Black Moon (3)
Dandanso walked toward the club. Women passed along the street in clothes so scant they might as well have been wearing nothing at all.
Ahem.... There is truly nowhere fit to rest one's eyes.
Yeah~ Maybe later I'll try wearing something like that in Dandanso's body~
Absolutely not! The playing-cute, This Venerable One may forgive—but that, never. Never shall it be. Even should the viewers later beg thee to wear such a thing, thou must not put it on.
So playing cute is allowed now?
Ah.... No.... That is not— This Venerable One did not mean it so....
She reached the club entrance before long, and a guard came out to meet her.
"BabyHeavenlyDemon-chan?"
"Ah.... Ah.... Yes."
Once he had confirmed the nickname, the guard led her underground.
Ugh.... To think This Venerable One would be addressed as something so base as BabyHeavenlyDemon-chan.
Ehehehehe.
Do not laugh. Is this not entirely thy fault?
Step by step, the stairs leading down ran longer than she had expected.
Hmm....
What? What's wrong?
These wretches dare to play their little tricks.
The farther down she went, the sharper the killing intent that prickled against her skin. Perhaps because this was Jimin's frail body, the murderous aura pressed in all the thicker.
Shouldn't we be running, like, right now?
This Venerable One has already thought it through. Worry not so.
"This way."
The guard opened the door. She stepped inside ready to call on Realize at any moment, and dozens of men filled the club beyond. The one who looked to be their boss came toward her.
"Oh~ Didn't think it'd be a woman. So what are you—a hunter, or a civilian? The energy coming off you is pathetic."
His eyes dragged over her from head to toe, slow and unpleasant. The rudeness of his tone and his manner was entirely bare. He made no effort at all to hide that he meant to pick her clean.
His hand moved at a speed she could not even see, and her hat and mask dangled from his fingers. In the Heavenly Demon's body she would have reacted. In Jimin's frail one, she had not even seen it happen.
"Oh~ Pretty, though. Forget the organs. Sell her alive to China as a slave and we'd clear two or three million, easy."
"Boss, mind if we have a little fun with her before you sell her?"
"Heh heh. You want to do that with a little runt like her?"
Dozens of men closed in around her, cracking filthy jokes. She could tell at a glance. This was hardly the first time these bastards had done something like this. They did not look at people as people. They looked at them as things.
Her own world had held their kind as well—trash who seized people to sell as slaves, or used them as test subjects for poison arts and sorcery. Dandanso loathed such trash, and of all who had ever caught her eye, not one had lived.
"Bwahahaha!"
"Last words? This bitch is so scared she's lost her mind."
"These things taste better when they put up a fight, Boss. Heh heh."
A few of the men who had been watching her with filthy eyes stepped closer. Dandanso did not hesitate.
Realize
The body transforms into that of the Heavenly Demon.
They would learn that the Heavenly Demon Dandanso was, in truth, Lee Jimin. It did not matter. No one here would leave this place alive today, and a corpse could tell no tales. These were trash who trafficked human beings as an organized trade, and men who worked that way would already have shut off every camera. There was nothing to fear.
"Truly, what paltry last words."
Dandanso swung her sword at the men closing in, and four heads took to the air. Not one of them wore a face that had even understood what struck them.
"Fuck! What the hell!"
"I didn't even see her draw."
"Wait! That's Dandanso!"
"Fuck! Where'd that vacant-looking bitch go, and why is Dandanso suddenly here!"
"If that's Dandanso, she's an S-rank hunter!"
"Everybody run! We can't take her!"
The boss among them, dozens of men broke and fled in blind panic. Blood-red smoke spilled from Dandanso's lips as she watched.
"Fuck! Move, up front—get out of the way!"
"Shit! That's the skill from the video!"
"Hurry! We have to get out of here! We're all gonna die!"
"Move! I said move!"
At the sight of that blood-red smoke, the gang members lunged even harder for the entrance and the hidden passage. But Dandanso was faster.
"Blood Thread."
Crimson threads of blood spread from around Dandanso, rippling outward like a stone dropped into a still lake.
Fountains of blood erupted all through the club. In a heartbeat, the room was a sea of blood.
The only one left alive and standing was Dandanso.
At that same hour, in the secret operating room that could be reached only through the club's underground passage, Dr. Hwang was waiting for Seo Dongcheol. Beside him lay a hunter's corpse, the work already finished.
"Two of them in a single day. Today ought to pay rather nicely."
A single hunter's corpse brought in a million dollars, and five percent of that fell to him—fifty thousand a body, a hundred thousand for the pair. Once he processed the hunter Seo Dongcheol was bringing, that sum, together with the one he had already worked on during the day, would land in his hands. If the goods were in good condition, it might be even more.
"Running late."
Grown bored, Dr. Hwang opened the freezer on a whim and checked the organs. They were neatly prepared and sealed in packs. To the eye they looked no different from an ordinary person's, but the price was another matter entirely. A hunter's organs sold for far more.
The main customers were wealthy civilians who believed that transplanting a hunter's organs, or eating them, would make their bodies stronger—and hunters of the Black Mage class, who used such organs as offerings. As for him, he did not care what they did with them. So long as the money came in.
"What the hell? Why isn't he here yet?"
He had set up for the procedure and waited a long while, but Seo Dongcheol never came. A glance at the clock showed more than an hour past the appointed time. Calls went unanswered.
"Something must have happened."
The club door burst open with a crash. Baek Mugang, boss of Black Moon, stepped into a room that had become a sea of blood.
"Fuck! What the hell happened here?"
He glared at Dr. Hwang as he spoke.
"Well...."
Dr. Hwang explained the situation as far as he knew it.
"So. The time for the job came, and Seo Dongcheol never showed. Something felt off, you came here, and everyone was already dead. That's what you're telling me!"
"Yes."
"They dare lay a hand on Black Moon! Who the fuck are these bastards?"
Baek Mugang swept a savage look over the corpses.
Who were they?
Seoul's underworld was already in his hands. Among the gangs in the city's shadows, there should not have been a single lunatic bold enough to challenge Black Moon.
The Management Bureau, then?
No. Not the Bureau either.
The Management Bureau did regard Black Moon as a thorn in its side. Even so, they would never move this rashly. They knew full well that Zhou Huang, China's Rank 2, stood behind them. He could not begin to guess which bastards had done this.
He turned his head and looked at Dr. Hwang.
Don't tell me. Is this bastard involved?
"Hey, Dr. Hwang. What you just said—that was the truth, was it?"
"Y-yes.... Yes, it was."
"Right."
A tentacle tore free of Baek Mugang's shadow and stabbed into Dr. Hwang's thigh.
"AAAAAGH!"
Dr. Hwang clutched his thigh and screamed.
"I'll give you a chance. Tell it again."
"Ghhh.... I only told you what happened.... AAAAAGH."
This time a shadow tentacle punched through his forearm.
"It really was the truth.... AAAAAGH."
Baek Mugang repeated it several times more, but the answer never changed. If the man still would not break after this much, then he was not involved. That did not mean Baek Mugang meant to let him live. After what had just been done to him, Dr. Hwang would nurse a grudge, and a man with a grudge could betray you at any time.
"I really did tell the truth. Please, please, just spare my life."
Perhaps he had sensed what was coming. Dr. Hwang begged for his life with everything he had.
A shadow tentacle pierced his heart.
Leaving the doctor's corpse behind him, Baek Mugang turned to the dead men of the Gangnam branch.
"Wait—what is this! This is impossible!"
He cried out in shock as he examined the bodies.
"What's wrong, Boss?"
"One person."
"What?"
"One person! One person killed every one of our boys here."
He had assumed, of course, that a large force had stormed in. The corpses said otherwise. He himself was a level-20 A-Rank hunter, a man who had weathered every kind of fight, and the wounds on a body were enough to tell him how they had died—and whether the killer had been many, or only one. He could see it at a glance.
The one who had massacred Black Moon's Gangnam branch was a single person. And there was a fact more shocking still.
Twice.
The killer had wiped out the branch in only two attacks. No—in this case, it was effectively one. One attack had killed four. The next had killed everyone who remained. Had the killer wished it, a single attack would have been enough.
Baek Mugang's hands grew slick with sweat. To kill all of them in one strike—even he could not do that.
"What's this?"
He had been looking over the corpses when a single long strand of crimson hair on the floor caught his eye. In that instant, one hunter came to mind. Long crimson hair. Someone far stronger than he himself, a level-20 A-Rank hunter. Someone who could massacre every person here in a single attack. The S-rank hunter who had appeared not long ago, judged stronger even than Kang Mujin and Kang Chaemin—Korea's Rank 1. Dandanso.
Into Baek Mugang's mind rose the image of that monster splitting a mountain apart with a single sword.