An Opening
Even without a single ounce of "therapy" applied, Mix sang like a canary, spilling everything about the situation without hesitation.
"So you handed over five seals and commissioned them? And who took the job?"
"Pomade. He's their leader."
"Pomade?"
"Yes. That's how it looked to me, at least. And after him, Horned Glasses."
It differed in places from the information Won-goo had gathered. But it wasn't flat-out wrong either.
The Seal Collector gang had no official leader. So he couldn't dismiss Mix's personal impression as simply mistaken.
"Where did you meet them?"
Won-goo wrung every last drop of intel out of her about the Seal Collectors.
Once he'd extracted everything she had, he bound Mix up and looked around at his crew. While he'd been interrogating her, they'd been treating their own wounds without needing to be told.
Pacific was sitting in his wheelchair.
"The drugs wearing off already? No way. There should be plenty left."
"I'm rationing it. You're planning to chase those bastards down, aren't you?"
Pacific had his sloppy sides, but every now and then he showed razor-sharp judgment.
This was one of those times. He had Gong Won-goo pegged exactly.
"First, status report. Everyone holding up?"
"All good, sir!"
Lee Hyun-sung bellowed. Everyone had taken wounds, but nothing critical.
The worst injured was Geum Chul-soo.
And even he still had Dulla, his main weapon, alive and well.
Dulla's great advantage was that he could be spent like a consumable card at any time. After putting on a hell of a show, all it took was returning to his capsule and he was quickly restored to his original state.
Because of advantages like this, once the earliest phase of the apocalypse passed, people who collected capsules — alongside coin enhancement and seal harvesting — began to appear.
Capsules came in all sorts of grades, and there were plenty of monsters stronger than the Dullahan out there.
On top of that, they could be fitted with equipment and even raised and developed — which had to be counted as a massive edge.
Having finished treating the rest of the crew, Jo Mu-sa approached Won-goo.
"Director. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. Already handled it. How'd everyone else do?"
"No serious injuries. Hye-ji seemed a little shaken, though."
"That's because she's not the type to get hit often."
"Right. Nothing else to report. Hyun-sung's wounds were already closing, and Su-won just has a hairline crack in his ribs. I gave him painkillers and a recovery potion. Someone like Su-won will heal up in no time."
"Can he still move?"
"He can."
"Good."
This much Won-goo could have judged on his own. The reason he'd asked Jo Mu-sa anyway was partly to cement the man's standing within the organization.
Jo Mu-sa was the medic. Even if Won-goo was the head, consulting him before deciding next steps wasn't exactly a pointless formality.
As long as it wasn't a split-second combat decision, it was more than justified.
Won-goo recovered the gun that had fallen to the ground.
Then he walked over to Raphael.
"Protico. How much longer can it keep moving?"
"Protico gains strength by consuming nutrients. This area is—"
"I said, how much longer can it move?"
"Not long. It could, with more nutrients."
"Can it move another five minutes?"
"That much is possible."
"Anything beyond that's a stretch?"
"Correct."
Won-goo looked back and forth between Protico and the Trailer.
"Quick question — does that thing still count as moving even if you're not the one moving it?"
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"I'm asking if it disappears when you stop controlling it."
"It does not. The moment I use all of my authority, Protico is dismissed."
"Really? You're sure?"
"I'm sure. Are you planning to fight more?"
"I don't live on borrowed time — debts have to be paid. Everyone, gather up!"
At his call, the crew, who'd been checking their gear, assembled.
They'd been his people for a long time now. Which was exactly why they knew.
The fight wasn't over.
If it were, Won-goo wouldn't be taking this stance. He'd have told them to patch up their wounds and gather the loot.
Round up whoever needed to be taken prisoner.
But right now he was paying no mind to either loot or prisoners.
Which meant he had something more planned.
"According to the intel we pulled, this is an opportunity for us too."
"What part of this qualifies as an opportunity?"
"The fact that the Seal Collectors didn't all gather in one place. They took us for easy marks."
"So you're saying we chase them down now?"
"I think that's the right call. The hyena is controlled by that bastard Neverland, the one we dealt with at the Black Shelter. And the Piercing bastard seems to have some ability to cross long distances in an instant."
"Then what was that darkness?"
Jo Mu-sa asked.
"They call him Dark Eye among themselves. But that bastard's spent — he can't use his power again. Well, even that isn't certain. Either way, he can't use the same ability twice. So he won't be trapping us again."
"Really? He can't use it?"
"Positive. I heard him loud and clear: 'That's my limit now.' Said he was completely drained after releasing the darkness, too. And I saw it with my own eyes. The guy with the most tattoos was carrying him."
"Then what about the others — what are their abilities?"
"No idea. But right now, exactly four came out of the Seal Collector gang: Piercing, Horned Glasses, All-Tattoo, Dark Eye — and Neverland. Gut feeling says Horned Glasses is the one who handles their operations, and All-Tattoo might be their muscle."
"It really is an opportunity, then."
"It is. And you took that drug, so it's an even bigger one. That stuff cost a fortune."
"Then let's hit them. We've come this far — we were bound to run into those bastards eventually. And Neverland? They say he was at the Black Shelter? Then we go."
"Everyone agree?"
One by one, they all nodded.
"Good. Then we run them down as far as we can with the Trailer. Judging by their speed, if we floor it we can catch them in about fifteen to twenty minutes. We use the Trailer to move that thing."
Won-goo pointed at the Trailer, then at Protico.
Smiles crept across everyone's faces.
"See? Th— those damn lunatics never fucking listen. I told them we had to grab Gong Won-goo while we had the chance!"
The moment Neverland spotted Gong Won-goo, he flew into a furious tantrum. The hyena beside him responded with a low growl.
"What do we do about that thing? The second that bastard spins up, it turns into a complete freaking monst—"
Thwip!
Horned Glasses casually clamped a hand over Neverland's mouth.
Then, with grave eyes, he spoke to his comrades.
"That thing up ahead. We're better off avoiding it."
All-Tattoo and Piercing nodded. All-Tattoo was still carrying Dark Eye on his back.
Even amid all this commotion, Dark Eye hadn't stirred on All-Tattoo's back.
Then All-Tattoo woke him.
"Dark. Get up. Come on, get up."
"Why?"
"More work came in."
Still slung over his comrade's back, Dark Eye turned to look behind them.
In the far distance, the Trailer came barreling toward them, pushing an enormous ball ahead of it.
And there was Gong Won-goo, cursing every filthy word the world had ever produced.
"Persistent bastard. Is that guy banged up all over too?"
"Cut the crap and get up."
Dark Eye stretched and planted his feet on the ground, calm and unhurried.
"Stay sharp. Horned Glasses says we should avoid that thing."
"Avoid it?"
"Yeah."
All-Tattoo jerked his chin toward Protico.
Vroooooom!
Unlike their leisurely swagger until now, the Seal Collectors dodged Protico with lightning-quick movements.
Protico rolled straight through the gap between the collectors, splitting around it on either side.
In the same breath, the Trailer screeched to a halt and swerved sideways, throwing up a wall of steel.
Every crew member had already dismounted and taken position behind it.
The hyena lunged first.
But an attack had begun even before that.
The chakrams — weapons that could strike even while carving long, sweeping arcs.
Pacific's chakrams carved wider circles than before, raking into the Seal Collectors.
Timed to connect the instant Protico rolled past them.
One chakram went for Neverland's throat — but just as Horned Glasses had covered Neverland's mouth earlier, he matter-of-factly seized the man by the nape and yanked him down.
He'd saved Neverland's life.
The other chakram whipped toward All-Tattoo and Piercing, who had leapt the opposite way, but they evaded it with room to spare.
Came next: the harpoon attack.
It buried itself dead-on in the hyena's flank as it threw itself at the Trailer.
The hyena's strength dwarfed Jeon Hye-ji's — normally, it should have dragged her clean off her feet and carried her along.
But that was Won-goo's Services for you — flexible adaptation to the situation was their bread and butter.
They'd already sketched out a battle plan from the scraps of information they'd gathered.
First order of business: neutralize the most annoying problem — the hyena.
Mu Beob-sa, and even Jo Mu-sa, piled on to pin the beast down.
With the harpoon buried deep in its side, the hyena thrashed and writhed, trying to tear free.
But the harpoon only sank deeper.
Once the hyena was secured, Won-goo, perched atop the Trailer, opened fire.
A torrent of flame swallowed the hyena whole in an instant.
"Angelina!"
Neverland screamed, voice cracking with sobs.
Then Dark Eye moved. Unbowed even by the roaring flames, he advanced toward the hyena.
Watching him, Won-goo swung the flamethrower's stream toward Dark Eye.
Dark Eye raised a hand and stirred the oncoming blaze as if parting a curtain.
Darkness bloomed into being.
The flames were being sucked into that darkness.
Won-goo cut the fire.
At the same moment, Horned Glasses fingered his glasses, stepped forward, and spoke.
"You're Director Gong, aren't you? What we did was just business. There's no need to get this heated. Keep this up and your side takes a lot of damage. It's unnecessary."
"You son of a bitch. You call flaying people's arms off 'business'? You crippled one of my kids and you call it business?"
"That was a slight mishap during an ongoing operation — no, a margin of error, rather. Show me a business these days without that much error. I'll say it again. Let's stop here."
"This bastard doesn't have a single clue what he did wrong. Hey! Did you eat something rotten? You think the world bends over just because you whine? Crazy son of a—"
"Honestly… we're getting nowhere. Then you leave me no choice — you die. Anyone here carrying a seal, by chance?"
"Why the hell do you ask?"
"If you have one, I'll take the seal and spare your life."
"You're Horned Glasses, right?"
"Correct."
"Seals? We've got a shitload of them."
"A lot, you say?"
"Yeah. The ones on your bodies — every last one of them's a seal. And soon they'll all be mine. So yeah. A lot."
"You brought this on yourself."
And in that instant, Horned Glasses removed his glasses.
Three identical figures appeared.
In the blink of an eye, there were four Horned Glasseses.
The clones were utterly indistinguishable from the original, and the moment they materialized, they scattered and lunged.
"First we play brick-toss, now it's spot-the-difference?"
The first to welcome Horned Glasses's clones was the flame pouring from Won-goo's gun.
The hyena Angelina, engulfed in the searing blaze, had been roasted whole — a grotesque, charred shape fused to the ground.
Fwoooosh!
One of Horned Glasses's clones rolled across the ground, shaking off the flames, and charged straight at Won-goo.
Wham!
The clone's strikes were fast and economical.
Going by body movement alone, it was upper-Named caliber.
The clones fanned out to attack the other crew members, and the remaining collectors joined in.
Only Neverland stood apart, staring blankly at the charred remains of his pet.
The collectors' base specs were anything but ordinary.
Above all, they were supremely experienced in combat.
Not the type to flail around on raw ability alone — their fundamentals were rock-solid too.
So the battle seemed to settle into an even standoff.
But both sides knew. This was a fight where whoever showed their hand first could end up the loser.
Play your card and succeed, and you'd seize the momentum — fail, and you'd hand over the initiative instead.
That was why the collectors hadn't used their hidden abilities either.
But there was one thing they had gotten wrong.
The simple fact that the Won-goo side had already played their card.
"Dark!"
Dark Eye was scattering veils of darkness to deflect the projectiles raining down on the collectors.
And at him, All-Tattoo roared in alarm.
Because the massive Protico that had rolled away into the distance was creeping stealthily back — and was about to drop right on top of Dark Eye.