The Hunting Dog of the Prestigious Family Has Returned Chapter 44

Chapter 44

“Is anyone here?”

The lowest of the low—squalid as ever.

When I pushed open the creaky church doors, the children huddled in the corner immediately perked up.

“Chang-woon hyung is here!”

This was the rundown church run by Father Jung Soo-han.

Now that I had wrapped up urgent matters, I finally had some time to show my face again.

And while I was at it, I thought I’d buy these kids something tasty.

“Our patron! Our moneybag! Our wallet!”

“Hyung! Hyung! When are you coming again? It’s my birthday this time—can you buy me the brand-new DX Transforming Combiner No.14?”

The kids rushed at me shouting, and honestly, it didn’t feel bad at all.

But wait. Transforming Combiner? No.14?

“That’s that cartoon that started airing just last week, right? They’re already up to fourteen robots?”

“Yeah! When you open a random box, you get one of the robots from No.1 to No.13. And if you collect them all and combine them, there’s a 5% chance the last No.14 will get delivered to your house!”

Insane bastards.

It was bad enough to sell kids’ toys through random boxes, but what? A complete gacha system?

Just imagining the greed of those robot anime producers made my teeth grind.

How crazed by money do you have to be to come up with something this vile?

“Every time you come, you bring such precious gifts. I truly don’t know what to say, young master.”

While I was spending time with the children, Father Jung Soo-han came out from the side of the church and greeted me.

“How could I ever come empty-handed? Because of me, you’ve all gotten dragged into a rebellion you were never fated for.”

My gaze slid toward the surveillance devices I had discreetly placed around the church.

After confirming nothing was amiss, Father Jung Soo-han tilted his head and asked, puzzled:

“Rebellion? What do you mean by that?”

“……Excuse me?”

Was this guy serious?

Stunned for a moment, I looked at the bewildered priest and explained carefully.

“Listen well, Father.”

“Yes, yes.”

“Not long ago, you remember letting General Yu Sang-hyeon of the Iron Tiger Corps and his daughter stay here, right?”

“Yes indeed. To meet someone I’d only ever seen on the news was truly an honor.”

“Then you must also know that the influential clan sent assassins to kill them.”

“Well, yes, that’s true……”

I elaborated for the nodding priest.

“In other words, Father, you’ve provided sanctuary and hidden people who are targets of assassination by the ruling clan.”

There was a moment of silence.

“……Uh, excuse me?”

“If the noble families find that out, what do you think will happen to you, the master of this church?”

At those words, Father Jung Soo-han’s face went pale.

Watching his expression twist and crumble like some kind of abstract painting, it seemed he genuinely hadn’t known.

“Just give up, Father. The moment you got tangled with this young master, our lives were already screwed.”

From the workshop in the church basement, Jung Yu-rim slowly dragged herself out.

“Look at me right now. I’ve been holed up in my workshop for a whole week and only just came out… Ugh, I’m so sleepy.”

I tossed a canned coffee at the half-dead Jung Yu-rim. She gulped it down like it was the water of life.

The reason those dark circles marred her otherwise pretty face was simple.

The members of Pyeong-un Tavern who were working in our casino—

All of their artificial bodies had been custom-ordered right here.

“Still, thanks to that, you’re making plenty of money, aren’t you? Just this month’s commissions must be huge.”

“Then, young master… if I return all that money to you, can you take me out of this so-called revolution?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Ugh.”

While Jung Yu-rim and I were bantering—half-joking, half-serious—

Thud!

“Ah, ahhh…!”

Finally realizing the situation, Father Jung Soo-han staggered back a few steps before collapsing to his knees.

“Lord, why… why would You bestow such a trial upon me…!”

“Oooh! Hey! The Father’s getting possessed by the Holy Spirit!”

A Catholic priest getting a “spirit descent”? That alone made me want to laugh, but the show was worth watching.

For quite a while, he chanted what sounded like the Lord’s Prayer to steady his heart.

When that didn’t work, he began singing some hymn.

Eventually, it devolved into some bizarre gestures that blurred the line between prayer and hysteria.

In the end, foaming at the mouth, he collapsed.

“Me… a rebel…!”

With that last, dying-scream-like cry, Father Jung Soo-han fainted.

Elapsed time: about five minutes.

The kids, still munching on the snacks I’d bought, clapped with wild excitement at the sight.

“Awesome! I’ve never seen Father that scared before.”

“Idiot, that’s not fear. The shock was so big he actually met God for a bit.”

“Seeing Father like that makes me think God really does exist. I better stop running away from prayer time from now on…”

“Phew, I almost got convinced.”

We only had a moment to gawk at the priest who’d just realized his situation.

“Are you gonna keep teasing my father like that?!”

Jung Yu-rim brusquely cuffed the kids who’d been cackling, putting on a mock-angry face.

“Yu-rim unni’s mad! Everyone disperse!”

“Disperse—!”

With a roar the kids scattered like a storm. They clutched the snacks I’d given them and began playing among the nooks and pews of the church.

For a beat I was about to scold the little runaways, but when I saw their wide, grinning faces, Yu-rim softened and snorted with amusement.

“Still, like you can see, our church’s finances have improved a lot.”

Yu-rim flopped down on a church bench and spoke.

“Thanks to the Pyeong-un Tavern people who keep guard for us all the time, nothing dangerous happens anymore. And Aunt Bok-ja drops by sometimes to play with the kids, too.”

“Aunt Bok-ja… the landlady?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

Come to think of it, she said she’d been coming here to pray. Lately her face looked calmer—maybe faith actually helps, after all.

“Look at how far we’ve climbed from being alleyway beggars… Maybe this rebellion business isn’t so bad after all.” Yu-rim joked.

“Well, we’ll climb even higher.” I said.

There’d be a lot for this church to do in the days ahead.

Watching the children play, I asked casually, “How’s the mood around here lately?”

“You saw it on your way, didn’t you, young master?” Yu-rim replied, clamping a cigarette between her lips before she spoke.

“The black market down in the lowest tier is booming. Weapons, artificial bodies, organs… so much stock is coming in, and more and more buyers are showing up.”

“What’s causing it?”

“What do you think?”

She pointed upward with a finger.

“There was a purge at the highest tier. Not just any purge—the Andong Kim clan rounded up the entire Pungyang Cho Clan and crushed them. Everyone’s trying to take advantage of that chaos and make a killing, and the whole neighborhood is going crazy.”

“That’s right!” the kids shouted from a corner of the church, bouncing up and down to add in.

“So if you go outside now, you’ll run into dangerous uncles everywhere! The priest said not to go out!”

“We’ve been stuck here for a month!”

“I want to go play! It’s suffocating… Ah! Yu-rim unni stole my snack!”

Yu-rim grabbed a handful of the kids’ snacks and chomped them, face full of mischief. Watching her frown, the little brat, cheeks blown out like a seasonal pufferfish, swung an arm at her with furious energy.

Even so, seeing the kids act like this made one thing clear: the situation was serious.

“Bye, Chang-woon hyung!”

“DX Transforming Combiner No.14! Got it?!”

After handing the kids three extra boxes of same-day snacks and five seasoned chickens, I waved them off and left the church.

I strolled leisurely to an old park a fair distance away. The park sat on higher ground; from its railing I could see the lowest-tier garbage dump sprawled below.

Click.

After confirming nobody was around, I pulled the Choreng-i mask that Hahoe had supplied out of my coat and slipped it on.

For a moment my vision went black.

[Access level: Grade 1. Authentication complete.]

A brief message, and a VR image appeared before my eyes.

I was sitting in a stately pavilion floating in the middle of a lake. Looking up, countless characters spread across the sky like a milky galaxy.

“Spectacular. Damn—these maniacs kept all this?” I muttered.

I’d heard the access grade had gone up, but I didn’t expect anything like this.

The scene before me was Hahoe’s accumulated database—decades of records. Confidential files from major firms across Joseon, network access codes, classified information—everything was catalogued here.

So how would I find the specific information I wanted in this ocean of data?

A brief flicker of worry, then it dissolved. The moment I thought of what I wanted, dozens, then hundreds of screens started appearing before my eyes.

Shhhhhh—!

Like pages flipping in a paper book, drone footage, news articles, reports, editorials—everything streamed into view.

Most striking were the files stamped “CENSORED,” the documents that had been redacted and erased for failing to meet government press guidelines.

“They kept telling us Hanseong was safe, but it’s a mess.”

When the noble elite became destabilized by the purge, law and order in Hanseong began to wobble, too.

It was natural—one of Joseon’s largest clans, the Pungyang Cho Clan, had risen up en masse. In modernized Nanyang-ju there were daily volleys, and affiliated corporations and branch families had released private troops to sabotage the Andong Kim clan and their sympathizers.

To stop it, the court mobilized the Geumgun guard and the Training Command’s tactical modules, and even pulled in the policing modules and officers from the Police Bureau.

‘Kim Junghun probably pushed the court’s AI to move. He’d think ending this quickly is the most efficient course of action.’

But because so much attention was focused on crushing the Pungyang Cho Clan, a gaping hole opened in Hanseong’s otherwise-solid security.

And into that gap crawled the sword clans.

Those were the scum who trafficked people to Cho Seong-hwan—relatives of Dok Go-seong, if the rumors were to be believed.

‘If he’d been alive, Seong-hwan would’ve prevented Hanseong’s security from collapsing this far. Even though he was low-ranking, Dok Go-seong’s sword faction had the backing of powerful clans.’

From my memories of a past life, that was true. Dok Go-seong’s sword faction had acted like a balancing boss among the other sword clans—horrible people, but they rarely overstepped certain lines. Cho Seong-hwan cooperated with the underworld to keep the filth of Hanseong from surfacing.

Now the manager, Cho Seong-hwan, was executed as a rebel; the damper role of Dok Go-seong lay dead and had been washed away down Hanseong’s sewers.

With the giant organization that kept them in check gone, the medium and small sword clans nested underground took up arms and poured onto the surface. They started looting middle-tier banks, parts factories, cryptocurrency mines—anything they could get their hands on.

The butterfly effect from killing Cho Seong-hwan had reached all the way here.

“And among them, the most problematic are…these guys.”

On the Police Bureau’s wanted list was a band of sword clans.

Noble-Killing Association.

A group whose name literally means “the society for killing noble,” they were an organization that ambushed mid-tier noble families who’d nested in the middle levels.

One interesting thing about these bastards was their pattern of behavior.

If they were raiding a noble household, they should be ripping out data chips or crypto wallets or whatever—not leaving empty-handed. But there wasn’t any sign of that.

“Instead, as if they don’t care about that stuff at all, the moment they finish the job they immediately move on to the next target….”

It seemed their purpose was singular: to kill noble, pure and simple.

While this chaos continued, they moved as if desperate to slaughter as many noble as possible.

I’d seen this countless times in my previous life as well.

“Revenge.”

I took off the Choreng-i mask and tucked it into my coat.

I wasn’t about to sympathize with their grudges, but I did admit their skills appealed to me: strong hatred toward the noble that couldn’t be bought with money, and they handled their work cleanly.

Perfect candidates to recruit.

“Now then—where do we find these sword clans…”

What to do next.

Should I go to the addresses where their families lived and snatch someone? Kidnap a family member to draw them out?

I was mapping out routes and tactics when a voice called, and I turned.

“Hey.”

“…Huh?”

The speaker was a man staggering drunk, hair in wild tangles and eyes hollow. His worn robe looked no better than rags.

His left limbs were crude artificial replacements, jerking clumsily. Yet, incongruous with his shabby appearance, the Korean Sword at his side shimmered and hummed with latent power.

He matched the identity I’d just been viewing down to the last detail.

They say a tiger comes when you speak its name.

A sword clan member.

“You there, kid—you not from around here, are you?”

“Nope. What place this shabby would let me set foot, huh?”

He shoved the question toward me along with his blade, but I answered without showing fear.

Maybe my calm reply irritated him.

The sword-clan man froze and, baring his teeth, pressed again.

“So where are you from then? Judging by your clothes, you must be from some pretty fancy household, right?”

“Sure. A very—very distinguished family. You’d be surprised if you heard it.”

“Hehe, really?”

The man chuckled and smirked, but in a blink the grin drained from his face like it had never been there.

“Then die.”

Before I could react, a blade faster than reflex rained toward my head.

Claaang—!

Only when the Sword was within an inch of me did I realize he’d attacked—but luckily my head did not split in two.

“…Taewoong .”

The Sword slammed into Taewoong’s artificial arm and stopped mere centimeters from my face.

Watching the sword’s heated edge smoke and glow scarlet, I spoke in a brighter voice than I had in a long time.

“Do not kill him. Understood?”

---The End Of The Chapter---

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