Episode 10 – The Big Picture (1)
“Kuaaack! M-My hand…!”
Geumho realized his right wrist had vanished in the blink of an eye, and simultaneously, he couldn’t maintain his composure under the surging pain.
“Wh-What the. Sir Choe! Stop the car right now. I said stop the car!”
Panicked by Hajin’s urgent voice, Sir Choe attempted to slam on the brakes, but due to the long body of the limousine, the vehicle struck a nearby utility pole.
Screech! Crash!
“Kuhack. B-Blood!”
“Sin Geumho, pull yourself together! You can stanch the bleeding on the severed part with mana.”
Hajin and Geumho were both high-level Awakened, so they were capable of that much.
But.
“That might be a bit difficult? I played a little prank when I cut it just now. Haha.”
Wrapping Mukgi around his right hand, as he severed Geumho’s right wrist, he poured a small amount of Mukgi into the open wound.
Due to the violent nature of Mukgi, no matter how hard Geumho tried, the bleeding wouldn’t stop; instead, he was only wasting mana.
‘To be exact, it isn’t consuming mana but devouring it.’
“More importantly, you. How did you manifest mana just now? Have you already overcome the side effects from four years ago?”
‘Thanks to the Assimilation skill, they didn’t notice the demonic energy at all.’
“Do you have to ask to know? It should be obvious at a glance. But thinking about it now, you guys really give me every right to kill you. You tried to send your cute nephew, who can’t even use mana, to a dangerous place like the borderlands? The more I think about it, the more pissed I get.”
Stabbed by a momentary pang of conscience at the facts spat out like machine-gun fire, Hajin could only stammer and failed to give a proper answer.
“Th-That’s….”
“See, you have nothing to say too, right? That’s why you guys need to be beaten up.”
Thanks to Seojun’s over-the-top provocation, Hajin, who had managed to come back to his senses, swallowed dryly and warned his nephew.
“Huu, you may have just overcome the side effects, but you must know that facing a High Ranker like me is impossible. To think you’re so arrogant.”
While speaking, Hajin rubbed the ring on his ring finger, and from the ring emerged a Legendary-grade sword emanating a faintly red aura.
Then he gradually took his stance and glared at Seojun.
“Cheongeom Form 1, Jecheon Ilgeom (諸天一劍).”
Before anyone knew it, Hajin had already swung his sword from top to bottom, and the resulting blade wind instantly pierced through Seojun.
No, to be exact, it was just before piercing through.
Realizing that fact, Seojun hurriedly threw his body to the side and managed to avoid the attack.
‘Whew. As expected of a High Ranker, he’s definitely different….’
There wasn’t exactly a stat difference, but Hajin’s attack was sufficiently threatening.
“Hoo? Even though it was only Form 1, you dodged it.”
“It was so slow I was about to yawn. Don’t you have anything better?”
‘Is his trait incredibly good, or is he just strong?’
Dodging was easy, but it wasn’t something to be careless about, so he was merely intrigued.
On the other hand, Hajin, hearing the mockery, openly radiated killing intent and glared at his impudent nephew.
“I wonder if you’ll still be able to say such things after getting hit by this.”
He leisurely gripped his sword and raised it upright, beginning to boil and gather mana.
“Cheongeom Form 2, Cheonra Bungeon (天羅噴劍).”
The moment he tried to slice diagonally with his sword.
“Aren’t you embarrassed to say each and every name?”
Before Hajin could even take his stance, Seojun leaped into his embrace and smashed the opponent’s jaw with high strength.
Thwack!
“Kuek! Wh-What.”
Hajin, who had nearly lost consciousness for a moment, tried to get up to prepare for Seojun’s next attack, but.
Stagger.
Staggering and collapsing as his entire body’s strength gave out from a single punch of Seojun’s, Hajin belatedly realized that his level of force was vastly superior to theirs.
“H-Hold on!”
“Just take your beating like a good boy. Don’t waste your strength resisting for no reason.”
“That’s impossible! A trash bastard who couldn’t even raise a single point of mana!!”
Seojun looked down pitifully at Hajin, who was sitting sprawled out and shouting at the top of his lungs.
“Is that all you guys can say when you see me? I’m getting tired of even that kind of development now.”
As if he couldn’t even hear Seojun’s words, Hajin had to struggle to escape the current situation.
And soon he tried every struggle he could, but there was no mercy in Seojun’s fists.
Thwack!
“Are you dancing or something? If so, you dance terribly. Pfft.”
“I see… So that’s what happened. It wasn’t drugging him with sleeping pills, but you suppressing Manho directly and dragging him away. Hah, to think you hid such martial prowess all this time.”
Seojun gifted him with ridicule until the very end as he muttered in a daze.
“Instead of wasting page count spouting useless nonsense that takes up sixty-seven characters in a novel, just lie low. I’ll put you to good use, just like Manho.”
Having finished those words, Seojun knocked Hajin unconscious, and before anyone knew how he had gotten there, he approached Geumho, who was scrambling on two feet while barely holding his unstaunched severed hand.
“Huff! Huff. You trash bastard. If I just get back to the clan. Hup!”
Geumho had high HP stats befitting a High Ranker, but whether overwhelmed by the situation Seojun had created, he was panting heavily.
“Where are you going in such a hurry? Weren’t you going to play with me? Hee hee.”
Seojun, whose Agility stat surpassed even that of a High Ranker, leisurely followed behind Geumho with his hands clasped behind his back, as if taking a stroll.
“G-Get away! Have you ever seen such a sly bastard. How dare you hide your strength?”
“Is it normal to go around showing off your own strength? And I never really hid it. Maybe you guys just weren’t interested in me?”
Momentarily speechless at Seojun’s flawless rebuttal, Geumho soon seemed to think of something and spoke in a confident voice.
“Tch! The reason you could be so arrogant must be because you’re confident in your skills, but what are you going to do about this? You seem far too weak to face our clan, which you so desperately want to take revenge on.”
Since Geumho had an expression full of conviction, denying his words was difficult, and Seojun became purely curious about Geumho’s intentions.
“Why do you think that?”
When Seojun reacted to his words, an elated Geumho began to chatter to his heart’s content.
“From what I see, your Agility stat seems to be your main stat, but relying on that alone is no use when the clan is teeming with countless High Rankers.”
“Ah~ was that all? And here I was, needlessly scared.”
To Geumho, who didn’t know that Seojun’s stats in not just Agility but every category rivaled those of a High Ranker, it was a valid assertion.
“I’ll punish your oh-so-great clan fairly too. Sleep tight.”
Seojun withdrew the Mukgi he had infiltrated into Geumho’s body and stanched his bleeding.
‘They still have value as pawns, so it’d be troublesome if they died here.’
But perhaps because he had bled too much while fleeing, by the time Seojun acted, Geumho had already collapsed. Seojun lifted the unconscious Geumho and Hajin, who had fallen earlier, and loaded them into the back seat of the car.
“Did you say your name was Choe? Turn the car back the way we came.”
“Y-Yes! I’ll take you right away!”
Sir Choe, who had watched the entire process from the driver’s seat, had no choice but to obediently follow Seojun’s command while trembling in terror.
“Now, since you’ve worked hard, there should be a reward too, right?”
In the meantime, Seojun rummaged through the clothes of the unconscious ones, looking for anything useful.
“I’ll definitely take this ring…. Huh? What’s this?”
Having taken the subspace ring from Hajin, Seojun was able to discover a piece of paper from his bosom.
“March 2nd. 19:00, Tomb of the Nine Snakes? Is this all?”
‘Today is February 27th. So three days from now.’
Eyeing the paper, which only had a date, time, and place written on it, suspiciously, Seojun stowed it away in his bosom for now.
“The fox is fully plucked, so is the pig all that remains?”
Since Geumho was equipped with several items emitting a faint red aura, it was only natural to feel anticipation.
And that anticipation became reality.
“Wow~ You had this many Legendary-grade items? You’re even walking around with six subspace rings. Manho didn’t have stuff like this. You didn’t even share with your son and hogged it all to yourself. You truly live up to your stature.”
“But the Yeongmyeol Sword didn’t have any aura…. What grade is that?”
Equipment Rare grade and above faintly emitted auroras of various colors depending on their grade, but the Yeongmyeol Sword didn’t emit any aura at all. Seojun became all the more curious.
Though extremely curious about the grade of his main weapon, since there was nothing he could do about it now, he decided to focus on the current situation.
He hadn’t yet rummaged through the subspace rings, but he decided to be satisfied since there were already seven Legendary-grade items currently equipped on Geumho.
“Necklace, earrings, belt, ring, armor, shoes, and even a sword.”
“You’re basically covered head to toe in Legendary equipment.”
‘Since I’m already using the Yeongmyeol Sword, I’ll sell the sword… I can equip the rest.’
The level of equipment Geumho was wearing was so excessive that even Seojun, who was robbing him, felt a pang of conscience.
“So this is what they mean when they say the Cheongeom Clan is on another level?”
Though he didn’t see any Mythic-grade equipment, which was said to be one tier above Legendary, considering how difficult Legendary equipment was to obtain, he could truly feel the financial power of the Cheongeom Clan.
‘Well, there have only been five Transcendent-grade items discovered, after all.’
“Meanwhile, the fox only had one subspace ring and that suspicious piece of paper, nothing else.”
Setting aside the question of whether Geumho was excessive or Hajin was frugal for a moment, Seojun reviewed his plan.
“These two are very important figures within the clan, unlike Manho, so they won’t be able to take them lightly either….”
‘They’re the direct children of the Cheongeom Clan head, after all.’
Seojun’s birth mother, Sin Ayeong, was also the clan head’s direct child, but due to a certain incident, she was treated as if she didn’t exist in the clan, so that was hard to hope for.
Just thinking about the benefits he would gain using these two made Seojun’s heart swell.
“Ah! Before that, I should take care of the black box.”
Acting immediately, Seojun crushed the black box installed in the front of the vehicle with his fist.
‘In this plan, I’m playing the role of a fellow victim too.’
Seojun’s grand scheme was only just beginning.
***
Cheongeom Clan, 1st Training Ground.
A man with a dignified impression in his late forties sat catching his breath.
“Huu, is it still too much to use Form 6? My level clearly isn’t lacking. I can’t figure out the cause.”
Just as he was about to leave the training ground after finishing his training.
He was forced to halt by his secretary, who opened the training ground door and came running in a hurry.
“First Young Master. An urgent matter has arisen that I must report, so I have come to see you like this.”
“What has happened?”
She too seemed unable to understand the current situation, stammering.
“Th-that is… The Second Young Master and Third Young Master have reportedly been kidnapped by someone.”
“Hm? Both of them at the same time? They are fairly high-level Awakened themselves. Were they ambushed or something?”
Uncertain even at Yuseong’s valid reasoning, she soon got to the main point.
“We were unable to find out that much in detail. I’m sorry. More than anything, the kidnapper has sent a suspicious video to our clan, so I came to report this as I thought it would be best for you to check it first.”
“Hmm… Let’s check it here first.”
Playing the video on a smartphone, they could see Hajin and Geumho tied to chairs while unconscious, and Seojun, whose face they couldn’t even remember now.
Before their images, a mysterious voice flowed out.
“—Aah. Can you hear me well? I hope whoever is watching this video right now is someone of fairly high standing in the Cheongeom Clan. You’d need at least that level of status to comply with what I’m demanding.”
Listening to the frivolously laughing mysterious voice, the First Young Master, Sin Yuseong, fell into deep thought.
‘Where could it be? No matter how many enemies the Cheongeom Clan has, there shouldn’t be anyone who’d act this brazenly….’
“—Now. Before we begin, let me introduce myself, whom you’ll be seeing plenty of for the time being. I’m called Lumos. Nice to meet you.”
Since it was already a recorded video, Yuseong, who had been merely watching, paused the video for a moment, pointed to one side of the screen, and asked his secretary.
“Who is that young man at the far right of the screen? Was he related to the Cheongeom Clan?”
Racking her memory briefly at Yuseong’s question, she soon answered.
“Uh… Just a moment. Ah! That young man is the son of Sin Ayeong, who was expelled from the clan seven years ago, Sin Seojun. You know, the child who was called trash four years ago because he couldn’t raise his mana stat due to side effects.”
Recalling the events of four years ago at her reply, Yuseong was barely able to remember Seojun.
“Ah. I remember. Wasn’t he the child they tried to take back into the clan but withdrew because of mana-related side effects? But what relation does he have with those two….”
Yuseong, who didn’t even mention his younger sister Ayeong, looked at Seojun in the video with an expression as if he had seen something he shouldn’t have.
“It seems to be related to how Young Master Manho ended up going to the borderlands.”
“Then, the one over there is….”
Perhaps because he remembered Seojun’s past, Yuseong didn’t even treat him like a person.
“Yes. He was the child originally chosen to represent the clan among Young Master Manho’s generation to go to the borderlands.”
“But seeing as Manho is in the borderlands now, it seems something went wrong. Such a worthless fellow is only a burden to Manho. Huff, let’s just finish watching the video for now.”
Letting out a long sigh, Yuseong resumed the video.
“—I want two things. A Mythic-grade sword, the Cheonsal Sword, and an Exclusive Skill Book. These two. If you comply with my demands, I’ll release these three.”
At the absurd demand of the kidnapper in the video, Yuseong could barely hold back his anger for a moment.
“I had a feeling, but it truly was content not worth listening to. It seems like a waste of time, so identify the location in that video and report back to me again.”
Before the video even ended, Yuseong left the training ground, gave orders to his secretary, and headed to his bedroom.
But in the last part of the video, which they had carelessly stopped playing.
“—You probably think it’s not even worth listening anymore, right? But what can you do? Whether you comply with the demands or not. The next target is already decided, you see. Did you say Sin Yerin? The only child of the next clan head candidate, a strong contender for succession…. Puhahaha.”
It contained a warning about the next target.