Preparations for the Proxy War (1)
May 11th. Around two in the afternoon.
Roughly two kilometers from the warehouse where Juni and Jeong Hoon's party were staying stood a building with a striking red roof. It had once been a fairly large restaurant, complete with an exposed balcony on the upper floor.
And now a group of men were using the place as a kind of forward base.
"Hyoseon-hyung!"
"Yeah."
Among those men was one whose eyes were particularly vicious—no, a man who reeked of having dunked more than a few people. Unlike the others, who still retained a somewhat amateurish quality that kept them from looking like proper thugs or villains, this man alone carried an air that said he wouldn't hesitate to drive a blade into someone's throat.
He was the leader of this vicious bandit gang. A man who had cleverly exploited his combat class to stab countless people in the back—without quite killing them—and reaped the benefits all the same.
Like his older brother, who mainly operated in northern Gyeonggi Province, he too was sucking the lifeblood out of people to survive the apocalypse.
"We finally found them! Come out and take a look, quick!"
"That so?"
Answering quite calmly, the man rose from his seat. The sofa right next to where he'd been sitting, however, was thoroughly soaked—drenched in moisture of a distinctly red hue.
Thud. A hand slipped off the sofa and hit the floor. The man who'd been screaming just a few hours ago wasn't screaming anymore.
The aftereffects of a torture carefully calibrated to stop just short of death had finished the job. He hadn't managed to hold on to his life.
And yet, even after creating a corpse, Kim Hyoseon's face didn't so much as twitch. In fact, even the system assigned to him registered no change. It hadn't judged him as the one who'd done the killing.
And so there was no pity, no feeling whatsoever about having ended a human life. Just like his older brother, he was a man who could commit atrocities and still maintain a shameless poker face.
"Alright, where?"
"Ah, Hyoseon-hyung!"
"Over there. There!"
The balcony. From the second floor of this massive pension-style restaurant, Kim Hyoseon approached two of his subordinates who held the Archer class.
Both of them pointed somewhere without needing to be told.
Kim Hyoseon furrowed his brow.
"Do I look like I've got an Archer class, you little shit? Describe it properly."
"Yes, sir! Those celebrity bastards are holed up in that warehouse! We've been watching for a while and we're sure of it! The windows are blocked, but… one or two of them came outside briefly and we confirmed it! They're the same ones we saw before!"
"That so? Jihun. Is he telling the truth?"
"That's right, hyung! Their faces match the Red Pink girls I remember exactly! Looks like they ran there overnight! Hehe…"
"Oho…"
Originally, these men had also been threatened by those flying monsters. But Kim Hyoseon, who had a supernatural nose for survival, had read the situation correctly. The moment the announcement went out, he'd taken shelter in the basement of a nearby building—this one.
Even so, he'd sent out scouts at intervals, and by morning the number of flying monsters in the area had somehow plummeted. Thanks to that, he'd been able to resume observing Juni's group, whom he'd already had his eye on.
Of course, they'd still taken precautions—hiding under tables, observing from spots where they'd bunched up parasols, and so on.
After cross-checking the information from both men, Kim Hyoseon accepted it as fact. He immediately went back inside from the balcony and headed down to the first floor.
On the first floor, his subordinates were sprawled freely across the restaurant tables. Kim Hyoseon spat curses at the useless lot.
"Cheer up, you bastards! The moment you've been waiting for—to screw those girl idols—is right around the corner!"
"Wh-what? For real!?"
"Woooah! Finally!"
"Is that true, hyung!"
The sprawled-out subordinates perked right up. For men overflowing with energy from tormenting people, the desire to pin someone down and ravage them until they were satisfied was always writhing just beneath the surface.
"Yeah. Ah—anyone know Haley from MyBerry? Leave that bitch alone. Jihun's claimed her. Anyone who touches her before Jihun gets their neck wrung by me. Got it?"
"Of course, hyung! Jihun-hyung's been working so hard for this!"
"Hehehe, never thought I'd get to screw a celebrity in this lifetime. Holy shit!"
"What about the bitches locked in the basement? They're all used up now—honestly, it's not even fun anymore."
Among their evil deeds was the practice of kidnapping decent-looking women, reducing them to playthings, and dragging them into hell.
"Ah, those bitches? Deal with them. Whatever you want. Preferably just dump them outside. Feed them to those bird monsters."
"Uh, hyung. About contacting Hyomin-hyung…"
Unfortunately, one of the subordinates chose that moment to utter a line that might well get him fed to the birds himself.
And Kim Hyoseon reached for the fool who'd carelessly spoken his brother's name. Not so much as a speck of hesitation.
Squeeze!
"Hey… what did I tell you before?"
"Huh? That's… ghk!?"
Warrior. And a Warrior who'd dumped everything into Strength was definitely strong. His subordinate's face turned a sickly blue-purple in an instant.
"You fucking piece of shit… did I or did I not tell you to keep it locked down tight that we're targeting those idol bitches? Look what happened last time. Some loudmouth like you blabbed, and where did all those fine women we'd barely caught end up? Huh? We had to hand every last one over to that bastard Hyomin. Fuck!"
"I-I'm sorr… ghk!"
But a single apology wasn't enough. Still gripping his subordinate's throat, Hyoseon hurled him onto a table.
Crash!
"Of all the times to bring up that bastard's name? Hey—don't let this asshole lay a finger on any of the women."
"H-hyung…!"
"So watch your fucking mouth, you piece of shit! Haa… For two days, you don't touch a single woman. Got it? Two full days."
At the same time, he was a leader. A leader who knew how to wield both carrot and stick.
It was ironic that a villain's leader should be so competent at managing a group.
"Y-yes, hyung… I'm truly sorry…"
Leaving the crushed subordinate hanging his head in despair, Kim Hyoseon climbed back up to the second-floor balcony. Gazing at the massive warehouse in the distance, he sank into thought.
Especially that blonde he'd clearly locked eyes on…
Imagining having Juni—hailed as Korea's greatest idol—in his grasp…
No, something beyond that… imagining pinning her beneath him and pounding her until she passed out, a smile spread across his face of its own accord.
Except for one thing.
"Of all places, that warehouse has to sit right on the border of a Sanctuary. Damn it, even the guys with Archer classes say it looks hazy over there!"
At the time, Kim Hyoseon had no idea that this single source of unease would become a massive butterfly effect.
"Hoo, hoo…"
"Deep breaths won't really help, but… anyway, come over this way once."
Inside the boundary. In the Sanctuary, I gestured to a woman. She was one of Juni's group who'd just joined Jung Miju's guild, Hope's Wings.
"I-I'm coming…!"
Wearing a rather grim expression—which was completely unnecessary—the woman walked toward me.
Even the way she walked looked like a picture. Was that an idol-group thing? I didn't know who she was. If Jung Yun were here, she probably would have explained, She's so-and-so from such-and-such group! If we got friendly quickly enough, maybe we could re-form their idol group and put on performances in our territory—maybe even broadcasts, if that became possible.
…Why the sudden tangent? Because the sight of the person thrashing around in front of me, trying to get through, was too embarrassing to watch.
She was putting everything she had into crossing the transparent—or more precisely, semi-opaque—Sanctuary boundary right in front of her. It wasn't working at all.
"Hah!"
She swung a fist. Thok, thok. Blocked.
"Wait… I'm a Warrior class, so… thank you! Hah!"
Whoosh! Swish!
She grabbed a stick lying nearby and swung it. The stick passed right through the boundary.
"Haa, haa… It's no use. Nothing works!"
"Hmm…"
"This is a problem…"
My companions on the Sanctuary side, who'd been watching in silence, each let out a sigh.
In the end, the second method had also failed. That left us with no choice but the third option—the hardest and most grueling path for these people's survival: training for growth.
And it came with extreme conditions. These people would have to hold out for a full nineteen days with only our indirect support.
I offered some words of encouragement to the woman who'd poured every last effort into it and was half-exhausted.
At that, a change came over her face. Her cheeks flushed pink, and she subtly edged closer to me.
"Y-yes, th-thank you… Ah, I'm Kim Sena. I go by Sena as my stage name in the group. And my age—"
"Sena, this is hardly the time!"
Juni scolded Kim Sena, who'd gone from introducing herself straight into trying to sidle up to me in a somewhat blatant pose. Sena clicked her tongue in disappointment and backed away from me. Talk about opportunistic. She'd been trying to seduce me, hadn't she? Radiating that former-idol charm. But…
"…"
Sena probably had no idea.
The moment she'd come at me with that full-on let's-seduce-him energy, killing intent had rolled off the people behind me. A considerable bloodlust I'd never once felt from my companions before, stabbing into the skin of my back like needles.
"Unfortunately, it seems I'll have to propose a rather labor-intensive plan for all of you. With our support, you'll need to hold out using this warehouse as your base until June 1st."
"Ugh…"
"Aah, until June…!"
Some of Juni's group openly groaned. Someone leaned back against the wall, staring at the ceiling with a hollow sigh.
The space that had been starting to regain a bit of energy instantly turned gloomy again the moment the conclusion sank in: they'd have to overcome cold reality the hard way.
"…We have no choice. Still, thank you for your help, Jeong Hoon-ssi."
"Yes. First, let's get everyone into the guild. Guild Leader Jung Miju?"
"Yes."
Jung Miju came over to my side.
Hmm? For some reason… she was sticking really close to me? I'd given her a pretty harsh dressing-down at lunch, so I figured she'd be pretty pissed. Why?
And Jung Miju's gaze toward Juni seemed to carry a fair bit of wariness. Was I imagining it… hmm… yeah, probably imagining it.
Anyway, Jung Miju quietly enrolled everyone from Juni's group in the warehouse into Hope's Wings. In an instant, the Hope's Wings guild became one with a balanced mix of combat and non-combat classes. Of course, the major flaw was that all the combat classes were at considerably lower levels than the non-combat ones.
"Ordinarily, we'd draw up a training plan for your survival and put it into action… but unfortunately, there's a serious obstacle standing in your way. Namely, the bandit gangs that dominate northern Incheon—the ones Juni-ssi told us about herself."
Before joining the guild, Juni had ground her teeth and given me every last detail of the information I'd requested.
Thanks to the Vampire Lord, and my mass monster hunting, the monster population in the Gyeonggi region had dropped dramatically. That much was good—but the improved environment had emboldened utterly ruthless people who'd decided to take what belonged to others.
And among them, the most notorious operated freely across northern Incheon, northwestern Gyeonggi, and northern Gyeonggi. Everyone who'd fled from those areas had trembled as they described the countless hardships they'd endured. Hardships inflicted by other humans, I should stress again.
"And the absurd part is… the trash that runs this region is exactly two factions. Even worse, the two of them cooperate. From what I've heard… the two men leading those factions… are brothers. Tsk, haa…"
Brothers. What a lovely family.
As she explained, Juni's expression was doing all the swearing for her. She clearly wanted to let the curses fly out loud too, but seemed to have barely held them back. Remarkable self-control.