The Asura's Wrath
The media, despite confirming Choi Jinwoo's school violence, moved with glacial caution. It was a far more sensational and explosive story than the Park Sooyeon affair, but the target was simply too dangerous. No matter how powerful the Judgment Seat might be, he was no match for Choi Seongcheol crashing through the front door himself.
Yet even without the press lifting a finger, every best post on every community board was already plastered with Choi Jinwoo's school violence.
Not a single soul took Choi Jinwoo's side. The boy in that video was malice incarnate, plain and simple.
But the critical question wasn't the school violence.
What would the Judgment Seat do? The same question that had been asked during the Park Sooyeon affair was raised once more — but this time, the weight of it existed on an entirely different dimension.
This was the age of the great hunter era. The presence or absence of a single S-rank hunter was now bound directly to a nation's fate. Gates kept multiplying, and the monsters inside them kept growing stronger. Nations that couldn't keep pace were winnowed out or devoured by their neighbors. A stark example: Italy, currently without a single S-rank hunter, depended entirely on France to handle its high-grade gates.
In gate clearance, and in diplomacy alike, S-rank hunters carried that much weight. Apologies to the victims, but the prevailing opinion was that the Judgment Seat should hold his hand.
Then the story of Kim Jeongsu — beaten to death, quietly, at Choi Jinwoo's own hands — surfaced from beneath the water. It was exposed once again by his friends, students of Seoju High School. Public opinion began to split down the sharpest possible line.
As Baek Eunha was being rushed toward the operating room, she noticed Choi Jinwoo trying to gag. Elevated intracranial pressure would do that — but it wasn't the only sign. His breathing was slowing, and the muscles of his face were stiffening at an alarming rate.
Could it be...?
She immediately channeled mana into his head and found it: blood vessels rupturing from the inside. She deployed healing at once, but the damage had already progressed too far. When? When did this even happen?
Choi Jinwoo had lost consciousness quickly, and she hadn't caught it in time. According to the Management Bureau hunters, the Judgment Seat used his skill once per day. She had allowed herself to relax on that assumption...
"We have to open his skull. NOW!"
Every second counted. Her healing could contain the bleeding, but the ruptured tissue — the hematoma, the necrosis — had to be removed by hand. If the intracranial pressure kept climbing, saving him would become impossible.
"Not like this. We have to move him to the operating room first," the surgeon said. No one could operate with no instruments at hand — brain surgery wasn't that simple.
"Somebody get the doctors in here, NOW!"
She hoisted Choi Jinwoo onto her back and sprinted for the operating room, moving at a speed no ordinary human could hope to follow. In the next instant, the hunters at the shelter closed the distance in a blink, scooped up the doctors in their arms, and vanished.
"..."
Choi Seongcheol, who had watched every second of it, strode wordlessly toward the operating room himself.
Seo Gichan exchanged a glance and approached Kim Woocheol. "What do we do, sir? From the look of it... saving him seems unlikely."
"What do we do. This is a problem beyond my pay grade."
"Then what?"
"Report to the Director. And come with me if you can."
"...Understood."
Seo Gichan vanished, and Kim Woocheol headed for the operating room as well. Choi Seongcheol, having arrived first, stood like a monolith before the door. None of the other hunters dared approach, and even Kim Woocheol stopped at a respectful distance.
Time seemed to freeze. Everyone held their breath — not even the sound of breathing — and waited for news from inside. Each minute, each second, stretched into an eternity.
Click.
About ten minutes later, Baek Eunha emerged, her hair plastered to her face with sweat. She looked at Choi Seongcheol and bowed her head deeply.
"I'm sorry..."
Her voice shook like a leaf in the wind. Every hunter in the room went rigid. They all understood what those words meant.
Choi Seongcheol turned away from her and entered. The doctors saw him coming and scrambled out of his path. His son's head had not yet been properly sutured, and the sight of Choi Jinwoo was not one for human eyes.
"..."
There was no light left in his son's closed eyes. He sat down in a chair and stared at his dead son for a long while. They had never been close — but this boy had been his only blood.
"I'm sorry."
An unknowable emotion churned inside his chest. Grief, fury, sorrow, guilt. Regret, self-loathing — and the thirst for vengeance.
The seated figure of Choi Seongcheol began to split. One head became two, and finally three. The face on the left was weeping. The face on the right was raging. And the face in the center was, terribly, utterly expressionless.
Yoon Hayoung, guildmaster of Valkyrie — one of Korea's three great guilds and the third-ranked hunter in the nation — rarely paid attention to the media. Her hobby was sparring. Monsters she could fight to her heart's content inside gates, but with people it was harder. What she truly relished was matching wits with someone intelligent.
"Nothing on the schedule today, right? I'm heading out for a scrap."
Lee Seongjun, her executive secretary, glanced up from his computer. "I don't think this is the time for that, ma'am."
"Why not?"
"You know Choi Jinwoo?"
"Who's that?"
"Hunter Choi Seongcheol's son."
"Ah. I've seen him. Takes after his dad — looked like he'd have a filthy personality. What about him?"
"Good read. His school violence just blew up. It's chaos right now."
Yoon Hayoung frowned. She was in her early forties, but her face bore almost no wrinkles, and her features carried an air of aristocratic refinement. A short bob and light makeup gave her the look of a noblewoman.
"Is it confirmed?"
"Yes. There's even video. Want to come see it?"
She watched the footage. "How the hell did that man raise his kid? Rewind it a second."
Something was off. When she ran the clip backward, she could see it — when Choi Jinwoo struck the student in the solar plexus, he barely pulled the blow. And yet the boy who took the hit writhed as if dying.
"The lunatic used a skill. On a student? What was he going to do if the kid died?"
Yoon Hayoung grasped immediately that it was a skill. "They're saying one did die."
"What?"
"There's a deceased victim, apparently. That's why the controversy's even worse."
Yoon Hayoung shook her head slowly. Lee Seongjun stared at her intently.
"What?"
"What do you mean, 'what'? The country's about to flip upside down. If the Judgment Seat touches this kid, do you really think Choi Seongcheol will sit still?"
"He wouldn't kill him... would he?" She couldn't imagine Choi Seongcheol failing to protect his only son.
"And if he does kill him?"
"That would be... a problem."
With gates multiplying by the day, Choi Seongcheol trading blows with the Judgment Seat was a scenario the country could not afford. If Sura Guild was pulled into that fight, the burden on gate clearance would skyrocket. High-grade gates, above all, absolutely required an S-rank hunter.
"I think he'll do it. The Judgment Seat, I mean. Kill Choi Jinwoo."
"Why?"
"This is a man who killed A-rank hunters without a flicker of hesitation. He's not going to spare Choi Jinwoo."
"He's Choi Seongcheol's son."
"Which is exactly why I think he'll do it."
Yoon Hayoung understood. Choi Jinwoo was, for all intents and purposes, one of the pillars of Korean power — and the Judgment Seat had been smashing those pillars to pieces, one by one.
"Hmm. I kind of like that."
"Master, please... You can't shield criminals."
When the Judgment Seat had first appeared, Yoon Hayoung had reacted positively. Someone has to do it, she'd said.
"You've been a hunter for ten years and you still don't understand this world? Power is everything here. The strong man's word is justice."
"Haah... You're not wrong, but... So what will you do? If Choi Jinwoo dies?"
"What else? Watch how it plays out, and step in if it looks like it's going too far."
"Step in between who?"
"Do you know who the Judgment Seat is? Where he lives?"
"No, ma'am."
She meant she would stop Choi Seongcheol.
Lee Hocheon confirmed that Choi Jinwoo was dead. The first use of his skill, the boy had survived, as expected. The second, he did not endure. It was probably agonizing. He couldn't watch the death directly, but he could imagine it — the terror of dying, experienced twice. It was a death that fit him.
His objective complete, Hocheon checked the news and the community boards. The "Challenge for the Students" movement caught his eye. Fists, it seemed, remained closer than the law. If news of Choi Jinwoo's death broke, the odds were good that school violence would drop sharply.
Why isn't the government responding?
Unlike last time, the government had held no emergency briefing, issued no statement. It sat in silence. He had expected them to revise the law immediately — the abolition of the Juvenile Act, harsher punishment for school violence. Nothing of the sort was happening.
So this doesn't threaten them, then.
Setting Choi Jinwoo aside, most of the perpetrators who had died this time were children of celebrities or ordinary families. Unlike the drunk-driving affair, not a single politician had been touched.
They're scrubbing the articles, too.
After the drunk-driving crisis, they had begun erasing the records of their own crimes. Hocheon hadn't discovered this himself — the Judgment Day administrator had quietly passed it along. The spectacle of them tending only to their own safety turned his stomach.
Still a long way to go.
The men who deserved to die kept living, and the ones who deserved to live kept dying. Fear had to continue — and for that, he needed to survive a very, very long time.
By the next day, news of Choi Jinwoo's death had spread like wildfire. Choi Seongcheol's side had tried to keep it secret, but too many eyes at the Management Bureau had been watching. The article leaked almost at once, and Choi Seongcheol announced a press conference.
Most people expected Choi Seongcheol to seek vengeance. It was the natural assumption — but his justification was paper-thin. His son had committed murder.
This affair had drawn the attention not only of public opinion but of the S-rank hunters themselves. Seong Taejin, Korea's number one and master of Cheongeom Guild. Yoon Hayoung, number three and master of Valkyrie. Depending on how Choi Seongcheol emerged, they too would have to take a stance.
The foreign press, moreover, was watching with rapt attention. The story of an S-rank's son being assassinated spread across the globe, and its sheer force turned the eyes of the world toward Korea. In this atmosphere, Choi Seongcheol's next move was the single greatest question on everyone's mind.
In the afternoon, Choi Seongcheol held his press conference at an outdoor venue. Every journalist in Korea was in attendance, and dozens of drones hovered overhead. Soon, a luxury black sedan rolled in. Choi Seongcheol's aide, Lee Dooho, stepped out and opened the door.
Choi Seongcheol's colossal frame emerged from the vehicle. He had three faces and six arms. He had come as the Asura.
Faced with the horns jutting from his skull and his blood-red eyes, not a single journalist dared fire a flash. He stepped up to the microphone.
"Move it."
Lee Dooho hurried over and cleared the microphone away. Everyone present — and everyone watching the broadcast — held their breath.
"From this moment, Sura Guild will find and kill the one who murdered Choi Jinwoo. Any who obstruct this vengeance will be treated as an enemy, and any who aid or harbor him will pay the price — all of them."
Despite his terrifying aspect, no emotion whatsoever colored Choi Seongcheol's voice. With those words, he turned and moved back toward the car.
Then one brave journalist raised his voice.
"Will you suppress the press as well?"
Choi Seongcheol looked at him. Jang Seonwoong of KMS felt his knees go weak under those crimson eyes, and he looked away. In the end, he couldn't hold his ground — he scrambled back to his seat in a rush.