Call Me Master
Whoosh—!
Just like at the start, a knife came flying. The moment Yeon-chan slipped past it with ease, he drove straight into Kim Jae-gyo's front.
Swish!
He dodged the sharply slashing knife without much trouble—then noticed thin threads trailing from the tip of the blade.
Wire?
Wire combat. Before the Gates appeared, a handful of people had practiced it as a military martial art, but once supernatural abilities emerged, the technique all but vanished. Among Awakened, those fragile threads could be severed in an instant—yet in a situation like this, it was a remarkably useful tactic.
Where the hell did he even learn this…
Even if someone wanted to study it, practically no one used it anymore. So where on earth had Park Yeon-chan picked it up?
And more than that—
Slash!
He's good at it.
Even among soldiers back then, wire work had a reputation for being notoriously difficult to handle. Watching Yeon-chan wield it this cleanly was something else. He was rapidly shrinking the space Kim Jae-gyo could move in, pressing the advantage hard—
Thud!
In a flash, Kim Jae-gyo found a gap in the wires and drove a heavy fist into Yeon-chan's jaw. As Yeon-chan staggered from the blow, Jae-gyo tried to force his way through the tangle of wire and close the distance—
"…!"
A round object tumbled from Yeon-chan's hand, and Jae-gyo's movement locked up cold.
Before coming here, Yeon-chan had been rummaging through his backpack. Apparently that was when he'd pulled this out.
I have to deal with it.
The grenade had dropped far too close—close enough that Yeon-chan himself would easily get caught in the blast. He'd probably meant to throw it and fumbled it when that unexpected strike landed.
That was Jae-gyo's read. He kicked the grenade skyward in a hurry.
Just as he thought he'd bought himself a breath—
Whoosh!
Yeon-chan, already back on his feet, pulled out another grenade and hurled it straight at him. At the same time, Yeon-chan came charging in, and Jae-gyo was certain.
The grenades are a feint to mess with my focus.
Otherwise he would never pull a stunt that put himself inside the blast radius too. Having reached that conclusion, Jae-gyo decided to ignore the grenades and braced to send Yeon-chan tumbling through the air again—
"Those eyes and ears of yours."
In the brief instant the distance closed—
"They're getting on my nerves, so I'll be taking them."
Jae-gyo heard Yeon-chan's voice perfectly—low, and smiling in a way that made the skin crawl.
And then—
BEEEEEEP—!
The grenade he'd kicked skyward erupted in a blinding flash that wiped out his vision. From the one he'd ignored came a shrieking noise that turned his ears into dead weight.
So he meant to take my eyes and ears.
The reason Jae-gyo had been able to push Yeon-chan around so one-sidedly, despite no real gap in physical ability, was largely his fully honed dynamic vision. Even without sight he could have managed on his razor-sharp hearing alone—but losing both at once meant he'd just been stripped of his primary and secondary weapons in a single stroke.
Not bad. But still not enough.
Sealing the five senses was a solid plan, sure—but someone at Kim Jae-gyo's level could more than handle an opponent using nothing but the shift of air and the feel of touch when they moved.
Whoosh—
Nerves stretched tight, he reacted the instant a presence knifed in close and snatched it—
Flutter.
What he'd caught wasn't Yeon-chan. A scrap of cloth flapped uselessly in his grip.
Clothes?
If Yeon-chan had simply thrown a piece of clothing, there was no way Jae-gyo wouldn't have noticed. And cloth couldn't move that sharply—
Whirrr—
The wires.
Before throwing the grenades, during the brawl, Yeon-chan had strung wire all over the place. He'd used those wires like a clothesline, making the fabric whip through the air as fast as a person.
Using the wires to pin my movement while burying his own presence among the clothes.
Whirrr—
Jae-gyo kept his senses razor-sharp as he slipped past the wires steadily closing in the space around him.
Three presences total. Two of them are probably bait.
Two of them knifed sharply inward—and at the exact same moment, a third presence came flying in from the opposite side, holding its breath. Perfect timing, driving into a tight space—
Papapapak!
Jae-gyo plucked them all out of the air with room to spare.
All fakes.
"The real one is—"
Swish—!
He caught what came dropping from above along with a flying knife—
"What…?"
Even that was just another piece of clothing hung on a tree branch, sliding down the wire.
Then where the hell was Yeon-chan?
That question didn't last long.
Click.
The sound of metal locking into place rang through the dense forest.
"One shot."
Yeon-chan's voice, a low whisper. The instant Jae-gyo realized a gun was trained on him, he tried to wrench his body free—
Crrrk!
The space the wires had sealed off, tangled with the wires snagged on the cloth he'd grabbed, locked him in place. He couldn't move.
"Checkmate."
Bang!
The gunshot cracked out, and the surroundings went dead silent.
"I win, don't I?"
Yeon-chan's voice broke the quiet as he hopped down from a tree.
And then—
"Hahaha! You really are one crazy bastard!"
After a beat of silence, Kim Jae-gyo threw his head back and laughed hard enough to shake the forest.
The moment Yeon-chan fired, Jae-gyo had known he'd lost. In the end he'd drawn up his own power and broken through both the wires and the bullet.
"Let me ask you something."
He hadn't actually expected to lose—but winning had never been the point, so he didn't particularly care. Lately he'd been holding himself back, but at his core he was still a maniac who chased strength and nothing else. For someone like that, this defeat was genuinely interesting.
"Hold on. I can't hear either. I'll read your lips, so talk slow."
Yeon-chan's ears were shot too, so only after he stepped in close could they actually talk.
"That first rush with the knives—that was to make me focus on close-range attacks, wasn't it."
"Yes. So that right up to the end, I'd keep the gun out of your mental checklist."
"And the grenade you dropped wasn't an accident."
"Right. I figured you'd move to keep me from dying."
"The wires—you planned to hang clothes on them from the start?"
"And to pin your movement while I was at it."
Hearing that, Kim Jae-gyo let out a long, clear sigh.
"So from start to finish, I was dancing in the palm of your hand."
He'd lost plenty of times in the broad sense of the word—but since Awakening, Kim Jae-gyo had never once lost a one-on-one fight. Something hollow and strangely refreshing settled in his chest, and he laughed under his breath.
"So I can move straight on to the next stage, right?"
Before he even had time to savor the aftertaste, Yeon-chan was already pushing ahead. Jae-gyo answered with a hollow little laugh.
"Yeah. The point of this training was for me to get a read on your level, and for you to get used to moving with your mana awakened."
"There was a deeper meaning to it… I'm sorry. I just figured you were being petty and beating me up because I ran my mouth a few times."
"…"
Kim Jae-gyo swallowed the urge to hit the kid who sassed him as naturally as breathing, and looked at Park Yeon-chan.
His friends had always nagged him to take on a disciple, and he'd always written it off as a hassle. But standing in front of a raw stone that actually looked worth polishing, he found himself wondering just how strong he could forge this one.
So this is what those bastards were feeling.
Only now did he understand why his friends had gone on and on about disciples.
Mentally, though… he seems a little off.
"Still. Not bad."
"Master, please don't look at people like you're deciding how to cook them. I think I'm going to throw up."
"Right. From now on, call me Master."
"Did the bullet I fired lodge in your head, by any chance?"
Watching Yeon-chan deliver Did you get shot in the skull? with perfect politeness, Kim Jae-gyo burst out laughing all over again.
"Even if it kills you, you're not getting out of this now."
"What? I mean… that is what I wanted, but why do I suddenly feel like something went very wrong?"
"You brought this on yourself."
And for the first time, Park Yeon-chan found himself deeply regretting what he had set in motion.
Deep into the night.
An ordinary apartment. An ordinary home.
Inside it, a girl who looked about middle-school age sat up, rubbing her eyes, blonde hair swaying. She turned her head this way and that, scanning the room in a hurry—until her gaze snagged on one spot.
There, sleeping softly beside her, was her little sister.
"Yeon-ah…? Why is Yeon-ah…"
As if she'd seen something impossible, the girl—Lee Yeon-hui—drifted closer in a daze and reached out to touch her younger sister.
"Mmnh…"
Yeon-ah stirred, and Yeon-hui flinched hard—
"What is this… this memory…"
—then clutched her head, letting out a small sound as if enduring something painful.
"Park… Yeon-chan…"
She spoke the name that lived inside her memories.
Drip. Drip.
The sound of water falling from somewhere filled a wide space.
"Hey… what the hell even are you…"
A man with both arms broken and his legs twisted at grotesque angles dragged in ragged breaths as he stared at the one who'd done this to him.
That someone was rolling his shoulders and cracking his joints like he'd just finished a warm-up, walking toward him.
This is actually insane.
The man—Park Jin-cheol—was an executive-level fighter in Freedom. And this place was one of Freedom's more important bases, stocked with forces that were by no means weak.
And he—
And this man had wiped the entire place out alone.
"Do you even know who we—"
Crunch!
Before Park Jin-cheol could finish, a boot slammed down hard on his twisted leg. Instead of words, a scream tore out of him.
"Gaaaaah!"
"Ugh, shut up. Why's a grown man so damn chatty."
Brushing dust off his clothes like it was a chore, he kicked Park Jin-cheol upright—
"You think I'd touch you without knowing you're Freedom?"
—and looked down at him like he'd just said something spectacularly stupid.
"…Do you have any idea what it means… to make enemies of us."
"Hey. Why do you think I left you alive."
"…"
He wasn't wrong. Park Jin-cheol should already have been dead. His arms and legs were useless, and the man in front of him could end him whenever he felt like it.
"You've got a message to deliver. Alive."
"…What message."
Thud!
A kick cracked across Park Jin-cheol's face before he could answer, then the toe of a boot tipped his chin up.
Their eyes met—more precisely, Park Jin-cheol was forced to look up into the other man's face.
"Get a good look. At this handsome face of mine. You'll need it when you report to your bastard of a boss."
"…"
"The Park Yeon-chan you've been killing yourselves to find is coming to wipe you out. If that pisses you off, come find me first."
With that final line, Park Yeon-chan drove his foot into Park Jin-cheol's head one more time, then strolled out of the base he'd just reduced to rubble.