Eden Camp (2)
“H-hiiik!”
Seo Yu-na’s face drained white the instant Ma Gang-il seized her. The cold edge of a blade pressed against her slender throat. Her pupils, blown wide with terror, trembled pitifully.
“……Damn it.”
“That… that piece of trash.”
Baek Do-hee froze in shock. Hwang Dae-un burned with rage. Yet neither of them dared move. Ma Gang-il’s aura made it clear he would slice the girl’s neck without a second thought.
And then—
“Stop it!”
A desperate scream tore out from an unexpected direction. A child burst from the outer edge of the crowd—Seo Yu-jin, the hostage’s younger brother.
“Please, just stop!”
He howled as if coughing up blood. But his cry was not aimed at Ma Gang-il.
It was aimed at them.
“If you people hadn’t shown up…! None of this would have happened!”
Seo Yu-jin’s outburst became a spark. The camp residents began to murmur. Their eyes held no expectation of saviors—only resentment and fear toward the disaster these strangers had brought.
A bent-backed old man pleaded in a quavering voice.
“Outsiders… please, just leave. It’s not as if you’re going to take responsibility for us…”
His hollow eyes settled on Hyun Si-woon.
“We… we were already surviving here, adapting the only way we could…!”
“……!”
Those words drove themselves like knives into Hwang Dae-un and Baek Do-hee. The ones who had tried to deliver justice had become destroyers of a fragile peace. The cruel truth that goodwill did not always end in good now stood naked before them.
Yes.
To these people, the beatings and forced labor were not the most important things. What mattered more was the strong power that protected them in a ruined world.
And yet?
Strangers had appeared and started killing their protectors without warning—how could that look like anything but catastrophe?
How…
Did we get this completely wrong?
Deep confusion settled over both their faces.
Watching them, Ma Gang-il’s mouth curved into a triumphant smile.
“What are you waiting for? Still haven’t put those weapons away?”
A brief silence fell. While the others reeled, Hyun Si-woon simply stared at Ma Gang-il with an expressionless face.
Was it resignation?
Fury?
Everyone held their breath, waiting for his next move.
Then words no one could have imagined left Hyun Si-woon’s mouth.
“Kill her.”
“……!?”
Every ear doubted what it had heard. Residents and teammates alike froze solid. Baek Do-hee’s eyes shook violently in disbelief.
“What?”
Ma Gang-il’s brow twitched. This was not the reaction he had expected.
“You little shit. You think I won’t do it?”
He pressed the blade harder, lightly slicing Seo Yu-na’s neck. Bright red blood welled and slid down her pale skin. Seo Yu-jin screamed as if he might faint.
“Noonaaa! Ahhk! Please—please stop!”
Ma Gang-il glared at Hyun Si-woon with bulging eyes.
“You’re really fine with this child dying?”
Hyun Si-woon let out a short, dry laugh.
“You seem to be under a misunderstanding.”
His low, cold voice swallowed every other sound in the clearing.
“I’m not trying to kill you because you did evil things to them. Honestly, that’s none of my business.”
Whatever choices they made, whatever hell they lived in—that was their share. It was not his place to interfere or take responsibility. In this ruined world, every person had their own way of surviving.
Step. Step.
Hyun Si-woon walked forward as if nothing were wrong.
“There’s only one reason. You people touched us.”
“…….”
“If you want to kill her, kill her. We’re leaving soon anyway. Killing the girl would only be your loss, wouldn’t it?”
He was not dismissing the child’s life. He was dismantling Ma Gang-il’s logic itself.
A hostage only has value when the other side cares about that hostage.
Hyun Si-woon deliberately denied that value. They were outsiders who would leave this place. They had no connection to the girl. Therefore her death would deal them no blow whatsoever. He was forcing that logic into Ma Gang-il’s skull.
Then he pushed one step further.
This child was a member of Ma Gang-il’s camp—his “asset.” Would destroying that asset with his own hands actually threaten them? It would only be Ma Gang-il’s loss.
—Khh!
Watching from within, Ha-wol laughed.
—Heh heh! Yes, this is how it should be! This lady was fretting that you’d start spouting soft nonsense like that healer girl. If you’d taken a loss over one mere child, it would have felt like choking down ten crates of sweet potatoes!
Satisfaction colored Ha-wol’s voice.
—Remember this, you rascal. Showing half-baked pity to trash like that is the surest way to get the child killed. The moment you appear weak, that man will try to strip everything from you, and in the end he’ll even kill the child himself to shift the blame. Forcing him hard like this and rendering his card useless is, paradoxically, the method that most raises the chance of saving her.
She was right.
That was exactly why he kept walking so casually even now.
Step. Step.
Before long the distance between Hyun Si-woon and Ma Gang-il had closed. The closer he came, the more Ma Gang-il’s eyes wavered. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead.
There’s nothing wrong with what he said.
Even if he killed the girl right now, that man named Hyun Si-woon would take no damage at all.
Judgment blurred. Breath quickened. In that half-second of hesitation—
Hyun Si-woon did not miss it.
“……!”
There was no sound of feet striking the earth. An explosive first step of Moon Shadow Step. One blink, and the man who had been far away stood right in front of him.
“Y-you crazy bastard—?”
Ma Gang-il’s instincts drove force into the knife. The very instant he meant to cut the girl’s throat—
Whoosh!
A chill killing intent poured down from above his head. There was no time even to look up. Hyun Si-woon’s Formless Sword was already plunging straight for the crown of his skull without a shred of hesitation.
All right, let’s see.
Hyun Si-woon thought.
Which is more precious—your own life, or cutting that child’s throat?
He had already committed. Ma Gang-il had only two choices.
If he cut the girl’s neck?
The girl would die—but a fraction of a second later Ma Gang-il’s own head would split open and he would die too.
So the only move that let him live?
Abandon the child at once, raise his blade, and block Hyun Si-woon’s strike!
“……!”
Horror flooded Ma Gang-il’s eyes. His life versus the child’s life—there was nothing to weigh.
“Haaah!”
He jerked his knife upward in panic.
But—
The sword cutting through empty air stopped a hair’s breadth from Ma Gang-il’s blade, as if every part of this had been calculated from the start.
“……!”
In the instant confusion flickered across Ma Gang-il’s face, Hyun Si-woon was already moving into the next motion. He converted the halted momentum of the Formless Sword into a twist of his waist. At the same time his foot scythed through the air.
Thud!
It slammed perfectly into Ma Gang-il’s abdomen—left completely open by the defensive posture he had just taken.
“Guhhk!”
Ma Gang-il’s body crumpled like paper and toppled backward. While he groaned in pain, Hyun Si-woon lightly swept an arm around the waist of the girl who was falling off-balance and pulled her into his arms. Every motion was as clean as a perfectly choreographed martial demonstration—not a single wasted movement.
He handed the girl safely over to Baek Do-hee. Her trembling transmitted vividly through the fabric of his clothes.
“It’s all right.”
One quiet sentence. Nothing more was needed.
The moment Hyun Si-woon’s gaze returned to the battlefield, his teammates were already in motion.
“You sons of bitches are all dead.”
Hwang Dae-un’s roar split the air as his heavy blunt weapon tore through it. His target was the flustered Bear. Baek Yeon-ho had already raised his shield and cut off Crow’s escape route.
This was the fruit of their team training laid bare. A single glance was enough for them to know the next move.
“Graaah!”
“Th-this is—!”
Bear and Crow’s resistance meant nothing. Hwang Dae-un’s overwhelming power, Baek Yeon-ho’s solid defense, and between them the piercing spear thrusts of Jang Cha-yul and the soundless arrows of Kang Si-a. Each of them was already equal to Ma Gang-il or better. With four such people moving as one body, the outcome had been decided from the beginning.
Thud! Thwack!
Dull impacts rang out and both men crumpled bonelessly.
Meanwhile Hyun Si-woon walked slowly toward Ma Gang-il, who was trying to rise while moaning in pain. Ma Gang-il stretched desperately for the sword that had fallen to the ground. Before his fingers could close on the hilt—
Clang!
Hyun Si-woon’s sword flicked it far away. Then came the follow-up.
Slash! Slash!
Two merciless strokes severed the tendons in both of Ma Gang-il’s shoulders with perfect precision.
“Gyaaaaaaah!”
A beast-like scream tore from Ma Gang-il’s throat. He was now completely helpless, unable to use either arm properly.
The faces of the camp residents watching filled with pure shock. The man they had believed was their king and absolute strongest was being toyed with one-sidedly by this young outsider. Not a single effective counterstrike—an overwhelming difference in skill. It went beyond fear and stirred something close to awe.
“Noona! Noona, are you okay?”
Seo Yu-jin ran over crying and threw himself into his sister’s arms. Seo Yu-na held her brother close, still trembling faintly, yet she could not take her eyes off the man who had saved them.
Hyun Si-woon planted a foot on Ma Gang-il’s chest and stood over him. Then he turned his gaze on the terrified residents.
The oppressed old man, the frightened women, the powerless men—and their children as well. Looking now, there seemed to be roughly a hundred of them.
“All right.”
Hyun Si-woon’s voice rolled out low. The residents held their breath.
“We’re only outsiders. As I said earlier, we have no intention of judging the order here, and no intention of saving any of you.”
His words were cold. He jerked his chin toward the restrained Bear and Crow in the distance.
“As an exception, we won’t kill these two. If you want, we’ll even treat them.”
“……!”
Confusion crossed the residents’ faces. They understood exactly why he was saying it.
Ma Gang-il’s group had been tyrants—but they had also been the camp’s strongest shield. Because of his power they had been safe from outside monsters and, perhaps, from plunder by other survivor groups. The residents had groaned under that violence while depending on the minimum safety it provided. That was why they had begged the outsiders to leave. If you won’t take responsibility, don’t interfere.
“However, I want you to understand why we had no choice but to attack these men.”
He glanced at Hwang Dae-un. Hwang Dae-un quickly brought something from the lodging—a black plastic bag holding the food they had only pretended to eat earlier.
Hyun Si-woon opened the bag and dumped the pieces of chicken onto the ground.
Thud-thud-thud!
The once white, appetizing meat was gone. It had turned an unpleasant black, as if soaked in ink.
“They claimed they were treating us to a meal and mixed poison into it. I won’t bother spelling out what they planned to do after we ate.”
At his words the residents began to stir. An old man among them who handled herbs went wide-eyed with horror.
“Th-that is…!”
He pointed a trembling finger at the chicken.
“Juice of the monkshood flower! A deadly poison. They used that much of it?”
“……!”
Faces blanched.
“That poison… clouds the mind and paralyzes the body. Eat enough and you can die… Khh.”
The fact that they had laced food for outsiders with paralyzing poison dragged Eden’s ugly truth—the truth they had tried so hard to ignore—up to the surface.
At that exact moment—
“He’s right!”
Seo Yu-na, still trembling in her brother’s arms, cried out in a voice raw with fury.
“That man is a bad person! Every night he called women my mom’s age into his room! And… and the next morning those women always came out crying! He beat me all the time because I saw it!”
The girl’s courageous exposure set fire to long-suppressed rage.
“That’s right! My son… my son was dragged into the warehouse because he wouldn’t listen to them…!”
“My wife…!”
“What? Those bastards!”
One by one, the voices of the oppressed began to burst free. Parents who had lost children, husbands whose wives had been taken, young people who had endured constant beatings. The fear that had filled their eyes slowly ignited into flames of anger.
Yes. Even if we die, we can’t live like this anymore. We built this camp with our own hands. We can survive without those men.
Someone picked up a rusted iron pipe. Starting with that, the residents one after another seized whatever they could as weapons and advanced on Ma Gang-il’s group.
“Th-this is insane…!”
Color drained from Ma Gang-il’s face as the situation reversed. He crawled frantically and shouted.
“Y-you people! You think you can live without me? This camp is mine—!”
“Shut up, you son of a bitch!”
The first to charge was the man who had lost his son. His iron pipe smashed mercilessly into Ma Gang-il’s head.
Thud!
That became the signal. The long-suppressed rage exploded. Residents roared and swarmed over Ma Gang-il and his underlings.
“Kill them!”
“You demons!”
“Give me back my son!”
In an instant the place became a living hell. Hyun Si-woon and his teammates simply stepped back one pace and watched the scene in silence.
This was not their judgment.
It was the moment the oppressed seized their own liberation.
—Heh heh heh.
Inside his head, Ha-wol laughed with satisfaction.
—Yes, that’s how it should be. Salvation is not something given by others—it is something you seize for yourself. You rascal, you know how to use that head of yours after all.
Hyun Si-woon did not answer.
He merely… found the taste in his mouth a little bitter.