Organization Annihilation
The restaurant sat roughly a ten-minute walk from the black market.
When he pushed the door open, the smell of grilled meat rolled out first. Dinner hour had already slipped past, yet more than half the tables inside were still occupied.
Sihyuk scanned for an empty seat and stopped in front of a poster taped to the wall.
Blonde hair cascading to her waist, pointed ears.
Riel smiled brightly while holding a green bottle.
The Choice of Korea's S-class Hunter Riel!
It looked nothing like the woman he had run into at the front door yesterday.
"Almost didn't recognize her."
"Are you a fan of Hunter Riel?"
A staff member approached with a menu in hand.
Sihyuk glanced between the poster and the employee.
"No. Just a face I know."
"Pardon?"
"Never mind."
He pointed at an empty table as if it were nothing.
"Mind if I sit there?"
"Ah, of course. Right this way."
Sihyuk settled by the window and opened the menu.
Samgyeopsal and moksal he knew. Hangjeongsal and gaburisal were names that told him nothing about which cut they actually were.
Fortunately the prices were far cheaper than the steak he had seen yesterday.
And now he had money in his account.
He studied the menu a little longer, then called the staff over.
"One mixed platter, please."
"Coming right up. Anything to drink?"
Sihyuk pointed at the poster on the wall.
"That one."
"The soju Hunter Riel advertises?"
"Yeah. Just one bottle."
A short while later meat hit the grill.
Oil popped and the scent of cooking flesh spread. Following the staff's instructions, Sihyuk flipped the pieces and lifted the soju glass.
He swallowed a mouthful of the clear liquid.
"Milder than I expected."
Compared to the hard liquor he had drunk in the Demon Realm, it was almost gentle.
He picked up a nicely browned strip of samgyeopsal. After tasting the oil and meaty aroma that filled his mouth, he took another sip of soju.
"Goes pretty well with the meat."
The hangjeongsal had a better chew than he expected. Gaburisal was softer than moksal, and eating it with the green-onion salad the staff had left changed the flavor again.
Sihyuk ordered a second platter.
The meat was milder and far more tender than anything he had eaten in the Demon Realm.
No one showed up mid-meal carrying a report.
That was the part he liked best.
While he ate, the same gaze brushed him several times from outside the window, but he pretended not to notice.
After cleaning every plate, he tapped his phone against the terminal.
A short beep, and the payment was done. A notification arrived at once that money had left the account he had opened when he sold the gold.
"Convenient."
No need to dig out cash and count it.
Looking satisfied, Sihyuk left the restaurant.
Two men standing across the street came straight toward him.
They were different from the ones he had met in the alley earlier.
Their clothes were ordinary, yet their steps and eyes never wavered. Both had something hidden inside their waistbands.
"Come with us for a bit."
"And if I say no?"
"Then we drag you."
One of them flicked a glance toward the restaurant.
"You don't want a scene here, do you?"
Sihyuk looked back through the glass door.
He had already finished eating.
If he refused here, they might show up at the housing facility next.
"Fine. Where to?"
The men exchanged a brief look.
Apparently they thought he was being surprisingly cooperative.
"This way."
The drive took less than ten minutes.
The van stopped behind a wholesale market where most of the lights were already out.
They led Sihyuk down into an underground loading dock.
The deeper they went, the more people appeared.
Guards with radios stood at every entrance, and cars without license plates lined the walls. Between tarps covering crates he glimpsed uncut magic stones and severed horns of magical beasts.
A faint stench of blood mixed with the smell of oil.
Sihyuk counted only the ones in plain sight.
More than twenty.
Unlike the alley thugs, most of them were Awakened. Several carried mana guns.
When Sihyuk looked around, the man walking ahead spoke.
"Don't get any ideas."
"Just looking."
"You won't have the leisure for that much longer."
Sihyuk didn't bother answering.
At the far end of the dock was a space fitted out like a makeshift office.
A middle-aged man sitting on a sofa looked at Sihyuk. His build was not large, yet the mana coiled inside him felt solid enough.
Behind him stood a man with a splint on his wrist.
The one Sihyuk had let live in the alley.
When their eyes met, the color drained from the man's face.
The middle-aged man confirmed the reaction and asked,
"That him?"
"…Yes."
"You heard the warning."
Sihyuk stopped opposite him.
"And you still called me?"
"You killed four of our people."
"They came at me first."
"Not my problem."
The man tapped the armrest of the sofa with his fingers.
"If I let this slide, who the hell is going to listen to me after this?"
"So this is about your face. You want another fight over it."
"Easier to think of it that way."
His gaze dropped to Sihyuk's right hand.
"Hand over the money from the gold bars and everything inside your subspace. Kneel and apologize, and I'll spare your life."
Sihyuk looked at him for a moment.
"I don't want to."
The air inside the loading dock settled.
The middle-aged man's fingers stopped.
Around them came the successive clicks of safeties being released. Muzzle after muzzle appeared from behind crates and from the steel stairs above.
The man rose slowly from the sofa.
Ironclad
With the low utterance, the mana wrapping his arms hardened like black metal. Shell-like patterns spread across his skin and climbed to his shoulders.
The man behind him called out in an uneasy voice.
"Hyung-nim…"
The man raised a hand to silence him.
"Still so relaxed even after coming this far."
"Why should I be tense?"
The man's brow twitched.
"Let's see if you can still say that in a little while."
He drew his right foot back and lowered his stance.
The blackened arm cocked beside his waist. Power gathered under the sole of his foot until a thin crack spidered across the concrete floor.
The next instant the floor burst.
His body shot toward Sihyuk.
From the very first step the speed was nothing like the alley thugs. Mana sheathed his arms and legs without a single gap, and there was no waste in the motion.
The fist that had been drawn back at his waist drove straight at Sihyuk's face.
Sihyuk caught the punch with his palm.
A heavy boom rolled out. Empty crates stacked nearby skidded away. Several magic stones on the floor tumbled and cracked against the wall.
When Sihyuk did not give ground, the man immediately twisted his wrist free and yanked the arm back. The opposite elbow snapped toward Sihyuk's temple.
Sihyuk leaned his upper body just enough to slip it.
A knee came in at his side right after.
This time he blocked with his arm.
A dull impact rang out, yet Sihyuk's body did not budge an inch.
Better than the ones earlier, at least.
Sihyuk seized the man's shoulder, spun him, and shoved him in the chest.
The man flew backward and slammed into a concrete pillar. The surface of the pillar caved in, but he did not fall.
He rolled once across the floor and immediately recovered his stance.
Blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
"Shoot!"
Gunfire erupted all at once.
Blue rounds poured in from the front, from the steel stairs above, and from behind.
Just before they touched Sihyuk's body, black ripples bloomed one after another in the empty air. The bullets never crossed that line; they lost direction and ricocheted into the floor and walls.
Kwon Taeseok did not even check the sight.
He had never planned to drop Sihyuk with guns. The instant the barrage blanketed the field of view, he was already driving in beside him.
Thick gauntlets had appeared on both of his hands at some point.
The arms blackened by Ironclad fused with the gauntlets, and sharp spikes rose across the surface.
He changed direction twice between the falling rounds.
Every time his foot slammed the floor, the distance to Sihyuk shrank dramatically.
Closing the last two steps in a single surge, he cocked his right shoulder back. Waist and legs turned together as mana concentrated at the tip of his fist.
A heavy punch drove toward Sihyuk's face.
A deep boom.
Sihyuk caught that fist with one hand.
The man twisted his wrist again, but this time it did not move at all.
His expression hardened for the first time.
Sihyuk opened his mouth.
"Down."
The air dropped.
A colossal weight fell on everyone aiming at Sihyuk.
The men holding guns slammed face-first into the floor. The steel stairs bent downward, and several stacked crates could not endure the pressure and burst.
Most of them lost consciousness without even managing a scream.
The man himself drove one knee into the floor.
A heavy crack.
The concrete beneath his knee fractured like a spiderweb.
He clenched his teeth and lifted his head. Blood ran from his nose, yet he did not let go of consciousness.
Sihyuk looked down at the gauntlet in his grip.
When he tightened his fingers, cracks raced across the blackened surface.
A sharp snap.
The shell of Ironclad connected to the gauntlet shattered all at once. Black fragments and metal shards poured onto the floor.
Sihyuk released his hand and lifted the pressure.
The man gasped for breath.
"That's enough."
Sihyuk looked down at him.
"Stop, and I'll let you live."
The man did not answer.
He planted one knee as if rising, then drew a short blade from inside his sleeve.
Mana flared along the edge.
As he came up he slashed for Sihyuk's throat.
"I said that's enough."
A single black line pierced the man's chest first.
He staggered a few steps and toppled backward.
The knife slipped from his hand and clattered across the floor.
Sihyuk looked at the fallen man for a moment, then turned his head.
The man with the injured wrist was trembling with his back pressed to the wall.
"Where's the information on me?"
"S-sir?"
"You were told to look into me, weren't you?"
The man's face went paper-white.
He led Sihyuk into a small room off the loading dock.
Black boxes stood in rows inside, and screens on the wall were packed with names and numbers.
Sihyuk stared at the screens for a moment.
He had no idea what any of it meant.
"Where is it stored?"
"O-on the servers…"
"Where?"
The man pointed at the black boxes lined along the wall.
"Those ones over there."
On one corner of a screen floated Sihyuk's face and a few simple details. They had only managed to learn his name and that he was a returnee; the housing address was still blank.
"Just mine?"
"No. Transaction ledgers, people's addresses, blackmail material—everything…"
Sihyuk thought for a moment.
He could erase only his own records and leave.
But if the next guy took this seat and looked through the same files, more annoying trouble might follow.
"Wipe it all."
"All of it?"
"Yeah."
"Then the organization will…"
The man never finished the sentence.
Sihyuk glanced once toward the loading dock.
"Looks like it's already finished."
The man shut his mouth and typed with shaking hands.
Before long the names and numbers filling the screens vanished one after another.
"Everything's deleted."
Sihyuk laid a hand on the wall of black boxes.
Black energy seeped inward.
The screens went dark all at once, and small sparks jumped inside the boxes. The smell of burning filled the room.
He also tore open a metal case sitting to one side.
Black flames spread across the ledgers and documents inside. The paper turned to ash in an instant.
After confirming that every flame had died, Sihyuk left the loading dock.
The next morning.
The guildmaster's office of Yeomhwa, one of Seoul's five major guilds.
Do Ha-gyeong sat half-reclined on the sofa, zooming in on a tablet screen.
Her red hair, which fell past her shoulders, was tied high. Every time she swiped the screen the tip of the ponytail swayed lightly.
Over a black combat suit she had thrown on Yeomhwa's dark-red jacket without much care. Her figure was lean, yet the exposed arms and shoulders carried clean, hard muscle forged by long combat.
Deep interest lit her amber eyes as she studied the photos of the wrecked loading dock.
"Whoa."
The guildmaster seated at the desk looked up.
"You're enjoying this right now, aren't you?"
"I'm not saying dead people are fun."
Do Ha-gyeong enlarged the marks left on the concrete pillar.
"It's just amazing that one person did all this."
The guildmaster flipped a page of the report.
"The dead man is Kwon Taeseok, boss of the Mujin Association."
Do Ha-gyeong's finger stopped.
"That Kwon Taeseok?"
"Yeah. The one who basically controlled one of Seoul's four major black markets."
The guildmaster brought up a photo of the shattered gauntlet on the screen.
"On paper he was B-class, but because of his unique skill Ironclad he was rated close to A-class in close combat. He had more than twenty subordinates with him too."
"And it was over in a few minutes."
"Only Kwon Taeseok died at the loading dock. Most of the rest just lost consciousness or got hurt."
Do Ha-gyeong flipped to another report.
"What about the four who died in the alley?"
"They attacked first, apparently. Demanded everything inside his subspace."
"So he didn't go there intending to kill from the start."
"There's testimony that he warned them once, and at the loading dock he said he'd spare them if they stopped."
The corner of Do Ha-gyeong's mouth lifted.
"Wow. He even controlled his strength?"
"Don't make that face."
"What face?"
"The one you make when you find someone strong."
That was also why Do Ha-gyeong had become vice-guildmaster at twenty-eight.
Yeomhwa valued ability over age or career, and S-class Hunter Do Ha-gyeong had taken the seat purely on results. She was one of the guild's top combat assets, and once she discovered a strong opponent she could not rest until she confirmed it herself.
"We still don't know if he's strong."
"Even after looking at that?"
"I have to see it in person to be sure."
The guildmaster pressed his brow.
"We found a likely candidate."
What the Mujin Association had targeted was the returnee who sold gold bars at the black market that day.
After securing the name and settlement details from the merchant who brokered the deal, Yeomhwa's intelligence team cross-checked nearby road footage.
The data pointed to only one person.
Five gold bars.
The seller: Kang Sihyuk.
A recently registered returnee.
"Does the Association know?"
"They'll know the Mujin Association collapsed. But connecting it to Kang Sihyuk is still only us."
On the Association measurement records: physical ability 0.3, mana 0.2.
Classification: Non-Awakened.
Do Ha-gyeong looked at the numbers and laughed.
"This is a Non-Awakened?"
"On paper."
"Either the machine broke,"
She enlarged Sihyuk's face on the screen.
"or he faked it himself."
The guildmaster did not answer.
Do Ha-gyeong set the tablet down.
"I'll go meet this guy myself."
The guildmaster's face hardened.
"You're not going to fight."
"I have no such intention."
"Really?"
"For now."
The guildmaster looked at Do Ha-gyeong for a moment, then let out a sigh.
"That's the most worrying answer of all."