56. The Edge of Seoul

After crushing the Blue Cross Group, Elena immediately began her assault on Pax Company.

“Why those bastards!!”

“Hold them off first!!”

The battle between the numerically overwhelming Pax Company and the elite-strike-force Blue Cross Group resembled a raid.

Each Blue Cross member was fighting against anywhere from 10 to nearly 15 Awakened at once.

The fully armed hunters of the Blue Cross Group smashed through Pax Company’s front gates and began tearing through the Awakened, forcing the hunters who rushed out upon hearing the news to face Elena.

“These fuckers just won’t die!!!!”

“Evacuate the civilians first!! There’s something wrong with these bastards-they’re clearly being controlled!”

“Uuurggh!!!”

“Gyaaaaa!!!!”

A Pax Company hunter who had been directing the battle was ambushed and taken down by a Blue Cross member. The member who split his skull open with an axe was sobbing.

They didn’t want to kill people, but in a situation where they had no choice, those with weaker wills simply chose to go insane.

They didn’t want to fight either. But their bodies moved on their own. From the moment they submitted to Elena and became her limbs, they could no longer disobey her commands.

“Heheh.”

Elena laughed.

‘Taking the Blue Cross first was the right move.’

Her judgment had been correct. If she had gone after Pax first and led them to the Blue Cross, she would have lost a lot of valuable forces for nothing.

‘Next is Osung Group.’

Pax Company had been easier to subdue than expected, but Osung would be different. Their quality and quantity were both exceptional.

‘But still.’

Having obtained an immortal body, there was nothing left to fear.

‘The real problem is being captured without dying.’

That was the biggest concern. If she took a fatal hit, she’d just revive anyway, but if she was hit with a sealing technique or something similar, it would be game over.

“Ghk… Y-you crazy bitch… What… what the hell are you…?”

Meanwhile, Kangseok, the head of Pax Company, coughed up blood with half his chest blown open as he questioned Elena. Just what was she? He couldn’t fathom where this insane woman had come from.

“Just a victim.”

Elena answered Kangseok’s question with complete sincerity.

“A… a victim? You’re calling yourself a victim?”

She claimed to be a victim. After suddenly dragging all the Blue Cross members in and wrecking their business, she had the audacity to call herself the victim.

“Y-you fucking bitch!!! Kghhk…”

Kangseok, overwhelmed by sheer injustice, wanted to curse Elena one last time, but his breath gave out before he could.

“Pathetic.”

Elena had grown too strong, too quickly.

To the point where even she couldn’t fully comprehend it.

And that made her uneasy. The divine being that had possessed her must have done so to screw with her, yet everything she did somehow worked out perfectly.

‘Honestly, if the world hadn’t ended, it would’ve been even better. What the hell is their game?’

She was curious about the intentions of the being that had possessed her. If they really wanted to mess with her, they could have just thrown her in without any powers and treated her like dirt.

Not to mention, they’d even gender-swapped her. If they wanted her dead, they’d had plenty of chances to give her a gruesome end.

“I just don’t get it.”

She gave up thinking about it. No answer would come from agonizing over it. Maybe she had just been isekai’d into a novel she was reading.

‘Or… maybe I regained memories of a past life.’

That was also a possibility. It might not have been possession, but the awakening of past-life memories.

“For now…”

Elena gathered the items from Kangseok’s room. With these, her chances of becoming Seoul’s ruler had increased even further.

She now had HP Bio, the Blue Cross Group, and Pax Company under her control. If she could just take Osung Group, Seoul would effectively be hers.

‘Of course, there are still the Hunter Association and the Academy to deal with.’

But taking down the four biggest factions should be enough, right?

‘I just need to kill Jang Yi-sang.’

Elena concluded that, aside from the original protagonist, she had no real rivals.

‘Honestly, with this much power, I’m not even scared.’

The thought that Jang Yi-sang-currently enjoying his sexual escapades with monster girls-was her only real opponent made Elena sigh.

‘I didn’t get to take any of the protagonist’s cheat-level opportunities from the novel, but… whatever. Doesn’t matter.’

She had obtained even greater opportunities, so Elena was satisfied.

“Let’s go, then.”

She decided to move immediately. She planned to strike before her enemies could get word. If she gave them time, they’d prepare countermeasures, and fighting would become a pain.

******

“Huh? What’s that…?”

Meanwhile, Jin Seon-mi, who had been waiting on the rooftop of HP Bio’s headquarters, panicked when she saw the sudden flood of people approaching.

Elena had explicitly told her to kill anyone hostile coming this way.

‘Do I kill them?’

What was approaching was a fleet of buses.

They kept coming, one after another, packed with people.

‘If I just kill the drivers…’

It was an uphill road. Jin Seon-mi figured that if she killed the driver of the lead vehicle, the ones following behind would crash and die on their own.

Her mindset was purely efficiency-driven. She didn’t care at all about the lives that would be lost-a survivalist mentality had taken hold of her.

It was inevitable. After being kidnapped and tortured by Elena, then abducted again by HP Bio and used as a test subject, these two experiences had twisted her.

She had come to accept that trampling others was necessary to survive, and as a result, human life no longer held any value to her.

Or rather, the lives of others had completely vanished from her concern.

Her own life was the only one that mattered.

“W-wait!!!!”

“Huh?”

Just as Jin Seon-mi was about to kill the bus drivers and send all their passengers to the afterlife, Number 1 rushed over to her.

“Don’t kill them!”

“Huh?”

“Master’s orders-let them in instead.”

“Ah. Got it.”

Only then did Jin Seon-mi lower her hand. Soon after, the buses packed with survivors entered HP Bio’s headquarters.

“Whoa! Finally!!”

The trio of bespectacled researchers, who had already heard from Elena that test subjects would be arriving today, came out to greet the survivors.

The people who stepped off the buses looked like they’d seen death.

They had been subdued by the hunters of Pax Company, now Elena’s lackeys, and dragged here like prisoners.

Now, they would be transformed into mutants-nutritious snacks for point farming.

******

“Kghhk…”

I gripped the neck of Osung Group’s chairman and savored the night view.

*Snap*

I broke his neck. After climbing like scaling a tower for about seven hours, I had finally taken this bastard down.

With this, Osung Group had fallen into my hands. It was over.

“Corporate annihilation complete.”

In less than a day, I had devoured all the corporations that had divided Seoul among themselves. I was exhausted, but I could still hold on.

‘Now, what’s left…’

The military stationed in Paju, the villain factions in North Korea, the Academy where the protagonist would be, and the Hunter Association, which still hadn’t made a move.

‘Speaking of which, what happened to the Hunter Association?’

By now, they should have stepped in. Yet, there was still no word from them. It was as if they had already been wiped out.

‘Are they… up to something?’

Elena decided to return to HP Bio’s headquarters, which she had claimed as her base. She needed to assess today’s spoils. Moreover, having earned an absurd amount of points, she had to make a shopping run.

******

“What… the hell is this…?”

Jang Yi-sang couldn’t believe his eyes at the sight of the slaughtered hunters.

‘In a single day.’

After finishing up at the Academy, he had killed the chairman and become the student representative before heading to the Hunter Association.

He intended to form an alliance with them as equals. But when he arrived, the Hunter Association had already been destroyed.

“Opened the door, they say…”

He gritted his teeth as he looked at the decapitated corpse of the association head, a man he had known for years.

The markings were the work of The Gatekeeper. The only ones who opened doors and spread chaos across the world were those bastards from the other side.

‘So they’re taking advantage of the chaos to wreak havoc. Disgusting scum.’

Jang Yi-sang had planned to use the Hunter Association as a shield, forging close ties with Seoul’s major factions to create a strange atmosphere where love between monsters and humans would be accepted.

‘With this, the numerically superior Pax side would…’

But when he went there, it too had been completely wrecked.

Osung was the same.

Even the Blue Cross Group’s building had collapsed into rubble. Not a single place remained intact.

While Jang Yi-sang had been busy creating an army of monster wives, seizing control of the Academy, and killing the chairman over the past four weeks, Seoul had already been cleaned out.

“What is this?”

He was beyond angry-he was bewildered. The situation was so hard to process that his mind couldn’t keep up.

‘This… maybe…’

He had been very conscious of public perception. Sexual unions between humans and monsters were seen as a societal issue, so gaining strength was also about persuading others.

But now, the people he needed to persuade were gone. They were already dead.

‘In that case… I can just do whatever I want.’

Villains didn’t need to be persuaded anyway.

‘Then…’

Jang Yi-sang decided to retrieve the monster he had been saving.

A succubus-the ultimate monster that could ensnare any male.

‘Finally. I’m going to devour you.’

Wiping the drool from his lips, Jang Yi-sang headed toward the place rumored to be the nest of the demonic race.