Robang
"I'm sorry? What do you mean—"
Seo Jintae, who had been reaching to seize Seo Jinwoo's arm, froze mid-motion and turned the question on me.
When our eyes met, the man forced a hollow smile onto his face. "Haha. As I said, I'm truly grateful that you saved my brother. But his current condition is..."
"His condition?"
A dry laugh escaped me as I looked at his shameless face. A man so worried about his brother's welfare wouldn't have turned tail and abandoned him to die right in front of my eyes. And I saw no reason to hold my tongue about it.
"Funny thing to say for a guy who ditched his own brother to save his skin not five minutes ago."
My blunt mockery crumpled Seo Jintae's face beautifully. A few of his guild members, apparently still capable of shame, flushed a deep scarlet—but Seo Jintae himself did not.
"...I believe there's been some misunderstanding, but I hardly think it's your place to meddle in another guild's raid methods."
"Fair enough. How you people survive is none of my business, true. But this one is."
Even as I spoke, I grabbed the back of Seo Jinwoo's neck, who was standing there utterly lost, and hauled him closer. "I picked him up in there. Which means he's mine now."
In that instant, I watched a chill settle into Seo Jintae's eyes.
Seo Jinwoo's eyes had gone just as cold. He was staring at me with the expression of a man who had never once imagined his promise to repay his debt would take a form like this.
"Th-that's— that's absurd nonsense!"
"Why is it absurd? Abandoning a person is apparently acceptable, so what's the problem with picking one up?"
At my question, Seo Jintae simply glared at me in silence. Judging by the look of him, he was working his brain overtime trying to figure out what, exactly, he could do to me here.
A smirk tugged at my lips as I watched the gears grind behind his eyes. "What? If you're so confident, try taking him back by force."
At my words, I saw several of the guild members quietly begin to edge out of the line of fire. Unlike Seo Jintae, the rank-and-file of Hyunmu Guild had no particular reason to fight over Seo Jinwoo—and every reason to want no part of another brawl right now.
"Profit! Seo Jinwoo, say something! What is this man even talking about? Huh?"
In the end, the option Seo Jintae chose was to lean on his brother all over again. And even as he did it, the man reached out toward Seo Jinwoo out of pure habit.
I caught his hand naturally and twisted.
"GAAAACK!"
With the crunch of bone grinding out of its socket, Seo Jintae's scream tore through the air. For a moment, a few of the Awakened flinched and reached for their weapons—but not a single one of them actually stepped forward. I had let out only the faintest thread of killing intent, and it was enough to freeze their bodies in place.
"Did no one ever teach you that touching what belongs to another gets your hand chopped off, unless the owner says otherwise?" I looked down at the man kneeling on the ground and said it as casually as commenting on the weather.
"D-do you really think you can just do whatever you like, and clean up after yourself?" Seo Jintae clutched his broken arm and snarled up at me with what venom he had left.
"Yep."
"..."
"If you put your faith in laws and courts and all that, go right ahead. Try the legal route, try force—do whatever you're capable of. Just know you'll be the one dealing with the consequences."
The killing intent I'd been scattering across the Hyunmu Guild members, I now concentrated on Seo Jintae alone. His jaw began to rattle, and his eyes skittered away from mine. Whatever petty greed had driven him to reclaim the brother he'd thrown away, it had long since evaporated without a trace.
Having confirmed that much, I turned my head slightly toward Seo Jinwoo. I had spoon-fed him this far. If, after all that, the boy made some baffling choice, there was nothing more I could do for him.
"So? What'll it be? If you want, I'll wipe the debt clean."
"..."
"J-Jinwoo. That's not right, is it? If I've hurt you all this time, I'm sorry... But we're brothers, aren't we? Right? Mom and Dad are both gone, and now it's just you and me..."
At my question, Seo Jinwoo said nothing for a long while. He simply stared down at his brother in silence, while Seo Jintae begged and pleaded all over again.
"I can't give you all day. Decide. Now."
"I..."
Pressed by my urging, Seo Jinwoo's mouth began, slowly, to open.
"I'll... I'll go with you. Hyung, I'm sorry."
"Seo Jinwoo, you little son of a bitch! How dare you talk to me like— ARGH!"
The moment his brother's mind was made up, Seo Jintae spat his curses as though the apology had never happened. I channeled a bit more force into the arm still locked in my grip. The pain of every muscle in his body twisting at once had Seo Jintae screaming for his life.
"Th-that's enough! Please, let's go quickly. Sir."
Hearing Seo Jinwoo address me that way, I released Seo Jintae's hand with a flick. "Not 'sir.' From now on, it's hyung."
At that, Seo Jinwoo slowly nodded his head.
...Is this even real?
Kang Iseol felt her mind beginning to slip away from her at the scene unfolding before her eyes.
Granted, orc warriors were ordinarily classified as C-rank mobs—but when they gathered in numbers like this, the equation changed entirely. And unlike before, they were moving like a proper army, which made them all but a different species altogether.
The problem was that this orc legion was being thoroughly demolished by one single man.
"AHAHAHA! You're slow, pigs!"
The man's style of combat ran on a track entirely outside anything the average hunter would recognize. Conventional hunter warfare revolved around maintaining formation: the front line of tanks absorbed and dispersed the enemy's attacks while the dealers dealt damage from behind. That was the standard.
But this man burrowed straight into the heart of the packed legion, laying about him with whatever his hands found—orc warriors and shamans alike, beaten to death on the spot. It was a combat method that could only look senseless, and yet, impossibly, it was working. Flawlessly.
Instinct?
But after a short while of tracking the man's movements, Kang Iseol realized his fighting was anything but random. He wasn't merely striking at the enemy's center of gravity—every time he churned through their formation, the orcs' lines collapsed a little further. It was movement that could absolutely be called strategic. And yet, to Kang Iseol's eye, it looked less like strategy than raw instinct.
How can a person like that even exist?
Watching the man in his ill-fitting T-shirt, she felt goosebumps crawl up her skin. If the enemy here had been not an orc horde but that man? Most of the allied hunters standing on this field would have been slaughtered helplessly. There were several A-rank hunters present right now, and yet no matter how she turned the problem over, she could find no way to fight him. Even thinking of the handful of so-called S-rank returnees, comparison was simply impossible.
"...Out-of-Gauge."
The words slipped from Kang Iseol's mouth of their own accord.
And she was not the only one stunned by the sight of him. Choi Taemin, who had brought the man here in the first place, stood with his mouth hanging open, staring—and so did every other hunter bound under the name of Hyeolcheon. In particular, the few who had nursed grievances about the alliance's founding were visibly trembling as they watched the man punch an orc shaman's head clean apart with his bare fist.
"E-everyone! What are you doing? Attack!"
Kang Iseol barked the order at the hunters who stood frozen, gawking at the man's one-sided slaughter. They had been locked in a grueling struggle until now—but with a single man joining the field, the entire battle had turned on its head.
At her command, the waiting hunters finally set upon the orc horde, and the desperate crisis began, little by little, to be put to rest.
"Well, well. What an interesting world this is."
Having finished off the last orc, the man came trudging back toward Kang Iseol drenched in blood from head to toe, saying that. Hundreds of orc warriors, wiped out almost single-handedly—and he wore the expression of a man who'd just taken out the trash. Goosebumps rippled across her arms.
"Th-thank you for your hard work."
The words left her before she could stop herself. She didn't even know who the man was, had no idea of his affiliation—but the fact that he had saved Yeongdeungpo was beyond dispute.
"Hard work, nothing. This is what the Cult Leader ordered—hardly worth calling a job. You can handle the cleanup yourselves, I trust?"
Kang Iseol nodded at the man's words. It was easy enough to read between the lines that the "Cult Leader" he spoke of was Lee Jaeseong. After all, the fact that Jaeseong led an organization called the Blood Heaven Cult was hardly news to her.
What she hadn't known was that this Blood Heaven Cult counted a monster of that caliber among its members.
What kind of life has he lived, to become... that?
An uncontainable curiosity—and something bordering on awe—bloomed in Kang Iseol's chest toward the existence called Lee Jaeseong.
One thing was certain: the balance of power among Korea's Awakened was about to reorganize itself around that man. No—perhaps it would reach far beyond even that.
"Come in."
I told Seo Jinwoo as I pushed open the front door. Him choosing to follow me was all well and good, but a boy still in his teens hardly had anywhere else to go.
What was strange, though, was that the closer we got to the house, the redder the kid's face became.
"Th-then, if you'll excuse me..."
"Uncle, you're back?"
"Hup."
The boy's already bizarre reaction hit its absolute peak the moment Seoyeon stepped out of her room. He stood there staring at her, unable to meet her eyes, like a man caught red-handed at a crime scene.
Good grief, what a hopeless softie.
I could only wear a bemused expression as I watched Seo Jinwoo revert, seemingly in real time, to the behavior of a pubescent boy.
"Huh? Seo Jinwoo?"
The genuinely unexpected event came right after that. The instant Seoyeon laid eyes on the boy standing behind me, she greeted him by name.
I'd wondered if they actually knew each other, but Seo Jinwoo's reaction said otherwise. He looked positively aghast at the girl calling out his name.
"Y-you know me?"
"Of course. You're famous. Iron Wall Seo Jinwoo."
Seoyeon chattered away at him brightly. Apparently, this blockhead was a fairly well-known Awakened after all. The kid was indecisive and a bit dense, sure—but taken on its merits, his ability was solid and his face wasn't bad either.
"Wow. Seeing you in person is surreal. But—how do you know my uncle?"
"...H-he, your uncle saved me."
"For real?"
Leaving the two of them to talk, I wandered to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. Another odd guest brought home on the heels of Samsik—but Seoyeon seemed delighted, so I counted it a blessing.
"...W-well, I know you too."
That was the moment the unexpected came out of Seo Jinwoo's mouth.
"Huh? You know me? How?"
"I... I watch your stream."
I looked at the kid with genuine wonder. It was true that among the handful of viewers I had, there being one of him was remarkable.
"Seriously? What's your handle?"
"...Um, it's... Robang."
Pfft—!
At those words, the water in my mouth made its dramatic exit before I could stop it.
So that's what it was. I'd gone outside and picked up something ridiculous yet again.