Uninvited Guests
"So he left after all."
When Kunlo still hadn't returned late into the night, Jincheon knew by instinct that the boy was gone.
I figured it would come to this — but faster than I expected.
The knot lodged in Kunlo's heart was not the kind of thing a few words or a little time could untangle. Jincheon had expected him to wrestle with it for a few days before walking away. Judging by how things had played out, though, something must have happened while he was out on that bike.
Nothing for it. I'll have to look into it myself.
Kunlo had been the first disciple Jincheon had taken in this world — but the boy had left of his own free will. There was no obligation to go chasing after him. He had already fulfilled the contract in good faith for the sake of a mere man; morally speaking, he had done more than enough.
Still, it was the first bond he had formed since arriving in this world, and that left a faintly bitter taste.
Heh. I'm getting old. Or maybe I've just been starving for human connection.
Aside from the occasional descendant who came looking for him, he had spent two or three hundred years alone in the deep mountains, forming no ties with anyone. In that state of isolation, Kunlo trailing after him like an abandoned puppy had been… a little endearing.
More precisely, it means my soul has worn that thin.
After burying every one of his wives, Jincheon had felt his soul eroding. With each passing year he had grown more indifferent; joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure had all begun to slip beyond his reach. Coming to a new world had restored some of that feeling — but the recovery was far from complete.
To mend a fraying soul and rekindle dead emotion, he needed fresh stimulus. He needed new companions. That hunger had driven him since his youth, and it had never left him.
But with the boy gone, I can feel a new current starting to move. Looks like I'll be entertaining plenty of guests for a while.
Thinking thoughts no one else would have understood, Jincheon remotely activated his drones and turrets through his Bio Device, then stretched out on the bed.
Some time later—
"Target sleep-rhythm activity confirmed."
Three unidentified soldiers appeared, clad in battle suits built for pure combat — armor-like shells engineered for nothing but killing power.
"Deploy drone."
One of them spoke in a near-whisper and tossed a fist-sized sphere upward from his belt. The sphere unfolded into a winged drone in an instant and glided toward the courtyard without a sound.
It rose first above the spherical security drone on patrol.
"Security level?"
"Lowest. Five seconds."
The security suite on Jincheon's drones was cheap junk — barely a system at all. The infiltrating drone shadowed the spherical unit from above and, in five seconds flat, remotely hacked it and seized control. Once the turrets were compromised as well, the soldiers slipped inside without a footfall, heavy battle suits and all.
"I'll say it again — subdue the target only. Do not kill him."
The one who looked like the squad leader stressed the point as they moved. Jincheon's survival was essential to their mission. His subordinates nodded and pressed deeper into the house.
The open layout made infiltration easy; as long as they didn't bump a wall, they made no noise. The leader reached the bedroom where Jincheon was sleeping without incident, then flashed a hand signal ordering the takedown.
Even the best hunters aren't much.
On the leader's command, one subordinate leveled a suppressed pistol loaded with non-lethal voltage rounds at the bed. The target was Jincheon's legs, buried under a blanket.
Pishuk! Pishuk!
The powder charges had been dialed down for non-lethal use; the shots barely made a sound as the rounds left the barrel.
Thud.
…Huh?
The moment the voltage rounds punched into the mattress, the blanket shifted — revealing a bed stuffed with pillows.
"No killing intent."
"Ghk—!?"
The target's voice came from the ceiling. They scrambled into close-combat stance and looked up.
Crunch!
"Guh!"
Jincheon was already behind the man. A knife-hand strike landed with enough force to shatter the neck guard. The subordinate dropped, nervous system shorted out for an instant. Jincheon ignored the unconscious body and headed outside.
"Spread out!"
The leader, blocked from firing by his own man, barked the order and put distance between them fast.
"Looks to me like you came to subdue me. Mind telling me why?"
Jincheon stood with his hands clasped behind his back, perfectly at ease, watching the soldiers open space on either side of him. He asked the reason for the ambush as if it were a polite inquiry.
They had no intention of answering. A shared glance, and both opened fire at once.
Pishushushushuk!
Battle-suit strength killed the recoil; they hammered the triggers as fast as the weapons would cycle. Jincheon simply extended his right arm and flicked his wrist, batting the voltage rounds out of the air as casually as swatting flies.
"An enhanced soldier!?"
"Close combat!"
Watching bullets bounce off bare hands, the leader chose melee. He flung the pistol aside and drove a fist straight in. At the same moment his subordinate lunged from the flank with a low kick aimed at Jincheon's legs.
Either blow would have been dangerous to an ordinary man — but against an enhanced soldier, neither should have been fatal.
Whoosh. Whoom.
Fist and kick both passed clean through the space where the target had been. Jincheon's form dissolved like smoke.
Gone? A hologram?
When—?
The leader decided it was a hologram and snapped into a biometric scan. The problem was the target's actual position.
"I'd appreciate it if you stopped being such a nuisance."
He was standing directly behind him.
"Hup—!"
How he had gotten there in an instant was a mystery. The leader didn't waste time wondering — he drove an elbow back hard.
Whir. CRASH!
"Gah—!?"
What… the hell…? Why am I—?
He had definitely swung the elbow. The next thing he knew, he was hitting the ground headfirst. The battle suit cushioned the impact, but the shock was so unexpected that his eyes rolled as he tried to reorient.
"Hup!"
In that gap, the subordinate charged with a swinging fist. Jincheon brushed the tip of the punch upward with the back of his hand, the way a man might shoo an irritating fly.
Whoom. CRASH. Thud.
As if gravity itself had been rewritten, the subordinate's body rocketed upward off that light tap, smashed into the ceiling, and crashed back down.
"Ugh…?"
The suit's armor took most of the hit, but he still couldn't understand why he had flown — and that confusion made him slow getting up.
Thud.
Jincheon was already there. The instep of his foot drove into the man's jaw with enough force to crumple the protective plating.
"Gh… grrk…"
The subordinate's brain rattled in his skull; he collapsed in the half-risen posture he had been holding.
Two men unconscious in moments. Jincheon turned last toward the leader.
"W-wait! We—!"
"You didn't come here to kill me. There wasn't a scrap of killing intent the whole time."
Non-lethal powder weapons loaded with voltage rounds made the intent obvious enough to anyone.
"Your master is watching from outside, I take it?"
Jincheon studied the battle suit until his gaze settled on the built-in camera.
"There's a saying on Terra. If you want to call a dog's owner, beat the dog."
A leisurely smile touched his mouth.
"I'll be waiting."
Thud.
He struck the leader and put him under. Then, for some reason, he picked up the discarded pistol and fired into empty air.
"Rude."
A few more shots, and Jincheon walked over to the men he had dropped. He pulled off a helmet and found red skin and heavy features — a Zabalcan male. Gripping the man's head, he spread his inner energy through the body and began mapping the physical structure of the Zabalcan species. He checked the other subordinates as well, just to be thorough, and came away satisfied. Then he gathered the unconscious soldiers together.
Well then. Time to prepare for company.
Far from Jincheon's residence, in a shabby house, Zabalcan soldiers had thrown out the owner and converted the place into a temporary combat intelligence post.
"This is insane… He shot the nano-drones dead-on?"
An officer who looked to hold the highest rank among them couldn't hide his disbelief at the sight of Jincheon destroying nano-scale drones with a pistol.
"Could he have undergone cybernetic surgery?"
The suggestion sounded reasonable enough —
"We already confirmed through the biometric scan that there's not a single mechanical part in his body."
— but it clashed with everything the nano-drones had reported.
Arrogant bastard. Just because he's got a little skill, he thinks he can run his mouth like that?
"So are we just going to sit here?"
A woman who had been watching quietly from behind the officer finally spoke.
Aquamarine hair fell in a straight wave to her chest. The slight downturn at the corners of her eyes and the slender lines of her body gave her an air of delicate vulnerability — but the eyes matching her hair held a hard, focused strength, and the overall impression was of a sharp, intelligent beauty. She wore an expensive, form-fitting suit.
The officer's face twisted with irritation at the woman standing with her back to him. By the time he turned around, the expression was gone.
"It appears the target has already noticed our presence."
"I have no interest in hearing things everyone already knows."
"…Now that we've confirmed his skill is exceptional, we should go meet him."
The officer swallowed his irritation and answered with careful deference.
Lowborn bitch with those tiny horns…
In Zabalcan society, larger and longer horns marked nobler blood. The officer himself had a horn protruding from one side of his forehead. The woman who had spoken to him so casually had horns smaller than his — if his were the length of a finger, hers were barely a single joint.
Even so, he could not say a word against her. Lowborn or not, she still carried imperial blood.
Having horns that small despite imperial blood is proof her birth was base to begin with. I'll enjoy watching how long she can keep that chin up.
For an officer sworn to the Zabalcan Empire, the thought was deeply improper. Then again, he was hardly alone in thinking it. She was a princess of the empire — but she was also a bastard of low blood.
Still, meeting Jincheon was unavoidable. Outwardly, at least, he would pretend to follow her lead.
"Then we will move out."
The original plan had been to subdue Jincheon and seize the initiative. Instead, they had only inflated his confidence. Even so, the officer's expression was not particularly sour. Skilled or not, the offer they intended to make would be the same either way.