85. The New National Team Representative (2)
“Wow.”
Yoo Jia, faced with Park Ho and the Baekho executives, was left speechless.
Summons blocking the front of the car.
Threatening, blatant expressions.
There was no need to ask what that meant.
No matter how wronged they felt, were they really using summons to threaten her with force right now?
“What exactly are you doing right now?”
Bang!
Yoo Jia, who had only half-opened the sports car door, shut it again and frowned.
Then she quietly prepared a skill.
Desperate Call: Once per day, forcibly summons the designated player target.
An intermediate-grade skill that could call Baek Jinwoo.
In a South Korea that had lost its public security functions, this was the biggest reason Yoo Jia could move around so boldly.
That was why Yoo Jia did not panic.
If anything, she had to struggle to suppress the rage boiling inside her.
For reference, Yoo Jia had registered that intermediate-grade skill to a rare summon, Snow Owl (B-grade).
The Snow Owl was a kind of CCTV.
It recorded and filmed everything within a 10-meter radius in full 3D.
And it did so automatically.
They said filming someone without consent was illegal, but in a criminal nation, this much was basic.
“You’re not even a gang, and yet the master of a major guild is blocking the path of a powerless civilian with summons? And you even brought several people?”
“You should’ve known when to stop.”
Crunch.
Park Ho clenched his fist.
“Didn’t you know that if you touched the high school teaching circle, the administrators would bite back? Fine, spreading public opinion with rumors of internal conflict was one thing. I admit that. I was greedy too. But the national representative—”
Park Ho looked completely unable to restrain his fury.
With just a few words and some political maneuvering, she had destroyed Baekho, the guild he had built over three years.
And during the investigation, he had realized something too.
‘She was even faster than me.’
Yoo Jia had clearly begun recruiting people and preparing to sway public opinion even before Park Ho had seriously begun his own political schemes.
What did that mean?
It meant she had intended to sink Baekho from the very start.
Grit!
Grinding his teeth, Park Ho stretched his right hand out horizontally.
At that, Bok Jeonghee and Seo Sangwon subtly moved to block the escape route.
“Haa.”
Yoo Jia let out a sigh.
“So what exactly are you trying to do here?”
“What do you mean what?”
Park Ho’s gaze turned cold.
Even in South Korea, a summoning backwater, he had still played the role of a predator there for a full three years.
He had run the guild with obsession and viciousness, and he had always dealt decisively with those who went against the group’s interests or insulted it.
Even if the target was someone from Daeseong?
It did not matter.
“We’ll make you pay for insulting us, and then we’ll naturalize somewhere else. Anyway, public opinion has already completely turned to Baek Jinwoo’s side, right? We’ve got no intention of fighting for the people who criticize us.”
“Make me pay…… Can you really take responsibility for those words?”
Park Ho.
This bastard really had gone all the way off the edge.
Yoo Jia was dumbfounded.
How could he even think of committing murder in the middle of Seoul?
Had the public really praised a guild like this as the best in the country all this time?
Baekho’s exposed true face was uglier than ugly.
“Why, are you scared? That’s why you should’ve picked your target more carefully. And get this straight. You’re the one who should take responsibility for insulting us.”
Yoo Jia snorted.
Far from being scared, she calmly crossed her arms.
As long as Baek Jinwoo’s protection remained, there was nothing for her to fear.
“First of all, the four of you all think the same way, right?”
“.......”
“I’ll ask one last time. You’re really willing to give up your nationality and even commit crimes just to follow one stupid leader? That’s really what you want?”
There was a barb in those words.
She meant she truly could not understand why they would watch that idiot do something so stupid and still follow him.
“That’s right.”
“The ones who were treated unfairly are us.”
“You shut us out during training, and you’d been planning to sink us from the beginning anyway…… What gives you the right to talk about crime? You’re no different from us.”
Bok Jeonghee and Seo Sangwon also backed up Park Ho’s words.
Yoo Jia knew why they were acting like that.
They had already harbored rotten intentions, and they had even acted on them……
‘They’re only reacting like this because I struck first.’
That was why they were saying it.
That she was the same kind of person as them.
But they did not know.
They did not know that Yoo Jia had the Mind-Reading Eagle.
That she had only identified their rotten intentions in advance and responded first.
But what did that even matter at this point?
The two groups were already aiming guns at each other, and there was no taking it back now.
“There’s no need to talk anymore. Kill Yoo Jia and leave Korea immediately.”
“Yes, sir!”
Seo Sangwon’s summon, an ogre, raised its massive arm.
‘It can’t be helped.’
Just as Yoo Jia was about to quickly use ‘Desperate Call’—
“Wait.”
At the same time Kang Geonho stepped in front of her—
Uwoooooooh!
The ogre’s arm, which had shot into the air together with its club—
Slash!
Kang Geonho’s summon, Paladin (A-grade), cleanly cut it off.
Pshhhaak!
A fountain of blood painted the sky as the ogre howled in agony.
“Kang Geonho! What do you think you’re doing?!”
Park Ho shouted.
“Betraying us?”
“Rather than betrayal, call it conviction.”
“Conviction?”
“Brother Ho. Let’s stop making ourselves uglier than we already are. Sure, we’ve killed before, but it was against gangs. Not civilians. This has gone way too far.”
“Gangs or them, it’s all the same. They were trying to kill us too.”
“No, they never tried to kill us.”
“So someone only dies if their neck is cut or their heart is pierced? Socially burying someone is killing them too.”
“Stop spouting sophistry. If you want to kill Yoo Jia, you’ll have to kill me first.”
“Even if it’s you, taking on the three of us won’t be easy.”
Just as the situation was about to become a 1 versus 3—
Swoosh!
A man appeared in front of Yoo Jia.
It was Baek Jinwoo, answering her Desperate Call.
“What?”
As he looked around, trying to figure out what was going on—
“Jinwoo!”
Yoo Jia hurried over to him and immediately started tattling about everything.
And that was not all.
She even showed him the footage the Snow Owl had recorded while eagerly explaining the whole thing.
“Hoo.”
Watching that, Kang Geonho let out a brief sigh and turned his gaze toward Park Ho.
“No matter how I look at it, I think the one who’s in trouble is you, Brother Ho.”
“......”
“Or maybe not trouble. Maybe I should say you’re completely fucked?”
That was exactly right.
Park Ho, Bok Jeonghee, and Seo Sangwon.
All three stared at Baek Jinwoo with stiffened expressions.
Through all the repeated consulting, they knew better than anyone roughly where Baek Jinwoo stood.
They all knew the same thing: even if the three of them attacked together, their chance of winning approached 0%.
‘Fuck, we’re fucked!’
Baek Jinwoo’s expression hardened.
‘Look at these bastards?’
Malicious.
“So since you knew you’d obviously lose if you came after me directly, you were planning to slit up powerless Yoo Jia and run?”
This crossed the line far too badly.
“You sons of bitches.”
Slowly, Baek Jinwoo raised his arm.
Sssst!
At that moment, HunGyo was summoned on the spot.
Had he sensed his master’s anger and intent? HunGyo drew his sword, murderous aura pouring off him in waves.
“W-wait.”
“We’ll just leave.”
Feeling an overwhelming pressure so intense it made it hard to breathe, the three rankers began backing away.
He had already grasped the situation.
He only needed to wipe out everyone except Kang Geonho, and there would be no compromise.
“Last words.”
Baek Jinwoo muttered quietly.
“No last words, right?”
The thing he hated most was people laying hands on those around him.
He had thought that lesson had already been thoroughly learned through the gang purge incident.
“L-last words? What are you talking about? Didn’t you hear us say we’re just leaving?”
“We were only threatening her with words. It’s not like we were really going to kill someone. We were just planning to rough her up a little and leave.”
They kept making excuse after excuse, but not a single word entered his ears.
There was no point listening to them anyway.
They had tried to kill someone.
From the moment that failed, they became bastards who deserved to die.
‘And on top of that.’
The target had been Yoo Jia.
“Wipe them all out.”
—Yes, my lord.
A monstrous aura began pouring out from HunGyo’s body.
It was yin-yang energy, disciplined and controlled through Resonance Demonic Art.
‘Th-this is insane.’
‘How can a summon have that kind of presence…?’
‘Was HunGyo always this kind of summon?’
Baekho’s rankers knew HunGyo well. They had seen him often during consulting.
But even for them, this was the first time seeing HunGyo fight with his full strength and absolute focus.
“Stop him first!”
Park Ho shouted.
Thinking about it calmly, escape was difficult anyway.
Rather than just sitting there and taking it, they had to struggle as much as possible.
‘Besides.’
It made sense that Baek Jinwoo was confident, but right now he had only brought out a single summon.
Now was their chance.
If Lamba, the Explosive Dragon, and the others all came pouring out, then there would truly be no answer.
“Don’t defend, just all attack together!”
They might have been national representatives, because they quickly united and switched to offense, but—
Ssssss……!
There was absolutely no way they could withstand HunGyo, who was practically coated in Trinity Runes.
HunGyo merely slowly drew his sword down.
-Krrgh?
-Grrrrrrk!
One slash.
At that single downward stroke, every summon that had been charging in froze in place.
“What are you doing?! Move!”
“What the hell is this?! Is this bugged?”
All of their summons had already been overwhelmed by HunGyo.
No, they had already been cut down.
Shrrrraaaaaak!
It was just that he had cut them so fast, at a speed like light itself, that even sound had not caught up yet.
‘Insane!’
This made no sense.
A single sword strike from just one summon, and the full combined force of three national representatives collapsed?
And this pathetically?
Losing was one thing, but this was just too much!
“Summon the other team!”
As everyone knew, a player could possess numerous summons.
And those owned summons could be organized into “teams”, with up to three teams registered in advance.
The rankers, seeing their elite team returned in one blow, immediately moved to call out their reserve second team.
No, to be exact, they were just about to—
Sssst!
Energy shot from HunGyo’s fingers and split into three branches.
Those streams pierced through gaps in their vanished barriers and struck them with perfect accuracy.
—Pay the price for daring to disturb my lord’s peace of mind.
The technique of Tendon-Breaking Bone-Crushing had been unleashed!
“K-kaaaargh!”
“Aaaaargh!”
“Grrraaaagh!”
To summon, a player had to either shout with their mouth or adjust their line of sight.
But with an immense pain they had never experienced before exploding through their entire bodies, all they could do was scream.
This was how all rankers were when they were not disciples.
Bodies of ordinary people who did not exercise and did not cultivate their minds through breathing or discipline.
With such bodies, how could they endure bones splitting and muscles being shredded into tiny pieces?
Even if they somehow managed to summon, it would not matter.
At best, they would just be cut down by HunGyo anyway.
“How many minutes did you set HunGyo?”
—One minute, my lord.
Maybe a summon could endure more, but for ordinary players, one minute was the limit of their mental strength.
Beyond that, the odds of serious mental damage became quite high.
But—
“They’re too weak.”
Baek Jinwoo’s voice was icy cold.
Without even sparing a glance for the collapsed rankers screaming in agony, he muttered,
“Set it to ten minutes.”
—As you command.
Mercy toward an enemy was a luxury.
No comments yet. Be the first to leave a review!