I Became an Apocalyptic "Physical" Therapist (63)
Crack! Crunch!
"I was saving this for catching a bear, but……"
The Trailer hadn't simply been plowing straight ahead. Like something out of a stunt show, it spun and swerved as it charged, swatting aside the Bloodfans that flung themselves at it.
The Trailer itself was sturdy, but that wasn't all — they'd sunk no small amount of investment into it. With durability like that, there was nothing better for bulldozing through trash mobs.
"Sweep them up nice and easy. These things are the real deal, so don't hold back."
The crew moved.
Humans were a species ranked near the very bottom in raw physical ability — but when it came to brains, they could hold their own against the upper races without breaking a sweat. And having a good head meant one thing above all: you learned a hell of a lot from experience.
Won-goo's crew had been through countless desperate battles now, and each one had honed them sharper.
This fight looked entirely different from the one against the insect summoner. Barely any time had passed since then, yet they were dispatching the Bloodfans in a far more polished fashion.
Geum Chul-soo's performance in particular was outstanding. Locked shoulder to shoulder with his summoned Dullahan, he carved through the endless waves of Bloodfans.
"Chul-soo! Don't push too far forward!"
At Won-goo's bellow, Geum Chul-soo's ears twitched. He fell back without hesitation, and barked an order to the Dullahan beside him as well.
"DUH-LAHAAAH!"
With a Bloodfan skewered on his weapon like a shish kebab, the Dullahan thrust its hand into the air and roared.
Its training still wasn't complete, so it shrieked at the top of its lungs every time it received a command. Anyone who didn't know better would have jumped out of their skin at the sheer volume — but honestly, this was real progress. Before, it had screamed nonstop at random, commands or no commands.
Thud! Thud!
Geum Chul-soo made aggressive use of his shield. If a technique wasn't drilled into your hands, no amount of practice would carry over into actual combat. And Chul-soo was landing proper shield charges now, hammering Bloodfans down with his mace.
Jeon Hye-ji was pulling her weight too. As their ranged specialist, she was holding back her weapon this time — on Gong Won-goo's advice.
Instead, she'd tied a cord to the small hand axe at her hip and was whirling it through the air. Weapon-slinging with a rope was an extremely difficult technique, and Hye-ji hadn't mastered it yet. There were still rough edges, sure — but she was doing her share and then some.
Simply keeping the Bloodfans from encircling the crew was enough to call her role fulfilled.
"Hyeong-nim!"
Suddenly Lee Hyun-sung, at the front of the formation, shouted. A new animal had appeared behind the Bloodfans.
"Bear incoming! Everyone brace up!"
It was an Asiatic black bear. A moon bear several times larger than the ordinary kind — bigger, in fact, than any grizzly or polar bear.
Won-goo cursed at the sight of it.
"Shit. That's way past our estimates. What the hell did they feed this thing?"
The moon bear before them could have been called a monster without a second thought. Drool hung in long strands from its jaws.
And it proved just how vicious it was the moment it showed up — it swung a forepaw and tore apart one of the Bloodfans right in front of them, an unsettling display of raw savagery.
The bear charged straight at Lee Hyun-sung, who had stepped up to the front line.
BAM!
Hyun-sung stayed calm, waited for the bear's forepaw to lash out, and swung his Chinese cleaver.
Paw versus cleaver.
A single collision sent Lee Hyun-sung skidding back nearly five meters.
The crew's faces hardened in an instant. Lee Hyun-sung — thrown back that easily?
WHAM!
But they weren't standing around admiring the beast, either. The Trailer moved. The vehicle that had been churning through the Bloodfan horde now aimed for the moon bear's rear.
It wasn't at full acceleration, but it was moving fast enough to topple the bear from behind.
It failed to land a serious blow, though — the bear immediately started pushing itself back up.
"Jo Mu-sa!"
"Yes, Director!"
As if he'd been waiting for the cue, Mu-sa jammed his stun baton into the bear.
ZZZK-KZZK!
With rain still falling, the sparks crackled even more fiercely. The moon bear, mid-rise, shuddered violently from head to tail.
And then the rest of the crew swarmed in.
They'd already finished their intel on today's opponents. They had discussed the bear at length in particular, so their response was lightning fast.
Won-goo dove in first and swung his war hammer. He didn't even need to swing hard — all it took was fast, repeated strikes, like hammering away with a toy mallet. While he did that, the others piled indiscriminate attacks onto the downed bear.
It was a brutal, merciless dogpile — the kind you'd call cruel if you had the luxury of judging. But this wasn't the time for that. The thing was a monster beyond imagination. This was the same bear that had thrown back Lee Hyun-sung — a man who had never once been knocked away on first contact by anyone.
"Mu-sa! Don't ration the output! Use it all!"
"Yes, sir!"
Even under that avalanche of attacks, the bear kept trying to rise — and every time it did, Mu-sa's perfectly timed stun baton froze it in place.
Then came Won-goo's turn.
The war hammer looked utterly unremarkable, but once you knew what it could do, it was flat-out broken. No matter how strong the moon bear was, it didn't matter.
After more than twenty hammer strikes landed, Won-goo spoke up.
"Mu-sa. Start conserving it now."
"Yes, Director."
Won-goo looked over at Lee Hyun-sung. Hyun-sung had already climbed onto the back of the prone bear.
That meant it had been weakened enough.
In the meantime, Mu Beob-sa and the Dullahan had been holding the line, beating back the charging Bloodfans.
KRAAAAGH!
The bear recovered its senses, heaved itself upright, and let out a roaring howl. But it had already tasted the war hammer more than enough.
Hyun-sung seized the bear's head with one hand and pinned it down so it couldn't lift its muzzle. It looked absurd on its face — but it worked. The moon bear couldn't overpower Lee Hyun-sung's strength. It was subdued with almost insulting ease.
Shrrk! Shrrk!
Hyun-sung's Chinese cleaver bit into the bear's throat.
The moon bear's severed head lay apart from its body.
The crew stripped the hide just as quickly. They moved with a butcher's practiced ease.
"Check out the thickness of this hide. It's insane."
Twice as thick as the hide of any ordinary animal. It deserved to be called a monster moon bear, plain and simple.
Once the skin was off, they calmly portioned out the carcass. Hyun-sung and Won-goo cut the meat into handy sizes, and the rest of the crew wrapped each piece meticulously in plastic sheeting.
"Um… are we okay just standing around like this?"
The atmosphere had completely flipped from the ferocious battle of minutes ago, but Jeon Hye-ji still hadn't let go of her combat tension.
"The Bloodfans bailed. That means they ran."
"They ran, sir?"
"Nothing to be surprised about. Burn this into your memory. There's one defining trait of the kind of scum bad enough to make the blacklist. Know what it is?"
"What is it?"
"They only look out for themselves. Sure, complicated interests might have them cooperating and scratching each other's backs for a while — but at the end of the day, their own hides come first. Things go south, they bolt. Simple as that."
Hye-ji's jaw hung open. She couldn't quite wrap her head around it — they'd built this whole system, and yet they'd abandon it that easily?
"Nothing strange about it. Those guys are survivors too. Their whole goal is staying alive. You think they'd bet their lives just because their operation took a bullet to the head? Especially that bastard Neverland — he plays the tough guy on the outside, but he's a grade-A coward."
"It's possible they've fallen back to the main base."
But Won-goo's expression said otherwise.
"Want to bet on it?"
"What bet?"
"Whether Neverland ran for good, or linked up with his buddies."
"I'll take that. I'm on 'he linked up with his crew.'"
"Then I've got 'he bolted completely.' A hundred coins."
"Deal. Silver coins."
"Then I shall wager gold."
"None of your backtalk when we get there, you hear?"
"Have no fear, sir."
Neverland's expression was calm. Even though the foundation he'd spent years building had been mostly wiped out, his eyebrows never so much as twitched.
Instead, his next movements were swift.
Why? How? For what reason?
Questions like those never crossed his mind even once. Right now, he had to get out. As fast as possible — while grabbing whatever was worth grabbing on the way. There wasn't much he could take, though.
A fair number of Bloodfans had come back to him, but he couldn't exactly keep them all as pets.
Neverland's Gift was the ability to turn animals into pets. He'd invested in several related abilities, which allowed him to raise and keep creatures classified as monsters, like the Bloodfans.
But corralling the Bloodfans had really been less about his own powers and more the doing of his pet, the moon bear. The bear had subdued the pack, and Neverland had controlled the bear.
And now that bear — the one he'd raised with such loving care — was dead.
For Neverland, it had been his main card and his trump card all in one. And it had been slaughtered almost offhandedly. So he made his decision fast.
We're under a real hit. This is a proper job on us.
He vacated his assigned territory in a hurry and moved ahead to somewhere else entirely.
The standard routine would have been to head for the shelter director's seat — the man who led the Black Shelter. But Neverland went elsewhere.
"What's going on?"
Pomade said. Despite the unscheduled visit, he was immaculate in his tailored suit.
"You told me to do the job clean."
"So?"
"We're under a hit."
"Ganjeol Point? Those guys are barely worth a swat."
"Not them. That crazy bastard Gong Won-goo made a move."
"That mutt? The one you said — in no uncertain terms — we absolutely could not touch until you had a perfect plan in hand? That mutt?"
As voices rose, the tattooed crew members gathered one by one. Among them, All-Tattoo handed a glass of water to the panting Neverland.
"Forget the water. Get me a beer."
"We never even touched their turf, though……"
"Sure about that? You said this Ganjeol job wouldn't touch them either — and look how that turned out."
At that, Pomade shook his head coldly.
"Not this time. We haven't set foot in that area yet. You must be mistaken about something."
"I've got a blood feud with Gong Won-goo. You think I wouldn't recognize his work?"
"Recognize it or not, we haven't even expanded into that region yet."
"Then maybe someone in Ganjeol Point hired him."
"Is that so?"
"It's not a matter of 'maybe' — pack your bags."
"Why would I pack?"
"Because we're leaving."
The tattooed crew members stared at Neverland as if he'd lost his mind.
"All this over one guy showing up? Gong Won-goo? You said yourself that Ganjeol guy or whatever is stronger."
"Probably, sure. But Gong Won-goo doesn't bite unless he's dead certain he can win. If that bastard came charging in like this… then the rest of them are probably getting hit all over too. Most of the Named in this region will have bolted already, and Ganjeol Point's probably joined the pile. Think you can handle that?"
"It seemed like a decent spot, but… yeah. Let's pack up."
At Pomade's word, the tattooed crew moved at once.
"First time for everything."
"Like what?"
"Getting run out of a neighborhood before I even finish a proper job there."
"The big seal really came up, then? For real?"
Neverland asked.
"That's the only reason I came. If it hadn't, no request from you would've moved me."
"We'll do the job next time."
"We'll have to. Hard to work when you've got nowhere to sleep."
And while they talked, the crew was already moving fast.
"Hey, Director Sapi. Long time no see. Rain quit awfully quick, huh."
Fresh greeted Sapiens, who returned the nod with a slight dip of his head.
"Is the work finished?"
"Phase one."
"And the Director?"
"Been here a while."
"Hyeong-nim. You were here?"
"Sure was."
Won-goo said, stepping out from inside the Trailer.
"Will it rain more, you think?"
"Doesn't look like it."
"Then I may as well take this off."
Sapiens said, shrugging out of his rain poncho — and the crew behind him shed theirs as well. With so many Trailers parked around, it had taken Sapiens a moment to spot which one Won-goo was in.
Sapiens had brought more than thirty subordinates trailing behind him. They were armed to the teeth, like some kind of riot squad. One of them was even carrying a full-body riot shield.
"Checked in over the radio — sounds like the other sites wrapped up more or less on schedule too."
"Good."
"Before we go after the potatoes, I think we need to take out a different target first."
"Not following the plan, then?"
"You gotta stay fluid. Fresh, you're sure about this?"
"Dead sure. That bug bastard's holed up somewhere nearby. You saw it yourself, Director Gong."
"It did look close."
"Not 'close' — it IS there."
"You heard the man. There's a summoner wrangling bugs out there, and we take him down before we move. Leave him be and he'll just fester into a problem later."
"If that's your call, Hyeong-nim, then that's the call. It's your operation."
"Right. When the job's done, I'm covering the crew's dinner tab myself."
"No need, sir. It's not like we're working for free."
Thump.
Won-goo clapped Sapiens on the back with a laugh.