Smile?
Smile?
“Let's not get emotional. That's how jobs go sideways.”
“An' yet ye don't fly off the handle a'tall?”
Montage asked, eyeing Gong Won-goo.
“I'm furious. Whole reason the world's in this state is bastards like that, far as I can tell. But the moment you start pouring too much emotion into it, nothing good ever comes of it. So let's cool our heads, appropriate-like.”
“…….”
“You went through it with Ralph too, so what's the fuss?”
“Ralph an' this'un ain't cut from the same cloth.”
“The people Ralph got don't see it that way. Him or this guy, same thing. They both play with human lives. And besides, we don't even know for sure. Could be some unknown monster we've never seen.”
“Ye don't believe that yerse'f.”
“No, I don't. Which is exactly why we shouldn't screw up. We can vent once we've got him.”
“Ye think he'll even show? Careful bastards this meticulous are damn hard to catch. That Coker fella was the same way.”
Fresh cut in at just the right moment.
“Different case. This bastard's famous around these parts.”
“What?”
With that, Won-goo pulled a cigarette from his breast pocket, and Lee Hyun-sung hurried over to light it for him. Won-goo gave Hyun-sung's back a pat by way of thanks, then stretched out a hand toward Hye-ji.
Jeon Hye-ji blinked.
“Hye-ji. Hand me that file you got from Fresh. The victim list.”
Hye-ji dug a binder out of her backpack and passed it over. Fresh and Montage followed suit — shared material, since they'd all agreed to work the case together.
“What's this for?”
“Any common threads?”
“Look close. Now the conversation's finally making sense.”
“I don't see it.”
“…….”
“There'll be victims we don't know about too, but look at the ones we've got.”
“No common ground I can see. They're from all different lines of work……”
“Different, but there's one thing they share. They're all mid-tier bastards. Tell me — is there a single Named in that list?”
“……!”
“……!”
“Not one, right?”
“So he wasn't picking at random?”
“That's my read. The shelters around here — Bed. Word is Ah-bal pulled a few jobs around there recently, yeah?”
“She did.”
“You, Ah-bal — there's a decent number of Named operating out of Bed as a base. Which makes Damseok Mountain their main hunting ground, basically. And we're supposed to believe he never noticed?”
“He's been hiding it this whole time? Until now?”
“He must've stopped needing to hide it.”
“Confident enough to……”
“Either confident enough, or he figured he'd eaten his fill. Look at the other pattern. Nearly all the victims operated out of Bed. They could've come over from anywhere else — but he only targeted guys living in Bed.”
“So he's from Bed himself.”
“Right. One correction — maybe he isn't famous around here after all. But one thing's certain: this bastard operates out of Bed.”
Swwwish!
Only the sound of wind cutting through the air. Yet everyone caught that faint wrongness at once.
“It's here! Everybody, set up!”
The moment Won-goo finished speaking, Montage's crew took their positions separately.
And then the monster revealed itself.
Just as Montage had predicted.
The only difference was that it was even more grotesque than he'd imagined. Its body was shaped like a cockroach, with arms like mantis scythes sprouting from where its antennae should be — and its face was human.
“Ah f***…… the hell is that thing?”
“It's a chimera. Nobody knows its full abilities, so don't rush it!”
At Gong Won-goo's shout, everyone nodded.
Fwooo-eeek!
The monster collapsed their formation with a single leap.
Diving straight into the center, it swung its scythe-like antennae — and stuck out its tongue.
A tongue studded with countless white spikes unspooled, impossibly long.
“Every damn affliction in the book packed into one. I have to see the face of the bastard who made that thing.”
Bang!
The tongue whipped sideways like a lash and struck at Mu Beob-sa. The mage raised his shield and deflected it with ease.
But the insect monster moved its tongue and its body almost independently.
Even as it swung the tongue, it darted off in the opposite direction.
Straight for Jo Mu-sa. Everyone assumed he'd slip out of the way smoothly enough —
Sudden as it was, they'd all drilled enough that this level of movement was comfortably within his ability to evade.
Instead, Jo Mu-sa stood frozen, blank-faced.
Looking closer, his whole body was trembling ever so slightly.
“Hey! Jo Mu-sa! You dim-witted son of a—! What the hell are you doooing!”
Even at Won-goo's bellow, Mu-sa didn't move.
Survivors all knew exactly what was happening to him.
Panic.
A phenomenon seen constantly back when the apocalypse first began. When a person couldn't adapt to reality, fear locked their body in place.
But after the apocalypse had progressed, it became almost never-seen. Everyone had been strengthened by coins.
“Sh**! JO MU-SAAA!”
The insect monster's scythe antennae plunged for Mu-sa's throat.
Then Geum Chul-soo dove in like a swimmer off a block, dragging Mu-sa to the ground. In the same instant, Mu Beob-sa seized the tongue barehanded and hauled on it — and Lee Hyun-sung and Gong Won-goo piled in to help.
The insect monster staggered, wobbling off-balance. Its second antenna strike went wide.
Even so, Geum Chul-soo took a wound. A hair's delay in timing and his body would have been split in two, and no one would have blinked.
Montage's crew piled onto the insect tongue as well, hands bleeding freely from the spikes.
Jaws stepped up front and bellowed.
“Sh**head! Do Ah look lahke a Joce to yew!”
The insect monster came dragging in, pulled completely off its feet. Furious, Won-goo leapt straight at the thing as it reeled toward them.
A jump like a launched rocket. And a swinging warhammer.
PAAANG!
The scythe-like antenna met the warhammer with a sound like a struck gong. Riding the impact, Won-goo spun backward through the air several full rotations before landing.
“Hye-ji! Get me Bag No. 9! Hyun-sung! Don't let go of that tongue!”
“Yes, Hyeong-nim!”
Then it was Fresh and Montage's turn. Montage hauled out an axe and went for the monster's legs; Fresh conjured a spear and drove it home, again and again. Won-goo raised his hammer, ready to charge back in —
— and something else flickered into the edge of his vision.
Another individual, muscling into the fray.
And further off, a summoner.
Camo gear, so nothing was certain — but there was no fooling Won-goo's eyes.
Accumulated experience picked out the hiding summoner, and read the expression on top of it. Enhanced vision helped too.
“Smile?”
Camo jacket, hood pulled up — no way to see the face properly.
But that smile, white teeth bared in full view, was unmistakable.
The summoner was grinning.
“You're dead! Fresh! Can you handle things here?”
With a second insect monster crashing the fight, logic said the situation should have gotten worse.
But that math didn't apply to survivors.
Least of all to these veterans, ground down and ground down again in the apocalypse. What they feared was the unknown variable in a problem — not a difficult problem itself.
Once the enemy was understood, they could handle far worse monsters than this.
And they'd clashed head-on. The understanding was done.
The insect monster was powerful and dangerous — but it was nothing beyond that.
“Sh**! What're ye doin'? Sure, Ah can manage.”
“Found him. He's splitting off over there. I'm going for him — Montage-hyeong. Alright if I go?”
“Go! If yew cain, take him ALIVE.”
Thwack!
Jeon Hye-ji threw the backpack. Won-goo caught it and took off like a relay runner.
Up the hill, toward the fleeing summoner.
Even at a dead run, Gong Won-goo never stopped thinking.
The summoner's back, speed, gait. All of it filed away in his head.
He made sure to follow the exact path the summoner had taken, too. This one had used this area as his hunting ground for a long, long time. He might well have laid traps.
Traps needed no related Gift or ability to set. Killing people never required anything elaborate — simple, primitive traps were more than enough to do the job.
The distance kept shrinking.
Won-goo wasn't an enhancement type, but the coins he held were worth double the average Named. And his opponent was a summoner-type — far likelier to have skimped on physical investment than an enhancer.
Mid-chase, Won-goo pulled a fresh magazine from the backpack and swapped it out. Matching the round to the situation was simply how he operated.
“Filthy bastard…… so that's why you finally showed yourself.”
The fleeing summoner whipped around and faced him.
There was a reason he hadn't been able to get a good look at the face before: the summoner wore camo cream on his face too. Whatever special blend it was, it made the features hard to make out — up close, all that showed were those white teeth.
“Even a celebrity's come out. Guess it's about time I moved on to somewhere else.”
A genderless voice. And around the summoner, countless insects rising to their feet. Similar in shape to the insect monster that had attacked first — but much smaller. Barely a meter tall.
Even so, the hideous design was unchanged, and so was the weaponry. They'd merely shrunk and multiplied.
“Gong Won-goo, the Physical Therapist — right? Mostly active out of Sabbath.”
“That's right.”
“You know I'm not answering any questions?”
“So you're planning to say I lured you into this?”
“Didn't I?”
The summoner smiled again.
“Can't even show your face, and you've got a lot of mouth.”
“Waiting on the family? I only take a minute, you know.”
“What minute?”
“The minute it takes me to grind you into nothing that's left.”
“It really is a great world for bastards like you to roam around in, isn't it?”
“Can't argue there. It's very comfortable. No — it's heaven.”
“Then you know why you don't see many bastards like you around here lately?”
“……?”
Won-goo chuckled low.
“Because I've been catching and killing bastards like you on sight.”
Clack.
He raised his gun.
“Won-goo's Services is famous enough — surely you knew that much?”
As Won-goo leveled the muzzle, the bugs stepped forward to shield their summoner.
“My bullets hit harder than you'd think.”
“Then pierce us, if you can.”
Meanwhile the bugs kept multiplying. The moment laid bare exactly why he'd been so bold about expanding his territory.
“Perfect.”
Fire roared from Won-goo's muzzle.
FWAARRRRUHK!
The bug summoner's eyes bulged near out of his skull, and the bugs scattered in every direction — even as they still lunged for Won-goo, scythes raised, tongues lolling out.
But against that ferocious flame they had no answer at all. The fire pouring from the muzzle was powerful enough to call unreasonable, and the burn time was long.
Until now, Won-goo had used the flame only in very short bursts. The reason was simple: every add-on function of the Trailer had to be strengthened with coin payments, and Won-goo had never sunk many coins into the gun. So the amount he could spend in one go was tiny. Each use demanded a long recharge, which meant strict rationing.
Not anymore. He was burning everything around him into an inferno — call it a sea of fire and be done with it.
1 Gold Coin has been paid.
1 Gold Coin has been paid.
1 Gold Coin has been paid.
A status window flickered before Won-goo's eyes. The spare coins stored in the Trailer were draining away in real time.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Gritting his teeth, Won-goo shot the bugs through their heads and climbed up through the flames.
Horrified, the summoner was running for the Coin Exchange.
Bang!
Won-goo's shot grazed the summoner's leg. The gap closed fast —
— and then the summoner's body began to drift upward off the ground, bit by bit, as if gravity itself had let go.
Won-goo knew exactly what that was. Levitation magic.
He tried to call the flame up again, but the summoner was already higher than the fire's effective range.
Heee.
The summoner smiled down at him again.
And this time, Won-goo smiled back — leisurely pulling out a cigarette and sticking it between his lips.
White teeth on full display.
Even as the summoner kept climbing.
Khrrk!
Dark crimson blood poured from the summoner's mouth.
“That one's poison. This is going to hurt.”