Samsik
"So what you're tellin' me is, past this big red hole here, that's where the Cult Leader's at?"
The underground training chamber.
A man stood gazing up at the blood-red vortex swirling in the air before him, his eyes positively gleaming.
He had a rat's nest of tangled hair and wore a filthy, tattered martial uniform caked with grime. From a distance he looked like any vagrant off the street, and in truth he was nothing more than a low-ranking warrior of the Vanguard Division — and yet not a soul dared treat him carelessly.
The Mad Dog, Kang Samsik.
He was a member of the Vanguard Division who had caught the eye of the Blood Heaven Sovereign himself and been granted a stroke of destiny — which was exactly why.
"That's right. The Cult Leader you've been searching for appears to have passed through here into another world."
Hyeolnoe spoke those words to Kang Samsik, wearing an expression like his skull was splitting.
After all, the only reason they had pried open a training chamber the Cult Leader had entered at all was because this man had thrown a fit the moment the Leader's scent suddenly vanished.
"So?"
"It's not 'so' — first, we need you to go ahead as an advance party and determine the Cult Leader's exact inten—"
Hyeolnoe never got to finish.
"Okay, call!"
With the corners of his mouth curling up, Kang Samsik shouted those words and hurled himself forward without a single second of hesitation.
"Hey! You lunatic!"
Hyeolnoe's roar came too late. Kang Samsik's figure had already vanished into the red vortex.
"That crazy bastard doesn't even listen to the end of a sentence!"
But to Kang Samsik, nothing else mattered anyway.
The fact that the Cult Leader lay beyond that red hole was reason enough to leap in, no matter what waited on the other side.
"Keck. That's some foul stench."
The first thing Kang Samsik did after dropping down through the dimensional tunnel and landing was pinch his nose.
The air was thick and murky — nothing like the crisp air of the Central Plains. A nasty smell of iron filings and polluted qi drifting on the breeze pricked at his nostrils like needles.
But then, sniffing away, Kang Samsik's expression suddenly hardened.
Between the layers of foul stench, his instincts had caught something faint — barely a thread, yet utterly familiar.
The scent of the Ten Thousand Li Tracking Incense he had once secretly rubbed into the Cult Leader's clothes.
'East. Far away, but it's there.'
That was the moment Kang Samsik's eyes began to gleam.
He slowly lifted his head, and only then started to take in his surroundings.
And the scene spread out before Kang Samsik's eyes matched, astonishingly well, the stories the Cult Leader used to toss out over drinks in the old days.
"So this is that 'skyscraper' thing the Leader talked about? Certainly tall enough to stab the sky. And those things rolling around must be the iron carriages."
A strange cityscape glimpsed between rundown, abandoned buildings.
For a while Kang Samsik looked around with an expression of wonder, but his interest soon died and he clicked his tongue.
A world without the Cult Leader in it meant nothing to him.
"Right then. Time to run and find the Cult Lea—"
Kang Samsik had just turned his first steps east when—
"Halt! Who are you? How did you come out from inside the Gate?"
A dozen or so men in strange garb, weapons drawn.
They blocked his path and shouted those words.
Needless to say, they were Awakened affiliated with China's Gate Management Bureau — but Kang Samsik had no way of knowing that.
"Huh? What're these rats supposed to be?"
Kang Samsik scrunched up his face in irritation.
The men reflected in his eyes looked second-rate at best — no, third-rate — like people who didn't know the first character of the word 'martial arts.'
"Can't you understand Chinese? This is Chinese territory. Drop your weapons and surrender at onc— urk!"
In that instant, the hunter standing at the very front shot up into the air along with his scream.
Kang Samsik had closed the distance at a speed no one could even track, and driven his fist straight up into the man's jaw.
"Your land? Any place where the Cult Leader resides is the Cult Leader's land, no matter where it is!"
Kang Samsik bellowed that out as he glared down at the man sprawled across the pavement.
The strange thing was that everyone present understood every word of it.
Even though his mouth was clearly shaping sounds that were nothing like Chinese.
"Th-this madman! Attack!"
Panicked, the hunters hurled spells and charged with blades drawn, but Kang Samsik snickered as he slid leisurely through the gaps in their assault.
Every time his hand so much as brushed past, another Chinese hunter's bones snapped and flesh burst open.
It could hardly be called a battle. It was the one-sided play of a tiger loose in a pack of wolves — or, to borrow the Cult Leader's own word, a lamb-slaughter.
"Ahaha. Weak! Is the world the Cult Leader described really nothing butcripples like these?"
Having reduced a dozen Awakened to wreckage in the blink of an eye, Kang Samsik wiped his blood-soaked hands carelessly on his grubby martial uniform.
Then he sniffed the air again and stared off toward the eastern sky.
"Wait for me, Cult Leader. Kang Samsik comes to pay his respects now!"
BOOM—
With a thunderous crack, Kang Samsik kicked off the ground and launched himself skyward.
Lightly vaulting the cars streaming along the roads below, he began to sprint headlong east — following the trail of the Ten Thousand Li Tracking Incense, toward Korea.
The morning air was pleasantly crisp.
With last night's commotion behind me, I was shuffling out in my slippers to take out the trash, same as always.
But my attention was fixed on a peculiar sensation hanging near one side of the apartment complex.
'Some little bastard spying on people's homes again?'
A position no ordinary person could occupy. And from it, I could distinctly feel a gaze watching me — or more precisely, surveilling the entire apartment complex.
It was a subtle presence no ordinary person would ever detect, but by spreading out my qi-sense I could pinpoint its location exactly.
When I turned my head slightly, feigning obliviousness, I could see a single small eyeball floating in the distance.
Needless to say, popping that eyeball would've taken me less than a heartbeat.
Instead, I slipped a hand into my pocket and merely let a faint, cold smile cross my face.
'Go on. Stare all you like.'
That eyeball was surely an Awakened skill, or some strange ability scavenged off a slain monster.
If I carelessly burst it, the frightened main body would just burrow deep into hiding, and things would only get messier.
Which meant that by letting that eyeball keep confirming what was on this side, I could use it in reverse — to locate and strip their home base bare.
So I feigned a lazy yawn and walked back inside.
"Kuroda Sho. I remember seeing him in the documents on an organization called Babel."
Wei Jinsheng came to visit my home that afternoon.
And once he'd confirmed the photo of Kuroda Sho, what came out of the man's mouth was quite fascinating. I'd figured that as a former member of the Chinese hunter establishment's upper echelons, he might know more about this Kuroda Sho than the Blue Snow Guild kids did — and I'd called it right.
"Babel?"
"A coalition of internationally wanted criminals, psychopaths, and every variety of lunatic. Even within China they're under active surveillance, and as I recall, Kuroda Sho was one of their members."
"So what does this outfit actually do?"
"We don't know. Not who leads them, nor what their purpose is. What is certain, however, is that they're obsessed with collecting special titles."
At Wei Jinsheng's words, I felt the corner of my mouth curl upward.
Thanks to him, a rough picture was starting to form in my head. Which meant that the one gunning for my nephew might not be Kuroda Sho alone — but an entire organization called Babel.
"Wei Jinsheng, one more question. Among these Babel bastards, is there one who uses some ability to float an eyeball in midair for surveillance?"
"...Yes. I do remember hearing of such a person. Someone who slew a mutant Beholder and earned the title Clairvoyance."
A hollow little laugh escaped me.
"Because I'm pretty sure that eyeball is hovering around my house right now."
"...What? Wh-what did you just—!"
Wei Jinsheng went pale and whipped his head around to scan the surroundings — but I raised my qi and kept his neck from turning any further.
"Don't tip them off. Until the bait's taken properly, this is a moment for watching and waiting."
I said it to Wei Jinsheng with a chilly smile.
The price for daring to peep into my home and set their sights on my nephew.
In my mind's eye, I could already see the board where I'd swept every last one of these Babel bastards off the table to collect that price in full.
'A shame, really. If Samsik were here, this whole affair would've been far simpler.'
"Chen Lei, why has this man still sent no word? This is what I get for trusting an incompetent."
Beijing, China.
On the top floor of a towering skyscraper, the Sword Emperor Namgoong Hwi scowled out the window.
He'd given nothing more than an order to bring in one man who hadn't even Awakened, and the fact that his own subordinate still hadn't reported back gnawed at him.
The Sword Emperor sipped the tea set on his table and steadied his mind.
Not everyone would think as he did — that much was only natural.
In times like these, one must be all the more composed, all the more calm. That was the bearing befitting an absolute sovereign, Namgoong Hwi reminded himself.
"...What? Another person has come out of that Gate?"
His composure shattered less than an hour later.
"Yes. An A-Rank hunter team attempted to secure the scene, an engagement suddenly broke out, and within a minute the entire team was wiped out to the last man."
"...Say that again?"
Namgoong Hwi's brow drew down dangerously.
Careless or not, this had been an A-Rank team from China. And among them had been Awakened belonging to Cheonmuseong itself. If a single individual had annihilated them all within a span of one minute, he had to be assessed as at least S-Rank or higher.
"Footage. Did you secure footage?"
At Namgoong Hwi's words, the subordinate who had come to report hurriedly worked a tablet and brought up a holographic display.
And the footage recorded by the scene-securing drone began to play.
Within it, a man in a grime-caked martial uniform kicked off the ground like a rabid hound, turning China's hunters into lumps of meat — a horrific tableau.
"Ahaha! Weak! So weak! Is the world the Cult Leader talked about nothing butcripples like these?!"
A bizarre laughter, faintly audible even through the screen.
The instant Namgoong Hwi heard it, his body nearly crumpled back into its seat on its own.
'...Huh?'
Namgoong Hwi's eyes began to tremble violently.
Zap—
That terrible sensation from long ago — the moment his head had gone rolling from his shoulders at the Murim War, cleaved off by some nameless nobody.
Seized by that vivid phantom pain, Namgoong Hwi found his hand drifting helplessly to the back of his own neck.
"L-Lord Sovereign? Your complexion—"
"Th-that mad— how is that mad son of a bitch here, of all—"
His subordinate was standing right there, but Namgoong Hwi couldn't even register the fact.
His face white as a corpse, his lips quivered and trembled.
The composure befitting an absolute sovereign? He'd thrown that to the dogs long ago.
The horrific terror of a memory — his head severed in a single strike. And the man who had carved that fear into him was laughing on the screen right now.
"Wh-where is that man right now?"
Pressed by Namgoong Hwi, his subordinate went white and reported in a rush.
"He—he headed east. Even now he is moving east at a tremendous speed, killing every Awakened who tries to block his path."
"East? East would be—"
"Our estimate is that he is advancing straight toward Korea. South Korea, that is."
Korea.
At that word, Namgoong Hwi's mind bleached white.
Of all places — that country had to appear again.
And the words that lunatic had spoken still seemed to ring in his ears.
"Ahaha! Weak! So weak! Is the other world the Cult Leader talked about nothing butcripples like these?!"
Only one being existed whom that madman would call Cult Leader: the Blood Heaven Sovereign. Which meant the Lee Jaeseong who had gone to Korea before was likely no namesake — but the Blood Heaven Sovereign himself.
"At—at once. Contact the other sovereigns. Tell them the Sword Emperor is convening the Moorim Branch Association!"
"Sir? The Moorim Branch Association, you say?"
"Yes. Tell them attendance is mandatory. Absolutely mandatory."
Namgoong Hwi badgered his subordinate without the slightest regard for his own dignity.
If the man who had crossed over into South Korea really was the Blood Heaven Sovereign, it was not a matter he could shoulder alone.
Whether by fortune or misfortune, China held several more returnees of Murim origin besides himself.