The Three Heads of Asura Roll
Asura sat on the stairs. A man in a suit stood beside him. A corpse with a burst skull lay sprawled across the cold concrete floor. The moment the broadcast went live, people scrambled to switch on their TVs and phones. The scene of an S-rank hunter committing murder. Could there be any greater spectacle than this?
Nobody could make sense of what they were watching. Then the armchair analysts started rolling in.
If that was the plan, he couldn't turn public opinion entirely, but he could certainly build a base of support. Humanity was a varied lot, and even now there were people cheering Choi Seongcheol on.
The viewer count climbed exponentially, and internet streamers came running with cameras in hand. The tiny hillside shantytown was packed in minutes.
Click.
Choi Seongcheol rose from his seat. Everyone on the scene tensed and swallowed hard. He looked down at Choi Seokhyeon and spoke.
"I killed this man, as payment for his betrayal. The contents of the recording files are true. So what will you do about it? Will you presume to name my crime? Will you dare to judge me?"
Choi Seongcheol descended the stairs slowly. His enormous frame and armor lent him a crushing, monumental weight. He moved to the center of the ring of cameras, and a dead silence settled over everything.
"Go on, then — kill me. Surely you aren't about to lose your nerve and run now."
He said it quietly. He named no one, but everyone knew exactly who he was addressing.
Word of what was happening in a Busan shantytown reached the President almost instantly. The S-rank hunters Seong Taejin and Yoon Hayoung dropped everything and watched the live feed with grim expressions. So did the Bureau, and every other guild. They were all thinking the same thing.
Would the Judgment Seat kill Choi Seongcheol? Could he?
From the standpoint of the powerful, Choi Seongcheol had to survive. If a mysterious criminal whose face no one had ever seen killed Korea's second-strongest hunter — and did it without taking a single risk — it could mean only one thing.
The rise of a new absolute power. That was far more dangerous than Choi Seongcheol ever had been. At least with him, combined force could restrain him somehow. Outwardly they showed nothing, but every one of them was praying for the Judgment Seat to fail.
The public felt differently.
The prevailing opinion was simple: kill Choi Seongcheol. Just as with Park Suyeon, everyone waited for the Judgment Seat. And as they wished, Choi Seongcheol began to tighten the noose around his own neck. The Judgment Seat had appeared.
Choi Seongcheol, eyes bulging wide, looked for all the world like a vengeful demon. His thick grip was crushing down on a thick throat. His face reddened rapidly, but he never blinked. All of South Korea held its breath as it watched. Time flowed like syrup, as if frozen altogether.
One minute passed, and the red slowly crept back into Choi Seongcheol's face. He released his throat. His neck was covered in vivid fingermarks and bruising.
"Is that all you have?"
That single line detonated public opinion.
But then Choi Seongcheol clutched at his chest. His heart had stopped.
As expected, Choi Seongcheol's face began to go pale. He pounded his own chest with his fists, trying to force his heart back to life. The dull thuds echoed through the microphone. A moment later his face lost all color and sagged. To anyone watching, he was dead.
The chat turned cautious.
Then it happened. The dead face on Choi Seongcheol's head rotated away, and the face on the left slid to the center. At the same moment, the body attached to the dead face dropped away — leaving two heads and four arms.
The appalled audience was struck speechless. Choi Seongcheol sneered openly, for show.
"Is that the best you've got?"
He turned to glare at the camera drones as if daring them to try again. The shot from the sky showed a man utterly at ease.
But soon after, he felt a pain like his skull was splitting open.
"Ugh..."
He groaned and pressed a hand to his head. Moments later, brain death claimed another Choi Seongcheol, and that body fell away too. Only the original remained. Restarting the Asura skill would take a little time. He gathered all of his mana and stationed it in his brain and heart.
Astonishingly, though, Choi Seongcheol weathered several more attacks after that. And he understood something.
Hold out for one minute, and it's over.
The Judgment Seat's attacks stopped after a minute. For an S-rank with a vast reservoir of mana, that much time was survivable — barely. It wasn't without cost; small wounds kept accumulating, one atop another. But as the seconds stretched on and Choi Seongcheol refused to die, the people watching felt it instinctively.
The winner of this fight would be Choi Seongcheol.
"If it's only a minute, I can endure as long as you like."
When no further attack came, Choi Seongcheol shouted it with a face full of relief. No more pain wracked his body. He was certain of his victory now.
He must have given up. Or his mana ran dry.
A smile curled at the corners of his mouth. It had gone exactly as expected. Experience had taught him that between two S-ranks, no matter how strong one was, victory was never easily decided. He had trusted that experience, and he had been certain he would not die. Even Seong Taejin, Korea's number one, would have to be prepared to cripple himself to kill him.
"Pathetic."
Those two words settled everything.
The power elite watching the broadcast breathed easy. The death of an S-rank was a dire threat to them as well.
The public mourned in earnest. They had hoped for justice's victory, but reality was cold.
Choi Seongcheol drew one of the six swords strapped across his back. His face split into three again, and he took the form of Asura. Red horns began to sprout as he raised his blade high overhead. Just as everyone assumed he was celebrating his triumph —
Swish.
Asura's neck hit the ground. Three heads rolled off in three different directions. He had cut off his own head.
Every single viewer shot to their feet — or clapped a hand over their mouth in sheer shock. Even the ceaselessly scrolling chat froze. Then, after a beat—
"WAAAAAH!"
The crowd on-site roared loud enough to shake the mountain. The chat exploded simultaneously, and the platform's servers, unable to bear the traffic, crashed. The major online communities were so lagged that no one could even log in.
Lee Hocheon had watched the scene of Choi Seongcheol's murder and used his skill. When a man begged to be killed, there was no reason to spare him. The first attempt failed. Without a flicker of agitation, he kept casting until Choi Seongcheol died. Strangulation failed, so he went for cardiac arrest; when that failed too, brain death. He alternated between the two, over and over, but the man held on.
S-ranks truly were different. He could see now why the world treated them as transcendent assets.
Twenty uses remaining. Then the weapons on Choi Seongcheol's back caught his eye. If the old methods didn't work, he would simply devise a new one. He designed it so the man would cut off his own head.
It worked cleanly.
"..."
His death carried enormous weight. The cheers rose from the crowd, but Lee Hocheon turned off the TV. He needed to organize his thoughts.
If an S-rank hunter can be killed...
Then S-rank boss monsters could be killed too. If his mana simply grew further, he judged he could bring even S-rank gates under control.
There's nothing left to get in my way.
At least, not in Korea. And yet nothing actually changed. He would simply keep doing what he had always done. Drunk driving had plummeted to a staggering degree, and no more exposés of school violence were being posted. Other crimes were dropping too. The fist worked better than the law.
He began searching for the next ones to kill. An article caught his eye: the Nine Lab stock manipulation ring had pocketed five hundred billion won in gains. The victims' desperate pleas were piling up just as thick.
Watching Choi Seongcheol's remains standing there alone, Cheon Ilguk, Director of the Hunter Management Bureau, knew at once that a new era had arrived. He immediately summoned the heads of every department. A meeting was required. The opportunity for change he had craved for so long was finally here.
The three-pillar system is finished. With Choi Seongcheol dead, two S-ranks can't cover the S-rank gates.
There were many A-ranks whose experience bars were full but who had never bloomed. The Bureau had to produce the nation's first S-rank hunter before anyone else did.
And the Judgment Seat...
I must bring him in, no matter what.
After today, his value had soared beyond any price. He was a being one level above an S-rank hunter, and that meant a great deal. Supremacy in international diplomacy. A complete solution to the gate problem. Dominance over the world's hunter market. Summary execution of criminals — and flowing from it, enormous economic windfalls and the self-purification of political power. What would take the birth of ten S-rank hunters or more could be achieved by a single man.
Of course, there were conditions. The Judgment Seat had to be just to the very end. He had to be a patriot, willing to accommodate the ruling class's demands to some degree. And above all, he had to cooperate. For that, the Bureau would have to throw every ounce of its power at the problem. Cheon Ilguk's impatience grew — because he knew full well that no one else would be sitting still.
Yoon Hayoung of Valkyrie rubbed her eyes, and rubbed them again. Three of Choi Seongcheol's heads were unmistakably rolling across the ground. She slapped her own cheek and looked at Lee Seongjun.
"..."
One look at his expression told her that what had just happened was no dream. She shook her head briskly and snapped back to herself.
"Hey."
Lee Seongjun didn't answer. He just stared at the screen.
"HEY!"
She kicked him. Only then did he come to his senses and scramble upright.
"Choi... Choi Seongcheol... he's... he's dead..."
"I know. I watched it too, didn't I? This is no time for that."
"What?"
"Divine Metal."
"Divine Metal?"
"Now that Choi Seongcheol's dead, Sura Guild's dissolution is only a matter of time. We need to get our hands on the manufacturing process for Divine Metal."
Her eyes gleamed. His death had been genuinely shocking, and the Judgment Seat's power terrifying — but the opportunity she had longed for had finally come.
Choi Seongcheol had never made proper use of Divine Metal. If he'd understood its value, he wouldn't have died so pathetically.
Six weapons. Every one forged from Divine Metal — and every one used exactly as if it were ordinary steel. Like stringing pearls around a pig's neck.
"Move, NOW!"
She grabbed her coat. That scheming old fox of Cheongeom would surely be after the Divine Metal too — it was obvious.
"Oh, and — pull some hunters aside, have them hunt for the Judgment Seat, and purge every guild member with a criminal record."
"That's a bit sudden..."
"Sudden, my ass. They're dead men walking either way, and all they'll do is drag the guild's name through the mud. Slip them some money and cut them loose."
Yoon Hayoung was a sharp, perceptive woman. She knew how to dress herself to fit the demands of the age.
It wasn't only the Bureau and Valkyrie reacting this fast. The government, the great corporations, Cheongeom, and countless foreign powers as well. All of them began to move — each for its own profit, or for its own convictions.