Sahyeol Gate
Once Leo had devoured every stat and skill of rank 500 or below from the players of Sahyeol Gate, Jin-soo granted them eternal rest.
"So what are we going to do now?"
Shin Sua asked him.
"Just because we sit still doesn't mean they will."
The men ordered to kidnap Jin-soo and Shin Sua had gone missing, and yet the two of them were walking the city in perfect health. The Sahyeol Gate branch manager who had given that order was not about to let it lie.
If he were the type to sit quietly, he never would have ordered a kidnapping like that in the first place.
He would come after them, of course, and dig until he had the truth of what had happened. There were plenty of ways to handle it. They could leave Starting City, or they could ask Changsung Gate for help — a sect already on bad terms with Sahyeol. Jin-soo, however, had no intention of running from Sahyeol Gate or begging Changsung for aid.
No need for any of that.
He was hardly saint enough to swallow an attack launched against him out of pure malice and do nothing.
"Let's pay them back for what they did."
Take the first blow and answer with nothing but defense, and all you did was look like easy prey.
"I think that's better too. The more players of that sort there are, the more people end up hurt."
Shin Sua was in full agreement.
"For now, let's turn the summons loose and head back."
"Will that really be all right?"
She looked unconvinced. No one knew better than Shin Sua herself just how strong Jin-soo was, but the gap between having his summons and going without them was enormous.
"It's fine."
"All right."
At his certainty she smiled and nodded.
A hiss of displaced air, a grinding crack of bone and stone — Jin-soo called his summons forth.
Scatter. Hunt monsters.
The order fell.
"Kyaoooo!"
Two Bone Dragons loosed a low roar, beat their wings, and climbed into the sky. Two Sand Worms bored into the earth and vanished, while two Basilisks simply smashed through the trees and thundered off through the forest. Shadow Summons, Dragon Tooth Soldiers, undead summons, a demilich, and orc shamans wove together into formation, then broke into several bands and began their march.
"Kuwoooerk!"
"Uwoooerk!"
The ground shuddered under their going, and Jin-soo's summons scattered to every corner of the hunting grounds.
"Now we go back and get some real rest."
"We're not moving right away?"
"We've been through plenty. One day of proper rest won't kill us. Stay at the inn and there's no ambush to worry about, either. You don't want to?"
"No. I do."
Jin-soo and Shin Sua set off at an easy pace toward Starting City.
Sahyeol Gate isn't a place to take lightly.
It was one of the highest guilds on the Tower's 200th Floor.
Their players run high in level, on the whole.
More decisive still, they were rich in experience fighting other people.
Nothing like the players from Earth.
These were men who had trained in martial arts long before the Tower ever took them — men who had sparred and fought for real more times than they could count. They had no qualms about killing, and combat against an armed human was familiar ground.
Which is why they sometimes struggle against monsters that aren't humanoid.
Even that, though, was a problem they could solve quickly once they adapted.
A war against all of Sahyeol Gate might be difficult without the summons.
What Jin-soo meant to fight was not the whole of Sahyeol Gate on the 200th Floor, but only the branch stationed in Starting City.
Starting City is nothing more than where the weakest players on a given floor gather.
The same held for Sahyeol Gate's branch there. Which meant there was no reason to halt the summons' automatic hunting just to deal with that one branch.
Leo and Kkami alone are more than enough.
More than enough, in truth — excessive. Kkami's scouting would track every Sahyeol player's movements, and Leo would hit them by surprise and strip their stats and skills. That was all it would take.
Honestly, leave it entirely to Leo and Kkami and they could probably wipe out a single branch without breaking a sweat.
Even so, he could not afford to grow careless. If Sahyeol Gate had someone on Ak Chanseo's level, Kkami or Leo might be the ones who paid for it.
I don't even know the full extent of Leo's strength...
What if blind faith in the cat got him hurt? Jin-soo had no wish to carry that risk.
Rest properly for a day first.
After that, he could take them apart one by one.
"A full day, and not a whisper from those bastards. Don't tell me they still haven't moved?"
Son Sanghyeok, branch manager of Sahyeol Gate in Starting City, scowled and glared at his men.
"W-well, I'm not sure..."
"They said they'd move yesterday, on the spot. Did those idiots wander off somewhere in the middle?"
"Perhaps the targets kept to the main streets, and they never found an opening."
"Even so, they should have reported, shouldn't they?"
At his bark, the subordinates' eyes flickered.
"Did those fools oversleep?"
"We'll turn over every inn and tavern this instant and drag them before you, Branch Manager."
They vanished like lightning. None of them wanted to linger at Son Sanghyeok's side and catch the thunder of his temper.
Within the Starting City branch of Sahyeol Gate, Son Sanghyeok was as good as a king, and his cruelty was so well known that his men groveled before him. He had lived as if no one in the world stood above him long before the Tower ever dragged him in, and that attitude had not changed afterward. If anything, it had grown worse.
Before the Tower, he had at least kept one eye on the great sects and the supreme masters. Once he was inside, even that thin necessity vanished. There were no great sects, and no master stronger than he was, so no one existed who could stop him from carrying on like an utter delinquent. Floor by floor he reigned as a tyrant, taking whatever caught his eye and killing whoever irritated him.
The first real brake on that life came on Tower Floor 150, when masters stronger than Son Sanghyeok and great sects appeared once more. He was quick to join Sahyeol Gate, the mightiest of the sects that walked the unorthodox path, and from then until his arrival on the 200th Floor he had eaten well and lived well.
The reason he could live exactly as he pleased, both before the Tower and after, was that he was a martial artist who had reached the furthest edge of the first-rate. And once he awakened as a Player, the System that came with it set wings on a man whose martial arts had stagnated for a very long time.
By the nature of unorthodox arts, the odds of Son Sanghyeok ever breaking past the wall of the first-rate had been so vanishingly small they might as well have been impossible. After he became a Player, that changed. Hunt monsters of a high enough grade, stack the proper achievements, and the wall could be crossed with ease. He had hunted the gatekeeper of Tower Floor 150 alone, broken through the wall of level 500, and climbed from the first-rate into the peak realm as if it were nothing.
He already had the strength to advance to the next city whenever he liked. He remained branch manager of Starting City all the same, on the excuse that there were still achievements he had not obtained — because if he moved on, he would no longer be the first man of a Sahyeol Gate branch.
I need to make one big score before I leave for the next city.
Son Sanghyeok had absolute confidence in his own martial power, and so he wanted war: war with the sects raised by other players out of Moosung, and with the guilds built by players from Earth and from Arius. War promised faster, easier growth than hunting monsters ever could. But even a man who bowed to no one could not entirely ignore the eyes above him, and so he could not simply pick a fight with whoever he pleased.
Changsung Gate is perfect.
Changsung Gate and Sahyeol Gate had been at odds from the moment of their birth, and they clashed constantly. They bared their teeth and growled over the pettiest slights. Even so, the leadership on both sides kept to a careful line, and it had never quite come to war. Son Sanghyeok wanted to use exactly that.
If he kept provoking them just short of handing his superiors a pretext, until Changsung Gate was the one to strike first?
It ought to be like blowing your nose without lifting a hand. Trouble is, they don't fall for it easily.
Ak Chanseo, Changsung Gate's branch manager in Starting City, was no match for him. The rest of that rabble was not even worth naming.
Keep poking the newcomers, and there'll be a reaction.
Whether they had joined Changsung Gate or not did not matter. Erase them quietly, leave no evidence, and that was the end of it. Afterward, if Sahyeol Gate offered no material proof and only let the scent drift — the scent that, by circumstance alone, they were the true culprits?
Ak Chanseo will move. No question.
He was not a man who could sit still once he knew someone had suffered, or died, because of him.
I only have to keep them from catching my tail.
So he meant to keep aiming at weak newcomers, the sort he could erase without a trace.
And yet it's already gone sideways from the very start.
He had stressed how important this was, and still his men had handled it with a sloppy hand. He fully intended to make them pay for that.
"Where the hell did that bastard Gwangchu slink off to, knowing full well what the Branch Manager's like?"
"He's probably still watching them."
"Even so, he should have reported, shouldn't he? You think only they get thrashed if there's no report? We get thrashed too."
"That's true."
"That bastard Gwangchu — I am not letting this go."
The Sahyeol Gate officers ground their teeth and poured their fury out at Jin Gwangchu, the man responsible for the job.
"Nyaang?"
Mid-rant, both of them turned at the sudden meow of a cat.
"It's a kitten."
"Not a monster, is it?"
"How would a monster get into the city?"
"Fair point."
They dismissed the black-furred kitten with a glance and turned away again.
In the next instant the kitten kicked off the ground, shot upward, and lashed out with its front paws at lightning speed. The blows landed in a soft, rapid flurry.
"Ghk! What the— has this damn kitten lost its mind and decided to die? How dare you!"
"Hahaha! You idiot. Ambushed by a kitten? It's not even a monster!"
The officer who had been hit exploded with rage. The one watching clutched his stomach and howled with laughter.
"Huh? My legs... the strength..."
He folded, dropping bonelessly to the ground. The colleague who had been making a tremendous fuss over catching a single kitten had collapsed without a shred of strength left, and the laughter died on the spot.
"W-what?"
"Nyaaang!"
The black kitten lunged at the startled officer.
"Die!"
He ripped his weapon free — a great blade — and swung it at the kitten. The little body twisted lightly aside, slipped the edge, and raked him with its front paws in the same motion. A flurry of blows landed in an instant. The officer flinched, then recovered just as quickly. There was no real impact at all, as if he had been tapped a few times with a cotton bat.
"You damn kitten, I swear—!"
Crimson blade-qi streamed from the great blade in long streaks. He meant to cut the thing down and kill it in a single stroke. He swung, and swung, and swung again, but the black kitten slipped every arc with absurd ease and kept batting at him with those small front paws.
"Grrk!"
Rage surged at the thought of being toyed with by one miserable kitten. Then, all at once, the strength ran out of his legs.
"Huff! Huff! Huff!"
His breath tore ragged, as if his stamina had hit bottom, and the great blade he had lifted light as paper grew heavy beyond belief. Steel clanged against the ground. He dropped with it, and just as his colleague had done, the Sahyeol Gate officer could only sprawl there, helpless.