50. The Black Market (1)

— Sloosh. Sloosh.

A fishing boat pitched and rolled with every wave. Aboard the little putt-putt boat, as people called it, a man gazed off to the east, where a thin strip of land hung at the horizon, shimmering and etched against his eyes.

“Fuck.”

Kim Jaewoo, the man who had run the Red Spider, spat the curse low under his breath. Rage boiled up inside him; the way his temper ran, he would gladly have smashed the putt-putt boat and everything on it to pieces.

He stood at the peak of 6th Rank. If the mood took him, he could grind a boat like this to powder with a single kick and still make it back to land afterward. But not now.

That bitch of a Madam!

There was no longer any place left in Ground Zero for him to return to.

“Chairman. Is it really all right to run like this… to pull back?”

One of his officers, only two of them left now, had followed him out.

“You want to stay back there and drop dead?”

“N-no. Of course not, Chairman.”
“A hundred and fifty Hunters dead, counting that bastard Choi Hyeongtae. Not fifteen — a hundred and fifty!”

Half their Hunter strength had been wiped out in the borderlands, all for nothing. By the time the handful of survivors brought him word, the Madam had already begun to move.

“The man-hunter rumor came from the Madam too, I’m sure of it.”
“Was it really the Kaesong crew, then?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. The problem is we got played by that bitch.”

The Red Spider had seized control of Ground Zero on overwhelming numbers alone. However much money the Madam threw around, there was always a ceiling on how many mercenaries she could field at once. And yet that edge in numbers had evaporated, all thanks to Choi Hyeongtae’s blunder.

“If he’d thrown a fit about holding the territory, it’d have been a dog’s death.”

Even stepping out of Ground Zero, the outlook was just as bleak. The Red Spider’s officers were criminals to a man, and they had lorded it like kings over a lawless zone precisely because stepping out into the daylight was so hard for them.

“Chairman. Still, if we make it down to Busan—”
“Hey. You think the Madam’s going to just let us slip away?”

The Madam’s reach into the shadows ran even wider than the Red Spider’s. Where Kim Jaewoo’s influence was penned into Ground Zero and its fringes, her connections stretched far beyond.

“Busan? We’d be lucky not to take a knife before we even cleared Gyeonggi Province.”
“So heading to China really was the best choice.”
“You explain it to the others. I can’t be bothered to run my mouth any more.”
“Yes, Chairman.”

The officer ducked back inside the boat. Kim Jaewoo watched him go, contempt on his face.

An officer that dumb. Pathetic.

Not that leaving Ground Zero sat well with him either. Abandon every foothold he had and cross over to China? If a single other path to survival had been open to him, he would never have taken the Guryongbang’s hand.

Now I’ve got no choice but to become their lackey, plain and simple.

His standing was nothing like the days when he’d run the Red Spider. While the gang still had teeth he had at least been a partner in name, but crossing to China saddled with debt, he would have to fall in under the Guryongbang.

Another option? The Guryongbang was not the sort of outfit to sit back and watch the Red Spider’s remnants slip away.

It’s already done. Nothing for it but to bide my time for the next chance.

He would lick their boots if that was what it took. Grovel like a dog as a junior outfit under the Guryongbang, and one day his chance would come: the day he drove the blade of vengeance into the Madam.

To build a crime network, they’ll reach into Korea too.

When that day came, he would lead the Guryongbang’s vanguard back into Ground Zero. Swearing his revenge, Kim Jaewoo gazed off to the east until the last of the land sank below the horizon.

Never once suspecting that behind the Red Spider’s downfall lay the hand of a single Necromancer.

The night that had seemed it would never end finally broke. As the sun climbed over the horizon, it laid bare the carnage of the hours before: dark-red stains scattered across the ground, all of it blood spilled from the bodies of the Red Spider’s men.

“Congratulations, Madam.”

The man in the suit wore a faint smile.

“I didn’t expect to see you first thing in the morning, Mister Ji Yeongman.”
“Do call me Mister Black. This is a professional relationship, isn’t it?”
“I’ll try, Mister Ji Yeongman.”

The man’s lips gave a faint twitch. It was the name his parents had given him, but he had never much cared for it. Ever since taking over the black market he had gone by the alias Mister Black, and the people who still knew his birth name were vanishingly few.

“What brings a man as run-off-his-feet busy as yourself to call on me at this hour of the morning?”
“I ought to make a good impression, oughtn’t I — now that you’ve swallowed the Red Spider’s territory as well.”
“Hoho. I wonder whether you actually intend to make a good impression.”

A cold air drifted between the two of them. Even the heat of the battlefield, still far from settled, could not reach the Madam and the man.

“What does the black market want?”
“The balance of power must be maintained.”

The man came straight to the point.

“And if I were to try to swallow the businesses the Red Spider used to run?”
“The black market would step in as well.”
“Hoho. It’s bad manners to lay a hand on someone else’s rice bowl.”
“Isn’t it a touch large to fit into the Madam’s little mouth?”
“That’s something we’ll only know in time.”

The balance of Ground Zero had collapsed. Beyond the blood-stone and the Black Herb farm, the Red Spider had run any number of other lucrative operations: smuggling people in from the north, working illegal gates, even moving goods back and forth between the old North Korea and China.

The two ventures Yujin had laid hands on were the biggest sources of funding, but the rest were nothing to dismiss. Hold even one of them, and a man could live like a king in Ground Zero.

“Tell me what it is you want.”
“Me?”
“I’m well aware the Madam has no intention of taking the Red Spider’s interests for herself.”
“Then will the black market be taking them?”
“Depending on the situation, yes — but haven’t I already told you what we intend?”

Ground Zero drew every stripe of criminal, every kind of person with a story to bury. Let one faction grow too large and there was no putting on the brakes; the place was a pit of chaos snarled with illegal interests of every description. Only once the Madam, the black market, and the Red Spider had each staked out their own ground had Ground Zero settled into an order of its own.

“Hoho. My thoughts exactly.”
“Which means…”
“If someone were on hand to manage the Red Spider’s territory, Mister Black would be satisfied too, wouldn’t he?”

The Madam’s lips curved in a bright smile. From that one remark the man pieced together the whole picture, and very nearly let slip the thought that flashed through his head.

So there was a collaborator.

In the war of nerves between the Red Spider and the Madam, Mister Black had judged that neither side would ever truly fall.

The Galaxy Pub’s bartender was a 6th-Rank Hunter, the equal of Kim Jaewoo, and the Madam was a shrewd operator besides; even under the Red Spider’s pressure she would take no serious harm. The reverse held too: to come at the Red Spider head-on, she would have had to hire mercenaries, and filling out the numbers was hard enough to begin with.

Well, I’ll be. I’ve been had.

Mister Black gave a wry smile. The black market had always worried about any single organization in Ground Zero growing too powerful, and the Red Spider’s collapse, pointless and abrupt, was the very outcome the man had least wanted.

The mistake was opening the hand I held first.

The meaning behind the Madam’s manner was plain. Someone had played the decisive hand in bringing down the Red Spider, and she meant to turn the spider’s various interests over to that collaborator.

“The Legion?”
“Hoho. Kim Jaewoo wiped out the organization called the Legion two days ago.”
“Then the Ghost? Or else…”
“If you’re truly curious, the three of you should sit down over a cup of tea and talk it through.”

The Madam turned her head away, as though she would say no more.

Hah. Well and truly cornered.

An imbalance of information. There was a whole shape to this affair that not even the black market had managed to grasp: a collaborator who had dealt the Red Spider a crippling blow and won even the Madam’s willingness to share her stake.

Could it be someone from inside Ground Zero?

Too little to go on. Caught short of data at the very moment the Red Spider’s stake was being carved up, he felt his throat tighten. In the end the man raised the white flag.

“Very well. I’d like to have that meeting as soon as possible.”
“Today, at noon. Come to the Galaxy Pub.”

A soft smile spread across the Madam’s lips, her back already turned.

The Galaxy Pub stood out on the edge of Ground Zero. The place normally hummed with custom even when the sun hung high overhead, yet today, this one day alone, it was silent.

— It doesn’t look like they’re open right now.

“Not open? The sign’s lit, isn’t it.”

— You can hardly even see it for the sunlight. Maybe they just forgot to switch it off last night?

— Creeeak.

A giant of a man shoved the door open and stepped inside. Yujin came in after him and made straight for the lounge.

“You’re open, yes?”
“The Madam is waiting for you, sir.”

Old Jeong gestured toward the back of the pub, to a private room kept for VIP members alone.

Yujin gave a slight nod, then laid a hand on the firmly shut steel door.

— I doubt you can open that with your strength, Master.

“You idiot. It’s not a door you open with strength.”

— Guguguung—!

The steel door slid aside with a ponderous groan.

— What’s this? Did you eat an elixir or something while I wasn’t looking?

“Elixir, my foot.”

The Human-Shaped Snow Ginseng he’d wrung out of Seongcheon Enterprise was still sitting unused, going to waste. There was no longer any need to feed it to Fafnir. By rights, Yujin should have taken it himself. But.

Swallow that and my heart would freeze and I’d die.

For a wielder of negative-dimension mana, and a Necromancer above all, no finer elixir existed. The same held for Yujin, yet he wasn’t ready to take that power on all at once.

4th Rank at minimum. And I’d have to build up my physical stats before it’s worth attempting.

Mercifully, thanks to Life Drain, his body was growing stronger by the day. The day he could swallow the Human-Shaped Snow Ginseng would not be far off.

Stilling his thoughts, Yujin held up a hand to stop Fafnir, who had been following behind.

“Fafnir. You wait outside.”

— Hmph. If those are my orders, I’ll obey.

There was no telling what the Madam might say about him dragging a subordinate into her private room. He cut a sidelong glance at Fafnir, planted before the steel door, and went inside.

A quadruple barrier? No — quintuple.

Soundproofing and anti-eavesdropping, sight obstruction, mana resistance, shock absorption. The private room had been packed with magic circles, every last one of them there to guard its guests’ secrets.

“You’ve come.”
“I came like you told me to. Who’s this?”

The man in the suit rose and promptly held out a business card.

“Black market, so that means the underground auction house.”
“You’re well-informed. You seem to know Ground Zero quite well.”
“Let’s drop the fishing for information, Mister Black.”

Well, now. To think I’d run into that fellow here. The master of the black market — Mister Black.

He looked far younger than he had in my memory, so I didn’t place him at first, but the moment I caught his tone and his manner he came back to me at once.

When Yujin shot the Madam a quizzical look, she met his gaze without flinching and winked.

That drive of hers hasn’t changed, then or now.

The Red Spider’s stake was the reward he had named for the job. One of the three organizations that steered the currents of Ground Zero had fallen, and the heads of the remaining two now sat in a single room; the board had been set rather nicely, all told.

The Madam did say she’d back me, but even this much is enough.

Yujin knew the man in front of him well. Before the regression, he had dealt with him a great deal while building the Necropolis. The Necropolis had stood in Kaesong, close enough to Ground Zero that Yujin had picked up a fair amount about the man.

“No need to talk in circles. You’ll know what I want.”
“The Red Spider’s territory and stake, you mean.”
“I’m not saying I’ll take all of it. I’ll just take the Black Herb farm and the cross-border business with the North.”

At Yujin’s brazen words the man let out a hearty laugh.

“Haha. You’re an amusing one.”
“First I’ve heard I had a talent for comedy.”
“Would you tell me why our black market ought to back you?”
“I took out a hundred and fifty Hunters, Choi Hyeongtae included.”

The man didn’t so much as twitch an eyelid. Drawn in by the Madam’s wiles, he had looked into the matter beforehand and half expected as much.

“Are you demanding a stake for having brought down the Red Spider?”
“You catch on quick.”
“That’s something you can demand of the Madam. It has nothing to do with the black market.”

The man’s eyes ran swiftly over the whole of Yujin’s frame.

A Hunter who blew away half the Red Spider. No exaggeration to call him 6th Rank.

A nameless powerhouse, sprung up out of nowhere. He cut a fitting figure to fill the vacuum the Red Spider’s collapse had left behind. Even so, the spider’s stake was not something to hand off carelessly to a man whose origins no one knew.

Grant only part of his demands and pin him down in Ground Zero.

He had only just settled his calculations, the smile not yet off his lips.

“I’ll wipe out the man-hunters for you, and open the road toward Kaesong on top of it.”
“What?”
“That’s a fair enough deal for your side too, isn’t it?”

At Yujin’s unruffled tone the man’s eyebrow gave the faintest twitch.