StopDeath
Another increase in mana.
The number he could kill was seven.
For two days now, he had made his existence amply known to the world. Every media outlet was screaming murder over the incident. Now it was time to reveal his intent — why he was killing, and for what purpose. That, the world needed to know.
And the first crime was—
Drunk driving.
It was the classic crime where the ones who deserved to die lived on, and the ones who deserved to live ended up dead. Driving under the influence: the punishment was light, yet the fatalities kept piling up. A strange crime, that way.
His goal was to plant a single, unmistakable fear — if you drive drunk, you will die.
Will it actually work?
He didn't know. Nobody had ever tried it before. It was an experiment, nothing more.
He pulled up the statistics right away. On average, three hundred people were caught drunk driving every day. Roughly forty related accidents, sixty injured. The critical figure was the recidivism rate — forty percent of drunk drivers did it again.
I can't kill them all.
The number he could kill was finite. Seven in total. He would have to start with the ones whose crimes were beyond any doubt.
Celebrities first.
There were plenty of famous names with drunk-driving records. Some among them had reformed and lived honestly since; others wore masks and prayed their pasts stayed buried. There was no need to distinguish between them.
I'm not a god.
They would be judged on facts and records alone.
He selected the most representative drunk-driving celebrities and applied the skill to all of them equally — a command to strangle themselves with their own hands.
Suicides, for the time being.
Only by making it clear that a single person was behind this would the world focus.
I need a car.
Tomorrow he would have to kill ordinary criminals too. Kill only celebrities, and the intent might not land cleanly. The problem was that ordinary drunk drivers' faces weren't splashed across the internet. He would have to find them himself.
Where? The most reliable place was the sobriety checkpoint itself. And for that, he needed a car.
I'll have to buy one.
He'd saved up about seventy million won so far. He set out from home to hunt down the cheapest used car he could find.
The next day.
In the Hunter Crime Investigation Division, Chief Kim Woocheol sat with two hunters, watching the broadcast. One was a handsome man in glasses; the other a hulking figure behind sunglasses.
The A-rank hunters Seo Gichan and Park Gwangdo — the twin pillars of the Crime Investigation Division.
"One more than yesterday," Seo Gichan said.
"These ones don't look like criminals, though," Park Gwangdo muttered.
"How is he even doing this?"
The two hunters traded theories among themselves. Kim Woocheol watched the screen in silence for a while, then finally spoke.
"What did the scene investigation turn up?"
"Same as yesterday, sir. Most of them killed themselves in the bathroom."
"No signs of forced entry either?"
"None."
"Christ. I'm losing my mind here."
Kim Woocheol was at the edge of turning grey. Since the investigation had kicked into full gear yesterday, he hadn't slept a wink. He'd had to prevent the next incident, so he'd thrown every available body at the case — and dug up nothing.
"Every single person we flagged yesterday slipped through," Seo Gichan reported. The division had identified the individuals they judged most likely to be next targets and posted people on them. Not one of them had died.
"What's the criteria, then?"
Just then the door opened and a woman walked in — a cat-eyed beauty in an office suit. The A-rank hunter Kang Yeji.
"I found what the victims have in common."
Every hunter turned to her.
"What is it?"
"All of them have prior convictions for drunk driving."
Kim Woocheol frowned. "Don't tell me he's killing people over drunk driving."
Drunk driving, in his mind, didn't warrant murder. The other hunters felt the same.
"Yes. Drunk driving is exactly why he killed them. Public opinion has already swung that way too."
"What does public opinion have to do with anything?"
Kim Woocheol couldn't have cared less about public opinion. Their views were worthless to the investigation.
The bespectacled hunter Seo Gichan spoke up, eyes on his phone. "The public is convinced it's about drunk driving, that much is certain. What if that's precisely the point?"
"The point of what?"
"The people killed over the past two days had nothing connecting them. But today, only drunk drivers died — deliberately. Which means the message is baked in: drive drunk, and you die."
"Who does this punk think he is?"
Park Gwangdo said it as he slid off his sunglasses, revealing heavy brows and hard, masculine eyes.
"What's he need to think he is? He's some rookie playing hero. Just awakened, and it's gone to his head."
So judged Kim Woocheol. In the hunter world, this kind of thing happened now and then — and they always got caught fast.
"For a rookie, though, the ability seems far too strong. I don't even know where to begin the investigation."
"Can't figure it out? Put people on every celebrity with a drunk-driving record. Start there. And we're checking recently awakened hunters, right?"
"Yes. Everyone who filed an awakening report is under investigation — though frankly, I doubt he filed one."
Awakened individuals were legally obligated to report their awakening.
"Keep on it anyway."
"Understood. Oh — one more thing, Chief."
"What?"
Kang Yeji handed over the report she'd brought. Summarized on its pages were posts from all the major communities.
"Public opinion is... not normal."
Kim Woocheol looked over the pages.
Reactions of praise. There were dissenting voices too.
Opinion had split into two camps, locked in a bitter fight. The pro-side held a slight edge — and perhaps that was only natural. Drunk driving was a crime, plain and simple.
"This kind of brawling's been going on forever. Nothing new."
Kim Woocheol dismissed it. But Kang Yeji looked genuinely grave.
"What's the problem?"
"There's a risk of him being deified. Turning into a religion."
At her words, the faces of every hunter in the room — not just Kim Woocheol's — went hard.
Deification. What it implied was bigger than it sounded. If the killer became an object of faith, organizations would spring up to legitimize his acts. And with a case like this, the odds of an extremist group emerging were extremely high. If hunters got tangled up in that—
"That's a headache."
"Followers are already forming communities around him. We need to watch that front too."
"You take that side for now. Hire a well-liked celebrity and run the media game so nobody gets whipped up."
"Understood."
Kim Woocheol pressed a hand to his forehead. Today, one way or another, he had to get his hands on a thread of the killer.
Lee Hocheon arrived at a sobriety checkpoint. He'd chosen the brightest spot he could find, close to the city — the easier it was to be seen, the less likely anyone would question who he was.
Police were pulling cars over in front of a crosswalk, dragging drunk drivers out one by one.
Time to get out.
Having picked his spot, he parked and walked into a convenience store on the opposite side of the checkpoint. He bought a cup ramen and a sausage stick, then settled at the outdoor table to eat and watch the checkpoint at work.
There was some distance between them, but since his awakening, his eyesight, hearing, and every physical sense had sharpened — it hardly mattered.
"Blow into this, please. Keep going, keep going, keep going."
Before long, a drunk driver was caught. The man climbed out of his car and blew into the tester.
"Zero point one-six-zero. That's license-revocation territory."
"That's impossible. I didn't drink."
A man in his late thirties, face flushed red. Anyone could see he was drunk, but the excuses came pouring out anyway.
"I didn't drink anything, so why did it read like that?"
"Ah, well, the thing is, I only had a little. One glass. Just one glass."
"One glass doesn't put you at revocation level."
"No, wait — isn't this thing broken or something?"
"Then blow into it again."
A nearly identical number came up. The man kept up the act, as if bewildered by it all.
"The truth is I had two bottles, but I wasn't planning to drive drunk. I was just moving the car a short distance. From there to there. The parking spot was bad."
"That is drunk driving."
"No, come on. I know these roads like the back of my hand."
The back-and-forth dragged on. Lee Hocheon used his skill on him.
This time he adjusted the content slightly.
Dying right now would be inconvenient.
After that, he used the skill on two more.
Time to move.
Killing them all in one place was a dangerous play.
He finished his meal and moved on. He roamed across Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi Province, laying the skill on drunk drivers, then headed home.
"Whew."
Silent darkness greeted him. He flicked on the lights, washed up, and turned on his computer. He searched how to report tips to news organizations.
Too many places to touch.
He couldn't stay fixated on drunk driving alone. This much should serve as a sufficient warning — now it was time to make society clean house on its own.
11 p.m.
Every press building in the country was still lit up. KMS — the largest media company in South Korea — was no exception.
"Ugh. How long do I have to keep pulling overtime?"
Jang Seonwoong, a reporter at KMS, was venting. He'd come back from his honeymoon and from day one of his return, that thing had been stirring up trouble. The communities had taken to calling it the Judgment Seat.
From that day on, the media outlets had shoved every other story aside and made covering the Judgment Seat their top priority.
"Can't be helped for a while. The ratings are insane."
Kim Hansu, his junior and colleague, tried to console him. Thanks to the Judgment Seat, the newsroom was feasting.
"Damn it. Is he going to kill again tomorrow?"
It burned him to be at the office instead of snuggling up with his wife — but the existence of the Judgment Seat pumped out powerful dopamine all the same.
"Four the first day, six the second, seven the third. Tomorrow it'll be at least eight."
"Why was it only four on the first day, though?"
"Beats me."
They didn't know that Lee Hocheon had started by killing the man who'd abused a puppy. Nobody else did either.
"What's the Hunter Crime Investigation Division even doing? Don't you have a friend over there?"
"Don't get me started. They're pulling all-nighters too, apparently."
"Any progress on the case?"
"Nope. They're calling it homicide, but honestly, they're all suicides, aren't they? Everyone strangled themselves, so what evidence is even going to turn up?"
"Is God really delivering judgment?"
"Could be."
"Well... fair point."
Jang Seonwoong sucked down a mouthful of coffee. Since the gates appeared, humanity's scientific thinking and logic had utterly collapsed. No one knew why the gates had come to be, and awakening was the same. Decades of effort had poured into finding out, and humanity had reaped nothing for it.
"The tips are flooding in like crazy."
Jang Seonwoong combed through the online submissions. Most were useless. Especially the dozens of "I'm the killer" confessions — not even worth reading.
Then one title caught his eye.
A specific number. A specific target. Jang Seonwoong licked his dry lips with his tongue. Something about this was off. Unlike all the fake tips he'd seen, this one sat heavy somehow. That was the instinct of a man who'd worked as a reporter for years.
The post continued:
The reason I am reporting this myself is simple: I wish for there to be no more deaths caused by drunk driving.
"What kind of bullshit is this?"
That was how the post ended. He kills drunk drivers — and wishes for no more deaths to occur? But after rereading it a few times, he soon grasped the man's intent.
"Hey, look at this."
He showed the post to the junior at the desk beside him.
"So if nobody drives drunk, he stops killing. That's what this is saying, right?"
"Looks that way. Do you think it's real?"
"No idea. But I feel it. I feel it. If bodies turn up tomorrow, we identify them immediately — if they're ordinary civilians, we blow it out as breaking news. No, wait, we shouldn't be sitting here for this. Hey, you — run the IP trace on this thing."
Jang Seonwoong got up from his desk to report upstairs. Before leaving, he checked the sender's ID.
StopDeath_1234
Stopping death.
It was an utterly juvenile handle.