The Blood Cult Charges Straight In
“Kiiiiek!”
Dobuchi Hikio frowned at the monsters charging straight for him.
The creatures crawling up from the sea onto the shore were wildly varied in appearance, yet somehow shared a strange, unsettling uniformity. They had fish heads grafted onto human arms and legs, and every last one of them was draped in rotting seaweed, clutching a trident in its hand.
“Seriously, what an unhinged design.”
Dobuchi muttered it without thinking, staring at the fish-men swarming the water. Their grotesque appearance alone was enough to turn his stomach.
KWAAAANG!
It was at that exact moment that a sound like a ruptured eardrum tore through the air. Sato Kenji had appeared out of nowhere and hurled himself at the half-human, half-fish monsters right in front of him.
Like a man sweeping away irritating insects, Sato Kenji began hunting down the monsters scrambling ashore with terrifying speed.
Insane. Is that even possible?
Dobuchi's mouth hung open as he watched. Sato Kenji had been a fairly famous hunter in Japan, after all, and Dobuchi naturally knew roughly what his stats had been. But in the time they'd traveled together toward Korea, those stats had skyrocketed beyond recognition — the Sato Kenji of now was, without exaggeration, a completely different person.
What struck Dobuchi most was that the man wasn't even using his trademark shikigami attacks anymore. He was beating the monsters to death with his bare hands, like a physical-type awakener.
I have no idea what his secret is. The drawbacks are massive, sure — but with power like that, he'd absolutely take the bait.
Dobuchi swallowed hard as he watched Sato Kenji slaughter the monsters one-sidedly. Even now, his appraisal ability confirmed that Sato Kenji's stats were climbing at a rapid pace.
“Hold formation. Focus on support.”
“Rear guard! Concentrate fire where Sato isn't!”
The Japanese awakeners who had followed Sato Kenji into the gate were already responding to the monsters with practiced efficiency. These were elites that Japan had hand-picked and prepared for this exact operation, and they were proving it.
Two awakeners at the front clasped hands together, and a massive serpent-shaped shikigami materialized out of thin air. The serpent twisted its body straight through the heart of the fish-man horde crawling up the beach, and in moments the creatures caught in its coils were being swept away like debris.
Right behind them, the shamans in the rear launched talismans. The paper charms flying toward the monsters transformed mid-flight into balls of flame that swelled larger and larger, charring whole clusters of fish-men into lumps of charcoal with each strike.
The Japanese awakeners' attacks were landing with devastating effect — and yet Dobuchi's expression didn't brighten in the slightest.
Damn it. They just keep coming.
No matter how many thousands of monsters they killed, even greater numbers surged in behind them. Worse still, the Japanese awakeners' firepower was dwindling bit by bit as time wore on. Wounds were accumulating on the tanks in front, and the attacks from the rear were stretching further and further apart.
Even just from the statuses Dobuchi could see in real time, he could watch their mana and stamina draining away by the second.
“Support! We need support over here!”
One awakener, unable to bear it any longer, shouted toward Sato Kenji. But Sato Kenji didn't seem to care in the slightest whether the defensive line collapsed — he remained utterly consumed with slaughtering the monsters around him.
Goddamn it. Is this raid even actually clearable?
Dobuchi ground his teeth. If they stayed like this, one by one, they were all going to die to an endless wave of monsters.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
That was when a strange, heavy vibration began rolling across the ground from somewhere beyond the coastline. At the sound, the swarm of monsters pushing onto the beach froze in place.
And when Dobuchi turned his head toward the source, his jaw dropped.
“Wh… what the hell is THAT?”
From the forest on the far side of the beach emerged a legion of rabbits — each one the size of an adult man, boasting muscles that looked fit to burst. With glinting crimson eyes and bodies crisscrossed with scars, the rabbits came sprinting down toward the shore, each hauling a massive pestle the size of its own body.
“Kieeeek—!”
One of the half-fish monsters, sensing an instinctive threat, charged at the rabbit legion. But the scar-covered rabbit at the head of the column leapt lightly into the air and brought its enormous pestle down on the monster's skull in a full swing.
KWAJIK—.
The fish-monster's head exploded like an overripe watermelon, gone in a single blow.
“…Rabbits?”
Dobuchi murmured it, half his soul leaving his body. Strange things happened inside gates, sure — but never in his wildest imagination had he expected to witness an army of muscle-bound rabbits swinging pestles and butchering fish-men.
And then, at that very moment, something happened that surpassed even Dobuchi's imagination.
“If those fish are your enemies, then they are our foes as well. If it please you, we invite you to our village.”
One of the rabbits approached Dobuchi's group and spoke.
“Uncle!”
A road on the outskirts of Busan.
Stepping out of the sliding door alongside Samsik and Yuk Jurim, I spotted Seoyeon waving at me with a bright smile. Beside her stood my brother-in-law, along with Seo Jinwoo, Kang Iseol, and Park Jaehyun.
“How's the situation, brother-in-law?”
“The awakeners who crossed over from Japan have already been confirmed inside the gate, and the area around it is currently being guarded by awakener teams from the Busan hunter guilds.”
It was Park Jaehyun, not my brother-in-law, who answered my question. Apparently, even though he'd only just arrived in Busan, he knew the local situation as if he'd watched it firsthand — because one of those hunter guilds had agreed to cooperate with the government.
“Ha. Why is it that every one of them leaves their own soil alone and throws tantrums in someone else's country?”
I couldn't help muttering it with a look of pure incredulity. China was sending spies into other people's homes, and Japan had outright sneaked into foreign territory to raise hell. Even if I'd spent more years in Moorim than in Korea, watching this was never going to feel good.
“Oh, right — about the China situation…?”
“Ah, that? It worked out fine.”
I gave that breezy answer to Park Jaehyun, whose face was full of worry as he asked. In truth, I'd concluded successful negotiations with China's most powerful man, and Hyeolnoe and the rest of the Blood Heavenly Cult were adapting well. There was nothing about it that should have become a problem.
“W-what exactly does 'worked out fine' mean…?”
Of course, even after that explanation Park Jaehyun's face remained thick with anxiety, but I only laughed it off. My trip to China had, first and foremost, been about keeping my subordinates from causing a catastrophe, and second, about bringing back a few useful people. There was no reason to walk him through every last detail beyond that.
“Brother-in-law. And who might these gentlemen be?”
It was then that my brother-in-law glanced at Yuk Jurim and his men and asked. He had a point — Yuk Jurim and his subordinates had a completely different flavor from Samsik. Like the warriors of the Blood Shadow Squad generally, Yuk Jurim looked as though he'd walked straight off the set of a wuxia film.
Even Seoyeon and Seo Jinwoo were staring at him with eyes brimming with curiosity.
“These are my people. Say hello.”
“This humble one, Blood Shadow Leader Yuk Jurim, pays respects to the revered bloodline of the Cult Leader.”
The real problem was that these men, like Samsik, were Blood Heavenly Cult members through and through — their manner of thinking and their reactions were almost eerily similar. Yuk Jurim and the Blood Shadow Squad members dropped to their knees on the ground and roared their greeting in unison.
What was strange was how my family's reaction differed, subtly, from how they'd handled Samsik.
“Ah. Pleasure to meet you.”
“P-please, get up. Please.”
Granted, this was only the second time they'd witnessed this, so the shock was bound to be dulled.
No, honestly? I'm pretty sure it's just because of how they look.
Watching my brother-in-law's and Seoyeon's expressions, I couldn't think otherwise. It was true for him, but especially for Seoyeon — the way the corners of her mouth kept twitching made it look, unmistakably, like she was enjoying this.
And to be fair, I understood. Watching the hulking Samsik flop face-down onto the ground and watching Yuk Jurim — a man with the looks of a dashing wuxia protagonist if ever there was one — and his men sink to their knees with crisp, courteous precision were simply two entirely different experiences.
Samsik himself, of course, didn't appear to be thinking about any of it at all.
“Ahem. So, what's the plan from here?”
“Plan? Ah — yes. For now, our contact on the inside has agreed to send us a signal. They're human too, so they'll have no choice but to rotate their guard personnel. We intend to move in at the moment when their vigilance is at its weakest…”
“Hmm. I don't really see the need for all that, though.”
I said it while watching Park Jaehyun earnestly lay out his carefully drafted operation. I'd said it before, and I'd say it again: when you have the strength, there's no need to go around anything.
“Samsik. Take the Blood Shadow boys and go on ahead. Clean it up.”
That was what I said to Samsik and the Blood Shadow Squad.
The awakeners of Busan, is it?
Not a bad opponent at all, I thought, for the Blood Shadow Squad's first battle under Yuk Jurim's command.
“Sungwoo, you little punk. Loosen up that face, will you?”
Busan Port — the temporary command post of the Busan guild alliance.
Han Sungwoo, Guild Master of Dongbaek Guild, was biting down hard on the curses boiling up inside him as he faced the senior guild master talking down to him.
“You heard the terms Japan offered. They're handing over Busan entirely, as a special zone. Korea's finished anyway. They can barely hold the capital's defenses as it is — you think they've got the bandwidth to care about way down here?”
Every guild master Han Sungwoo knew had gotten drunk on the sweet candy Japan had tossed them. Their spending habits had already changed, and the source of the money was blatant enough that nobody even bothered to question it anymore.
Truthfully, Han Sungwoo had spent that money without a second thought at first too. Running a small guild meant perpetual financial struggle, and the money that had appeared out of nowhere back then had genuinely let him breathe.
But his thinking changed the moment he learned whose money it was.
It wasn't that he had any burning patriotism for the nation of Korea. He simply had no intention of actively selling out his own country with his own hands. He didn't even know if it was true — but Han Sungwoo's father had always said that his grandfather was a decorated war veteran.
Team Leader Park. Can I really trust this man?
That was why Han Sungwoo had contacted Park Jaehyun in secret, behind the other guild masters' backs.
The problem was that even after handing over everything the man had demanded — the situation on the ground, the full disposition of the guard rotations — there had been no response of any kind. Not yet.
“Y'know, I read on the internet that some guild called… Hyeolcheon, something like that, is supposed to be crazy strong.”
“Aigo, you adorable little idiot. Scared you, did it? Sungwoo, since when has anything those suits spout from on high been anything but bullshit? And even if that guild IS strong — you think they'd ditch Seoul and come all the way down to Busan? This isn't even their turf. My bet is they're the ones sweating over when the government's gonna stab THEM in the back.”
At Han Sungwoo's attempt to steer the conversation, the senior guild master just laughed and rapped him on the head.
WHAM! CRUNCH!
It was at that exact moment that chaos erupted outside the temporary command post.
Several of the guild masters inside instinctively drew their weapons and rushed out — but the situation didn't change. If anything, the only thing that came back was the bewildered voices of the men who'd gone out.
“AAAAAAGH!”
“Wh-what is it?! Where the hell are they attacking from—”
KWAAAAANG!
Han Sungwoo watched the container wall of his temporary command post cave in helplessly.
A fist?
The fist that had punched through the wall promptly seized the torn edge of the container and peeled the entire panel away like a sheet of paper.
Through the gaping hole in the wall appeared a man of colossal build.
“Heh heh. Quite a few more of you gathered here than I expected.”
Facing that giant's gaze, Han Sungwoo found himself swallowing hard. He'd seen the Japanese awakeners from a distance before — but this man radiated a menace on an entirely different level from anything he'd felt then.
“W-wait a second. Who the hell are you?”
The senior awakener who, like Han Sungwoo, had stayed inside the container asked the question. In answer, the giant simply extended one brutish fist.
THUD.
With a sound like a watermelon being crushed, the senior guild master who'd been lecturing Han Sungwoo mere moments ago crumpled to the floor.
“You small fry sure do talk a lot.”
Han Sungwoo could do nothing but swallow again as the giant flashed a grin down at him.