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Chapter 6
Twhack–!
Before they could regain their composure, I loosed another arrow.
The arrow sliced through the air with brutal speed.
But the assassin who saw it only snorted with disdain.
“Even if it’s military-grade, an arrow is still just an arrow. No matter how well you shoot, there’s no way it’ll be fast enough.”
Just as the assassin muttered and turned his head to dodge—
“I know that too, dumbass.”
KWAANG—!
The arrow, which had brushed past the side of his head, exploded on the spot.
“What the hell?!”
A shockwave slammed against his face.
Only then did the assassin turn back, gritting his teeth.
“You little brat... what kind of half-assed prank…!”
Attached to the arrowhead was a small block of solid explosive.
The moment it passed by his head, the fuse had been triggered to ignite.
“…Wait.”
Realizing this, his eyes darted, not toward me, but to his own arm, where the first arrow had struck.
Of course.
If the second arrow had a bomb attached to it…
“Then obviously, the first one had one too.”
KUKWAANG—!
With a line delivered in absolute confidence, an explosion erupted from inside his arm.
The internal mechanical components, unprotected by any armor plating, were instantly shredded.
“Damn it…!”
Having lost an arm in a moment of carelessness, panic flashed across the assassin’s face.
And in that fleeting opening—
“Let me return the favor, kid.”
Having been watching and waiting for the right moment, Taewoong didn’t waste his chance.
He grabbed the man’s face, his expression like stone.
“Your playmate is me. Where do you think you’re looking?”
“Y-You bastard—!”
CRUNCH!
As Taewoong applied pressure, the assassin’s head caved in like a watermelon.
Even with protective gear on, the skull was completely crushed, such was the raw strength of a Grade 1 military-grade artificial body, leagues beyond a civilian combat prosthetic.
“What the—did he die in one hit?!”
“That dumbass! He went in close against a Sedo Clans bodyguard…!”
As one of their frontline fighters fell, chaos rippled through the remaining assassin positioned at long range.
“What’s going on?! This isn’t what we were told! Weren’t we told only one of them could fight?! Why the hell is that brat shooting arrows?!”
“Is this really the time to be bitching?! Just shoot something already!”
Following the shout of one man, two of the remaining three immediately pulled the triggers on their rifles.
TUDUDUDUDU—!
“Tch.”
The rounds they were firing were small-caliber anti-personnel bullets.
Taewoong, raising his arm, blocked the hail of bullets and turned toward me.
“Young master, are you alright?!”
With Taewoong’s artificial body, those rounds couldn’t do any serious damage, but the real concern was me, standing behind him.
My clothes had some level of ballistic protection, but there was no way they could hold off that many bullets.
As Taewoong stood his ground in front of me without budging, the remaining three assassin smirked with satisfaction.
“We’ve got the bodyguard pinned!”
“Get the heavy weapons! Hurry!”
“Are you nuts?! The target is that bodyguard bastard! If we use that, the brat’ll get caught in it too…!”
“Then we all die here?! Just do it, damn it—!”
So only one of them had a military-grade prosthetic, huh?
Even as they lost cohesion, their coordination remained solid.
When one ran out of ammo, another immediately took over.
While that happened, the third reloaded and resumed fire.
As they took turns with almost professional efficiency, the last one began assembling a recoilless rifle delivered by drone.
“Shit! This wasn’t part of the plan…!”
A hurried voice accompanied the rapid assembly of a rocket launcher.
Seeing it, Taewoong’s eyes widened.
“Anti-tank rocket! Young master! At this rate—!”
“Just keep blocking it!”
Even if it was a military-grade artificial body, taking a hit from that thing would leave nothing of you.
Another mountain beyond the last…
Taking position behind Taewoong, I immediately pulled back the bowstring.
“Hoo…!”
It felt like hell.
My hands trembled uncontrollably from the aftermath of the explosion. Blood trickled down the taut bowstring I struggled to grip.
One chance.
Just one.
The tension gripped my whole body like a vice. And yet, rather than panic, a smile crept across my lips.
“No way I’m dying.”
I will survive.
I’ll make it through this, so I can laugh at those damned Sedo Clans bastards as they scramble in vain.
I’ll watch with these very eyes as the flames of revolution devour this so-called Joseon and every last one of them.
THWACK—!
By the time that thought ended, the arrow had already been loosed.
It flew in a perfect, unwavering line, and buried itself right into the face of the assassin who was assembling the rocket launcher.
“G-gghk…!”
The alloy-tipped arrowhead crushed his brain. His body collapsed like a ragdoll, limp.
His fingers, seizing up from the pain, twitched reflexively, and pulled the trigger.
“No—Don’t…!”
The rocket, now pointed at the ground, fired.
The two assassin beside him, still in the middle of their own firing, were instantly obliterated, not even a trace left behind.
KUKWAAAAANG—!
A deafening explosion, a shockwave of dust and shattered debris scattering in all directions.
Taewoong, shielding me with his body, crouched against the blast. But only briefly.
Once he confirmed the situation was over, he stood and immediately scanned our surroundings.
“There may be more attackers. We should move to my hidden safehouse—”
“No. There won’t be any more.”
And even if there were, I’d still be fine.
As I muttered this under my breath, Taewoong turned toward me, a puzzled look on his face.
“You didn’t catch what those guys were saying, did you?”
“What they were saying…?”
Clutching my shaking legs, I moved slowly toward the wreckage.
My target: the military support drone that had fallen during the explosion.
I tore off the drone’s damaged armor plating and dug through its contents, eventually pulling out the charred voice module. Forcing it to play back, I rewound to the last few seconds of recorded audio.
Chzzk. Krrzzzt.
-“We’ve got the bodyguard pinned!”
-“Get the heavy weapons! Hurry!”
-“Are you nuts?! The target is that bodyguard bastard! If we use that, the brat’ll get caught in it too…!”
-“Then we all die here?! Just do it, damn it—!”
Taewoong narrowed his eyes. He hadn’t had the time to register any of that during the fight.
“Kim Hyunwoo isn’t stupid, he’s just an asshole. And just last week, he and I clashed head-on in the clan’s ancestral estate. His little followers saw it too. By now? Every noble family in the region’s probably heard the story.”
I paused.
“And now, in the middle of all that, I’m attacked and killed? By Hahoe? You think the upper ranks of the Sedo Clans families are really going to buy that?”
“Of course not.”
Taewoong understood the ways of the noble families all too well.
With a grim look, he glanced down at the corpses.
“So you’re saying… they never intended to kill you from the start?”
“Exactly. But now think one step further.”
I turned my eyes to the far corner of the ruined structure.
A small surveillance camera, mounted on a utility pole, silently stared back at me.
Kim Hyunwoo was still watching me.
“They weren’t trying to kill me. They were trying to keep me alive.”
CRACK!
The moment I locked eyes with it, the camera sparked and burst into smoke.
Evidence erased, instantly.
Taewoong, realizing it too late, furrowed his brows. I began explaining the twisted little stage they had constructed.
“I lose my bodyguard to a Hahoe attack, barely escape with my life… and then Kim Hyunwoo personally comes to save me? Sounds like a hell of a story, doesn’t it?”
“……!”
Kim Hyunwoo wouldn’t kill me.
More precisely, he saw no need to.
All he wanted was to plant fear in me.
To let me know, without a shadow of doubt, that he could end me any time he wanted. That was how he planned to break me.
“That’s why the real target of this ambush wasn’t me…”
“…It was your bodyguard—me.”
With a heavy voice, Taewoong stared down at the corpses of the assassin scattered across the ground.
“Taewoong.”
“...Ah, Young Master. I apologize.”
A brief silence followed.
But my voice seemed to snap him out of it, and he hurried over to examine my body.
“We need to treat your injuries. I’ll call someone immediately. And the bodies—”
“Are you okay?”
“……!”
Taewoong’s voice cut off mid-sentence.
He opened and closed his mouth, trying to say something, but in the end, no words came out.
I understood.
“After over ten years of loyalty and service, the only thing you get in return is your life being targeted. And all because of some petty pride struggle between those bastards?”
Muttering as if speaking for him, I looked over at him with a hollow laugh.
“Taewoong. How long are you planning to stay loyal to a family like this?”
“……!”
At those words, Taewoong remained speechless, his face contorted with conflicted emotions.
I could guess how he felt.
There’s nothing more miserable than loyalty that’s never rewarded.
He clenched his fists tightly, fighting to contain his feelings.
And as I watched that face…
‘Just as planned!’
I held back the laugh that nearly escaped.
Why? The reason was simple.
This was the man I needed the most, more than even that guy I was going to meet next.
He was Seo Taewoong.
‘If I can win this guy over, then risking my life on this insane plan will have been worth it.’
Since entering the family as a bodyguard, he had watched over me for most of his life.
For what? A half-assed emotional reason that I reminded him of his late son.
But deep inside, he held the stubborn warrior’s mindset, once loyalty is given to a family, it lasts till death.
‘That’s why he risks his life for me, but that doesn’t make him mine.’
He cared for me not out of love or loyalty to me, but because the family had ordered him to protect me.
But this ambush… it cracked that stubborn loyalty for the first time.
So now, I had one job.
To wedge that crack wide open, and insert something new in its place.
Disillusionment with the Sedo Clans.
Treason.
And finally, loyalty, not to the family, but to me.
WEE-OOOHH!
While I was deep in thought, a distant siren echoed in the background.
“They’re finally here.”
Uncharacteristically gruff, Taewoong muttered as he powered down his enhanced prosthetics.
“I’ll take care of securing the bodies. I’ll handle the investigation and cleanup as well, so please tend to your wounds first—”
“It’s just a cut finger, not a mortal wound. More importantly, Taewoong.”
“Yes?”
Shaking off the dried blood on my hand, I turned to him.
“These assassin corpses. Burn them. All of them. Leave nothing behind.”
“……Excuse me?”
He blinked at me, thinking he must’ve misheard.
“Young master, these bodies are some of the only concrete evidence of the ambush—”
“I know.”
“Then this is even worse! We should be securing them for investigation, not destroying them! If we do this, there’ll be no way to prove the attack even happened—”
“And if we prove it, what? The Royal Inquisition Bureau is going to drag Kim Hyunwoo off to jail or something? No chance.”
At best, they’d release some half-assed public statement condemning the Hahoe attack. That’s all.
Muttering with disdain, I picked up one of the Hahoe masks the assassins had been wearing.
“No matter what we say about this attack, Kim Hyunwoo won’t bat an eye. All the elders in the clan are on his side anyway. Even if we scream and shout, there’s nothing we can do.”
“Still…”
“So, we do the opposite.”
The mask, cheaply made from carbon fiber, 3D-printed. Not even real wood.
A flimsy imitation, just like the attack.
And provoking them too early with this? Not worth the fallout.
“Today’s car crash wasn’t an attack by Hahoe. It was a freak accident caused by a self-driving malfunction. The explosion? Battery overheating.”
“Young master, are you saying…?”
“Exactly.”
I smiled, sly and deliberate.
“This ambush? We bury it ourselves.”
---The End Of The Chapter---
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