<"Massacre cut short (Early Finish)"... Demon erases every survivor in the arena in 60 hours>
<Nova America Arena: "the most shocking debut in history... the 'special impact' we have been waiting for was in him all along">
<[OFFICIAL] Nova Arena's official selection: Demon wins 'Performance of the Arena' unanimously>
<The New York Times: "an aesthetics of violence that renders strategy meaningless; Demon was the special fighter Nova Arena has been waiting for">
<"NO MORE SURVIVORS!" The last 10 dug a trap, but Demon buried his enemies along with the trap itself>
<"The Demon from Japan!" The Japanese islands go wild... "the Demon who came over from the islands has conquered the American league">
<'Demon' takes the No.1 real-time search term on Japan's portals... "what lives in his swordsmanship is the soul of a samurai">
<China's Sina News: "the Demon is unmistakably Chinese... the deep principles of Chinese martial arts are coiled in his movement">
<Weibo real-time search term #TheDemonIsOneOfUs... experts say "that footwork and those forms are true martial learning rendered in virtual reality">
<BBC: "the Asian devil who shook the American league, and an unprecedented argument erupts over his true nationality">
<The terror hidden behind a mask... the Asian 'Demon' who upended NAA's landscape is breaking the rules of the game>
After match <Ashmoon Knight 193> ended, a flood of articles poured out.
The one who drew the most of the press's spotlight was, by far, Go Tae-min.
The Japanese Amateur League's first warrior to promote undefeated.
And in a survival match run as his debut, he had recorded an Early Finish for all to see and survived alone.
That showing of Go Tae-min's made him a star of the American Pro League overnight.
What had been decisive in particular was his bringing down Christopher, who had been building momentum by killing the league's heavyweights Juggernaut and Joaquin one after the other.
And there was a man watching all of that with regret.
"......Damn it. He went and made a scene in his debut after all."
Oh Hyeon-seok, Nova Arena's Korean Branch Director, replayed the match 4 highlight reel and let out a low sigh.
惡鬼.
The man on the screen was the handle itself.
Because he had roamed the jungle like a ghost, hunting down and killing every last remaining survivor one by one.
"Where on earth did something like that crawl out of?"
Privately, Oh Hyeon-seok had hoped the Demon would show the limit of his ability in this match.
It wasn't simply that it galled him to see a warrior out of the neighboring league going from strength to strength.
He had an exceptionally fine eye for gauging an opponent from a single movement.
And as Oh Hyeon-seok saw it, the Demon was the owner of a truly enormous talent.
That animal instinct, bringing down a named warrior like Christopher without a trace of formal schooling about him.
And on top of it, a vicious tenacity that refused to give up even at the most desperate moment and found a way to win in the end.
That sort of thing could not be bought and learned.
Oh Hyeon-seok watched the Demon swinging his blade indifferently on the screen and clicked his tongue.
"He'll get to the World League at the very least."
As the Korean branch's director, the fact that a prospect like that was flowering in somebody else's league, of all places, came at him painfully.
Knock, knock—
Just then his secretary came into the office along with a quiet knock.
In his hands was a tablet for the report.
"Director, this is the list of Legions newly registered this month."
Oh Hyeon-seok took the tablet and swept slowly down the list.
A faint smile hung at the corner of his mouth as he looked it over.
A rising number of Legions was good news. It meant the system was gradually taking hold in Korea too.
"Are you planning to visit all of them in person again this time?"
His secretary, checking the schedule beside him, asked.
Oh Hyeon-seok nodded as if it were obvious.
"A Legion head's disposition becomes that Legion's color. You have to see that color to see what the warriors who grow there are made of. These are things you can never grasp from the numbers written on a scrap of paper like this."
Out of habit he looked over the registered Legions' detailed entries one by one.
Then his finger stopped on one name.
Oh Hyeon-seok's brow narrowed.
"Huh?"
"......Is there some problem?"
"No, it's nothing. By the way, could you give me the detailed file on this Legion?"
His secretary brought the additional file he had prepared in advance up on screen and answered:
"Here it is. On paper there wasn't a single thing to fault, though?"
The conditions for founding a Legion are by no means easy.
A roster of 5 or more Pro License holders, proof of training facilities, and above all the specialist staff to underpin a warrior's performance.
A Legion is a body that must guarantee the best possible environment in exchange for a share of a warrior's fight purse. The founding standards and the review are bound to be that strict.
In that sense, Oh Hyeon-seok felt a strange dissonance looking at one Legion's name.
'Veil, is it...... the same name as the place the Demon is supposed to have joined. Simple coincidence?'
After sinking into thought for a moment, Oh Hyeon-seok tapped the tablet screen as if he had decided.
"This had better be the first place I visit. Let's see...... the address is Jungnang-gu."
"That's correct. Shall I try to coordinate the schedule?"
"No need to drag it out. Tell them I'll go tomorrow."
Even after his secretary bowed and left, Oh Hyeon-seok did not put the tablet down.
His gaze swept once more over the name written at the top of the list.
'There's no harm in checking.'
A strange premonition he couldn't account for was pricking at his sharp nerves.
***
The boisterous party had wound up.
Chae Geon-uk began clearing up, gathering the scattered empty bottles and plates with practiced hands.
Even in the middle of it, Go Tae-min couldn't take his eyes off the Waldstein Series.
At the sight of him carrying on like a child who had been given a toy, Chae Geon-uk let a laugh slip.
'He really is a peculiar one.'
By now he had known him 10 years.
The dissonance was still there: in the field, a 9th Clandestine Unit operative more vicious than anyone, and the moment he turned around, a man munching a hamburger with a harmless face.
All the more so watching him now, examining a blade with eyes pure enough to look stupid.
Chae Geon-uk smiled soundlessly and finished the washing up. Only when he set the last plate on the rack did he notice the silence of the empty living room.
That aside.
"Eun-jeong and So-yeon are a bit late."
Chae Geon-uk wiped his wet hands and checked the clock.
More time had passed than he thought.
"It'll be chilly, it being night."
They might call it June, but the night air was still fairly cold.
Chae Geon-uk picked up a jacket and left the lounge.
Then he started toward the stairs up to the roof, and faltered.
'Huh?'
The workroom door, which should of course have been shut, was open a sliver.
Chae Geon-uk's workshop, which took up the whole 3rd floor of the building, is divided broadly into three areas.
The reception room where he meets clients, the workroom where he collects information and processes it into something usable, and the lounge where they had been grilling meat until a moment ago.
A thin smile spread at the corner of Chae Geon-uk's mouth.
So-yeon had always been curious about what her father did. Coming back down from looking at the stars on the roof, she had clearly slipped into the workroom the way a sparrow can't pass a mill.
Putting on a deliberately stern voice, Chae Geon-uk pushed the door open and went in.
"So-yeon, I keep telling you to stay out of the workroom."
But what he met was not the innocent back of his daughter.
"......!"
Gooseflesh ran up his spine in an instant.
Inside the pitch-dark workroom, someone was sitting in a chair with the blue glow of several monitors at his back.
"Well, well, President Chae. I'd rather not have had to see you as well."
The man set down the tablet he had been holding and gave a sleazy smirk.
Chae Geon-uk's gaze went past him, to the corner of the workroom.
"Mmf, mmph!"
"D-Daddy......!"
His wife Yu Eun-jeong and his daughter Chae So-yeon, mouths covered, sunk down in the corner.
Beside them, big men with blue-steel knives stood like shadows.
The color drained out of Chae Geon-uk's face in an instant.
"What...... are you doing?"
Chae Geon-uk's voice trembled low.
The middle-aged man rose slowly from his seat and adjusted his tie.
"The information trade is like this, you know. Rather than paying a high price, it adds up better to just steal a little. So I thought I'd do some quiet work. But my luck was out. Of all things, your family had to come sightseeing at this hour."
At a gesture from the man, the big men holding his family pressed their blades closer.
The men in front of him were the sort with no compunction about stabbing a person. Provoke them needlessly and something irreversible would plainly happen.
Chae Geon-uk slowly raised both hands.
"Is it information you want? Or money? I'll hand over all of it. So...... would you please move that knife away first."
His voice trembled low.
To a man raised an orphan, his family was the whole world. For those two he would gladly have thrown away his own life.
But the middle-aged man strolled out at his leisure and shook his head.
Each time his dress-shoe heel struck the floor it rang out a regular click.
"I regret it, but I don't think that's going to work. The principle in this trade is not to leave witnesses alive."
The man shrugged and added:
"You know it too, President Chae. That being thorough is what keeps trouble from coming back."
"......!"
"Hands up and come over here slowly. One slip and I cut straight away."
Chae Geon-uk swallowed a trembling breath and lifted his feet.
As he moved, the blade of the big man holding his daughter pressed harder against the nape of her neck in warning.
Then Chae Geon-uk stopped his feet abruptly.
And he glanced sideways, throwing his gaze toward the workroom entrance.
"......?"
It was an extremely brief instant, but the middle-aged man did not miss that strange shift of the eyes.
Had someone else come into the workroom? In the moment the man, feeling an instinctive sense of crisis, turned his head toward the entrance with the window at his back.
CRASH—!
Along with a rupturing sound that tore the silence, the window behind the middle-aged man blew apart.
Through the scattering shards of glass, a pitch-black shadow shot in like a flash of light.
THUD! THUD-THUD! CRACK!
"Ugh!"
It happened in an instant.
The shadow that had come crashing through the window pulverized the face of the gang member who had been holding a knife to Chae So-yeon's throat.
As the man, unable even to scream, was driven into the floor, the shadow rushed straight to the one beside him.
CRUNCH!
"Aaaagh!"
This time the arm of the man throttling Yu Eun-jeong's throat was bent at a grotesque angle.
Go Tae-min slammed his shoulder into the chest of the screaming man and sent him flying, then used the recoil to drive a hard strike up into the jaw of the middle-aged man behind him.
"Kuh!"
The middle-aged man went sprawling backward, and the distance from the hostages opened up.
Only a few seconds.
The murderous air that had taken hold of the workroom turned into unseemly groaning.
"......Haa, haa."
Chae Geon-uk gathered his daughter and his wife into his arms with trembling hands.
The two of them, who had been frozen with terror, burst into the tears they had been holding back once they were in his arms.
"Waaaaaahhh! Daddyyyy, it wash sho shcaryyyy......!"
Chae So-yeon buried her face in Chae Geon-uk's chest and poured out bitter tears.
"Honey, I'm sorry. You told us not to come in without asking, and we just......"
Yu Eun-jeong too was white as a sheet and couldn't finish.
Chae Geon-uk soothed them in a cracked voice.
"No, it's all right. You and So-yeon did nothing wrong at all. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all of it."
Even after stroking his daughter's back with trembling hands and gripping his wife's shoulder, it took a long while before he could finally calm down.
Before long Chae Geon-uk turned his head to Go Tae-min.
"......Thank you, truly, for helping. Tae-min."
"Nothing to thank me for. I had to earn that Korean beef I ate."
"How did you know?"
"You know how it is. My instincts are good. It had gotten far later than the time my sister-in-law and So-yeon said they'd be back, so I took a look out the window just in case. And there were these black sedans lined up prettily in front of the building."
Then he nudged the gang member sprawled on the floor with his foot.
"So I came up just in case, and sure enough. Having a proper club meetup, are we. Who exactly are these people?"
Chae Geon-uk looked down at the middle-aged man collapsed on the floor with cold eyes and opened his mouth.
"Managing Director Jo, an executive at JH Capital. He's the bastard who bought information about the Guryong-dong redevelopment off me a while back."
"Ah, I remember that man. The mood was pretty warm back then. Why the sudden circus?"
"He seems to have made a nice profit off the information I passed him and got greedy. Rather than paying high prices for information every time, he must have meant to strip my servers whole and monopolize the source. And then run into So-yeon and Eun-jeong on the way."
"Ah, so he thought paying list price was a waste and decided to push the owner out and ride for free?"
"That's about it."
Go Tae-min shook his head as if dumbfounded.
There are people like this wherever you go.
The sort who mistake a kindness for a right, who take the hand you offered first as a sign of weakness and stab you in the back.
The smile faded slowly from Go Tae-min's mouth.
In the place where his clownishness had been wiped away, a cold killing intent had settled instead.
"But what are these guys into?"
"Drugs, human trafficking, loan-sharking...... anything that makes money. Lately there's talk of organ trafficking too."
Words frightening enough just to hear came out of Chae Geon-uk's mouth.
Go Tae-min snorted.
"Cleaning that up will be satisfying. Hyung, get me a few big sacks. Along with JH Capital's address."
At those words Chae Geon-uk's eyes trembled.
There was no way a man who had crossed the line between life and death alongside him wouldn't know what the things Go Tae-min was asking for meant.
"......You're going to kill all of them?"
A heavy silence settled over the inside of the workroom.
Instead of answering, Go Tae-min adjusted his grip on the knife worn against his chest.
The smoothly maintained blade drank the moonlight and gave off a bluish gleam.
He looked down at the middle-aged man and said it coldly.
"That's how we were taught. The both of us."