Chapter 130: Go Namseok (2)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 130: Go Namseok (2)
Beneath a streetlight that flickered several times a second, two figures clashed.
Clang! Sparks flew, and the impact shot straight through my palm, but it was nothing more than a tickle.
It would probably be more difficult to beat a wooden dummy with a wooden sword at the dojo.
In contrast, the man was gasping for breath, looking like he could collapse at any moment.
“...Shit.”
In strength, speed, and skill, he couldn't match me in any way.
The daggers in his hands were already cracked, a result of desperately blocking my attacks to protect his vital points.
Truthfully, I could have ended it at any moment. I could see openings even now.
Objectively, his skill was below my expectations.
He was so pathetic it was almost an insult to compare him to the leader of the group that attacked Cheon Yeo-hwa.
'Didn't they say Go Namseok's older brother is the guild master of the Heuksan Guild?'
Perhaps he never imagined someone would target his younger brother, because the bodyguard's skill was abysmal.
Still, the reason I was dragging this out was to test the performance of my daggers.
As expected of an artifact, they were sharp and light. Moreover, their durability was exceptional for daggers.
Daggers are typically weapons of finesse, used to exploit an opponent's openings, not brute force. But these were so sturdy I could mindlessly crush him with pure strength without any issue.
Kwaang!! The impact was powerful enough to make one doubt it came from a clash of daggers. Through the faint gust of wind, I could see the man's contorted face.
“District Mayor! Call for backup, quickly! I can barely hold on by myself!”
“Y-You useless piece of trash!”
Despite his words, Go Namseok must have realized the situation was serious, as he frantically tapped at his phone.
The way he kept cursing suggested things weren't going well.
“It's no use.”
I raised the corners of my mouth, though he couldn't see it through my mask.
“...What did you do?”
“Who knows? Maybe the reception is bad in the forest.”
The man's face twisted in a grimace.
I wasn't being leisurely without a plan.
A makeshift barrier.
It's a type of barrier magic that uses a pre-arranged spell formula and a transmuted medium to quickly deploy a barrier in a designated location.
It's a useful spell for secretly setting up a barrier like this or when time is short. However, its durability is pathetic, so it's not a very popular spell.
Furthermore, its duration is short, and its range is only a 200-meter radius.
On top of that, it consumes a massive amount of magic power and requires a high-purity C-rank magic stone as a medium.
No mage in their right mind would even glance at it.
Unless they had a shady purpose like me.
“Nonsense, there's no way the reception would just... Wait, don't tell me?!”
Clang! The man parried my dagger and rolled across the ground.
The look in his eyes changed completely. I didn't care and continued to swing my daggers.
I'd never learned how to use daggers, so it wasn't easy, but parrying, stabbing, and slashing were the same as with a regular sword, so it wasn't too difficult.
Only the footwork was different.
Because the blades were short, I had to step in a step and a half deeper than usual.
Shnk. The blade grazed past him, slicing his thigh. I immediately switched to a reverse grip and stabbed him in the abdomen.
“Keuk?!”
He wasn't poisoned this time either. The probability must not be very high.
I wanted to test the poison effect as well, but it seemed he had realized I was a mage.
If I took my time and he blurted out the word 'mage,' things could get complicated later.
According to Grandma Choi Young-ok, there's someone in the Association with psychometric abilities.
Of course, she said it was a conditional ability so I didn't have to worry too much, but it couldn't hurt to be prepared.
[Wind's Walk]
[Wind envelops your entire body]
Shk. I strolled past the horrified man as if on a walk. In that instant, his head fell from his shoulders, and a fountain of blood erupted.
It was an ability from 'Viper's Fang.' My body instantly felt lighter, and my joints' range of motion expanded.
Right now, it felt like I could even attack with my arm twisted back.
“Go Namseok is... that way?”
As soon as Go Namseok confirmed his phone had no signal, he had fled into the forest.
Of course, the mountain at night isn't forgiving enough for his fat body to escape.
Instead of magic detection, I spread my qi sense.
The range wasn't wide, but it had the advantage of not being detected by any mages who might investigate this incident.
“...Found him.”
My qi sense, spreading through the forest, caught Go Namseok. I immediately dashed through the undergrowth.
Was it because of the dagger's ability? My body felt as if it had become the wind.
Like the wind weaving through trees and bushes, I naturally grew faster and faster. In terms of speed, it was comparable to the Formless Electric Body.
Though, only in places where the wind blows, of course.
Anyway, thanks to that, I spotted Go Namseok with my own eyes in less than five seconds. His suit was already in tatters. He looked like he'd aged ten years in a matter of minutes.
He must have run for his life, but he hadn't even managed to escape the barrier I'd set up.
His toupee got caught on a branch and fell off.
It seems no matter how well you eat, you can't prevent hair loss.
I pulled a dagger from my coat and threw it at Go Namseok.
Thwack!
“Gaaack?!!”
A sound like a pig being slaughtered echoed through the forest. Struck in the shoulder by the dagger, Go Namseok tumbled to the ground.
Thud! After rolling for some time, he slammed into a tree and stopped.
I dropped down from a branch and slowly walked toward him.
“Kngh...”
Go Namseok groaned, clutching the shoulder where the dagger was embedded. Thanks to the fast-acting paralytic poison I'd applied, he wasn't squealing like a pig anymore.
“If I leave you like this, you'll die soon.”
“Y-You... who the hell are you...!”
Whether he still hadn't grasped the situation or just couldn't let go of his pride even in death, he continued to glare at me. I crouched down in front of him.
Pretending to pull it from my coat, I took out some holy water from my inventory. I had plenty left over from when I was hospitalized at the church.
I sprinkled the holy water on Go Namseok's head.
“Ptui, ptui!”
“Tsk, tsk. You should be thanking me and drinking it, not spitting it all out.”
It was quite expensive holy water, so I could see the wounds on Go Namseok's body healing.
“H-Holy water?! Are you after money?!”
“Who do you take me for, a beggar?”
Crunch. I lightly stomped on Go Namseok's fingers.
“Gyaaaah?!!”
It seems even paralytic poison can't ignore the sensation of bones not just breaking, but shattering.
Ignoring another pig-like squeal, I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him through the forest.
He screamed in agony as his body was pierced and cut by sharp rocks and branches on the ground, but I paid him no mind.
That was the whole point of dragging him, after all.
Returning to the road where the incident happened, I carelessly tossed him aside.
“Please, please just spare my life...”
His earlier pride had vanished, and now he was pathetically begging for his life.
It had been less than three minutes, but his suit was already soaked in blood.
Crack!! Without a word, I grabbed his shoulder and crushed it.
“Gyaaaaaah?!!!”
Perhaps because the pain surpassed the threshold a sane mind could endure, Go Namseok writhed in agony before soon passing out.
Looking down at him sprawled on the road, I took a syringe from my coat.
It was a type of stimulant frequently used by hunters. Since any hunter or mage could easily purchase it, I didn't have to worry about it being found during an autopsy.
Holy water? Strictly speaking, holy water isn't a drug. Naturally, once absorbed, it couldn't be detected even if they searched his very bone marrow.
Plunge. The stimulant flowed from the syringe stuck in the nape of his neck.
“Huk?!”
The moment the stimulant entered his system, Go Namseok shot up. It was a stimulant made for hunters, so its effect on a normal person like him was almost too good.
Coming to his senses, Go Namseok stared at me with eyes full of terror.
“T-Taepyeong-dong redevelopment!!”
I flinched involuntarily at his words.
“There's the redevelopment project I'm involved in! I'll give you all the profits from it! I've already taken billions in rebates from selecting the construction company, and with everything else, it'll easily be in the tens of billions! So please, just spare my life!!”
“...”
I thought the first words out of his mouth would be a plea for forgiveness.
But I was wrong.
To him, the Taepyeong-dong redevelopment project was nothing more than a means to secure his own illicit gains.
He couldn't care less about the livelihoods of the residents who lived there, and he never even considered that they might dare to take revenge on him.
In that moment, something in my head seemed to snap, and the image of the nun lying in a hospital bed, injured by hired thugs, flashed through my mind.
She was the one who'd caught the flu after spending hours fundraising on a market street on a freezing winter day, all for the starving children at the orphanage.
Her fingertips were red and trembling from the cold, yet she had carefully held the bungeoppang she'd bought for us.
What had that nun, who had dedicated her entire life to children, done to deserve such a fate?
“...Gyaaaaaaah!!!!”
Go Namseok's scream brought me back to my senses.
I looked down and saw Go Namseok's finger joints, mangled like torn dough.
His left hand had already lost the shape of a hand long ago.
But surprisingly, I felt nothing.
If anything, I felt relieved.
Because his right hand and both legs were still left.
“Aaaaaaaah!!!!”
Go Namseok's pain-filled screams echoed through the air.
A monster who had lived his life feeding on the pain and bloody tears of others was now hoping someone would save him from his own.
A laugh escaped my lips.
Would anyone even be around to hear a man's scream in the mountains at dawn and come to help?
Even if there were, they wouldn't be able to hear it, blocked by the barrier's other effect: soundproofing.
The next afternoon, a shocking news article hit South Korea.
*
Bang! A fist slammed down, shattering the desk.
“Aaaaaaaah!!!”
The man's desperate cry was like a shriek of agony.
A vicious killing intent billowed out, and in his indescribable rage, the blood vessels in his eyes burst, sending bloody tears streaming down his face.
His face twisted like a demon's—he was Go Taebeom, the guild master of the Heuksan Guild.
“Namseok...!! My brother!!”
He was the older brother and only family of Go Namseok, who had been found the previous night with his limbs severed.
The uncontrollable backlash of his killing intent and magic power wrecked the guild master's office.
The secretaries waiting nearby could only lower their eyes and stare at the floor, busy trying to stay out of the way.
They were so anxious that the madman's rage might turn on them that they couldn't even wipe away the cold sweat trickling down their faces.
“Which bastard...”
Amidst the suffocating pressure that made it hard to even breathe, the chief secretary stepped forward.
“...The police are investigating the scene, so what we can confirm right now is limited. However, according to a detective I know, the estimated time of death was 5 AM.”
The chief secretary swallowed nervously, holding back the rest of his words.
The attack was estimated to have occurred around 1 AM, meaning Go Namseok was likely tortured for nearly four hours before his death.
If he said that out loud, the secretaries he had worked so hard to train might be killed by the enraged guild master's hand.
“...Find him. Find him no matter what. And bring him to me alive.”
“...Understood.”
The chief secretary barely managed to suppress a sigh.
How were they supposed to catch an assassin who had already fled?
But soon after, he saw a glimmer of hope in another article that made the headlines.
[Chairman of the Taepyeong-dong Redevelopment Committee Found Dead in His Home]