The Butcher's Vigil
Wrenching his blade free from the earth it had been buried in, Park Woochan hauled in rough, ragged breaths. There were no serious injuries, but the backlash from pushing his body so hard was taking its toll.
Of course, he'd stocked supplies for exactly this kind of occasion. He tipped a top-grade potion, retrieved from the storage space beyond, into his mouth. For all the self-proclaimed talk of it being practically an elixir, perhaps the boasting hadn't been empty after all. The instant the restorative touched his tongue, he could feel his condition turning around — the smoldering pain faded, replaced by an odd, languid heaviness.
The mechanics of it traded natural recovery for mana consumption, regenerating the body directly. Potion in name only, its true nature was closer to a highly effective restorative magic tool. Long-term, this was certainly the healthier option — which was precisely why it was the wrong thing to use in a situation like this. Not that Park Woochan gave a damn about that.
He kicked lightly at the ground with the tip of his toe. And then—
With nothing more than that trivial motion, Park Woochan connected to the dragon vein and began plundering the mana flowing around him, claiming it as his own.
...An outrageous act of madness. Or, alternatively, suicide. There was no other way to describe it.
Adequate facilities for a hunter. Control authority over the gate for a monster. Only after considerable time and preparation on top of that could the flow of a dragon vein be brought under dominion. And he was absorbing an energy of that monstrous scale directly into his own body, without so much as a single proper filtration system?
Needless to say, with the stampede still raging, none of it posed any problem for Park Woochan. His senses, honed to their absolute limit, wielded the ability on his behalf. He drew out the mana composing the dragon vein as if drilling into a well, filtering and refining it. To borrow the earlier metaphor — it was the feat of a hunter hurling himself into a typhoon and bringing every last strand of the storm's wind under his control.
A few seconds of that, and Park Woochan had mastered the typhoon.
His condition was identical to before he'd set out on the hunt — or better. Flexing and unfurling his fingers as he checked his own body, he was finally able to nod in satisfaction.
The results weren't bad, either. Hunting a large-type really did have its own rewards. Was that thanks to Seoa working herself to the bone? No sign of anything stirring nearby anymore, either.
That, in turn, let Park Woochan think with a refreshingly clear head.
I need to get to the summit.
He'd succeeded in hunting the leader, for starters. With no other commanding entity in evidence, the Gangwon Branch should be able to wrap up the stampede without issue. If anything, descending now might throw their command structure into chaos. And besides, he still had unfinished business.
Do Joojin.
The hunter who had vanished so abruptly still hadn't shown himself. If Do Joojin had simply happened to be away from his post when the stampede broke out, he would have rushed to join the fight by now, however late.
And yet.
Do Joojin remained completely out of contact. What was going on?
...It was well past the point where anyone could laugh it off as a bad case of constipation. Frankly speaking, Park Woochan suspected Do Joojin might be behind this stampede. No evidence. No motive. Honestly, it didn't even add up on instinct.
But every last circumstantial clue pointed at him. It wouldn't hold up in a court of law, but as grounds for suspicion, it was more than enough.
Was he one of theirs from the very beginning? Or—?
If only he'd struck while Do Joojin was busy fighting Duduri, he could have settled the question cleanly. Tch — before he knew it, he was clicking his tongue.
His reason for not using his signature was the same. Cut Prettily. In Lee Joongoo's assessment, one-strike-certainty. In Choi Seungjun's assessment, the national first-place holder in the category of imbecilic skill names. With Park Woochan's absolute blade, even an opponent like Duduri could have been settled in a single stroke.
But if Do Joojin was still lurking in the wings, then even Park Woochan needed to ration his strength. After all, he had no idea what Do Joojin's purpose even was right now.
So — onward to the summit. Might as well cull a casual hundred or so monsters on the way up while he was at it...
No — fuck that!!
The next instant, Park Woochan's hand whipped up and delivered a stinging slap to his own cheek. The sharp bolt of pain snapped him instantly back to his senses. This damn sensory ability — this was exactly the problem with it. The situation being what it was, it kept trying to slide nonsense past him at the edges.
He shook out his head and forcibly organized his thoughts. Ignoring it wouldn't actually make things better, granted, but for now it was the lesser evil. He'd just finished carving up a heavyweight, after all. Surely he could endure this much.
Oh, call it... ten minutes or so?
Gazing past the sky he himself had cleaved apart moments ago — watching not a curtain of rain but a falling shower of arrows — that was the judgment Park Woochan reached. For Shin Seoa, an unexpected stretch of hard labor had just opened up.
In any case.
Having barely reined in his bloodlust, Park Woochan set off toward the peak of the mountain. According to what he'd confirmed before coming, there was an association watchtower standing at the summit. If Do Joojin was anywhere, it would be there, nine times out of ten. To avoid squandering strength on monsters amid this bedlam, he'd need somewhere to hole up.
He still had no idea what means had been used to trigger the stampede, but Park Woochan was certain of one thing: even for them, keeping the monsters at bay would require a separate mechanism. The same went for Manpasikjeok, even if they had mobilized it. If a single tool could suppress monsters, the nations of the world would have long since been breeding them in captivity. Precedent made that plain enough. The Succubus Queen — and even the godlike nine-tailed fox — had needed to exert their power to control Gwisu Mountain, after all. Call it a thing no mere secret organization could afford to sit on. If it were truly capable of such a thing, they'd have proclaimed it proudly to inflate the organization's name. At that point, even we couldn't have carelessly touched them.
...And so, his thoughts kept churning. The root of the problem lay there, in the end.
Why had Do Joojin set all this in motion? Had he been one of theirs from the start?
No — to claim that, the staging was contrived to the point of absurdity. The Academy had come to the Gangwon Branch for field training, and just so happened to have one of that organization's operatives there? Such coincidences weren't impossible. But thinking it through, the method was far too clumsy. If he'd been planning to pull this off from the beginning, there'd have been no reason to approach Park Woochan during the lunch break — all it did was raise his guard. The added suspicion that the Gangwon Branch itself might be colluding with them was a bonus.
Which meant the more reasonable story was this: the organization had approached Do Joojin, who originally had no ties to them.
The problem was, he had no idea what had tipped Do Joojin over. What on earth had they offered him? And what did Do Joojin want, that he'd promised them his cooperation?
While Park Woochan was turning all this over, his feet had arrived at the mountain's crest. In the distance, the watchtower glowed with a faint light.
Just as I thought.
From the traces, it seemed the monsters hadn't approached the tower either. The barrier they'd raised around it played its part, no doubt, but more than that, the vast majority of the monsters had likely descended the mountain chasing mana. He lowered his body in silence. Long strides, careful not to leave tracks on the soaked ground. Breath held, gaze stretched far ahead.
...No suspicious presence made itself felt nearby. Mana detection? Not happening. Park Woochan had already made that call. The stampede was in full swing — running his sensing ability now would do nothing but drag his attention straight to the monsters. If anything, he was the one who had to be on guard against suddenly bolting off to hunt them. So instead, Park Woochan chose to accept the risk of ambush.
Distance to the watchtower: ten meters. On any normal day, a gap Park Woochan would clear in a single bound. And yet now, it might as well have been a mountain range. It took him nearly as long as his entire fight with Duduri to finally close in on the tower. Mercifully, no attack from Do Joojin had come flying by then.
Had he not noticed? Or was he baiting this approach on purpose?
With his back pressed against the watchtower wall, Park Woochan let out a stray chuckle. He'd made the mistake of imagining how he must look to Seoa, who was watching all of this. The sabu who marched off to take the leader's head suddenly starts acting like a lunatic?! Khek-hek — a low laugh escaped even Park Woochan himself.
Well, either way. Not a sight I want to show her... But there was no helping it, not right now.
Ear to the wall, attention trained on it for several seconds. Still not so much as a breath of human presence from the watchtower, and Park Woochan drew in his breath once more. And then—
Do Joojin, you fucking bastard!!
Roaring like thunder, Park Woochan hurled himself into the watchtower. Kicking the door off its hinges, he rolled through the entry, catching his balance in an instant as his eyes swept the interior.
And the result—
Ah, shit.
Uncharacteristically, Park Woochan let out a cry of pure shock. But there was no helping it. To put it simply: Do Joojin had been a far more courteous man than Park Woochan had ever imagined. Answering Park Woochan's call in such a wretched state — that, surely, was his way of paying his respects.
Beyond the broken door. On the middle of the stairs leading up the watchtower, Do Joojin's corpse lay sprawled. The unmistakable scent of death, plain to any observer. No verification was needed — no physical enhancer, however capable, could stay alive with a hole punched through his heart.
And so, for one fleeting moment, Park Woochan's mind went white-hot and blank.
Dead? By whose hand? Do Joojin? Why? He wasn't the one behind it all?
The questions came gushing out, each spawning the next. And then, in that very instant—
For the first time since the stampede had begun, the hunter's body locked completely rigid.
Roughly a single second, by the measure of time. But for whoever had orchestrated this situation, that was more than enough. TAANG!!
And then — beyond the dark storm clouds fusing with his own body—
Shin-saem!!
Before he knew it, Park Woochan thought he heard a voice achingly familiar to his ears.
And at the same moment, a low, heavy gunshot echoed across the mountain.