Chapter 67
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 67
Chapter Title: What Happened on a Moonlit Night
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After neatly dealing with a gang, Cheon Doun went up to their office and took a seat.
Cheon Doun drew a circle on the map on the table with a red pen.
Before him stood the gang's founder, I Ducheol, nervously watching his every move.
“Let's start here, in District 11. How about we start light, by sweeping the streets? Everyone gather tomorrow with brooms.”
“B-brooms?”
Sweeping the streets with brooms. What could that mean? Was it some kind of slang? I Ducheol racked his brain.
Sweeping the streets could mean entering enemy territory and wiping out the rival gang.
If so, 'brooms' was likely slang for weapons.
“I noticed a lot of trash on the ground on my way here. Lots of broken glass, too. It’s filthy.”
“Huh? Yes. That… yes. It is filthy.”
“Focus on sweeping that up first.”
I Ducheol’s eyes darted again. He worked his mind hard, trying to interpret Cheon Doun's words.
“The area is wide, so it'll take a while. Well, it should be fine. You're all Awakeners, so you can work without rest, right? Isn't that so?”
“That is… yes…. What?”
“Once that's done, weed removal. I saw the sidewalks and roads have been left broken for too long. Grass is growing through the cracks. Weed removal is the second task.”
“That is… uh, yes.”
What am I hearing right now? I Ducheol's eyes wavered.
“When that's finished too, erase the graffiti from the building walls. It'll be hard to get it perfectly clean, so it'll be faster to just give it a new coat of paint.”
I Ducheol couldn't answer. This wasn't some kind of slang.
Realizing he was truly being ordered to clean, his face went blank with bewilderment.
“S-so… you mean cleaning, as in… *this* kind of cleaning, not *that* kind of cleaning?”
“What nonsense are you talking about? Cleaning is cleaning. Is there another kind?”
“Ah, no! That… it's nothing! Yes, there’s only one kind of cleaning. Cleaning is great!”
Are we really not going to war with the other gangs? He swallowed the question. There was no need to stir up trouble.
If he said something unnecessary and made him think, 'Oh, that's another way to use them,' and change his plans, they'd be sent to their deaths.
‘Ah…! I see. He plans to take over this area. That's why he wants to clean up the streets first.’
Even if you rule over a city, it's no fun if the place is dirty and squalid.
This Coconut Family must be trying to raise the value of the city they're about to claim.
I Ducheol nodded. He, too, had once thought it would be nice if the area his gang controlled was clean, so he could understand the plan.
He just hadn't been able to try it, blocked by practical problems.
But the man before him was about to do it.
‘That’s right. Come to think of it, they have no reason to use us as meat shields. Why would people with that kind of power need to?’
These were the people who annihilated a gang of Awakeners without even breaking a sweat.
A gang made up of ordinary people would obviously be no match for them.
“But cleaning all of District 11 will take a considerable amount of time. The painting alone will require a lot of funds.”
“Funds shouldn't be a problem, right?”
Cheon Doun glanced at the safe in the corner of the office. At that, I Ducheol's vision went white.
So the necessary expenses would be coming out of his own pocket after all.
“You’ve extorted plenty until now, haven't you? What you took from the city's people, you'll pay back through urban development. It's not like you can return it anyway. You don't have a ledger detailing who you took how much from, do you?”
I Ducheol looked guilty. As a small organization with irregular income, they had run things haphazardly.
Instead of making rounds to designated shops, they would just go into whatever place they felt like and extort small amounts of money.
“If you don't want to do it, you can run.”
Cheon Doun said, looking out the window.
“Even without you, 42 people have already slipped away while I've been talking to you.”
“What…?”
“I've memorized all of your mana signatures. If you're going to go, then go.”
Cheon Doun looked at I Ducheol with a slight smile.
“I’ll come for you.”
I Ducheol had never seen a person's smiling face look so terrifying.
Half of him wondered how he could possibly catch those who had already fled. The other half figured he must have something up his sleeve, since he hadn't even posted a guard in the yard.
Cheon Doun went to the window and looked down at the yard. The gang members were huddled together there, looking anxious.
One of them stealthily broke away from the group and disappeared into an alley.
“There goes another one.”
I Ducheol felt a pang of guilt. He had actually been planning to run away himself once he left here.
But after seeing Cheon Doun's smile, he cleanly gave up on the idea.
“I'm going to catch the runaway workers. You can go now. Relay what I said to the guys downstairs.”
“Understood.”
I Ducheol left the office immediately.
He had given up on escaping. He didn't know the scale of the Coconut Family, but becoming a subordinate organization to a group with someone that powerful wasn't a bad option.
‘Besides, that cleaning wasn’t *that* cleaning. It wasn’t about dying…!’
Was this what it felt like to survive a near-death experience? He ran down the stairs to tell his subordinates the news.
The siblings, who had been watching the situation unfold, approached Cheon Doun after I Ducheol left.
“You’re not really planning to run a gang, are you? What are you trying to do?”
“I’ll just come a few times at the beginning to establish discipline. I'll have to leave the rest to that I Ducheol guy. He's not rotten to the core, so he should be useful.”
Having grown up in the slums, Cheon Doun knew what gangs were like.
Even though they were memories from before he was nine, his image of gangs was bad enough that he had never forgotten it.
“It’s not easy to step into this world and not cross the line. The path to big money would have been plainly visible, after all.”
Despite that, I Ducheol never crossed that line. There were countless temptations, but he never went so far as to do things a person shouldn't do.
Of course, that didn't make him a good person, but he was someone who hadn't thrown away his last shred of conscience.
“If I work him hard with cleaning jobs for a few years as a way of atoning for his karma, there's a chance for improvement.”
“You’re dressing it up in nice words. Aren't you just happy you've got a new labor force you can exploit?”
Cheon Doun didn't deny it and just smiled.
He spread his mana to search for the runaways. The gang members in the yard were terrified by the energy that enveloped the entire District 11.
“Well then, I’ll be back.”
Cheon Doun climbed onto the windowsill and leaped. It seemed like a light jump, but his figure vanished in an instant, leaving only an afterimage.
“Wh-what was that? Can a person move like that?”
“And what was that mana just now?”
“I thought a Gate opened and a Monster popped out. Is he even human?”
The men gathered in the yard murmured amongst themselves, their faces pale.
I Ducheol, too, had been so startled by the energy from a moment ago that he had collapsed to the ground.
To think I tried to run from someone like that. I'm glad I didn't even attempt it, he thought, inwardly wiping away sweat.
***
A dark alley. A man who was a low-ranking member of the gang ran through the secluded alley at full speed.
“Damn it, don’t be ridiculous. A war with other gangs? As if I’d be some meat shield!”
Thirty minutes had passed since he'd watched for an opening and slipped out. After running for a long while, he stopped.
He gasped for breath, hands on his trembling knees.
“*Pant… pant…* This should be far enough.”
“Done running?”
“Agh!”
The man jumped in fright at the sudden voice.
When he looked up, he saw Cheon Doun standing at the other end of the alley.
Why was that man here? Startled, he stumbled backward, tripped over a piece of wood on the ground, and fell.
“See? That's what happens when there's so much trash on the street.”
“Wh-what… why are you here…”
“I came to meet you.”
Was 'meet' the right word for a time like this? The hair on the back of the man's neck stood on end.
“You're the last of the runaways. Want to go a little further?”
“Ugh, aghhh!”
He had never seen someone walking so leisurely under the moonlight look so terrifying. The man turned and ran.
He was confident in his running. He was a physical enhancement-type Awakener, and he was good at anything physical.
‘I-I did it! If I put this much distance between us, he won't be able to catch me!’
Hiding between buildings, he panted for breath.
He had deliberately chosen to run through complex terrain. A place where anyone but a local would get lost.
He even tried to throw him off by running into a dead-end alley and leaping over the wall.
“Alright. With this, I should have completely lost… him…”
Leaning against the wall, he looked up and froze stiff.
Cheon Doun was squatting on top of the wall across from him.
“Done running?”
The voice was identical to before, not a single syllable out of place. The dissonance, as if he were listening to a recording, sent a shiver down the man's spine.
“Why… h-how are you here…”
“I came to meet you.”
Even those words were the same. This was horror. He had become the protagonist of a horror movie being chased by a killer.
His legs gave out, and the man collapsed. He remembered being kicked by Cheon Doun and sent flying out the window.
As he collapsed, Cheon Doun leaped down from the wall.
“Looks like you're done running. Now, let's have you take a little beating.”
“Y-yes…?”
“I can't just bring back someone who ran away as is. It wouldn't be fair to the ones who waited obediently in the yard.”
No. Fairness isn't a word meant to be used in situations like this.
The man started hiccuping at the sound of approaching footsteps. Why did I ever bother running away?
He regretted it as he shot into the sky with the sound of an impact.
***
The front yard of the Space Gang's building. About forty men were sprawled there.
Every single one of them had a colorful face.
I Ducheol swallowed dryly as he looked at the unconscious men.
When Cheon Doun had started bringing back the escaped gang members one by one, he had thought it impossible.
How could he possibly find everyone when they had scattered in all directions? Three or four at best. Ten at most.
That's what he had thought. But as he watched the runaways being piled up neatly one by one, he realized he had been mistaken.
“Alright. This is the last one.”
Cheon Doun placed the unconscious man down in the yard.
‘Oh, my god. What happened to him? His face is twice its normal size.’
‘To beat him up that badly without breaking a single bone. That’s a skill in itself.’
‘How did he even do it?’
They were curious, but they didn't want to know. They had a feeling it was something they were better off not knowing.
The gang members turned their heads, pretending not to see.
“Took you longer than I thought.”
Yu Beom said as he came down the building's stairs. The men were surprised once again.
For them, the fact that he had found all forty-odd people by himself in such a short time was already astounding.
They doubted the sanity of someone who would call that 'taking a long time'.
“They were all running so desperately, I felt bad for them. They looked pitiful, so I waited until they were exhausted.”
The gang members were shocked yet again at how casually he accepted that.
“Waited for them? Wasn't that just giving them false hope?”
“Of course not. I just waited so they could enjoy their last moments of freedom.”
That's exactly what you call giving false hope. The gang members suppressed the words that had risen to their throats.
“Anyway, now that I've brought them all back like this, they should understand that running away is pointless.”
Running with all their might had amounted to nothing more than a pointless exercise under the moonlight.
The thought of escaping had vanished completely, both for those who were caught and those who had watched.
“Looks like that settles things for now. I'm going to pop into the Gate for a bit.”
“Why? Did you forget something?”
“I'm worried about leaving the Mandragora alone.”
It must have been tired from our trip to the dry cave region, because it was sleeping so soundly that I left it behind.
I don't think it's woken up yet, but I want to go back and check on it before the sun rises.
“I can't have it wandering into the forest looking for me.”
Just in case, I left the beaker inside the house and blocked the door with some luggage.
I even deliberately left some of my clothes that carry my scent on the floor, so even if it wanders, it'll be confined to the house.
‘It might even be wriggling around inside my pile of clothes.’
That would be a little pitiful, so I should go get it. Cheon Doun thought as he shattered a return stone.