The Assassin Hunter Stops Time
“Enter.”
“Team 1! Front entrance! Team 2, back entrance! The rest of you, grab anyone who tries to run outside!”
“Hurry up! Move!”
“Move! Move!”
The A-rank Special Suppression Team. They wore reinforced tactical gear capable of blocking hunter attacks and carried rifles loaded with mana bullets.
“Get down! Everyone down!”
“Kyaaaaah!”
“P-please save me!”
“Team 1, enter the basement quickly. Team 2, provide cover!”
“Roger.”
Zzzt.
With the sound of the walkie-talkie crackling, Team Leader Lee Taeseop of the A-rank Special Suppression Team entered the basement where the problem was occurring.
The stench of blood hit him the moment he stepped outside. Taeseop entered with a hardened expression.
And……
“H-uh!”
The deputy team leader who had been following behind jumped in fright and looked around.
Countless corpses littered the area. It looked like someone had detonated a bomb here.
“Team Leader! There are a lot of corpses inside too!”
Taeseop walked toward the direction the voices had come from. The operatives searching the basement reported.
“No survivors.”
“Everyone is dead?”
Taeseop’s words prompted the operative to nod.
The deputy team leader shook his head at the corpses in the room.
“Tsk tsk. They were tearing each other apart from within.”
“It’ll be hard to tell, but we can probably treat it as a turf war between organizations.”
One of the operatives spoke up.
“The scale was huge, but turf wars between organizations do happen occasionally.”
But Taeseop crouched down to examine the wounds on the dead.
“……It doesn’t look like an organizational war.”
“What do you mean?”
Taeseop answered the deputy team leader.
“These people here… all got taken out by one person.”
“……What?”
The deputy team leader’s eyes widened in shock.
“Everyone here is a hunter. Most were low-rank, but some were even B-rank.”
“That can’t be.”
“Right, but you’d better contact Team 3 right away and check if anyone escaped. There’s no way all of them are dead—they were probably hiding or got out.”
“Understood.”
“And make sure to check for mana reactions!”
“Yes!”
“……Who the hell is this guy?”
From the scene, it didn’t take more than five minutes—maybe even three. In such a short time, he had killed so many hunters.
The chill ran down his spine. Even an A-rank hunter should have left traces. Yet this was clean.
‘It’s like a ghost’s handiwork.’
One precise shot to each vital point. Taeseop knew of no one in Korea who could do this.
His mind raced. But then.
“Team Leader! There’s a ledger here!”
“A ledger?”
The situation hadn’t even been sorted out and something new had come up again. Taeseop saw the operative emerging from a small space under the desk.
“This can’t be happening.”
The ledger he received listed names that screamed enormous scale. Taeseop sighed.
“This could actually flip South Korea upside down.”
Taeseop stuffed the ledger into his coat and bit his lip tight.
Finally……
“We’re done here.”
There was nothing left to find out or confirm. The dead couldn’t speak.
They had no choice but to hand the case over to the incident response team. His usual calm walk now felt heavier.
* * *
Whooom!
Inside the speeding car, Sohee remained silent. The scene from inside the room still played out before her eyes.
She hadn’t seen the details clearly because of the darkness, but the sounds of flesh tearing and bodies collapsing still echoed in her ears. The dead hadn’t even screamed.
“……”
“Are you scared?”
“Huh?”
Startled by Dojin’s question in the silence, Sohee answered.
Then she gave a small nod.
“A little. Really…… is it okay?”
Many people had died. The police would investigate for sure.
“Uncle…… aren’t you scared?”
“……Uncle.”
She was only twenty-five, yet at sixteen it made sense. Dojin nodded.
“There’s no problem. Everything has already been settled.”
“……Huh?”
“More importantly, we’re almost there.”
Sohee’s eyes widened at Dojin’s words. She knew exactly where they were going.
Soon Dojin pulled up to the rear entrance of the large building and turned off the car’s engine. It was early morning—nobody was around.
“Let’s go.”
Dojin took Sohee inside the hospital. The chief of staff Kim Gyeongtaek was already waiting for him.
“We’ve been waiting. This way.”
His vigilance was thorough. Dojin entered the private room with Sohee.
“Mom!”
“Sohee!”
Sohee’s mother, who had been watching from the window, jumped at her daughter’s voice and cried out.
Sohee ran and threw herself into her mother’s arms.
“Mom! Mom, are you okay?”
“Mom’s fine. Our daughter…… isn’t hurt anywhere?”
The sight of the two women with tears streaming down their faces made Dojin glance at Gyeongtaek and give a subtle signal to step outside.
He wanted just the two of them alone for now. Outside, Gyeongtaek spoke to Dojin.
“I never thought you’d handle everything.”
“I had to cut out the rot anyway. They crossed too many lines.”
But more than that.
“Please convey my gratitude to the chairman. It must have been no small favor.”
Even with money and fame, moving the power of the state wasn’t easy. Yet Gyeongtaek shook his head.
“No, on the contrary, the chairman asked me to tell you that he’s grateful. People who helped the chairman this time are saying they achieved great results.”
“If it helped, I’m glad.”
A mutual benefit for everyone involved.
Dojin turned his gaze forward. Gyeongtaek asked cautiously.
“By the way, Hunter Ha Dojin. How did you know about that club?”
From the scale, it wasn’t ordinary. Among the dead in the basement were several high-ranking bureaucrats and heirs of chaebol families. The ledger connected even to sitting members of the National Assembly.
But Dojin shook his head.
“Pure coincidence.”
“……I see.”
“Please handle that guy carefully for the next few days. It’ll probably take a few days to sort things out.”
“Understood. Then where will you go now?”
He had said there was something he needed to do. So Gyeongtaek was curious about Dojin’s next move.
Dojin looked somewhere and said, “With an incident this big, it’ll be chaotic for a while. We’ll have to see how it plays out.”
He got into the car and started the engine.
“See you again.”
Whooom.
Gyeongtaek simply watched the car disappear into the distance.
* * *
“So, what’s the damage?”
“More than the Burning Red operations being shut down, the gambling hall that had been running for so long is gone.”
The money that flowed in through the gambling hall made up half of the Red Circle guild’s capital. Half of the guild’s funds had been cut off.
“……”
Jang Junyeong tapped the desk with his index finger. The silence grew suffocating, and Baek Ilsung, who had come to report, turned deathly pale.
Jang Junyeong, an A-rank hunter at level 210 and the top executive in charge of Burning Red, was ranked fifth within the Red Circle itself. Usually gentle and calm, he became terrifyingly cruel when angry.
And this time the scale was even worse.
Junyeong spoke.
“First, contact every place where we threw money and recover as much as possible. Stopping the situation from escalating is priority one.”
“But this time the ledger stored in the basement has been leaked, and several parties are expressing dissatisfaction.”
Some had already begun cutting ties and contacting others. Baek Ilsung swallowed hard as Junyeong’s eyes cooled.
“So recover it. If the ledger is right there, that means we set a trap. It was a competitor’s sabotage. Come up with a story and recover as much as possible.”
Junyeong stood up from his seat.
“The pigs who took the money are mine to deal with.”
He straightened his suit, buttoned it neatly, and said, “Remember this. If this goes wrong…… everyone dies. So run as if your feet are sweating.”
“Ah, understood!”
He knew the words carried no exaggeration.
Baek Ilsung gave a loud reply and left. Junyeong let out a long sigh and frowned.
Just a few months ago the Red Capital had burned and vanished. Now Burning Red too.
“It’s no coincidence.”
Someone was targeting them. The scale suggested it wasn’t an individual. A large organization.
Otherwise none of the events so far would make sense.
‘If they killed Heo Sangwoong and entered Burning Red……’
They had to include at least one A-rank hunter. Otherwise there was nothing to explain the situation.
“The Firebird Guild is really moving?”
Junyeong shook his head. The Firebird Guild was large, but he had no reason to clash with them.
He frowned deeper.
“With so many enemies, it’s hard to get a read.”
Enemies were natural once the Red Circle had laid its own path. But no one would openly show their fangs like this.
His mind spun. One thing was clear, though.
“Since we know there are people coming at us…… we just have to find them.”
Junyeong pressed the button on the phone on his desk.
“Release the hounds.”
Now they were the ones chasing.
Standing in front of the mirror, he straightened his clothes and headed out at a brisk pace.
* * *
The call from Sohee came three days later.
“Surprisingly fast.”
“We couldn’t stay hidden forever. I wanted to thank you.”
And……
“I’ve been thinking. Why did you single me out?”
“Why did you think that?”
“If it wasn’t for that, there was no reason for you to come to that place.”
He had thought about it all night. When he first met her, he hadn’t harmed her in any way and had spoken directly about her mother.
It meant he already knew about her.
Dojin’s lips curved into a faint smile at Sohee’s words. Unless you looked closely, you might not have noticed he was smiling.
Dojin said, “Half right, half wrong.”
“Still, you got half right.”
Having experienced a major incident, she didn’t seem her age. But……
‘Even from the first time I saw her, she carried herself with sharp awareness.’
Normally someone in that situation would have broken. She had awakened, but she was just a sixteen-year-old girl.
Yet Sohee was looking at her current situation with perfect objectivity.
Sohee asked, “You plan to take them out, right?”
If that was what she meant, she was referring to the Red Circle guild.
Dojin nodded.
“Yes.”
“I want revenge too.”
Things had gone well, but those who had tried to ruin her life and her mother’s had to be dealt with. She wanted revenge.
And……
“I want to repay the uncle for the help. Please help me.”
Sohee’s eyes burned with conviction.
In return she had obtained a tank-type hunter ranked among South Korea’s top three.