#81
The man stepped back one step. While staring intently at his opponent whose face was half-covered by a mask, he didn’t forget to maintain his guard. It was dark so he wasn’t certain, but those eyes and that voice. He definitely remembered. It was definitely that man who had been the only one to chase him right to his chin during the second incident last time.
The culprit rapidly turned his mind while not letting go of the broken sword in his hand. But even at such behavior, Ha-seong just chuckled as if he had already expected it.
“…How did you do it?”
After a short standoff, the man spoke for the first time.
“Oh, so you can talk too.”
Ha-seong widened his eyes as if surprised. He had thought the guy would run away excitedly like last time, but surprisingly he was responding quite calmly.
“If you’re curious, I’ll tell you. But first, just a moment.”
Ha-seong opened his inventory and took out an item. Then his opponent gripped the already broken sword once more. At the quick defensive posture, Ha-seong showed his right palm. It was an attitude meant to reassure in his own way.
[Using item ‘Silence Snail Shell’. For the next 2 hours, people within a certain radius will not be able to hear the owner’s conversation.]
“There are probably few people passing through here at this hour, but just in case.”
“What I heard definitely wasn’t your voice.”
The culprit glanced once at the snail shell Ha-seong had casually placed on the ground. Then he demanded an explanation from him once more.
“Right. What you heard was Lee Seung-woo’s voice. To be precise, a recorded voice.”
“Recording?”
Ha-seong put his hand into his jacket pocket again and took something out. It was a small cube-shaped black object. Ha-seong pressed down firmly on the top surface of the object.
‘Yeah. I didn’t get hurt today either. How long are you really going to keep asking?’
‘I understand. I love you too.’
Then from the small device flowed Lee Seung-woo’s voice that the man had heard earlier. The culprit showed signs of slight agitation and stepped away from Ha-seong.
“I used to collect quite a lot of strange objects from dungeons for business back in my day.”
Ha-seong waved the object in front of the culprit as if showing off.
“Is it a recorder?”
“It’s not just a simple recorder. This is an item.”
The black cube Ha-seong was holding was an item called ‘The Living Talk Too Much’. This item came as a set of two total – the other one was a red cube shape. You place the item in your desired location, link it with the black cube Ha-seong now held in his hand, and the preparation for use was complete.
It was a rare among rare items that recorded and stored all sounds and movements within a 1km radius of where the red cube was placed, and you could check the information stored in the red cube in real time through the black cube.
“I was originally going to sell this to ‘We’ll Sell Anything’ too, but I kept it thinking it might come in handy someday.”
This item was usually used during dungeon raids by placing the red cube near monsters, then using the black cube to understand that monster’s movements or attacks to improve combat efficiency. Ha-seong hadn’t known he would use this rare item in a place like this.
“That means…”
“All the actions you’ve been secretly hiding in this alley watching Lee Seung-woo have been recorded too. Of course, Lee Seung-woo’s voice you just heard was also stored in the red cube.”
The man clenched his fist tightly. He couldn’t shake the feeling of being completely outmaneuvered. He had been confident that he had grasped all of Lee Seung-woo’s movements during this time. The target’s routine, voice and clothing style, every small detail. He thought he had figured out everything to kill him perfectly.
Not knowing that he himself was being figured out.
“…What exactly are you? Are you from the management bureau?”
This man is dangerous. He could tell instinctively. It was the same that day on the rooftop. Since he was confident in speed alone, he had thought he could somehow escape. But seeing the guy continuously chase him right to his chin, he felt goosebumps for the first time. In reality, without help, he probably would have already been caught by that man.
“Well. You know, before asking someone else, you should introduce yourself first.”
Ha-seong shrugged his shoulders. The sense of crisis he had felt that day on the rooftop was trying to raise its head once more. There was no time. Rather than trying to handle things himself here now, it would be better to do like that time…
“Ah, wait a moment before that.”
It was when the culprit was rapidly turning his mind and about to take action. Ha-seong put the black cube back in his pocket and quickly swung his right hand forward.
“What the…”
“I’ll take this with me.”
It was instantaneous. In that moment of not even a few seconds, the culprit’s necklace was somehow in Ha-seong’s hand. The silver wing-shaped necklace sparkled under the streetlight.
“If you call your friend with this like that time, it would be a bit troublesome for me. The most cowardly thing in a fight is ganging up.”
“How, how did you know about that too?”
The culprit’s voice was slightly more agitated than before. Meanwhile, Ha-seong’s composure only deepened.
“Well, when I thought about it, the answer came out. At that time you were caught by me and couldn’t have used a phone or other communication device… so how did your colleague come there?”
That day the culprit was wearing rags to cover his body like now and all he had was one gun. Then how did his colleague know to come help? If it wasn’t a common communication device like a phone, he must definitely have been carrying something that could send signals.
A sword and clothes covering his entire body. There shouldn’t have been anything else he was carrying, but there was exactly one thing that flashed through Ha-seong’s mind.
The necklace the guy had been wearing continuously since the first incident. He couldn’t ignore the possibility that it was connected to something that sent signals. And seeing that guy’s reaction just now, he knew that the hypothesis he had bet half on was correct.
“You’re impressive.”
The man let out a snicker and put his hand inside his jacket. Then he took out something familiar and thrust it toward Ha-seong.
“I’ll praise you for tracking me down and figuring out about that necklace. But that’s as far as it goes.”
Ha-seong looked impassively at the gun barrel pointed at him. And that was the moment. The culprit pulled the trigger just like that. The bullet flew toward Ha-seong’s face along with the sound of passing through a silencer.
But the bullet that flew in with great momentum couldn’t even touch a single hair on Ha-seong’s head and fell with a thud after hitting something.
“This guy keeps shooting guns. Sorry, but the gunshot wounds I got from you guys still throb sometimes?”
Ha-seong’s leisurely deployed shield had deflected the bullet. Even if he had been careless then, now was different. There was no reason to be careless, nor any intention to be.
Tch, thinking that guns wouldn’t work, the culprit quickly made the decision to throw away the gun and lunged his body at Ha-seong. He seemed to be planning to go with hand-to-hand combat rather than using weapons.
“Right. By nature, if you’re a man, you should fight with fists. Don’t you think?”
Ha-seong lightly dodged the heavy punch the culprit swung and retreated backward. Since it was a narrow alley to begin with, there were limits to moving his body freely. But he had no intention of continuing to dodge here and there.
Ha-seong quickly changed trajectory to the right to avoid the incoming punch. Then he raised his fist high toward the guy’s back.
But whether he read the attack pattern, the culprit pivoted his body largely with his left foot as the axis. But Ha-seong wasn’t flustered. He just raised the corners of his mouth and strongly swept the guy’s left leg with his right foot, toppling him.
“Urgh.”
At the unexpected counterattack, the culprit fell backward.
“Ah, maybe because it’s been a while, this is really fun.”
Ha-seong dusted off his hands and flashed a smile at the fallen culprit. But the guy quickly got back up and assumed a fighting stance.
“Not bad.”
The man crouched low with both fists clenched tightly like a boxer. Then he lunged his body at Ha-seong.
[Using trait, telekinetic skill ‘Psychic Magnet’ (S).]
That was the moment. Ha-seong’s eyes flashed as he stretched his right hand to the side. Then the food waste bin placed at the end of the alley slowly moved following Ha-seong’s gesture.
Ha-seong swung his right hand and made the object he had pulled with telekinesis hit the guy directly. The culprit who had been running with both fists firmly clenched was properly struck in the head by the trash bin. With a dull reverberation, the trash bin fell to the ground.
It wasn’t only the trash bin that fell to the ground. The culprit let out a single groan and collapsed to the ground on his knees, clutching his head.
“…Urgh.”
Red blood began to trickle down from the man’s head. He wiped the blood flowing to his forehead once and struggled to raise his head to stare at Ha-seong approaching.
“You, you definitely said to fight with fists… how cowardly.”
“Ah, that? Sorry, but where are there methods in fighting? If you win, that’s all that matters.”
Ha-seong crouched down on his knees in front of the culprit.
“Well, I’m sorry it turned out like I deceived you, but there’s someone waiting for me like a dog that needs to poop, so I have to go quickly.”
“What does that…”
“You’ll understand when you sleep and wake up. I’ll explain everything then. Baek Sa-jin. Or should I call you the son of Baek Seong-hyeon?”
At Ha-seong’s words, the man’s eyes widened. He was showing the most agitation of all the expressions he had shown so far. He wanted to shout how he knew that name, but his mouth just wouldn’t open. His struck head throbbed and his vision, stained with red blood, began to fade dimly.
Like that, Baek Sa-jin’s vision gradually went dark.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
