Urban Vagabond: Reload

While Kim Muhyuk and Shin Kangheon went down below and raised hell, Kim Bokja erased her presence with spellcraft and was investigating the club from top to bottom.

“The boss’s office looks like it’s over there, the liquor storage is back that way... so where the hell would they be stacking the cash bundles—?”

Even as she wandered around humming to herself, no one noticed she existed.

When she was almost finished mapping out the club’s layout and the key figures’ positions, Kim Muhyuk’s voice came through the earbud in her ear.

[We’re starting.]

Tap tap.

“Okay. Starting on my side too.”

Replying as she lightly tapped her earbud with a finger, Kim Bokja walked toward a target she’d already marked.

At the same time, the mood among the club’s guards began to turn chaotic.

“Floor manager. I think you need to go down there.”

“What is it?”

“Some crazy bastards are making a scene downstairs...”

A few of the guards who looked like they’d trained martial arts whispered among themselves, then all hurried down.

Most of the people shaking their bodies like they’d lost their minds were too drunk to even care.

‘This makes it way easier for me.’

As she watched the club’s security loosen with the guards gone, Kim Bokja grinned.

A moment later, she stopped in front of her target and released the spell.

When someone suddenly appeared right in front of him, the target blinked a few times in surprise, then broke into a bright smile.

“Wow. Why’s a beauty like you walking around alone?”

He was one of the promoters she’d been watching—a capable one, too. Clean-cut, and skilled at sweet-talking customers until they couldn’t think straight.

‘And the drug stench is practically rolling off him.’

No matter how long he’d worked in the club, even with his eyes blurred and unfocused, the man smoothly tried to sell.

“You’re seriously insane. Red hair suits you way too well. You an influencer or something?”

“There’s a table I want to go to. Can you guide me?”

“Oh! Absolutely!”

Kim Bokja gave the approaching man a sweet smile.

In that instant, blue ghostflame bloomed from her pupils.

“Kkagwi. Bite.”

A black, cotton-candy-like wraith appeared in midair and chomped down on the promoter’s face.

It looked like Kkagwi was swallowing his face whole, but in reality, it was taking control of his mind.

A moment later, with the promoter’s mind already soft from drugs, Kkagwi slipped in easily—and succeeded in stealing his body.

“Kyakyakya!”

Grinning, he flexed the body this way and that, then started swaying and dancing. A few people looked over, but since it was a club, no one thought anything was strange.

Kim Bokja smacked Kkagwi on the back, amused.

“Let’s go. Take me to the table the boss is at.”

With the club promoter guiding from the front, even the guards stepped aside. They simply assumed the woman following was a special guest.

SLAM!

She opened the boss’s office door without even knocking and walked in. A middle-aged man was inside, smoking with an anxious expression—then he flinched and turned.

“...What?”

He was the puppet boss GREAT HEAVEN GATE had installed.

He’d heard a huge fight had broken out in the underground butcher shop and was already on edge. The moment he recognized the familiar promoter’s face, he snatched up an ashtray and hurled it.

“You bastard—do you know where you are, barging in like that?!”

But the promoter, who was supposed to be bleeding and sprawled on the floor, shot out a hand and snatched the ashtray out of the air. The movement looked like something a martial master would do.

“Kyakyakya!”

At the sight of the promoter walking toward him with a face that looked completely gone, the puppet boss swallowed hard.

“Y-you... what’s wrong with you? What are you doing right n—”

Behind him, Kim Bokja shut the door with a THUD, then spoke in a voice that rang with a chill as she summoned anomalies.

“Shaggy Hound. King Serpent.”

A huge white dog—big enough for a person to ride—and a thick yellow serpent flicking its tongue slid into existence and took their places at Kim Bokja’s sides.

Normally, ordinary people couldn’t see anomalies because their eyes weren’t open.

But if a spellcaster laid spellcraft on an anomaly, it could be made visible—solid enough for normal eyes to see.

“Go. Bring him.”

To make what she needed to do from here easier, Kim Bokja willingly laid spellcraft over them.

“Hiiii—! D-die!”

Screaming at the anomalies that had appeared out of nowhere, the puppet boss sprang up from his seat. He yanked a handgun from the inside pocket of his suit and fired at Kim Bokja and the anomalies.

BANG BANG BANG BANG!

But the bullets couldn’t pierce even the surface of the anomalies. They clattered to the floor.

The Shaggy Hound’s massive body completely covered Kim Bokja, and in the meantime, the King Serpent subdued the puppet boss and slammed him down.

Kim Bokja walked over step by step, looked down at him, and lifted the corner of her mouth.

“This room’s got great soundproofing, huh? Or is it that nobody cares because you’re just a puppet boss?”

“Guh...!”

Wrapped tight from head to toe by the huge serpent, the puppet boss trembled with fear.

Gunshots had just gone off, but the club’s deafening music meant no one noticed.

And a puppet boss installed by GREAT HEAVEN GATE—just like she said—no one would care whether he lived or died...

Lifting his head with a thread of hope, the puppet boss tried to threaten her.

“Y-you... are you with the ones who came in downstairs? Do you even know who owns this club—”

“It’s GREAT HEAVEN GATE. That’s why I’m here to rob you.”

“You... knew and came anyway...?”

Kim Bokja crouched in front of his dumbstruck face and smiled softly, her voice low and coaxing.

“If you cooperate, I don’t plan to hurt you. These guys don’t really like human meat—it tastes bad to them.”

As she said it, she petted the dog the size of a calf and the serpent, and the two bared savage teeth and drooled thickly.

GRRRR....

The puppet boss barely held back from pissing himself. He sobbed as he begged.

“Please... spare me....”

“Who said I’m killing you? Just answer my questions one by one and that won’t happen, so don’t worry. But you keep nudging people into paying cash here—where do you store it?”

From there, Kim Bokja successfully extracted everything she needed from the puppet boss: where the cash was stored, where the drugs were kept, the connections, the VIP list.

“But you know... the more I hear, the more it sounds like you’re a pretty nasty piece of work. You’re not just some scarecrow they propped up, are you?”

The puppet boss knew far more than he should about what went on in the underground club, and he was tangled up in the organ-trafficking business too—human garbage.

“What—what are you doing? You promised you’d spare me earlier—!”

Sensing the air shift, the puppet boss twisted and shouted.

“That’s why... who said I’m killing you?”

Blue ghostflame rose from Kim Bokja’s eyes, and a moment later the puppet boss’s gaze went slack and crooked, drool spilling from his mouth.

“Heeheehee... heeheehee....”

The puppet boss wouldn’t be able to tell anyone what happened here tonight.

Because he wouldn’t even remember what his own name was.

With everything done, Kim Bokja pulled out her phone and called someone.

“Uncle Suksu. How’s it outside?”

While the three of them were inside the club, Hwang Suksu was outside handling information lockdown and cleanup.

[No problem! For the next hour, GREAT HEAVEN GATE won’t notice a thing. I blocked all the CCTV too, and I even slipped a little something through my connections. Heh heh heh.]

As someone who’d come up through the underworld, Hwang Suksu sounded like he was enjoying being out in the field again.

Even if he wasn’t stepping in directly, and was just backing Blue Wolves.

“We’ll grab the list and the cash while we’re coming up. The stuff in the butcher shop—you move it later. But you remember we’re destroying every last bit of the drugs, right?”

[It’s a shame to just throw away something that expensive, but... I’m the one hitching a ride on your operation, so I guess I’ve gotta take what I get.]

Hwang Suksu sounded reluctant about destroying the drugs, but Blue Wolves had drawn a hard line on that point from the moment they planned the operation.

They would take the martial artists’ organs only for the people who truly needed them, then hand them over to the hospital.

And the drugs that were useless for anything but ruining lives—they would destroy all of them.

[Keuh! Even underworld martial artists have a sense of romance, huh? You’re young, you’re young.]

Not knowing Blue Wolves’ true identity, Hwang Suksu said it half-joking, half-impressed.

Right then, a message came in from Kim Muhyuk.

[We’re done. You?]

“Done here too. Come up. We’ve got loot to grab and take together.”

Not long after, Kim Muhyuk—wearing an indifferent expression despite doing something enormous—and Shin Kangheon—looking proud as hell—came up into the club.

“No problems?”

“Today I was insane again.”

“They were weaker than I expected.”

The three of them spoke casually as they left the club.

Even after they were gone, the club’s music stayed loud, and people kept shaking their bodies as if nothing had happened.

*****

“Don’t fuck with me! I’m crippled? You’re saying my lower abdomen can’t be fixed—?!”

The man called Boss Yang in the underground club, Yang Junseok, heard the news the moment he opened his eyes: the lower abdomen where the internal energy of his entire life had been built was shattered, and it couldn’t be restored.

No matter how far modern medicine had advanced, a ruined lower abdomen was still unexplored territory.

“Aaaaargh—!”

As he raved, half-mad at being pronounced dead as a martial artist, GREAT HEAVEN GATE’s sect leader came to see him.

“...Is your body any better?”

To the man who was both his sect leader and, privately, his older cousin, Yang Junseok poured out rage and bitterness.

“Sect Leader! The bastards who did this to me—one used ice technique, and one used blazing-yang martial arts. It’s Sun and Moon Gate!”

With a face twisted red like a demon, Yang Junseok screamed at the top of his lungs.

“Brother! Avenge me! Tear those bastards apart and kill them!”

“......”

Yang Junpyo, sect leader of GREAT HEAVEN GATE, only looked at his younger cousin who’d become a cripple overnight with a pitying expression. Elder Gu Jaseung stood beside him with a grave face.

Yang Junpyo waited until Yang Junseok had exhausted himself cursing, then asked.

“Did they say ‘Sun and Moon Gate’ with their own mouths?”

“They didn’t say it outright, but they made it obvious!”

“Why?”

“...What?”

“There’s no reason for Sun and Moon Gate to do that. In this situation, what do they gain by making an enemy of us?”

At that cold, realistic question, Yang Junseok couldn’t answer for a moment. Then his anger surged again and he ground his teeth.

“So you’re saying I got beaten by some nobody’s ice technique?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“How is it not?! If it’s not Sun and Moon Gate, then I got done in by trash, and the GREAT HEAVEN GATE martial artists who were there all died because they were worthless idiots!”

Even though the man in front of him was his sect leader, Yang Junseok spat out crude words without restraint.

Gu Jaseung, who’d been listening in silence, stepped in to stop him.

“Captain. Please watch your words in front of the Sect Leader.”

“Shut up! You little punk—an elder, my ass—getting cocky and mouthing off—”

Yang Junseok’s body suddenly went limp, collapsing onto the bed.

The sect leader, having knocked his younger cousin out with pressure-point sealing, clicked his tongue low.

“Let’s go.”

“Yes.”

The two left the hospital room, leaving the unconscious Yang Junseok behind.

Walking at the sect leader’s side, Gu Jaseung spoke with a grave expression.

“Three sites were attacked in a single night.”

“All by the same people?”

“From the circumstances, yes. We’ve identified a swordsman who uses ice technique, a saber-wielder who uses blazing-yang martial arts, and one spellcaster.”

“I don’t understand. The last terror incident too... Are the enemies really Sun and Moon Gate?”

Yang Junpyo was cold and rational by nature.

That was why it was hard for him to believe the betrayal of an old ally like Sun and Moon Gate—or what looked like an attempt to discard them now.

Because as he saw it, GREAT HEAVEN GATE and Sun and Moon Gate still had a relationship that was useful to both sides.

“Sect Leader. Every sign points to Sun and Moon Gate. And they don’t seem to have any intention of hiding who they are.”

Even Gu Jaseung—the sect leader’s most trusted elder, who had personally matched blades with the ice-technique swordsman during the previous terror incident—was convinced the enemy was Sun and Moon Gate’s master.

“The swordsman I fought mentioned Ghostshade House. Something only the main sect and Sun and Moon Gate would know.”

“Hm.”

Faced with a fact he couldn’t deny, Yang Junpyo murmured low.

“And the enemies are masters skilled enough to toy with our martial artists stationed at the sites. In this country, Sun and Moon Gate is the only sect that can cultivate ice technique and blazing-yang martial arts at that level.”

“......”

The butcher shop was one of the highest-grossing operations among GREAT HEAVEN GATE’s back-end businesses.

That was why they’d stationed ample manpower and masters there, including Yang Junseok, who stood at the doorstep of the pinnacle, and they’d invested heavily in security facilities.

And yet everything had been breached in a single night. The butcher shop, and the other three attacked sites as well—absurdly easily.

More absurd still was that they hadn’t even learned the sites were raided until hours after the fact.

It was clearly professional work.

“They’re all specialists, elite. They targeted only our prime operations. It’s the work of people who already knew the locations of the sites we manage—and if not the Eight Great Sects, what force could possibly carry out an operation at this level?”

“Even if we mobilize the main sect’s very best, it wouldn’t be easy...”

Masters and a spellcaster capable of toying with guarded sites, plus a behind-the-scenes operator who could scramble information.

If it wasn’t a force on the level of the Eight Great Sects, gathering that many specialists one by one would be nearly impossible.

“If Sun and Moon Gate really is trying to cut us off...”

Only then did suspicion and fury begin to bloom in Yang Junpyo’s heart.

“We’ll have to show them that we won’t die alone.”

Yang Junpyo muttered, eyes glinting with venom.