Chapter 57 - Water Shadow

The kid was walking down an alley on his way home from cram school. After checking that no one else was around, I crept up behind him and swung my Staff of Justice.

There was a loud noise, and he collapsed to the ground.

Strangely, everything looks red. What's happening? Have my powers awakened in the real world now, not just on the computer?

That was my last thought before I lost consciousness.

The Outcast Killer, J.

Dong Bongsu had finally caught the man he had been tracking for the past several months.

The nickname Killer J came from the initials he left on his victims' cheeks: an English J and its Korean equivalent.

For someone without so much as a job, the man was remarkably meticulous and cruel. He ranked among the more difficult prey Dong Bongsu had encountered. And by ordinary people's standards, his conduct was particularly heinous. As his nickname suggested, he hunted only social outcasts. Middle school outcasts, at that.

Meeting him in person today, Dong Bongsu had discovered something truly unusual about him. It was a trait that set him apart from all the other prey he had hunted.

Despite his casual willingness to commit acts that modern society considered crimes against humanity, the man's eyes were surprisingly clear. Not clear of all emotion, like Dong Bongsu's own. His eyes genuinely shone with a sense of justice.

Unless this was an act more flawless than any he had seen in his life, the man was... a genuine lunatic overflowing with righteousness.

It made little difference to Dong Bongsu either way. He had learned a tiny bit from the encounter, but there was nothing special about it. To him, the man was merely another piece of prey.

Dong Bongsu slung the man over his shoulder and loaded him into his car, parked near the scene.

VROOM.

The car disappeared.

The hero was gone, too.

The world grew dark again.

Dong Bongsu still roamed the city in that darkness, searching for prey.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.

—John Dryden, English poet and playwright

The pursuit began.

Tang Wu and the wedding guests were the ones being hunted. Their pursuers were the pirates of the Eighteen Waterway Strongholds of the Yangtze River and the demonic practitioners of the Heavenly Demon Castle.

And one other man: Dong Bongsu.

Every one of the Namgung Clan's boats had already sunk. The clan's servants, who had rowed the boats and served as stepping stones for the escapees, were all dead as well. The less skilled wedding guests had also been wiped out.

Only a hundred or so people remained alive. Still, every one of those who had survived this long was someone who could throw their weight around within their own sphere of influence, and they did not go down easily. That certainly did not mean their prospects were bright. The Yangtze pirates and the Heavenly Demon Castle's fighters pursued them relentlessly. No matter how many they killed, more kept coming. Worse still, the experts scattered among their pursuers were nothing short of a calamity for the survivors.

Their one piece of good fortune was having a Beyond Peak Realm expert on their side. Even with Namgung Hye on his back, Tang Wu broke through the encirclement along the shores of Soho Lake. The trouble was that his breakthrough led toward the mountain, but for now, climbing it was their only route to survival.

Following their instincts, the survivors took the path Tang Wu had opened. At least this spared them the trouble of dealing with enemies appearing ahead. It did nothing, however, to change the fact that they were being hunted.

Pirates continued to climb up from the direction of Soho Lake, while demonic soldiers kept appearing from the north to obstruct their progress.

Pirates were enemies they would ordinarily never encounter on dry land. Now their shouts chilled the survivors to the bone.

"Aaargh!"

Another wounded man who had fallen to the very rear was killed.

Then the man ahead of him, and the one ahead of him...

Though they fled with every ounce of strength they could muster, the number of survivors kept dwindling. The unfamiliar terrain was likely slowing their steps, and the relentless pursuit had left their bodies utterly exhausted.

By contrast, the pirates and demonic soldiers were full of vigor. They were exploiting both their superior numbers and the fact that they belonged to two separate forces to attack in relays. First the pirates struck and withdrew, then the demonic soldiers charged in and fell back. It might not have seemed like much, but it was making an enormous difference.

Simply running away consumed tremendous stamina, and now even the survivors' internal power was running dry. If this continued, it would not be long before every last one of them was dead.

CLANG, CLANG!

"Aaargh!"

The pursuit grew fiercer as time passed. By now, the survivors were moving noticeably slower. At some point, the pirates and demonic soldiers had stopped taking turns attacking. Now they followed close on the survivors' heels, attacking together. Sensing that victory was theirs, they intended to bring the chase to an end.

In the end, the stronger survivors abandoned the others lagging behind and continued straight up the mountain.

As far as they were concerned, they had no choice. Staying behind and trying to save the stragglers would only get them all killed. Better that those who could survive should do so. That was what they thought, and how they justified their actions.

And so, once again, they succeeded in preserving their own lives at the cost of others'.

Once again, the weak were abandoned.

Those left behind naturally became easy prey for their pursuers.

"Aaaargh!"

THUD, THUD!

SLASH!

The pirates and demonic soldiers hurled themselves at the abandoned survivors like ravening fiends. Already exhausted beyond endurance, the wedding guests could hold out no longer and died one after another.

Among the attackers was one pirate whose movements were unusual. His face was utterly mangled, and he slipped in among the other pirates and demonic practitioners to attack the survivors. Curiously, whenever he landed a blow, he immediately left to attack someone else. Nor were his attacks ever fatal. At most, they left a light scratch on the victim's body. None of the pirates or demonic practitioners, already consumed by the frenzy of battle, noticed his peculiar behavior. They merely thought someone was busily dashing about, fighting hard.

Once again, the disfigured man slipped in among the others and attacked a survivor.

The survivor was already drenched in blood. Whether it was his own or that of the pirates and demonic soldiers, his entire body was covered in red. Perhaps that was why his once-powerful sword had lost its original edge. Even so, it still held enough sword qi to make his enemies wary of approaching.

But his fate was as good as sealed. The pirates and the Heavenly Demon Castle's fighters had blocked every possible avenue of escape.

"Aaaaargh!"

Was it his final desperate struggle? With an unintelligible, inhuman cry, he hurled himself at the pirates.

In an instant, a dozen or so swords pierced his body—Gi Daehyo's body. They brought him to the very threshold of hell. One more step, and he would never return.

The disfigured man's sword was among those that had struck him. As before, however, it was nowhere near a killing blow, having barely touched Gi Daehyo's forehead.

Beads of blood seeped from the cut on Gi Daehyo's forehead and trickled down. Enduring the stinging pain, he raised his head.

"Ghh..."

Their eyes met. Gi Daehyo saw a face that looked as though it had been ground to pieces. Although the features were wholly unrecognizable, something about the disfigured man felt familiar. But he could not recall where he had seen him before.

Because...

SLASH.

A man whose head had been cut off could no longer think at all.

Having reduced Gi Daehyo to a bloody rag, the pirates and the Heavenly Demon Castle's fighters soon moved on to their next target.

The disfigured man, Dong Bongsu, withdrew his outstretched sword and quietly uttered a word.

"Fifty."

Fifty.

He was referring to the number of kills completed for his class advancement Quest. Over the course of the pursuit, Dong Bongsu had taken down no fewer than fifty enemies at level 10 or above.

Some of those he had killed had been exactly level 10, but most had been higher, and some had even exceeded level 15. With kills like those, he should have leveled up long ago. What on earth was going on?

The hideous sword wounds still made his original features difficult to recognize, and naturally, there had been no burst of holy light from a Level Up. In other words, he was still level 10. Unchanged. Back when he was level 7, killing a level 16 enemy had raised him a full three levels...

What was happening?

The secret lay in group hunting.

During the pursuit, Dong Bongsu had been joining the other pirates in coordinated attacks to kill the wedding guests. Just as he had done with Gi Daehyo.

His original plan had been to trail along as inconspicuously as possible, killing enemies without exposing his identity.

As the pursuit continued, he discovered another feature of the New Murim Online system. When several people killed a single target, he received experience only in proportion to the damage he dealt. And there was a very important bonus to that discovery: no matter how little damage he inflicted, a survivor's death increased his Quest completion count by one.

Any wound would do. He could throw a stone or make a cut no larger than a fingernail with his sword. As long as the system registered more than zero damage, it counted. Any enemy at level 10 or above whose HP Dong Bongsu had chipped away qualified for the Quest.

From the moment he realized this, he roamed the battlefield, trying to scratch as many survivors as possible. That allowed him to make steady progress on his class advancement Quest while receiving almost no experience.

Current Quest Progress (Completed/Required): 50 / 100

He had taken down fifty people without emitting holy light—without revealing his identity. Only fifty more stood between him and class advancement.

The pursuit was not over yet.