Chapter 17. Cho Pyung
***
Cho Pyung was the leader of the Black Snake Association's vanguard. He was entrusting his body to the darkness while receiving the faint light of the crescent moon.
"Kkeuaaaak!"
"Keok ..."
Endless screams echoed from afar. Every single one was the sound of subordinates dying. Even those screams had now grown noticeably infrequent, to the point of being barely audible. That was proof that there were hardly any subordinates left.
Dongpal, Nadal, and even Ganghae, who had entered together with him, were probably mixed in somewhere among them. Perhaps he was now the only one left alive among the leaders.
Now the Nameless Martial Hero would come for him. Killing all the others, he was advancing this way. Nothing, no method, no countermeasure had been able to protect them. Even though they had anticipated it in advance and prepared.
Soon, it would be his turn.
I don't want to die yet...
He had only shaken people down a little, trafficked humans a few times, run some women and liquor businesses ... and killed a few things that weren't even human. Just that much, and he had to lose his precious life.
It was unfair. Where was there such unfair karma and retribution. There were countless people in the world worse than him, bastards who had killed dozens or hundreds and were still living well and eating well! To be killed just for doing this much evil.
The world was unfair.
The weak were easy prey. Those kinds of people were strong, so the Nameless Martial Hero must be leaving them alone.
Cho Pyung endlessly piled up sophistry in his head while cursing the Nameless Martial Hero. But he did not realize that none of it made sense. Just like most villains.
'Should I run?'
That thought crossed his mind for a moment, but Cho Pyung soon shook his head.
Run?
If he ran, it would be no different from losing his life anyway.
How much time had it taken to build up this foundation to this extent! He couldn't do that.
He reaffirmed his resolve to take the last remaining black faction members and defend Nakwon Village's final stronghold to the very end. Wasn't this place one with only a single road running through it, front and back?
Because of the terrain, it couldn't be assaulted directly, nor could someone sneak in secretly. The back road led to Nakwon Estate, the residence of Bang Po-yeom, the association leader of the Black Snake Association. In other words, the only path leading here was the single alley ahead. If they could properly guard just that spot, they might be able to stop the Nameless Martial Hero, or even capture or kill him.
"Uaaaaaaaagh!"
At that moment, a scream as loud and horrific as all the screams that had rung out so far combined reached the place where Cho Pyung was hiding.
With that, the final death cry came to an end.
Now 'he' would come. The one who had ravaged black faction members at will in the name of chivalry, the Nameless Killing Demon, would come this way.
Yes! Come! You bastard!
"I'll kill you!"
Fighting in the dark favored the black faction.
The Nameless Martial Hero might have chosen the dark night to easily catch black faction members, but the black faction had been born in darkness and lived their entire lives in darkness. No matter how much of a martial arts master he was, Cho Pyung was confident.
Was that all?
Those remaining here now were on a completely different level from the riffraff who had just died. Though they were low-level fighters, they were all people who had learned some martial arts at Murim sects.
The White Tiger Group and the Red Wolf Sect had fallen due to an unexpected assault. The Black Snake Association would show that they were different ...eh!? Already?
At the moment Cho Pyung steeled his resolve.
A black shadow shaped like a person flew in through the passageway.
In an instant!
Swoosh-swoosh-swoosh-swoosh-swak!
Along with a piercing sound like a school of salmon cutting through a current, dozens of arrows flew.
The pre-arranged bowstrings were released all at once.
Pubeobeobeobeok!
The shadow turned into a pincushion and fell to the ground.
Seeing that, Cho Pyung realized it wasn't the Nameless Martial Hero. It couldn't have been that easy.
Whoosh.
Then another black shadow flew in through the alley.
Once again, dozens of arrows flew, turning the shadow into rags. Of course, this too was not the real one, but a corpse.
'Are you hoping we'll run out of arrows?'
A snort of disbelief escaped him.
'What should I do about this? Sorry, but we've prepared more than enough arrows to shoot all night and still not use them up. What will you do now, Nameless Martial Hero?'
Just as he formed a triumphant smile!
"Kuk, kyaaak!"
One of the black faction members hiding in the abandoned house screamed. He was dead.
'How!?'
They were watching the only path leading here. He could come over the rooftops, but moving that way was even more dangerous. Wouldn't he be immediately exposed by the moonlight?
Black faction members had definitely been stationed on the rooftops as well, constantly watching. If he had moved that way, there was no way they wouldn't have seen him.
'Just where did he come in from!?'
While Cho Pyung was panicking, the final black faction members continued to die.
"Kraak!"
"Ok!"
"Keok!"
...
...
….
…
..
.
The screams of death were drawing closer to him. There was no longer time to think about how.
Cho Pyung immediately came out from where he was hiding and entrusted his body to the moonlight. Even in that moment, the last cries of the black faction echoed throughout the grounds.
But even that soon faded away.
"Damn it .... am I the only one left alive .... "
Originally, that was the signal. When he came out from hiding, all black faction members were to emerge into the central clearing at once and form a formation to confront the Nameless Martial Hero head-on.
"Is no one there?"
No response.
No one stepped forward.
No.
Tap. Tap.
There was one. A masked man with a slender build.
It was 'him', revealing himself under the moonlight with a leisurely gait.
"Y-you ... are you the Nameless Martial Hero?"
"...."
He only silently approached Cho Pyung. There was no answer from the Nameless Martial Hero.
"W-what do you want?"
"..."
Still, there was no reply.
Cho Pyung tried to say something else, but no words came out. It was because he met the Nameless Martial Hero's eyes head-on.
Since joining the Black Snake Association, he had seen many people's eyes, but he had never seen eyes so 'empty'. It wasn't emotionless.
Nothingness.
There was simply nothing. There was nothing in the Nameless Martial Hero's eyes that could be thought of as human.
"Shit...…"
Swaaaak, puksuk.
Cho Pyung's body was split cleanly in half from head to toe. Blood, entrails, and brain matter spilled from his corpse, staining Nakwon Village.
And at the same time.
Flash!
Pure white purifying fire bloomed from the Nameless Martial Hero's body, cleansing Nakwon Village.
In that bright light, the Nameless Martial Hero's appearance was revealed for a very brief moment, as clear as day.
The Nameless Martial Hero.
Sosam, the Horse Stable Hireling of the Danri Family.
More precisely.
Dong Bong-su, now level 7.
***
After setting his sights on the black faction.
Dong Bong-su had been extremely busy.
There were simply too many things he had to prepare.
Though he had leveled up by killing Jang Ho, he was still far weaker than the black faction members. Naturally, just like back on Earth, the preparation process required a great deal of time and effort.
He had to closely monitor the movements of the black faction and individual black faction members, and determine the priority order for hunting them. Even after that, he had to meticulously plan various surrounding circumstances and hunting scripts. Only when not a single hair's breadth of failure probability remained. Only then would Dong Bong-su actually go out to hunt.
He diligently gathered information while roaming the back alleys of Bongyang. Among that information was what he had obtained from the thugs he had killed last time about the Black Snake Association, but those details were already widely known and not very helpful.
He spent about a week focusing on gathering information about the black faction.
But.
With Sosam's status as a mute and being alone, there were clear limits to information gathering. The few things he did find out were either too trivial to be useful at all, or so broad that they had no meaning.
At best, the only usable information was roughly which streets the black faction mainly operated on and approximately where their dens were located.
Even learning things like that had little significance. Unless he had the strength to storm those places alone, which was impossible at level 2.
Still, he couldn't just obsess over information gathering indefinitely. At this rate, half a year, maybe even several years, would pass doing nothing but investigation.
In the end, he changed his approach.
Strike the grass to startle the snake.
Beat the grass and alarm the snake.
It was commonly used to describe acting rashly before being fully prepared and failing as a result. But the original meaning of this idiom was completely different.
One of the foundations of ancient Chinese military strategy, a tactic recorded in the Thirty-Six Stratagems.
To catch a hidden snake, you beat the grass to make it crawl out of its hole and then catch it. In other words, it was not a negative proverb, but a tactic.
Dong Bong-su stopped investigating the inconspicuous 'snake'. Instead, he struck the 'bush' where snakes were likely to live.
One day.
After thoroughly disguising himself, he went to an underground gambling house operated secretly beneath the surface. And he completely swept the tables clean. Once or twice might go unnoticed, but when it happened repeatedly, the snakes finally bared their fangs.
A black faction member attacked him as he left the gambling house, not knowing that Dong Bong-su was a 'mole'. That was how the first snake to be sacrificed was a low-ranking black faction member of the White Tiger Group. In fact, Dong Bong-su hadn't even known that the gambling house was run by the White Tiger Group. All he knew was that there was a gambling house there. That was all.
As a result of that incident, Dong Bong-su was placed on the White Tiger Group's blacklist under the name Doma and was pursued, achieving his intended goal.
Thus it began.
The blood-soaked counter-pursuit slaughter.