Chapter 126

Chapter 126

SQUELCH—!

“Guh!”

A sharp sound and a scream rang out at the same time.

The owner of the scream rolled across the ground with a hole pierced through his shoulder.

He was a smooth, clean-shaven man.

His face, shadowed beneath a coat that reached his ankles and a fedora pulled low over his head, was filled with bewilderment.

“Why? Why are you doing this?”

At that moment, the one who had pierced a hole through his shoulder landed lightly.

She was a beautiful woman with alluring eyes, soft hair fluttering in the wind, and a curvaceous figure.

The woman approached with a face full of irritation, twirling a long spear in her hand.

“Are you asking because you don’t know?”

“No, I mean, you suddenly attacked someone who was just walking by minding his own business......”

“Minding his own business?”

“No, what I mean is......”

“Fuck! Do you really think so? After you ambushed and killed an Awakened who was minding his own business yesterday?”

“How did you......?”

The woman holding the spear smirked when she saw the eyes of the man in the fedora tremble.

“You thought you could pull that shit inside Neo Seoul and not get caught? You Scavenger bastard!”

“Fuck! Who the hell are you?”

The man sprang to his feet and shouted.

“Me? I’m the poor civil servant forced to work overtime because of you. Ah, maybe not a civil servant? Anyway, I’m Mandy, and I’m stuck doing this bullshit in the middle of the night because of you. Ah! Right now, I’m Eloy.”

“Mandy? Eloy? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Anyway, it’s because of you, you son of a bitch!”

The woman who shouted in fury was Eloy.

The mission assigned to her was to clean out the Scavengers disturbing Neo Seoul.

As the Scavengers continued stirring up trouble, City Hall had issued missions to the Awakened.

Other Awakened could choose missions to suit their tastes, but Mandy, who was under contract with City Hall, had no right to refuse at all.

As much as she enjoyed the benefits of being a Supervisor, her obligations were just as heavy.

That was why she was brawling in the middle of the night with a man suspected of being a Scavenger.

The man’s name was David Oh.

He was an ordinary man whose residence was in the Northern District.

At least, that was how he was known publicly. But Eloy’s investigation had revealed otherwise.

He had disguised himself as an ordinary office worker, but he was a Scavenger.

And a particularly vicious one at that.

The number of Awakened hunted by him had already exceeded five.

If not for Eloy’s sharp half-elf intuition, it would have taken much longer to uncover his true identity.

“Getting caught by City Hall’s hound. Guess I’m unlucky.”

“Repeat after me. You’re dead.”

“Don’t make me laugh. I’ll kill you and run into the desert. That’s all there is to it.”

“Where would you even go in the desert? You’d be better off letting me catch you.”

“Hmph! You think people only live in Neo Seoul? People live in the desert too.”

“So the Scavenger main base is in the desert. Tell me quietly, and I’ll beat you gently.”

“Don’t make me laugh! The bitch who punched a hole through my shoulder out of nowhere is going to be gentle?”

“Now that I think about it, I was a little too much there. You should understand. You know the sorrow of a working person.”

“I don’t know, you fucking bitch.”

“You don’t? Then I’ll teach you.”

Eloy smiled coldly.

“Let’s do this. You think I’ll go down easily?”

David drew the weapon he had hidden inside his coat.

CLATTER!

The weapon in his hand was a metal whip.

It had been made from a special material, and when David flicked his wrist, it instantly extended to five meters.

Eloy looked at the whip in David’s hand and muttered.

“Scavenger bastards never do anything the easy way. You won’t come to your senses until you’re beaten half to death.”

“Die!”

At that moment, David’s whip flew at a speed exceeding the speed of sound.

It was a terrifying speed no ordinary human could ever perceive.

But Eloy was no ordinary human.

She was a half-elf and an Awakened.

Her senses were far sharper than those of ordinary Awakened.

SWISH!

She dodged the whip by a hair’s breadth, then charged at David.

She was as fast as the whip he had swung.

“Ugh!”

David hurriedly tried to draw the whip back and defend himself. But Eloy gave him no chance to block.

CRACK!

Her spear shaft slammed into David’s body.

David screamed from the pain of breaking bones and rupturing muscles.

“Guh!”

“Don’t you dare whine. We’re nowhere near done yet, you bastard! You need to be beaten until you’re half dead.”

Eloy struck David again and again with the shaft of her spear.

If she stabbed him with the spearhead, she could have taken his life quickly. But she did not.

Her goal was not to kill David.

It was to subdue him and gather as much information as possible.

For now, it was enough to keep him breathing, so she adjusted her strength and beat him mercilessly.

THUD! THUDD!

The brutal violence continued for a long time, and when the beating finally stopped, David had been tenderized like a lump of meat. Still, he was not dead.

Eloy grabbed David by the collar and said,

“Now then, let’s have ourselves a conversation. Where’s your base?”

---

The slums were noisy.

Usually, under the blazing midday sun, people did not move around, so the streets were quiet. Recently, however, that peace had been broken.

Zeon knew very well that the reason was the White Bear Caravan.

Ever since the White Bear Caravan’s fortress had settled in the desert outside Neo Seoul, people’s activity had increased.

The appearance of the White Bear Caravan had stimulated Neo Seoul and the slums in many ways.

Most of the goods released by the White Bear Caravan were things that could not be obtained in Neo Seoul before.

Those goods stirred people’s curiosity and drew them out into the streets even during the day.

Thanks to that, the slums, which had been quiet as death, were brimming with life for the first time in a long while. But such an atmosphere was not necessarily a good thing.

Incidents and accidents had increased along with it.

“Stop right there! I’ll kill you if I catch you.”

“Damn it!”

A chase unfolded inside the Goblin Market.

One customer had stolen an item and run away. But before long, he was caught by the Guards of the Goblin Market.

The merchants watched the man being beaten after he was caught by the Guards and said,

“There have been more drifters like that lately.”

“If he knew what kind of place the Goblin Market was, he wouldn’t have dared try to steal.”

“The waters have gotten muddy since the White Bear Caravan arrived.”

Zeon listened to the merchants talking near the shop.

He had come to the Goblin Market because he needed something and had witnessed the commotion.

The item the customer had stolen was a dagger that had come from the White Bear Caravan.

It was said to be a dagger enhanced by a skilled Enchanter.

Enchanters themselves were a rare profession, and the dagger’s materials were so good that it had received a fine option.

That option was increased piercing power.

According to the Goblin Market’s appraisal, its piercing power had increased by at least thirty percent compared to daggers of the same grade.

An item like that could not be easily found on the market.

Zeon could understand the thief’s desire to some extent.

Of course, that did not apply to him.

The goods released by the White Bear Caravan were quite excellent, but they were not enough to draw Zeon’s interest.

What Zeon needed was not those weapons.

They were small things necessary for daily life.

An Awakened of the Goblin Market pulled a small disc out of the thief’s pocket.

“What’s this? Where did you steal it from?”

“Fuck! That’s mine. I bought it from the caravan with my own money.”

“This bastard is lying. I’m confiscating this for now.”

“It’s mine! Give it back.”

“How dare a thieving bastard raise his voice?”

The Awakened of the Goblin Market shouted and beat the thief.

The thief’s eyes turned bloodshot as he resisted, but he could not overcome the Awakened of the Goblin Market.

Zeon shook his head and resumed choosing items.

Then someone quietly approached him.

“You don’t have to come all the way to the Goblin Market to buy things like this, do you?”

The one who spoke to him naturally was Yu Se-hee, the Guildmaster of the Goblin Market.

Her trusted subordinate, Black Lion, stood behind her.

Zeon handed money to the merchant and said,

“Still, this place is the most trustworthy.”

“That’s true.”

Yu Se-hee nodded as if it were only natural.

“That’s why I came here. What about you?”

“It was noisy outside, so I came out to take a look.”

Yu Se-hee looked at the subdued thief.

The thief was struggling desperately to reclaim the disc that had been taken by the Awakened.

Zeon smirked.

“You must be coming out often these days.”

“Yes. I end up coming out several times a day. There really are more riffraff coming in.”

“Don’t you usually screen identities strictly?”

“We do, but that doesn’t mean we can block them completely. We’re short on manpower these days, so holes have opened up.”

“That’s a little serious.”

“It is serious. This is all because of the White Bear Caravan. They threw a stone into a quiet pond and set off ripples.”

“The shock waves are fairly large. I can hear things creaking here and there.”

“It’s proof that Neo Seoul isn’t as perfect as people think. If it were perfect, it wouldn’t be shaken this much by a shock of this level.”

“That’s true too.”

“It will probably keep creaking for a while. Poison has already been released into the market.”

She was talking about the goods released by the White Bear Caravan.

Zeon agreed with that.

“Poison, is it? That sounds right.”

“We’ll have to watch how far the poison they released spreads. It will be quite noisy until then.”

“Well, we’ll have to endure it.”

“How nice, being so relaxed. Then again, someone as capable as you probably won’t be affected much by this kind of commotion. I’m a little envious.”

“Envious? I hate noisy things too.”

Zeon shrugged as he answered.

CRASH—!

Suddenly, a tremendous explosion erupted nearby.

Intense flames and the aftershock swept over the area.

“Damn it!”

Black Lion quickly formed a protective barrier and shielded Yu Se-hee from the explosion.

Thanks to him, she remained unharmed without a single injury.

“What?”

Yu Se-hee looked at the place where the explosion had occurred with a stunned face.

It was the place where the Awakened who had stolen an item and fled had been subdued moments ago.

The Awakened who had stolen the item, the Awakened of the Goblin Market who had subdued him, and even the nearby shops were swept up in the explosion and vanished without a trace.

“What happened? What the hell just happened?”

“It seems the man who was subdued exploded.”

“You mean a person exploded? That’s impossible.”

“Perhaps an item he had on him exploded.”

“That’s......”

Leaving Yu Se-hee, who could not continue speaking, behind him, Zeon walked toward the site of the explosion.

“Ugh!”

“Ugh! My leg......”

“Save me.”

The area around the explosion resembled a pandemonium.

Many people had been injured by the explosion and were groaning.

Some had lost arms, and others were groaning with large holes torn through their abdomens.

Zeon’s face hardened at the damage, which was greater than expected.

They were people who had little to do with him, but it still did not feel pleasant to see them dying or wounded before his eyes.

“This is the place.”

Zeon immediately found the origin point of the explosion.

A large pit had been gouged into the ground, and chunks of flesh and bone lay scattered everywhere.

He could also see the remains of items that seemed to belong to the Awakened of the Goblin Market.

Among them, what caught Zeon’s eye was a blackened metal fragment. Zeon recognized it as a fragment of the disc that had been in the thief’s possession.

Zeon carefully picked up the fragment.

The fragment, half the size of his palm, was engraved with patterns whose meaning he could not understand.

“What is it?”

Yu Se-hee, who had approached before he knew it, asked.

“I don’t know. Have you ever seen an item like this?”

“No. This is my first time.”

“A strong lingering trace of mana remains on it.”

“What does that mean?”

“It seems this item exploded.”

“What is it, then? Why did it burst like a bomb?”

Zeon could not answer.

He did not know what the item was either. But he felt certain of one thing.

The one who had released this item was Damian.

‘Damian. You released the poison on purpose.’