Chapter 17 - Jo Pyeong

● ● ●

Jo Pyeong was the Black Society’s senior leader. He stood concealed in the darkness, bathed in the eerie light of the waning moon.

“Aaaaargh!”

“Ghk...”

Endless screams drifted over from afar. Every one was the sound of another subordinate dying. Even those had grown so infrequent that he could barely hear them now. That alone showed how few of his men remained.

Somewhere among those screams must have been those of Dongpal, Nadal, and Gang Hae, who had joined the Society alongside him. Perhaps he was the only leader still alive.

Now the Nameless Hero would come for him. He was approaching, slaughtering everyone else along the way. Nothing—not a single measure or precaution—had protected them. Even though they had anticipated his arrival and prepared for it.

Soon it would be his turn.

He didn’t want to die yet...

All he had done was extort a little money, traffic a few people, run a little business selling women and liquor... and kill a few things that hardly qualified as human. To lose his precious life over so little!

It was unfair. What kind of karmic retribution was this unfair? There were still so many worse bastards in the world. Men who had killed dozens, hundreds, were openly living in comfort! Yet he had to die for doing so little wrong.

The world was unfair.

The weak were always easy targets. The Nameless Hero must leave those other bastards alone because they were strong.

Jo Pyeong cursed the Nameless Hero, spinning endless sophistries in his head. Yet he never realized how little sense they made. Like most villains.

‘Should I run?’

The thought briefly crossed his mind, but he soon shook his head.

Run?

Running would be no different from losing his life.

How long had it taken him to build everything he had? He couldn’t do it.

He renewed his resolve to hold Paradise Village’s last stronghold to the bitter end with the remaining Black Faction members. After all, there was only a single road through this place, running from front to back.

The terrain made both a surprise assault and a stealthy infiltration impossible. The rear road led to Paradise Manor, the estate of Black Society Leader Bang Poyeom. In other words, the alley ahead was the only approach. If they could properly defend it, they could stop the Nameless Hero—and perhaps even capture or kill him.

“Aaaaaaaaaargh!”

Just then, a scream as loud and terrible as all the preceding screams combined reached Jo Pyeong’s hiding place.

With that, the death cries finally ceased.

Now “he” would come. The man who had ravaged the Black Faction members at will in the name of chivalry—the Nameless Slaughter Demon—would come here.

Yes! Come on, you son of a bitch!

“I’ll kill you!”

Fighting in the dark favored the Unorthodox Factions.

The Nameless Hero had presumably chosen the dark of night to make hunting their members easier, but the Black Faction members had been born in darkness and lived their entire lives in it. Jo Pyeong was confident, no matter how accomplished a martial artist his enemy might be.

And that wasn’t all.

Those left here were on an entirely different level from the rabble who had just died. They might be low-level fighters, but every one of them had learned some martial arts at a martial sect.

The White Tiger Unit and Blue Wolf Gate had fallen to unexpected attacks. They would show him that the Black Society was differ—huh!? Already?

At the very moment Jo Pyeong was steeling himself, a black, apparently human silhouette came flying down the passage.

In an instant—

WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH!

Dozens of arrows flew with a sound like a school of salmon cleaving the current.

The waiting bowstrings had all been released in unison.

THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD!

Riddled with holes, the silhouette fell to the ground.

Jo Pyeong realized at once that it wasn’t the Nameless Hero. It couldn’t possibly be that easy.

WHOOSH.

Another black silhouette came flying toward them through the alley.

Once again, dozens of arrows shredded it to rags. Of course, this one wasn’t the real man either. It was a corpse.

‘Are you hoping we’ll run out of arrows?’

The absurdity drew a derisive snort from him.

‘Sorry to disappoint you. We have enough arrows to keep shooting all night and still have some left. What will you do now, Nameless Hero?’

Just as he smiled in satisfaction—

“Ghk, aaaargh!”

One of the Black Faction members hiding in an abandoned house screamed. He was dead.

‘How!?’

They were watching the only passage into this place. He could come over the rooftops, but that route was even more dangerous. Wouldn’t the moonlight expose him?

Black Faction members were stationed on the roofs too, keeping constant watch. If he had taken that route, there was no way they could have missed him.

‘Where the hell did he get in!?’

While Jo Pyeong floundered in confusion, the last of the Black Faction members continued to die.

“Aargh!”

“Ugh!”

“Ghk!”

...

...

...

.

The death cries were drawing steadily closer. There was no longer time to wonder how.

Jo Pyeong immediately emerged from hiding and stepped into the moonlight. Even then, the final cries of Black Faction members continued to ring out around him.

But those, too, soon faded.

“Damn it... Is every last one of them dead except me...?”

His emergence was supposed to be the signal. Once he came out of hiding, all the Black Faction members were to enter the central clearing at once and form a battle formation to face the Nameless Hero head-on.

“Is anyone there?”

Not a word.

No one stepped forward.

No—there was one.

With measured footsteps, a slender masked man sauntered into the moonlight.

It was “him.”

“Are... you the Nameless Hero?”

“...”

The Nameless Hero gave no answer. He simply approached Jo Pyeong in silence.

“W-what the hell do you want?”

“...”

Again, no answer came.

Jo Pyeong tried to say something else, but he could no longer speak. He had looked directly into the Nameless Hero’s eyes.

Since joining the Black Society, he had looked into many people’s eyes, but never eyes so utterly empty. This was not mere absence of emotion.

Nothingness.

There was simply nothing there. The Nameless Hero’s eyes held nothing that could be called human.

“Fuck...”

SWISH—SPLAT.

Jo Pyeong’s body split into two exact halves, starting at his head. Blood, entrails, and brain matter spilled from his corpse, befouling Paradise Village.

At that same moment, a brilliant flash erupted.

A pure white, cleansing flame rose from the Nameless Hero’s body, purifying Paradise Village.

For the briefest instant, its brilliance laid his figure fully bare.

The Nameless Hero.

Sosam, a horse handler of the Danri Family.

Or, more precisely, Dong Bongsu—now level 7.

● ● ●

After choosing the Unorthodox Factions as his targets, Dong Bongsu had been very busy.

There was simply too much to prepare.

He might have leveled up after killing Jangho, but he was still much weaker than the Black Faction members. Naturally, just as on Earth, his preparations required considerable time and effort.

He needed to scrutinize the movements of the Unorthodox Factions and their individual members, then decide the order in which to hunt them. After that, he still had to account for the surrounding circumstances and meticulously script each hunt. Only when not the slightest chance of failure remained would Dong Bongsu actually begin.

He diligently roamed Fengyang’s marketplaces, gathering information. He already had some information about the Black Society from the thugs he had killed earlier, but it was all common knowledge and of little use.

For about a week, he devoted himself to gathering information on the Unorthodox Factions.

But there were limits to what he could learn alone while posing as Sosam, a mute. The few things he discovered were either too miscellaneous to be of any use or too broad to mean anything.

At best, he could make use of information about the streets the Black Faction members frequented and the approximate locations of their dens.

Knowing those things meant little. It would have been different if he were strong enough to storm those places alone, but that was impossible at level 2.

Nor could he devote himself to gathering information forever. At this rate, half a year—perhaps even several years—might pass with nothing to show for it but research.

In the end, he changed his approach.

Beat the Grass to Startle the Snake.

Strike the grass and alarm the snake.

The expression was commonly used to describe failing after acting rashly before one was ready. Its original meaning, however, was entirely different.

It was one of the fundamentals of ancient Chinese strategy, a stratagem recorded among the Thirty-Six Stratagems.

To catch a hidden snake, beat the grass and make it crawl out of its hole. In other words, it was a tactic, not a proverb with negative implications.

Dong Bongsu stopped investigating the elusive “snakes.” Instead, he beat the “brush” where snakes were likely to abound.

One day, having thoroughly altered his appearance, he visited a clandestine underground gambling den. Then he cleaned out its tables. The first time or two might have passed without incident, but once it kept happening, the snakes finally bared their fangs.

A Black Faction member attacked him as he left the gambling den, unaware that Dong Bongsu was a “snake catcher.” The first snake sacrificed in this way was a low-ranking member of the White Tiger Unit. In fact, Dong Bongsu hadn’t even known the White Tiger Unit ran the place. All he had known was that there was a gambling den there. Nothing more.

That incident landed Dong Bongsu on the White Tiger Unit’s black book—its blacklist—under the name Gambling Demon. They began pursuing him, and he achieved his intended aim.

Thus began the bloody slaughter in which the hunted turned hunter.