Chapter 246
Chapter 246
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 246
Chapter Title: 56. Great Ethnic Migration (1)
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Butterfly effect.
The term for the phenomenon where a trivial event, like the flap of a butterfly's wings, leads to a massive result, such as a typhoon, down the line.
Take Jeong Gu's one-night stand and its byproduct, "Jeong Yeong-woo07," for example.
Of course, it was entirely predictable that an unplanned child might result from a one-night stand without protection.
But who could have foreseen it?
That this child, born from implicit intent, would survive all the way to the worst event in human history—the Reset—and then thrive like a fish in water, rocketing straight to the top as the Joseon Greatest Swordsman.
If a god existed in this universe, perhaps he knew. But Jeong Gu certainly didn't.
Before the Reset, he had sworn he knew nothing of his son's existence, let alone that the boy would grow into the Joseon Greatest Swordsman and come looking for him, sword in hand, in the near future.
So.
*I'm so wronged. This is too unfair!*
Jeong Gu felt utterly wronged.
He could confidently say he hadn't lived badly enough to deserve such severe punishment.
Thus, the notion that the Reset had reset all fates didn't apply to him.
He was living day by day with karma he hadn't even known he'd sown returning as terrifying retribution.
His life after the Reset was the butterfly effect incarnate.
And right now, before his eyes, lay one of that mongrel karma's mongrel offspring, clad in pitch-black armor.
"Hyung-nim! A-Are you okay?"
Jeong Gu rushed to the massive black knight's side, chanting inwardly, *Please, at least let you be dead!*, only for his son—who looked more like a corpse than anyone—to greet him.
"That guy's already dead. Didn't you see the notification earlier?"
"Oh, yeah?"
Jeong Gu made an awkward face as he peeled his knees off the floor.
Then he looked down at the biggest problem in his life: his own flesh and blood.
『Joseon Greatest Swordsman』
The title blazing brazenly above the bastard's head explained a lot.
Why the dragon had died again while his son survived, and why...
*I've ended up back by this bastard's side again.*
*Like a black hole of a son,* Jeong Gu thought bitterly.
And soon.
「Kyaaack!」
The Day 6 mutant from Dobong-gu, who had been relentlessly pursuing Jeong Gu and Neugwig, shoved a guttural rasp into their ears.
The thing had closed the distance in the meantime.
"What the hell is that?"
Yeong-woo, still lying down, craned his neck to look up, spotting a massive jackal charging ferociously.
[Businessman-Lee Jin-young]
Dobong-gu's Day 6 mutant, businessman Lee Jin-young.
A name Yeong-woo had never seen before.
So probably some local troublemaker or a criminal who'd briefly graced the society pages without Yeong-woo noticing.
"You don't know him? This Lee Jin-young guy."
"Huh? Of course not."
As Jeong Gu nodded at Yeong-woo's question, a golden trajectory sliced through the air.
Whoooosh!
It was to counter the mutant swooping low to snatch the prone Yeong-woo.
Like swinging a bat at a incoming baseball.
But the opponent was a Day 6 mutant, after all.
Even if it looked like just a oversized beast, its strength and agility defied imagination.
「Pulling some fancy trick, eh.」
Thud!
Lee Jin-young rolled nimbly aside to dodge, then thrust his muzzle forward and successfully snatched Yeong-woo from the ground.
「Ha-hat!」
A wild dog snatching meat from the road, exactly.
With Yeong-woo in its jaws, Lee Jin-young sneered at Jeong Gu, who stood frozen, staring.
「What, thought you were running off somewhere? This all you got?」
But then.
「Urk...?」
It suddenly scrunched its nose and gaped its maw wide.
Yeong-woo naturally tumbled out, and soon smoke billowed up.
Sizzle!
From inside Lee Jin-young's mouth, now starting to corrode.
「W-What the—?」
As Lee Jin-young's eyes bulged in panic, Jeong Gu scratched his cheek and said,
"It's like a pufferfish. Best not to even sniff it."
Meanwhile, a massive hole had burned through Lee Jin-young's jaw, and it writhed on the ground like it was scraping the dirt.
「Kek! S-Spare me!」
【Corrosive Blood】
|Your blood becomes corrosive.|
It wasn't just the Poison Dragon Heart's Corrosive Blood effect; the golden mark's pain-infliction had triggered too.
Now, unless it was a seriously powerful mutant, wounding Yeong-woo was tantamount to suicide.
"Looks like we've got a ton on our plate today. The Japs are stirring, the Chinese too."
Yeong-woo muttered as he struggled to his feet, but Lee Jin-young was too busy rolling on the ground to hear properly.
「Ughhh...!」
"Whoops, look at me. Hurts bad, huh?"
Leaving the enemy like this, intentional or not, was torture in itself.
Feeling like bad karma was piling up in real time, Yeong-woo hurriedly reached for the Sasenga at his waist.
Thud.
Then.
Slash!
He drew and swung like lightning, beheading Lee Jin-young in one clean stroke.
Slice!
A perfect decapitation.
「Guh...!」
Lee Jin-young let out a brief groan as its neck was severed by Sasenga, collapsing face-down. Soon its head separated fully, blood gushing out.
"No mutants from other districts today, huh? Everyone handling their own?"
Yeong-woo glanced around the now-empty surroundings as he spoke, and Jeong Gu replied.
"Bound to be a quiet day once in a while. With dragons popping up two days straight, maybe other spots only got weaklings."
"Yeah... if that's really the case, it's a relief."
More than anyone, Yeong-woo wanted each district's mutants handled locally.
With Pangea expanding borders, time for Seoul's internal cleanup was running short.
*If Japan's got extra trouble, Ye-chan'll handle it. So today, I'm heading back to China.*
He'd probably meet those debt-collector types from Beijing today.
Crunch!
Yeong-woo stomped Lee Jin-young's head on the ground, and its body melted into the air, leaving a golden orb.
Seeing it, Yeong-woo finally realized.
"Huh?"
"What?"
"Gwangjin-gu! Gwangjin-gu mutant."
"...Huh?"
"Where'd that bastard go?"
* * *
At the exact moment the Joseon Greatest Swordsman noticed the escapee, the Gwangjin-gu mutant in question was hastily flying west along the Han River.
「This is insane. No way.」
Heo Geum-hwa, 41, ethnic Korean woman.
She kept flapping her wings, face still dazed as she scanned her surroundings warily.
Whoosh!
She had been staring blankly at the ruins of Gwangjin-gu when suddenly the Joseon Greatest Swordsman and a steel-bodied dragon started fighting, so she'd fled.
[Internet Broadcaster-Heo Geum-hwa (Kind Geum-hwa-nim)]
Known as "Kind Geum-hwa," she was an ethnic Korean YouTuber with a whopping 2 million subscribers.
Her main content was daily vlogs and interviews with ethnic Koreans living in Korea, but trouble erupted earlier this year.
One of the many ethnic Koreans she'd interviewed was arrested as the suspect in a stabbing incident in some domestic region.
Her channel became instant kindling overnight, and the slogan she'd championed—"integration into Korean society"—shattered to pieces.
Then on June 10, the Reset hit, landing her on the deletion list with no small number of votes.
「......」
At the time, as her channel crumbled in real time, Geum-hwa was furious.
The absurd situation was suffocating, and she couldn't fathom why the blame arrows flew more at her than the actual suspect.
Of course, with the suspect's face and name unknown, eyes inevitably turned to her—face, name, and massive revenue from 2 million subs all public.
But Geum-hwa was fundamentally just an "individual," unable to predict her guest's crime, so she felt a burning injustice like her chest was on fire.
Thus, about two weeks after the stabbing, she posted what she called an apology—really a protest—on her channel.
As a major ethnic Korean channel, a moral apology was right, but did she truly have any guilt?
And that choice played a decisive role in dragging her to this moment.
Regardless of actual ties to the incident, she'd earned the public's hatred.
The moment the apology went up, media outlets twisted her public image with sensational headlines and edits, while so-called "internet lynch mobs" fabricated stories to blow it up.
Thus ended Geum-hwa's pre-Reset life.
Was even this written in the Book of Fate?
So coincidentally, probably.
But as a mutant returned to this world, she didn't yet know of the Book of Fate's existence.
So she just kept flying west.
To survive.
「At least I can fly.」
Whoosh!
She swung her massive wings once more, her gliding body catching a new current and accelerating.
Her body as Gwangjin-gu's Day 6 mutant was none other than a harpy.
A mythical being with a raptor's body and a woman's head, characterized—as she felt—by high-altitude flight.
She'd survived this long without the other districts' Greatest Swordsmen catching her solely thanks to flight.
Whoosh!
Soon, Wonhyo Bridge and Yeouido came into view.
「Ah...!」
And from then, Geum-hwa's head tilted southwest.
Precisely toward Yeongdeungpo and Guro Districts.
The reason she'd kept fleeing west from the Joseon Greatest Swordsman and Iron Dragon was to seek refuge in ethnic Korean enclaves.
Two of Seoul's three biggest ethnic Korean hubs—Gari-bong-dong and Daelim-dong—were in Yeongdeungpo and Guro.
Thud!
Finally folding her wings halfway and diving, the panorama of southern Yeongdeungpo welcomed her.
But Daelim-dong was at the southern tip of Yeongdeungpo, so she needed to go further.
No more river below meant vulnerability to attack anytime.
Heart racing, she banked south and accelerated.
Ruuush!
Fierce winds squeezed her feathers tight, drawing distant Daelim-dong—and beyond it, Gari-bong-dong—ever closer.
「Help!」
Nearly overhead Daelim-dong, she desperately called for aid.
Sensing her from above, Daelim-dong residents poured out of buildings.
「Oh, you all managed to survive!」
As she'd hoped, Daelim-dong was still packed with ethnic Koreans.
And soon.
Splat!
Among them, one unusually tall man looked up—toward the sky, toward Geum-hwa's approach.
He was none other than.
『Guro's Greatest Swordsman』
Of course, as a mutant, Geum-hwa didn't know why Guro's Greatest Swordsman was all the way down in southern Yeongdeungpo.
「C-Comrade! Please help me—!」
As she dropped to 20 meters and prepared to land smack in Daelim-dong's center.
Whirrrsh!
Unexpectedly, something flew from Daelim-dong.
「...!」
It was an axe—or axes—with razor-sharp blades.
The ethnic Koreans occupying Daelim-dong were hurling axes at her in unison.
Probably to shoot down the mutant Geum-hwa.
「W-Wait! Do you know who I am?!」
Geum-hwa panicked, about to reveal her identity in detail.
-Squeeeee!
Then from somewhere north behind, an unearthly screech she'd never heard.
Pssshhh!
With the faintest presence, a barrage of purple arrows flew in.