novelraw Chapter 41 : Erasing a Debt (4)
Chapter 41 : Erasing a Debt (4)
Chapter 41: Erasing a Debt (4)
There were still phenomena in this world that science could not explain. For example, in the West it was called hysterical strength. In the East, it was known as Kajibano Bakajikara—an unconscious surge of monstrous power.
Everyone had probably heard at least once a story about a mother at a fire scene lifting a car with a sudden burst of strength and escaping while carrying her child.
In this way, a brain soaked in adrenaline lightly broke past the body’s limits, squeezing out explosive power in a single instant.
Such monstrous strength did not appear only in extreme situations. By borrowing the power of faith, one could occasionally reach a trance state as well.
The ancient Norse called such people berserkers. At the same time, they held berserkers up as living proof of faith and bore witness to divine beings.
What was happening right now at Eunko Bar was not much different.
Ban twisted his body sideways in midair, and soon his dropkick closed in on Tang Ji-hye. Under normal circumstances, it was a sluggish kick she could not have been hit by even if she wanted to.
To start with the conclusion, she could not avoid it.
Tang Ji-hye, who could catch flying bullets, failed to react in time to the surprise attack from a boy who had been leaning on crutches just moments ago. Why?
The fervor of a fanatic emboldened in front of the cult leader made the 3rd Battalion Commander stagger backward.
“Yooou filthy biiitchhhhhh!”
“H-H-‘filthy biiitchhh—’?”
The battle cry of an adrenaline-drunk berserker clung to her body like a thistle.
Ban’s straightened leg drew a perfect line in the air, and his feet plunged cleanly into Tang Ji-hye’s perfectly defined abs as if plugging into an electrical outlet.
As if the universe itself were looking down upon Ban, all energy gathered at Eunko Bar…….
Crunch!
……An astonishing scene that Lee Taebaek would not have seen twice in his lifetime unfolded before his eyes.
Kuuuuung.
The sound of flesh bursting. Tang Ji-hye let out a suffocating noise, her eyes swelling white all around. Then she clutched her navel and collapsed forward.
“Ghk!”
3rd Battalion Commander, Tang Ji-hye.
Her back bulged upward like a small hill. The chief disciple of the Baekbaek Order placed the 3rd Battalion Commander beneath his feet.
“Wajaaa— ahh!”
Ban flicked his nose with his thumb.
The bout of farce came to an end.
“…….”
Lee Taebaek thought.
That Tang Ji-hye’s mistake was jumping to evade it.
If she had stayed still, it would have been driven into her upper chest. Because her timing slipped, the dropkick advanced straight ahead, bombarding the dantian—the vital point of martial artists.
And of all places.
Of all places, among the head, heart, and abdomen, it was the lower dantian.
The circulation where inner energy ran along the meridians from the lower abdomen to the heart, then to the crown, before pooling again beneath the navel was the Small Heavenly Cycle. The lower dantian was both the beginning and the endpoint of that entire process.
Kurrrrrrung!
A magnitude-9 ultimate earthquake struck there. More thrilling than sitting in an electric chair. A tsunami of pain slapped violently against the nerve-dense area around the hips.
“Ow, damn.”
To put it in perspective, it was comparable to taking three solid flicks straight to a man’s testicles. An odd groan escaped him without realizing it.
“There’s a reason martial artists spit blood…….”
Just then, Goeun came in. Even she, before grasping the situation, first had her complexion drain in shock.
Goeun, who had kept a blank expression even with all ten fingers broken, had not been exaggerating when she said she was hospitalized after taking one hit to the dantian. Those who had never been hit there would not know.
Great power was accompanied by commensurate risk. Even at the end of days, when science sought to encroach upon myth, it remained an eternal, unchanging truth.
“Ban! How could you hit the lower dantian! Lee Taebaek, did you teach him like that?!”
Goeun scolded him in a heated voice.
“The Gaepa Investigator said so.”
Of course, it had gone in one ear and out the other.
“That a true alpha male must not feel even a shred of guilt after striking an opponent. I am merely following the teachings.”
“When did I ever say that.”
“Baekbaek.”
This fanatical bastard.
Was the Baekbaek Order doctrine some kind of buffet? He looked like the type to drag my name out whenever he needed it.
“People really do flock with their own kind.”
A fed-up Goeun shifted her gaze.
Then she quickly squatted down right beside Tang Ji-hye, intending to at least pat her hipbone.
“Hm?”
Soon her eyebrows knit downward. Then, with an awkward expression, she spoke.
“Tang Ji-hye…… why are you here?”
“Grrrrrrrgh.”
Tang Ji-hye could only gargle phlegm while lying prostrate. Only after regulating her breathing for a long while did her lips finally move.
“Y-You…… son of a bitch……. Fuck. I’ll kill you.”
She flailed, lifting only her forehead.
“I’ll kill youuuuu!!”
She screamed in a frenzy, clawing at the floor.
‘At this rate, she’ll tear her fingernails off.’
Thanks to that, any pity evaporated instantly.
“Ji-hye.”
Goeun swept her bangs back with a sigh.
“No, Miss Tang Ji-hye.”
She lifted the hem of her skirt.
Slide.
Below the side slit tailored up to the hips, black straps wrapped around her thigh. It seemed she stored a pipe in a knife holster.
‘Talking to her really does make me want a smoke.’
Goeun grinned as she put the pipe to her mouth.
“At times like this, instead of ‘I’ll kill you!’, you’re supposed to say ‘help me’ or ‘please save me,’ you know?”
Fwooo, smoke wrapped around Tang Ji-hye’s skin.
“How is it you’re the same now as you were back then.”
“Uuuugh.”
“I’m pretty sure I told you to live while killing that temper of yours.”
“Ghhhh!”
“Otherwise you were destined for a short life.”
“F-Fine, I get it!”
“What do you get?”
Tang Ji-hye squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them.
“……Help me.”
“I can’t hear you very well~?”
“S-Save— meee!”
“That’s not the tone of someone asking to be saved.”
“Please save meeeeee!”
Tang Ji-hye wailed. Bead-sized droplets clung one by one to the upturned corners of her eyes.
“Good~ good~!”
It was a scene that proved the ‘ma’ of demon and the ‘ma’ of magic were written with the same Chinese character.
“I should’ve been there during the Demonic–Orthodox War……!”
“Where does a brat like you get off putting the Demonic–Orthodox War in your mouth.”
“You old hag! Thirty years ago you weren’t even a fetus, let alone a sperm!”
It was a parade of priceless lines perfectly suited to Lake City. As harsh as the world they lived in, the rhetoric of the two heroines had evolved accordingly.
“Still, when the entire martial world migrated to Lake City, I was seven years old.”
“Like being old is something to brag about…….”
Tang Ji-hye muttered as if chewing the words.
“…….”
“So, was I wrong?”
A thin vein stood out at her temple. Goeun (Mage, 24 years old, single her whole life) had been scratched the wrong way.
Meanwhile, Ban retreated three steps with a slightly startled look. By eye alone, he had realized that Tang Ji-hye was a martial artist.
Ban had personally experienced a fragment of Goeun’s power before. At their first meeting, he had ignorantly picked a fight and nearly died.
‘If the Gaepa Investigator’s punch was a punch of guidance.’
Goeun’s punch was a punch meant in earnest.
‘When flames wrapped around her fist, thank God I sensed I was fucked…….’
There was a reason the title he used for Goeun had settled as “older sister.”
Anyway, here was someone screaming she would kill that older sister. And Goeun looked as though it wasn’t mere bluster.
‘That means they’re on a similar level.’
Ban slipped the crutches back under his arms.
Martial artists considered touching the injured a disgrace to their clan. Especially in the Orthodox Path that lived off hypocrisy, it was practically social burial.
‘If it weren’t for that one place.’
If not for ‘that place,’ which was pathologically obsessed with debts and grudges, he could sleep soundly without worrying about being attacked in the dead of night…….
“I’ll pay you back. I’ll pay it back, so please, just treat me! You know how much the word ‘debt’ means when it comes out of my mouth! I’m from the Tang Clan!”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
This really seemed fucked.
Ban shot Goeun an urgent look. His eyes begged her to hurry up and treat that dumpling and save him too.
“I, you.”
Goeun finally opened her mouth.
“I’m not treating her.”
“……What?”
The one who fell into despair was Ban.
“I actually can’t.”
“What the fuck?”
The one who panicked was Tang Ji-hye.
“The compatibility between Demonic Cult magic and a martial artist’s inner energy is abysmal. If I mess with it wrong, not only you but I could end up dead.”
“Don’t bullshit me!”
“Your mouth smells like shit.”
Goeun dug at her ear with her pinky.
“Anyway, I can’t do it. Maybe if Yoo Dahee the Divine Physician comes. Come to think of it, the Divine Physician’s from the same organization as you, right? If you lick her shoes, maybe she’ll treat you. In terms of rank, she was your subordinate, I think?”
“Fuck! Fuuuck! Goeun, you! You perilla-leaf-haired bastard! And Lee Taebaek! I’ll kill all of you! Huh?!”
Tang Ji-hye slammed the floor with the underside of her fist. Her pent-up rage exploded like fireworks simultaneously inside her upper, middle, and lower dantian.
At that moment, a figure brushed lightly past Goeun’s shoulder and stepped forward. It was Lee Taebaek.
“What are you—.”
“Shut up. Unless you want to die.”
Tang Ji-hye froze at Lee Taebaek’s alpha pressure. Then he knelt on one knee and looked down at her. Tang Ji-hye flinched. Those deep, sunken eyes looked as though they could pierce through her very soul.
“…….”
“…….”
“……Investigator?”
A momentary standoff.
“Promise me two things. For the record, this isn’t a request. It’s a notice.”
It was a little later that Lee Taebaek’s voice split the silence.
“First, acknowledge that the state you’re in right now is entirely your own doing. In other words, don’t start spouting bullshit about repaying Ban for a favor once your body heals.”
“T-That’s none of your—!”
“I said it was a notice.”
Lee Taebaek didn’t wait for an answer.
“The second is, never set foot in Eunko Bar again. Whether you’re a 3rd Battalion Commander or whatever, I don’t care—I’m from the 9th Battalion anyway. And if the fact that you stormed in here today reaches Kang Hyunseong’s ears, do you think he’ll just let it slide? That One-Man Thousand Slaughter, Kang Hyunseong?”
“You’d probably lose an arm or a leg.”
Goeun added calmly, exhaling smoke. Lee Taebaek nodded while staring straight at Tang Ji-hye.
“No matter how much of a genius you were said to be within the Tang Gate, you know you’re no match for Kang Hyunseong. Martial artists at least don’t lie to themselves.”
“……How do you know that…….”
“I’m saying it’s a notice for the second time. There won’t be a third. Tang Ji-hye, if you understand, just nod. If you don’t like it, shut up and stay silent.”
Cold.
“Of course, you’ll have to bear whatever comes after.”
His words flew like a dagger and lodged themselves in her.
“Even if a situation arises where you have to receive my blade with your dantian half-shattered, don’t say it’s unfair.”
The color slowly drained from Tang Ji-hye’s face.
“Got it…….”
“Properly.”
“I said I got it, everything! So do something already!”
Lee Taebaek showed no reaction for a moment, then tugged the corner of his mouth into a smile.
“You owe me a debt.”
Lee Taebaek extended his arm. Tang Ji-hye had no time to respond.
[Buffing the target’s Faith stat.]
In truth, the one who owed a debt was Lee Taebaek. The twist was that the creditor was Ban.
The original plan had been for Lee Taebaek himself to approach Tang Ji-hye and secretly [Nerf] her lower dantian. Then, under the pretext of treatment, he would saddle her with a debt. The so-called “give illness, then give medicine” operation. But Ban ended up playing that role for him. A believer was indeed worth watching.
One might criticize how such a devilish idea could even occur to him. But with a brain thoroughly steeped in 「Concept: Bandit (True)」 and 「Concept: Psychopath (True)」, his chest was numbed, and he felt no particular guilt.
This was simply the Lake City way. If anything, it was generous. After all, I at least applied medicine after giving the illness.
True residents of Recons would give the illness and then steal the medicine too. Compared to that, Lee Taebaek was downright gentlemanly, befitting a descendant of Toegye Yi Hwang.
Ah.
One thing to add was that there was no certainty about the treatment. Whether a buff could increase another person’s recovery elasticity as well—it was closer to a clinical experiment.
Well, regardless of intent, the result was a success. For Tang Ji-hye, and for Lee Taebaek as well.
“Hraaaah.”
Tang Ji-hye sprawled out flat. Lying on her back, she felt around her lower abdomen, then, seemingly reassured, let out a sigh and dropped her arms.
But then.
Wasn’t Lee Taebaek doing something similar a few steps away? He alternated his gaze between his own abdomen and Tang Ji-hye.
After repeating that behavior several times, he finally let out a lament.
‘This is probably.’
It seemed that during the treatment, he had absorbed Tang Ji-hye’s inner energy. Perhaps because of that, his lower abdomen writhed, feeling as though it might burst at any moment.
A portion of the inner energy of the Poison Sovereign of the 10 Wings was rampaging within his lower dantian. If there were ever a moment to utter those words, this would be the finishing touch.
“Lucky.”