Protico
"Gong Won-goo's gotta die this time. This is our chance."
The man who said it was Neverland.
The zookeeper, a former executive of Black Shelter. He'd originally kept a massive bear and a whole pack of Bloodfans, lost them all, and the giant hyena he was raising now was his replacement pet.
"Nope."
Horned Glasses shook his head.
"We do exactly the job we were paid for. Nothing more."
"Gong Won-goo is one stubborn, relentless bastard. Didn't you see what he did to Black Shelter?"
"Like I said — we don't work for free. You joined us knowing we follow our own policy, didn't you? Then follow it."
"This is a real opportunity, though……"
"It's business. If Gong Won-goo let feelings get tangled up in jobs like this, he'd never have gotten where he is. Look at us. Even with the Black Shelter thing, we never once acted out of personal spite."
"No, but this isn't the kind of grudge you can just shrug off. That bastard Gong Won-goo……"
Tap.
Behind him, All-Tattoo touched Neverland on the shoulder.
"Neverland. I get how you feel, but honestly? We don't care that much."
"Same here. Besides, I don't think he's coming back out of that thing alive."
The Ganjeol Point fighters were swarming toward the darkness.
"And if he really is that good, he might end up a client of ours someday."
"Haah……"
Neverland was frustrated to the point of madness, but there was nothing more he could say. The Seal Collector gang was different from other gangs in too many ways.
Besides, he'd only recently started pulling his own weight — one man's worth of contribution, and even that had only been possible with the Seal Collectors' support. He had no standing to speak up.
The Seal of a Fierce Beast.
Seals weren't something that could only be applied to survivors.
They could be grafted onto pets, too.
Neverland was a Gift user who commanded and strengthened beasts. So a seal was worth far more on his pet than on himself.
"Come on, let's go. He'll pop out any second now."
All-Tattoo said it as he hoisted up Dark Eye, who hung limp in his arms.
Horned Glasses was already walking away into the distance, as if the outcome of the fight meant nothing to him at all.
Neverland didn't entirely hate this free-spirited attitude.
The Seal Collector gang was less an organization than a horizontal club. Charitable people would call it cool; less charitable ones would call it a total lack of structure.
To Neverland, it was simply maddening.
Even so, their fearsome reputation preceded them everywhere they moved, and that came down to the individual skill of each member — the kind of skill that spawned ghost stories.
Neverland had learned how strong they were after joining. It wasn't just raw power; each of them wielded some bizarre, unique ability, putting them on a level that ordinary survivor groups simply couldn't hope to match.
Which was probably why they had so little sense of urgency.
If Neverland had been in charge of hunting Gong Won-goo, every single member would have mobilized. But these people hadn't even gathered as a full group.
They'd split into teams to handle a completely different contract at the same time. On paper, both commissions were being handled flawlessly — but to Neverland, it was one regret after another.
Because they could have killed Gong Won-goo.
That expectation, however, was Neverland's misunderstanding alone.
Even those who'd known Gong Won-goo since the early days had failed to properly grasp one thing: that what he hadn't shown far outweighed what he had.
The Gold Coins he'd burned on reinforcement had been staggering, but the coins he'd stored away inside the Trailer against a worst-case scenario were just as considerable.
Even if the Seal Collectors had thrown in to help the Ganjeol Point fighters, there was no guarantee they'd have won.
On top of that, Won-goo's crew had recently taken on new blood — and those recruits were anything but ordinary.
Rafael and Pacific in particular were already strong enough to be classified as Top-Tier Named without a second thought.
Pacific had the glaring weakness of a very short window of effectiveness, but his skill was the real deal. Strict, stingy Won-goo himself had certified it.
BOOM!
The moment the darkness vanished completely, the Trailer shot out.
And the crew members who'd been clinging tight to it revealed themselves as well.
The hyena and Piercing broke away the instant they were outside, running for their allies waiting in the distance.
Won-goo watched them closely.
The Seal Collectors, turning their backs and vanishing as if their job was done.
He wanted to chase them right now — but the Ganjeol Point fighters around him numbered far too many.
"Take them down, fast!"
The Ganjeol Point forces surged forward in a wave, but Won-goo's crew didn't so much as blink.
The first to move was Pacific.
He stepped out of his wheelchair and in a single breath was up on the rooftops, chakram already flying.
The chakram was both a close-quarters weapon and a thrown one. But as a throwing weapon, it wasn't easy to retrieve — it had never been designed to come back.
Pacific's chakram, however, returned to his hand.
And he handled the thing with baffling, surgical finesse.
The chakram carved a half circle, wheeling through the air.
Whiiiing!
He threw the right chakram, dropped down to the front of the Trailer, and swung the other in a vertical arc — then pirouetted like a ballet dancer and took three heads clean off.
He pushed forward, reclaimed the chakram, and threw again. This time both of them.
Two chakrams tore ahead at furious speed and sheared through the legs of two survivors.
Butchering coin-reinforced survivors this easily wasn't something you could do with a good weapon alone.
And Pacific wasn't done — he drew two knives from his waist without a pause.
Massive military combat knives, blades a good fifty centimeters long.
Feet flickering through impossibly fast steps, both arms never once stopping.
Not a trace remained of the man who'd seemed so untrustworthy until now.
The skill of Pacific standing on his own two legs was real.
Wham! BOOM!
He'd plunged into the crowd in front of the Trailer, so attacks coming at him was only natural.
One aimed straight for his torso.
Pacific crouched, dodging the incoming axe. As he slipped past, it buried itself deep in the Trailer's hull.
He rolled forward and cut his opponent down like harvesting grain with his knife.
Countless strikes came at him trying to run him through, but Pacific was the type who did only what he was supposed to do.
He blocked attacks aimed at lethal zones, and simply took the rest.
He wore excellent armor, and even if something punched through it, he wouldn't die while the drugs were active.
He was the owner of a Gift that doubled the effect of every medicine he took.
Thud! Clang!
He wasn't just swinging knives, either. A kick toppled an opponent, he stepped on the fallen body, and launched himself into the air.
The chakram spinning back toward him rose to meet him in the empty sky.
Pacific caught the returning chakram on his blade.
Then whirled it in a full circle and threw it again.
Jeon Hye-ji's assessment had been right. There was a reason Pacific had always been able to travel alone.
In the meantime, Geum Chul-soo had released Dulla and stood guard over Jeon Hye-ji with one arm.
Mu Beob-sa was the same. Since raising his shield, he'd often taken on the job of protecting her — but with Geum Chul-soo currently wounded, he'd naturally dropped back to cover the rear.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Jeon Hye-ji fired at enemies now within arm's reach without a flicker of hesitation.
Being able to hold aimed shots at that range came down to one thing: how much she trusted the crew around her.
Tap!
She gave Geum Chul-soo a light kick from behind. He immediately ducked down.
The gunfire carried on without a break.
The rest of the crew were each pulling their own weight, cutting through the Ganjeol Point fighters.
Mix's expression was stiffening by the moment. She'd gathered more than enough executives and believed they could overwhelm the enemy with ease.
But when the lid came off, Won-goo's crew turned out to be built of nothing but absurd monsters.
Every single one of them was at minimum a mid-tier Named.
And a few of them were Top-Tier Named level.
Rafael above all was rampaging like a fish returned to water.
She wasn't even using her divine authority.
And she was plenty powerful without it.
To enemies gathered together like this, Rafael was nothing short of a natural disaster.
Ganjeol Point's counterattack was no pushover, but turning the tide was going to be difficult.
The Trailer above all.
Whenever the Ganjeol Point side brought out a powerful ability or display of strength, Won-goo used the Trailer as a shield with pinpoint timing.
Exquisitely precise orders and coordination.
Pacific fought on alone at the front, and yes, he got swept up in the occasional big attack — but that was all.
Right now he was taking barely a scratch from most strikes, and even when wounded, he recovered almost instantly.
Not the regeneration of Ralph from the Human Cook Gang, but a good half of it.
And with his close-combat skill on top of that, there was nothing to worry about.
Overwhelming opening firepower.
Even so, plenty of Ganjeol Point fighters remained.
But no matter how many were left, the battle couldn't drag on.
Shaken by firepower they hadn't anticipated, some of the Ganjeol Point survivors had started to run.
Seeing it, Mix screamed herself hoarse, rallying them.
"Save my father first! Kill them, and this ends!"
Her cry rang out, sharp and carrying across the whole battlefield.
Won-goo answered her by snapping a survivor's neck.
Crack!
"Ganjeol's already dead!"
After delivering that answer, he added one more line, quieter.
These words were for Lee Hyun-sung.
It was a toss-up whether anyone could hear him over the chaos — but Lee Hyun-sung reacted instantly.
Hyunsung. You're pushing too far forward.
His ears perked up; he barked, "Understood, Hyeong-nim!" and fell back at once.
Lee Hyun-sung had been giving a considerable account of himself too.
He'd grown more comfortable in battle, and handling Huang Zhiheng's Chinese Cleaver had started to come more naturally.
On top of that, he had spare lives to spare.
Survivors already possessed hardier constitutions than ordinary humans and fought dangerous battles as a matter of course — and Lee Hyun-sung routinely fought ones even more dangerous than that.
Not dancing along the line between life and death, but outright crossing over it to fight. That was the only way to put it.
Where Pacific, even mid-rampage, rigorously dodged or blocked anything aimed at his vitals, Lee Hyun-sung simply ignored attacks that came straight for his.
In exchange, his offense was merciless.
Yet even his movements had a measured rhythm to them. Not a berserker — he controlled the tempo as he fought.
And with a style that was pure relentless offense, he was a far trickier opponent than he looked.
As Lee Hyun-sung was pressed back toward the Trailer, the Ganjeol Point fighters threw themselves at its rear compartment.
Won-goo tried to hold them off with his own body, pressed flat against the Trailer's side.
The attacks came pouring in.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Shluk!
Blades, axes, and blunt weapons hammered wildly at Won-goo's body.
He defended adequately with his shield and warhammer, but he couldn't block everything. The numbers were simply too great.
His one small mercy was that there were so many of them that the Ganjeol Point fighters could barely put their full strength behind their swings.
But a weapon was still a weapon.
The kind that cracked bones and opened bleeding wounds with the slightest graze.
And Won-goo took it all, standing his ground and enduring.
Part of it was the excellent armor he wore, and part was the strength the coin reinforcement had given him.
"Hyeong-nim!"
Lee Hyun-sung saw it and abandoned his position, trying to reach him.
"Hold your line! Your brother's not dying!"
"Yes, Hyeong-nim!"
Won-goo sent a signal to Jeon Hye-ji as he fought.
She slung her rifle behind her back and drew out a crossbow.
KWOOONG!
A massive surge of force shook off every enemy clinging to him in a single blast.
Mu Beob-sa helping from the side with his shield was a bonus.
The enemies cast off, Won-goo took hold of his flamethrower.
Fire was ready to come roaring out of the barrel.
Allies were close by, so he eased the trigger down with the lightest possible touch, adjusting the output.
And then — something gleaming flew at Won-goo's weapon.
Tap!
The carelessly flung object wasn't aimed at Won-goo. It was aimed at the gun.
Won-goo's brow furrowed.
Because the weapon had suddenly risen off his hands into empty air, and he couldn't grip it anymore.
They'd fought Ganjeol Point many times. Their own data had accumulated on his side, so it stood to reason they'd prepared something too.
Shluk!
A vicious knife came flying at the frowning Won-goo's throat.
It feinted for his neck, then changed direction with shocking abruptness and went for his abdomen.
The man who'd thrown it was Dae-young, his scalp peeled back like an egg yolk, face swollen grotesquely, wearing a vicious smile.
"Looks like you're rattled? Can't even block something like this?"
"You…… toupee-wearing bald fuck……"
"Now — up we go!"
The blade had been laid horizontally as it sank into his belly; Dae-young rotated it vertical and heaved upward.
Pain exploded through Won-goo, the kind that would snap even a survivor's mind wide awake.
A weapon that punched through thick layered armor and split the belly open.
It looked like a simple sashimi knife, but it was nothing of the sort. The odds were high that it carried some kind of reinforcement enchantment.
Biting his lip until it nearly split, Won-goo steadied his trembling body and blocked the other attacks coming in.
All while gripping the blade embedded in his stomach with both hands and hauling down on it desperately, refusing to let Dae-young carve any higher.
His guts were being sliced open even now — the pain trembled so violently he could feel it radiating out through his skin.
Thud! SLAM!
Even in this desperate state, Won-goo kept moving.
He drove a foot up into Dae-young's groin, buying a split-second flinch, then twisted his head aside to dodge a strike aimed at his skull.
The rest of the crew knew exactly what state Director Gong was in — but they couldn't reach him.
There were simply too many Ganjeol Point fighters. Too many, and the battle had started at far too close a range.
Thud!
Kicking Dae-young back once more to open up distance, Won-goo roared.
"RAFAEEEEEL!"
The Trailer lurched violently forward.
Won-goo jumped backward in perfect time with it.
Keeping his eyes locked on Dae-young the whole way.
Five meters or so ahead, the Trailer's rear door suddenly swung wide open.
Won-goo slipped inside in one smooth motion.
Watching a small sphere bloom near Rafael's position, swallow the survivors whole, and keep growing.