The Tower of Evil

Lee Gwangsu's phone went off in a harsh, rattling ring.

He answered without a moment's hesitation, and a subordinate's urgent voice came spilling through at once.

"Team Leader! The Seongjin Association is on the move!"

In that instant his eyes went sharp. He had expected all of it.

He was no fool. He had never taken the Seongjin Association lightly, nor written them off as ordinary gangsters. If anything, he was one of the few who judged them with a cold, unsentimental eye. That was why he had deliberately scattered his forces in advance—around each of the Association's branches, and above all around the sites tied to old cases.

And now, out of that whole net, a single movement had been caught.

"Where? Can you tell which way they're heading?"

A tight breath came back through the line.

"Seven vehicles just tore out of the Fourth Branch. We're expecting more movement. Their heading is... the old fire. Near the place where Han Seungwoo's uncle died!"

The site of the fire. Lee Gwangsu's face hardened all at once.

So the bastards really were a step ahead. Still inside what I accounted for.

He snatched up the radio.

"This is Team Leader Lee Gwangsu! All units move immediately to the site I designate. Target area: the vicinity of the Han Seungwoo fire scene! Every vehicle rolls now, and we cut their routes!"

Light bars flared. Sirens shook the ground, and the police cars surged as one. Tires screamed as the car carrying Lee Gwangsu ripped away down the road, and urgent reports kept crackling from the radio inside.

"Seven Seongjin vehicles have entered the highway. Estimated arrival, within ten minutes!"

The engine roared, the RPMs climbing with his subordinate's words. His heart hammered. Veins stood out across the hand locked on the wheel, and cold sweat beaded on his brow.

He did not know exactly what was happening out there. One thing, though, was certain. If the Seongjin Association reached the scene first, it would all be over—and the truth of this case, the filth that had been buried for so long, would stay buried forever.

"Faster! Do not let those Seongjin bastards get there first!"

He keyed the radio again. Out on the road, red and blue light split the dark. This was no simple arrest operation. It was open war between justice and crime.

Jeong Iksu, action captain of the Seongjin Association.

Under the skies of old Seoul, there was not a blood-reeking street that did not know those three syllables. He had butchered dozens with a single blade. The men who still limped from the wounds of that day numbered in the hundreds, and the dead were past counting. He lived draped in grudges and hatred. And yet he was still alive.

The reason? Simple. He was strong. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Strength was the only reason a man could keep from dying inside all that hatred—the only justification.

Known even now as a legendary knife-fighter, he remained one of the Seongjin Association's action captains, and he was still very much in the field. That was why he had come in person at the disturbance inside the territory he oversaw. They called him an executive these days, but he was a knife-man: the sort who could not rest until he had seen a thing with his own eyes and cut it with his own hand.

He stepped out of the car, and the smell of blood stabbed up his nose at once. Entrails. Blood. Gunpowder. Seared flesh.

...This isn't rot.

A hunter knows. This was the smell of blood just taken. And the thing that had done the hunting was right there ahead of him, clothes soaked through, walking out through the doors of the district police substation.

A kid...?

The build was not large. The body ran thin, and the eyes were dull, almost vacant. That only made him more dangerous. A gait drenched in blood. Pupils without a trace of fear. Breath in which no hesitation could be felt.

"All of you. Hold."

At his word the men froze, tension locking them in place. Every one of them knew. When he spoke like that, what followed was not a fight. It was a slaughter.

He drew the blade—a long, slender knife that had slept in the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠leather case at his waist. Taiwanese steel, fed on the blood of hundreds. Whenever that edge moved, at least one line of blood was sure to follow.

"You did this?"

A question, only to confirm. And then a brief locking of eyes.

As I thought!

Not a beast. Not a man, either.

A hunter.

Instinct was speaking. This one was a hunter, the same as he was. Jeong Iksu had passed through too many battlefields and too much experience to be fooled by an exterior. His heart kicked—and in time with that beat, he drove in as fast as he could, along the shortest line. A lion gives everything it has even when it hunts a rabbit. The optimal arc: a throat opened in the instant before the enemy could ready himself.

"Die!"

The point was driving for the neck—

...?

Gone. The figure was gone.

"Where—!"

Something flashed, and the sky turned over.

...What...?

He was looking at the ground. Feet. Blood. The pavement. And his own body.

...My body?

Ah. So his head had come off.

Blood fountained. The head thudded and rolled across the ground. And so the legendary knife-fighter fell without ever registering that he had died.

That day, in front of the substation, the Seongjin Association's legendary blade became prey with its throat torn out, without managing a single word. And the Association men who saw it—

"..."

"..."

Before a killing quieter than any death they had ever witnessed, they could only keep silent.

Blood pooled and spread across the ground. Two legs that no longer moved. And one corpse, not yet gone cold, its black veins burst open.

"..."

It was quiet. A moment quieter than death itself. There was not even the sound of breath. Not one of them dared take that single step.

Slowly, I lifted my gaze. The Seongjin crowd filled the space before the substation, every man armed, tools and blades raised toward me, lips bitten white.

Dozens of red numbers hung overhead, covering my vision. Most of them sat near minus one thousand, or past it.

Of course they did.

The Seongjin Association. On the surface they played at being a respectable enterprise, but the place was a den of filth that reeked. Death. Murder. Torture. Human trafficking. Drugs. They were the kind who committed everything this society forbade—and I was the Judge who judged such people, who grew strong by feeding on the wicked.

"..."

"...!"

For an instant my eyes met one of theirs. No warning. No answer. The moment I moved... it began.

I planted my foot, and the ground ruptured and split beneath it. Force compressed into a single instant detonated, and I vanished from every line of sight.

"Wh—where...?!"

I came around behind them. An ordinary man might have read a movement like that well enough. I was the exception.

Agility, 19. Even 10 would already be past anything you could still call human, and this was nearly double that. So I had circled that whole distance, and they never knew.

My hand closed on the nearest man's head. Still gripping it, I drove it straight down.

A human head is weaker than people think. The moment it struck the shattered concrete, it burst like fruit. Blood sprayed.

"Hhk!"

"When?!"

The rest scattered in shock. Pointless. My legs tore the wind as they moved, and my arms became a grinder for bone.

"Aaaagh!"

Some of them ran.

"Son of a—!"

"You fucking dog!"

Some raised their weapons. The responses differed. The result was the same for all of them. I broke one man's arm, stabbed out another's eye, and punched clean through a third man's gut.

"Gyaaaaah!"

Screams, the rip of tearing flesh, the crack of breaking bone. It was as precise as a scene played out upon a stage. Blood flew. Bodies rolled across the ground. And I never once paused to catch my breath.

Karma stacked. There was no justice in what I was doing here, now. No salvation, either. This was only punishment—the sum of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠evil piled up through murder after murder. All I was doing was returning that result with my own hands.

"..."

I looked, one by one, into the eyes of those who had to die. Every one of them understood. They were prey, with death already before them.

The old law and the old order would have given them questions, and chances. So I asked nothing. Cut a person, and you are cut. Kill a person, and you die. That was the unchanging, fitting principle, and it was judgment. And that was my work: the beginning of retribution for every evil this society had, in the end, chosen to look away from.

The light bars blinked and tore the night open. Sirens wailed with the shriek of tires, and police cars lined up one after another before the substation. Team Leader Lee Gwangsu, first to take command of the scene, kicked his door open and got out.

"Approach with caution, all of you! Survivors first—no exceptions!"

He did not hang back. Faster than anyone, he drew his pistol and strode toward the scene. But—

"...What is this...?"

Feet that had seemed as if nothing in the world could stop them came to a halt. Before the substation, what lay in sight was corpses. Dozens of them. Close to a hundred, strewn across the ground. Skulls burst red. Bodies with necks twisted a hundred and eighty degrees. Corpses frozen where they had died, still clutching knives. Blood, entrails, and the stink of cooked flesh mixed with smoke spread thick enough to choke the night air.

"...Is that... Jeong Iksu?"

Someone muttered it. Lee Gwangsu heard the voice, followed the gaze, and found him. Jeong Iksu—a legendary knife-fighter whose name circulated even among the police. But now only a headless body remained where he had been. The head had rolled away, soaked in blood, both eyes still open in shock.

"U... urk...!"

One officer retched. The others lost their words and only trembled at the lip. Someone murmured.

"...Wiped out. A person did this...?"

But—

"Someone could still be inside! All units, prepare to enter!"

Lee Gwangsu shouted it through clenched teeth. His heart was pounding madly, and his feet hardly wanted to move, and still he took the lead. He bound his shaking heart with will and drove his hesitating feet forward by duty. Pistol held out ahead of him, he eased the iron door open. It groaned. And then they saw.

"...!"

Lee Gwangsu's breath stopped, and so did the breath of everyone looking on that scene. The inside was hell itself. The fluorescent lights were shattered, and corpses in police uniforms lay across a floor soaked in blood. Torsos crumpled. Arms severed. Faces crushed past recognition. Some had died still gripping their pistols, spent casings scattered around them.

They even got shots off...?

Lee Gwangsu's eyes shook hard.

"Who... who the hell...?!"

He bit his lip before he knew he was doing it.

"We're too late...."

An officer beside him said it in a trembling voice.

"That bastard... he killed police and syndicate men without picking between them.... Who in the world...?"

It was everyone's question. But Lee Gwangsu knew. One name. The name sitting at the junction of all of this.

Han Seungwoo. Was it you?

Even so, he could not easily believe it until he saw the man with his own eyes. Someone who had only just turned twenty—with what kind of strength, and what kind of nerve?

Whether it was Han Seungwoo or someone he had never anticipated, one thing was certain.

He isn't moving on emotion alone.

This was no simple revenge play. It was a hunt, plain and clear: a thorough, organized punishment aimed at evil. Lee Gwangsu set his fingertips against the substation wall where the blood had dried. What he felt there was not the shadow of revenge, but a predator's coldness.

Then where next...?

He judged at once that it would not be Seongjin headquarters. That place was too deep, and too solid. By any common-sense reckoning, it was a place you could strike only at the end.

"Analyze the route so far."

He gave the order to the detectives under him.

"Victim lists, and the recent records of clashes. Cross-check every internal connection inside the Seongjin Association. The next strike point is probably... a Seongjin branch where there was already bad blood."

He lifted the radio.

"All units, attention. Attach surveillance to every Seongjin branch. Deploy patrols immediately, establish access-control lines, and restrict civilian entry."

Cold analysis. But there was one thing he had not considered—that sometimes instinct makes a finer instrument of prediction than calculation.

I could see it.

At the edge of the city center stood a structure taller, harder, and more imposing than any other building.

The name of the most prosperous conglomerate in this city—and, at the same time, the deepest and vastest cradle of crime.

I stood before it. To someone else ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it might have been nothing but the respectable headquarters of a major corporation. To my eyes it looked different. That place was a tower. A tower of evil, raised from countless corpses. A symbol of greed and corruption that had climbed into the sky on a footing of every crime and every drop of blood.

"Hoo—"

I let the breath out. Slowly, and deep. A little preparation. That was enough.

Now I would climb this tower of evil. And at its summit, I would tear the throne of evil to shreds.