The Assembly Room
"Kkagh...!"
In an instant, Ko Moo-young found himself seized by the nape of the neck.
But he wasn't about to go down helplessly like this.
Even before he'd turned to look behind him, his hand — already slipped into his jacket — was wrapped around the folding knife he carried everywhere.
"Who the hell are you? Who are you, you bastard!"
Tae-jun backed away a step from the man's wild slashing.
There was no need to ruin the clothes he was wearing, after all.
"Did Kim Young-hwan send you? Or..."
"Plenty of people would want to."
"...What?"
"I've made a lot of enemies."
"What the hell are you talking about, you bastard!"
At least when it came to handling a knife,
Ko Moo-young was clearly no ordinary thug.
He lived up to his title as boss, one might say.
Whish! Thwip! Shwick!
Erratic, unpredictable arcs —
and yet every one of them hunting for a vital point.
Ko Moo-young grinned, working himself up.
"What, scared? And here you were, talking about looking for something?"
"..."
"Get in here, you son of a bitch! I'll carve you up like sashimi!"
But his desperate flailing ended there.
"...Huh?"
The knife was wrenched from his grip in a blink —
and driven straight down into his right shoulder.
Thuk!
"Ngh... nnghh...!"
Worse still, Tae-jun jammed the bundle of cloth he'd prepared into the man's mouth.
He couldn't even scream freely.
"Shut up."
Sensing death, Ko Moo-young shut his mouth.
He bit down and endured the pain radiating from his shoulder.
Then Tae-jun pulled the gag free and asked,
"Do you want to live?"
Bob, bob.
Of course. Of course he wanted to live.
A will to survive more ferocious than he'd ever felt in his life.
Ko Moo-young nodded his head frantically.
"Your organization's office is down here in the basement, isn't it?"
Club Janus was the club Ko Moo-young operated under a borrowed name.
The 21st Century Gwanak Gang's headquarters lay directly beneath it.
It was from there that they had plotted and carried out fraud, violence, and every other kind of crime.
"Gather your men."
"My... my men, sir?"
A cautious question. Tae-jun gave a slight nod.
"Every last one of them. No exceptions."
"Wh-where should they...?"
"The largest room in the basement."
"..."
"Do that, and I might let you live."
At the words let you live, Ko Moo-young immediately whipped out his smartphone.
He began issuing assembly orders in the 21st Century Gwanak Gang's group chat.
He didn't believe a word the man said — his real aim was to buy time, nothing more.
"Look here! I've called everyone! They'll all be in the assembly room within twenty minutes!"
Impressive.
The speed at which his orders were confirmed was lightning fast.
Within moments, all thirty members had read Ko Moo-young's message.
Along with identical replies swearing they'd come running on the double.
"But why do the boys need to...?"
"Lead the way to the meeting point."
"...Excuse me?"
"I'll go ahead and wait."
Ko Moo-young felt a flicker of bewilderment at that.
What was this guy after?
No — before that, who even was he?
I'll just do what he says for now.
Survival came first.
He had to live, no matter what it took.
I can always strike when the chance comes.
The guy would be isolating himself in the basement, wouldn't he?
And after summoning thirty of his own men, no less.
Far better than facing him one-on-one.
No — with numbers on his side, he'd win for certain.
"...Follow me, then. I'll take you the quiet way."
Which meant there was a secret passage only organization members knew about.
This bastard — I will kill him. With my own two hands.
Swallowing the pain in his shoulder down with rage,
Ko Moo-young guided Tae-jun to the basement room.
"Here we are. The boys will be here... any minute now."
Concealed spaces beneath the club —
one of which Ko Moo-young called the 'assembly room.'
So this was what the assembly room was.
It looked like a kind of basement used for enforcing discipline.
The scattered baseball bats and wooden clubs made that plain enough.
"...Boss?"
How much time had passed since then?
The members of the 21st Century Gwanak Gang arrived almost simultaneously.
Ordered to the assembly room of all places, they'd come sprinting in a panic.
"Boss, what happened to your shoulder?"
"Who is this guy...?"
They darted their eyes between the knife buried in Ko Moo-young's shoulder
and Tae-jun himself, back and forth, back and forth.
To say the scene looked suspicious would be an understatement.
The stench is overwhelming.
Bodies bloated and flabby, every one of them.
Slathered over with sprawling irezumi tattoos.
Down to the foul odor rolling off them in waves.
They were supposedly in their twenties to early thirties.
What kind of lives had they lived to reek like that?
As I thought.
Utterly worthless.
No value whatsoever in letting them draw breath.
That such trash got to live while So-hee could not — it was more than he could stomach.
Time to start clearing them away.
"Thirty. Is that all of them?"
"Yes, sir. Here, if you check the headcount in the chat—"
"Good. Well done."
"...Sir?"
Seogeok!
Tae-jun drew the knife buried in the man's shoulder across the back of his neck.
Proof that he had never had the slightest intention of sparing him.
"Th-this lunatic—"
Paseuseuseuseus
Ko Moo-young crumbled away into a handful of ash.
All he left behind was a single mid-high tier Soul Stone.
"Wh-what the hell?"
"That bastard — he just killed our boss—"
The reeking lumps of filth stood frozen, stunned by the unforeseen turn.
And as they stared, Tae-jun spoke the demon tongue.
Unfold — Curtain of Darkness
At once, an ink-black darkness swallowed the entire space.
A chasm of blackness where not even a hand's breadth ahead could be seen.
"I can't see anything!"
"Grab him! Grab that mad bastard!"
The voices of the gang members rang out, thick with confusion.
But the clamor did not last long.
Shwik!
Each time something moved in the darkness,
"AAAAAGH...!"
"S-spare me! Please!"
"My arm — my arm—!"
one-sided screams came bursting out.
Seogeok!
Inside the assembly room, where nothing could be seen —
the hour of the massacre had arrived.
Silence.
No — beyond silence, something desolate.
It was hard to believe that screams and death howls had filled this very space only moments before.
"Whew."
Tae-jun steadied his ragged breathing.
Beneath his feet, the floor was a ruin of blood and Black Powder.
And scattered across it lay thirty-one gleaming Soul Stones.
Fwooooooh...
First, he should collect the Soul Stones.
Tae-jun swept his outstretched left palm sideways.
A black vortex swirled up and began drinking in the stones scattered across the room.
Kwadeuk! Kwadeudeuk!
And that wasn't all.
The Soul Stones cracked open, and the malice trapped within them was sucked into Tae-jun's hand.
His soul devoured that malice with savage ferocity, like a starved beast descending on its prey.
"..."
Having absorbed every last ounce of power, Tae-jun opened his eyes.
His blood-red irises had deepened, gleaming with a sharper edge.
Name:Ki Tae-jun
Rank:Lower-Middle Demon
Authorities Held:Shadow Cloak, Shadow Step, Curtain of Darkness, Fluidization
Unlockable Lower-Middle Authorities:1
Note:Descended into the mortal realm
Time Remaining:398 hours 32 minutes 51 seconds
The grade of his demonic rank had not risen.
But the number of lower-middle authorities he could unlock had grown by one.
He already knew which authority he would open — the time simply wasn't right yet.
First, the tasks at hand.
Tae-jun looked around.
He was searching for the things Lee Seo-hyun had asked for —
right here, in the underground headquarters of the 21st Century Gwanak Gang.
Here it is.
How long had he ransacked their headquarters?
Deep in a room on the third basement level, Tae-jun discovered a suspicious door.
A thick steel door, locked layer upon layer with padlocks.
Anyone could see it was a vault.
Kwajik!
Of course, to Tae-jun such locks were utterly useless.
They snapped clean off in his unhesitating outstretched hand.
Tuk!
The pile of locks clattered to the floor.
Tae-jun opened the door and stepped inside.
As expected, it was a storeroom doubling as a vault.
Money, gold bars, and...
Not a staggering amount, but gold bars stacked in respectable fashion.
Bundles of fifty-thousand-won notes matching them in volume.
And last of all —
The ledger.
He flipped it open and skimmed the contents. This was it.
A book of dirty secrets recording years of bribe payments.
The very thing Lee Seo-hyun had wanted.
Dalkarak!
Tae-jun picked out two of the several backpacks left in the storeroom.
Then he began packing the gold bars, cash, and ledger inside, piece by piece.
No doubt Ko Moo-young had kept them on hand to smuggle the gold and cash out in a hurry if things ever went south.
This should be enough.
The backpacks quickly grew heavy.
Packing enough, Tae-jun left the storeroom.
Then he headed for the secret room on the first basement level.
There, two women lay drugged out of their minds, unaware of how they'd come to be there.
Offerings prepared solely for Ko Moo-young's pleasure.
Chi-iiiing!
Tae-jun brought the dark energy welling from his fingertips to their foreheads.
And astonishingly, the eyes that had been dulled by the drugs began to regain their light.
"Ugh... uuuugh..."
The women opened their eyes with faint groans.
"..."
To them — barely conscious, trembling with fear —
"...Go home."
Tae-jun said quietly.
"Go back to your families."