KKAGAGAGAGAK—!
The blades scraped against each other, throwing off a rough shower of sparks.
After dozens of clashes, the two saber fighters broke apart at the same time.
Then, like mirror images, they took the exact same stance.
But the result was different.
Shin Junhyun stood there perfectly fine, while blood ran down from the wound where Shin Kangheon’s shoulder had been grazed.
“You still want to keep going? Then next time, it’ll be your face.”
Shin Junhyun pointed at Shin Kangheon’s face and spoke in a voice thick with killing intent.
“Put the saber down. You don’t seriously think you can beat me, do you?”
A cold sneer curled at Shin Junhyun’s lips.
After bringing Shin Kangheon in, he had personally taught him saber arts.
He had never cared about Shin Kangheon as a person, but he had taken an enormous interest in Shin Kangheon as a martial artist with potential and value.
“I know all your habits when you hold a saber. I know how you move when your eyes shift, and which side you react slower on too. And you think you can beat me?”
“Do you know your nephew’s birthday?”
“......What kind of bullshit is that at a time like this?”
He also knew that Shin Kangheon had received and learned the Blazing-Yang Art from the Glacier Priestess. He had been keeping track of that progress too.
He knew Shin Kangheon’s strength had grown drastically after he started running around with Kim Muhyuk, but it had not even been a full year.
That was nowhere near enough time for a twenty-year-old brat to grow strong enough to beat him, a seasoned Red Worm mercenary.
“This is your last chance. Get on your knees and beg for forgiveness right now!”
Shin Junhyun did not bother hiding his killing intent in his impatience.
Black Heaven Society was under attack, and Black Swallow had gone silent. He needed to confirm what the hell was happening immediately.
But Shin Kangheon only slung his saber over his shoulder with a loose, lazy posture and crooked a finger at him.
“If you’re so confident, make me kneel with your skills. Don’t just stand there throwing childish threats.”
“......You little shit!”
Shin Junhyun kicked off the ground and came at him in a savage rush, swinging his saber furiously.
JJEO-JEO-JEO-JEONG!
‘This time, I’ll beat him half to death so he never dares rear his head again!’
As long as all four limbs stayed attached, his market value would not drop.
So he would use this chance to carve fear of himself into Shin Kangheon’s body so thoroughly that this would never happen again.
“You know that?”
It was only after dozens more exchanges that Shin Junhyun realized something was wrong.
Shin Kangheon’s eyes held not a trace of fear.
Even when the blade barely grazed past the side of his face, Shin Kangheon’s gaze stayed unnervingly calm.
“All those bad habits you knew about me. I fixed them a long time ago.”
“What......?”
“Kim Muhyuk kept biting down on every weakness he saw, so they kind of fixed themselves.”
Steam began rising from Shin Kangheon’s body as he grinned.
It was the result of pulling the Blazing-Yang Art to its absolute limit.
HSSSSSS.......
The droplets of blood he flicked into the air dried up instantly in the blistering heat.
The sheer temperature turned Shin Junhyun’s face red in an instant.
And then Shin Kangheon’s movement changed.
JJEONG—!
A speed on a completely different level from before.
Shin Junhyun barely managed to block the hard-to-read trajectory of the saber.
“Ghk......!”
“Watch closely. Now it starts for real.”
As if everything up to now had been a joke, Shin Kangheon began to swing his saber in earnest.
Each time the saber wind roared, flames billowed with it.
JJEO-JEO-JEO-JEO-JEONG!
Shin Junhyun was so overwhelmed by the frenzied assault that he could not even think about counterattacking. All he could do was struggle to block.
His wide eyes were full of shock.
“That’s impossible......!”
That astonishing talent he had discovered.
It had long since surpassed his expectations by a distant margin.
Believing he could control it had been a mistake. After gaining mastery in the Blazing-Yang Art, Shin Kangheon was no different from a living inferno.
WHOOOOSH!
“......You’d better block this one really well.”
The flames wrapped around the saber while keeping their shape, swelling even larger.
Then Shin Kangheon swung down the three-meter flaming saber without mercy.
KWAAANG!
With the explosion, Shin Junhyun was blasted backward and smashed into the wall.
Shin Kangheon slowly steadied his breathing and looked around at the scene he had created.
Walls burned black.
The floor had melted.
Even the steel framework had warped from the heat.
“Fuuu...... this is fucking incredible.”
At that moment, Shin Kangheon felt it.
He had finally reached the realm of a pinnacle expert.
*****
When Shin Junhyun came to, the first thing he realized was that his hands and feet were tied.
“You...... ungrateful little bastard......”
Leaning against a concrete wall, Shin Junhyun gasped for breath.
His once-clean suit had been scorched black in places and reduced to rags.
But his eyes, glaring at Shin Kangheon, were full of venom.
Shin Kangheon, who had been checking the crew group chat, turned to look at him.
“You awake?”
“You bastard worse than an animal! You don’t even know how to repay the man who raised you, and you betray me? If it weren’t for me, you’d still be some wandering nobody drifting around the back alleys by now—!”
He could not accept it.
No matter how rusty he had gotten, the fact that he, a former Red Worm mercenary, had lost in a fight to a twenty-year-old brat was impossible to swallow.
But the reason Shin Junhyun was most enraged was not the reversal in martial skill.
“Do you know who made you that strong? Who discovered your talent—!”
Shin Kangheon walked over to the shouting Shin Junhyun.
He dropped to one knee and met his eyes.
“Uncle.”
Shin Kangheon was not unscathed either.
Cuts were visible all over him.
A few of them would have been fatal if they had gone just a little deeper.
The man he had called uncle for the last several years had not hesitated to use killing blows on his own nephew.
“Thank you for taking care of me all this time.”
Even so, Shin Kangheon bowed his head and expressed his gratitude for the years they had spent together.
“......Are you making fun of me right now?”
“I mean it.”
The look on Shin Kangheon’s face as he stared at Shin Junhyun was incredibly complicated.
There was sadness there he had not quite managed to hide under that stiff expression.
For just a moment, his eyes even looked wet.
‘Maybe?’
Seeing that, Shin Junhyun’s eyes gleamed slyly, treating it as a final chance.
“K-Kangheon. Untie me first and let’s talk. You’ve misunderstood something. Someone’s been slandering your uncle, right? I can explain everything. This isn’t the time for family to be acting like this—”
Red Worm elites were on their way to Korea.
If he could just somehow regroup with them, he was confident he could still escape this crisis.
“I don’t know whether you’re really my uncle or not...... but that part doesn’t matter much. The fact is, you were my only family until now.”
“Exactly! I’m your only family! So—”
Shin Kangheon shook his head and continued with the expression of someone holding back grief.
“Loan sharking, smuggling, drugs....... You thought I didn’t know all those crimes you committed every time you went on one of your business trips?”
“......”
For a moment, Shin Junhyun was speechless.
Shin Kangheon looked at him, then rose to his feet.
“You told me not to drag my parents’ name through the dirt, right? That’s exactly what I’m going to avoid doing. You’re going to the Martial Alliance to receive a proper judgment.”
The complicated emotions had drained out of his eyes, leaving only indifference behind.
At that moment, Shin Junhyun understood.
No persuasion, no threats, no tears would work on Shin Kangheon anymore.
The magic word family no longer meant anything.
“Heh heh heh...... hihihi.......”
Laughing like a madman, Shin Junhyun suddenly narrowed his eyes like a snake.
His entire demeanor changed in an instant as he let out a sick little chuckle and spoke.
“Really? Then want me to tell you something amazing? I’m not your uncle. Shin Junhyun died on the battlefield. By my own hand.”
“......What?”
Throwing off the mask of Shin Junhyun, the Red Worm mercenary began telling him the horrible truth.
Even tied hand and foot, he knew how to kill a person.
“Of course I killed your parents too. Your father came running toward me, happy because he thought I was his little brother, and I stabbed him. That unorthodox suppression mission? That’s just the cause of death I forged for your father. In reality, he died like a dog. Your mother was the same. Begging me to at least spare her son—God, she was pathetic. Hwahahahaha!”
The Red Worm mercenary wearing Shin Junhyun’s face knew that once he was dragged to the Martial Alliance, he would never see the outside world again.
If it came out that he had killed Shin Jaehyun, he would rot in prison for life.
And if his ties to Red Worm were exposed, even worse suffering awaited him.
‘If that’s the case, I’d rather die.’
But he had no intention of dying quietly.
He had invested years into Shin Kangheon, only to be betrayed by him, so he intended to make the other man suffer just as much.
As he looked at Shin Kangheon’s rigid face, he cackled.
“How’s that? The true identity of the uncle you believed was your one and only family. You stupid bastard spent years living with your parents’ murderer without knowing a damn thing! Calling me uncle, following after me like a dog! Hwahahahaha!”
The Red Worm mercenary had been twisted to the core from the beginning.
Right up to the very end, he meant to leave Shin Kangheon with a horrific trauma and break his mind.
If he was going to die anyway, then he wanted to ruin someone else before the end.
‘Come on. Kill me now. Then spend the rest of your life trapped inside this nightmare!’
The mercenary thought Shin Kangheon’s enraged saber would come chopping down on his neck any second now.
But no matter how long he waited, the reaction he expected never came.
“So it really was that.”
Smirk.
A cold sneer spread instead across Shin Kangheon’s lips.
“Well, I figured as much. But now that I’ve heard it from your mouth, all the pieces finally fit.”
“......What?”
The mercenary’s expression twisted at that completely unexpected response.
Only then did he realize he had fallen for the brat’s guided questioning.
“Don’t tell me, you little—!”
“I wanted to hear the truth straight from your mouth. If I’d asked you to tell me, you never would’ve said it.”
No matter how many years they had lived together, the mercenary had remained indifferent to Shin Kangheon.
But Shin Kangheon knew the man who had been his only family very well.
“I figured if I acted like this, you’d be honest. If you were the man I knew.”
“You little piece of—!”
Shin Kangheon drove his foot hard into the mercenary’s lower abdomen.
“GHHK—!”
The mercenary’s eyes rolled back from the agony of his lower abdomen being crushed.
As the man writhed on the floor like a bug, Shin Kangheon kicked him a few times and flipped him flat onto his back.
“Thanks to you, I got rid of every last grain of guilt I still had left. You fucking bastard.”
To make sure he could not run, he shattered the joints in both his arms and legs.
Then he stuffed a gag in his mouth so he could not bite off his own tongue and kill himself.
He had seen Kim Muhyuk and Choi Geon do it enough times that, even though it was his first time, he was able to imitate them pretty skillfully.
“Hey, Uncle.”
Squatting down in front of the mercenary, Shin Kangheon patted his cheek a few times and spoke in a friendly voice.
“See you again soon. I’ll come visit you often in the Martial Alliance underground prison. We’ll have lots of nice private conversations, just the two of us. Got it?”
“Mmph! Mmph—!”
“Oh, and I’ve got a lot of family now, even without you as my uncle. So you don’t need to worry about me.”
“Mmghhhhhh!”
SMACK!
After hitting the mercenary in the temple and knocking him out, Shin Kangheon crammed him into the trunk of the car the mercenary had arrived in.
Then he got in, started the engine immediately, and drove off.
The license he had gotten right after coming back from Jeju Island was finally paying off.
“Fuuu.......”
Shin Kangheon leaned back in the seat and let out a long breath.
He had kept up a cold expression until just now, but of course there was no way he could really be fine.
Still, he decided to shove those tangled emotions aside for the moment.
“......All right. Let’s go.”
Because his crew needed him.
His real family was waiting for him.
[Kimoo : When’s the lunatic getting here?]
[God Kangheon : 30 mins.]
After sending the message, Shin Kangheon slammed down on the accelerator.
