novelraw Chapter 111 : Chapter 111
Chapter 111 : Chapter 111
Chapter 111 Hunt Opening
An office somewhere in Seoul.
One president, one employee, but since the president and the employee were the same person, it was essentially a one-man operated office.
This was the office of the broker, Bart Sinel.
Ji Byeong-seo's friend, and Riman's assigned broker.
Bart spoke while leaning back in his office chair.
“...So, Mr. Leman? What is it that you’re asking for?”
“This.”
CLATTER-
Riman poured cell phones onto Bart's desk.
Seven cell phones.
These were phones taken from Cha Hak-jun's private soldiers who died by Riman's hands in Room 303 earlier.
“Please track the location of other phones that communicated with these phones. Focus on frequently called numbers.”
“...Pardon? All of these?”
“Yeah.”
“That... uh... it’s not that it can’t be done... so you want to know the activity radius of the people who communicated with the owners of these phones, right?”
“Exactly.”
These phones were piled high with contact records exchanged with Cha Hak-jun's other private soldiers.
In other words, just by properly digging into the location information associated with these phones, he could find out the whereabouts and locations of the private soldiers.
“But even if you find out, it won’t be of much use, will it? Usually, the standard practice for things like this is to insert a signal modulation device in the middle of transmission and reception to make location tracking impossible, isn't it?”
“If everyone follows it, is it standard practice? You probably didn't finish reading The Standard of Mathematics back in high school either.”
“What is that?”
“...Anyway, please do it. As quickly as possible.”
“Yes, well... but there is a limit to doing it quickly. It will likely take at least two days.”
“Faster.”
“No, I’m saying this is the limit?”
“I’ll break that limit for you.”
“Pardon?!”
Bart flinched and stepped back at the words ‘break for you.’
At that moment.
DING-
A notification rang on Bart's phone.
Bart's jaw dropped for a moment after checking the phone screen.
A tremendous amount of money had been deposited into his bank account.
And under the name of ‘Leman White,’ no less.
“T-T-T-This is...”
“Advance payment. And the sooner you finish the work, the balance will also...”
“I will finish it within a day.”
“......”
Riman's eyes looking at Bart narrowed.
Noticing that Riman's mood had become uncomfortable, Bart hurriedly began to add excuses.
“No, that is. There is a new software recently released on the black market, and honestly, the price is expensive, and it’s a format I’ve never handled before...”
“Anyway, it means it can be done, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then do it.”
“Understood!”
“Ah, and please write a receipt for this case.”
“Pardon? Suddenly?”
“Yeah. I have to process the expenses.”
“...?”
Riman planned to charge all expenses incurred in this operation to Pyo Seok-jung.
Well, he was also someone who would sufficiently give that much money.
After entrusting the phones to Bart like that.
Riman opened the notebooks he brought from the private soldiers.
All sorts of miscellaneous things were written in the notebooks.
Lunch menu, debt amount, location of gambling den, doodles.
But valuable information was inserted among those miscellaneous pieces of information.
Contact points with other private soldier teams, passwords, operation dates and times, shift timings, etc.
Riman took out a separate piece of paper and extracted and recorded only this information.
Like that, roughly four hours passed.
“Done...! Finished!!”
Bart jumped up from his chair and shouted.
“I’ve extracted all location information!”
Bart finished faster than expected.
Indeed, a broker whose ability wouldn't be inferior anywhere.
Of course, betrayal was scheduled in the future...
...Well, for now, he decided not to think about that part.
“No, but you said it would take 3 days, how did you finish so quickly?”
“...Think of it as doping with money, haha.”
“Anyway, good work. Can you print all that on paper and give it to me?”
RUSTLE-
Riman laid out the materials Bart printed on the table.
Below that, he laid out the paper with information organized from the notebooks.
Then, the location information extracted from the phones and the information extracted from the notebooks came into view at a glance.
Riman began to read down these two types of data simultaneously.
“What are you doing?”
“If I extract the intersection between these two pieces of information...”
...Highly reliable information is calculated.
Information about where and how Cha Hak-jun's remaining private soldiers would be positioned.
“...In terms of war, it’s no different from obtaining the enemy camp's troop deployment map.”
“Wait, enemy?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Don’t tell me... you turned Mayor Cha Hak-jun into an enemy?!”
“Don’t worry. Those guys don’t even know you’re on my side.”
“S-Still...!”
“Anyway, thanks. I deposited the balance.”
With those words, Riman came outside.
‘With this, I’ve inputted all movements and deployments of Cha Hak-jun's private soldiers into my head.’
Of course, individual private soldiers are not that strong.
But in war, quantity is something that cannot be ignored.
If those private soldiers start narrowing the encirclement targeting only Riman, the situation becomes quite tricky even for Riman.
So if he could deal with them in advance, it was right to deal with them all beforehand.
‘From now on, the hunt begins.’
Muttering inwardly like that, Riman began to move forward.
* * *
‘...What to do.’
At the time Riman went outside.
Bart was deep in agony.
‘Turned Mayor Cha Hak-jun into an enemy...? Is he crazy?!’
Ordinary citizens might not know, but everyone deeply involved in the underworld like Bart knew.
How vicious a bastard Cha Hak-jun was.
‘There’s a truckload of people who died mysterious deaths after messing with that bastard, and he wants to wage war against such a guy...?’
Just staying still made him short of breath.
If Riman is defeated, and by any chance Bart's own name pops out in the process, his head would be cut off that day.
‘Crazy, crazy, no matter how much money he gives, to touch something like this...!’
Bart calmed his breath first.
And turned on his phone.
There was a number on his phone that could connect to Cha Hak-jun's secretarial staff.
‘...If I snitch information related to Leman to Cha Hak-jun's side, can I live?’
Fear was dominating Bart's mind right now.
In the past, there was a time when his colleague messed with Cha Hak-jun wrongly and literally became dog food.
Furthermore, thinking with common sense, snitching was rational.
Currently, Riman was facing the giant evil called Cha Hak-jun almost single-handedly.
Betting on Riman's side in this situation was clearly an irrational act.
‘But...’
The Riman he had seen so far was not a person of common sense.
A human who always carried irrational phenomena and results.
That was Riman.
So in this case, common sense should not be used as a basis for judgment.
Judging an irrational human based on common sense would be irrational in itself.
‘...Good.’
A few minutes later.
‘Right, if successful, it's revenge; if failed, at worst it's just death.’
Bart reached a conclusion.
BEEP.
He turned off his phone.
“...I bet on you, Leman.”
Bart hardened his resolve.
* * *
Room 303.
One of Cha Hak-jun's secretaries froze with the front door open.
He expected it because the smell of blood was vibrating even before opening the door, but the inside was horrific beyond imagination.
“I came because they weren't answering the phone... and they are all dead like this?”
An unbelievable scene unfolded before his eyes.
Cha Hak-jun's elite private soldier squad was entirely annihilated.
‘The elite troops that catch even high-ranking superhumans if they engage in team play... were annihilated so helplessly like this?’
First, the secretary calmly searched the inside of the room.
And found the PC connected to the CCTV, and played the recorded video with it.
Not long after starting to play the video, he found the culprit.
“Wait, this guy, Leman White...?!”
What was clearly captured on the entrance CCTV was Riman's face.
Combining the state of the corpses and the circumstances before and after, Riman had to be the culprit of this massacre unconditionally.
And in reality, it was so.
“This bastard, how did he know this place and hit it...?!”
The secretary picked up his phone immediately.
And called somewhere.
It was a call to the squad leader of another private soldier squad.
Soon, a man with a large build and menacing impression answered the phone.
“I received the call.”
“It’s an emergency. Squad 3 has been annihilated.”
“What?! Which bastard...!”
“I will transmit the culprit's face and personal information right now. As soon as you receive it, share it with other squads, designate him as the top priority target, and proceed with the kill operation.”
“Understood. I’ll proceed right after finishing the current task.”
BEEP.
The squad leader who hung up the phone checked the message the secretary sent.
“Leman White huh... Looks like a pretty boy. I don't like it.”
After memorizing Leman's face, he opened the car trunk.
Inside, a man in a suit was lying down, wrapped around with duct tape.
The man said with a pleading voice.
“W-Wait a moment, there is no reason to go this far...!”
“You can't go home until you vomit out everything from the names of the sources to the number of hairs, kid.”
“No, that, that, you shouldn't speak so carelessly ow ow ow ow!!”
“Right, right, would I not know your mouth is heavy. So I’ll put that snout on a diet. It becomes light quickly if I pull out a few teeth.”
The squad leader grabbed the man's hair and dragged him somewhere.
The place he headed to was an abandoned warehouse in a deserted place.
As the squad leader stood in front of the warehouse door, the squad members opened the door for him.
CLANK-
SCREECH-
The door opening with a heavy metallic sound.
However, inside the warehouse that should have been empty, something unexpected was occupying a spot.
“Huh...?!”
The squad leader spat out an exclamation from his mouth without realizing it.
The squad leader said.
“Wow, there’s no need to bother sharing information with other squads, this.”
Because Riman was sitting on a chair placed in the middle of the warehouse.
The squad leader shook the man's hair and said.
“Well, but the person who should sit on that chair first is here. Hah, if I knew this would happen, I would have prepared two chairs.”
“Well, I don't have a hobby of getting tortured.”
“Hmm, hmm, no. The moment you sat there, your end was already decided.”
THUD!
The squad leader slammed the man he was holding onto the floor.
The man rolled on the floor like a pitiful sack, and the squad leader pulled out the knife he was wearing at his waist.
And pulled the trigger on the knife handle.
VROOOM-
The engine started.
Along with the heavy engine sound, the saw blade attached to the knife blade began to vibrate.
In short, it was a weapon reinterpreting a chainsaw in the form of a one-handed sword.
Feeling the sluggish vibration climbing up his palm, the squad leader smiled.
That was the signal.
SHING-
CLACK!
The squad members standing behind his back also took out their respective weapons.
Posture for battle.
But Riman didn't lift his butt from the chair even at that moment.
And that appearance was enough to make the squad leader feel he was arrogant.
“This bastard...”
The squad leader took strides toward Riman without hesitation.
One step, two steps, three steps.
And the moment reaching the fourth step.
BOOM!
An explosion burst beneath the squad leader's feet.
At the too sudden explosion, the squad members flinched or closed their eyes.
At the same time as the aftermath swept by, the squad members felt something fly and stick to their cheeks.
It didn't take long for them to realize that it was a part of the squad leader.
Riman said nonchalantly.
“It’s called [Flame Seed]. If translated freely, it means seed of fire...”
“This bastard!!”
“You don't have much intention to listen to the explanation, do you?”
Riman concentrated mana in both hands.
The curtain of the hunt in earnest rose.