Jo Pyeong was the Commander of the Black Snake Society.
He hid his body in the darkness, bathed in the faint light of the waning moon.
"Kuaaaack!"
"Keok...?"
Endless screams echoed from the distance.
They were all the sounds of his subordinates dying.
Now, even those had become so infrequent that he could barely hear them anymore.
It was proof that not many of his subordinates were left.
The screams of Dong Pal, Nadal, and Ganghae, who had joined with him, were likely mixed in there somewhere.
Perhaps he was now the only Head left alive.
Now, the Nameless Righteous Swordsman would come for him.
He was approaching, slaughtering all the rest.
Nothing, no method, no countermeasure could protect them.
Even though they had anticipated and prepared.
It was his turn soon.
He didn't want to die yet.
All he did was extort a little money from others, engage in human trafficking a few times, run a small business with women and alcohol... and kill a few creatures that were barely human.
To think he would lose his precious life for just that.
It's unfair.
Where was there such an unfair retribution in the world? There were still so many people in the world worse than him, even those who had killed tens, hundreds of people, were living well! To think he had to be killed for doing just a few bad things.
The world was unfair.
It was always the weak who were easy targets.
The Nameless Righteous Swordsman must be leaving those other villains alone because they were strong.
Jo Pyeong endlessly spouted sophistry in his mind, cursing the Nameless Righteous Swordsman.
But he didn't realize himself that it made no sense.
Just as most villains do.
'Should I run?'
For a moment, the thought crossed his mind, but Jo Pyeong soon shook his head.
Run?
Running away was no different from losing his life.
How much time had it taken to build this foundation! He couldn't do that.
He resolved once more to take the last remaining enforcers and defend Paradise Village's final stronghold to the end.
Wasn't this a place with only one path leading in and out?
Due to the terrain, it was impossible to launch a surprise attack or sneak in.
The back path led to Paradise Manor, the estate of the Black Snake Society's Leader, Bang Po-yeom.
In other words, the only approach to this place was the single alley in front.
If they could just defend that properly, they could stop the Nameless Righteous Swordsman, and perhaps even capture or kill him.
"Uwaaaaaaaaack!"
Just then, a scream as loud and terrible as all the previous screams combined reached the place where Jo Pyeong was hiding.
With that, the death screams finally ceased.
Now, 'he' would come.
The one who trampled the enforcers as he pleased in the name of righteousness, the Nameless Killing Demon, would come here.
Yes! Come on! You son of a bitch!
"I'll kill you!"
The Unorthodox Factions have the advantage when fighting in the dark.
The Nameless Righteous Swordsman might have chosen the dark night to easily catch the Unorthodox Faction members, but the enforcers were born in the dark and had lived in the dark their whole lives.
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No matter how much of a Murim Master he was, Jo Pyeong was confident.
Was that all?
The ones remaining here were on a different level from the riff-raff who had just died.
Though they were low-level, they were all men who had learned some degree of Martial Arts from the Murim Sects.
The White Tiger Group and the Blue Wolf Gate had fallen to an unexpected attack.
I'll show him that the Black Snake Society is different... huh!? Already?
The moment Jo Pyeong steeled his resolve.
A black shadow that looked like a person flew in through the passage.
In an instant!
Swish!
With a sound like a school of salmon cutting through water, dozens of arrows flew through the air.
The bowstrings were released all at once, as planned.
Thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack!
The shadow fell to the ground, riddled like a honeycomb.
Seeing that, Jo Pyeong realized it wasn't the Nameless Righteous Swordsman.
It couldn't have been this easy.
Whoosh.
Just then, another black shadow flew towards them through the alley.
Again, dozens of arrows flew and tore the shadow to rags.
Of course, this one, too, was not the real person, but a corpse.
'Is he waiting for our arrows to run out?'
Pfft, he couldn't help but snort at the absurdity.
'Too bad for you.
We have more than enough arrows to shoot all night long.
What will you do now? Nameless Righteous Swordsman.'
Just as a triumphant smile graced his lips!
"Keuk, kuaaak!"
One of the enforcers hiding in an abandoned house screamed.
He was dead.
'How!?'
They were watching the only passage leading here.
He could get on the roof, but moving that way would be more dangerous.
Wouldn't he be directly exposed in the moonlight?
There were definitely enforcers positioned on the roofs, watching at all times.
If he had moved that way, it's impossible that the enforcers wouldn't have seen him.
'Just where did he get in from!?'
While Jo Pyeong was panicking, the last of the enforcers continued to die.
"Kuaak!"
"Ugh!"
"Keok!"
The death cries were getting closer and closer to him.
There was no longer time to wonder how.
Jo Pyeong immediately came out from his hiding place and stood under the moonlight.
In the meantime, the final cries of the enforcers continued to ring out.
But even those soon died down.
"Damn it... are they all dead except for me......"
Originally, that was the signal.
When he came out of hiding, all the enforcers were supposed to come out to the central open space at the same time and form a battle formation for a direct confrontation with the Nameless Righteous Swordsman.
"Is no one there?"
Complete silence.
No one stepped forward.
No,
Thump, thump.
There was one person.
A Masked Man with a slender build.
It was 'him', revealing himself under the moonlight with a leisurely stride.
"Are you the Nameless Righteous Swordsman?"
"..."
The Nameless Righteous Swordsman simply approached Jo Pyeong quietly, without any answer.
"W-what is it that you want?"
"..."
Again, there was no reply.
Jo Pyeong tried to say something else, but he couldn't speak another word.
It was because he had met the Nameless Righteous Swordsman's eyes head-on.
Since joining the Black Snake Society, he had seen the eyes of many people, but he had never seen eyes so full of 'nothingness'.
It wasn't something like emotionlessness.
Nothingness.
There was just nothing there.
Nothing that could be considered human was contained in the Nameless Righteous Swordsman's eyes.
"Shit..."
Sssshhh, thwack.
Jo Pyeong's body was split exactly in half from the head down.
The blood, entrails, and brain matter that spilled from his corpse defiled Paradise Village.
At the same time.
Flash!
A pure white purifying light that cleansed Paradise Village rose up from the Nameless Righteous Swordsman's body.
In that bright light, the Nameless Righteous Swordsman's appearance was revealed in full view, if only for a brief moment.
The Nameless Righteous Swordsman.
The Danri Family's Stablehand, So-sam.
To be more precise.
It was Dong Bongsu, who had just reached Level 7.
After setting his sights on the Unorthodox Factions.
Dong Bongsu was truly busy.
It was because there were so many things to prepare.
Although he had killed Jangho and Leveled Up, he was still much weaker than the enforcers.
Naturally, just as he had done on Earth, a lot of time and effort went into the preparation process.
He had to meticulously grasp the movements of the Unorthodox Factions and individual enforcers, and decide on a hunting priority among them.
Even after that, he had to carefully craft a hunting plan, considering various surrounding circumstances.
Only when not even a sliver of a chance of failure remained would Dong Bongsu actually set out to hunt.
He diligently roamed the markets of Soaring Sun, gathering information.
Among that information was some about the Black Snake Society that he had obtained from the Ruffians he killed last time, but that information was already widely known and not very helpful.
For about a week, he put in the effort to intensively gather information about the Unorthodox Factions.
But.
With his identity as the mute So-sam and being all alone, there was a limit to his information gathering.
The few things he did find out were either too trivial to be of any use, or too general to be meaningful.
The most he could use was roughly knowing the streets where the enforcers were mainly active and the general location of their lairs.
There was no great meaning in knowing such things.
It might have been different if he had the skill to invade their lairs alone, but that was impossible at Level 2.
Still, he couldn't just endlessly focus on investigating.
At this rate, he felt like half a year, or maybe even a few years, would pass with him just investigating.
In the end, he changed his method.
Startling the Snake by Beating the Grass.
Beating the grass to startle the snake.
It's an expression often used to mean failing by acting rashly when one is not yet prepared for something.
However, the original meaning of this four-character idiom was completely different.
One of the basics of ancient Chinese military strategy.
It was a stratagem included in the Thirty-Six Stratagems.
To catch a hidden snake, you beat the grass to make the snake crawl out of its hole and then catch it.
In other words, it wasn't a proverb with a negative meaning, but a tactic.
Dong Bongsu stopped investigating the inconspicuous 'snakes'.
Instead, he beat the 'bushes' where many snakes were likely to live.
One day.
After thoroughly disguising himself, he went to a gambling den that was secretly operated underground.
And he swept the tables clean.
They might not have noticed the first or second time, but as it kept happening, the snakes finally bared their fangs.
An enforcer attacked him as he was leaving the gambling den.
Not knowing that Dong Bongsu was a 'Snake Hunter'.
The first snake sacrificed in this way was a low-ranking enforcer from the White Tiger Group.
In fact, Dong Bongsu didn't even know that the gambling den was run by the White Tiger Group.
All he knew was that there was a gambling den there.
That was it.
Because of that incident, Dong Bongsu was placed on the White Tiger Group's Black Book under the name 'Gambling Demon' and began to be pursued, thus achieving his initial objective.
And so it began.
The bloody counter-pursuit of slaughter.