped a guild's entire conspiracy.
She couldn't hold back a laugh.
"What an utterly ridiculous person."
Without even asking her name to the very end, he had swept the darkness from this city and left.
"What the hell were you doing? A mart five hundred meters away, and it takes you three hours? Were you slacking off?"
"A minor trouble arose during the errand mission."
"The meat didn't go bad, right?"
"It is still perfectly fine."
Just what had he been up to out there? On top of that, a huge amount of mana had drained out of me mid-fight and nearly caused a disaster. I'd never burned that much mana in one go before, so I hadn't known—dumping a massive amount at once left me with something like dizziness. I almost threw a critical team fight because of it. Good thing we won. If I'd lost that match, I never would have forgiven Alex.
"What's this USB?"
"Spoils of the trouble."
Checking it myself would be faster than listening to an explanation, so I plugged it into the computer. It wasn't some kind of hacking tool, was it? When I opened it, it turned out to be ordinary human-experiment research data.
"What did you actually go and do?"
"I destroyed the Yiseong Guild's biotech research laboratory and rescued the detained test subjects."
Besides the research data, there were also ledgers of fund flows—apparently they'd been throwing money at the police and the press to bury their crimes. For a normal person, even accessing information like this would be dangerous.
"Simona. Create a fake online news outlet and dump all this data and the collusion connections."
Our forces had a highly competent information and telecommunications officer.
"Yes, Mother."
For nearly a month after that, all hell broke loose. A major guild's human experiments, police collusion, and press collusion—a complete gift set.
If I hadn't sent Alex out for pork belly, would those test subjects still be suffering even now?