Ch.158Kiss of Fire 9

A dense fog shrouded the Songdo residential district.

Monster attacks and hunter battles had reduced many homes to rubble.

Finding an intact house was rare, like counting on one’s fingers after a bombing raid.

Yet, Jeoksa calmly surveyed the area.

She knew well.

The most wretched places make the best hiding spots.

Wearing a black coat,

She walked through the houses with her hands in her pockets, her breath forming white clouds.

Suddenly, a relatively intact three-story house caught her eye.

It must have belonged to someone wealthy in Songdo.

And typically, houses like these…

Fall into the hands of villains who occupy the city.

The representative of those villains enters the den.

Opening the front gate, she’s greeted by a yard of rotting grass.

A sour smell in the air.

Not the damp, musty ocean scent that had lingered until now, but an artificial odor that permeated the area.

And this smell was all too familiar to Jeoksa.

The chemical scent used when disposing of corpses.

The fact that it was strong enough to smell from outside meant one thing:

There were many “things” that needed chemical treatment.

Jeoksa calmly headed toward the source of the smell.

Behind the gloomy building.

A suspicious metal door.

She firmly grasped the door leading to the basement.

But, as expected, the handle was securely locked.

“…”

She put her hands back into her coat pockets.

And then…

“—!”

She forcefully stomped on the lock with her heel.

The door rattled.

It swung open with one kick from Jeoksa.

“Ugh…”

A wave of putrid stench hit her.

Even for someone accustomed to handling corpses, it was almost unbearable.

Covering her nose with her coat sleeve, she slowly descended the stairs.

Thinking no living person could possibly stay here,

She turned on her phone’s flashlight and surveyed the basement.

Bodies tightly wrapped in black plastic bags.

And a plastic bathtub placed there for disposal.

Inside that tub…

There was someone still alive.

“…!”

Perhaps noticing that the footsteps belonged to someone different than usual,

The person trapped in the tub thrashed about, their feet slipping with effort.

Jeoksa shined her light toward the person.

It revealed a woman in her twenties.

Wearing only thin underwear and a shirt.

Her arms were handcuffed to the bathtub handles.

“Calm down. I’m not your kidnapper.”

Jeoksa grabbed the blindfold and gag restraining the woman.

The bound woman shrank back, trembling violently.

She must have reflexively feared more abuse after countless beatings.

Finally, her face was revealed.

Pretty and delicate, her makeup was smeared with tears, suggesting she’d been wearing it before being kidnapped.

“Hic… Hnnng…”

The woman shed tears of relief upon realizing Jeoksa wasn’t her captor.

However, Jeoksa didn’t seem particularly interested in rescuing her.

She merely stared down at the kidnapped woman with snake-like red eyes.

She was calculating.

What reward she might gain by saving this pitiful woman.

“Who are you?”

“Hic… I’m sorry. Please save me…”

She had cried so much.

Her voice was completely hoarse.

“That’s not what I want to hear. I asked who you are and why you’re imprisoned here.”

A firm, cold voice.

The woman breathed heavily at that tone.

“I’m an employee of the Songdo Hunter Association…”

Association employee?

Why would someone who should have been in one of the safest places be here…

“For the past few days, rioters with red eyes have appeared in Songdo…”

“Like mine?”

“No, yours are clear and bright… theirs were murky red, like animals.”

The woman kept glancing nervously toward the stairs Jeoksa had descended.

“The rioters kidnapped what few Songdo residents remained. This led to several clashes with our association.”

That was to be expected.

The association wouldn’t stand by while residents were being abducted.

“But those people were incredibly strong, each one feeling like an A-rank hunter or higher…”

The association employee trembled with fear, seemingly recalling the events.

Were they really strong enough to defeat the association’s hunters?

“Eventually, the Songdo Association collapsed, and many people, including myself, were kidnapped.”

The woman looked at the bodies wrapped in black bags with resignation.

Then she looked up at Jeoksa and pleaded.

“Is that enough…? Please save me… It’ll be my turn soon…”

Rioters with red eyes.

And the people they kidnapped.

This must be connected to Park Shin-ae.

Was she planning to use these people as experimental subjects again?

But…

They used to kidnap mainly hunters to extract their abilities.

Now they’re taking ordinary people too…

Something’s different.

It’s not like before.

“Alright.”

Jeoksa pulled a dagger from her inner pocket.

She slowly approached the bound woman.

She raised the dagger to cut the handcuff chain.

But at that moment,

The woman’s face, which had been relieved at the prospect of rescue, turned pale.

“Behind, behind you…!”

Jeoksa turned her head immediately at those words.

But…

“—!”

Before she could dodge, a massive metal club flew toward her head.

With a brutal sound, her temple caved in.

She flew helplessly.

Sprawled among the corpses on the floor.

“—!”

The woman screamed at the sight of Jeoksa with her head smashed in.

But even that scream didn’t last long.

The man who had swung the club at Jeoksa.

He glared at her with murky red eyes.

“Shut up… Didn’t I tell you to keep quiet…?”

The man breathed heavily, his breath visible in white puffs.

He rolled his eyes incessantly, as if deranged.

“Who’s that woman? Has the Seoul branch already made a move?”

“I-I don’t know… I don’t know…”

The woman shook her head frantically.

With an intruder in their hidden location,

The man decided they couldn’t stay any longer and unlocked the woman’s handcuffs from the tub.

“If the councilor hadn’t ordered us to bring undamaged humans…”

He grabbed her wrist and dragged her away.

“You would’ve ended up like her. Understand?”

The woman, dragged away helplessly,

Looked at Jeoksa’s body on the floor with desperate eyes.

“Please… someone save me…”

The man wore only a sleeveless shirt despite the autumn chill.

An Incheon gang tattoo was visible on his shoulder.

With overwhelming strength, he gripped the woman’s nape and climbed the stairs.

His footsteps grew fainter.

But they suddenly stopped.

A voice came again from the basement he thought he’d never revisit.

“Incheon Oseongpa, huh?”

His former affiliation.

The man turned his head at the name.

His eyebrows twitched in shock.

The woman he thought he’d killed with one blow was standing there as if nothing had happened.

Her face was clean, showing no sign of having been hit with a club.

“Was the reason for the riot to gather offerings for Park Shin-ae’s new government?”

Jeoksa asked him with a calm expression.

The man stared down at her in disbelief.

“Yeah, the condition for entering the Sky Island is offering five people per person.”

He carelessly set the association woman down on the stairs.

Then, with the club resting on his shoulder, he said to Jeoksa:

“I only need one more.”

The man pointed to his red eyes.

Quite proudly.

Looking at those eyes, Jeoksa understood the powerful blow she had received earlier.

An alien power gained at the cost of four sacrifices.

It must have been bestowed by Park Shin-ae’s ability, extracted from Siho and countless hunters.

“So you’ll just have to die.”

After those final words,

He leaped down from the stairs.

He raised his club with one hand and charged at an inhuman speed.

But Jeoksa had already assessed his level long ago.

Calmly, from her inner coat pocket, she…

Drew a gun.

“—.”

A short, powerful gunshot.

With that sound, the man’s forehead twisted.

He collapsed helplessly to the floor.

White smoke gently rose from the gun barrel.

Jeoksa lowered the gun calmly and approached him.

But at that moment,

He sprang up like a coil and lunged at her again.

Jeoksa struck his temple with the gun handle.

As he fell,

Sharp bones erupted from the basement floor.

When Jeoksa clenched her fist, those bones gripped him like a Venus flytrap.

“Gah…! What is this…!”

He glared at Jeoksa with his red eyes.

But she showed no reaction to such a gaze.

She merely tightened her fist, constricting him until his body began to swell.

“Why? Didn’t you say you got stronger after sacrificing four people? Try escaping from this.”

Jeoksa’s firm words.

At those words, the man began to feel genuine fear.

His bulging eyes turned toward Jeoksa’s red ones.

The same color but with a distinctly different quality of killing intent.

The moment he felt that intent, the man realized who he was facing.

“Il… Ilshim…”

“If you want to live, answer me now. Where is Park Shin-ae’s base?”

His entire body twisted under the pressure of the giant bones.

Like a fly being crushed.

He knew.

Ilshim’s cruelty.

He would certainly die if he didn’t answer properly.

So he forced out a response.

“In… in the sky.”

“The sky?”

An ambiguous answer.

Soon the bones began to dig into his flesh.

The man screamed like the woman he had kept captive.

He cried out in a pain-filled voice:

“It’s really in the sky…! There’s a stairway to the floating island at the Central Building…”

A desperate voice.

Jeoksa frowned at his words.

No matter how unrealistic the answer seemed, a man facing death was unlikely to lie.

Finally, she opened her clenched palm.

The bones constricting him loosened.

“Haa…”

Jeoksa sat briefly on the bags of corpses.

Crossing her legs, she fell into thought.

Red hunters and criminals who lived in Songdo.

Rankers following Park Shin-ae—were they all on this Sky Island?

While she was lost in thought, the man began crawling on all fours.

He grabbed a phone from the floor and pressed the emergency call button.

“Stupid bitch… This isn’t the time to be so relaxed.”

Jeoksa showed no reaction to his words.

The man made a sour face, then kept shouting at her:

“My gang members are coming this way right now. You dare mess with me in Incheon? I’ll kill—”

“—.”

Jeoksa rested her chin on the back of her hand and casually fired the gun.

The man groaned and clutched his leg.

“—.”

Finding him noisy, Jeoksa fired another shot.

Only then did he cover his mouth and fall silent.

“Urgh…”

After five minutes.

Jeoksa finally seemed to have organized her thoughts and stood up.

She looked down at the fallen man with her phone in hand.

Like she was looking at an insect.

“You said your members are coming?”

“Yeah…”

“Don’t worry. I have someone coming too.”

“One person…? You think just one person can defeat our elite members?”

Jeoksa, deeming him not worth answering, kicked him.

Then she emotionlessly fired five shots into his head.

“…”

Divine power.

No matter how great it was, it couldn’t match five bullets to the head.

The man, shot through, no longer moved.

Passing the trembling woman on the stairs, Jeoksa climbed up alone.

And then…

She encountered Anna, her face covered in blood.

The color was vivid, as if freshly spilled.

“You’re late.”

Jeoksa said with narrowed eyes.

Anna wiped her cheek with the back of her hand and replied indifferently:

“There was some trash on the way.”

Her white hair tied to one side.

Blood stained her black jacket and the sleeveless top underneath.

She wore the same outfit she used when hunting hunters.

“Jisu went to the building first. He said the entrance is there.”

The two rankers calmly left the house.

As they departed,

Numerous bodies lay scattered on the lawn.

Their eyes were red, just like the man Jeoksa had killed.