A Warning Written in Blood
A warning.
With a light flick of his finger, a single strand of wire arced smoothly through the darkness and returned to Jinhyuk’s fingertips.
“Wh-what the hell just…?”
In an instant, a comrade’s body had been shredded beyond any recognizable form.
Everyone gathered here was C-class. More than that, they were members of the guild’s cleanup unit—the ones who handled all the dirty work. And yet they had died this easily.
While they stood frozen in shock, Jinhyuk stared expressionlessly at the Eunyongsa in his hand.
I didn’t even feel the cut.
It was better than he had expected. He had never imagined bone would slice like soft tofu.
“I have one question.”
“Shut your mouth…!”
One of them kicked off the ground and closed the distance in a flash, sword already swinging.
That was a mistake.
He never saw the Eunyongsa coiled around Jinhyuk’s body. The moment the blade came down, his arm was severed clean.
Seogeok.
“Aaaargh!”
The man screamed and rolled across the ground. Blood fountained upward, yet Jinhyuk’s eyes remained utterly indifferent.
“Ready to answer now?”
Two attackers remained. Instinct told them the truth: contrary to Jo Taeo’s report, this was no ordinary civilian.
But they were veterans of the underworld. This level of crisis barely registered.
“His wire has limited range! Don’t panic—stick to the usual plan!”
The man on the left roared and flung three daggers from his belt.
The blades carved dizzying trajectories through the air, too fast for the eye to follow, then streaked toward Jinhyuk’s crown, nape, and thigh. Controlling projectile paths was his unique ability.
At the same time the man on the right stomped hard. A powerful shockwave raced through the ground and shook the earth beneath Jinhyuk’s feet.
A near-perfect combination timed for the exact moment of lost balance. More than a few hunters had fallen to this duo.
But—
“Not bad, I suppose.”
Jinhyuk’s form was already gone from that spot the instant before the ground trembled. The shockwave only rattled empty air.
At the same moment, Eunyongsa shot from his fingertips and whispered through the space.
Clang!
All three daggers lost their trajectories, bounced away, and buried themselves in the floor.
“This is impossible…!”
Horror flooded their eyes. The time allotted to them was already running out.
“So. Ready to answer?”
“You arrogant bastard! Just because you beat us with that—”
He never finished the sentence. Jinhyuk had already slipped between them and flicked his fingers.
Seogeok.
Two precise silver arcs. That was all it took.
The man who had been shouting with veins bulging in his neck was already a corpse. The one beside him shared the same fate.
Jinhyuk turned slowly and approached the man still writhing in agony with one arm gone.
“Ready to answer now?”
Despair flooded the man’s face. He had just watched three comrades vanish before his eyes.
“It’s not a hard question. I simply want to know where your base is. I’d like you to show me the way.”
“…”
The man clamped his mouth shut. Jinhyuk continued without the slightest change in expression.
“Not going to answer? That’s fine too.”
He drew a dagger from his belt and sliced lightly. The target was the man’s cheek.
Seogeok.
A thin strip of flesh, as if filleted, dropped to the floor with a soft thud.
“Gyaaaaah!”
“Pain is something you never get used to. Especially unfamiliar pain.”
“You son of a—!”
Seogeok.
Another strip of flesh. This time the bridge of his nose.
“…Aaaargh! My—my nose… my nose!”
Watching him thrash and scream across the ground, Jinhyuk spoke flatly.
“I’m going to give you all kinds of pain. And by the time you get used to it…”
Another clean cut. This time the forehead. The neatly severed piece fell with a soft thud.
“…you’ll be begging me to kill you.”
Some time after Jinhyuk began the interrogation, Jung Hayun—on her way back to the shop after grocery shopping—suddenly stopped mid-stride.
…This smell.
A faint scent of blood carried on the wind. Far too alien for the middle of the city.
What happened here?
She sharpened her senses, fixed the direction, and followed the blood scent at once. Minutes later she arrived at the place where Jinhyuk had fought the assailants.
“…This.”
The sight that filled her vision made Jung Hayun’s expression harden like stone.
Bloodstains scattered across the ground and three unrecovered corpses. The cleanly severed cross-sections left by something razor-sharp made it obvious at a glance that this was the work of no ordinary fighter.
She crouched and examined one of the bodies.
Body heat still remains.
They had not been dead long.
He couldn’t have gone far.
Her sharp gaze swept the surroundings until she found a single faint footprint.
I need to find out who did this.
After a brief moment of thought, Jung Hayun turned and sprinted in that direction.
Outskirts of Gangnam, an abandoned logistics warehouse. From the outside it looked like nothing more than a neglected building.
But the man who had been forced to guide the way muttered with a half-vacant face.
“H-here. Tipone Guild…”
“…”
Plenty of presences could be felt inside. Whether his words were true or not no longer mattered; anyone connected would die either way.
“…Good work.”
Jinhyuk flicked Eunyongsa and severed the man’s neck, then left the corpse lying in the street and began moving silently along the outer wall of the building.
Here.
He reached the electrical panel at the rear. With a light touch of his fingertip he flipped the main breaker.
Click.
The sound of the switch dropping was followed by every light in the building going out at once.
“…What the—power outage?!”
“Call the management office!”
Panicked voices erupted inside. The commotion did not last long.
Seogeok.
“…!!”
The neck of the man standing at the entrance, peering around, was severed in an instant.
“I just felt something—”
The owner of that voice never finished the sentence either; his head dropped to the floor.
Thud.
The severed head struck the ground with an unpleasant sound. No one immediately noticed anything amiss.
“Hey, lights still out? Something break?”
“Probably taking a dump in the bathroom… why’s he so late?”
Casual chatter drifted from every direction. They treated the blackout as nothing serious.
Jinhyuk moved through that gap without sound or presence. Thanks to the Ninja’s Boots obtained on the third floor, his already hard-to-detect aura had become nearly perfect.
Twenty-four in total.
The number of presences he had counted just before killing the power. Two at the entrance already handled; twenty-two left. Completely melted into the darkness, Jinhyuk advanced.
Next he came upon two men playing cards in what looked like a break room.
“Shit, blackout—can’t even see my hand.”
“Just play by feel.”
“Bullshit. You wouldn’t say that if you had my cards, you bastard.”
Snickering laughter. Jinhyuk approached from behind without a sound.
Seogeok.
Two short silver arcs. Where the laughter had been, only two corpses remained, faces planted on a table scattered with cards.
Next.
As Jinhyuk moved down the corridor, voices still ignorant of the situation reached him.
“Why aren’t Cheolsu and Jaewon here? Those bastards slacking off again? The branch manager’s here today.”
“I saw them playing cards earlier.”
“What…? Cards in the middle of this mess…?”
Thud.
The moment the words trailed off, that speaker’s head also rolled across the floor.
The quicker ones began to sense something was wrong one by one.
“…Wait. Something feels off.”
It was too quiet. The lights should have come back on long ago.
The muttering man raised his phone and started calling around.
…No answer. No matter how many times he tried.
“Don’t tell me?”
Vague unease sharpened into certainty in an instant.
“We’re under attack! Everyone to alert status! Basement two, start the backup generator!”
The shout had barely finished echoing when every person inside the building snapped to attention.
“Lights! Get the lights on first!”
That was the moment.
A fountain of blood erupted from the throat of the man still shouting at the top of his lungs. Another guild member who witnessed it right in front of him.
“Here! He’s right he—!”
Before he could even point, silver wire wrapped his arms and legs simultaneously. His body twisted at grotesque angles, then sliced apart like tofu.
“Fuck, stick together! Don’t scatter!”
Panicked guild members pressed their backs together and formed a circle. It lasted only a moment.
Sssrrk.
Something thread-like settled on their shoulders—
Kwaaaak.
—and the Eunyongsa, woven like a spider’s web, constricted every one of them.
Chwaaaak!
In the next instant, amid fountains of blood, their bodies became chopped meat.
Two left.
One of them was the most powerful presence in the building.
Oh Baekheon, Gangnam Branch Manager of the Tipone Guild. A strong hunter on the very verge of A-class.
The enemy is alone. He seems used to fighting in the dark, but he’s no match for me.
The Gangnam branch was full of nobodies. The real fighting power was himself alone. The rest were little more than useful goons for grunt work.
Killing my subordinates has made him cocky.
But flying too high without knowing the sky’s limit ended now. He himself had stepped in.
A man whose frame was massive even compared to an ordinary adult male glared into the darkness with eyes wide open.
…I can sense him.
A faint presence.
“There you are!”
Kwaaang!
The axe Oh Baekheon swung smashed straight through the wall. Fragments flew in every direction, but the target was already gone.
“Not bad.”
Jinhyuk rarely felt admiration, yet the man’s agility was hard to believe for such a huge body.
That was all. The instant the man read the presence and prepared to swing the axe again, Eunyongsa coiled around his ankle.
“…!!”
The ankle was severed by that terrifying cutting power. In the split second he lost his balance, Jinhyuk closed the distance to right in front of his face.
Seogeok.
The thick neck split in a single stroke. The giant crashed to the floor with a heavy thud.
“Still wouldn’t have changed anything, though.”
At last only one remained. A man curled in a corner, trembling violently, sword hanging limp in his hand.
“P-please, if you just spare me I’ll do anything…”
“…”
Jinhyuk looked down at him for a moment. If he had wanted information he would have interrogated the confident one from earlier. The rank-and-file man in front of him was of no use.
Seogeok.
He simply cut the man’s throat.
With that, everyone who remembered today’s events had vanished from the world.
This should keep things quiet for a while.
It was a kind of warning: stop poking around. If even a warning failed, then he would have no choice but to wipe them out completely.
I hope they choose wisely.
Jinhyuk turned and melted back into the nighttime city.
A short while later the generator kicked in automatically and lights returned to the building. One woman stepped inside.
“…!!”
It was Jung Hayun, who had followed the scent of blood. The scene that filled her vision froze her mid-step.
More than twenty corpses covered the floor. The only common point was how cleanly each had been finished. Most had died without even leaving a struggle mark.
Two bodies slumped over a table scattered with cards. Layers of chopped meat where a formation had collapsed. And at the center, the massive man with his head severed, leaning against the wall.
“…This can’t be real.”
Jung Hayun covered her mouth with a trembling hand.
Everyone here had been hunters—official members of the Tipone Guild. Even for a branch, slaughtering this many people was beyond common sense.
Aside from a few, most seemed to have died without ever knowing what hit them. A single axe mark left on the wall was the only remaining trace of any real resistance.
Jung Hayun slowly looked around and murmured,
“Just… who…?”
She wished someone would explain the situation clearly,
…but the dead, unfortunately, had nothing to say.