For the Sake of Solidarity, Part 6
With S-class healer Park Yu-tae at my side, a gang of thugs didn't stand a chance. We flattened them so fast that before long they were on their knees, begging for their lives.
“P-please, spare us!”
“The money's right here! Take it all!”
The guys I’d hit had sunken noses, broken arms, and ankles bent at ugly angles. Park Yu-tae, meanwhile, quietly knocked the rest unconscious and put them to sleep.
He’d probably wake up without anything worse than a few serious injuries. Pretty merciful, for a healer. Then again, the healer’s oath was all about treating people and keeping them alive. There wasn’t a single line in there about encouraging violence.
Feels like I’m the more ruthless one here. Maybe whenever I put on the mask, I got colder and more vicious than I usually was.
“Ugh.”
I grabbed the money bag. It was packed so full of fifty-thousand-won bills that it weighed quite a bit.
Park Yu-tae didn’t say a word.
I handed him the bag and approached the man who seemed to be the boss—the one in the silver-gray suit.
“H-hiiik!”
The man shrieked and collapsed onto the floor.
I crouched down until my eyes were level with his.
“Where’s Harpy?”
“W-who?”
“Your boss.”
The silver-gray man swallowed hard.
“He should be here soon. If someone presses the button under the desk, it means the gambling den’s under attack.”
Harpy, the hunter formerly of the Dio Guild, had built himself a base in Busan by using gangsters, running not just gambling but all kinds of illegal rackets.
I told Park Yu-tae, “You heard him. Says he’s coming soon.”
“......”
Park Yu-tae looked like he couldn’t make sense of it.
The Dongbaek Guild building was in Nampo-dong, and the gambling den was in the same area. If Harpy had been running wild all this time, why had Park Yu-tae never run into him? Why was the bastard who’d ruined his life standing right under his nose?
There were two reasons. First, hunters didn’t involve themselves in crime. Closing Gates and killing monsters was their job; dealing with gangsters was the police’s problem, not something hunters were meant to step into.
Park Yu-tae tilted his head. “He was in Nampo-dong? Then why the hell did I never run into him? Huh?”
Now he looks like a lunatic with that newspaper over his face.
The second reason was...
From outside, there came the crash of heavy footsteps and a noisy racket.
So he’s here.
I glanced at Park Yu-tae and stepped out of the office, whose door had already been blown wide open.
The gamblers had long since run away. The people who came in now all had solid, bulky builds.
God, they look disgusting too. Each of them was carrying a weapon—clubs, iron bats, sashimi knives, even axes. It had been a while since I’d seen such classic weapons, not since the gang from the Ilsan factory.
Park Yu-tae came up beside me.
“What the hell. He’s not here again. You messing with me or what?”
“Did you live your whole life getting fooled? I told you he’s here.”
While Purple Guy and Newspaper Head traded nonsense, someone from the other side stepped forward.
“Looks like you aren’t gangsters. You’re awakened, right?”
Thick eyebrows, a high bridge of the nose. At first glance he seemed like a handsome man, but something about his face felt off, almost artificial.
I pointed at him.
“Ah. It’s the legendary Pokémon Harpy.”
At last, the strange beast showed himself.
Park Yu-tae ground his teeth beside me.
“Quit screwing around. How the hell is that—”
Then he shut his mouth.
Harpy spoke first.
“My, my. And after all that work changing my identity. There’s still someone alive who knows me?”
After becoming a wanted man, Harpy had been forced to run. To avoid being tracked, he’d gotten plastic surgery and changed his face. That was the second reason Park Yu-tae hadn’t recognized him even if they’d crossed paths on the street.
“See? I told you.”
“Hearing his voice, it’s definitely him.”
The newspaper covering Park Yu-tae’s face trembled faintly. He was probably shaking with rage.
Park Yu-tae said, “Harpy. Come out. Let’s finish this.”
“Heh. Do you know me? I’m a pacifist, you know. I’m leaving.”
Harpy sneered and stepped back.
His underlings surged forward. By rough count, there were more than twenty of them.
I stopped Park Yu-tae as he was about to lunge at them.
“Hey. Today’s main character should conserve his strength.”
“What?”
I had made a deal with Park Yu-tae: in exchange for borrowing the Dongbaek Guild’s power, I’d promised to help him catch Harpy.
“I’ll handle it.”
There was no need for Super Kid, Speeder, or Mr. Eden to step in. This level of trash was nothing.
I picked up a stack of hwatu cards from the gambling table with my left hand and drew two cards with my right.
March and August.
Sakura and the full moon.
There was even a bright character on the bottom.
Oh. A perfect hand.
I focused mana into the cards clenched in my fist.
“Hup!”
Like a pitcher throwing a baseball, I flung them with all the strength I had.
“Ghk!”
“Kraaagh!!”
One of the thugs had an ear sliced clean off, and blood sprayed up to the ceiling.
As expected, Park Yu-tae looked stunned.
It might look easy, but actually pulling it off was a high-level technique. You needed the concentration to pour mana into each card, the kind of tightly compressed strength that let you hurl a plastic tile like a bullet, and the precision to hit your target dead on. It was something a low-rank hunter couldn’t even dream of doing.
“You really are D-class...”
I left Park Yu-tae behind and ran forward. Again and again, I used the cards like throwing stars to drive the enemy back. Screams burst out all around me.
“Ghk!”
“Get him!”
“As if you can!”
“Aaaagh!!”
The last thug in my grip collapsed without a fight. Hah. Like a battlefield gone mad, the cards embedded in the pillars and ceiling dripped blood onto the floor. Groans rose from every corner.
It didn’t even take three minutes to render more than twenty men unable to fight. My breathing stayed calm; this level of work didn’t even make me sweat or pant.
What remained was Harpy and Harpy alone, perched on the gambling table with his mouth hanging open and his eyes blinking stupidly.
“Yawn.”
He had the nerve to yawn in a situation like this. Was it confidence based on something real, or just bluster? We’d find out soon enough.
Harpy clapped his hands. “Wow. Not bad. Still, if an awakened is skilled enough, a crowd means nothing.”
Harpy climbed down from the table.
“Warmed up yet? Hey, Purple Guy. Why don’t you have a go at me too?”
I ignored him, dragged over a chair, and sat down with a thud.
“My turn’s over. The supporting actor is stepping out. Your opponent is...”
I held out my palm toward the air.
Park Yu-tae, who’d been silent all this time, slapped his hand against mine.
High-five.
The signal for a tag change.
Harpy shrugged. “I don’t mind if you both come at me together.”
Still sitting in the chair, I said to Park Yu-tae, “Feeling confident? Want me to help?”
“Bullshit. Go drink your coffee.”
Like a general promising to return before his tea went cold, Park Yu-tae strode forward alone, full of swagger.
The two men met on the narrow bridge that was the gambling den floor and faced each other.
“Huh. Newspaper-head. What the hell grudge do you have against me?”
“How long are you going to keep pretending not to know, you bastard?”
Even with his face hidden under newspaper, one sleeve of Park Yu-tae’s jacket still flapped empty in the air.
Harpy wasn’t about to forget the man whose arm he’d cut off.
Only then did Harpy grin.
“Long time no see, Geumwi Daejang.”
Park Yu-tae ripped off the newspaper he’d been wearing. There was no need to hide his identity anymore.
“Harpy. Before I kill you, I’ll ask one thing.”
“Jesus. And who’s killing who?”
“Why did you do it back then?”
I only knew that a fight had broken out while they were collecting the spoils, and that Harpy had cut off Park Yu-tae’s arm and fled. I didn’t know the details of what had happened at the time.
Park Yu-tae’s brow furrowed deeply. “Why did you turn Biyuk, Seongmin, and Se-hwan into that? Why’d you do them like that?”
I could guess who the names he mentioned were referring to—the ones who limped, who bore burns across their faces, who’d lost an eye and now wore eye patches.
That’s right. Harpy hadn’t only attacked Park Yu-tae. In that incident, the Dongbaek Guild members had suffered wounds that would never fully heal.
That was the real reason Park Yu-tae had wanted Harpy so badly. It wasn’t just to vent rage at the bastard who’d taken one of his arms.
As the leader of the Dongbaek Guild, it was...
Revenge for his comrades.
Harpy snickered. “Why? That’s just how life is. Touch my stuff, and you end up like that.”
A fierce aura burst from Park Yu-tae’s body. It was a killing intent more concentrated than I’d ever seen from him.
Harpy leaned in close to Park Yu-tae’s face.
“Don’t get cocky. Want me to cut off the other arm too?”
And then the clash began.
Harpy reached out, trying to snatch Park Yu-tae’s throat. Park Yu-tae slapped the hand away and twisted his head aside to dodge. One thing was strange: every time Harpy moved, green smoke rose from the sleeves all over his clothes.
That smoke...
God's Aura has been activated.
A thin shield woven from mana wrapped around my entire body. It now protected me not only from mental magic, but from all kinds of physical attacks as well.
“Ugh!”
One of Harpy’s underlings, lying on the floor, clamped a hand over his mouth. His face turned red in an instant, and veins bulged across his skin.
“M-mmph!”
“Uuugh!!”
Vomit sprayed from all directions. Some of them foamed at the mouth and rolled their eyes back.
Then, one by one, their arms dropped limp.
They were all dead.
Poison.
This was a narrow, sealed-off space with every window blocked shut. It was the perfect place for toxic smoke to spread.
Smoke used by a poison artisan was lethal even in the smallest amount.
Park Yu-tae seized Harpy’s wrist.
“Still a coward, I see.”
“What, there ain’t any such thing in a fight!”
Harpy’s assault continued. Every time he kicked or struck with his hands, more of that vicious smoke burst out. My eyes stung. If not for God’s Aura, I’d have been poisoned already.
Park Yu-tae’s face turned redder and redder. Since he was a healer with self-recovery, he seemed to be barely holding on—but if this kept up, it was only a matter of time before he broke.
Harpy’s rank back in the day had been A-class. He’d originally held the top position in the Dio Guild, but after causing one problem after another, he’d been pushed down by Mun Dal-su and demoted to an ordinary combat member.
If Harpy had kept training all this time, he might have reached S-class by now.
In other words, this was a fight between high-tier hunters.
“How long are you going to keep dodging?”
Harpy grabbed Park Yu-tae’s hand with one of his own. Park Yu-tae didn’t dodge this time, either; instead, he met Harpy’s hand head-on.
The floor trembled and sand fell from the ceiling. It was almost like master martial artists were clashing their inner power. The two of them poured out mana without yielding even an inch.
“Aaaagh!”
“Ghh!”
At first glance, it seemed like the contest was dead even. But little by little, Park Yu-tae began to give way.
The green mana flowing from Harpy’s grasp slowly crept toward Park Yu-tae.
The match-up is bad. Their skill might be similar, but healers were built around healing. Against someone like Harpy, whose sole priority was killing, Park Yu-tae was at a disadvantage from the start.
...He’s going to lose. No, he might even die.
Park Yu-tae was indispensable for this operation.
No choice.
I set a hwatu card on top of my thumb and snapped my finger after feeding it mana.
The card shot across the room like a shuriken and buried itself in Harpy’s eye.
“Ghk!”
In a fight between experts, one moment’s mistake decided everything. Harpy turned his remaining eye toward me.
“You fucking bastard...”
Park Yu-tae didn’t waste the opening.
“Antitoxin Reversal!”
The green smoke instantly surged back toward Harpy all at once. Maybe it wasn’t enough to kill him outright, because Harpy jerked in surprise for a split second.
“Cough!”
Harpy dropped to one knee and spat blood.
Park Yu-tae looked down at his old enemy and reached out a hand.
“Goodbye, you bastard.”
Harpy looked up at Park Yu-tae.
“D-damn it...”
Park Yu-tae delivered the final blow.
He spread his hand and clamped it over Harpy’s face.
“Gaaah!”
Harpy collapsed, blood pouring from his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears in thick streams.
Park Yu-tae didn’t let go until the man was already a wreck. Still gasping for breath, he stood there for a long time before finally running out of strength and toppling over.
“Hah... huh...”
Had they taken each other down together?
Worried, I helped Park Yu-tae sit up.
“Hey. You okay?”
“...Open.”
“What?”
“Open the window. Feels like I’m going to die if I can’t breathe.”
I sprang up and flung the window wide open. The contaminated smoke and the fresh air began to circulate.
Warm sunlight settled over Geumwi Daejang’s face.
“The hidden card for this operation can’t die.”
Park Yu-tae looked at me and smiled faintly.
“Who’s dying, you punk.”