It Was Always Our Clan's Affair
Dan Miryu saw Phantom off.
"We'll go over the details tomorrow."
"Are you truly confident?"
Dan Miryu was worried.
"Then let me ask you the opposite. Are you not?"
"...... No."
"Then that settles it."
Phantom took his leave of him.
"I'll be going. Rest well."
"Yes. I'll see you tomorrow."
Phantom vanished into the distance, and Dan Miryu watched until he was gone.
"He really is beyond imagination..."
"You're right. I never thought something like that would come out of him."
Mi Soryeong let out a long, heavy sigh.
"Miryu, are you really going to do this?"
"I have to. It isn't the wrong thing."
Dan Miryu clenched his fist.
Joining forces with Phantom had been the right call, but he had never imagined the man's first target would be the villain alliance Negus.
"Does he even have a plan?"
"Do you, Miryu? It's Negus. You know how vicious they are..."
Negus, the villain alliance, was a coalition born when six villain organizations bound themselves together. Its scale ranked among the greatest in East Asia—a global syndicate whose reach stretched all the way into Korea.
"If they have to be destroyed, then they have to be destroyed."
"A colossal evil."
Dan Miryu nodded at Mi Soryeong's words.
Korea's villains were not especially strong, and that, paradoxically, left the country weak against invasion from outside. Negus was an organization that had come in from China.
"Unjinhoe..."
One of Negus's six groups, and the one charged with transport—the organization that had reached into Korea most aggressively of all. Korea was East Asia's crossroads, sea on three sides and easy routes running north and south, so it was only natural that Unjinhoe would extend a hand. Born in China, its scale was immense; a single branch of that one group was the largest villain organization in the country.
Driving an organization like that out of the Republic of Korea sounded like a dream.
"They've caused plenty of trouble."
"It would have been better if Korea had heroes, too..."
Korea had no heroes. Only villains. Public order was still left to the police.
"Better than other countries drowning in villains, though."
"That's true."
"And..."
As if something were caught in his chest, Dan Miryu looked up at the sky.
"Miryu..."
Mi Soryeong wrapped her arms around him from behind.
"It was a good thing. A necessary thing."
"I know."
Dan Miryu turned and held her in return.
"But now we have to take it back."
"Yes. This is where it starts."
He had resolved to set right the failures of his past.
"Who are we? We're the Dan Clan."
The confident smile that was his alone crossed his face.
The Dan Clan—a house that had sunk its roots into Korea across thousands of years. Would a clan like that fail to handle a single organization?
"I'm going to reconnect the ties we cut."
"I never thought a day like this would come again."
"Yeah. On that, I agree."
It was true the clan's strength had waned compared with decades before. As things stood, the direct line numbered only two: Dan Miryu and Dan Chuyeon. That did not mean they had fallen. Power laid down across ages has a way of carrying forward unbroken, and the head of the clan now was Dan Miryu.
"I have to bring the old glory back to life."
"It feels like a dream."
Mi Soryeong was glad. She had never imagined she would see again the brilliant Dan Clan she had once known. What pleased her even more was her husband—vigorous, fairly radiating life. He had always seemed somehow drained. Not anymore.
"Sleep will have to wait."
"I'll help. Let's give Mr. Phantom a surprise!"
Dan Miryu returned to the house with Mi Soryeong.
It was the moment a sleeping dragon opened its eyes.
Shanghai, China.
"The Dan Clan was attacked?"
"Yes. It happened only this dawn."
A man frowned at the report his secretary delivered.
"And the Dan Clan?"
"All of them are unharmed."
The man's face said of course they are.
"Who were the attackers? Some vermin of a villain outfit?"
"No, sir. We were unable to identify them."
"What...?"
"I apologize."
The man looked at his secretary.
"You couldn't identify them?"
"They were people who never appeared in our intelligence network. It was certain, however, that they were no ordinary operatives."
"Based on what."
"The damage from this attack."
The secretary handed him several photographs. They showed a city in ruins—buildings collapsed, the earth overturned. It was impossible to believe a fight between human beings had produced this.
"What is this? Did a war break out? Some massive group battle?"
"No, sir. This is the aftermath of a battle fought by at least three people. Here is the footage the CCTV captured."
The secretary played the video on a laptop that had been set out.
On the screen, a figure in the Smiling Mask fought a figure with a sword. Another clip showed Dan Miryu subduing operatives in specialized combat suits, then sprinting toward the place where the masked man and the swordsman clashed.
"This is no joke. Is there more?"
"The aftermath destroyed every camera, so that's all of the CCTV. The rest is footage posted on social media."
The secretary played it. A green barrier stood as though it meant to blot out the sky, and the only hint of the battle within was the rumble and the sound of destruction rolling out of the footage.
"What am I supposed to make of this? Did a god descend?"
The man was past disbelief.
"What does the Korean government say?"
"Their official position is that it was terrorism, but..."
He watched the footage again and snorted.
"Bullshit. If that's terrorism, the terrorists have conquered the planet."
In other words, the Korean government didn't know either.
"Report every last thing related to this. Social media, the news, CCTV—leave nothing out. The moment anything wrong turns up, every one of you dies."
"Understood."
He gave the order with killing intent naked on his face. Sweat pouring off him, the secretary backed away.
"The Dan Clan... still not dead..."
The man let out a hollow laugh.
He had thought the house that had endured so long in Korea had finally collapsed, and here they were showing power like this.
"They were a headache even back when we were operating in Korea..."
Decades ago, when he had first reached into the country, the Dan Clan had obstructed him viciously. Remembering how close he had come to dying as a young man because of that interference still jolted him upright out of sleep. Then, all at once, the clan had ceased to exert any influence, and his organization had been able to sink safe roots into Korea.
"I always regretted meaning to take revenge and never getting to..."
He had tried to retaliate against the Dan Clan back then, only to be stopped by the power struggles inside the alliance. Seeing this, he was thinking about it again.
"If I had, I wouldn't even be able to look at Korea now."
The man scrolled through the contacts on his smartphone. The Korean branch needed reinforcements, and it needed them now. After a brief hesitation, he placed a call.
It rang, and then it died. As if that were only to be expected, he called again. That call died too.
"This bastard still doesn't pick up."
He spat the curse.
At the man's flighty voice, Cloud pressed a finger beneath his nose.
"I'm the dumbass for asking..."
At the boisterous racket spilling through the phone, Cloud wanted nothing more than to rush over that instant and kill every last one of them.
Mugang said it in a voice that made plain how much of a bother he found the whole thing.
Goddamn bastard. He needs a beating.
Cloud ground his teeth. The man lived like a thoughtless beast.
Only now did Mugang drop the flippant tone.
Perhaps he had grasped how serious this was. Mugang asked the question as the boss of his organization.
At the irritated voice, Cloud sneered.
Cloud hung up.
"A meeting of the organization might be called."
A large-scale battle in Korea. Attackers no one could identify, and Dan Miryu's power. An agenda of that weight was more than enough to convene one. Cloud clutched his head over how to handle what came next.
And not long after—
"C-Cloud, sir! Word just came in—the Korean branch is under attack!"
"What?!"
A chill of premonition ran through him.
Something unknowable was drawing closer to Cloud, slowly.