Chapter 97
Terminally Ill, but It's Okay — Episode 97
What's next. Just as I imagined.
"No, what the X—?"
"Gaaah, my leg."
"Ghk."
The moment the white herons tore into the flock of crows, the office quickly turned into utter chaos.
THUD, THUD.
They were striking down with bread, yet oddly enough it produced the sound of blunt weapons landing.
I entered slowly as well and approached a thug.
The one closest to me was clutching his crushed nose, blood streaming down, and hacking.
"Wh-what the hell are you."
THUD.
Instead of answering, I hit him in the same sore spot again.
"Ghk, you demonic bastard......."
THUD.
This time I smacked the back of his head, and he went quiet.
I studied the area around the fallen man's left forearm closely.
And I found it.
"A tattoo."
It was lumpy, as if something had been injected into the skin, and the shape drawn was that of a mantis.
"Hm."
But it wasn't glowing. At a glance, it didn't look much different from an ordinary tattoo.
Did it only glow when mana was channeled?
But then again, there was nothing in this guy's body that could be called mana.
"X—. Just blow it. Blow it and kill every last one of those bastards."
That was when. A shout filled with fury bored into my ears.
The bearded man with a cigar in his mouth was bellowing orders at the top of his lungs.
"But blow what, exactly."
Surely it couldn't be a bomb.
I was just thinking I should have grabbed the boss first and was starting to rise when—
Flash—
In an instant, light burst from the mantis tattoo.
Squirm—
At the same time, the fallen thug began staggering to his feet.
The thug flailed like a zombie and let out a gurgling groan.
"...K-kill... you."
His rage-filled pupils were stained red from burst capillaries. His speech was slurred, but the fact that he could still talk meant he hadn't completely lost his mind.
But was it because we were facing off?
"Interesting."
I sensed immediately that the man's ability and momentum had changed from before.
It wasn't an illusion born from the fact that a previously fine man was making animal noises and the tattoo on his forearm was flashing.
It was the manifestation of a sense of wrongness that my Heightened Senses had picked up.
It felt as though his very essence had been elevated by a step.
He had clearly been an ordinary person, yet now he gave off an aura similar to an Awakener's.
Had this kind of setting existed in the original work?
I searched my memory, but nothing came to mind.
"So you're not an ordinary thug. Right?"
Grrrr.
Instead of answering, the man threw himself at me.
He closed the distance in an instant with movements that would put an athlete to shame.
As if trying to drag me into grappling, he tried to wrap me up without consent.
"But even so......."
I lightly twisted my body and dodged.
"A thug's still a thug."
I drove my fist toward his wide-open back.
A common straight punch.
An extension of the taekwondo I'd learned in elementary school.
But the force reaching 5.2 Strength—an ordinary person averages around 3—was threatening enough.
The man went flying like a line drive slicing between second and third base, staggered, and tried to reset his stance.
"I'm busy, so lie down for now."
But this time, I was the one closing in. I sprinted at him and rammed him with my shoulder.
Since I didn't know martial arts well, I simply leveraged my overwhelming physical stats.
THUD.
The man went flying with a whoosh and collided with the wall. He didn't move, apparently knocked out again.
"What the hell is going on."
It was an unusual phenomenon, so I glared at the empty air, but there was no answer.
As always, I'd have to figure it out myself.
I calmly steadied myself, then surveyed the whole scene.
First, of the forty-odd members of the Flash Faction, about half were thugs with glowing tattoos.
But the intensity of the light seeping through their suits varied from one to another.
Some were faint, and some were fairly vivid.
The difference in results was so obvious that there was no need to deduce anything separately.
"Definitely......."
The vivid ones seemed stronger, and those who had originally been stronger seemed to emit brighter light from their tattoos.
"Aaaah, s-save me."
Just look at the buzz-cut Awakener whose collar Reina was currently grabbing.
That man had an especially bright glowing tattoo.
When I'd checked him at the entrance, he'd looked like about a Tier 10 Awakener, but now he carried the aura of someone around Tier 9.
The wall between tiers that some people could not cross even after a lifetime of devotion—he had crossed it with nothing more than a single tattoo.
This was not something to pass over lightly.
Not only was it a trace of Yoo So-young, but was this a side effect that had appeared because of a new cycle?
Or was it simply an anomaly, or a gap in the setting that I didn't know about?
I needed to investigate thoroughly and determine the truth.
...That was what I resolved. And that was when.
[Through outstanding observation and powerful obsession, you have opened the possibility of a new development.]
[Achievement-248: Story Pioneer]
[As a reward, you acquire 20 SP.]
[An unplanned Inter Quest is triggered.]
[Inter Quest]
[Objective: Confirm the secret of the glowing tattoos]
[Reward: 30 days added to Remaining Time, 50SP provided]
I looked at 4885, which had only now reacted, and let out a short laugh.
It seemed like that side had scrambled to prepare something too.
I was glad I wasn't alone.
Thanks to Reina coming along, I didn't have to worry about the small fry.
My eyes went straight past the chaos.
"Let's get out of here first."
"X—. No, what kind of monster bitch is that......."
"It'll be worse if you get caught."
The bearded man was dragged by a subordinate thug with a knife scar on his face and fled through a door at the back of the office.
"You can handle it alone, right? I'll move separately."
I shouted to Reina, then crossed the space in pursuit of them.
"D-don't let him follow. Stop him."
For all their pretense of loyalty to their boss, two thugs with glowing tattoos blocked my path.
...They wanted to die.
Swish-sh-sh.
I pulled out two strands of Cheonjam Thread and wrapped one around each man.
After infusing mana and lightly flinging them left and right, I fired Cheonjam Thread at the door handle.
I closed the distance in an instant.
BOOM—
I threw the door open as if breaking it down, and saw a narrow, long corridor and the back of the bearded man's head as he sprinted down it.
"Where do you think you're going."
At the same moment I gauged the distance, I manifested a stone.
Not just in form—a real fist-sized stone, stone in nature as well.
But if I tied Cheonjam Thread to it and threw it, it would become a weapon worse than a gun.
So I controlled the speed and threw it.
WHIZ—
The stone borrowed the Cheonjam Thread's pull and shot forward in a straight line.
It advanced in the blink of an eye as if crushing the space, and—smack—at the back of the bearded man's head.
—Before it landed, I heard a slicing sound first.
The subordinate thug beside the bearded man.
It was because the knife-scarred man had drawn a sashimi knife and cut it down.
"As expected."
After confirming the light flickering on the man's left forearm, I twitched the corner of my mouth.
In truth, my target was the strongest one among them. Not the bearded man, but the knife-scarred one.
The bearded man was probably a figurehead boss, and that guy was the real power. With the tattoo boost, he looked to be around Tier 8.
In Demonkin terms, around upper Green and lower Blue.
So nothing would change.
He was an opponent within controllable range, so unless I let them go, they couldn't escape this place.
"Block this too."
I quickly manifested a 40% First Sword and hurled it once more, then kicked off the ground at the same time.
Obviously, catching up to the speed of First Sword was impossible.
"Ghk."
The launched First Sword shattered the knife-scarred man's sashimi knife and pierced through his left shoulder.
"Aaaah, b-blood, blood......."
Only after it then embedded itself in the bearded man's thigh did I finally arrive.
"S-save......."
"I'll deal with you a little later."
I smacked the bearded man's face once more as he writhed on the floor.
The bearded man shuddered, then went limp.
The noisy distraction was gone, so only the knife-scarred man remained.
I didn't want to drag this out, so I asked directly.
"What the hell is that tattoo?"
Naturally, what leaked from the man's mouth was barely coherent.
"J-just... kill... me."
So I asked again.
"Why would I?"
"...?"
"Why would I kill you."
"Well......."
It was an important question, but the man seemed flustered and couldn't get his words out.
He'd probably blurted it out without much thought.
Well, he must have learned it from gangster movies or something. In those, they always say to kill everyone if you get caught.
Tsk, tsk.
I clicked my tongue at length, then spoke my honest feelings.
"I'd actually prefer you to live. So hang in there. This is only the second time I've used it on a person, so I don't really know what side effects might occur."
"What are you talking about......."
Swish.
I pulled out Cheonjam Thread and wrapped it around the man's body.
"W-wait a second."
The knife-scarred man was greatly flustered and thrashed violently in resistance.
Earlier he'd asked me to kill him, and now it seemed he wanted to live.
But I had no intention of stopping.
The situation was quite serious, so I absolutely had to know.
Just what was happening.
I placed my hand on the knife-scarred man's head and murmured quietly.
"Appraisal."
* * *
4 p.m.
Joo A-rin returned to her lodgings carrying only a store-bought sauce and a single pack of ramyun—she needed the seasoning packet.
"Hm......."
Of course, her heart was as unsettled as the empty basket.
If only she hadn't known, she could have just cleaned the octopus and prepped the abalone.
Under the assumption that Cheon Seo-yoon's guess was true, that small store-bought sauce felt—with a bit of exaggeration—like a complex magic formula.
Because she wondered whether she really had the right to cook this.
Her missing mother.
It would be food carrying memories of someone she could never see again.
"This is hard."
Joo A-rin stared blankly at the sauce container, then moved to her desk.
There was still time, so she'd think a little more. She turned on her laptop to check work emails.
"......."
But perhaps because old memories had surfaced for the first time in a while?
The missing-person report she'd kept hidden away and hadn't opened in years.
That case from back then, which she'd lived having forgotten because it no longer stirred any emotion, resurfaced and tickled a corner of her mind.
Joo A-rin, who had been motionless for a moment, finally moved the mouse.
Click—
[Cold Case-8742: The Letter Demonkin Disappearance Case]
About seven years ago.
Letters in black envelopes had been sent to around fifty people, and the recipients had gone missing one after another.
The motive, evidence, and so on remained unclear, leaving the case unsolved. Even the Letter Demonkin identified as the culprit was only a provisional name; in truth, no information about them had ever been revealed.
Click—
Joo A-rin read through the report as if retracing past regrets.
The more she read, the deeper the furrow between her brows grew.
Perhaps because her perspective had changed, the sloppiness of the report's structure—things she hadn't noticed before—and the excuses written down as if speculation were fact dug into her like thorns in her eyes.
It was slipshod. The sense that they'd investigated carelessly and covered it up was vivid.
But she had no intention of raising a fuss.
Nothing would change anyway.
Thanks to the person who had abandoned her children and left, she was too busy living day to day. She had long forgotten any resentment for someone she no longer even hated.
Click—
The report had reached its final page before she knew it.
[Victim List]
It was a meaningless page, so she scrolled down quickly, swish-swish, intending to at least check those names for the first time in a while.
"...!"
But then, an unexpected word flashed past.
.
.
So the scroll stopped. And along with it, the screen.
Joo A-rin blinked, then leaned forward hurriedly, wondering if she'd misread.
[Victim No. 21. Yoon Jeong-a]
Age: Mid-30s
Family: Presumed Geunwon Sulga.