The Tyrant’s Hunting Method (2)
A black Mercedes-Maybach rolled to a stop in front of the mansion. The driver got out and opened the back door.
"Representative. We’ve arrived."
In the back seat, Go Pil-hun was dead drunk and sunk into a deep sleep. He’d been out late again, drinking and carousing to his heart’s content at some upscale bar.
"Representative?"
At the driver’s voice, Go Pil-hun slowly cracked his eyes open. A pleasant buzz from the alcohol spread through his body, lifting his mood at once.
The driver helped him out of the car, and Go Pil-hun looked up.
"My house?"
The sight of the luxurious home—complete with a blue garden, swimming pool, movie theater, and every other amenity—filled him with a fresh sense of satisfaction.
"Heh-heh! Not bad. Not bad at all."
The place had originally been purchased for workshops for Dio Guild employees, but by now it was being used as Go Pil-hun’s private residence.
That wasn’t all. The cost of the housekeeper, the gardener, and the maintenance of the facilities was all being paid for with Dio Guild funds.
It was a blatant case of breach of trust and embezzlement, but so far he’d been living comfortably without consequence.
That was, until the Nation Daily started making an issue of it.
"That trash reporter."
Go Pil-hun snickered, his shoulders shaking.
By now, the Nation Daily reporter would be a bloody mess. And before long, the one pulling the strings behind that reporter would be exposed too.
Feeling good, Go Pil-hun waved a hand.
"Forget it. I’ll park it myself. Go on."
"You seem pretty drunk, sir…"
"I said go."
"Understood."
The driver backed away, and Go Pil-hun got behind the wheel himself and drove into the garage.
He was so drunk that the bumper slammed straight into the garage door.
"Oops!"
The steel gate caved inward.
At the ear-splitting noise, barking rang out from somewhere inside the estate.
"Heh-heh!"
Go Pil-hun laughed, grinning to himself. He didn’t care that a luxury car worth hundreds of millions of won had been turned into a wreck.
So what? I can just buy another one.
His goal was to sell off the Dio Guild as quickly as possible and spend the rest of his life living in luxury.
Go Pil-hun parked anywhere he pleased and got out of the car.
He was just about to head inside when—
"Huh?"
The sensor on the ceiling didn’t react today.
He didn’t think much of it. It was the sort of thing you could dismiss as a malfunction and move on from.
This is…
Not until he caught the faint smell of blood drifting from somewhere nearby.
Even if alcohol had dulled his sense of smell, there was a limit. Go Pil-hun had once been a hunter. He’d smelled enough blood on the field to recognize it instantly.
He took out his phone and turned on the flashlight.
In a dark corner, something caught his eye.
When the light hit it, the face of a man smeared with blood came into view.
"…Kgh!"
Go Pil-hun sucked in a sharp breath.
Three men, all in a ruined state, were tied up tight with ropes. They were wrapped so thoroughly they looked like human-shaped bundles.
Their mouths leaked blood and saliva as they groaned weakly.
"Who the hell are you guys?"
Looking closer, he recognized them.
They were the hunters who had been expelled from Dio Guild and forced out of the company—men sent to attack the Nation Daily reporter.
In an instant, the drunken haze vanished from his head.
No way!
Go Pil-hun jerked his chin up. Every CCTV camera in the garage had been destroyed.
…
There was no way the Nation Daily reporter had done this alone, not against hunters.
This had been a calculated attack by someone backing the reporter.
Was this what it meant to give as good as you got? The arrow he’d loosed so confidently had come flying straight back into his own chest.
Damn it.
Go Pil-hun clenched his teeth.
Among the hunters tied up with ropes, he noticed a bloodstained note.
He picked it up and unfolded it.
Under the light, purple handwriting, scrawled in a slashing hand, came into view.
Wait.
I’ll send you where your brother is, too.
The mocking message sent rage boiling all the way to the top of his skull.
"Aaaaagh!!!"
Go Pil-hun slammed his fist down on the hood of the car and let out a bestial scream.
On the rooftop of the Dio Guild building in Gangnam, the space had once served as an emergency helicopter pad, but after Go Ju-hun died, its purpose changed.
They installed shade canopies, planted greenery, and placed chairs here and there, turning it into a break area for employees.
I sat on a bench and savored an instant coffee. The sweet liquid slid over my tongue and down my throat.
Employees were chatting lazily all around me. It was a peaceful lunch break.
Taking in the view, I asked, "So. What’s the reaction?"
It might have sounded like I was talking to myself, but the woman sitting on the bench with her back against mine answered.
"Well, the moment he got to work, he went ballistic. He screamed for them to catch the bastard who broke into his house—even if it meant throwing the entire Dio Guild at him. What a fucking lunatic."
Lee Yu-seol sipped her coffee as she spoke.
Because of the seating arrangement, we were looking in opposite directions. Anyone watching would never have guessed we were having a secret conversation.
"Still, that’s amazing. You played with Go Pil-hun like he was a toy."
"It wasn’t hard. Dio Guild’s methods are simple."
Last night, I’d dealt with the thug who attacked the Nation Daily reporter.
After what happened to the quick-delivery guy at Seo Gwang-pal’s hands, I’d made up my mind.
I wasn’t going to let anyone around me get hurt again.
"We’ve been running the articles exactly as you ordered. Want to check them?"
"No need. I already saw them."
The Nation Daily hadn’t stopped attacking Dio Guild.
More precisely, it hadn’t stopped attacking Go Pil-hun.
The comments section was burning hot.
Lee Yu-seol said, "Still, I’m worried. Go Pil-hun isn’t exactly weak when it comes to counterattacks."
The Dio Guild representative monopolized wealth and power. Go Pil-hun wasn’t the kind of man who would just sit there and take a beating.
He immediately put out rebuttal articles.
If there was the Nation Daily, openly defying Dio Guild, then of course there were also friendly outlets willing to sing its praises.
Go Pil-hun used that to insist on his own innocence.
Lee Yu-seol let out a hollow laugh. "And in the middle of all this, he’s dragging poor Hunter Choi into it. What a pathetic little bastard."
Go Pil-hun had dragged me into the spotlight as his last trump card.
He’d given me all kinds of benefits—an accelerated promotion by two ranks, bonuses, vacation days, the works—but was now acting as though I’d betrayed him by refusing to side with him.
Even the so-called official documents weren’t anything special.
It was just the KakaoTalk logs he’d thrown out there.
Something like this:
- Lee Yu-seol: Representative. The send-off party for Hunter Choi is ready.
- Go Pil-hun: Good work. Let’s give Hunter Choi an energetic send-off tomorrow!
- Lee Yu-seol: Understood.
It made it look as though Go Pil-hun had been the one personally pushing this whole thing along.
In modern society, manipulation was easy. Leak false information through the internet, and the public would sway with hardly any effort at all.
Exactly as Go Pil-hun intended, the public perception of me began to rot slowly, like a drop of ink spreading through water.
Wasn’t it funny?
The public got hot and then cooled off depending on media coverage, and the mood could flip on its head in a heartbeat.
Lee Yu-seol had a point.
This wasn’t the time to sit around with a blank face.
If this kept up…
One wrong move, and the frame I’d worked so hard to build would collapse.
From the hero who saved Busan to the traitor who betrayed his guild—that was the danger I was facing.
That’s probably exactly what Go Pil-hun wants.
Lee Yu-seol complained about him with obvious disgust.
"Unbelievable. When he was using you all he wanted, he was all smiles, and now that the sweet juice is gone, he’s ready to throw you away."
Go Pil-hun hid behind a major guild and set me up as the lightning rod to take the beating from the public.
Watching the flood of hateful comments aimed at me gave me a strange feeling.
In my past life, nobody ever criticized me.
That made sense. Who would throw stones at a man living like a cockroach in a collapsing apartment block, hiding away in poverty so severe it was like being flayed alive?
I did nothing, so nothing happened.
That was why there was nothing in particular to feel bad about.
Being famous, and ending up in the middle of controversy, only meant one thing.
It meant I was living this life with enough ferocity to get noticed.
Right.
This was the weight of the crown a hero had to bear.
Lee Yu-seol turned her head a little and watched me carefully.
"So what’s the next move? I’m assuming you’ve got a plan…"
Go Pil-hun had dragged me into a public war.
Eye for an eye.
To fight a public war, I’d need to win with one too.
"I’ll beat him at his own game."
"…How?"
I crushed the paper cup and tossed it into the trash can.
Perfect shot.
I brushed my hands off and stood.
"Prepare the press conference."
The press conference hall was packed wall to wall with people. A host stepped forward to begin the proceedings.
"We’ll now begin Hunter Choi Yongki’s press conference."
I faced forward with calm confidence.
What a sight.
So many reporters were pointed at me, cameras in hand.
One thing I’d learned through my past life was this: the world didn’t really care about me.
Even when my grandmother died in a house falling apart from desperate poverty. Even when my younger brother was murdered by a villain. The world kept turning as if nothing had happened.
The reporters were the same. Not a single one of them looked emotional. Every face was stiff, every pair of eyes empty.
They’d only come to the press conference to churn out sensational copy. There wasn’t the slightest trace of human interest in me.
The bright flashes kept bursting without pause, as though they were watching an animal trapped inside a cage.
I wondered whether there was anyone in the crowd on my side at all.
No one who was willing to step up and speak for me had arrived yet.
Ha. Lonely, aren’t I?
In the abundance of being watched while still belonging to no one, I found myself remembering Na Sang-min’s hellish training.
During those brutally harsh drills, hard enough to make me want to throw up, there were times I wanted nothing more than to run. There were times the pain had been almost unbearable.
Looks like bad experiences aren’t always bad after all.
The stronger my body became, the more I could feel my mind hardening with it.
This much pressure is nothing.
Slowly, I gripped the microphone.
"Thank you all sincerely for coming here in the middle of your busy schedules. I’ll get straight to the point. I volunteered for Dio Guild’s Busan dispatch. My comrades also left their assigned garrison zone without authorization to help me. That is the plain truth."
One reporter raised a hand.
"What was Dio Guild’s position? Representative Go Pil-hun’s opinion, I mean."
That was the heart of the issue.
Had Go Pil-hun interfered with me before the Dirty Kraken battle, or had he actively supported me?
"I’ll answer with evidence rather than a hundred words."
When I activated the remote, the screen behind me lit up and played a video.
Go Pil-hun was in a rage, yelling at the top of his lungs.
"What monster extermination? Pull them back. Tell them to return if they don’t want disciplinary action."
"But Representative, the monster due to appear this time is said to be comparable to an apocalypse-class threat. The Busan branch alone won’t be enough…"
"Didn’t you hear me? I said get them back here now!"
The reporters began to murmur among themselves.
Go Pil-hun had been loudly denying the media’s claims all this time.
But with evidence this airtight, his tall tales were exposed for what they were.
The sound of keyboards sped up all over the room as the reporters raced one another to write.
Still too early to be surprised.
There was a highlight still left to come.
The video rolled on mercilessly.
"What if they refuse?"
"Then enforce it by force."
I stopped the video with the remote.
It showed Go Pil-hun smiling with a nasty little curl to his mouth.
At the same time, all the reporters shot to their feet and raised their hands one after another.
"Where did that video come from?"
"Hunter Choi! Is this an internal whistleblowing case from Dio Guild?"
"Why did you make such a brave decision? We want to hear the reason!!"
Everyone was up, firing off questions with enthusiasm.
Now this is fun.
Everyone was focused on me, and everyone was listening to what I had to say.
I had gone from a national traitor to an internal whistleblower who chose justice in a single instant.
"The reason I made this decision is…"
Then, all of a sudden, the door to the conference room opened.
Did they arrive?
My comrades.
I’d asked the Hunters of the Roundtable for support.
I wanted them to testify about what happened on the scene back then, for my sake.
But without realizing it, my eyes widened.
Whoever said life never goes the way you want had been right.
Instead of my comrades, someone completely unexpected came barging in.
Why is he here…?
Every reporter’s gaze snapped to the uninvited guest.
"Aigoo. This place is packed. What is this, a dungeon nest?"
The man walking in wore a visibly irritated expression.
The strongest hunter in Dio Guild.
S-class hunter.
Also known as the Mad Dog.
"Yongki, you punk. Your brother’s here."
Na Sang-min lazily raised a hand.