novelraw Chapter 34 : Cyber Psycho (3)
Chapter 34 : Cyber Psycho (3)
Chapter 34: Cyber Psycho (3)
The outermost edge of the bottommost district.
If one were to describe this place—
it was an entertainment district that boasted the tremendous achievement of letting numerous troubled souls sniff incense smoke from behind a folding screen.
Even the most hopeless lives that frequented brothels like a revolving door hesitated to set foot here.
And for good reason.
It was the most reliable route to ringing the bell on one’s life.
The Stiletto Club, operated by the Monterrey Gang—one pillar of the Ten Gang Alliance—was also located here.
As one could tell just from the location description, this was not an ordinary club where people merely shook their asses.
After all, gangs suffered from a congenital condition that made them nauseous whenever they ran legitimate businesses.
“Ghhhhh…….”
The guard groaned as he tried to stop the bleeding from his severed wrist. He had looked at me sideways, so I kindly swung my blade.
Thunk.
Something fell with a light sound.
The place where an ear should have been was empty. Several thin streams of blood spurted out in little dribbles, like an old man’s leaking urine.
“Aaagh……! Aaaah… aaagyaaaahhk!”
Lee Taebaek opened his umbrella to block the spray of blood. The nice thing about noise was that it drowned out screams.
Still, it hurt the ears.
Slash, thud—
I evened things out symmetrically.
Two streams of fresh blood ran down along what would have been sideburns and met at the tip of the jaw. The guard became deaf in an instant, so absurdly fast it felt hollow.
“Oh? Still got some fire in your eyes.”
“Ughk… you bas—….”
“So even a lackey who just plays doorman wants to keep his gang pride, huh.”
Smack!
“Ghk!”
“Skull back to position.”
The guard rubbed his blood-soaked cheek and did as Lee Taebaek told him.
“Oh? Not lowering your hand? Want me to cut off the remaining one too?”
“S-stop! I won’t resist, so stop! Stop hitting me! No—please stop hitting me!”
“You were probably a school bully back in your student days. How does it feel to be the victim now? Getting some mirror therapy?”
“…I’ve never gone to school, so I wouldn’t know.”
“So you’re pulling a preemptive block. Fine, I’m the only bad bastard here.”
“…….”
“Want to die?”
Lee Taebaek clicked his tongue shortly and folded his umbrella. Then he turned his head toward the club entrance.
♬-
Even before stepping inside, Lee Taebaek was able to experience the internal chaos in advance.
Flash!
Multicolored light spilled out of the entrance, briefly draping itself over his vision before blinking out again and again.
Boom boom—
A throbbing vibration traveled up through the soles of his feet.
Because of the music and cheers, the red carpet laid out to welcome customers writhed like living cavernous tissue.
A wave of frenzy was surging just beyond the entrance.
“I’m visiting a club here when I’ve never even been to one in my past life.”
Stay inside for just ten minutes and my eardrums would probably burst. Maybe I should sign up for cybernetic body insurance.
A joke. Unless I suddenly came down with pancreatic cancer, I had no intention whatsoever of undergoing augmentation.
‘Even if it’s considered normal in this world.’
To Lee Taebaek, an outsider, it was a procedure that instinctively evoked revulsion.
Was it really normal to cut off perfectly fine limbs and replace them with machines? This wasn’t Lego.
And besides, in a near-future era like this, living and fighting with an entirely organic body was the pinnacle of romance.
Anyway.
“To think I’d come to a club I never even got to visit on Earth…….”
Muttering, Lee Taebaek shifted his gaze.
Feeling the razor-sharp look, the guard flinched and shrank his shoulders.
“Which room is Baron Marlow in.”
He was the manager of this club, and also one of the Monterrey Gang’s three top executives.
“P-please spare me.”
“That wasn’t an answer to my question.”
Abigail Baron Marlow.
The notable thing was that he was extremely fond of men.
“My masculinity will die!”
The Baron was a man. That is to say, he was a homosexual.
“You’re something else. With one hand chopped off and your ears gone, you’re worried about your masculinity first?”
“A hand and ears can be replaced with prosthetics, but a man’s life as a man is only one, isn’t it.”
Lee Taebaek was dumbfounded. If Confucius had heard that, he would’ve burst out of his coffin.
“You’re not thinking about the cost of prosthetics?”
“Compared to masculinity, it’s cheap.”
“For a gang member, you’ve got quite the silver tongue.”
“Please… please spare me.”
“But there’s something you’re mistaken about.”
Lee Taebaek’s eyes sank coldly.
“If you tell me which room Baron Marlow is in, your dick gets cut off. If you don’t tell me, you get your head cut off right here.”
I had come to verify the results of my past efforts.
And it was about time to clean up the district anyway.
…To be a bit more honest, I also admitted that Ban held no small share of the reason.
In a lawless world, justification was everything.
‘Ban’s sacrifice became the justification.’
Monterrey had touched the Baekbaek Order.
That gave me the justification to exact corresponding retribution upon the gang. In the end, it was thanks to Ban.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
‘Debts of grace and resentment must be repaid.’
The duty of one who had become a cult leader.
And I possessed the power to do so.
In a short period of time, Lee Taebaek had grown at a pace that even surprised himself.
His self-assessment—that he could take on a gang boss in a one-on-one duel—was a subjective judgment backed by ample grounds.
But that was only in a one-versus-one scenario.
Before a mob beating, even the strongest fell.
His subconscious rang an alarm bell. Since his foundation was Siesta assassination techniques—ones he himself was unaware of—it warned him to avoid fighting multiple opponents whenever possible.
His conscious mind also notified its owner. If he barged into the wrong room and the Baron issued an emergency external call, things would become troublesome.
Of course, he had already thought of an alternative.
But no matter what, the plan required him to buy some time alone.
And the prerequisite for that was this interrogation.
“……”
Even under threat, the guard only rattled his lips like a large washbasin pot. There was no sign of them opening at all.
He had realized it too.
If he spat out the information, his usefulness would evaporate on the spot.
After that, like his colleagues, he would be envisioning a future where he turned into dew on a blade.
‘For a gang from the alliance, you’re not completely braindead.’
Unfortunately, his matchup luck was terrible.
Of all people, his opponent was Lee Taebaek.
And one who had mentally armed himself with concepts optimized for a psycho.
On top of that, it was the very moment when the energy of a spiritual medicine had just settled into his lower abdomen.
-Ding.
[You have consumed the Experience Accumulation Spiritual Medicine]
Description: A commercial-grade secret spiritual medicine that brings together Lake City’s cutting-edge technology and the time-honored mysteries of the Sacheondang Clan. When used, experience gain increases by 100% for 3 hours.
‘Experience Accumulation Spiritual Medicine’ cannot be used more than once at a time.
[The EXP x2 Event has begun!]
[Time Limit: 17:00 ~ 21:00 (3 hours)]
I hadn’t expected the spiritual medicine’s effect to be displayed like this. Should I consider it a possessor’s perk? Either way, it was a convenient function for Lee Taebaek.
Swoosh.
Lee Taebaek dismissed the status window and looked back at the guard. Sensing the sudden change in momentum, the guard flinched.
Then, as if retracting his long silence, he hurriedly opened his mouth.
“R-room eight……! The Baron is there.”
Lee Taebaek readily nodded and held the blade in reverse. At a glance, it looked as if he were about to sheath it.
“Let’s live a good life.”
“Yes. Of course—.”
“In Valhalla.”
“……?!”
Lee Taebaek’s shoulder blurred as it moved. That was the last thing the guard ever saw.
[You have obtained 1,673 EXP.]
[EXP 100% Event has occurred.]
[You have obtained an additional 1,673 EXP.]
[Special rewards will be granted upon goal completion!]
The corpses used their bellies as brushes to draw vivid red lines along the roadside. Lee Taebaek dragged the two bodies under a streetlight, all the way to a pile of trash.
“Hoo…….”
Lee Taebaek wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Then he squatted in front of them and stretched out his arms.
A moment later, he stood up. Hands on his waist, he admired his handiwork.
“Hm.”
He moved the corpses’ arms to make them look like they were forming a heart together. A couple was born. This would draw far less attention than leaving them sprawled right at the entrance.
“……?”
Leaving behind a brief sense of satisfaction, Lee Taebaek suddenly began scanning the surroundings.
It was because suppressed moans were coming from the darkness of the alley. They sounded almost like animals crying.
‘…A male–male couple.’
They seemed too busy heating up their bodies to notice the disturbance at all.
Thanks to them, the dead guards could also be disguised as a male–male couple without any sense of incongruity.
At that moment, a man noticed Lee Taebaek. He vulgarishly flicked the tongue piercing in his mouth like a piece of hard candy.
‘Fuck.’
When Lee Taebaek shot killing intent at him, the man hurriedly averted his eyes. A deep sigh welled up from within.
If this was how it was going to be, I should’ve really just developed some Stardew-like farming healing game instead.
Deep regret surged up, but what could be done. The iron rule of possession stories was that they always dropped you into a trash game…….
“No, that’s not it.”
Recons was absolutely not a trash game.
If anything, it was the opposite.
It would become a game that presented a new horizon to the slackened game industry. I was proud of that, and confident. However, before that, it seemed necessary to conduct one round of ‘fire’ cleansing in the Monterrey Gang’s territory.
‘If this place were to get flagged by game rating review.’
The release itself could be scrapped.
Just imagining it made my vision spin.
‘That must not happen. That alone must not…….’
It wasn’t something to boast about, but to be called a game-crazed madman, you had to be serious to at least this degree.
“Perfect timing for motivation.”
Soon, Lee Taebaek went down the stairs. The music pounded up to his crown, making it throb.
[Sudden Quest: Raid the Stiletto Club]
[Quest Reward: Unique Skill ‘Emergency Inspection’]
The interior of the Stiletto Club exceeded everything Lee Taebaek had imagined. It was louder than imagined, and far more depraved than imagined.
People moved like mad, as if they had entrusted not only their bodies but their souls to the club music.
On one side, multiple couples tangled together like bushes, biting, sucking, and indulging themselves. True to Lake City, the compositions of the couples were diverse.
Male–female, female–female… going into further detail would be bad for everyone’s mental health, so let’s skip it.
They pressed their chests together and parted their overlapping lips. Saliva stretched out in sticky parabolic arcs, seemed to end—then they immediately plunged into round two.
“…….”
This place was a crucible where desire was condensed.
With a complicated expression, Lee Taebaek plunged into the crowd. Flailing as if peeling cobwebs off his arms, he crossed through the club.
At last, he arrived at the cocktail bar set up at the end of the first floor. Beside it were stairs leading up to the second floor. Lee Taebaek slightly lifted his head.
The second floor was a balcony-style layout. A few people leaned their arms on the railing, looking down at the crowd below.
He moved a bit further. The bartender, who had been shaking a shaker to the beat of the music, jerked his chin.
“Hey, you there. Masked guy.”
The bartender wore straight-line goggles. A cybernetic body. An absurdly expensive piece—far beyond what a bartender’s salary could afford.
Thus, Lee Taebaek reached the conclusion that he wasn’t an ordinary bartender. Some kind of checkpoint inspector. It seemed that to go up to the second floor, one had to get past this bartender.
“Don’t recognize your face. First time at the Stiletto Club?”
“…….”
When Lee Taebaek silently nodded, the bartender grinned, revealing gold teeth, and slid a glass over.
“Then here, welcome drink.”
A gasoline-like smell seeped up from the cocktail glass. Lee Taebaek gave the glass a brief look, then shifted his gaze.
“There’s a fire.”
“Huh……?”
At the abrupt remark, the bartender froze with a blank expression.
“W-where!?”
Flustered, the bartender blurted out something only a person in charge would say. It was the moment Lee Taebaek’s prediction hit the mark.
In that opening, Lee Taebaek lifted his upper garment. With a restrained motion, he drew the Python.
“Right here.”
Lee Taebaek said as he aimed the muzzle at the glass.
Since ancient times, alcohol had been a cause of fires. Liquor that reeked of gasoline was a perfect accelerant.
Bang—!
With a low, suppressed gunshot, the cocktail glass exploded. The next moment, the flames spat out by the Python leapt onto the spilled alcohol on the bar table.
The bartender swallowed the scream that had risen to his throat and reached his hand under the bar table.
The Python didn’t wait. Rapid shots followed. Shell casings clattered against the bar table.
[You have obtained 2,182 EXP.]
[EXP 100% Event has occurred.]
[You have obtained an additional 2,182 EXP.]
The bartender, a bullet embedded in his forehead, collapsed.
Crash, bang!
The shelves behind the bartender toppled over. Liquor bottles shattered one after another, adding fuel to the firepower.
By then, it had drawn everyone’s attention. Seeing the bar engulfed in flames, people panicked and began to flee.
Amid the chaos, Lee Taebaek calmly went up the stairs.
For now, everything was going according to plan.