Three Heads, Six Arms
Seo Gichan went to see Kim Woocheol.
"Chief. I think we might be able to catch the Judgment Seat."
"What?"
Kim Woocheol shot to his feet.
So the order to investigate Judgment Day had finally paid off.
"The forum administrator is a prosecutor. He's been in contact with the Judgment Seat."
Seo Gichan was certain of it.
One of his skills amplified his senses to their absolute limit.
When he had handed over the identity-verification list, Kang Doyun's pupils had dilated, his breathing had gone shallow and rapid, and his lips had faltered mid-sentence.
Those were the split-second reactions of a man who'd been blindsided — or caught red-handed.
An ordinary civilian with no awakening couldn't control involuntary responses like those, no matter how hard he tried.
"So we use him as bait and lure the Judgment Seat out?"
Seo Gichan shook his head.
"That'll be difficult. I secured the identity-verification records as evidence, but he doesn't strike me as the type to cave to blackmail. He'll retaliate one way or another — and if his side assembles a legal defense team and works his prosecutor connections, this will drag out for months."
"Then what do you suggest?"
"We release Kang Doyun and use Judgment Day itself. We approach the victims directly and post the cases on our end."
"Ho-ho. And then?"
"We alter the perpetrator's identity records. The Judgment Seat won't kill them then, which forces him to act through other means. He might even go hunting for the perpetrators himself."
"And the perpetrators are already in our custody?"
"Exactly."
It was more than worth attempting.
After a full month, they had finally caught the tail.
And yet Kim Woocheol kept turning the Director's words over in his mind.
"Is something weighing on you, Chief?"
This should have been a moment to celebrate, but the man looked deeply troubled.
"What if we brought the Judgment Seat over to our side instead?"
"..."
Seo Gichan paused to consider it.
The truth was, he'd entertained the thought countless times.
If that man were a member of the Hunter Crime Investigation Division? South Korea's law enforcement would become terrifyingly effective overnight, and they'd finally be able to squeeze the major guilds that danced around hunter crime.
The problem was that the man was far too extreme.
"I'm against it. He's a dictator in the making."
"Hmm..."
Kim Woocheol deliberated.
The chance to capture the Judgment Seat had arrived — and with it, so had the chance to make contact.
"Let's try both. What do you say?"
"Both... Understood."
"Bring that prosecutor up here first."
Seo Gichan left the room.
Choi Seokhyun of Sura Guild was wringing his brain dry.
He had never imagined the plan to leverage the gates would fail.
He could still remember the murderous look in Choi Seongcheol's eyes.
One wrong move, and I'm dead.
The Master was a ruthless man.
Even after ten years together, the moment anyone fell out of his favor, he discarded them without a second thought.
And yet Seokhyun stayed — because the returns were on an entirely different plane from what any other guild could offer.
Think. Think.
No matter how hard he racked his brain, no method for flushing out the Judgment Seat came to him.
He checked the time.
Somehow the meeting was already upon him.
"..."
In the end, he walked in with nothing, and he had to face Choi Seongcheol. Under that bloodthirsty stare, he blurted out the two worst options he had.
"If we want to prove we matter more than sd1234, S-ranks will have to pull out of gate duty."
Outraged protests erupted from every corner of the room.
"Or we could exploit the fact that he never touches the innocent, and threaten him with murder."
That one was just as insane.
Threatening to kill innocent people made you a villain, plain and simple.
When the response stayed icy, Choi Seokhyun circled back to his first point.
"I'm not saying we actually pull out. Only that we pretend to. Dangle the crisis in front of them, and then step in at the last moment."
"Are you sure this time?"
Choi Seongcheol asked.
Even within the guild, Seokhyun was one of the men he trusted most.
His sharp mind had steered Sura well up to now.
"This time the pressure will be real. I guarantee it."
"No. Master. This incident has already bred discontent inside the guild. Even if it means delaying our vengeance a little longer, it would be better to form a dedicated department and cooperate with the Crime Investigation Division instead."
One of the executives, unable to hold his tongue any longer, said the most sensible thing anyone had heard all meeting.
At the mention of his son, Choi Seongcheol's eyebrow twitched.
"Delay my revenge? Then why did I even start this? Did everyone forget I declared war?"
This was a matter of Asura Choi Seongcheol's personal pride.
"Knowing when to fold, even briefly—"
"S-ranks stand down."
The order fell.
It was the worst possible move Sura Guild could have made.
The first to react to Sura's announcement was Valkyrie.
Cheongeom followed suit.
And then they went even further.
The guilds that had held their tongues all this time were reacting with such fury for good reason.
Six S-rank gates currently existed in South Korea.
Cheongeom and Valkyrie could technically handle them alone, but it was a grind.
Clearing even one S-rank gate drained so much stamina and focus that a hunter needed substantial recovery time afterward.
If Sura pulled out now, Cheongeom and Valkyrie would never get a moment's rest — and the odds of a fatal mistake climbing with every mission were extremely high.
Public opinion had turned its back on Sura completely.
Amid this chorus, dissenting voices began to rise inside Sura itself — and they swelled beyond anyone's control.
Hunters started leaving the guild.
What do I do?
As events spiraled in the exact opposite direction of what he'd planned, Choi Seokhyun grew desperate.
If this kept up, it might not end with simply being cast aside.
If it becomes impossible to contain this...
In the end, he compiled the Sura Guild materials he had secretly secured.
Among them were audio recordings of Choi Seongcheol's own voice.
Lee Hocheon was a little taken aback as well.
He hadn't expected them to go this extreme.
They had played a losing move against themselves.
So it'll collapse on its own, then.
Swept up in emotion, they were tearing down the tower they'd built with their own hands.
It was hard to climb, and one breath away from falling.
There was no longer any reason for him to concern himself with it.
He logged into Judgment Day.
A single new secret message was waiting.
My name is Kim Woocheol, Chief of the Hunter Crime Investigation Division, Hunter Management Bureau.
Over the past month, South Korea has undergone great changes because of you. Drunk-driving laws have been strengthened, and the assaults committed by the S-rank hunter's son have been exposed to the world. At first, we did everything in our power to catch you. But in the end, we realized you were doing the same work we do. We, too, hunt down criminals and deliver punishment. The only difference is that when you do it, you are treated as a criminal — while we are called detectives under the banner of the state.
In short: join the Hunter Management Bureau and punish criminals legally.
There was a promise of maximum support, of course — and even a special law to bury every crime he'd committed so far.
So they've cracked this place open...
What bothered Lee Hocheon more than the message itself was the fact that Judgment Day had been traced.
Because he could no longer use this place.
That could get dicey.
He logged in from a different location every day, so pinpointing his position wouldn't be easy for them.
Still, for the time being he would have to keep a low profile at home and focus on criminals in the public eye.
Doesn't seem like the administrator tipped them off, though.
If he had, they would have laid a trap instead of posting an open invitation like this.
This was a genuine request for cooperation.
Is it because of the monsters?
That was probably what had changed his evaluation inside the Bureau.
Lee Hocheon sank into thought.
With each passing day, Choi Seokhyun's stress mounted to unbearable levels.
The pressure from Valkyrie and Cheongeom continued, and public opinion stayed bitterly cold.
Even the Judgment Seat hadn't stopped his activities.
Seokhyun kept saying they only needed to wait a little longer — but he already knew the verdict: they had lost.
The Management Bureau had announced that, as a contingency, it had formally requested support from one of Japan's S-rank guilds.
The sum was astronomical, and every arrow of blame came raining down on Sura.
The exodus of guild members accelerated.
A-rank hunters began resigning, and even the hunters who forged Divine Metal abandoned the guild.
A complete collapse had begun.
And even in the face of it, Choi Seongcheol did not rage. He waited in silence.
Waiting for the Judgment Seat to appear.
You're going to die.
Choi Seokhyun could not escape responsibility.
The Master discarded people with a very old, practiced hand.
Take them into an S-rank dungeon and throw them to the monsters as bait.
Or more precisely — simply decline to help, and let death find them on its own.
So seamlessly that even the hunters who came along wouldn't notice.
Only a handful of executives knew the truth.
And Seokhyun was one of them.
If I want to live, I have to kill Choi Seongcheol.
There was no other way now.
Fleeing abroad was next to impossible.
From A-rank on up, no hunter could leave the country without the Management Bureau's clearance.
Sura would know within moments.
He had exactly one hope left.
The Judgment Seat.
He had to make the Judgment Seat kill Choi Seongcheol.
Dying before he'd even turned forty felt unbearably unjust.
He sent a scheduled email packed with the materials to a journalist he was friendly with, took the money, and left Seoul.
When Choi Seongcheol noticed Choi Seokhyun's absence, he gave a flick of his eyes.
One of the executives contacted him immediately.
"He's not answering."
"..."
He closed his eyes.
He had brought the boy in at twenty and raised him to be the guild's next S-rank.
Seokhyun had been the man he trusted most after Lee Dooho — and he had betrayed him.
"Bring me Lee Dooho."
"Understood."
The dispatched executive was on his way out when another burst urgently into the room.
"T-turn on the news! Now!"
He hastily switched on the TV.
The news broadcast the recording.
"What do we do about Lee Byeongho?"
"Put him in the S-rank gate. Take care of it there."
"Understood."
The content was brief. Its meaning was not.
The staggering revelation sent public opinion into an uproar.
Killing someone inside a gate was a flat-out crime.
Comment after comment voiced disbelief that such things still happened at all.
"M-Master. It looks like Choi Seokhyun recorded everything."
"Bring Lee Dooho."
Choi Seongcheol rose and began donning his armor.
He pulled a crimson mask over his mouth and strapped six weapons to his back.
Lee Dooho entered at once.
"We're going to see Choi Seokhyun."
"Understood."
Choi Seongcheol had sensed something was off for a while now — that was why he'd had Lee Dooho keep watch on Seokhyun.
They boarded a helicopter and flew for Gyeongsang Province.
Choi Seokhyun had confirmed the broadcast was airing, and now he could only pray that the Judgment Seat would kill Choi Seongcheol — quickly.
He was holed up in a small motel in a slum.
He had deliberately hidden in a place like this precisely because it was hard to find.
Please, just hurry up and kill him.
His heart was racing, but the truth was that the odds of the Judgment Seat taking down Choi Seongcheol were low.
The man was an S-rank hunter.
Asura, dying? It was almost impossible to imagine.
Clank. Clank.
The sound of metal striking metal echoed down the quiet corridor.
Instantly, he felt goosebumps crawl over his entire body.
That sound...
Choi Seongcheol!
The heavy armor and weapons — that was why the man always made that noise when he moved.
How on earth had he found this place?
The motel was tiny; the windows were barely big enough to be useless for escape.
He would have to break through the wall.
CRASH!
For an A-rank hunter like him, smashing through a wall was as easy as slicing tofu.
But the moment he climbed through the hole, a man was standing there waiting.
"Lee Dooho..."
Choi Seongcheol's closest confidant.
The man who always stood at the Master's side — the man Seokhyun had envied for years.
It had all been for nothing.
"You'll be thrown away too, sooner or la—"
SQUELCH.
Asura had appeared before he knew it, and a gigantic hand crushed Choi Seokhyun's skull.
"Uuuuugh—!"
He thrashed and clawed to break free, but with a sound like a watermelon bursting, he went limp.
Lee Dooho immediately brought a handkerchief and handed it to Asura.
"Contact the press."
"...Right now, sir?"
Choi Seokhyun's corpse lay there in plain view.
"Let them see. Why I am Asura."
Lee Dooho bowed his head and vanished, and Choi Seongcheol seated himself on the stairway leading up out of the slum.
Before long, reporters from the local station appeared with their cameras.
At the sight of the Asura with three heads and six arms they flinched — but they soon began broadcasting live.
"I will show you that no man can judge a god."
His finger pointed at Choi Seokhyun.
The camera zoomed in on the corpse, drenched in blood.