Chapter 16

Dodging bullets was not difficult.
Even if the yakuza and gangsters had more firearms, all he had to do was cut them apart.

The Books of Karmic Sin floating above their heads.
And the terrified eyes staring at him.
Only one man’s gaze was different.

The orc, Fearn.
He alone was looking at Jun-gyeong with interest.
While everyone but Fearn was half out of their minds with fear, Jeong Dong-hyeok was the first to regain his senses.
He quickly looked around and hid behind Fearn.

“F-Fearn, kill him. Kill that bastard.”

But Fearn merely bared his tusks and stared at Jun-gyeong without stepping forward.

“Wh-What? What’s wrong?”

Dong-hyeok’s face twisted when Fearn made no move.
Then his gaze shifted toward the duffel bags on the table.

“One hundred million yen. No, I’ll give you two hundred million.”

Only then did Fearn look toward Jeong Dong-hyeok.

“That’s right! Two hundred million yen. Two billion won. That should be enough…”
“You’re trying to save money at a time like this? You idiot. And that money still belongs to me.”

Takahachi pushed the duffel bags toward Fearn.

“I’ll give you all of it. In exchange!”

His finger pointed toward Jun-gyeong, then immediately shifted toward Jeong Dong-hyeok.

“Kill everyone except us.”

The corners of Fearn’s mouth rose.

“Wh-What the hell are you saying?! Kill everyone?!”
“Shut up, you useless Chōsenjin bastard.”¹

Jeong Dong-hyeok’s gaze snapped toward Fearn.
Fearn, chief of the Blood Tribe, a tribe that would do anything for money.

“N-No way…”

THUD-!

The back of Fearn’s hand struck Jeong Dong-hyeok’s face, and his head tore free from his body and flew through the air.

Thud… Thump…

The head rolled across the floor while blood gushed from the neck that had lost it.
Fearn was drenched in blood from head to toe, and he was smiling through it.

“A good deal.”
“R-Right. Yes! It’s a good deal. Now it’s his turn. Kill that bastard first.”

Takahachi pointed at Jun-gyeong, and Fearn’s gaze followed his finger.

“This should be fun.”

Fearn wiped the blood running down beside his eye with the back of his hand and licked it away.

“You’re the first warrior I’ve seen like this on Earth. Are you an elf? No, judging by your ears, probably not.”

Fearn’s face twisted further.
Just as everyone else recoiled from the expression, Jun-gyeong spoke lightly.

“That’s your smiling face, isn’t it?”
“Heh heh. Sounds like you know an orc warrior or two. Most people are terrified when they see this face.”

Jun-gyeong answered expressionlessly.

“Orcs I know… There were some. Though all I ever did was swing a sword at them.”

Jun-gyeong stared directly at him with crimson eyes.
A massive monster with muscular green skin.
It was something he already knew.
He had fought beings like this thousands, even tens of thousands of times in Hell.
Back then, he had thought they were monsters. Only after returning to the mortal world and gaining Han Jun-gyeong’s knowledge did he realize they were orcs from another dimension.

Monsters strong enough to tear humans apart.
With their monstrous strength and characteristic simplicity, they had ultimately swallowed up Korea’s underworld.
As Jun-gyeong read the Book of Karmic Sin floating above Fearn’s head, the orc didn’t seem much different from a monster at all.

In the early days of Dimensional Fusion, once humans learned that no physical matter could pass through a Gate, they looked down on the otherworldly races crossing over.
What threat could there possibly be from beings who came through completely naked, unable to bring so much as a weapon or a scrap of clothing?

Magic existed in the Capri Dimension, but no material connected to magic could cross through a Gate, and even Mana, the substance that formed the foundation of magic itself, couldn’t pass through.
The otherworldly races had developed magic instead and were largely ignorant of science.
So humans, whose science was far more advanced, saw no reason to fear them.

Then an incident occurred at a manual-labor site where an orc who had crossed over naked was working.
They had withheld six months of his wages, beaten him when he protested, and during the assault, slashed the tribal tattoo carved into his body with a knife.

That day, there were roughly one hundred casualties among the construction manager, the gangsters overseeing the site, and even the police who arrived to stop the fight.
More than ten were torn apart and killed by the orc’s bare hands.
Another thirty or so survived but were left unable to walk or chew food for the rest of their lives.
The body of the site manager who had cut the orc’s tattoo was ripped into so many pieces that it was unrecognizable, the pieces scattered everywhere.
After that, no one on Earth touched an orc’s tribal tattoo or delayed an orc’s wages again.

But none of that mattered to Jun-gyeong.
To him, it was merely a story from another world contained in Han Jun-gyeong’s memories.
The orcs he remembered were simply monsters whose twisted faces looked the same whether they laughed or cried.
Still expressionless, he continued.

“After cutting at them thousands, tens of thousands of times, I eventually learned the difference. Whether that face means you’re smiling before a fight, or suffering in pain.”
“An orc suffering from pain? What are you talking about? To us, pain is another kind of pleasure. The same way you people think spicy food tastes good. So that expression must have been a smile too.”

Jun-gyeong choked up on the sword’s grip and stepped forward.
Killing intent welled from his body.
But Fearn attacked first.
He blasted off the floor like a missile, smashing through the table as he charged.
Then came a fist swung with tremendous power.
Neither its speed nor its strength could be compared to a human’s.
It was a speed born of raw muscle and survival instinct, as though mocking Earth’s laws of physics.

Even with the Dokkaebi Eyes showing the attack’s direction in vivid red, it moved far too fast for a human to dodge.
Jun-gyeong quickly raised both arms to block the fist, but he couldn’t fully redirect the force created by their difference in size.
Jun-gyeong’s body lifted from the floor and flew backward, smashing through the wall before landing on the rain-lashed deck outside the conference room.

CRASH-! THUD! THUD!

After rolling across the deck several times, Jun-gyeong rose as red karmic flames bloomed around his body.

“Damn it. Is nineteen percent still not enough?”
-Ah~ Ah~~ Can you hear me?
“I’m busy.”
-I know. I can see you.
“You can see me?”
-Yeah. You weren’t answering, so I sent up a drone.

SHAAAAA-

Something glittered faintly in the distance through the downpour.
But Jun-gyeong immediately had to turn his attention back.
Fearn’s massive body burst through the shattered wall.

BOOM-!

The instant he landed on the deck, the steel plating boomed, sending rainwater splashing in every direction.

FLASH-!

The rain pouring straight down caught the twin white searchlights and flashed like silver needles.
At the center of that white light, the crimson karmic flames rising from Jun-gyeong’s body flickered with a strange, terrible beauty, like the fires of Hell refusing to die even beneath the rain.

“GRAAAARGH!!!”

Fearn roared and ripped apart the rain-soaked clothes he was wearing.

-That guy’s insane.
“Seems so.”

His green skin, slick with rain and blood, gleamed even more beneath the searchlights.

“Are those flames your life burning out?”

With a trembling hand, Jun-gyeong picked Seolhwa up from the deck.
He could barely put any strength into his grip.
He tore a strip from his shirt sleeve and bound Seolhwa’s handle tightly to his wrist.
It felt as though the bones in his chest had cracked, and sharp pain stabbed through him with every breath.
Jun-gyeong slowly exhaled and steadied his breathing.

Except for the time he chose to take his own life, he had never once abandoned a battle.
In the thousands, tens of thousands of battles he had fought, injuries like these had been commonplace.
If anything, these were relatively minor.
He had fought on with hands and feet severed, arrows buried throughout his body.
The karmic flames rising around him now were the madness he had endured tens of thousands of times in Hell, and the sheer defiance that had carried him through it.

SHHK-!

A cold arc of steel sliced through the rain.
But Fearn didn’t dodge. Instead, he thrust out his steel-like forearm and took the blade directly.

CLANG-!

With no energy infused into it, the saber bounced away from the orc’s hardened hide.
The instant Jun-gyeong’s stance broke, Fearn’s massive kick crashed into his chest.

BOOM!
“Ghk!”

Jun-gyeong tried to redirect the impact with the flat of his saber, but Fearn’s brute strength was beyond imagination.
Jun-gyeong rolled dozens of meters across the deck before slamming into the railing.

CRUNCH!

The railing’s steel pipes crumpled around the shape of Jun-gyeong’s body.
The metallic reek of blood surged inside the Ghost Mask.
His nervous system was running wild, but his blood vessels and bones couldn’t keep pace and screamed under the strain.

“How disappointing. Let’s finish this now!”

Fearn roared and charged at full speed through the rain.
With the searchlights behind him, his shadow stretched enormous, as though it would swallow Jun-gyeong whole.

RUMBLE- KRAKOOOM!!

Amid the thunder, Fearn’s enormous foot came crashing down where Jun-gyeong had been lying.

BOOOOM-!

Jun-gyeong gritted his teeth and rolled aside, narrowly avoiding the stomp.

RUMBLE- BOOM! KRAKOOOM!!

Lightning flashed down from the sky.
A violent bolt struck the lightning rod above the ferry’s wheelhouse, and at that instant, the bead in Jun-gyeong’s pocket reacted.
A cold vibration began at his thigh and raced up his spine into his brain.
The yellow bead given to him by the old woman’s spirit began resonating with his heartbeat, crackling with electricity.

“Yes.”

Across the deck, previously lit only by yellow sodium lamps and white searchlights, yellow currents began winding around Jun-gyeong’s body through the crimson karmic flames.
The falling rain evaporated before it could even touch him, forming a red mist.
The blood pouring from his wounds stopped, and with a grinding crack, he felt his displaced ribs shift back into place.

Jun-gyeong slowly rose to his feet.
Blue lightning erupted around his entire body as though setting him ablaze.
At the same time, yellow lightning slithered like snakes from beneath his feet across the deck.
The grin twisting Fearn’s face vanished, and for the first time, his instincts began screaming danger.

“Pain is pleasure, you said? Then enjoy it.”

Takahachi’s mind was in chaos.
Both Jun-gyeong, who had appeared from nowhere, and Fearn, who had sent such a monster flying outside with a single blow, looked like monsters to him.
Fearn seemed likely to win, but Takahachi couldn’t afford to relax.
No, he couldn’t trust Fearn.
A man who betrayed someone once could easily betray someone twice.

He had to hurry and finish what the onmyoji had instructed him to do.
The sacrifices had changed, of course, but whatever lurked beneath the sea was unlikely to care whether its offerings were Korean or Japanese.
Terrified, he shouted at the subordinate standing beside him.

“Grab the bodies!”
“H-Hai!”

Takahachi hoisted Ito’s corpse onto his shoulder, while one of his men picked up Jeong Dong-hyeok’s head from the floor.

“Take the body too.”
“Hai!”

Even as the blood-dripping corpse was lifted, the Saenara Gang thugs couldn’t bring themselves to interfere.

“If you don’t want to die too, follow me.”

The Saenara Gang members exchanged uneasy looks, then followed him into the corridor.
Once they rounded the corner and entered the cabin corridor thick with the stench of blood, Takahachi shouted again.

“If you want to live, grab one corpse from each room and follow me.”

No one answered, but they understood that he was planning something.
They scattered into the rooms, each picked up a corpse, and followed him.
Carrying a heavy corpse down the metal stairs, Takahachi headed toward the corner of the railing.
Then he threw the body into the sea.

Splash-

On the deck, crimson karmic flames spread across the floor around Jun-gyeong, and Fearn’s voice could be heard.

SHAAAAA- RUMBLE, BOOM! KRAKOOOM-!

Lightning crashed down and lit the deck for an instant, but the frantic Takahachi no longer had the attention to see what was happening between them.
He had something more important left to do.

“Throw the bodies into the sea.”

The gangsters and his subordinate who had followed him began throwing the corpses overboard.

“Good. That’s enough.”

His gaze returned to the deck.
A yellow light that hadn’t been there before was now flowing across it.
But none of that mattered anymore.

“Orc or whatever the fuck he is, that monster bastard’ll be dead soon too. This isn’t a world where the strong survive. The ones who survive are the strong.”

A sinister smile began spreading across his face.
And beneath the sea, something that had consumed the sacrifices stirred and opened its eyes.