17
Chapter 17: Commentary
Jo Pyeong was the Senior Gang Leader of the Black Snake Society. He was entrusting his body to the darkness while receiving the dim light of the crescent moon.
"Kyaaaack!"
"Kuk..."
Endless screams heard from a distance. Every single one was the sound of his subordinates dying. Even those had now diminished in frequency to the point where they were barely audible. It was proof that not many subordinates remained.
Dongpal, who had attended with him, Nadal, and Kang Hae's screams must all be mixed in somewhere over there. Perhaps he was now the only Gang Leader left alive?
Now the Nameless Vigilante would come to him. He was approaching while slaughtering all the others. Nothing, no means, no countermeasures could protect them. Even though they had anticipated and prepared in advance.
Soon it would be his turn.
He still didn't want to die...
He'd just extorted a bit from people, done human trafficking a few times, done some women trading and liquor trading... killed some things that weren't even human. Losing his precious life over just that.
It was unfair. Where was there such unfair karmic retribution? There were still so many worse people than him in the world, and people who had killed dozens or hundreds were living well and eating well! Having to be killed just for doing this level of bad deeds.
The world was unfair.
The weak were easy targets. Those strong ones—the Nameless Vigilante must be leaving them alone because they were strong.
Jo Pyeong endlessly spouted fallacies in his head while cursing the Nameless Vigilante. But he didn't realize that it made no sense. As most evildoers do.
'Should I run?'
For a moment, such a thought occurred to him, but Jo Pyeong soon shook his head.
'Run?'
Running would be no different from losing his life.
How much time had it taken to build up this foundation! He couldn't do that.
He reaffirmed his determination to defend the Black Snake Society's final stronghold to the end with the last remaining Black Agents. Wasn't this a place with only one passage open at the front and back?
Due to the geographical features, it couldn't be attacked, nor could anyone sneak in secretly. The back road was the path leading to Nakwon Manor, the estate of Black Snake Society's leader Bang Po-yeom. In other words, the only approach to this place was that one alley ahead. If they could properly defend just that spot, they could block the Nameless Vigilante, or even go further and capture or kill him.
"Uwaaaaaaaack!"
At that moment, a scream as large and terrible as all the previous screams combined reached the location where Jo Pyeong was hiding.
With that as the end, the death throes finally ceased.
Now 'he' would come. He who had violated the Black Agents as he pleased in the name of righteousness, that Nameless Slaughter Demon would come here.
Yes! Come! You son of a bitch!
"I'll kill you!"
Fighting in the dark was advantageous for the Black Group.
The Nameless Vigilante must have chosen the dark night to easily catch the Black Group members, but the Black Agents were born in darkness and had lived in dark places all along. He was confident even against a martial arts expert.
Was that all?
Those who remained here now were on a different level from the trash that died earlier. Though they were low-level, they were all people who had learned martial arts to some degree in martial sects.
The White Tiger Group and Red Wolf Gate had fallen to unexpected attacks. He would show that the Black Snake Society was different... Huh!? Already?
The very moment Jo Pyeong was steeling his resolve.
One black shadow that appeared to be a person came flying through the passage.
In an instant!
Swaswaswaswaswaswa!
With a sound of tearing air like a school of salmon cutting through water, dozens of arrows flew.
The promised arrow strings had all been released simultaneously.
Pububuububuk!
The shadow became a honeycomb as it was and fell to the ground.
Seeing that, Jo Pyeong realized it wasn't the Nameless Vigilante. It couldn't be this easy.
Hwik.
At that moment, another black shadow came flying through the alley toward them.
This time too, dozens of arrows flew and turned the shadow into shredded rags. Of course, this time too it wasn't the real one, but a corpse.
'Is he hoping the arrows will run out?'
Pik, a sneer escaped involuntarily at the absurdity.
'What should I do, I'm so sorry? We have enough arrows prepared that we couldn't use them all even shooting all night. What will you do now? Nameless Vigilante.'
Right at the moment he wore a triumphant smile!
"Kuk, kuaaack!"
One of the Black Agents hiding in the abandoned house screamed. He was dead.
'How!?'
They had been watching the only passage leading here. He could come over the roof, but moving that way would be more dangerous. Wouldn't he be immediately visible in the moonlight?
Black Agents were definitely deployed on the rooftops as well, constantly watching. If he had moved that way, there was no way the Black Agents wouldn't have seen him.
'Exactly where did he enter from!?'
While Jo Pyeong was flustered, the final Black Agents continued to die.
"Kuack!"
"Urk!"
"Kuk!"
......
....
..
.
The cries of death were gradually approaching him. There was no time now to think about how.
Jo Pyeong immediately emerged from his hiding place and entrusted his body to the moonlight. Even during that time, the Black Agents' final cries continued to ring through the area.
But even that soon died down.
"Damn... Did everyone die except me...?"
Originally, that was supposed to be the signal. When he emerged from his hiding place, all the Black Agents were supposed to simultaneously come out to the clearing in the center and form a formation for a frontal confrontation with the Nameless Vigilante.
"Is anyone there?"
Complete silence.
No one emerged.
No,
Tabak tabak.
There was one. A masked man with a lean build.
It was 'him' revealing himself under the moonlight with a leisurely gait.
"Are... you the Nameless Vigilante?"
"......"
He simply approached Jo Pyeong quietly, with no answer from the Nameless Vigilante.
"Wha, what exactly do you want?"
"......"
Again, no answer came back.
Jo Pyeong tried to say something else, but could no longer say anything. It was because he had met the Nameless Vigilante's eyes directly from the front.
Since throwing himself into the Black Snake Society, he had seen many people's eyes, but eyes so 'empty' were a first. It wasn't something like emotionlessness.
Nothing.
There was just nothing. Nothing that could be considered human was contained in the Nameless Vigilante's eyes.
"Shit..."
Slice, Split.
Jo Pyeong's body was split exactly in half starting from the head. The blood, intestines, and brain matter flowing from his corpse defiled Nakwon Village.
At the same time.
Flash!
A pure white purifying fire rose from the Nameless Vigilante's body, purifying Nakwon Village.
In that bright light, the Nameless Vigilante's appearance was revealed in broad daylight, though only very briefly.
The Nameless Vigilante.
The Danri Family's Groom Sosam.
More precisely.
It was Dong Bong-su, who had now become Level 7.
***
After targeting the Black Group.
Dong Bong-su was truly busy.
Because there were far too many things to prepare.
Though he had killed Jang Ho and leveled up, he was still in a situation where he was much weaker than the Black Agents. Naturally, just as on Earth, the preparation process took much time and effort.
He had to thoroughly grasp the movements of the Black Group and individual Black Agents, and determine hunting priority among them. Even after that, he had to meticulously plan various surrounding circumstances and hunting scenarios. Only when not even a hair's breadth of failure probability remained. Only then would Dong Bong-su actually set out to hunt.
He diligently roamed Bongyang's markets gathering information. Among that information was what he'd obtained from the thugs he'd killed last time about the Black Snake Society, but those pieces of information were already widely known and weren't very helpful.
He spent about a week concentrating on collecting information about the Black Groups.
However,
With the identity of the mute Sosam and a body working alone, there were limits to information gathering. The few things he discovered were either too miscellaneous to be of any use, or too general to be meaningful.
What could barely be used was at most roughly where the streets the Black Agents mainly operated and where their lairs were located.
Knowing these things didn't mean much. Perhaps if he had the ability to attack those places alone, but it was impossible at Level 2.
But he couldn't endlessly fixate only on information investigation. At this rate, it seemed like half a year, or perhaps even several years, would pass with just investigation.
Eventually, he changed his method.
'Striking the Grass to Startle the Snake.'
Beat the grass to startle the snake.
It's commonly used to mean failing by rashly committing to something in an unprepared situation. But the original meaning of this idiom was completely different.
One of the foundations of ancient Chinese military strategy. It was a military tactic recorded in the Thirty-Six Stratagems.
To catch a hiding snake, beat the grass to make the snake crawl out of its hole and catch it. In other words, it wasn't a negative proverb, but a tactic.
Dong Bong-su stopped investigating the hard-to-spot 'snakes.' Instead, he beat the 'grass' where many snakes seemed to live.
One day.
Thoroughly disguised, he visited a gambling den operated secretly underground. And he swept that table clean. Once or twice might go unnoticed, but when such things repeated, the snakes finally bared their fangs.
One Black Agent attacked him as he left the gambling den. Without even knowing Dong Bong-su was a 'land mine.' The first snake to be sacrificed that way was a low-ranking Black Agent of the White Tiger Group. In fact, Dong Bong-su hadn't even known that gambling den was operated by the White Tiger Group. What he had known was just one thing. That there was a gambling den there.
Due to that incident, Dong Bong-su ended up on the White Tiger Group's Black Book under the name Gambling Demon and was pursued, achieving his intended purpose.
That's how it began. The bloody reverse-hunting slaughter.