Bounty in the Urban Shadows
A mailbox-like iron box covered in countless names and numbers.
Taeyang looked up at the iron box and muttered to himself.
“Ah, I remember now.”
The Bounty stage.
The rules were simple.
Players had to track down criminals hiding throughout the city and kill them. Success granted points equal to the criminal’s bounty.
The target was 20,000,000 points. Once collected, returning to the iron box cleared the stage.
Taeyang glanced around and muttered again.
“Endless Express was the same. We keep landing on stages with massive scale.”
Figuring out the connection between the iron box and the mission wasn’t difficult, so players quickly converged on it.
Schweitzer Angel – 10,000,000
Maruyama Sapiens – 1,000,000
James Harari – 500,000
Angela Hun – 1,300,000
Antigone Plot – 6,000,000
Bimal Straight – 3,500,000
……
Names and bounties. That was all the iron box revealed. Everything else—appearances, personal details—had to be uncovered through direct action.
“Ran, let’s move.”
“Huh? Aren’t we supposed to memorize the names and amounts?”
“You already know why I’m doing this.”
This wasn’t the first or second time.
“Ah.”
When Taeyang winked, Ran let out a small laugh and followed after him. It was nothing unusual. That ghost lady beside him had probably told him again.
Hyeonhye suddenly spoke up.
-By the way, is it okay to leave the stream on? Viewers will keep reporting their progress over there.
“What, let them.”
Taeyang answered with a perfectly calm expression. Their location? Their plans? He honestly didn’t care if it became public knowledge. They couldn’t stop him anyway—no matter what he intended to do.
Glancing over, Taeyang spotted Messiah’s group already moving. They hadn’t even properly checked the iron box before heading straight into the forest of buildings.
-Tsk, our paths are going to overlap.
“Well, it was bound to happen.”
Regardless of the stage, crossing paths with Messiah was inevitable. Both Messiah and Hyeonhye were veteran players who had long since reached the peak. Strategy guides were built from shared player knowledge, so while minor details might differ, their approaches were unlikely to diverge significantly.
Taeyang suddenly turned to Ran.
“Hey, do you know anything about ghosts?”
“Ghosts? You mean monsters or beasts?”
“Yeah. Vampires and that sort.”
“Ah, I know a bit. Not sure if it’s the same kind you’re thinking of.”
Well, it probably was. Ran frowned.
“Don’t tell me those are what appear here?”
“Yep. Nailed it.”
Vampires. Exorcists. And the mafia. The concept of Amerigo, the city stage in the Bounty stage, was “urban fantasy.”
* * *
Messiah briefed his companions while walking briskly.
“Let’s split into groups of two or three and check the back alleys.”
“Start with the low-level drug addicts?”
“Yeah. That’s the fastest way in. Even if we run into some punks, just bow your head. If things get rough, run. Got it?”
His tone was unusually urgent—different from his usual self. Celtavigo, the second-in-command among Messiah’s users, asked with a worried expression.
“Vampires do have bounties in the ten-million range, but do we really need to take the risk? Wouldn’t it be safer to just clear the stage with the small fry?”
“Catching guys worth a hundred or two hundred each would take ten times the effort. We’ve got limited mouths to feed.”
“Still……”
Messiah stopped abruptly.
“Since when did you become such a nag? I’ve said it over and over—Dantalion is a game that devours you if you play passively out of fear of the difficulty.”
“……”
“And there’s the highest bounty achievement, Night’s Noble Encounter, and Constantine. Just off the top of my head, that’s three. Cut the side branches and at least five more pop up easily.”
Celtavigo sighed.
“I’m saying this because it feels like you’re too fixated on Yoon Taeyang. Highest bounty, vampire encounter—there’s no need to rush those.”
“Rush?”
Messiah snorted.
“Listen, do you even know how many achievements Yoon Taeyang has right now? Huh, Celtavigo? And the rest of you—think carefully. This stage is different. It’s where we prove our worth.”
Prove their worth. Celtavigo and the others’ expressions hardened. Messiah’s eyes darkened.
Of course it stung their pride. But that was reality.
“We’re on the 13th floor. Do you know how many achievements Yoon Taeyang has?”
“……”
“Eighty-four. You think my pace is going to break KK’s record? What does that even mean? He’s already broken it. KK is already obsolete next to him.”
Tsk. Wasting time.
Messiah urged his group forward, watching their stunned faces. They had heard Yoon Taeyang was impressive, but they hadn’t realized Messiah thought this highly of him. To them, Messiah was already top-tier, and so were they by extension. Seeing him belittle himself like this felt like an attack on their own self-worth.
Celtavigo shouted at Messiah’s back.
“Messiah, I honestly don’t get it. Is there really a reason to go this far?”
Messiah stopped.
“Damn it, let’s be honest. I don’t understand why you’re so obsessed with Yoon Taeyang. Yoon Taeyang? Sure, he’s amazing. But so what? Let him do his thing. We’ll do ours. We’ve been doing fine so far! What’s the problem?”
Messiah gave a small laugh.
The problem?
“Friend, I told you. I came here to clear Dantalion and save everyone trapped inside.”
Messiah loved attention and might seem slightly unhinged from a normal perspective, but he wasn’t a liar. He had genuinely logged in with the intent to save the three hundred million humans imprisoned in Dantalion. And at least in his eyes, climbing the tower alongside Taeyang seemed like the most efficient path.
“Of course Yoon Taeyang isn’t perfect either. He’s human. Streamer Dal-nim? She’s pretty famous, but I’m not about to claim she knows the game better than I do.”
So Messiah intended to prove himself. To show what he could accomplish—things that couldn’t be done alone—through tight cooperation between users.
“Yoon Taeyang is the closest to clearing this. If you can’t accept that, leave. I’ll say it again: I’m here to clear the game. This isn’t some children’s game.”
With that, Messiah turned and disappeared into the alley. The remaining users let out sighs of admiration.
“That’s Messiah for you. I was too caught up in pride to even think like that.”
“Honestly, he’s right. Eighty-four achievements—that’s the all-time record! If anyone clears this, it’ll be them, not us.”
“Whew, yeah. We have to admit it. Doing it ourselves might feel better, but thinking about the clear, it’s not the efficient choice.”
“What are we waiting for? Let’s go after him.”
The users hurried after Messiah. Left alone, Celtavigo’s expression grew complicated.
“Messiah… is that really how you feel?”
* * *
Amerigo was a lawless city where multiple mafia gangs formed factions and drew guns on each other at the slightest provocation. Gunfire at night was routine, and waking up to find a neighbor dead or missing was just another ordinary day for its residents. Even the police, meant to maintain order, bowed their heads to the mafia.
“And the mafia’s main source of income is drugs.”
“Drugs, huh.”
“Yeah. See that guy over there with the glazed eyes?”
A man brushed past Taeyang. The dark circles under his eyes and unfocused gaze made it obvious he was a vagrant who had lost everything—home, family—to addiction.
“They handle drugs systematically. From cheap marijuana to high-grade synthetics they manufacture themselves. They even use vampire sorcery.”
Ran’s eyes widened at Taeyang’s explanation.
“Vampires make drugs?”
“Surprisingly, yes.”
“Can vampires and humans coexist?”
“Why wouldn’t they? In front of a gun barrel, all life is equal.”
The moment the trigger was pulled, dog, human, or vampire—death came for them all the same.
“What we need to do is simple. Steal the most valuable drug they’ve produced.”
V-Heroin. A drug that temporarily transformed the body into a vampire, granting expanded senses and euphoric highs beyond anything a normal human could experience. V-Heroin was the most famous reward obtainable in the Bounty stage. In actual combat, consuming it triggered full-body vampirization, massively boosting regeneration and granting access to certain vampire abilities.
Yeah. That was interesting.
Taeyang pulled his eyes away from the chat window and continued.
“During the theft, three groups are bound to get involved. The mafia, the vampires, and the exorcists.”
And anyone connected to V-Heroin—the city’s most valuable commodity—was guaranteed to be a major player.
“So why did we climb up to the rooftop?”
Taeyang and Ran stood atop a tall building in the city. Security had been tight enough that shaking off tails had taken considerable effort.
Taeyang crossed his arms and declared confidently.
“V-Heroin is an ultra-expensive item, only accessible to the city’s highest powers.”
“And?”
“People like that always prefer high places, don’t they?”
Even in dramas, the chairman’s office was always at the very top. The tallest building in this lawless city. Whether by coincidence or not, it was covered in blackout curtains.
Hyeonhye asked with a dubious expression.
“……You’re planning to just smash through?”
“Simple is best. Why make it complicated?”
Truthfully, Messiah’s method—finding drug addicts and tracing the supply line—was the standard route. Hunting down addicts, blending in to locate dealers, then pulling the thread all the way to the top. That was the approach Hyeonhye had initially suggested too.
-But thinking about it again, you don’t need to go through all that trouble.
Eighty-four achievements. A spec capable of clashing with even the stage’s boss-level monsters. It would be a waste not to use it.
“Once we get the item, there’s no need to do anything else. The people we need to find will come to us on their own.”
Plus, they’d score some useful doping items along the way.
Shing.
Taeyang drew the Light Saber – Type: B from his waist.
“Time to work. Let’s go.”