Sahyeol Gate's Scheme (2)
"Kkami."
"Kkaak! Kkaak!"
At Jin-soo's call, Kkami shot up into the sky. He and Shin Sua then made the rounds of the restaurants and taverns, gathering what word they could.
Every answer came back the same.
Something's wrong.
The rumor was spreading far too fast. Worse, the claim that the player who had wiped out the Sahyeol Gate branch was a man of Changsung Gate — the Prism Divine Sword, Jo Unhaeng — was circulating as if it were already proven fact.
Too specific. Too consistent.
This was no rumor drifting by chance. Someone had set it loose on purpose, with a goal in mind.
Give it a single day and it'll grow every scrap of flesh it can.
By tomorrow, dozens of people would be swearing they had watched the Prism Divine Sword, Jo Unhaeng, slaughter the Sahyeol Gate branch with their own eyes.
"Kkaak! Kkaak!"
Just then, Kkami sent back its scouting report.
There they are.
He couldn't pin the number exactly, but roughly twenty players were moving in pairs, sowing the same rumor wherever they went.
Jin-soo seized one of them.
"Why are you spreading a rumor like that?"
"What are you talking about? Spreading a rumor?"
"We've done no such thing."
The two players answered with faces that said they hadn't the faintest idea what he meant. Judging by their expressions alone, it looked as if he had grabbed innocent men. But Kkami's eyes and ears had already confirmed, beyond any doubt, that these were the ones carrying the rumor.
"Heukha Gate?"
Heukha Gate was a sect founded by players from Moosung who made their trade of gathering information — and of twisting it.
"Heukha Gate? And what sect is that supposed to be?"
"We belong to Jangseong Gate."
They kept up the act with perfectly calm faces. It didn't work on Jin-soo.
"I already know everything, so quit the lies. Who's the client?"
He drew up his mana, triggered his Intimidation skill, and let a faint killing intent seep from him as he asked. The two players' legs began to shake.
"We don't know either. Someone offered a huge sum of points for the job, and we simply took it, Great Hero."
"Refuse, and it felt like we'd die on the spot, so we accepted. Please, spare us. We never meant to disgrace Changsung Gate."
They had taken Jin-soo for a man of Changsung Gate, or a master on friendly terms with it.
"You don't know a single thing about the client?"
As the killing intent pouring off him thickened, the two hurried to speak.
"From his presence and the way he spoke, he seemed a master of the unorthodox sects."
"He was no expert of the caliber that works this city. He definitely came down from an upper city."
"If I had to guess, he commissioned the job intending to set Sahyeol Gate and Changsung Gate at each other's throats."
"I suspect he was a master of Geomsal Gate, or of the Heukrim Faction."
The moment they truly believed they might die, mouths that had been shut tight came unstuck, and the words poured out.
"Is that all?"
Jin-soo asked one last time.
"Yes. That's everything. I've told you all I know. I swear it."
"I don't know anything more either."
"We don't take jobs like this, as a rule. But it felt like refusing would get us killed, so we had no choice."
"That's right. If anyone caught us spreading a false rumor, we could end up enemies of both Changsung Gate and Sahyeol Gate. Why would we do something this insane?"
They didn't seem to be lying.
I should have found them sooner.
Then he could have rounded up the disciples of Heukha Gate and stopped the rumor before it spread. And when the client came for revenge, he could have caught the man and dug out whoever stood behind him.
But it was already far too late.
The rumor had spread as far as a rumor could. The client's purpose was as good as accomplished.
Still, better to keep watching. He might try to erase them.
When players from Moosung wanted a secret buried, they killed to silence. The dead tell no tales.
"Go on, then."
Jin-soo let the two go.
"Thank you, Great Hero. Truly, thank you."
"A heart that generous is sure to be blessed."
They bobbed their heads at him, then hurried off as if fleeing.
"Kkami."
"Kkaak! Kkaak!"
At his call, Kkami answered as if to say there was nothing to worry about, and climbed back into the sky.
Through Kkami, I can check whether what they said was true or false.
And if the client came to silence them for good, he would know at once.
If he doesn't come, there's nothing to be done.
Then the client's trail would vanish into fog, and stay there.
"So what are you going to do now?"
"We go to Changsung Gate."
Jin-soo answered Shin Sua's question in a flat voice.
Before his regression, when he had first reached the Tower's 200th floor, Changsung Gate and Sahyeol Gate were already locked in a savage war, each side killing and being killed. The war between them might have been inevitable — this was only it, arriving a little early.
Even so, I can't be the one who hands them the cause.
Old bonds and old grudges from before the regression aside, he had no intention of standing by and watching a slaughter unfold because a misunderstanding born of his own actions had set them on each other.
I'll stop the war.
He had no thought of siding with Changsung Gate and making an enemy of Sahyeol Gate. He meant only to drag the truth into the open and keep the war from ever starting.
Well. In the end, that probably means Sahyeol Gate and I go to war instead.
That was a burden he would have to carry himself.
And yes, the result might still look like I'm helping Changsung Gate.
The intent was different.
He wasn't helping Changsung Gate. He was keeping them from being hurt by a lie.
And the fight with Sahyeol Gate isn't something I went looking for, either.
He had never set himself against them in the first place. Sahyeol Gate had come to him, and attacked.
I'm not about to bare my neck for someone charging in to kill me.
Nor was Jin-soo the sort of saint who could smile with mercy and forgive an enemy who struck at him out of malice.
He arrived at the Changsung Gate branch. Unlike a few days before, the air around it was bleak and uneasy.
A lot of eyes on this place.
Not so much as an ant showed itself near the branch itself. A little farther off, though, a knot of players watched it with keen, hungry interest.
Here to spectate a fight?
Players from Earth, from Moosung, and from Arius had all gathered.
Better to hide my face.
Jin-soo equipped the Black Dragon's Cursed Armor Set. It was a single integrated suit, helm included, and it concealed his face completely. Seeing that, Shin Sua quickly drew a mask imbued with a recognition-dampening skill from her inventory and put it on.
"Leo, want to go play somewhere else?"
"Nyaang?"
"Outside the city is fine."
"Nyang!"
Leo, who had been tilting its head, lit up at the permission to leave the city and hopped down from Jin-soo's shoulder at once.
"Be careful."
"Nyang, nyang!"
At the warning, Leo answered shortly, as if to say not to worry, then bolted and vanished in an instant.
Leo stands out.
Small and cute as it was, one look was enough to make it hard to forget.
Time to go.
As Jin-soo approached the Changsung Gate branch, the watching players' eyes snapped to him as one.
Kreeeak!
The branch gate swung open, and Ak Chanseo and the players of Changsung Gate poured out in a rush.
Trying to avoid the fight?
That seemed right.
The players of Changsung Gate would have heard the rumor that had blanketed the Starting City in a single day. With Sahyeol Gate's people certain to come crashing in before long, they had chosen flight over a fight.
Wise.
Saddled with a baseless charge, they had every right to cry injustice. But the speed of this rumor was anything but natural, and given Sahyeol Gate's nature, they were never going to hear Changsung Gate out and withdraw with good grace.
A fight was inevitable, and their odds were close to zero.
Better to swallow the coward's name for now, get clear, and throw off the false charge later, than to die defending pride. It was the practical choice. The wise one.
Not a choice players from Moosung make easily.
They lived by honor and died by honor. Those of the orthodox sects, especially, were proud, and held the name of their sect and their own reputation above all else.
Plenty of them have walked into a death they could see coming, just to keep that name intact.
The one who had made this decision was almost certainly the branch manager, Ak Chanseo.
"Hah! The Flash Spear Hero, Ak Chanseo, making a choice like that? I'm watching it with my own two eyes, and I still can't believe it."
"Age must have made a coward of him."
"So it seems. From now on we ought to call him the Flash Spear Deserter, not the Flash Spear Hero."
"The Flash Spear Hero, Ak Chanseo, turning tail. Tsk, tsk."
"All that reputation was nothing but a mirage."
Players from Moosung muttered among themselves, sneering at Ak Chanseo.
And this would not be the end of it.
His own people in Changsung Gate will heap every kind of contempt on him, too.
He had made the choice knowing that, to keep the players of the Starting City branch alive.
The guilt could kill me.
This was not solely Jin-soo's fault. The one who had spread the baseless rumor, and Sahyeol Gate, who had given them the cause, bore the greater blame. Even so, it was a ripple of something he himself had done that had driven Ak Chanseo into this desperate corner, and that was a fact he could not look away from.
Shwk, shwk, shwk!
A band of players burst out and barred the way of Ak Chanseo and the branch.
"And where might the great Flash Spear Hero, Ak Chanseo, renowned under heaven, be rushing off to in such a hurry?"
One of them asked it in a mocking drawl.
"Blood Hound Asura — So Chanseong!"
"Sahyeol Gate's elites were already watching..."
"Tsk. It's over. It's over."
The onlookers clicked their tongues.
They were waiting from the start.
Jin-soo clicked his tongue as well. Sahyeol Gate had no intention of letting Ak Chanseo and the players of the Changsung Gate branch slip away.
Hm?
Just then, a scene Kkami was sending flooded into his mind.
An ambush?
The two Heukha Gate players who had spilled their information to him earlier were under attack.
That's the client.
Listening to what the ambushed players were saying, he was certain.
Keep after him.
He gave Kkami the order. If he could have followed his heart, he would have run there this instant and seized the client who had paid to spread the lie. But this was not the moment.
Saving Ak Chanseo and the players of the Changsung Gate branch came first.
"How can you brand our Changsung Gate the culprit and hound us on rumor alone, without a shred of evidence?"
"Heaven knows, and the earth knows, that the gruesome slaughter at the Sahyeol Gate branch was Changsung Gate's doing — and still you try to wriggle free? And if not Changsung Gate, who would dare lay a hand on Sahyeol Gate?"
So Chanseong answered Ak Chanseo's protest with perfect arrogance.
"So you admit you have no evidence."
"Hmph! The sight of you bastards fleeing in a panic is evidence enough that you are the culprits of this massacre! Today, on this very spot, I will collect the blood-price of the slain disciples of Sahyeol Gate!"
Shrring!
So Chanseong ignored Ak Chanseo and drew his sword.
Ching! Ching! Ching!
In the same breath, the players of Sahyeol Gate drew their weapons as one. At that, the players of Changsung Gate drew theirs as well. They were not about to sit still and die.
In the instant the quarrel was about to break into steel, Jin-soo stepped forward.
"Who's that lunatic?"
"Right? Stick your nose into a fight between Sahyeol Gate and Changsung Gate, and you won't like what you see."
"Maybe he's friendly with someone from Changsung Gate?"
"A fool. Step in, and all you'll earn is a dog's death alongside them."
"Still, that's some nerve. Some real chivalry."
"Chivalry? It's stupidity."
The crowd muttered as they watched Jin-soo walk into the space where the players of Changsung Gate and Sahyeol Gate stood with weapons drawn, facing one another down.
"And what are you supposed to be?"
So Chanseong asked, eyeing him with open suspicion.
"The one who wiped out the Sahyeol Gate branch in the Starting City."
Jin-soo said it in a perfectly even voice. At those words, the players of Sahyeol Gate and Changsung Gate — and even the ones who had only come to watch — lost, for a moment, every word they had.