Chapter 8: Black Rose (1)
The tentacles that burst out without warning attempted to absorb the magic stone directly.
‘What the hell is this guy?’
When Jin-young pulled the magic stone away from his chest, the tentacles followed it.
Just before they could touch it, Jin-young’s telekinesis froze their movement.
He considered shaking them off with psionic energy like last time, but curiosity got the better of him, so he left them be.
The thing he thought had vanished was suddenly reappearing and coveting the magic stone.
What would happen if he just gave it to them?
Since he’d be able to get more magic stones anyway, handing over one wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Jin-young personally handed the magic stone to the tentacles.
Slurp—
The wriggling tentacles greedily devoured the magic stone.
As if they’d finished their business, they immediately retreated back into his chest and vanished.
‘It’s just eating it raw like that? Wait a second.’
Jin-young thought nothing had happened, but he soon felt a change in his body.
First, as expected from the magic stone’s original effect, his overall physical abilities improved.
His body felt lighter than before, and his senses became a bit sharper.
But it wasn’t enough to raise his Hunter grade.
Normally, when 8th or 9th-grade Hunters absorb a 3rd-grade magic stone, they grow by at least one full grade—so the effect was relatively weak.
Instead, something else changed for him.
‘The Subspace Storage has expanded.’
He’d never heard of absorbing a red magic stone processed from a heart strengthening a unique ability.
All that was known was that it only helped increase physical abilities.
Even right before he was transported to Renard—that is, three years from now—no such fact had ever been discovered.
Absorbing a blue magic stone processed from a brain increases mana capacity and, with low probability, allows skill acquisition.
But even that didn’t strengthen unique abilities.
Unique abilities, like physical stats or mana, were typically grown through consistent training and real combat.
‘The fact that I’m the first… must be because of something other Hunters don’t have.’
Psionic energy.
Or the unidentified black tentacles.
Naturally, the latter was far more likely.
Since this happened as the tentacles absorbed the magic stone.
If a red magic stone expanded his subspace, what effect would a blue one processed from a brain have?
Jin-young hoped Jeon Yu-hwan would finish processing the brain soon.
“Jeon Yu-hwan?”
Had he disappeared while Jin-young was absorbing the stone?
Glancing down at the floor,
“Urgh…”
There was Jeon Yu-hwan, foaming at the mouth and unconscious.
‘What’s wrong with this guy now?’
Jin-young looked around and spotted a sink.
Without moving, he used Psychokinesis to turn the faucet on full blast, filling the sink to the brim.
Whoosh—
A massive blob of water lifted by telekinesis slammed directly into Jeon Yu-hwan’s face.
Splash!
“Gah!”
Jeon Yu-hwan’s eyes shot open from the sudden deluge.
“You okay? You suddenly passed out.”
“I… did?”
At Jin-young’s words, he looked utterly confused.
His hair was completely soaked, but he had no time to care about that.
As if suddenly remembering something, his face twisted in horror.
“I remember now! That black abyss that appeared on your chest, Hunter-nim… What on earth was that? I couldn’t help but keep staring at it, and then my memory just cut off.”
‘Abyss?’
Jin-young frowned at the mention of an abyss rather than tentacles.
Misinterpreting the expression, Jeon Yu-hwan hurriedly continued.
“I’m sorry for peeking without permission. I only glanced once, but strangely, I couldn’t look away. I think I even heard some weird auditory hallucinations.”
“You heard hallucinations?”
“Yes. I couldn’t make out what the voices were saying. My memory cut off because of it…”
If the tentacles’ true nature was indeed remnants of a demon king, Jeon Yu-hwan’s reaction wouldn’t be too strange.
Considering the power of the entity he’d faced right before regression, someone like Jeon Yu-hwan exploding to death on the spot wouldn’t have been surprising.
Since only a speck of remnant remained, it ended with just fainting.
“Enough about that. Can you speed up the brain processing?”
“Yes. I was planning to start tonight anyway. If you come back in about five days, it should be ready.”
“Good.”
Jin-young nodded and left the workshop.
Left alone, Jeon Yu-hwan only slumped into his chair after Jin-young had completely departed.
As if all his energy had been drained, he muttered limply.
“What the hell did I just see…”
His back was drenched in cold sweat.
***
For civil servant Hunters at the district office, dealing with people was more frequent than dealing with monsters.
They handled strange complainants, but more often than not, they encountered fellow Awakened.
Those called “villains” rather than Hunters.
Ordinary criminals could be arrested by police, but Hunter criminals required other Hunters to step in.
Guild-affiliated Hunters wouldn’t bother with unprofitable tasks like villain arrests, and there was no legal authority to force them anyway.
In the end, it fell to civil servant Hunters.
And villain activity didn’t distinguish between day and night.
At 2 a.m., prime time for finally lying down after preparing for bed and scrolling on the phone.
Jin-young, urgently summoned just before sleep, arrived at a market near Gimpo Airport.
A total of ten civil servant Hunters, including Jin-young, had been mobilized.
Twenty police officers armed with firearms accompanied them.
They had completely surrounded all entrances to a rundown three-story commercial building inside the market.
While the combat-oriented response team prepared to breach the building,
Jin-young and Jin-sol from the support team had no role on the front line, so they stayed in the rear with the non-Awakened police.
“Whew, I hope this operation ends safely.”
Jin-sol said with a tense expression.
Dealing with villains could sometimes be harder than hunting monsters.
Monsters could simply be killed with full force, but villains couldn’t be killed carelessly.
Even murderers weren’t executed on the spot—they had to be arrested first.
The law applied not only to ordinary people but to Hunters as well.
Of course, heinous criminals who committed terrorism against civilians were sometimes killed on site.
But those levels of villains were handled by Intelligence Department agents, who were granted summary judgment rights, so it wasn’t an issue.
The villains ordinary civil servants dealt with were relatively minor—assault, unregistered Awakened, black-market dealings, and the like.
Many Hunters ended up seriously injured while trying to subdue such villains without killing them.
“Are you worried?”
Jin-young asked.
“Of course. If fighting breaks out inside, someone will definitely get hurt. If only the Sand Wraith equipment had been distributed sooner, things would be better. Still no word on it.”
“Wasn’t there any mention of when it would be issued?”
“No. I even emailed the National Monster Research Institute, but they’ve been completely silent.”
The National Monster Research Institute—abbreviated as NMRI—was in charge of researching monster corpses hunted mostly by public-sector Hunters, as well as crafting equipment, artifacts, and refining magic stones.
The Sand Wraith corpse Jin-young had hunted on the day of his regression should currently be there.
There had to be a reason the NMRI was deliberately ignoring the inquiries.
‘Someone probably intercepted the Sand Wraith in the middle.’
The Intelligence Department wouldn’t stoop to such shameless and senseless behavior. They weren’t desperate enough to want mere Sand Wraith scraps.
More likely some mid-tier civil servant Hunters with vague authority but oversized greed.
It was still just suspicion, so Jin-young didn’t speculate further.
He could look into it himself later.
For now, he needed to focus on the villains inside the building.
Before regression, he could never forget being urgently deployed at 2 a.m.
Contrary to intelligence suggesting only low-level villains, a high-grade villain hiding their identity had been mixed in.
Since they were unregistered, their exact grade was unknown, and no news had surfaced afterward.
During the arrest operation, the civil servants were utterly defeated and let all the villains escape.
Some were caught later, but the unidentified unregistered Hunter was never found.
If the case had been handed over to the Intelligence Department, Jin-young had no way of knowing.
‘I’m curious what kind of bastard he is.’
Jin-young was the type who had to satisfy his curiosity.
***
Inside the rundown three-story commercial building.
Children who looked barely middle-school age were gathered in the middle of a shabby office.
They weren’t physically bound, but they were huddled together, terrified.
The person sitting on a folding chair in front of them spoke.
“Kids, I’m telling you—just drink this and I’ll send you right home, okay? Don’t you trust uncle?”
A bald man shook a bottle filled with black liquid.
A scrawny, rat-faced man beside him chimed in.
“Boss, why waste time? Let’s just force it down them. Put it in a syringe and inject—it’ll work instantly.”
“Hey, you idiot. Are you crazy?”
“No…”
“If side effects kill the lab rats, you gonna take responsibility?”
“Sorry, boss. I spoke out of turn.”
The bald man scolded the rat-faced man, then turned back to the children.
“Uncle’s being nice right now, yeah? If you keep testing my patience, I might do something worse than what I’d do to that rat over there.”
“Hic…”
One of the girls in the group finally burst into tears.
At that, the bald man put on a pitying expression and said,
“Hey now, how can you start crying already? I haven’t even done anything yet.”
Watching the indecisive bald man, the rat-faced one nervously fidgeted his legs and bit his lip anxiously.
The organization had specifically kidnapped delinquent teens, but some of them might still have parents who hadn’t lost interest.
If that were the case, a missing-person report could have been filed, and if the police started searching, their trail might eventually be traced.
And such ominous premonitions often came true.
“Boss!”
A man burst through the office door and shouted urgently.
“Cops here?”
The rat-faced man reacted first.
“It’s not just the cops. Civil servant Hunters came with them!”
“Civil servant Hunters too? Fuck, did the investigators catch a whiff?”
“What do we do, boss?”
“For now—”
Before the rat-faced man could give an order, the bald man cut in.
“Why the panic? Isn’t this Gangseo District jurisdiction? The Gangseo District Office civil servants are at best 7th or 8th-grade, right?”
“Y-Yes, that’s right.”
“Then what are you waiting for? Go block them.”
“Yes…!”
All the gang members except the rat-faced one moved in perfect unison toward the building entrances.
Even amid the chaos, the bald man remained relaxed.
“Kids, the cops are outside now. Uncle can’t wait any longer, okay? If I really put in effort, little brats like you will die.”
At the bald man’s soft-spoken threat, ripples of unease spread through the group.
Someone had to step up first.
That was the only way to buy time.
But heroes willing to readily drink an unknown liquid were rare.
As everyone hesitated,
BOOM!
“Aaagh!”
“What are you doing? Block them properly!”
“Guh…”
A massive explosion and screams echoed from the entrance.
The police had finally stormed in.
Oddly, the rat-faced man thought he heard more screams from their own men.
If it was 7th–8th grades fighting each other, the side with greater numbers should have won.
Something felt off—just as he thought that,
BAM!
Civil servant Hunters kicked down the office door and charged in.
The unstoppable wave of civil servants aimed their weapons.
Among them, a Hunter in police uniform looked at the rat-faced villain and said,
“Got you at last, you rat bastard. A long tail always gets caught eventually.”
“Oh my, isn’t this Inspector Kang Tae-woo? What brings you all the way here, you fucking prick?”
Even while bluffing, the rat-faced man thought he’d been hit hard by the cops.
He never imagined Inspector Kang Tae-woo from the major crimes unit would show up here.
A rare 6th-grade Hunter in the police force, he was a tough opponent and notorious for his brutal hands.
The baton he was casually spinning was a nightmare for villains.
It wouldn’t kill you, but it hurt bad enough to make you wish it had.
“Came to arrest you, rat. That bald guy over there is new. New lackey, maybe?”
“Lackey? If he were, would I be acting like this? He’s the boss I serve, you bastard.”
“You actually serve someone? Well, we can talk details at the station. First—you kids, you’re safe now. Come this way.”
Kang Tae-woo said to the trembling children.
The moment the kids glanced at the bald man and tried to shuffle toward him,
“One step and you die.”
At the bald man’s voice thick with killing intent, the children froze in unison.
The man who had been sitting in the chair until now finally stood up.
“Handle them while I clean this up.”
“Understood, boss.”
The rat-faced man replied, accepting the bottle of black liquid from the bald man.
There was one reason he respectfully called this parachuted-in boss “hyung-nim” despite the man being forced on them from above.
He was a high-grade Hunter.
Definitely stronger than himself, though the rat-faced man hadn’t yet heard his exact grade.
That’s why he didn’t act immediately.
A fight between the civil servants and the boss—he could watch the outcome and decide later.
Kang Tae-woo eyed the approaching bald man and said to his team,
“The opponent is a villain whose full strength is unknown. Maintain distance and engage cautiously.”
“Yes, sir.”
The civil servant Hunters backed away to avoid the approaching bald man.
Suddenly, the bald man stopped walking.
The distance between them was about twenty paces.
Kang Tae-woo narrowed his brows and closely observed the opponent.
When the bald man abruptly raised his right hand,
“Dodge!”
Kang Tae-woo shouted, but it was already too late.
Whoosh—
The bald man simply swung his hand once, as if shooing away a fly.
The next instant.
Shrrrieeeek!
A blade-like gust of wind tore through the air and flew toward the civil servants.
Shhhrrrr—
“Gaaah!”
The civil servant Hunters were slashed all over their bodies and collapsed to the floor, while the wall behind them cracked open.
“Civil servants are still as pathetic as ever. I even held back so you wouldn’t die.”
Kang Tae-woo, the only one who had successfully defended, aimed for a fleeting opening.
Whoosh—
He vanished from his spot in an instant and reappeared behind the bald man.
Then he struck the back of the bald man’s head with full force using his baton.
Crack—
At the sound like bones shattering, Kang Tae-woo sensed something was wrong.
It wasn’t that he’d hit too hard and crushed the skull.
His baton had snapped clean in two.
It was made from “black steel,” renowned for its hardness and discovered in a 4th-grade dungeon.
Unless using a skill or ability, even 4th-grade Hunters couldn’t break it with raw strength alone.
But the bald man turned around nonchalantly.
BOOM!
With a single punch, he sent Kang Tae-woo flying.
CRASH!
Kang Tae-woo slammed into the wall and couldn’t get up as the bald man approached.
Fortunately, he was still conscious, so he barely managed to open his mouth.
“Rat… bastard. Stop right now.”
In the end, the rat-faced man, having filled a syringe with the black liquid, was grinning sinisterly at the children.
With the bald boss’s complete victory, there was no reason to delay any longer.
“It’s my style, so I’ll make it special—not too painful.”
The rat-faced man said as he approached the girl who had been crying.
Seeing this, Kang Tae-woo struggled to move his body.
It wasn’t easy—bones were probably broken in several places.
The bald man looked down at his labored efforts.
Gritting his teeth, Kang Tae-woo said,
“Goddamn it… Who the hell are you? What group are you with…?”
“There’s nothing a punk like you could figure out even if you knew. So just lie there and rest easy.”
Just as the bald man raised his fist,
“Kyaaaaah!”
A shrill scream came from behind.
The owner of that frivolous voice was definit
ely the rat-faced man.
“Causing a damn scene.”
The bald man dismissed it as nothing and ignored it.
“H-Help! The civil servant is killing someone! Save me!”
Finally turning around, the bald man tilted his head in confusion.
There was no one in front of the rat-faced man—it looked like he was putting on a solo act.
“What are you do—”
Crunch—
“Guh! Grrrk…”
Suddenly, both of the rat-faced man’s arms bent backward, and he collapsed foaming at the mouth.
His crotch was stained red.