What Kim Ho Says Is ???
KWAAANG!
Once again, a cannonball of a Magic Bullet slammed into the bamboo-hatted man. He had been braced for it since the second shot, raising an arm of hardened qi to intercept, and on the surface he seemed to take no damage at all. But there was nothing he could do about the shockwave shoving him backward, inch by grudging inch.
That was the window Gwak Seung-jae needed to finish his spell. He himself seemed to know it — that without the covering fire, he would have died right there — for his composure was visibly rattled. He flung the wooden door wide and dove through it.
“Grrgh...!”
The bamboo-hatted man ground his teeth. His target remained fixed on the wooden door. Destroy the bridge between the two spaces, and he could buy time — time until Gwak Seung-jae, already through on the far side, managed to open a new one.
His blood-red arm of hardened qi fired off force blast after force blast.
PAPAPAPAT!
Dang Gyu-young dropped to one knee and slapped her palm against the ground. Shadow boiled out from her in an instant, drowning the floor in black, and a massive wall of it surged up without warning to collide with the blasts.
BAM!
A shield-bearing Disciplinary Committee member filled the gap where the shadow wall crumbled away.
BAM!
As he was knocked sprawling, the ponytailed alumna slid into his place, both palms thrust out before her.
BAM—!
With the blasts shut down, the bamboo-hatted man charged in person to smash the door — only for another sniper round to come screaming in, forcing him to falter. Glaring at the ring of enemies hemming him in, he spat:
“You goddamn bastards...!”
And that was that.
They had bought far more than enough time for Gwak Seung-jae to call in reinforcements. If he had linked the space properly to the staff office, the teachers on duty would be along at any moment.
Sure enough, the half-open wooden door swung a little wider — and light flashed. At that, everyone froze stock-still where they stood, as if on cue, and lowered their eyes. Dang Gyu-young, yours truly the slacker, the ponytailed alumna, the Disciplinary Committee members... even the bamboo-hatted man.
At the end of every gaze, the man's severed arm lay sprawled on the ground with a bleak, desolate finality. Only then did he register his own empty shoulder — and the scream ripped out of him.
“KRAAAAAAGH!!”
“Everyone, fall back.”
At the low voice, they all put distance between themselves and the bamboo-hatted man. The wooden door swung open wider still, and a single figure walked slowly out. The moment his identity registered, the hatted man's face began convulsing without pause.
“The Human Butcher...!”
“That would be me.”
The Human Butcher, Lee Sudok. In his hand was an enormous blade shaped like a butcher's cleaver. It was with that blade — and the blindingly fast blade aura he had loosed from it — that he had sheared off the bamboo-hatted man's arm.
Face twisted, the hatted man snarled through his teeth.
“The Human Butcher himself, and he resorts to ambush? A sorry way to honor the name.”
“I've no idea what rumors you've heard, but I am not the sort to insist on a head-on fight. And if blame must be assigned, it should fall less on my ambush than on your own recklessness — crawling alone into the heart of enemy territory.”
Had he truly been expecting a fair and formal one-on-one duel, after parading around in the middle of Dungeon Island? The bamboo-hatted man offered no retort; all he could do was set his jaw and brace for what was coming. Lee Sudok propped the massive cleaver against his shoulder.
“There is much I need to hear from you, so I will not kill you. But it has been a while — I must have myself a taste of Blood Cult blood as well.”
“...”
For a few seconds the two men simply glared at each other. Then their figures blurred at the same instant — and the very next breath they had closed the distance and collided.
KWA-KWA-BOOM!
Meanwhile, Dang Gyu-young had dragged herself up to the rooftop and collapsed in a heap beside me. She was covered in wounds great and small, and blood still trickled in a thin line from her nose and the corner of her mouth — her internal injuries looked every bit as serious. I immediately pulled a Lesser Elixir from my inventory and cracked the cap.
“Drink.”
“...”
She didn't seem to have the strength even to lift a hand; all she could do was tip her head forward. I held the bottle to her lips, and she gulped it down, swallow after swallow. As the glass emptied, her wounds knit themselves shut at speed, and the strain slowly drained out of her expression. By the time not a single scratch remained anywhere on her, I pulled the elixir away and slipped a candy into her mouth instead.
Rolling the candy around inside her cheek, Dang Gyu-young spoke.
“Thanks. Pretty big of you, burning a whole elixir on me.”
“If not for moments like this, when would I ever use it?”
She had put her life on the line to help me — as if an elixir were too precious to spend on that. It was exactly what Kim Gap-du had given it to me for, come to think of it.
Toad Senior, thank you kindly. It has been put to excellent use.
What remained of the elixir after her share, Dang Gyu-young poured straight over my fingers. Because I had Amplified Hyneum Jade Demon Finger up to A-rank, even my S-rank Elemental Resistance hadn't fully smothered the penalty — my index finger had gone swollen and frozen stiff, for all the world like a bad case of frostbite. The moment the elixir touched skin, though, the swelling drained away and the finger returned to normal.
Watching that happen, Dang Gyu-young asked,
“You used it on that guy just now, didn't you? The Hyneum Jade Demon Finger.”
“Sure did. On him.”
“No wonder he suddenly went so much weaker. Thanks to that, I managed to hold on.”
The frost qi channeled in through the Hyneum Jade Demon Finger torments its victim without mercy, refusing to let go until it is either driven out completely or the body freezes through completely. Even the A-rank Blood Cult Elder had been forced to divert nearly half of his inner power just to wall the cold out. From the receiving end, there can't be many suppression skills in the world this vicious.
Right on cue, 'that guy's' death rattle rang out across the grounds.
“KRAAAGH!”
Looking down, I found the battle already over. The bamboo-hatted man lay spread-eagled in the puddle of his own blood. The bamboo hat he had stubbornly kept on even through the thick of the fight had been knocked loose, and his blood-red hair, a wild tangled mane, veiled his face. He had been carved up to precisely the point where breath still clung to him — and not a step beyond.
Faculty really are a breed apart.
Granted, the Blood Cult Elder had been laboring under one disadvantage after another — but even so, this was a monster whom three graduates and three third-years together had only barely managed to pin down. And Lee Sudok had subdued that monster one-on-one in a single stroke. It was a telling glimpse of what Dragon Slayer Academy's faculty was made of.
Two more faculty members then stepped through the wooden door — and went wide-eyed, glancing back and forth between Lee Sudok and the Blood Cult Elder.
“Huh? Mr. Lee, you're done already?”
“Done.”
“Oh dear, sorry about that. We hardly meant to dump the whole thing on you, sir. Leave the cleanup to us.”
Lee Sudok gave a small jerk of the chin, and the faculty began managing the scene with practiced ease: the Disciplinary Committee members who had converged here were set to cordoning it off and keeping the general student body away, while the graduates who'd been rubbernecking were roped in to help. Lee Sudok surveyed them all with an air of supreme disinterest, then lifted his gaze upward. Those ferocious eyes came to rest on the two of us atop the roof.
We'd made eye contact with the teacher now; standing up there gawking was not an option. Dang Gyu-young and I came straight down. When we approached and bowed our heads, Lee Sudok turned on his heel and led the way to the wooden door.
“Follow me.”
“...”
We followed him into the staff office. Every faculty member who'd been on duty had rushed out to the downtown district — the place was empty but for us. The moment the wooden door closed behind us, it sank into the floor of its own accord and vanished. He trudged to his desk, lowered himself into his chair, and looked the two of us over carefully before he finally spoke.
“You will explain the whole affair, start to finish, in exact detail. Not one word of it may be a lie.”
How, exactly, had we come to be trading blows with a Blood Cult Elder? Judging by how his gaze settled and stayed on me, he wanted that explanation from my mouth. But no matter how you sliced it, there was no way I could come clean with, I edited the coded message and set a trap, sir.
So the instant I opened my mouth, I started laying it on thick.
“Well, I've been wandering all over the place around here with Dang Gyu-young, and—”
“I said not one word of it may be a lie.”
Lee Sudok cut me off with a second warning. Anyone else on the receiving end of that murderous stare would have shriveled up and confessed on the spot — but I was not 'anyone,' so I fielded that glare without so much as a flinch.
Shall we try that once more, then?
He had most likely caught on that Dang Gyu-young was the president of the Thief Club. So this time I blended it half truth, half lie — leaving out everything about the coded message, of course.
“I was helping Dang Gyu-young with the Black Market here—”
“Helping how?”
“Getting in the way of the Disciplinary Committee's stop-and-question sweeps, and slowing down their searches.”
“...”
“And while we were making the rounds like that, we spotted some guy in a bamboo hat, so we tailed him.”
“You found him while wandering around?”
“Yes, sir. I mean — a bamboo hat in the dead of night? That's a little strange, no?”
“...”
Lee Sudok stared holes through me. Strange to say, I could feel him probing, scanning me for something I couldn't name. Before long he took his eyes off me and turned to Dang Gyu-young.
“Is Kim Ho's word the truth?”
“It is, sir.”
“You do love your lies. I have warned you twice now.”
“...”
Dang Gyu-young heaved a deep sigh of surrender and — much like me — served up an answer laced half with truth.
“We didn't see him passing by. We saw him through the crystal orb.”
“...Crystal orb?”
At his question, Dang Gyu-young explained the existence of the Control Tower — how they had been hijacking the feeds of the downtown district's security crystal orbs and putting them to work for the Black Market. Lee Sudok did not press the point. Rule violations were not what mattered now; this was the hour to harvest every scrap of intelligence on the Blood Cult.
“Resourceful. Compile every record of the man's movements captured on those crystal orbs and submit them to me. Do that, and I will grant you an exception where the rule violations are concerned.”
“Understood. Thank you.”
Dang Gyu-young bowed her head. Lee Sudok turned his questions back to me.
“You followed him because the man in the bamboo hat looked suspicious?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why was he not reported?”
“Like I said, we were in the middle of helping with the Black Market, so we weren't exactly in a position to stand tall ourselves. Instead, we asked one of the graduate seniors for help.”
And the moment we confirmed he was Blood Cult, I added, we had fired the Disciplinary Committee's signal flare — everything after that he had seen with his own eyes. And with that, my account was complete. Lee Sudok seemed to mull it over for a moment, then gave a slow nod.
“Dismissed.”
Lee Sudok possessed a skill.
▷ Determines whether an answer is true or false.
▷ Seeing through a lie makes it all the easier to draw out the truth.
▷ Charges available: (0/3)
▷ Recharges every 3 days
A mental-type skill that judged whether its target was speaking truth or lies. It came shackled with constraints — one charge every three days, capped at three in total — but its performance once manifested was beyond all doubt. To date, it had been the engine of Lee Sudok's every investigation.
And yet—
“Well, I've been wandering all over the place around here with Dang Gyu-young, and—”
Cast upon Kim Ho, the skill had produced a notification plastered in question marks — neither truth nor lie. Nothing like it had ever happened before, and Lee Sudok could not help being thrown off balance.
What the devil is this.
Even with the skill failing, it hadn't been difficult to infer that Kim Ho was lying. The Black Market was, quite obviously, in full swing at that very moment — no one strolls the downtown district like a sightseer alongside the Thief Club's president under those conditions.
So partway through the explanation that followed, he cast [Truth or False] once more.
“You found the bamboo-hatted man while wandering around?”
“Yes, sir. I mean — a bamboo hat in the dead of night? That's a little strange, no?”
Another message, riddled from end to end with question marks. For one instant, Lee Sudok wondered whether the skill itself had broken.
So he put the question to Dang Gyu-young.
“Is Kim Ho's word the truth?”
“It is, sir.”
That Dang Gyu-young's lie was seen through on the spot suggested the skill simply failed against Kim Ho alone. Pressing her hard, Lee Sudok was able to establish that the Thief Club had been helping itself to the security crystal orbs — and once he had heard the full account of the incident, he sent the two of them out of the staff office.
Left alone, Lee Sudok slowly turned the whole affair over in his mind. The broad picture was clear. What remained were the scattered patches that refused to sit right.
They stumbled upon the Blood Cult Elder by pure chance?
Even granting them a far wider field of view through the crystal orbs, would they really have had the luxury — dead in the middle of running a Black Market — to tail some suspicious-looking stranger? They had plainly known something more.
One more thing gnawed at him: for all his fearsome name, the Blood Cult Elder had proven woefully frail the moment blades actually crossed. Pool the abilities of every person on that field, and it still fell far short of what it would take to hold down an A-rank. Then what, exactly, had sapped him so?
What weighed heaviest on Lee Sudok's suspicions was what the Elder had spat out as he went down — along with his death rattle, in something like a mutter to himself.
— "So... bitter...! ...If... it... weren't... for...!"
And as the words left him, his gaze had flicked — just for a heartbeat — toward the rooftop.
But dragging the truth out of Kim Ho's mouth promised to be a stubborn business. The skill would not take on him; he had squandered precious charges proving it, and it would likely fail just as thoroughly every time hereafter. To stack lie upon lie without so much as a blink in Lee Sudok's presence — the boy had gall to spare. Put a blade to his throat and squeeze, and it would no doubt be the same.
But I have caught the very tip of his tail.
And until he laid bare exactly what Kim Ho was hiding, Lee Sudok would go on watching him.