Police vs. Firefighters (6)
I flew through the sky with Pippi and headed for the high-rise building.
"Over there."
I pointed toward the helicopter landing pad on the rooftop.
Pippi flapped her wings and settled lightly onto the roof.
"Grrr!"
Trying hard to look imposing, Pippi let out an angry roar, then swept the area with sharp, predatory eyes.
"How many centuries has it been since I last set foot in the mortal realm? Heh heh. It seems humanity has grown very peaceful in my absence. I shall personally step forth and exterminate them."
Give me a break.
The wyvern was strong, sure, but not strong enough to bring about the end of the world. At best, it was a ruin-grade monster.
And weaker than the Dirty Kraken, too.
Still, maybe because he was so proud of his dragon blood, Pippi insisted on keeping up the act.
"The great name that will destroy the universe is Silvion Albatr—Aah?!"
I yanked on his ear, and Pippi let out a pained shriek.
"Quit acting up."
"My apologies, sir."
Pippi immediately lowered his head and shut his mouth.
It still felt strange, no matter how many times it happened.
Talking to a wyvern. Better yet, taming one with complete freedom.
It may look easy, but...
There was a saying: if something looked easy, it meant the person doing it was a master.
From the start, without the magical circle Whisper of the Stars, I wouldn’t have been able to communicate with a wyvern in the first place. And without Assimilation, I wouldn’t have been able to touch a monster’s subconscious at all.
Everything was thanks to my hero abilities.
I stood face-to-face with Pippi.
"Besides flying, what else can you do?"
"I’m a fire-attribute monster, so I’m good at handling flames."
Just as awakeners had their own unique talents, monsters each had their own traits. Big Lava, for example, was earth. Dirty Kraken was water. For reference, the ghost-type monster Batter had the ether attribute.
"Fire? Let’s see it."
"Yes, sir."
Pippi took a deep breath, then tilted his head back toward the sky.
"Kuhwa!"
He spewed a column of fire from his mouth.
The heat was so fierce it made my face sting.
Oh. Not bad at all.
If it had been a dragon instead of a wyvern, the power would have been much stronger.
I crossed my arms and thought it over.
Now that I’d dragged a monster out into the open, wasn’t there some better way to use him?
"Heh. As expected. My breath is still going strong."
Pippi puffed himself up again and growled proudly. The corners of his mouth were blackened with soot, but he didn’t seem injured.
"Doesn’t that hurt?"
At that temperature, his palate should have melted clean through.
"I am, after all, a descendant of dragons. Fire-attribute dragons naturally have resistance to flames."
He wasn’t wrong.
For one thing, dragon hide didn’t burn.
When a monster mixed mana according to its attribute, that was what gave rise to its abilities. There was even a saying that the fire attribute’s strongest representative, the red dragon, could swim through a furnace as though it were water.
Wait. If that’s true...
Something sparked in my head.
5. Bear Man
1) Assimilation
: Passive skill. Free.
Assimilation is more than just the ability to befriend animals and monsters.
You can borrow their abilities, too.
I slowly reached out my hand.
"Pippi. Come here."
"Yes, sir."
I placed my palm on Pippi’s head and closed my eyes.
Assimilation has been activated.
Cost: Free.
A warm current flowed through Pippi’s body and into my hand.
This is...
It felt as if my body had linked up with something else. A completely different sensation from my usual mana seized my whole body.
It worked.
I could feel it.
Fire-attribute energy was now coursing through my body.
"Try shooting the breath at me."
"Pardon?"
"Spit it out toward me."
"Are you serious, sir?"
I nodded.
For some reason, I was confident.
The hero abilities had never failed me even once, so my trust in them was absolute.
"No backing out later."
Pippi opened his mouth wide and blasted a stream of crimson fire straight at me.
A hot wind surged toward me in a roaring blast.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Damn it. Maybe I should’ve used God’s Aura first.
My worry was needless.
The huge blaze surged over me as if it meant to swallow me whole, but only the hem of my clothes singed slightly.
My mana-wrapped body was completely fine.
...This is insane.
Pippi looked stunned, too.
"Huh? N-no way. Again!"
He spat out breath after breath.
Each time, my resistance to fire held firm.
"Again! Again!!!"
Gradually, my skin started to feel hot.
Assimilation wasn’t something I could use indefinitely.
It had a set duration.
At this pace, I figured I could hold on for about five minutes.
Pippi bared his jaws and went all out.
"Again...!"
"Enough. Quit it, you brat!"
After I gave him a light knock on the top of his head, Pippi rubbed his crown and drooped sulkily.
Like smoke leaking out of a sealed jar and scattering into the wind, Pippi’s mana was draining out of my body in real time.
There wasn’t any immediate need to fight a fire-type monster.
And the enemy I’d be facing in the Police-Fire War wouldn’t be monsters anyway—it would be people.
Still.
A body that won’t burn, no matter what?
That was a viciously broken advantage, wasn’t it?
I’m sure I’ll have a use for it someday.
I stroked Pippi’s chin, where tears were starting to well up.
"Good work. Don’t let anyone see you, and stay hidden."
"Yes, sir. Understood."
Pippi spread his huge wings and took off.
The proud silhouette of the wyvern vanished far away between the clouds.
"Hoo."
Standing atop the building, I looked down at the city below.
Seen from this far away, the human world really did look peaceful, just like Pippi had said.
Monsters that burst out of Gates didn’t necessarily attack humans on sight. Some, like the Dirty Kraken or the giant arapaima, simply curled up and slept in the sea. Others lived and breathed in places humans never touched—lakes, deep mountains, volcanoes, caves, and the like.
That was why I had chosen Bear Man as my hero.
The Police-Fire War was only a few days away.
Looks like I’ll be running around Gwanghwamun with Pippi after all.
A gray building rose high in Seoul’s Seocho District.
This was the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office.
Among all the prosecutor’s offices, it was the largest in the country and was often called the nerve center of the entire system. It had more than two hundred prosecutors assigned to it, several times more than most provincial offices.
Men and women sat gathered beneath a wisteria arbor in front of the massive building.
"Prosecutor Ryu. Congratulations on being selected as this year’s model prosecutor."
The female reporter clapped politely.
"Thank you."
The man in the deep blue suit gave a pleasant, likable smile.
He was Prosecutor Ryu Su-hon, currently assigned to Criminal Division 1 at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office.
"How do you feel?"
"I feel proud, of course, but also burdened. I suppose that just means I have a responsibility to do even better, doesn’t it?"
After a round of questions and answers, the interview was nearing its end.
"One last question. What kind of prosecutor do you want to be in the future?"
"Well. Shouldn’t a proper prosecutor all be the same?"
Ryu Su-hon showed his white teeth.
"A righteous prosecutor. I want this world to move forward in a just and beautiful way."
At his words, the reporter seemed deeply moved.
"Thank you for the interview."
"I’ll be counting on you to write a good article, ma’am."
After the reporter left, Ryu Su-hon loosened his tie and scowled.
"Damn it! How many hours are they going to keep me stuck in this interview? My throat’s killing me. For something that doesn’t even make money, they sure know how to milk it."
Then he jammed a cigarette into his mouth and smoked it furiously, his mood turning more and more sour.
While he was still grumbling, someone came running over from a distance.
"Prosecutor Ryu!"
He was a man whose belly jiggled every time he ran—an investigator who worked with Prosecutor Ryu Su-hon.
The investigator said, "The chief prosecutor is looking for you."
"Seriously? Why the hell am I getting called in first thing in the morning... Tch."
Ryu Su-hon stubbed out his cigarette and got to his feet.
He entered the gray building and walked down the long corridor.
When he reached the chief prosecutor’s office, he stopped.
"Ahem."
Ryu Su-hon straightened his rumpled tie and smoothed back his hair.
Then he knocked with a reverent air.
At the voice from inside—"Come in"—he opened the door.
"Reporting in, Chief Prosecutor! What an unexpected honor. Prosecutor Ryu Su-hon, arriving so happily I almost left my soul behind on the way here!"
Ryu Su-hon fawned over him like a slippery snake.
Chief Prosecutor Yang Joomun snorted through his nose.
"Well, well. It’s an honor beyond words to have the illustrious Mr. Ryu personally grace the chief prosecutor’s office with his presence."
It was pure sarcasm.
The fact that Ryu Su-hon had received the model prosecutor award without producing any special achievements was no accident at all.
His father-in-law was a major figure with connections reaching into the political world as well, and naturally, that influence seeped into the Seoul District Prosecutors’ Office too.
"Please take good care of our son-in-law."
Remembering those words, Yang Joomun let out a bitter smile.
Ryu Su-hon rubbed his hands together smoothly.
"Oh, come on, Chief. You’re making me blush. So, what can I do for you?"
Yang Joomun tossed a stack of documents in front of him.
"Hey. Why are those Dark Alliance punks making such a scene these days?"
"Oh? Is that so?"
Ryu Su-hon flipped through the papers.
There was the club Red Moon, villains running wild in the streets, and even a brothel in front of Gwanghwamun. Every page was packed with recent incidents tied to the Dark Alliance.
"Yeah. There really are more of them this month."
"And this is what it’s come to. What the hell is the police doing?"
The police investigated.
The prosecutors indicted.
Their roles were clearly divided.
If the police didn’t do their job properly, then the prosecutors couldn’t function properly either.
"Villains running wild isn’t exactly a new problem. Is there some particular issue...?"
"The problem is that there isn’t one. The problem is on our side."
"I see."
Ryu Su-hon understood what the chief prosecutor meant at once.
The police weren’t the only ones taking bribes from the Dark Alliance.
There were more than two thousand prosecutors across the country, and naturally, some of them were also taking under-the-table money from the Dark Alliance.
"Tch. Even so, isn’t this getting ridiculous? Those villain bastards don’t even try to keep a low profile anymore and just run rampant. The police are nothing but the villains’ lapdogs at this point. Tsk. It’s embarrassing."
"Exactly. Everything the chief says is right."
"At this rate, I wonder if the villains are going to swallow the entire prosecution service too."
By then, the quick-witted Ryu Su-hon had already figured out what Yang Joomun was really after.
So that’s how it is.
The relationship between the police and the prosecution was cooperative on the surface. But in practice, the two institutions kept each other in check, maintaining a delicate balance by quietly threatening one another.
There were many kinds of power—media, politics, the legal world, and so on. The police and the prosecution were both institutions that held power of their own.
Yang Joomun grumbled, his temper rising.
"At this rate, the police and the villains are going to get all chummy and drag us right back into the Yusin regime!"
Back in 1950, the police had held all the cards in South Korea. Every one of the president’s close aides had been a heavyweight cop, and their influence was enormous.
"You brat, do you have any idea how much hell I went through back then? In my day, cops would just arrest prosecutors without a warrant and throw them in lockup!"
"Oh, really?"
Of course, Ryu Su-hon had no idea.
And I don’t particularly care, either.
Yang Joomun raised his voice.
"Why should we be bowing our heads to the police?"
"Absolutely not!"
"Those cop bastards think they’re such hot shit because their intel is a little faster, so they keep trying to dig up the prosecutors’ weak spots! Does that even make any sense?"
"Of course not!"
Ryu Su-hon muttered theatrically, pretending to be angry.
"Those damn cops. We should put them in their place once and for all."
"Exactly. Ryu Su-hon, your head’s finally starting to work. So how do we do it?"
"Well now. I’m a bit slow on the uptake, Chief, so could you explain it to me? Just point me in the right direction and I’ll work hard at whatever you need."
Yang Joomun tossed him a second stack of documents.
Ryu Su-hon caught them neatly.
"What’s this?"
On the first page of the A4 packet, a bold heading was printed in large letters:
- Investigation into collusion between police and villains regarding the firefighters’ rally. -
Ryu Su-hon flipped through the file at speed.
"Hmm. If this goes well, it could really get the police and the firefighters at each other’s throats."
"That’s probably exactly what’ll happen. Build the case around that."
Yang Joomun pointed at the file with his index finger.
"A falling leaf can sometimes turn into a blessing, after all. If you frame the scenario well enough, the police are the ones who’ll take the backlash."
To have the police join forces with villains and drive away protesters—that was an outrage that would go down in history.
But the prosecutors themselves were not exactly free from their own ties to villains, so they couldn’t openly judge the Dark Alliance in public.
"Just watch for now. The chance will come."
"Understood."
Ryu Su-hon gathered up the documents and turned to leave.
"Oh, right, Chief. Are we on the firefighters’ side, then?"
He had just been trashing the police, but the police and the prosecution were inseparable. Ryu Su-hon wasn’t sure whose side he was supposed to be on.
"Whose side? We’re always on the same side."
The chief prosecutor curved his lips in a thin, oily smile.
"The winning side."