For Solidarity (7)
The fight between the Gold Guard Captain and Harpy was over.
The gambling den was in complete chaos. Tables had been smashed to pieces, and playing cards were lodged everywhere like shrapnel. Harpy’s men lay sprawled across the floor in heaps. And Harpy himself was lying as still as a corpse.
His shoulders were rising and falling ever so slightly, though, so...
He’s not dead.
Park Yu-tae flopped backward onto the floor in the sunlight, spreading out like a man who’d had all the bones knocked out of him.
“Damn... I almost got killed.”
A poison master and a healer facing off head-on. It was a kind of battle I’d never seen before.
Interesting.
“How did you do it?”
I asked, my face full of curiosity.
Building up experience and information was basic training if you wanted to become a competent hunter.
“How do you think? TTX.”
Park Yu-tae pointed at Harpy.
“That bastard uses it mixed into his smoke.”
TTX. I knew it.
“Tetrodotoxin.”
“Huh, look at you being smart.”
It was a biological toxin found mainly in pufferfish and certain other fish. Its lethality was a staggering thirteen times that of cyanide. For an adult man, even a grain of rice’s worth could kill him.
Park Yu-tae stared up at the ceiling and muttered, “Ha. All those years drinking the same damn poison tea over and over finally paid off.”
There were also plants that contained TTX, not just fish.
The most famous one was mandrake.
The reason Park Yu-tae could withstand TTX, despite humanity never having discovered an antidote, was because of that. He’d been drinking mandrake tea so often, as if it were a habit, that his body had learned to heal itself.
“I absorbed the TTX that bastard spread, then shoved it right back at him. If I’d been even one second slower, I’d have gone to hell.”
That was an extremely dangerous strategy.
He’d gambled his own body and thrown himself into a tactic that flirted with death.
Park Yu-tae said calmly, with a hollow look in his eyes, “I can finally relax a little. If that kind of trash had been roaming around Busan, I’d never have slept soundly for the rest of my life.”
Park Yu-tae hadn’t chased Harpy down for his own sake alone. It was revenge for his comrade, yes, but it was also to protect the citizens of Busan.
Yeah. He really is something.
For a healer, Park Yu-tae was rough and crude, but he was solid and dependable.
I walked over to him and held out my hand.
“We took out a common enemy together. Does that make us friends now?”
“Tch.”
Park Yu-tae took my hand and hauled himself up, looking like he was forcing himself to go along with it.
“Calling us friends out of nowhere’s embarrassing. Let’s just say we’re comrades, at least.”
He exhaled and started to get ready to leave.
“Then let’s vanish without a trace.”
“Hold on.”
Park Yu-tae picked up a phone that had been lying around on the floor.
Then he made a call somewhere.
“This is the police station? I found a wanted criminal. He used to be a hunter. Call sign Harpy. The address here is...”
Turning Harpy over to the police meant he was going to let him live.
Merciful. So that’s how it is. Nonkilling.
It was a creed befitting a healer who had sworn solemnly to spend his life treating the injured without discrimination.
Park Yu-tae ended the call.
“They’ll be here in about five minutes.”
No matter how corrupt the police were, if someone had caught a wanted criminal dead to rights and then reported him, they couldn’t easily pretend not to see it.
Harpy wasn’t some giant figure on the level of the Cheonyang-ji cult leader. There was no way he’d escape punishment.
Just as I was about to turn away—
“Cough!”
Harpy jerked and started foaming at the mouth.
His limbs flailed like a fish’s, and his eyes rolled back in his skull.
“Ghh... ggh...”
If he’d been trying to find an opening to run, he’d have been better off just playing dead.
In other words, this wasn’t an act.
I knew that at a glance, even without any knowledge of healers.
If we leave him like that, he’ll die.
Park Yu-tae’s expression darkened.
“...”
Is he hesitating?
Whether he should watch his enemy die, or choose another way.
Harpy didn’t have much life left in him now.
“Khk!”
With one final gasp, Harpy’s body went limp.
...He’s dead.
Park Yu-tae stood there, rooted to the spot.
Even an S-class healer couldn’t bring back the dead.
Kill: below 1/100
I stared at the screen in disbelief.
The mission had been completed.
Why?
I hadn’t killed anyone.
I’d dealt with the gangsters who’d come swarming into the gambling den, sure, but all I’d done was break their limbs or put them out of the fight. I hadn’t killed a single one of them.
It wasn’t because I’d felt pity for them.
I simply hadn’t judged them to be evil enough to deserve being butchered.
And yet the count had gone up.
Harpy’s death?
But Harpy hadn’t been killed by me. He’d been killed by Park Yu-tae.
This wasn’t some childish feeling of resentment or unfairness. I just wanted to know. What exactly had caused the mission to trigger? What rules were governing it?
No way.
While I was lost in thought, Park Yu-tae moved quickly.
He knelt beside Harpy and placed both hands on his chest.
“Hup!”
Then he pressed down, forcing mana into the body.
The poison that had built up inside Harpy’s body rose like smoke and curled into the air.
“Ghh...”
Park Yu-tae gritted his teeth and unleashed his healing skill. He was concentrating so hard that beads of sweat were already forming on his forehead.
He looked exactly like a doctor doing everything he could to save a patient with CPR.
How long had it been?
“Hoo...”
Harpy finally forced out the breath that had been blocked in his chest.
Park Yu-tae had miraculously brought back a man who had already clinically died from cardiac arrest.
“Damn it. I’m gonna die, you cursed bastard. Even in death you’ve got to keep tormenting me.”
The moment Harpy’s breathing returned, Park Yu-tae collapsed onto the floor, utterly drained.
I looked back at the screen in the air.
Kill: below 1/100
The number hadn’t changed.
I think I get it now.
The reason the mission recognized someone else’s killing was because I’d been involved in the act.
In simple terms:
1. Park Yu-tae killed Harpy.
2. The decisive reason Harpy died was that the playing card I’d thrown had lodged in his eye.
3. Which meant I bore part of the responsibility for Harpy’s death.
That was what it meant.
The system had interpreted Park Yu-tae’s killing as something I had done together with him.
It was almost like...
conditional intent.
Holding me responsible for acting even while knowing there was a possibility a killing would occur.
The fact that the count had gone up but not back down likely meant the tally applied only to the category of “killings.”
My head was a mess.
To avoid becoming a murderer just because the system demanded it, I’d chosen to abandon the mission.
If it works like this...
Then maybe there would be situations where I’d complete a mission even without intending to.
I ran through a few possibilities in my head.
...None of them are good.
Either way, somebody would still lose their life.
“Hey. You okay?”
Before I knew it, Park Yu-tae had come up to me.
“Did the smoke get to you? Want me to detox you?”
The Aura of the Divine had already kicked in, so I was fine.
More importantly...
The unexpected incident had made it impossible to know what effect this whole thing would have on the mission.
Sirens wailed somewhere outside.
Leaving the tangled mess behind us, Park Yu-tae and I fled the gambling den like we were running for our lives.
The training room at the Dio Guild Busan branch had originally been used for team workouts, but today it served a different purpose.
I was giving a briefing to the Busan team.
Heo Da-young and I were standing, while the others were seated and listening.
“So we’ll be carrying out a joint operation with other guilds.”
“Black Cop from Dongnae, Blood Warrior from Geumjeong, and Light Hunter from Sasang have all agreed to join us.”
Mun Dal-su nodded.
“Oh, nice. More hands is always better.”
The others agreed as well.
“I thought we’d be short on manpower, but this should be plenty.”
“You got all three of them to agree in that short a time?”
“Hunter Choi, you’re amazing.”
Jang Na-ik, the youngest on the Busan team, was staring at me with sparkling eyes.
Heo Da-young seized the moment and started praising me too.
“Of course! This is Hunter Choi, the one who came all the way from headquarters!”
I hadn’t gathered them here to get praised.
Humans were a species that split into factions even when only three of them got together.
With a major war looming ahead, there was a ritual we absolutely had to carry out to strengthen the team’s cohesion.
“I assume you all know the guilds in Busan better than I do. Since I’ve invited each team here, why don’t we all take the chance to greet one another properly?”
Mun Dal-su tilted his head.
“You said they were coming here?”
The gym was spacious enough to hold everyone, so there wouldn’t be any problem accommodating them.
At that moment, the door opened and someone walked in.
“Ugh, it reeks like some old bachelor in here. Does Dio not even clean?”
The man was balding, with a belly that stuck out in front of him. He was the leader of Black Cop.
Mun Dal-su’s face lit up as he waved.
“Well, if it isn’t our little piggy.”
“The hell are you calling piggy, you old fossil!”
“Hahaha! It’s been that long?”
Since Black Cop Guild was apparently on familiar terms with them, the atmosphere with Dio Busan was warm and easy.
“We’re here too!”
“You not even gonna offer us a drink? Bring me a coffee!”
Soon after, the Blood Warrior and Light Hunter guilds arrived as well.
“You came empty-handed? Couldn’t even bring something?”
“You know damn well what our situation is, so quit talking nonsense. Team Leader Mun, you’re as shameless as ever!”
“Hahaha! Your ugly face is actually kind of nice to see after so long.”
Hunters rarely gathered in one place except in the field.
Guilds valued secrecy.
From the outside, it didn’t look very good to see members of different guilds meeting up so often.
Before long, the gym was crowded, packed with people.
Mun Dal-su looked at me.
“So is that everyone now?”
“One team left.”
The sliding door opened.
A man with cropped hair and a stylish mustache stepped inside.
It was Park Yu-tae, the team leader of Dongbaek Guild.
The warm atmosphere froze in an instant.
“Damn it!”
Mun Dal-su shot to his feet.
The rest of the Busan team reflexively pushed back their chairs and dropped into fighting stances.
Dongbaek Guild members filed in behind Park Yu-tae one after another.
The tension was so suffocating that the other guilds all clamped their mouths shut.
Anyone hunter in Busan knew that Dio and Dongbaek were sworn enemies.
Mun Dal-su stepped forward, his face stiff.
“Gold Guard Captain. What brings you here?”
The former head of Dio Guild, the man who had cut off the opposing team leader’s arm and fled.
The Dongbaek Guild, who hated Dio’s guts.
It wouldn’t have been strange if a brawl broke out right there and then.
Park Yu-tae stopped in front of Mun Dal-su and stood facing him.
“What do you mean, what brings me here? You called me.”
His tone was sharp, but he didn’t seem to have any intention of fighting.
“Called you? Who did?”
“Who do you think?”
Everyone from Dongbaek Guild turned their eyes toward me.
Mun Dal-su’s mouth fell open.
“Hunter Choi...?”
The Busan team swallowed hard and chimed in one by one.
“You’re still on temporary assignment, so maybe you don’t know this, Hunter Choi, but Dongbaek and we...”
They couldn’t bring themselves to finish the sentence.
It was like bringing a wild dog you could never tame into the house and taking the leash off.
But then—
“Gold Guard Captain, sit down already. Stop acting so stiff.”
Mun Dal-su and the rest of the Busan team were stunned.
They must have thought I’d finally yanked the whiskers off that ferocious S-class healer.
“Tch.”
But Park Yu-tae just turned his head with a pout and said, “Sit down, guys.”
Everyone from Dongbaek Guild obediently followed my words.
Only Heo Da-young, watching all this, broke into a wide grin.
People gaped and muttered in disbelief.
“What on earth did he do to make the mighty Gold Guard Captain act like that?”
“Hunter Choi Yongki? Wasn’t he supposed to be D-class?”
“Who is this guy? He’s forcing lifelong enemies to make up.”
I ignored all the chatter, clapped my hands, and drew everyone’s attention.
“All right, listen up!”
As I stepped forward, the eyes of every Busan guild member locked onto me.
“Tomorrow is the day at last.”
The day before the D-day invasion of the Dirty Kraken, a monster on the level of an apocalypse-class threat.