The Bomb Collar
Yuri Orlov ran himself ragged, his feet practically on fire — and for no one's sake but his master, 'Yu Jaewoo'.
"Proxima of Russia? What even is that. I move for my master and my master alone—"
"—is what I imagine he's thinking as he scurries about."
My voice rang through the meeting room at the Awakener Association's Strategic Headquarters.
"I honestly never expected you to resolve things this way."
"It's incredible! When you vanished from the expo, you really seemed like an immortal sage!"
Team Leader Jo and Section Chief Jeon Sua applauded in admiration.
Oh, come on. It was nothing, really.
Though for some reason, the look Ms. Yun Ju was giving me was a little uncomfortable.
"Jaewoo, you're seriously so cool. I think I might become a fan!"
"Ahem. Let's skip the fan thing."
Anyway.
I explained what I had done, and what I intended to do next.
"From this moment, Yuri Orlov will go around to high-ranking officials, National Assembly members, and media companies, revising his orders. Even if it means pushing his ability to its absolute limit."
Thanks to Yuri's diligent work,
I now had the Galleria Foret overlooking Seoul Forest,
so I'd decided not to kill him.
But unlike Jeokmyeo and Chilmyeo, I was going to work him like a dog.
"From now on, all we have to do is sit here and wait, and the high-ranking officials will come flocking to us. The question is what we do with them once they arrive..."
At my words, Team Leader Jo answered.
"Since you've dealt with Yuri Orlov, I can handle the rest. But as this is your operation, Jaewoo, I'll defer to your judgment."
And then.
Jeokmyeo, who had been standing behind me, spoke up.
"You've already brought the media under control. Why bother? In my opinion, the cleanest solution is to quietly slaughter every last one of them, without a soul the wiser."
"......"
Chilmyeo nodded along, but everyone else fell silent.
I turned to Jeokmyeo and said, flatly:
"Stay out of this."
Jeokmyeo hastily bowed her head.
"F-forgive me. I overstepped."
"It's fine."
Not a single person, Team Leader Jo included, asked me about Jeokmyeo and Chilmyeo. But I figured they had a fair idea already.
The meeting room was quiet.
Everyone held their breath,
waiting to hear what I would say.
"Hmm..."
Being an intellectual in my own right,
I fell deep into thought.
Bills proposed to the detriment of Awakeners.
Reckless, malicious propaganda with no thought for the aftermath.
Most of it hadn't been Yuri Orlov's doing. The politicians and high-ranking officials had crawled out of the rot on their own.
Which is exactly how rotten they were.
Kill them all? No...
This isn't a murim world, after all.
And so I engraved my own principles:
1. Anyone who touches my family dies.
2. Anyone who disturbs my daily life gets no mercy.
Okay. All decided.
Principles, my ass.
"For now, we'll investigate them and take appropriate measures."
"Whew..."
Only then did a sigh of relief escape Team Leader Jo.
"However,"
I said, gravely,
"we can't exactly let criminals feast on the nation's flesh, can we? Investigate them, and make anyone guilty of corruption turn themselves in and donate their entire fortune to society."
"Understood."
Team Leader Jo nodded at my words,
and since we were already at it, I said what I wanted to say.
"If there are officials involved in fraud, murder, or sex crimes, I hope their punishment will not be light. I want the victims to receive fair compensation and a heartfelt apology."
What would it have been like in the murim where my master once lived? In the Heavenly Demon Cult? If Master were in charge, he might have wiped out the whole assembly.
But that would turn into a massacre.
So I shook my head.
"You're more righteous than I am, Team Leader, so I trust you'll handle it well."
"I'll also work on the judges in advance."
I nodded.
Judges are always tangled up with high-ranking officials, after all.
And then.
As if that weren't enough, Team Leader Jo hurriedly pressed on.
"I'll adjust the prisons as well. We'll recruit mental-type Awakeners and deliver hell to those with the worst crimes. That said, I'll do my utmost to ensure no innocent person is wronged."
Hm. Righteous as expected.
"I'll leave it to you, Team Leader."
"Yes. Count on me."
"May I ask one more thing?"
"Just say the word."
He'd handle most things on his own,
but there was something I wanted done too.
And that was:
"Could you gather all the journalists who write malicious articles in one place?"
"Once this round of investigations is finished, we'll gather them at the Association gymnasium."
"Thank you."
Very satisfying. And finally—
"I'll handle the National Assembly members myself."
The journalists who had fallen under Yuri's mental control were investigated at the Awakener Association.
Malicious articles. Provocative articles.
The reasons they'd reported that way weren't anything all that grand.
To get people to click.
Because they had to make a living.
Because the corporation wanted it, and the government wanted it.
Because their superiors told them to tear someone down.
Or simply because that's how it had always been.
Jo Sanghyeok and the Association staff realized something.
These were just people trying to make money.
Just fragile human beings.
Not some great evil.
And yet.
That very absence of professional ethics was the problem.
Buying and selling the public's hatred.
Stirring up loathing for others,
inciting conflict and division.
Slicing people apart by gender, age, awakened status, region, merchant and consumer, upper class, middle class, lower class — and teaching each slice to despise the rest.
What was true,
what was a better way to deliver it,
what was necessary to build a better society—
they hadn't wrestled with those questions in a very long time.
Jo Sanghyeok filtered out the higher-ranked among them — the major players of the press — and gathered them in the gymnasium.
Just what does he intend to do with them?
Before long, Yu Jaewoo appeared in the gymnasium, and Jo Sanghyeok found himself curious about how Jaewoo would handle this.
There's no way to stop what Jaewoo does anyway. All I can do is trust in the reasonableness he's shown so far.
The senior journalists shouted furiously.
"What did we do wrong! We were just trying to earn a living — is that such a terrible crime?"
"Exactly! Let's be blunt here — you people never listen to what the press says anyway!"
"Quite right! We have to give people the stories they want or nobody watches, so what do you want from us?"
At that.
Yu Jaewoo raised a hand and spoke.
"Now, now. I've heard all about your noble sense of mission. So what you're saying is, you did it for the money."
One of the journalists shot back.
"The press isn't a charity. Corporations pay for advertising — are we supposed to ignore what they say? You think the media can just snub the government? We were simply finding a way to survive."
Jo Sanghyeok's brow furrowed.
Certainly, the government had intervened this time, but that wasn't the whole of it.
Fabricating suspicions out of thin air and spreading them,
shamelessly engaging in paparazzi harassment,
using information as a leash to jerk people around.
That was the excuse of people who had fattened themselves on exactly that.
But.
Yu Jaewoo answered with a smile.
"So it comes down to money in the end, and yet you beat around the bush. Money, money, money. I understand. It really is important, isn't it? I won't say you're wrong. I just don't care to hear your circumstances."
As Yu Jaewoo spoke with that smile, the journalists moved to protest all the louder.
But then.
"Enough."
Yu Jaewoo released a chilling aura.
—Shaaaaa—!
A bone-deep demonic energy spread through the gymnasium,
and every journalist went pale as a ghost, as if they'd seen one, their voices dying in their throats.
Some trembled so violently in their terror that their teeth chattered; others felt their legs give out and crumpled to the floor.
Yu Jaewoo looked down at them without a flicker of expression.
"I am not your friend. I am not your colleague."
And then,
he raised his hand and cast a skill.
"Gu Poison."
Chwaaaaarak!
A violet mist bloomed from his palm, and from the mist burst hundreds of centipedes.
dadadadak!
The centipedes swarmed out with a furious clamor and bored into the bodies of the terrified journalists.
"Gyaaaaak! What is this thing?!"
"Khh... khak! Save me!"
"Kyaaaaak! Something's inside me!"
"What did you do to me?!"
Instead of answering, Yu Jaewoo raised his hand and clenched his fist.
Kwaaaaak—
"Gyaaaaaaak!"
"Kkieeeek!"
"Gwak! Save me! Agh!"
The journalists clawed at their chests,
clutched their heads.
A moment later, they were slamming their heads into the floor,
rolling across the ground.
Some strangled themselves with their own hands.
Some collapsed foaming at the mouth.
Some passed out entirely, only to jolt awake seconds later and scream again.
For fifteen minutes.
The gymnasium was hell itself, and only then did Jo Sanghyeok understand.
When two sides' understanding collides,
compromise is called politics —
but Yu Jaewoo hadn't come here to do politics.
He came to deliver a warning.
Yu Jaewoo stretched out his hand into the empty air, and the journalists' screams stopped.
His eyes were as indifferent as ever,
yet not a soul in the gymnasium dared to argue.
This was not a man you could handle with logic and rhetoric. He was a predator standing at the apex of the law-of-the-jungle pyramid.
That predator looked at the journalists and said:
"The next time you publish a single article—"
—Seuuseuseuset
A sinister demonic energy wrapped around the journalists,
and in the suffocating tension that followed,
Yu Jaewoo continued.
"think a hundred times. Or else."
Yu Jaewoo's expression hardened,
and the air turned ice-cold.
"you'll be begging me to kill you."
Words that pierced straight through the skull.
In that instant, every excuse evaporated from the journalists' minds.
Section Chief Jeon Sua said to Jo Sanghyeok,
"Was it really this simple all along?"
Jo Sanghyeok answered with a dry laugh.
"No way in hell."
December 17th.
All three hundred National Assembly members attended the plenary session at the National Assembly Proceeding Hall. Despite how hastily it had been convened, not one was absent.
Thanks to Yuri Orlov's tireless work, every last member had fallen under [Puppet] and [Spektr].
Yu Jaewoo sat to one side of the chamber, seeming to be there and yet somehow not.
As his contemplation of the martial path deepened, he had attained a revelation — Jeolsikthe Severed Form.
A technique that severed others' perception of him, making him a man who did not exist.
Tak!
Yu Jaewoo snapped his fingers,
and a fine membrane unfurled through the air above.
Soul-Seizing Demon Art — Linked Shadow Grand Method.
Yu Jaewoo seized the entire National Assembly building with his Soul-Seizing Art and darted forward to stand at the Speaker's podium.
Whish—
The assembly members caught in the Soul-Seizing Art sat frozen in their seats, silent as mutes with their mouths full of honey, and only Yu Jaewoo took hold of the microphone and spoke.
"We will now begin a character test. Anyone here who is not a National Assembly member, please leave."
Tak!
Yu Jaewoo snapped his fingers,
and everyone who wasn't an assembly member filed out,
while the cameras, recorders, and all other equipment switched off.
"Now, form a single line."
Urrr—
Three hundred members rose in unison,
forming a long line that wrapped around the chamber.
"One at a time, come up and tell me what political convictions you hold and what purpose drives your career. And tell me, too — how much you've cheated along the way, and how you want to live from here on!"
Let's hear them out first.
Yu Jaewoo believed that no one was so clean a shake dislodged no dust. He wasn't exactly a paragon of morality himself, so he'd intended to let a fair amount slide.
It's not like I'm some cult leader.
He had hoped not to resort to heavy measures unless he had to.
But what was this?
Fraud, sexual bribery, sexual assault, contracted murder, drunk driving, stock manipulation — these rotten sons of bitches think this is a game.
Of the three hundred who had sworn to serve the nation, one hundred and seventy-three were garbage beyond recycling.
How on earth was Team Leader Jo controlling these people?
"You lot are done."
Tak—!
Yu Jaewoo snapped his fingers,
and the Gu Poison burst from his hand.
Chwareureureu—
The Gu poison poured into the bodies of the one hundred seventy-three,
coiling around their brains and hearts. And then—
"The remaining one hundred twenty-seven may return to your seats and rest."
Yu Jaewoo regarded those who remained.
Well, a hundred twenty-seven of them aren't vicious criminals, so that's fine, right?
"Damn it. There's no way it's fine."
The one hundred twenty-seven untouched by the Gu poison
would remember this moment,
this very instant,
for the rest of their lives.
Yu Jaewoo gave his command to the one hundred seventy-three.
"Donate your entire fortunes. Then go to everyone you have wronged and beg their forgiveness."
"Yes! Understood!"
A thunderous answer rolled back.
"And then go to the journalists and confess everything you have done, down to the last detail."
"Yes! Understood!"
Afterward, he addressed the Gu poison itself.
[Should these men scheme against others again after completing their orders, or harbor wickedness in their hearts — take them somewhere with no witnesses and make them end their own lives.]
The Gu poison wriggled in answer.
Good.
The bomb collars were in place.
No telling when these men might die,
but that was no concern of mine.
If your heart isn't pure—
you shouldn't have become a National Assembly member in the first place!