The Pretext for a Fight
The tall man looked down at me and said, “First, I’m only asking out of courtesy. We have our own reasons for this, too.”
In the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period, the Confucian scholar Confucius advocated the doctrine of rectification of names.
A king should act like a king. A subject should act like a subject. A father should act like a father. And so on.
In short, it meant everyone should behave in a way befitting their role.
By the tall man’s logic, that meant “gangs should act like gangs.”
When I first encountered that doctrine, I’d snorted. That was because my father had never acted like a father at all.
The tall man went on, “Not only did you trash a perfectly good press, but you even stirred up the workers? Damn, you’re a real piece of work!”
Reason and justification have a way of making violence look reasonable.
In truth, though, it was a matter of whichever side you hung the hook on—earring if you put it on the ear, nose ring if you put it on the nose.
“Why’d you do it? At least tell me why. You’re getting hit either way, but still.”
There it was.
According to the excuse you chose, violence could sometimes be called justice.
That was why I thought excuses were no different from lies.
It was far more honest to just talk about profit and loss.
“Why?”
I lifted my chin and looked up at the tall man.
“Because the side dishes were fucking awful.”
“What?”
The tall man frowned and twisted his face in irritation.
If I’d left the press alone, someone’s hand would have been severed sooner or later, if not Karki’s then someone else’s.
Maybe it would have been mine.
But that was the practical reason.
I had no intention of telling this bastard what I really thought.
“You lot only eat delivery food, so you wouldn’t get it. Come to the company cafeteria once. You’ll be wondering whether they meant it for people or for dogs.”
The tall man looked flabbergasted.
“That’s the reason?”
“Yeah. That’s right.”
One of the factory workers watching me burst out laughing.
“If you’re busting your ass all morning, they ought to at least feed you something decent.”
“Exactly!”
Karki’s voice came from behind me.
“Today, again, they put steel wool in the cafeteria slop. You want me to eat that and keel over? That’s too much, na!”
The boss hid behind the tall man and jeered, “Look at the way these filthy mouths talk! If we leave them alone, they’ll become dangerous. Director, please teach them a lesson!”
The tall man nodded.
“True enough, Mr. Kim. Maybe it’s time we taught the employees what the world can do to them.”
I hadn’t been dismissing the second-in-command of a gang out of pure arrogance.
Even while pretending to be calm, I studied him carefully the entire time.
Liars don’t usually trust other people. The better they are at deceiving others, the less they let their guard down.
I was the same.
Just because I’d awakened didn’t mean I’d gone around full of myself.
The hero skill Judgment of the Superhuman.
Wasn’t it possible that this was nothing more than a middling power?
Big Lava or Seo Gwang-pal—maybe it had only worked because he’d gotten lucky and run into weak opponents?
I was curious.
How far could I solve things with my own strength?
Ripping apart the press for no reason wouldn’t tell me that.
I was an Awakened too, but in terms of experience, I was still painfully lacking.
I needed a standard to measure myself against.
And that standard was this tall bastard.
The tall man tapped my chest with the back of his hand. “Listen, old man. Looks like you’re itching to throw your weight around just because you awakened. Keep it up and you’ll get a nasty surprise. I once went toe-to-toe with an A-class hunter and—”
There you go. Just like him.
Back in my previous life, he’d gone on and on about how he was “something something” in his prime.
It really did drive home the fact that I’d regressed.
It felt like watching an old movie all over again.
There was no way to know whether this bastard had really fought and beaten an A-class hunter.
But if it was true, then back when he was active, he’d been quite the capable fighter.
Still, that was ten years ago.
After all that time, his skills would have gone downhill. Right now, he was probably no better than someone who could barely hold his own against a B-class hunter.
And since Seo Gwang-pal was a C-class hunter,
that was perfect.
I caught the fist he was using to thump my chest.
“If we’re doing this, let’s get on with it. I’ve got less than five minutes left on break. I’ll go first.”
I wrapped my hand gently around his fist.
“Hm?”
The tall man tilted his head. “What are you doing? I’m not into touching other guys—”
I poured strength into my grip, enough to smash bone with Judgment of the Superhuman.
“Gah!?”
The tall man jerked backward in a panic, lost his footing, and sprawled onto the ground.
“……”
“……”
I looked down at the tall man, who had toppled over all by himself.
My balance hadn’t changed at all.
He must have sensed something and dodged at the last second.
Tch. What a shame.
Because I still wasn’t used to controlling the power properly, mistakes like that happened.
The tall man stammered, “Y-you… what the hell are you?”
Karki shouted, “Yes! Nice one, boss! That bastard hit me so hard in the head before because I blocked the restroom passage! You’re the best, boss!”
On the other hand, the gang members were clearly rattled.
“B-boss!”
“Are you all right?”
“Let go of me, you bastards!”
The tall man angrily shook off his subordinates’ hands.
“Hah. Huhh.”
Then he drew a deep breath and snorted hard.
But unlike Seo Gwang-pal, he didn’t lose his temper.
He studied me from head to toe as he steadied his breathing.
So he wasn’t just old by age alone.
There was something that came from experience.
Proof of that was the way his eyes sharpened.
“Looks like you’re not just some nobody.”
The atmosphere changed as he shifted into a proper battle stance.
For a moment, it felt like the air itself had frozen.
Even the people watching us held their breath and swallowed hard.
Now it was serious.
The tall man straightened and took a step forward. “Well, well. You must be pretty strong for someone so young. Let me guess, you awakened as a power type?”
Maybe it was just my imagination, but his outline seemed to warp like a strip of taffy.
“A change type like me might be at a disadvantage in a matchup like this. To be honest, raw strength isn’t my specialty.”
With every step he took, the tall man’s limbs rippled like heat haze.
That wasn’t natural.
It was definitely some kind of special ability powered by mana.
Dragging this out wasn’t going to help me.
One strike, one kill.
At the moment, that was my strongest point.
The tall man came close enough to touch.
“Go on, try hitting me again.”
I didn’t hesitate and drove a punch straight at him.
Whoosh.
Along with the sound of the air being cleaved, the tall man vanished.
“Behind you.”
His voice came from my back.
Fast…
“Hyaaaah!”
The instant I turned, he hammered a kick into my side.
Instinctively, I blocked with my elbow.
With a brutal impact, my body flew sideways.
“Ghk.”
I rolled across the dirt more than twice before finally coming to a stop.
A tiny, sharp pebble stuck to my skin and buried itself in my cheek.
My body was aching all over.
It had all happened in an instant.
If he hadn’t shouted before attacking, I wouldn’t have blocked it properly.
The tall man kept one leg raised in a kicking stance and said, “I held back on purpose. It’d be boring if it ended with one hit, right? Five minutes? I’ll keep beating on you until you’re begging me to let you live.”
My elbow throbbed dully.
If he hadn’t gone easy on me, it would’ve broken.
In other words, that had been close.
Standing on the edge of the blade gave me a clear idea of where I stood.
Judgment of the Superhuman possessed terrifying destructive power.
Purely in terms of ability, it was powerful enough to overwhelm that tall man.
But even if you had a bag full of pearls, they were worthless unless you strung them together.
No matter how excellent a fist was, it was useless if you couldn’t land it.
If I failed to read the bastard’s speed and bizarre ability, the outcome was obvious.
How do I close the gap?
1. Super Kid Series
1) Judgment of the Superhuman: ₩1,000,000 per use.
2) Divine Aura: ₩5,000,000 per day.
Step two.
It was time to push forward.
I clicked the gray text, 2) Divine Aura.
Condition not met.
Damn it. I wish it would just tell me what that condition was.
“Boss!”
Karki’s worried voice reached me.
The factory workers were backing away too, clearly frightened.
If I lost here, the future was easy to predict.
They’d keep coming back to Factory 4 whenever they felt like it, wrecking the place and harassing the workers.
Protection money, union dues, severance pay, and all the rest.
They’d squeeze even more out of our wages.
I couldn’t bear to watch my coworkers suffer through that.
Wasn’t there any way?
Condition not met.
[4/5]
As I glared at the message, I noticed a tiny line of text etched beneath it.
[4/5]
At first, I’d completely missed that number.
If I traced my memory back, it looked like the number had been creeping up little by little since I got here from the morning commute.
Four out of five.
One more time, and it would be five.
No way.
I brushed off my clothes and stood up.
The tall man clapped his hands. “Damn, you’re one hell of a man!”
I had a rough guess now about what the condition was.
It would’ve been nice to experiment at leisure, but I had no choice but to apply it in real combat immediately.
The plan was simple.
First, attack like hell.
I charged the tall man and threw a one-two combination with both hands.
Whoosh. Whoosh.
My fists once again sliced through empty air.
No withdrawal alert sounded.
That was because I hadn’t landed a valid hit.
“Wow! So close! You almost got me!”
The tall man dodged every strike with exaggerated ease.
“From your form, looks like you learned boxing somewhere. I used to go to a gym too, back in the day. One! Two!”
He slipped in jabs whenever he could.
He was striking with one hand, but his speed was so absurdly fast I couldn’t even tell where the punches were coming from.
His fierce blows slammed straight into my face.
My lip split, and sparks flashed in my vision.
Thud-thud-thud!!!
It was a one-sided beating.
I felt my mind going fuzzy, and for a second I wanted to collapse, but I clenched my teeth and kept standing.
My eyes swelled shut, and blood from my lip dripped onto the dirt.
“St-stop it, you bastard!”
Karki tried to step in, but the factory workers held him back.
“S-stand still!”
“If you jump in too, you’ll get hurt!”
But through my narrowed vision, I caught sight of the foreman moving.
Quietly, he gripped the monkey wrench hanging at his waist.
“Right. It’s one-on-one, so I’ll hold back. But if Yongki goes down, we all jump him together.”
My face was so swollen it was a mess, but a laugh still slipped out.
Who was it who said they’d never intervene in a fight unless it was to save their own skin?
The tall man’s mouth curved upward.
“Ho ho. You’re smiling? You’re way more insane than I expected.”
His afterimage blurred, and only his voice echoed from all around me.
“You said your name was Choi Yongki, right? I like your nerve. How about coming to work for us?”
Covered in blood and battered to hell, I raised my guard and coughed up a bloody spit.
“Go ask your mother.”
I confirmed where I’d finally ended up.
Right under the wisteria tree, where the purple blossoms hung heavy overhead, after deliberately luring him there while taking every one of his attacks.
I lifted my fist.
“I told you, it’s useless.”
The tall man easily slipped the attack.
That didn’t matter.
My target had never been him in the first place.
My mana-laden hand slammed into the pillar beneath the wisteria tree.
Crack.
Withdrawal: ₩1,000,000.
One of the square pillars shattered, and the wisteria rest pavilion collapsed around it.
At the same moment,
Condition satisfied.
Judgment of the Superhuman [5/5]
There it was.
The condition for buying the next hero ability was to use the acquired skill five times.
The moment the alert rang, I reached out and clicked what I wanted.
Purchase complete.
Divine Aura activated.
Awakener's Balance:￦1,068,565,998
My remaining balance dropped by a total of six million won.
At the same time, mana spread through every corner of my body.
It felt like sinking into a bathtub full of hot water.
Something wrapped around me.
If I were being held in my mother’s warm embrace, maybe this was what it would feel like.
I lowered both hands from my guard.
I was completely defenseless.
The tall man, now covered in wisteria branches, impatiently slapped the twigs away. “Giving up? What kind of stupid trick are you pulling?”
As the leaves covered my whole body, the tall man’s blurry outline became sharp and clear.
I grabbed him by the collar in one swift motion.
“Got you.”
The tall man was startled for a split second, then quickly regained his composure.
“And if you did? What’s that supposed to change? Didn’t I say I’d smash your jaw?”
He unleashed his specialty—speed—and drove a fist toward my chin in the blink of an eye.
Tick.
But,
his fist slid right past.
No, more accurately, it bounced off.
Divine Aura, the skill from Super Kid.
In the comic’s setting, it was an ability that unconsciously released energy to protect the hero.
The aura surrounding my body blocked physical harm and displayed transcendent defensive power.
It was a power I’d only ever seen in stories, but once applied to reality, it produced absurd results.
“……What? Why the hell is this happening all of a sudden?”
The tall man didn’t seem to understand the anomaly.
Still gripping his collar, I slowly raised my fist.
“Heh heh.”
I smiled faintly with blood filling my mouth.
A look of pure fear flooded the tall man’s face in an instant.
Yeah. From your point of view, this must feel like a horror movie.
Backed into a corner, the tall man wildly flailed and launched attacks with abandon.
“I-I—! Fuck!!!”
Thud-thud-thud-thud!!!!
It was even more ferocious than before, but every single strike skimmed harmlessly past my body.
“Hey, telephone pole.”
I opened my mouth calmly in the eye of the storm.
“You talk too much. That’s why you’re getting your ass kicked.”
I swung at his face, using it as a target.
With a sharp thwack, the tall man collapsed backward and rolled across the purple wisteria blossoms like a kicked-over sack.