The Falcon Gang (3)
Once we returned to the Mokdong Settlement, we asked the others who had gone out searching whether they had found anything of use. They told us they had scoured any number of places while we were clearing the tower, but had come back with nothing worth reporting.
In the middle of all that, Uncle Chunsik learned we had arrived and came running, then led us straight to where Uncle Dusik was waiting.
As expected, Uncle Dusik was with Uncle Kang Hancheol, and even at a glance the two of them wore expressions serious enough that we could tell something was wrong the moment we walked in.
"Oh, you're back. So the tower went well, then?"
Hancheol tried to hide that look behind a hearty laugh as he greeted us.
"Yes. We ran into a few problems, but we cleared it. If you check your devices, you should already see the rewards came through."
Matching Hancheol's effort to mask his exhaustion, Hyunseok filled both men in on what had happened inside the tower and on the rewards the devices had granted us.
"Hmm. I've run into a wave mechanic once myself, but there was always at least a little breathing room before the boss-class enemies showed up. You're saying there wasn't?"
"Right. It got pretty dangerous because of that, but Charlotte handled it. We were lucky."
Uncle Dusik stroked his beard, turning it over in his mind, while Hyunseok glanced at me once before going back to talking with the two of them.
I didn't see any need to join the conversation, so I sat on the sofa with Yeonseo and rested for a bit.
Hyunseok will handle the explanation just fine. Nothing to worry about.
Then I noticed a sheet of paper lying on the table.
"Huh? What's this…?"
"Ahem. Shouldn't have left that out…"
Hancheol looked at us with the face of a man who had just realized his mistake.
"Is this… a demand from the people who took your daughter?"
"Well, you've already seen it, so there's no point hiding it. Yes. That's what those bastards sent. Honestly, it's pure nonsense."
Having read it myself, I had to agree.
They would return his daughter — if he gathered the awakeners and came to Paris Park to take her back by force. Even a random stranger on the street would look at that and think, What is this? Are these people insane? It was a provocation that made no sense at all.
"But it's strange. Why specifically tell you to gather the awakeners and come? Do they even need that?"
Yeonseo leaned back against the sofa, flicked the note onto the table, and asked the question with a completely indifferent expression.
"We wondered the same thing. Even with awakeners here, the honest truth is that aside from me and Ara, no one has particularly strong abilities. Most of them either have nothing to do with combat, or they're just decent with a weapon, or they can move a little mana to reinforce themselves."
"Then it makes even less sense. One of your key fighters already got herself captured for free, and there's no way Bandit Uncle here could take that whole group on by himself. And why would they even want a fight when they already have the hostage advantage?"
Yeonseo's cold analysis probably stung a little, but neither man seemed particularly bothered.
"Ahem. Not much I can say to that," Hancheol muttered, clearing his throat and looking away.
"Haha! Fair enough. Even if I've got a bit of skill, I'm not exactly built to handle a crowd of that size."
"Y-Yeonseo? I'm sorry. She didn't mean anything by it."
Hyunseok bowed his head and apologized to both of them.
"It's fine. She's right, honestly. And that's exactly what we've been thinking, too. The Falcon Gang doesn't have overwhelming force that puts them far above us. Their leader — the one they call Falcon, Han Jin-o — is a different story, but even so, starting an all-out war like this is strange."
Hancheol tapped his forehead as if a headache were coming on.
"He's an awakener whose body has changed. All we know is that he has a pair of large wings, and that he uses them well enough to force aerial combat and dictate the flow of a fight. Beyond that, we know nothing. Even that much is just rumor, so I can't say how accurate it is. But even if he can steer a battle from the air, he still has no reason to do this. It's pure loss for them."
In the end, all we knew was that he had wings capable of aerial combat — and nothing more.
We kept tossing ideas around together until I noticed Hyunseok and Yeonseo starting to doze off.
"Uncles, would it be all right if we went in and got some rest?"
"Ah, of course! Go on. You must be exhausted after clearing the tower. I heard some of you got hurt, too. I'll send someone with medicine."
"Thank you."
I caught Uncle Dusik's eye, made a silent promise to meet him again, and led the two of them to their room.
After putting them both to bed, I stepped back out and met with Uncle Dusik again.
"So what's the deadline?"
"Straight to the point, huh. They said to show up at Paris Park by noon tomorrow."
"Hmm. No matter how I look at it, I can't figure this out. Why go that far?"
Uncle Dusik shrugged.
"Beats me. I've met the bastard once, but back then… I wasn't exactly in my right mind."
Judging by his tone, it had something to do with his late daughter. I was about to change the subject rather than press him when he spoke first.
"Charlotte. I suppose I can tell you."
Leaning against a nearby wall, he told me how he and his daughter had been on their way to the Mokdong Settlement when the Falcon Gang ambushed them — how he had failed to protect the people traveling with them, and failed to protect his daughter.
"That's a terrible story."
"It's already in the past. More importantly, that was around the time Ara awakened her ability."
"Is that so? Hmm. So that's why you've been searching for news of her all this time."
"Of course. To Ara, that girl was as good as a real sister."
He lifted his gaze to the sky, and his eyes held sorrow, regret, and a dozen other things I couldn't name.
Losing someone precious must hurt exactly like that.
And as I thought it, Hyunseok's face rose unbidden in my mind.
Why… why am I seeing his face right now…?
It was probably because I had watched him nearly die right in front of me. I shook my head and decided to hear a little more from Uncle Dusik.
"Who brought that note, by the way? On the way here, Uncle Chunsik said he'd been out looking around and hadn't found anything."
"Hmm? Ah — it was some man who lives in the shantytown. From what I heard, he went outside looking for anything useful, ran into those bastards, and they handed him the note."
"He goes outside? Oh — is he one of the resource scouts?"
"No. As far as I know, he just wanders around on his own. He isn't even part of any of the search teams we put together."
Something clicked in my head like a spark.
"Wait a second. He isn't on any team, and he's still going out to search? That's pretty strange."
Uncle Dusik thought for a moment after hearing me.
"Hmm. Getting onto a search team is actually fairly difficult. The first requirement is having enough ability to explore and protect yourself. We can't just send people out to die. And people who live alone are pretty common in a settlement like this. Plenty of reasons someone might prefer it that way. But looking at it from another angle… maybe you're right, Charlotte. Maybe they were exploiting that gap."
"We need to find him right now."
I set off with Uncle Dusik for the shantytown outside the settlement, hunting for the man — and then a massive BOOM split the night, followed by screams.
"Fire!!!" "Everyone, run!!!"
We followed the noise to a building that looked like it had been fitted out as a chapel, and the whole structure was blazing so brightly it lit up the dark.
"We have to put this out…?!"
People nearby were hauling buckets of water, but a fire of that size was never going to yield to buckets.
But with Durandal and Curtana in my hands, even a blaze like that was something I could turn into Holy Fire and control at will.
"Stand aside! I'll handle it."
"What are you talking about, little girl?! It's dangerous, get ba— wait…?"
The old man who had tried to stop me fell silent the moment he saw me command the flames as if they belonged to me.
I snuffed the fire out in moments, then went into the charred building with Uncle Dusik — and from inside came a sound that should never have been there.
A shrieking kieeeeek! tore through the air, and a strange monster in tattered rags lunged straight at us.
"Uncle!"
I poured holy power into my rosary, equipped my armor, drew Durandal, and sent a blade of flame flying as I moved. Uncle Dusik read the situation at once and began evacuating people, while I raised my sword tip and charged the thing in front of me.
The monster's movements were painfully simple — like a sick person thrashing around at random.
I closed the distance fast, cut both of its descending arms from below, then brought the blade down from above and severed its legs. As it toppled, I took its head.
"Hah… why was something like this even here?"
Strangely, the monster left no magic stone behind. Instead it withered and shriveled, giving off a foul stench like a rotting corpse.
Leaving it like that felt dangerous, so after a word with Uncle Dusik I decided to burn it with Holy Fire.
As the Holy Fire consumed it, I saw fine black threads lift from the body and drift toward the sky.
Those… those appear on people who worship an evil god… Why here…?!
"Charlotte?! Are you all right?"
Uncle Dusik caught my shoulder when he saw the look on my face.
"Ah — yes, I'm fine. I already disposed of it with Holy Fire, so you don't need to worry. Do you know anything about that monster?"
"Well… I've never seen one like that myself. Something about it felt familiar, but that shouldn't be possible."
"What do you mean?"
"It reminded me of the virus-infected from the Ryan Incident. The way it moved, and the way it withered after it went down."
What had started as a girl's small detour was beginning to feel like the first gust of a much larger storm.
Somewhere underground, groundwater dripped from the ceiling — drip, drip — gathering into a shallow pool on the floor.
In that place, a girl sat with her hands and feet chained to the wall, speaking with a man.
No — not speaking. Interrogation. Torture, more accurately.
"Hey, little lady. You'd better answer fast. I'm not a patient man. Ah~ looking at you, you're thinking of using your ability to jump me, aren't you? I'd drop that idea. Those chains holding you are pretty special. Back when the American government was still more or less functional, they made tools like this upstairs specifically to lock down awakeners' powers."
The girl's eyes went wide. The man smirked and stepped closer.
A man with a pair of massive wings on his back dropped to one knee in front of the girl slumped against the wall in chains, and asked his questions again.
She lifted a face that had been struck more times than anyone could count, managed a faint smile, and spat a mouthful of blood at him.
"Ha! You've got some nerve!!"
He stood, kicked her hard in the stomach, wiped the blood from his clothes, and spoke again.
"Looks like there are people from other settlements here besides that bandit idiot. Spit it out. Now!!"
"I… have nothing… to say… to someone like you…!"
"That so? Still not talking even after this?!"
A fist cracked into her — thud — and a sharp slap rang out as his palm struck her cheek. The only sound that filled the underground chamber after that was the girl writhing in pain.
"Haa, fine! Doesn't matter anyway. With this, I can beat anyone."
Han Jin-o pulled a glass bottle from his coat — a bottle packed with pills that radiated a strange, wrong energy — and held it up for her to see.
He grabbed Kang Ara by the hair, shook the bottle in front of her face, and went on.
"You know what? Just one of these, and even a weak little thing like you would get strong enough to break those chains and put me down on the spot."
Ara's eyes flicked to the bottle.
"Here. I'll be generous and leave one for you. So either take it and come kill me — or stay chained up and die without even seeing those precious family members of yours bleed out. Your choice."
He set a single pill right in front of Ara and walked away.
In her eyes, as she stared at it, hunger for power and fear of the unknown sat side by side.
"I'm heading out! Keep that bitch and the others under control!!"
One of his men followed Han Jin-o as he kicked the door open and asked,
"Boss, why the hell did you show that kid the pills? What if she actually takes one and comes after us?!"
Han Jin-o answered with a twisted, ugly little smirk.
"Relax. Even if those bastards call this their 'success,' the only thing anyone turns into after swallowing one is a monster. Every single person we fed one to ended up the same way. 'Success'? It's a failure, pure and simple."
"Well… yeah, that's true."
Both of them remembered the day the pills had first arrived. A priest from the Obelisk cult had swaggered in calling them a success, and several of their own men had taken the pills. For a moment they had grown stronger — and then they had lost all reason and turned on their own side.
"So it doesn't matter if the girl takes it or not. If she doesn't, we just grind her down with despair. If she does — well. We send her back to that precious family of hers and let her kill them. Heh."
"That's our boss!"
The two of them headed back to where the rest of the gang was gathering, already preparing for tomorrow's assault on the settlement.