A Mad Dog's Cure Is a Hawk
"WAAAAAH! Uncle! Thank you!"
It was the day after I'd stripped the Cheongseol guys bare.
Seojun, who had only just discovered the toys I'd brought back for him, was reacting like he'd won the lottery. He clearly wanted to tear into the box right that second, but since greetings came first, he was bowing at the waist with the toy box still clutched in both hands.
Honestly, I'd only grabbed it because it caught my eye, but it turned out to feel better than I expected.
I should tell Jang Yeongsu to keep buying this stuff regularly.
I'd spared his life, after all. A request of that caliber was well within my rights.
"...And where's mine?"
"A grown adult wants toys?"
Seoyeon asked with a sullen look on her face, and I clicked my tongue at her. Of course, she wasn't actually asking for a toy—just whining for whining's sake.
Watching her, I felt a familiar mischief stir in me.
"Come to think of it, Seoyeon, you used to be crazy about toys too, back when you were Seojun's age."
"What? N-no, I wasn't..."
"Why? Don't you remember? You were obsessed with that heart-pin thing or whatever, and when I told you I was Xi Jinping and could do whatever I wanted, you bawled your eyes out. I remember your exact words, too. 'There's no such ping, you liiiiiaaar!'"
I hadn't come up with that joke myself—I'd just copied it off the internet—but she had genuinely burst into tears when I said it.
Though the price of that joke was my sister-in-law's foot against my backside.
Apparently her most embarrassing memory had just resurfaced, because Seoyeon's face flushed a bright, blotchy red.
"Brother-in-law. Weren't you saying there was a briefing today?"
"Ah, right. The briefing."
"Dad!"
"What? Briefing is a real word, Seoyeon."
I chuckled at the sight of Seoyeon snapping at her own father and turned on the TV.
The briefing itself was long over, but the broadcast was still replaying Park Jaehyun's press conference on a loop. That, in itself, was proof of just how deep the trauma around the Yeouido Gate ran in this country.
Park Jaehyun and I had already more or less settled matters between us. The clearing of the Yeouido Gate would go public; my identity would stay sealed. There was no grand reason behind it—I'd simply judged that having my face known would cost me more than it gained.
Then again, judging by how Kang Iseol had tracked me down to my own home, it seemed everyone who mattered already knew who I was.
"Hm?"
That was the moment the phone I'd received from Park Jaehyun buzzed.
The number on the screen wasn't saved, but there was only one place it could be from.
Cheongseol Guild.
"I'll take this call. Be right back, brother-in-law."
I frowned briefly and picked up.
I had told him to call if anything came up, but I hadn't expected the call to come so soon—barely a day later.
"What is it?"
Stepping outside the apartment, I asked directly. Jang Yeongsu, remarkably composed, began laying out his situation.
He had teamed up with the Heukchi Guild—one of the so-called alliances—and had been waiting for me. In the process, he'd been beaten by the Heukchi Guild's Guild Master, Jin Dohyuk, and stripped of all his revenue streams. And ever since the government's briefing hit the airwaves, Jin Dohyuk had been calling him nonstop.
Frankly, my first instinct was to ignore the whole thing. But the moment Jang Yeongsu mentioned that this Jin Dohyuk fellow was a Returnee, my interest was genuinely piqued.
Since returning to Earth, I'd heard the word "Returnee" until it was worn smooth in my ears—yet I'd never actually laid eyes on one.
"Then tell him to come to you."
-...I'm sorry? Could you say that again?
"Summon him to your guild. I'll be along shortly myself."
I hung up without waiting for Jang Yeongsu's answer on the other end of the line.
A moment later, the front door cracked open and Seoyeon's head poked out.
"What are you doing out there?"
"Seoyeon, I've got somewhere to be for a bit."
"What? Where now?"
"I thought I cleaned everything up yesterday, but apparently I missed one."
"You mean that garbage nonsense from yesterday? Right now?"
I gave her a slight nod, gripped the apartment railing, and dropped straight over the edge.
"Uncle!"
I touched down lightly on the ground, and Seoyeon's voice came floating down from above.
"Try to use the stairs next time! You'll wreck your knees!"
I snorted at that, and set off toward Yangcheon-gu.
"These bastards, the second my back is turned..."
At the very moment Lee Jaeseong was heading for the Cheongseol Guild in Yangcheon-gu, Jin Dohyuk was also driving toward the same destination.
His reason for going was simple. Jang Yeongsu, who had finally gotten around to answering his calls, had summoned him to the office, claiming he had a brilliant way to capture that Returnee.
That said, Jin Dohyuk didn't trust Jang Yeongsu one bit. The man had sworn up and down that his loyalties were properly settled barely a day ago, but people were never, by nature, something you could trust.
In truth, whether Jang Yeongsu's claim was true or not hardly mattered. If it was true, he'd be rid of an annoyance. If it wasn't, he could simply work off the stress that had been piling up. Either way, he won.
Screeech—.
Jin Dohyuk pulled up in front of the Cheongseol Guild headquarters and stepped out of the car. A few guild members were visible out front, but every one of them averted their eyes the moment they saw him.
That's more like it.
His filthy mood finally lifting, Jin Dohyuk strode toward the top floor where the Guild Master's office sat, his expression one of pure arrogance.
BANG—!
"Jang Yeongsu, you son of a— telling people to come when you—"
Kicking the Guild Master's door open and barging in, Jin Dohyuk abruptly shut his mouth.
The scene inside the room was nothing like what he'd expected.
Jang Yeongsu and Yoon Jiseok, who should have been groveling at the sight of him, were instead casting nervous glances at someone else entirely. And in the Guild Master's chair—Yoon Jiseok's seat—sat a man he'd never seen before.
It was at that moment Jin Dohyuk's eyes turned predatory.
"So where'd you crawl in from, huh? Got your ass beat and ran crying to your big brother?"
Jin Dohyuk said this to Yoon Jiseok. Sure, the man in the chair looked years younger than him, but the world had long since stopped caring about appearances.
"You've got a filthy mouth."
"What? Was that aimed at me? Oh—don't tell me. You're that Returnee bastard?"
Jin Dohyuk asked with a sinister smirk, eyeing Lee Jaeseong. He couldn't be bothered to think in everyday life, but his instincts were far from dull. The only person who'd come to Cheongseol Guild and act like he owned the place was that Returnee, plain and simple.
"That's right."
At the man's admission, the sinister smile widened on Jin Dohyuk's lips. He'd been planning to take the man's head anyway—having him walk right up on his own saved him the trouble of hunting him down.
And there was a very good reason Jin Dohyuk felt so invincible.
This punk doesn't know a single thing about me.
The world Jin Dohyuk had endured was a colosseum—flying blood and shredded flesh. He'd fought in free-for-alls where dozens clashed at once, but what he trusted above all else was always the same: one-on-one duels where only two people remained, fighting for their lives.
And there was one more reason for his confidence.
After his failure at the Yeouido Gate, Jin Dohyuk had reaped a harvest beyond anything he'd imagined in the next gate he entered.
Some called it a "named" monster; others called it a mutant. Urkan was no pushover by any measure, but after a long, blood-soaked battle, Jin Dohyuk had brought it down with his own two hands.
As he said—he was confident he'd never lose a one-on-one to anyone. And Urkan had been a monster that perfectly fit those conditions.
Moreover, the title he'd earned from slaying it was the kind whose effects grew stronger the more powerful his opponent was.
"Well, this is convenient. I was planning to hunt you down sooner or later anyway."
Jin Dohyuk cracked his neck with a vicious grin. The man in the chair simply watched him with languid, unbothered eyes, but that meant nothing to Jin Dohyuk.
In a few minutes, he'd have that face contorted in terror.
TAP—.
Jin Dohyuk kicked off the floor and closed the distance in an instant.
"As your senior among Returnees, let me teach you exactly how to behave yourself on Earth."
All connection to external space is completely severed until one of the two combatants' hearts stops beating.
Vwoooom—.
In that instant, the Guild Master's office warped and twisted, and the space around them changed entirely. Jang Yeongsu and Yoon Jiseok were gone, and in place of the Cheongseol office, a massive circular arena of red sand now encircled the two men.
"..."
Jin Dohyuk smirked at his opponent, who remained silent even now. Almost no one in the world knew the true effect of this "title."
The man pretending so hard to be calm was surely panicking inside. It was obvious.
Jin Dohyuk reached into empty air, summoned a massive two-handed battleaxe, and bared his teeth.
"This is a space where only you and I remain. Neither of us can leave until one of us is dead, and no one's getting in. Don't worry, though—apart from that, this place is completely, absolutely 'fair.'"
"Fascinating. So the ability my brother-in-law roughly described to me actually exists."
"What?"
Jin Dohyuk tilted his head at the completely unexpected remark. Only then did the man look directly at him and speak.
"Good timing, actually. Even so, splattering blood all over someone else's office was a bit much for me."
At that same moment, in Beijing, China.
Inside the executive office on the top floor of the super-guild Cheonmuseong, an oppressive pressure had settled over the air so thick that breathing itself felt dangerous.
"...You lost him?"
The man seated at the head of the office was Namgoong Hwi, the Sword Emperor—a hunter ranked among China's top five.
At the chill in his voice, the tracking team captain slammed his head to the floor and began scrambling through excuses.
"F-forgive me. There was no way to know that Wei Jinsheng would flee the very moment his mother's funeral was..."
"So. Where did he go?"
"K-Korea, sir. We have confirmed that he illegally entered the country through Incheon Port, but his movements since then remain unknown."
Namgoong Hwi's brow furrowed at those words.
Wei Jinsheng. Half Korean by blood, yet a man who had risen, on sheer ability alone, to Team Leader of the Emergency Response Division of China's Hunter Management Bureau.
Men were cheap—crushed underfoot by the thousands. Removing a single one of them was no problem at all. But the man fleeing to another country was an entirely different matter.
Worse, the fact that Wei Jinsheng had fled to Korea, of all places, gnawed at Namgoong Hwi.
The Blood Sect. And a man named Lee Jaeseong, bearing the same name as the Blood Demon.
He tried, with all his reason, to deny the connection—yet the worry kept crawling back, no matter what he did.
To be fair, Namgoong Hwi had done his homework on the man. Fortunately, footage from when the Hunter Management Bureau had questioned him still existed.
That young punk is the Blood Demon? Please.
The real problem was that Namgoong Hwi had never once seen the Blood Demon's face with his own eyes.
It was a fact no one else knew, but during the Great Murim War, he'd never even gotten near where the Blood Demon was—some cannon-fodder grunt had lopped his head off instead.
Recalling that unpleasant memory, Namgoong Hwi scowled and looked down at his subordinate.
"Dispatch an A-rank tracking team to Korea."
"Sir? B-but a tracking team entering another country's territory is—"
Shwick—.
A thin blade of sword qi flashed from Namgoong Hwi's fingertip and sheared the protesting captain's ear off, clean.
"AAAAAGH!"
"If that kind of thing bothered you, you should have caught him ages ago. And do I, Namgoong Hwi, really need to mind the feelings of some third-rate little country?"
He said this to the captain clutching at his ruined ear. It might have been different with the Korea of old—but the Korea of today was a wreck so broken that even its own government couldn't function.
"Go. Leave now, and bring me Wei Jinsheng's head. No excuses."
Namgoong Hwi merely watched, eyes cold as ice, as the captain fled the executive office in a scramble.