Hwanggeum-i
The glasses went first. That was the question Piercing asked, and All-Tattoo answered with a short nod.
This was the place they had been using as their hideout — a hideaway built around the Trailer that stood parked inside it. A cave beneath a cliff, nearly impossible to stumble across by accident. They liked it here very much. No one would ever guess a Trailer was tucked away inside. Structurally, the cave was far too narrow to admit a vehicle of that size, and yet with Piercing's power, moving the impossible was barely an inconvenience. The Trailer was heavy, and after each relocation Piercing needed roughly a day to recover — a drawback, sure, but well worth it for a space like this.
And now they might have to abandon it before long.
"What about Neverland? No traces of him?"
"None."
"Then we clear this place out."
"Do we really have to?"
"We do. It's because we brushed off Never's warning that things ended up like this."
The Seal Collectors accepted the situation quickly. They had thought Neverland was being hysterical, but it hadn't been hysteria at all.
Gong Won-goo. In a world already crawling with lunatics, he was the kind of madman who stood out even among them.
"Neverland... he's been taken, hasn't he?"
"Probably. And Won-goo — they say he's a torture specialist."
"Then it's all going to burn."
"Yeah."
Neverland had once operated with the Seal Collector gang, so of course he knew this location.
"Then we move everything. What about Dark?"
Piercing asked, and All-Tattoo exhaled a long breath through his nose.
"Nothing to figure out. We'll know when we see it."
"How would we know that?"
The one who stepped into the cave was Long Hair.
The most handsome among them, and the most trusted. The world believed Pomade was the gang's leader, but every one of them knew the truth: when things got truly dangerous, the one who belonged in the leader's seat was Long Hair.
And that man's clothes were soaked through with blood.
"You—"
"Looks like you all had trouble too."
"What happened?"
"The deal fell through. Claw went down."
"..."
"..."
Piercing and All-Tattoo stared at each other. Then Pomade entered behind him.
Pomade was clutching his stomach. Both of them bore the marks of a brutal fight.
"Quite the day, huh. Your job went sideways too?"
Pomade's question. All-Tattoo and Piercing both nodded.
"Dark fell."
"How? That was supposed to be a simple job."
"The trade itself went fine, but Mix botched the finish. Won-goo's Services chased us down, and we got hammered for it."
"Were they that strong?"
All-Tattoo and Piercing nodded again. Then Piercing spoke.
"Won-goo's Services is... an opponent we should never have faced unless all of us gathered together at once."
Pomade and Long Hair stiffened even harder at that. Whatever ease had remained in the Seal Collector gang was gone now, utterly.
"What happened on your end? It was just a trade, wasn't it? You got ambushed?"
"No. Three came out to meet us. Two women, one man. And from the very start, they had no intention of trading."
"Still—"
"They came properly prepared to kill us."
"Were they really that skilled?"
"Strong. One of them was swinging around a giant mancatcher like a toy. The man was no slouch either. But the real problem was the other woman. She tore Claw apart."
"Tore him apart?"
"Yeah."
"What in the world is happening to this region—"
"That's exactly what I'm saying. Let's get out of here first. We leave, regroup, and come back. Right now... we've lost too much."
Pomade pressed the argument. Nobody refuted him.
WAAAAAAGH!
Ganjeol's agonized scream rang out long and hard.
"I already told you everyth—"
"You lie too much, see. If you just didn't lie, I wouldn't have to do any of this either. Pretty convenient for both of us, right? But you lie so damn much that I have to verify it over and over."
Won-goo said it with a face full of cheerful laughter.
Ganjeol bit his lip until it nearly split. Then he screamed.
"Just kill me! Kill me, damn you!"
"Hey, look at that. Still plenty of fight in you. All the more reason to keep checking, isn't it?"
Ganjeol was still inside the coffin he'd been transported in. The only change was that holes had been drilled into his face and a few other spots. The crew had been shoving heated spears through those holes to inflict pain.
Unlike the others, Won-goo had no intention of wrapping up his interrogation of Ganjeol quickly. He planned to squeeze out every last drop of quality information, then sell the man off to Bohwacheon.
Now that Ganjeol's ties to Neo-Mason were known, Bohwacheon had every reason to pay handsomely for him.
Nod.
The moment Won-goo dipped his chin, Lee Hyun-sung and Suwon drove freshly heated spears back into the holes. Ganjeol's scream broke into a shrill, hiccuping wail.
Having confirmed it, Won-goo turned his head the other way.
There was Neverland, locked in a staring contest with the goblin shaman.
"You get anything out of it?"
Won-goo asked, grabbing the back of Neverland's head.
"This is incredible, seriously. A goblin shaman."
"I didn't drag you here to hear you gawk."
"It's fully grown, I'm telling you. This little bastard understands every word people say — it's just been pretending not to. It's fully grown!"
At that, the goblin shaman — the always-silent Hwanggeum-i — slammed hard against its cage and bared raw hostility at Neverland.
KYAAAAAAK!
"Why, you—"
It tried to spew something, but Jo Mu-sa's quick reflexes cut it off.
CRACKLE!
Perhaps because he'd been through so many brutal fights, Jo Mu-sa was now showing the bearing of a Named-class fighter. In a single instant he drew the stun baton from inside his coat, extended it, and struck.
It was an attack that should have taken several distinct motions, but Jo Mu-sa flowed through them almost as one — smooth as water. That was how thoroughly the weapon had become part of his hands.
Hwanggeum-i took the jolt, shuddered from head to toe, and keeled over unconscious.
"So when can we actually open the box?"
"It can open right now, actually."
"We just open it?"
"I suppose? Only you'd get cursed."
"What?"
Won-goo's face twisted.
"There's no other way with that thing. Whoever opens it gets cursed, no exceptions. And this shaman had grown quite a lot... so that curse is going to be extremely powerful."
"Then what the hell was the point of raising it in the first place?!"
"No, there was a point. It's already grown so much that the items inside have become far stronger than they'd otherwise be. Normally, you'd open the box long before now."
"So you're telling me this can only be resolved if one person eats the curse? No other way around it?"
That was Mu Beob-sa, chiming in idly from his hammock where he'd been reading a book.
"That would be the case, yes..."
Won-goo's brow was furrowed. In an apocalyptic world, a curse was something you dodged at all costs.
He only had to look at Pacific, sitting nearby, to know that. Pacific — once so devastatingly powerful — was now confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his days.
That was the nature of curses. They could turn even the mightiest into a fool in a single instant.
And worse, there was no gauging how powerful the curse sealed inside that box might be. It had been a long, long time since they'd captured Hwanggeum-i and raised it.
"I can't exactly order one of you to take a curse..."
Every member of the crew was precious now. Each had their own role, and there wasn't a single one he could afford to throw away.
Won-goo prized his crew above all — so much so that even a member who couldn't pull their weight was still family once accepted. He would never shove a curse onto one of them.
"Ah. Right. There's you. Neverland."
"...Huh?"
"You open it."
"...? Me?"
"Yeah. You can do it."
"Why me?!"
"Did this little shit just drop honorifics? Why? Because you're a rotten piece of garbage who's worth less than a curse, that's why."
"..."
Neverland, whose mouth had been hanging slightly open as he sized up the situation, bolted for the office entrance.
But Lee Hyun-sung had already been ambling toward the doorway since who knew when. And Jo Mu-sa jabbed Neverland's body with the stun baton as he ran.
His enhancement had progressed far enough that he didn't drop unconscious in one hit like the goblin shaman had — but subdued he was.
"Trying to run, are we? Wasn't it just yesterday you swore you'd serve as my slave for life?"
"A curse is different! A curse is—!"
"Different how?"
"That's just too much! Bro! I'll do anything else, but take a curse? That's plain cruel. *Sob*, *sob*."
Neverland burst into tears again. At a glance he might have looked pitiful, but in the old world, he was a violent offender who'd have had a bounty on his head without question.
He only looked like a fool because he was standing in front of far stronger survivors. Whenever he got to play the strongman himself, he was every bit as vicious as they came.
Won-goo knew that better than anyone.
This was the man who had once thrown living survivors to his pets as feeding stock, just to keep the rest in line.
So he felt not one shred of sympathy.
"So you can't do it?"
"A curse... that's where I draw the line."
"Tch. Beating you any further wouldn't knock sense into you anyway. Hyun-sung!"
"Yes, Hyeong-nim!"
"Take this piece of trash and give him a tour of Sapiens' shop."
"Sapiens'? No—bro, that's going too far!"
"How many times have I told you not to call me bro! Why the hell would I be your brother?!"
Whack! Whack! Whack!
Beaten unconscious on the spot, Neverland was shipped straight off to Sapiens' store.
"You think that's gonna straighten him out?"
Pacific asked.
"No idea. But we repeat it until it does. That little shit's the only one here who can take the curse."
"Wouldn't picking one of the prisoners be better?"
"Offering freedom in exchange for taking a curse?"
"We don't know what curse would land, do we? Dying in there or dying here amounts to the same thing. And curses aren't all bad anyway."
"Curses are all bad. The only difference is between less bad and worse."
"Director. We have a visitor."
Dan-shin hurried over, apron tied on. He'd been busy making a giant rolled omelet off to one side.
"Mr. Kim?"
"Yes, sir."
"Send him in. And bring out a cup of coffee."
"Understood."
Mr. Kim, looking freshly cleaned up, stepped back into the office.
"You went? How was it?"
"Well... I looked around carefully outside, just as you instructed, before going in. But there were no traces, sir."
"Yeah? No traps or anything either?"
"There had been some, but nothing serious."
"No survivors inside?"
"None. It looks like they really did haul everything out with them."
Mr. Kim had been dispatched to scout Mix's hideout at Won-goo's request.
Together with some skilled Ttangkkun — Pathfinders.
"How much stuff is in there?"
"A lot. Not much that's actually valuable... but even that is money, isn't it? Though I'd guess we'll need several trips."
"Just pull out anything that seems important. Handle the rest with Dinosaur — split it up between you, keep it quiet, move it fast. All I need from you is the deposit按照 the percentage in the contract."
"Of course. You're paying half, so naturally I'll do it right. And anything that looks genuinely significant, I'm keeping my people completely away from — I've made that clear already."
"There'll still be greedy bastards who push. 'Looks significant' is a blurry line."
"One word about the contract and they all fall in line, sir."
"Good. Keep a close eye on them. This world doesn't offer much worth trusting. The only things you can trust are your crew and a signed contract. Got it?"
"Understood."
"You do know you and I are already half family, don't you?"
"I do, sir. I'll never forget the consideration you've shown me, Director."
Won-goo's method for binding people to him was simple.
The whip and the carrot.
Squeeze them with the whip first, then dispense the carrot at just the right moment to tame them.
And on top of that — an ironclad line between friend and foe.
To those he had designated as enemies, he showed no mercy whatsoever. But anyone who wasn't an enemy? He wouldn't so much as touch their rice bowl. He'd even go so far as to secure them a livelihood.
Dinosaur, once of Cheonmok, had found his living that way — and Mr. Kim was no different.
Had Won-goo never combed through the pathfinder outfits, Mr. Kim would still be idling away, dying slowly with no work to his name.
And going further back, it would have been hard to find a single business in Shelter Sabbath that hadn't gotten tangled up with Won-goo in exactly this fashion.
Even Sapiens and Sanghae had needed his help to get on their feet in the first place.
Finished with Mr. Kim, Won-goo was preparing to sit back down with Ganjeol when another visitor arrived — a man working under Sanghae this time.
"Director! The Heads have all gathered."
"Mm. Good. Tell them I'll be right there."
"The Heads have gathered" meant the leaders of every crew member under Won-goo's banner had assembled.
They had come to wrap up the whole Ganjeol Point affair.
Divvying up the spoils was every bit as important as the fighting itself — and with a Shelter on the line this time, the distribution talks were bound to be a bloodbath of argument.
And yet Won-goo's expression was bright.
Because he already had a flawless plan for handling the split, tucked neatly away in his head.