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Chapter 45
“Ugh?!”
Was he only just coming to?
As if finally regaining his senses, the man frantically glanced around. The tidily arranged space must have felt unfamiliar. Watching his eyes roll this way and that, I spoke to him slowly.
“Are you awake?”
When he heard my voice, the attacker immediately fixed his gaze on me. I sat there, leisurely watching him while wearing my blue robe. You can imagine the situation well enough: he’d tried to kill a noble in the underground district, failed, and was captured and dragged here.
“…Huh.”
Realizing his predicament, his expression froze into a cold mask.
Clank—!
“What?!”
“Guuuu—!”
Just as he was about to make his next move, a mechanical sound rang out, and his body went rigid where he stood. Blood dribbled from his mouth. Seo Taewoong, who had been waiting behind us, forced the man’s mouth open, and blood poured from his tongue.
“He bit his tongue to kill himself. If the behavior-control chip had activated any later, he would have died on the spot.”
“How pathetic. He tries to kill himself the moment he opens his eyes — what a lunatic.”
I shook my head in disgust, then opened my mouth.
“You’re going to try to die without saying a single word? Don’t you value your life at all?”
“Pfft!”
The attacker spat in my direction with a look of contempt. Spittle flecked with blood foamed outward, but luckily it didn’t reach me.
“I don’t cling to life anyway. How many did I kill this time— fifteen, maybe? They were all sons of dogs; I have no regrets.”
Completely resigned, he began to chuckle hoarsely, a bitter little sound.
“But yes. There is one regret…”
His eyes flicked toward the bodyguard Seo Taewoong, who stood behind me.
“I couldn’t stick a blade through your neck because of that bodyguard over there? That’s a pity.”
His blood-smeared face twisted as he spat toward Seo Taewoong.
“Ah, old man, that artificial body of yours is something else! I should’ve sucked off the backsides of those noble a bit more! Then maybe these limbs wouldn’t ache so much, right? Hehehe…!”
The taunt was obvious, and Taewoong’s eyebrows twitched. Having spent his life guarding high-ranking nobles, he had no tolerance for provocation like that. I stepped forward, blocking Taewoong’s path.
‘He had the nerve to bite his tongue to die, and he can still wag his tongue now— this guy’s dangerous.’
I licked my lips as I stared at the attacker. From what I’d seen in a previous life, this one ranked among the upper tier of the sword-clans.
“Your name is Min Jeong-hwan…probably an alias, right? Age thirty-five. Class-2 wanted criminal. Fifteen counts of murder, twenty counts of arson, three bombings, and hundreds of property-destruction charges…your record and your organization’s are brutal.”
I recited the personal data from the Police Bureau database and took my seat. Min Jeong-hwan sneered at me as if I were insignificant.
“You little runt playing at being the Police Bureau captain— stop the theatrics and just kill me.”
“I’m not interrogating you— I’m asking questions. For someone who’s killed so many nobles, you didn’t take anything worth money. That struck me as strange.”
“You kill for that.”
He leaned back against the chair and continued.
“Then tell me your story. Why do you kill nobles?”
“…Why should I tell you that?”
“Depending on what you say, I might let you go, or even help your group.”
“Fuck off.”
He laughed hollowly in disbelief, then his face contorted.
“Torture me or do whatever dirty things you want; it won’t matter. I have nothing to say to you nobles, and I won’t beg for my life. Got it?”
“……”
“So don’t waste time— just kill me! Kill me! Hurry up!”
He only seemed to calm down for a moment before he started thrashing again, trying to tear off the restraints.
Even when offered mercy, he resisted and kicked. Well, of course. A man who’d rather bite out his own tongue than bow to a noble would react like this.
Still, the smile at the corner of my mouth deepened.
When I finished thinking, I drew something from my robe and tossed it.
With a soft tuk, an ocher-green token fell, the Andong Kim clan’s identity card that shimmered like jade.
At once, Min Jeong-hwan’s eyes widened.
“Mad—Andong Kim? I knew you were a noble, but you are bigger than I thought…!”
“Not that. Look closer.”
At my words, he stared at the card as if puzzled, and his expression turned complicated.
The letters stamped on the tag were tinged yellow. His gaze landed on my name, the letters had been dyed yellow.
“…A son by a concubine?” he muttered.
“If only it were that,” I snorted, then mocked him.
“See, I’m a scum-spawn dragged up from the lowest of the low, a whelp crawling out of a serf’s belly.”
Maybe my hollow little self-introduction stunned him more than anything.
“…Tch. Of all things, the last one I had to touch was some half-bred noble.”
Min Jeong-hwan spat the curse with reluctance.
One odd thing: the fierce hostility he’d shown earlier had noticeably faded.
‘The moment he realized I was an illegitimate offspring, his venom eased. In other words, this fellow knows a lot about that side of things.’
Lost in that thought, I watched as Min Jeong-hwan glanced toward me and, with a sour look, spoke.
“With a bodyguard like that attached to you, you must be in league with the noble, aren’t you?”
“If that were the case, they’d have reported you to the main household the moment they captured you. The Andong Kim Clan’s intelligence bureau and the Royal Inquisition Bureau would have gladly pried open your head; you and your colleagues would’ve been seized and your heads displayed as a warning.”
There was no denying the logic, and Min Jeong-hwan fell silent.
If I’d wanted to kill him or extract information, I could have done so at any time.
“One more thing. Right now, you and your friends should count yourselves grateful to me.”
“Grateful? What the—!”
Min Jeong-hwan sneered for a moment at my words.
“I killed Cho Seong-hwan.”
At the name that slipped from my mouth without preface, he was left utterly speechless for a long beat.
But one thing was clear: the way he looked at me had changed unmistakably.
“So? Does that make you want to talk to me now?”
Talking to him felt like pulling teeth. Fighters are exhausting to deal with.
****
“This is impossible!”
I told Min Jeong-hwan, who was now kneeling before me, everything I had.
How I’d exposed the Pungyang Cho Clan’s experiment; how I’d torn a fissure open in the heart of Hanseong; and finally, how I’d made Kim Hyunwoo put the knife in Cho Seong-hwan.
“Are you saying…all those incidents were your doing? Yours?” he asked, unbelieving.
At first, he wouldn’t, couldn’t, accept it. But when I produced the Choreng-i mask that Hahoe themselves had made and held it in front of him, he could no longer deny my words.
“This is absurd. The Pungyang Cho Clan being torn to pieces, the thousands of noble dropping like flies…all because of you alone?”
“Alone? Don’t be ridiculous. I could’ve done nothing without Hahoe’s support.”
Indeed.
Even when we caught Cho Seong-hwan this time, it went like that. Prepare the breeding-season monster. Slip past the ironclad guards and swap the cargo. Stall for time until Kim Hyunwoo arrives. I planned the operation, but I had no choice but to use Hahoe’s hands to carry it out.
“In other words, right now I can scheme, but I don’t have the power to make those schemes happen. If I’m desperate, I can go through Hahoe like this time….”
I remembered the Yangbantal and shook my head.
“I don’t like it.”
It wasn’t a bad option, per se. There’s a righteous cause to change Joseon, and there are the intelligence and capable operatives to act on it. If I could keep using them, all the better. But that Yangbantal. Meeting that sly weasel made one thing clear.
If I kept borrowing their hands again and again, in this life I’d become Hahoe’s dog.
Thack.
I closed the file I’d been holding.
A collaborator who shares a goal and a common enemy, that’s enough of a relationship with Hahoe. As long as I have one foot inside a powerful clan, I can’t trust them 100%.
“That’s why I need an organization.”
An organization with its own force, its own intelligence network, and its own funding. A massive power that moves only for me.
“Is that why you want to recruit me?”
“Good, you understood fast.”
I intended to use the chaos of this political purge to secure as many people who would follow my orders as possible. And the first candidate was the man kneeling before me.
“Why us of all people?”
Min Jeong-hwan relaxed his guard, as if accepting that he wasn’t an enemy, and spoke.
“I don’t like saying it out loud, but there are plenty of people who handle blades better than us…”
“Tougher? Sure. If I hired a mercenary company right now, I would get a truckload of guys your caliber.”
His pride took a hit, and his head dropped, but what can you do, it’s the plain truth. In this country of Joseon, families throw obscene fortunes into teaching their children. Talented people are everywhere, tripping on the streets.
“But those so-called abilities…they’re not that important, actually.”
“What?”
I looked at the artificial bodies the people around us were fitted with.
“We live in an age where every citizen wears brain-neural interfaces and swaps their body for an artificial one. Talent, skill…you pay money and it’s solved.”
Physical ability? Stick an artificial spine in some decent guy, and his reflexes will rival any athlete. Give him even a second-class artificial body, and he’ll be leaping between buildings; what use are natural bones and frame then?
Intelligence? Much simpler. Replace the brain interface with a clean unit, upload the data, and you’ve got it. Attach an optional combat-assist processing module, and suddenly he’s a swordsman to rival Cheok Jun-gyeong* and a strategist to make Yi Sun-shin* look tame.
Of course, reaching that level costs astronomical money.
“Unless you’re born with a special gene carrying phasic power or a once-in-a-century genius…people’s capabilities are largely interchangeable.”
For that reason, what I sought now wasn’t people with flashy abilities.
“I need someone who’s mad.”
Mad for the cause, mad for ideology, mad with a grudge. People who would keep going even if their limbs were severed, who’d stare unblinking while their family was taken hostage, and still shove their face into danger for their objective.
Those were the talents I wanted.
‘Thinking about it, they really did seem crazy.’
I must have thought that tens of times. There was no solution besides killing, and they wouldn’t die nicely anyway.
It was a pain to choke them off from the other side.
And if I could command men like that as my hands and feet, how much easier would my work become?
“I need people who can smash the noble-clans to pieces. What use are hirelings bought with money? The nobles slide a coin into their accounts, and they’ll stab us in the back the first chance they get.”
“……!”
“They betray for coin, betray for power, and the ones who seem decent, their families get threatened and they betray too. You can’t imagine the kind of mess that makes.”
Bitter lessons from a past life.
But the man in front of me was the kind of asset I didn’t have to worry about.
I jabbed a finger into Min Jeong-hwan’s chest and said,
“People who already have something to lose. Fanatics who’d happily burn their own body for that thing. That’s the sort I need.”
If I put spoons in the pots of people like that, I could become something similar myself.
I slid a contract across to the trembling-faced Min Jeong-hwan.
“So tell your comrades.”
“Tell them what?”
“Tell them this: if they become my blade, I’ll give you your chance to cut down every noble in Joseon.”
The terms of the contract were simple in summary.
Kill the people I name. Do not kill anyone other than those I name.
Seeing that, Min Jeong-hwan’s mouth twisted on its own.
“Just one question. If we refuse?”
“You die. And your friends too.”
I shrugged with a short answer.
“What else can I do? If even one word of this leaks, it’s treason for me.”
“Yeah, yeah! Hehehe…!”
He muttered to himself for a while, splitting his thoughts in half. Then he straightened.
“All right. I’ll beg for my life gladly. But—”
Kneeling on one knee, Min Jeong-hwan spoke up.
“For signing that contract, promise me just one thing.”
A hard voice and eyes burning with hatred. The gaze of a dogged killer who’d died a hundred times in another life aimed squarely at me.
“Min Seung-chan, head of the Yeohung Min clan.”
“…….”
“Let me kill that bastard with my own hands.”
“Write his name in the special clause.”
His resolve made me laugh out loud.
Never did I think the day would come when I’d make a man with that look my tool.
“Survive under me, and I’ll make sure he dies by your hand.”
Contract sealed.
With that, these sword clan people became my executioners, blades to fell noble at my command.
Their satisfaction at gaining a new blade lasted only a moment.
Beep-beep.
“Hmm?”
A short signal came from the Chorengi-tal tucked in my robe.
Video data from the Imetal. I output the footage to the visual interface and a familiar scene filled the screen.
“…that idiot.”
My casino on Ground Level 1 materialized in the display. A cluster of sword-clan prowling the perimeter showed up in the footage. It looked like any ordinary scene at first glance, but when I saw the man standing at the center, eyes sweeping every direction, I couldn’t help a derisive snort.
“They actually tracked me down and came all the way here?”
It was Gu Jeong-hyeok— the steward of the Pungyang Cho Clan who’d worked with me back in Busan.
[TL: Cheok Jun-gyeong- A Goryeo military commander of Jurchen origin, famous for both his skill and his later betrayal. He initially served Goryeo loyally but defected to the Jin dynasty. In modern Korean historical fiction, his name sometimes symbolizes treachery or shifting allegiances.
Yi Sun-shin- The legendary Joseon admiral (1545–1598) who fought during the Imjin War. ]
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