Chapter 131
Out in the world, things were noisy in more ways than one.
It was always a place of chaos and commotion, but today it was even more crowded and disorderly than usual.
That was because it wasn’t every day that S-class hunters gathered in one country all at once.
There were plenty of people who couldn’t sleep with nothing but vague anticipation to keep them company...
An isolated island at the far edge of Jeollanam-do.
Even Chudo Hunter Prison, which did not quite belong to the world at large, was starting to stir in its own rough way.
Today was the day a king would be chosen in the mud.
Gong Woo-jae, Sung Joon-hyun, Lee Jeong-geun, and Kingpin.
Their factions had split into the four directions and were glaring at one another.
“Meeting you in a place like this makes that face less welcome, not that it was very welcome to begin with... ”
Gong Woo-jae, standing to the east, said to Sung Joon-hyun.
His side had eight men in all, all former Dazol Guild members.
“Is that so? I’m happy to see you. If I’d been the only one locked up here, I’d have been furious enough to die. I should probably even thank Han Jin-hwan.”
Sung Joon-hyun, standing to the west, answered with a crooked grin.
His faction had four men in all, all former Gibber Guild members.
“Heh heh... Thanks for gathering here to become my underlings, you morons.”
To the south stood the former A-class hunter Lee Jeong-geun, the man who had brought them all together.
His faction had fifteen men in all, all former Canis Guild members.
And finally,
“......”
To the north stood Kingpin, the prison’s current boss.
Kingpin’s faction had twenty-one men, the largest of the four.
But because it was so large, unlike the others it had no common thread tying it together.
Its members had been gathered from all over and thrown together as prisoners, and over the long years the group had changed a great deal.
There were about fifty prisoners out on the prison yard.
Every last one of them looked ready to tear into the others.
Only Gong Woo-jae, out of all of them, wasn’t glaring at another person. He was looking up at the night sky instead.
Maybe it was because this was an island at the very edge of Jeollanam-do.
“So distant...”
Countless stars glittered overhead.
It was so many that it almost felt as if he had come here on a trip just to watch them.
The thought came naturally, absurd as it was.
Of course, unlike the night sky, the place where he stood was anything but beautiful.
Chudo Hunter Prison.
A mud pit where those cut off from the world were left to wander.
And soon, the fifty-two prisoners here, himself included, would be tearing at one another’s throats.
To decide the king of the mud.
Gong Woo-jae dropped his gaze from the sky and said, “I’ll make an offer.”
The other factions looked at him.
His face was so hollow it was almost impossible to find any emotion in it.
“If you don’t touch me or my men, I’ll recognize you as the king of this place.”
Perhaps because he was signaling that he didn’t want to fight.
Confusion flickered in the other factions’ eyes.
But then—
“I’ll sincerely promise you Kingpin treatment.”
Even after he said he would sincerely promise it, none of the faction bosses were taken aback.
They even looked relaxed, as if they’d been expecting those exact words.
As though they had rehearsed it, all of them shook their heads at once, and smirks crept onto their mouths.
Lee Jeong-geun said in contempt, “That stopped working a long time ago, Gong Woo-jae.”
“......”
“If you didn’t want to fight, you should’ve moved faster. Though honestly, it probably wouldn’t have worked anyway.”
“Looks that way.”
Gong Woo-jae admitted it without resistance.
In their eyes, he could see people who were dying to spit out whatever negative feelings they had right now.
Sung Joon-hyun clicked his tongue as though he’d eaten something bitter.
He opened his mouth wide and flicked his tongue around with exaggerated disgust.
“Ugh, that repulsive bastard. He feels even more annoying every time I see him.”
“Oh? We’re in agreement.”
Lee Jeong-geun nodded.
“This is only the second time I’ve seen him, but... for some reason he just feels awful.”
“I know exactly why.”
“You do? Because he looks like a pretty boy who should be posing for perfume ads?”
“That’s part of it.”
“Heh heh.”
“What’s even more nauseating is that he acts all noble when he’s just a junkie. He’s the definition of contradiction, isn’t he?”
“Acting noble... heh, yeah. I know what you mean.”
“Right? But he doesn’t get it. He has no idea how much of a piece of trash he is.”
Then Sung Joon-hyun looked straight at Gong Woo-jae.
It was as if he were saying, Gong Woo-jae, you need to know that you’re trash.
Lee Jeong-geun and Kingpin followed his gaze.
Kingpin didn’t say anything, but he clearly seemed to dislike Gong Woo-jae just as much as the other two did.
For Gong Woo-jae’s own sake, he felt like he ought to deny it.
“I’ve never acted like that. And I’m fully aware I’m trash.”
“Like hell you are.”
“Yeah. He’s right. You are acting all noble.”
Sung Joon-hyun and Lee Jeong-geun both rejected Gong Woo-jae’s words.
They even gave each other thumbs-up while staring one another down.
Trash really did get along well with trash.
Gong Woo-jae muttered that inwardly and said, “Isn’t ‘junkie’ a little unfair? I didn’t make drugs just to get high.”
“So you want to say you weren’t making narcotics, but buff potions?”
As he said, Dazol had spent most of its time researching and producing buff potions.
In other words, they had focused on developing substances that boosted human ability.
It was research that looked oddly decent for a back-alley guild, but there was one problem.
They had been conducting illegal research with ingredients not approved by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.
Dazol was the kind of guild the government would absolutely have put on the wanted list, since it had manufactured illegal drugs and used substances that had never undergone proper clinical trials.
Sung Joon-hyun brought up that very point.
“Bullshit. So you’re proud of that? If it was such a legitimate line of research, why didn’t you get Ministry approval and make it legally? Huh? Why didn’t you clear every single step with the IRB?”
“......”
“There. No comeback, right?”
Sung Joon-hyun smiled in triumph.
Seeing Gong Woo-jae unable to answer gave him the thrill of a winner.
Slowly, Gong Woo-jae nodded.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“I have nothing to say. Since that was the road that led me to being thrown into a place like this.”
“Y-you son of a...!”
Crack!
Sung Joon-hyun ground his teeth so hard it made a sound.
Now that Gong Woo-jae had admitted it so readily, he actually felt as if he’d lost the war of words.
His earlier satisfaction vanished without a trace.
Watching that, Lee Jeong-geun let out a snort as though he’d seen something hilarious.
The sound of his laughter made Sung Joon-hyun’s anger flare up all over again.
Amid the grinding of teeth,
“I was wondering how long you’d keep talking...”
Kingpin, who had watched in silence until now, cut in.
All three factions turned their attention to him.
“You’re all chatting away while leaving me completely out of it. You bastards, do you really think you can handle this?”
“Oh. Coming in hot, are you?”
Lee Jeong-geun let out a low whistle.
Apparently pleased, he even clapped.
Sung Joon-hyun seemed to share the same feeling as Lee Jeong-geun, because he smiled and nodded.
Seeing that, Gong Woo-jae thought once again:
Trash really did get along well with trash.
“Fine. I suppose we got a little too wrapped up talking among ourselves with the current Kingpin standing right here. My apologies.”
As he said that, Lee Jeong-geun tilted his neck.
He raised a hand and pulled on the tilted neck.
He was starting to stretch.
“Like I said when I gathered you all.”
“......?”
His arms came next.
He raised his left arm so the elbow pointed skyward and pressed down on it with his right hand.
Crack!
Every time he tugged with force, his joints popped.
“I won’t be bothered by anything short of a real problem.”
The stretching moved from his neck downward, gradually working its way lower.
His sides, his waist, his legs.
“Yeah. Even if a few of you end up crippled... or dead.”
Clap!
After finishing his whole-body stretch in a single casual routine, Lee Jeong-geun clapped once.
Then he grinned.
“So stop worrying about appearances and let’s have some fun. The last one standing is the king. And of course, that king will be me.”
At that, the three faction bosses each reacted differently.
“No, no. The king here is me.”
“Idiots. Words are for using only when you can afford to back them up.”
“Huu...”
Desire. Greed. Rage. Despair.
All sorts of emotions churned among the four factions.
The quiet whirlpool burst apart in an instant.
A mud fight.
The prison’s brawl had begun.
No one had fired a signal flare, but they all rushed at the enemies in front of them at the same time.
The mud fight that had erupted so suddenly was, like any gang brawl, a chaotic free-for-all.
The faction that stood out first was Kingpin’s.
With the largest numbers, they could take on the other factions simultaneously.
But that was also the problem.
Soon they came under a combined assault from the other three factions, and their momentum began to fade.
Even the largest force shrank quickly.
By the time only a few people were left standing with Kingpin...
The joint assault from the other three factions stopped.
“......”
“......”
“......”
They were worried that if they kept attacking and failed to finish Kingpin off at once, he might turn the tables.
If that happened, there was no question they’d be hit from behind.
Sung Joon-hyun and Lee Jeong-geun didn’t know how strong Kingpin really was, so they watched cautiously.
Could they finish him in one blow?
And if they couldn’t, would those two bastards really just sit there?
Those doubts and worries kept them from moving.
But then—
“Gong Woo-jae!”
“T-that guy?”
Gong Woo-jae didn’t hesitate at all. He charged.
“You idiot! Do you have no brain at all?” Kingpin shouted in annoyance.
His entire plan to lie low for a while and recover from his earlier mistake came crashing down.
Gong Woo-jae, now standing before Kingpin, let out a faint laugh.
“Brain? Do I need one to crush trash like you?”
“What?”
“I’m clearly stronger than you.”
“What do you mean... urgh!”
Thud!
Gong Woo-jae smashed Kingpin in the stomach.
With a single blow, Kingpin’s body folded in half and his chin dropped down.
Thwack!
Kingpin’s jaw was sent violently sideways, and he crumpled without strength.
Kingpin had gone down in just two blows.
“That bastard was that strong...?”
Sung Joon-hyun muttered in disbelief.
To him, Gong Woo-jae had just been a junkie frantically trying to get stronger with buff potions.
He was weak enough that, if you kept him away from the drugs he made himself, you could take him out whenever you wanted.
Sung Joon-hyun’s judgment was, in fact, correct.
That is, if this had been the world outside.
If this place hadn’t been filled with shackles that interfered with the flow of mana equally for everyone.
Gong Woo-jae turned to look at the two men.
“I wasn’t blessed like you lot were.”
“What...?”
“All I had was a D-rank skill called Sword Qi Handling. It was only a skill that gave me a tiny bit of help in controlling Sword Qi, and if I couldn’t manifest Sword Qi in the first place, I couldn’t even use it.”
“Why the hell are you suddenly whining about your hard luck? Want us to pat your shoulder or something?”
“If you can’t understand, then that’s fi...!”
The man who had become an A-class hunter with nothing but his own body and no skill support at all charged at the two pieces of trash.
The mud fight was over in less than thirty minutes.
When it ended, the yard held two kinds of people.
Those standing while gasping for breath.
And those lying on the ground, groaning.
There were nine people standing in all, including Gong Woo-jae and his men.
“Boss.”
“Hm?”
When he turned around, Gong Woo-jae’s men pointed to one spot.
“We made you a chair.”
“Ta-da.”
“What do you think?”
“Have a seat here.”
Sure enough, there was a chair there.
It was not, by any subjective or objective standard, a chair that could be called beautiful.
That was because the material used to make it was human.
Lee Jeong-geun and Sung Joon-hyun.
They had been stacked on top of each other in perfect harmony.
“I wondered what they were up to...”
Gong Woo-jae shook his head.
And still, he sat down on the chair.
The moment he did, groaning voices drifted up from underneath him.
“Crazy bastards...”
Seeing that, the former Kingpin muttered under his breath.
The former Kingpin, who had been the first to fall, was now at least able to keep himself upright.
Gong Woo-jae, sensing his gaze, asked, “Going again?”
“......”
“Sorry, but even if you can’t accept it, I have no intention of giving you another chance.”
“...I’m not planning on going again either. You’re the new Kingpin. No, that side there is.”
“You should’ve taken my offer.”
“Then I’d be the one sitting on those two right now.”
Crack.
The former Kingpin ground his teeth.
Regretting it now didn’t change anything.
He had lost, and by the rules they had set, he was stepping down from the Kingpin’s seat.
From this moment on, Gong Woo-jae was the prison’s new Kingpin.
Gong Woo-jae looked up at the sky.
Even after becoming the victor, a sigh slipped out of him.
After all, he had only won a mud fight.
“Huu...”
“What is it?”
“Just thinking there are a lot of stars.”
“Huh?”
Gong Woo-jae reached out into the air.
“But I can’t catch them.”
As if he wanted to seize one of the stars, he curled his hand into a fist.
And then, at that very moment—
Crash!
A wall came tumbling down.
“......Huh?”
Why was the wall suddenly collapsing?
For the first time that night, Gong Woo-jae felt truly flustered.
There was no way his clenched fist had made a wall collapse.
From within the dust rising where the wall had fallen,
“Cough, cough...! Ugh, dust... Puh-choo!”
a familiar woman’s voice came through.
A woman with long, messy hair tied carelessly into a single bunch.
A woman whose cold eyes were hidden behind black horn-rimmed glasses.
Riding in on a beast as huge as a grizzly bear, Yoo Hye-joo coughed over and over, covered in dust.
“Ah...!”
Looking at Yoo Hye-joo standing right in front of his outstretched fist, Gong Woo-jae experienced love for the first time in his life.