Rage of Self-Reproach
Blood vessels surged in Woo Hyun-woo's eyes, flooded with pure rage. That fury burned for Sacheon Samsa and the New Gangnam Sam-ung who had slaughtered Bulgom and Bandalgom, but the guilt he felt toward Baekgom made him even angrier at himself.
“Boss, it might sound like an excuse, but…” Baekgom had said, crying. “We’ve beaten plenty of people, but… we’ve never killed anyone.”
The Murim Alliance’s protection service. At first glance it seemed like a healthy business—getting paid to guard people—but behind the scenes they also ran assassination contracts. They’d claim the killings were unavoidable for their clients’ safety, minimizing reputational damage and slipping away from criticism like eels through mud.
But the Gangnam Sam-ung had genuinely only protected. They had never taken a life.
“Whether you believe me or not, we weren’t trying to kill them that time either. We just wanted to rough them up a little and warn them not to act up again. Not that it makes what we did okay…”
As Baekgom sniffled through those words, Woo Hyun-woo’s heart had softened. In fact, he’d started wondering whether the organization bosses possessing beautiful girls wasn’t about some tattoo-like concept at all. Maybe it was about using pretty faces to inspire loyalty in subordinates and survive against enemies. He’d held that suspicion even while listening.
Naturally, those doubts meant he hadn’t fully trusted Baekgom’s story. After all, they’d charged in declaring they would kill Eris—how could they play the good guys now? That was why, even after reaching Baekgom Bakery, he hadn’t gone straight inside. He’d stayed back and observed the situation first.
Bulgom was already dead, but Bandalgom had still been alive. If he had rushed in immediately, he could have saved him. Yet certainty had eluded him. Should I really spare these bastards? Baekgom had sworn loyalty to Fantasia, but there was no guarantee Bandalgom would do the same—
While those thoughts ran through his head, the conversation between New Bandalgom and the real Bandalgom had begun. Listening to it, he realized: These guys really never killed anyone.
But the realization came too late.
With a sickening crunch, Bandalgom’s head had already been crushed.
He could have saved even Bandalgom. Now he wouldn’t be able to look Baekgom in the face.
So he was angry. Furious at himself. After meeting Bandalgom in person and knowing exactly what kind of person he was, he had still assumed the guy must have some filthy hidden side. It was the moment he felt, bone-deep, why Eris never doubted her own people.
“Ten seconds are up. Any of you fuckers still breathing, plant your heads on the ground. You pieces of shit have seriously ruined my mood today.”
For those ten seconds, New Bulgom, New Bandalgom, and Sacheon Samsa had been frozen in shock. New Baekgom died in a single blow? New Baekgom might have been treated like a grunt in the Sichuan Tang Family because he couldn’t handle hidden weapons, but he had still trained both external and internal arts evenly and was genuinely strong. Of course many people could kill someone at New Baekgom’s level in one hit, but at least it shouldn’t have been possible for an ordinary human without special abilities.
“H-how…”
New Bulgom muttered in confusion, then met Woo Hyun-woo’s eyes. Those red pupils. The eerie crimson glare stole the breath from his lungs.
“You were running your mouth about whether my head had a hole in it or not, right?”
“Huh…?”
Woo Hyun-woo was suddenly right in front of him. No movement had been visible. New Bulgom couldn’t even tell if what he was seeing was real.
“Then I’ll put a hole in yours too.”
BAM!
Woo Hyun-woo’s fist shot forward. New Bulgom’s face caved in. Blood exploded outward. The punch drove straight through his skull. He died without making a sound.
“H-heeeeek!”
New Bandalgom screamed as the stronger New Baekgom and New Bulgom fell. His legs gave out completely; he collapsed and couldn’t stand back up.
“Hey, rookie.”
Woo Hyun-woo stared at New Bandalgom and walked forward slowly. Unlike the burst of speed he’d used to kill New Bulgom, his steps were deliberate. If the guy wanted to run, he had every chance. But the air itself felt heavy. He couldn’t get up. New Bandalgom wanted to flee with every fiber of his being, yet his body refused to obey.
“What did you call Bandalgom earlier? Weakling?”
Thud. Thud. The slow footsteps echoed through the warehouse.
“That means I struggled against that weakling.”
─If you lose to me, the guy who struggled against that weakling, then what the hell does that make you?
“Don’t spout bullshit.”
“There’s a limit to how much I can stand listening to.”
Cheongsa and Hongsa are attempting to use poisoned needles!
“Too slow.”
Swish!
Without the slightest preparatory motion, Woo Hyun-woo snatched Cheongsa’s wrist and Hongsa’s ankle.
“H-how?!”
Cheongsa and Hongsa struggled to break free, but it was pointless. Woo Hyun-woo’s grip was stronger than their combined arm and leg strength.
“I always get curious when I see snakes. Do venomous snakes die if they get poisoned too?”
“N-no, please!”
Cheongsa and Hongsa screamed pitifully, but Woo Hyun-woo carried out the motion without hesitation. He yanked both arms inward as if pulling them together. Cheongsa’s fist and Hongsa’s foot stabbed into each other’s bodies.
“I don’t know what kind of poison it is, but I hope it’s paralytic. That way you won’t die, right?”
“F-f-fuck…”
But it wasn’t paralytic poison. Cheongsa and Hongsa’s faces turned a deep purple before they collapsed, dead.
“Wow, terrifying. You were really going to use something like this on me?”
Woo Hyun-woo hurled the corpses of Cheongsa and Hongsa aside like garbage.
“A-ah… aaaaaah…”
New Bandalgom screamed and scrambled backward on his hands as even Cheongsa and Hongsa died so pathetically. But crawling while seated was slower than Woo Hyun-woo’s casual walk.
“Where do you think you’re going? You should follow your big brothers, shouldn’t you?”
“Lady Heuksa, save me!”
Driven by the desperate will to live, New Bandalgom miraculously staggered to his feet and ran toward Sacheon Heuksa.
“I honestly didn’t expect Cheongsa and Hongsa to die too… You hit harder than I thought, huh?”
Sacheon Heuksa cracked her knuckles as if the deaths of her subordinates meant nothing to her. Crack, crack. The sound of popping joints echoed each time.
“Your family died and you don’t even care?”
“Family? Why would they be family when we don’t share a single drop of blood?”
“Cold-blooded indeed.”
“Still, it is a shame about the bald ones. They were actually pretty useful.”
The words made Woo Hyun-woo genuinely wonder if she was even human. He thought of Baekgom—the man who, despite sharing no blood, had called them brothers and thrown away every scrap of pride to beg for his younger siblings’ lives. Even that trash Porina from the Bananaman gang had flown into a rage when her subordinates died. Yet Sacheon Heuksa remained completely unmoved.
“I see. So that’s why you’re a snake. Just like a pit viper that kills its own mother without recognizing her.”
“Huh? Pit vipers don’t actually kill their mothers.”
“There’s no point talking to a psychopath who can’t even understand a metaphor.”
Anyway, he could kill New Bandalgom whenever he wanted. Right now his focus had to stay on Sacheon Heuksa standing before him.
Combat Power: 2,210
Sacheon Heuksa’s combat power was 2,210. In contrast, Woo Hyun-woo’s was 2,270. In theory, he should win. But he couldn’t help thinking that when two people at this level clashed, a mere sixty-point difference in combat power might not mean much.
He didn’t know exactly what criteria the system used to calculate combat power. The System would coldly withhold victory bonus power if the gap was even slightly larger. Yet Mohanya had told him not to treat combat power as the sole indicator of every fight, and that principle surely applied to more than just firearms—
Plus the opponent uses poison.
He couldn’t afford to be careless. He refused to let himself think victory was guaranteed. Woo Hyun-woo scanned his surroundings, taking stock of everything he could use. Since it was a bakery warehouse, there were plenty of flour sacks. There was also a ladder, shelves packed with various-sized cans of ingredients for the bread, and even a fire extinguisher in case of emergencies.
Environment fully assessed.
Woo Hyun-woo quickly reached into his inner pocket and pulled out a cleaver. He infused it with chegi and hurled it.
Swish!
The target was Sacheon Heuksa’s throat. Since she belonged to the Murim Alliance she wouldn’t use guns; a pierced throat would end the game instantly. But Sacheon Heuksa bent her upper body backward. Her torso twisted like a snake with unnatural flexibility, her hands planted firmly on the floor. The cleaver sliced through empty air. She immediately snapped back upright.
“Did you really think I’m only called a snake because people look down on me? That’s a huge misunderstanding.”
Sacheon Heuksa is attempting to use Mysterious Snake Gait!
He had no idea what Mysterious Snake Gait meant. Woo Hyun-woo couldn’t read the hanja. Reading the detailed explanation would probably tell him, but he didn’t have time.
In that case.
Only an idiot stood still and took a hit while the opponent prepared something. Woo Hyun-woo moved quickly, widening the distance between them. But Sacheon Heuksa was fast too. Purple internal energy coiled around her feet as she ran in a bizarre zigzag pattern, making her path impossible to predict. Afterimages lingered in the air like purple snakes slithering in every direction.
Like I thought, you really can’t judge a fight by combat power alone.
Sacheon Heuksa is attempting to use poisoned needles!
Swish-swish-swish!
She flicked her wrist rapidly and four poisoned needles flew toward him. Woo Hyun-woo instantly dropped to the floor and slid. The needles cut through empty air as he slid straight toward the flour sacks.
“Of course the mutt runs away!”
Sacheon Heuksa chased after him using Mysterious Snake Gait without pause. She fired more needles downward at the sliding Woo Hyun-woo. He rolled across the floor to dodge them.
Swish-swish-swish-swish-swish!
The needles stabbed into the ground, chasing and threatening the rolling Woo Hyun-woo. But he avoided every single one, then grabbed a flour sack and lifted it.
“Hey, you like flour?”
The poisoned needles Sacheon Heuksa had fired earlier slammed into the sack.
Thud-thud-thud!
Holes tore open. The needles buried themselves in the densely packed flour and lost momentum. Instead, the poison began melting the flour into a gooey mess.
“Wow, fuck. One hit from that and you’d be done.”
“Don’t worry. If you sleep with me I can suck the poison out.”
“Who the hell would sleep with a fucking freak like you?”
His words were provocative, but the matchup was bad. If she had attacked with needles already embedded in her body like Cheongsa and Hongsa, it might have been different. But the bizarre movement combined with long-range throwing made her annoyingly difficult to handle. He didn’t even know if long-range attacks were her only trick. An unexpected technique could come flying at him the moment he closed in.
This is why you’re supposed to know both the enemy and yourself.
But knowing the enemy and yourself wasn’t the entirety of strategy. A clever idea occurred to Woo Hyun-woo. He grinned and lifted the massive flour sack.
“Want to play hide-and-seek for a bit?”
He tore the sack open and swung it, scattering flour everywhere. A huge cloud of powder flew toward Sacheon Heuksa, making her cough violently.
“Cough, cough! What the hell is this? You think you can hide with something this pathetic? As if!”
“You’ll find out if it works if you just shut up and wait, you bitch.”
By then Woo Hyun-woo had already reached the fire extinguisher. He pulled the pin and blasted the powder straight into the flour cloud.
WHOOSH!
Flour and extinguisher powder mixed together around Sacheon Heuksa, completely blinding her. Breathing became difficult. She tried to escape the cloud, but then strange noises reached her ears.
Thud!Clatter…
Something toppled over. The sound of cans hitting the floor.
No way—?
Sacheon Heuksa ran to escape the smoke, stepped on something, slipped, and fell backward. It was a can of preserved fruit.
Ugh!
Because of the smoke she hadn’t seen the rolling cans. She flew into the air for a brief moment and saw him.
“Wow, the view from up here is pretty good.”
Woo Hyun-woo sitting on the ladder. But that moment was short-lived. She wanted to throw needles, but the smoke hid him from view. From within that smoke, Woo Hyun-woo leaped down while grabbing the ladder. An attack impossible for a normal human, but entirely possible with 2,270 combat power.
“Ladders are long, aren’t they?”
He spun the ladder he was holding and slammed it down onto the floor where Sacheon Heuksa lay.
BOOM!
“Aaaaaagh!”
The ladder smashed into her stomach. Sacheon Heuksa screamed and looked around, but the smoke hid everything.
“It’s nice that it’s long, right?”
Since he was striking with a long ladder, he maintained distance the whole time.
“If I felt like it, I’d toy with you more before killing you, you son of a bitch.”
─But he never let his guard down in a fight.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
Woo Hyun-woo brought the ladder down again and again, not even giving Sacheon Heuksa time to leave a final word. She could only scream until her breath finally stopped.
Victory achieved against a weak enemy. Your combat power increases slightly.
Thud!
Woo Hyun-woo tossed the ladder onto the spot where Sacheon Heuksa had been and ended the fight. As the smoke gradually cleared, New Bandalgom appeared, trembling in terror.
New Bandalgom saw Woo Hyun-woo’s red eyes emerging from the smoke and screamed. There was no one left to help him. Nowhere left to turn.
“F-fucking monster.”
“And you’re the weakling, you bastard.”
Crunch!
That was the last conversation New Bandalgom ever had before he died.