The Mad Bear
Flinch.
The Palgakhoe gang members, who had marched in so boldly, froze mid-step.
It wasn’t merely suspicious—it was blatantly, obviously suspicious. A pack of hulking white men stood waiting for them like a bad omen.
Every last one looked like a giant, all easily clearing 190 centimeters and a hundred kilos.
They had the kind of physique that seemed born to dominate construction sites.
Far from being intimidated by the Palgakhoe combat team barging in with their pathetic wooden sticks, the giants stared at them like insects.
“The fuck? You got shit in your ears? I asked who the hell you are.”
“The boss is asking, you fucking bastard.”
Weren’t they just supposed to give a light greeting? Those guys definitely looked heavy.
The Palgakhoe members’ eyes darted around in panic.
“Do we hit them? Or not?”
“...You go first.”
“What the hell are we supposed to do?”
“Boss…?”
Jang Chen was just as rattled.
He had thought this would be a tutorial. Why was there a boss waiting?
“You people. What are you?”
“Us? Just innocent passersby.”
…In what universe?
They were clearly neither innocent nor passersby.
“You messing with me?”
“Of course we are. If we weren’t playing around, do you really think you’d be able to talk to us like this? …Fuck, even the way you swing is pathetic, you dogs!”
The one who answered Jang Chen was the brown-haired woman sitting at the poker table.
She kept her bulging eyes glued to her cards as if these punks weren’t even worth noticing and continued speaking.
“If you walked into the wrong place, get lost quietly. Can’t you see your big sister is busy right now? I don’t have time to play with kids. I’ll give you one special chance. Think it over carefully.”
Jang Chen was now certain.
The intense killing intent he had felt from the start, and the way they seemed to have been waiting for them—he didn’t know how, but it was clear.
This was an open declaration of war.
Jang Chen spat and laughed viciously.
“I was going to play nice, but you want to make this painful? Boys, grab your tools!”
“He says grab your tools!!”
At the chant the Palgakhoe members raised their wooden sticks and baseball bats high.
Nearly two hundred adult men drawing weapons at once created an aura of intimidation beyond imagination.
They had been shocked by the first encounter, but no matter how you looked at it, those pale giants only numbered around thirty.
200 to 30.
They held an overwhelming numerical advantage.
Regaining his composure, Jang Chen asked one final time.
“I’ll say it again. Who the hell are you? Why were you waiting for—”
“Ah, fuck! A flush?! No way! No way!”
“Ugh! Sis, why did you flip the table!”
…But the woman continued to act as if they didn’t exist at all.
In truth, they really didn’t register. She was far more annoyed that she had a full house only for the opponent to drop a straight flush than by how many of these smelly thugs had shown up or where they came from.
The woman who had violently overturned the card table finally turned toward Jang Chen.
“Hey, you fucking bastard. What the hell is a dick-swinging prick like you yapping so much for? Do you know how much I just lost because of you?”
“…Is this bitch crazy?”
“You look like a Joseonjok. Skinny fucking bastard. And what’s that? A wooden stick? You fuckers really brought things that look exactly like your skinny wrists. That’s why you guys never make it. If you don’t have the basics, at least have some muscle.”
“You fucking bitch. Looks like you need to die.”
There was a warrior’s proper way of doing things.
True to her Slavic warrior blood, the woman had politely provoked her opponent.
And Jang Chen gladly answered.
“Get them!!”
Jang Chen charged with a roar of fury, wooden stick raised, and the combat team followed with shouts. Not to be outdone, the gang members kicked off from their seats starting with the woman and answered with their entire bodies.
“This is it! This is what a fight should be!”
“Real men communicate with their bodies!!”
Starting with Jang Chen and the woman at the front, the two groups collided in a chaotic storm.
Wooden sticks crashed down. Arms rose to guard heads. Baseball bats swung with full power. Bodies bent from blows to the ribs. Punches flew and nose bones shattered. Headbutts using the skull itself caved faces inward as blood exploded in every direction.
White dust rose. Broken sticks scattered sawdust. The stinging metallic scent of blood followed every smash, burst, and tear of flesh.
A bloody melee.
An all-out brawl.
The battlefield was overheating.
“Hey! Take the pills! Use your magic!! Kill every last one of them!”
“Uaaaagh!!”
At Jang Chen’s shout the Palgakhoe members swallowed some unknown drug.
Veins bulged. Eyes burned red—red enough to look like they were on fire.
It was dangerous. They were clearly no longer normal.
It wasn’t his imagination. A gang member with bloodshot eyes swung his stick.
The woman naturally raised her arm to shatter the stick flying at the back of her head, but—
CRACK!
“Ugh—!”
“Sis!!”
It was the first scream to leave the woman’s mouth.
Only then did she register their reddened eyes.
“Hey! Watch out! These fuckers took awakening drugs!!”
Awakening drugs.
Medicine that forcibly awakened magic power within the body.
It came with serious side effects, but in exchange granted definite strength. The drug poured literal fuel onto the already overheated battlefield.
“Everyone grab real weapons!!”
Not tools—actual weapons.
The Palgakhoe members who had discarded their sticks and bats hurled duffel bags in every direction.
What they pulled out in perfect unison were hammers, crowbars, and knives.
“Diiiie!!”
With magic power added to raw strength and metal blades replacing wood, the momentum that had been pushed back reversed completely.
The hulking men’s massive muscles had easily blocked blunt impacts before, but now blades left real wounds.
However.
“Fuck, so this is how you want to play?”
This wasn’t necessarily good for Palgakhoe either.
As much as they had removed their limits, the other side had done the same.
Yes—just like this.
BOOOOM—!!
“—?!!”
A roar louder than anything they had ever heard, and a human flying like a puppet with its strings cut.
The gang members’ eyes snapped toward the sound. There stood the woman, fangs bared in a savage grin.
“You chose the wrong people to fuck with.”
You think only you can use magic? We’re stronger. We’re meaner. Idiots.
From that moment on, magic light swirled around the hands of the hulking men led by the woman.
“Knock them all down!!”
“Kill them!!”
“Uaaaaaaaagh!!”
“Hey! Don’t get too excited! Control your power!!”
From the moment magic entered the equation, the fight could not last long.
This was no longer about superficial wounds. A clean hit now meant real death. It was the kind of battle where ordinary humans would already be corpses.
The only mercy was that the hulking men, who had maintained dominance since activating their magic, were still keeping their reason.
About ten minutes later.
The Palgakhoe gang members were rolling across the dirt. All two hundred of them, writhing like insects on the verge of death.
“Ptui!”
A bloody glob landed with a wet smack on the back of a fallen gang member’s head.
It was spit from the woman who had used her own hand to wrench her crooked nose back into place.
“…What the hell?! It was just getting fun! Why are they all lying down? Hey, stop faking it! You can still fight, can’t you!! You can show me more, can’t you!!”
She sounded like a PT instructor yelling “One more set!”
The woman still wanted to fight.
“Get up! Get up like a man!!”
“Hey, sis has lost it. Someone rein her in.”
“Sestra, calm down!”
“Yeah, sestra, the kids’ fight is over.”
“Hey! Get uuuup!! You fucking bastards!!”
The rampaging woman was dragged away by her larger younger brothers. It seemed the day’s battle would end there.
Until Jang Chen, who had been lying motionless, suddenly sprang to his feet and crossed the final line.
“Go to hell!!”
BANG—!
The fired bullet wrapped in blue light drew a dizzying, living trajectory.
A magic bullet struck the woman square in the forehead!
An exploding flame!
BAAAAANG—!!
“Kk kk kk kk, you fucking bitch. Ptui!”
He had endured every humiliation for this single shot.
Jang Chen laughed loudly and signaled the waiting reinforcements with his phone.
Moments later, buses stopped beyond the fence.
The buses vomited out Palgakhoe members. Wooden sticks, baseball bats, hammers, crowbars, even knives. Their numbers were instantly bolstered by nearly two hundred more.
Meanwhile, the woman who had been called “Big Sis” had her head snapped backward. Her body trembled violently.
“!!”
“!!”
The younger brothers who had been dragging her by the shoulders widened their eyes.
The squatting gang member froze solid. Even the man who had ordered them to carry her away dropped the cigarette from his mouth.
When a comrade took a bullet to the head, the normal reaction was to check if they were still alive. Yet none of them said a word. They didn’t even look worried.
Instead, the single thought that filled every mind in that instant was:
We’re fucked!!
Hard to believe, but even the underworld had a minimum line.
Use magic but don’t kill surrendered opponents. Use guns but never use “magic bullets”… lines like that.
But Jang Chen had pulled the trigger on the back of an opponent who had shown mercy, and the bullet had been a lethal magic round.
He had completely crossed the line.
Which meant the other side no longer needed to hold back either.
The man at the front shot forward like lightning and waved frantically at the Palgakhoe members.
“You idiots, run!! Get the hell out of here right now!!”
The gang members liked to joke about it.
The boss keeps two dogs.
If the right arm “Big Bro” was a snow wolf, then the left arm “Big Sis” was a—
sumashepshiy bury medved.
In plain words:
“Fuck, this is how it should be!! I like it!!”
MAD GRIZZLY
Berserk Bear Form
The woman’s body was instantly covered in thick fur.
And a moment later.
──────!!
The bus flew. A burning bus.
Jang Chen burst out of the alley and staggered dangerously.
“Huff… huff…”
Goddamn it. Shit. Motherfucker.
He wanted to spit out every curse he knew, but the breath that had climbed all the way to his throat from running made even that impossible.
He still couldn’t believe it. Four hundred of his most elite combat members had been crushed by only thirty people.
The opponents were awakeners of at least B-rank or higher—beings ordinary bullets could not touch.
Not worthless C-rank trash like the Palgakhoe members who didn’t even qualify as proper hunters, but monsters who could make a living from “hunting” anytime they felt like it.
And among them, that crazy bitch was definitely A-rank or above.
The sight of the woman in bear form casually picking up a reversing bus and hurling it was pure, unfiltered insanity.
“Huff.”
Jang Chen, who had finally found a place to catch his breath, slid down the wall.
The damp moss on the wall made him frown briefly, but once he caught his breath and looked down at himself, such things no longer mattered.
His clothes were half rags. There wasn’t a single spot without scratches or puncture wounds. His right hand, which had been in agony since earlier, was a disaster. All five fingers were bent at unnatural angles as if each had its own opinion.
Amazingly, this was the result of merely being grazed by that crazy woman’s attack.
The subordinate who had taken a direct hit had his arm torn clean off. Not exaggeration—literally ripped off while still alive.
“…Why the hell are monsters like that lurking in the underworld?”
Jang Chen felt genuinely wronged.
Wasn’t the underworld supposed to be a place for the inadequate?
Of course he had heard that sometimes people whose talents didn’t suit being hunters, or those who couldn’t show their faces in public, crawled into the shadows. He had even seen a few.
But still.
“If you can’t be a hunter, just become a villain. Why come ruin someone else’s ecosystem?”
No—now that he thought about it, the real lunatics were the Mir Guild bastards who had stationed monsters like these as mere construction site guards.
It was unfair. Truly unfair.
“The construction project, the money pouring in like water… ugh—!!”
Crack. Snap. Craaaaack—!
Gritting his teeth, Jang Chen realigned his twisted fingers one by one, then slowly drank a potion. He tore his outer garment, rolled the strips tightly, and bound his hand.
“The losses are catastrophic.”
People could always be replaced.
China was overflowing with them. What stung was the money already invested. He had thought it would be easy profit, yet it had become an anchor around his ankle.
There was no time to waste.
To salvage even a single penny, he had to move fast.
Jang Chen clenched his teeth, stood up, and slipped into a nearby villa.
When he emerged again a short while later, he had changed out of his torn clothes into comfortable sweatpants.
“First, I need a new phone.”
Jang Chen ran a palm over his face, altering his features, then headed down an alley in the exact opposite direction from where he had come.
As he hurried down the winding narrow path,
a pot-bellied man appeared from the opposite side. In that instant Jang Chen felt his hairs stand on end.
The man was white.
Coincidence? The ones who had crushed Palgakhoe were also white.
High probability they were connected! Jang Chen forced his wildly beating heart to calm.
Stay cool. You must stay cool.
Even if his combat ability was trash, his “transformation” ability was second to none.
Even if that person was with those bastards, there was no way to know. Jang Chen boldly spoke first.
“The path is narrow. Would you like to go first?”
What came back was a thick Busan dialect.
“Ah, is that all right?”
“No, please go ahead.”
“Oh my, thank you~”
The rich dialect that sounded like the man had lived in Busan for at least thirty years almost made him relax, but Jang Chen kept his guard up until the very end.
“Does this neighborhood always have so many alleys? This has happened several times just today.”
“You must be an outsider?”
“I came down from Seoul. I’m a photographer. I mainly shoot old neighborhoods and villages.”
“Wow~ I see. So you’re an artist. That’s impressive.”
Just in case, Jang Chen shook the camera he had brought along and fully immersed himself in the role. It seemed to be working perfectly.
“But you know, Mr. Artist.”
“Yes?”
“You should’ve washed off the smell of blood first.”
Before he got slammed into the wall.