My Uncle Settles His Accounts
Come to think of it, I do feel a little sorry for the Blood Cult kids.
Of all the things to surface first, faced with the ominous aura pressing in from outside, that was the thought that came to me.
We had rolled through thirty years together, but I had never truly opened my heart to any of them. The only person in Murim I had ever let past my walls was my master.
If I were to make excuses, from a modern man's perspective, the people of the Blood Cult had plenty of qualities that made them hard to like. Each of them was unhinged in some way or another, and seeing as this was Murim, every last one came with rage issues factory-installed as a passive skill.
But now, I could understand them completely. The reason I'd never been able to empathize with their emotions was that I had been a thorough outsider in Murim all along.
For me, it had only ever been Seoyeon getting tormented. No—that wasn't "only" anything, and yet even just that much was enough to make me want to hunt down every one of those bastards swarming outside and beat them to death.
If this was how I felt now, what must it have been like for those whose family or sworn brothers died at another's hand, who watched the village they lived in burn to ash?
Even grinding their bones to dust and drinking them wouldn't have cooled the rage.
That was the moment I truly, sincerely understood the Blood Cultists who went mad with vengeance.
"Stay put and wait inside."
With those words to Seoyeon, I dove straight out the fourth-floor window.
"Wh-what the hell?"
"Young Master, it's him! The guy from before!"
The moment I landed lightly on the ground, the men fetching their weapons stumbled back in confusion. In numbers and quality alike, they were a different class from the lowlifes who had come during the day. Even so, they all looked like trash to my eyes—though a few among them had eyes sharp enough to be worth something.
"Ah, so that's the bastard."
I arched an eyebrow at the sniveling little punk standing at the center of the group. I didn't need to ask who he was. The way the men around him kept checking his mood told me all I needed—that this was the "Young Master" they kept mentioning.
"You're Oh Sejun?"
At my question of confirmation, the bastard answered with a nasty grin.
"Hah. Jesus. What kind of retarded mutt just calls out my name like that? Hey, you know where you are and you're still pulling this shit? You must seriously wanna die."
I narrowed my eyes at the foul-mouthed punk. His body was undeniably a bit more developed than Seoyeon's. In Murim terms, he'd scraped past third-rate and just barely earned the second-rate label—which is to say, he was exactly good enough to guard a caravan for some merchant house and not one bit more.
"That's none of my business. I have one question."
"Wow, this bastard has zero situational awareness. You don't see all the guys swarming this place? Fine, whatever. Ask away. Before you die, I can spare that much."
I looked at Oh Sejun as he sneered at me, then slowly opened my mouth.
"Did you ever lay a hand on Choi Seoyeon?"
By "lay a hand," I didn't mean anything else. When I'd examined Seoyeon's body earlier, I'd noticed what looked like bruises on her—that was why I asked.
But the question must have landed differently in his ears.
"Fuck, if I'd laid a hand on her, would I be standing around like this? That bitch kept puffing herself up like she had a leg to stand on, that's why I came all the way out here in the middle of the night. Not that I was serious about dating her or anything—I just figured I'd try her out once or—"
Watching Oh Sejun sneer those words, I moved faster than the eye could follow. At the distance that closed in an instant, I saw his eyes go wide. Then I seized him by the head and drove it straight into the ground.
Crunch.
It sounded like a perfectly ripened watermelon splitting open, and I saw the men around us flinch as one. Not a single one of them had managed to properly track my movement.
"I see. Reason for you to die: confirmed."
I said it with his head still pinned to the pavement. Of course, I didn't kill him. Killing him that easily would be no true revenge at all.
But the bastard, ignorant of that fact, had clearly and thoroughly misunderstood the situation.
"Nnngh. Wh-what are you doing, you retarded fucks? This guy's just fast! Grab him!"
Even with his face mashed into the ground, Oh Sejun was shrieking orders at his underlings. That was the moment they all lunged at me.
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...How is that even possible?
Choi Seoyeon had been watching the entire thing from the apartment window. Her uncle had told her to stay put, but she wasn't obligated to listen to him. And strictly speaking, she hadn't gone outside, so technically she hadn't disobeyed either.
Why am I even getting worked up over this? Ridiculous.
The thought occurred to her for a moment, but that wasn't what mattered. An uncle who had materialized out of nowhere after ten years was facing down the Blood Bird Guild bastards. Alone. The visible numbers topped twenty, and among them were faces even Choi Seoyeon recognized. Which meant Oh Pilsang—the head of the Blood Bird Guild—had sent elites he prized to the scene.
Truthfully, part of why she was secretly peeking out the window was worry for her uncle. He was a hateful man, sure, but she didn't wish to see him beaten down by the Blood Bird thugs either.
It took less than a minute for every one of those worries to prove utterly pointless.
Having subdued Oh Sejun in the blink of an eye, her uncle began knocking down the Blood Bird Guild members one by one as they rushed him. With insulting, contemptuous ease. He merely grabbed a charging man's wrist, and the man went rolling across the pavement. It looked like he was simply waving his hand at a leisurely pace, yet the blade of one attacker ended up buried in his own comrade's body.
Blood sprayed, screams rang out—and through it all, her uncle remained impossibly composed, as if he were out for an afternoon stroll.
That was why the scene, which by any sane measure should have been horrifying, looked somehow different to her.
He said he was from Murim, didn't he?
Choi Seoyeon was an Awakened hunter who entered gates, low-ranked though she was. No—even setting Awakened status aside, everyone knew at least the basics about Returnees. Ever since the gates began appearing, public attention had inevitably focused on the Awakened, and the beings called Returnees were a fixture in the upper ranks of every ranking board.
Some came from the Rudian Continent, where mana and magic reigned. Some wielded the powers of a primordial age. Some possessed extraordinary affinity with the spirits. The worlds the Returnees had experienced ran the whole gamut—but of them all, the place consistently rated as the weakest in martial power was Murim.
The reason was simple. Unlike the other worlds that had shown interest in people from Earth, Murim was deeply insular. Even people native to Murim, by every account, refused to teach martial arts to anyone outside their family bloodline or sect. That was why the Murim-born Awakened who made the rankings could be counted on one hand.
Granted, at the very top of the ladder, the story changed. China's Sword Emperor and other Murim Returnees who'd been blessed with extraordinary opportunities were said to outclass even the knight-Returnees of mana-wielding worlds.
And Choi Seoyeon couldn't help but think that maybe her uncle was one of those exceptional cases. Naturally, there wasn't a single ranked hunter among the Blood Bird Guild goons—but of everyone she had ever seen, her uncle looked the strongest.
...That man.
Choi Seoyeon felt her hands tighten on the window frame.
For ten years, he had been nothing but an object of her resentment. Her mother walking toward that gate, her father starting his hunter work—in the end, she'd blamed all of it on her uncle. But if she were being honest with herself, none of that had been his fault. He hadn't chosen to fall into Murim.
She still couldn't say there was no resentment left in her heart. Yet at the same time, when she thought of her uncle—a boy barely older than herself—falling alone into an alien world called Murim, she couldn't imagine how terrifying and agonizing that must have been.
This is so annoying.
Choi Seoyeon muttered it inwardly as she watched her uncle close in on Oh Sejun again. She didn't welcome a so-called family member suddenly meddling in her affairs after all this time—but at the same time, she kept catching herself wanting to lean on him.
That was why Choi Seoyeon looked away from the window and stepped back. She didn't want the tears currently streaming down her face to be seen by that man, of all people.
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...Did she go inside?
I glanced toward the window and saw that Seoyeon, who had been spying on me this whole time, was no longer there. I considered that a good thing. She might be a niece who drew her sword at the slightest provocation, but the scene about to unfold was no fit sight for an eighteen-year-old girl.
"Hik... hiihk."
With the men he trusted all laid out flat, Oh Sejun was slumped on the ground making nothing but pathetic noises. I walked over slowly and slapped him across the cheek.
"Wake up. We've still got accounts to settle."
Instantly, focus returned to Oh Sejun's eyes. His gaze swept the surroundings—not a single one of his men remained standing.
"...Y-you're insane. Do you know who my father is? Oh Pilsang. Oh Pilsang of the Blood Bird Guild."
"Why would I need to know that?"
"What?"
When his father's name failed to do its job, I grabbed the panicking Oh Sejun by the collar and hoisted him into the air. I felt him flailing, but it was a useless struggle.
"I'm just trying to settle our accounts. Why does your father's name keep coming up?"
"S-settle? Accounts?"
Oh Sejun murmured it with a blank face, and I slowly nodded.
"You borrowed money from my niece, didn't you? What was the principal again?"
"...Around fifty million?"
He clearly hadn't expected money talk in this situation, but he answered my question all the same.
"And there was interest too, right?"
"...Should, should be about a hundred and eighty million."
Even to himself the number must have sounded absurd, because Oh Sejun averted his eyes from mine as he said it.
Still holding Oh Sejun in one hand, I slipped the other into my coat. Then I drew out three gold ingots and thrust them before his eyes.
"You can see what these are, yes?"
"...Gold?"
"That's right. One hundred percent pure gold. The Emperor gave it to me, so it's not fake. One kilogram each. At this weight, it more than covers the entire debt."
With those words to Oh Sejun, I shoved the three gold ingots into his pocket.
"The debt my niece owes is settled with that. Agreed?"
The bastard nodded rapidly, agreeing with everything I said.
"O-okay, okay, we're good. So just put me down and let's talk, yeah? You got your money back, so there's nothing between us anymore, right?"
I smirked at the terror frozen on Oh Sejun's face. Having wracked his brain and found no answer, he was clearly just trying to smooth things over however he could.
"No. We're not finished settling accounts. Didn't you hear what I told your underling?"
"...Wh-what do you mean?"
When I suddenly smiled, Oh Sejun asked it with a face drained of all color.
"I distinctly remember telling you to pass along a message: that I would collect the price for coveting my niece separately."
"...Wh-what does that even—"
I seized the right arm of the frantically backpedaling Oh Sejun and channeled qi straight into it.
Snap.
A sound that should never come from a human body rang out, and a horrific scream burst from Oh Sejun's mouth.
"AAAAAAGH!"
I looked down, expressionless, at Oh Sejun kneeling on the ground and shrieking as he clutched his arm. Tears were streaming from his eyes, but they stirred nothing in me.
"F-fucking... psycho bastard..."
"That was payment for the dog tongue you wagged in front of my niece earlier."
I said it with a smile, down at Oh Sejun. Unless he ran into someone called a Divine Healer, he would never eat a meal with his right hand again.
And I had no intention of stopping there.
Crunch.
My foot came down on one of his kneeling knees and crushed it. Whether from the shock of the unexpected blow, Oh Sejun couldn't even manage a proper scream—only strangled, wet retches.
"That's payment for daring, without even knowing your place, to mess with my niece."
Crunch.
This time I shattered his jaw with my knee.
"And that's payment for making a ten-year-old kid hide every time a person came near, because of you."
I was still smiling as I looked down at Oh Sejun, unconscious at my feet. He might have wished this was the end—but naturally, I had no intention of ending it here. Not when that Oh Pilsang he worshipped still had a debt of his own to pay.
"And one more thing—our Seoyeon is still a minor, you insane piece of shit."
Those were the words I spoke as I crushed Oh Sejun's groin into paste where he lay twitching on the ground.
The fact that Oh Sejun was the same age as Seoyeon—eighteen—would only reach me much later.
Not that it would have changed much of anything.