Ch.568Chapter 21. Blood Pack (28)

A person dies when shot in a vital spot.

Only the main and supporting characters in Korean movies survive being shot in vital spots, or manage to hang on for a few minutes to deliver their lines.

Most people die the moment they’re shot.

No slow motion—they just collapse and fall in one hit.

The same applies to ability users.

When a vital spot is destroyed, they die—even if they’re S-rank.

As ability users.

“Kuh, huk…?”

I grab my groin and fall to my knees atop the leech dragon’s head.

“W-what is this…?”

[You don’t seem to listen to adults. Haeguneul emphasized wearing groin protectors, but I guess you ignored them because you’re S-rank?]

Like execution squads, ability users are all people who live for their own self-importance.

They’re the type who ride motorcycles without helmets and drive cars without seatbelts.

What happens when there’s an accident?

‘They die.’

Just like now.

He probably thought he was safe.

He probably thought he was adequately protected.

[You seem to have made some effort by attaching leeches, but I’m afraid that’s unfortunate. A sharp blade pierces not just leeches but the groin as well.]

“You, you filthy…! As a man, kuhek, to another man’s there…!”

[It wasn’t me.]

I’ve already won.

So there’s no problem with talking a bit.

[If it were a woman instead of a man, would it not be cowardly?]

“What…!”

“It was me, meow.”

Whoosh.

With the wind, Hyun Fenrir appears beside me.

“Heheh.”

She twists her mouth widely beneath her cat mask, mocking Geomeunmeori.

Sharp magical blades glint in front of her cat-like hands, covered with red blood and leech remains.

“You, you…!”

“Dirty things should be cleaned up quickly, meow.”

Hyun Fenrir releases the magic from her hands, removing the blood and remains.

Since the blood was only left there to show Geomeunmeori, the purpose was achieved once shown.

“Y-you destroyed my groin!! Fenrir, you wretched woman!”

“Since it was a woman who burst it, not a man, it’s not cowardly, right meow?”

“Aaaagh!!”

His mental state begins to collapse.

At Hyun Fenrir’s mockery, Geomeunmeori starts tearing at his hair and screaming.

“N-no…! The control, the control is breaking…!”

Rumble.

The skin of the dozens-of-meters-long leech dragon begins to fall off.

Like tissue necrosis, the leeches that had been clinging to each other’s backs lose strength and start dropping to the ground one by one.

“No! I can’t, I can’t fall so absurdly…!”

Grooowl.

Geomeunmeori claws at his face as he rises.

His groin is shattered, and magic leaks through the cracks, but the look in his eyes as he tears at his face is fierce enough to kill us at any moment.

“In that case, I’ll kill everyone…!”

Not us, but the blood bags at his feet.

“This is my final order!!”

Flash.

“Suck all the humans dry!!”

As he shouts, exploding magic from his raised hand, the leech dragon explodes.

“Uwaagh….”

[An unpleasant sight.]

Like an exploding insect, like cells becoming individual organisms, the leech dragon breaks apart and falls to the ground.

Splat!

The first leeches to hit the ground were naturally pulverized.

But the leeches falling on top began to writhe on the bodies—no, corpses—of their comrades.

A grotesque sight just to look at.

But the peak of grotesqueness was happening atop the leech dragon’s head.

“Hahaha, if I’m going to die, this country will die with me! Let a world without me perish!”

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Leeches attached themselves to Geomeunmeori’s body and began sucking his blood.

‘This is most troublesome.’

The most basic human malice.

I can’t be the only one to suffer.

If I’m ruined, others should be ruined too.

With that emotion, Geomeunmeori is thinking like that now.

[If you’re going to die as Zenros, you want to take the world with you?]

“…Is he insane?”

Even Hyun Se-rin drops her concept and becomes serious, as Geomeunmeori begins a severe rampage.

“What do you want to do? Are we just going to leave him like that?”

[Even if we leave him alone, he’s just dealing with leeches. Feeding them his blood like that won’t turn the leeches into demons or anything…]

Suddenly.

I felt a chill down my spine.

As if mocking my prediction, an eerie presence seemed to approach from afar.

“That…!”

In the blink of an eye, in the moment I closed and opened my eyes, it had already appeared.

“A hand…?”

A black hand appeared above Geomeunmeori’s head.

The bony fingers covered in black fur extended only to the wrist, floating in the air above Geomeunmeori, moving its fingers.

“Your wish.”

That appearance, if I were to compare it, was like a monkey’s paw.

“Has been granted.”

Crunch!

The moment black liquid from the monkey’s paw fell onto Geomeunmeori, the leeches he had been controlling instantly attached themselves to him and began sucking his blood more violently.

Flash!

“Kuk…! Did I miss it? Impossible…!”

[Was it a demon?]

The monkey’s paw suddenly disappeared again.

Even though Hyun Se-rin and I were watching carefully, we missed it.

“Spatial movement?”

[Either it left just enough magic to manipulate things and then vanished, or it teleported away.]

Teleportation doesn’t always involve crossing dimensional gates.

[Let’s deal with that first, then talk.]

Grooooar!!

Small leech dragons began to writhe on top of the leech dragon’s head and started crawling across the ground.

[The swarm has regrouped. The forces have split.]

“…You mean they’ve gathered around smaller individual units?”

[After the death of Commander Geomeunmeori, they’ve regrouped by companies.]

“The scale seems to have shrunk considerably….”

Hyun Se-rin scratched her cheek and pointed around.

“Does it matter?”

[No.]

“Then, do we need to step in?”

[No.]

For once, it seems a demon came to understand the malice of a rampaging human and granted his wish.

[Even for a demon, there’s not much that can be done with the residual thoughts of someone whose groin has already been shattered.]

The malice left behind by a human whose “groin”—the possibility of future—has been destroyed cannot be used to influence the world.

[At this rate, the danger level might be S-rank, but it can’t be called S+ rank.]

With just the rampaging leech army left behind by a mere ‘S-rank villain’…

[It’s not S+ rank.]

It cannot defeat the ability of an S+ rank hero.

Rumble rumble rumble.

The ground moves.

High walls that the smaller leech dragons cannot possibly jump over approach from all directions, sweeping across the ground.

“Come.”

The black-haired young man who approached leisurely beside us, Black Taejo, lightly tapped his staff and raised it high.

“Black Coffin.”

Boom!

A black coffin appeared with a thunderous sound.

The rampaging leeches were all trapped inside the rectangular coffin.

Though squelching and bursting sounds continued from inside the black coffin whose interior couldn’t be seen, the coffin neither collapsed nor dented.

“How is it? Steel Chest, upgraded version.”

[I like the simplicity. Anyone would think it’s a technique similar to Armored Taejo’s.]

“It’s an application, an evolution. It’s different from Armored Taejo. More sophisticated, more definitive.”

Whoosh.

“Instead of trapping them in a coffin to starve to death, I can make them burn to death inside.”

The flames burning outside seep into the coffin.

The leeches cannot escape, but the flames enter through small gaps Black Taejo left open in the coffin, burning the leeches from the inside.

Thud, thud, thud!

Whether it’s the malice left by the demon running wild,

Or Geomeunmeori turned into a leech demon writhing as he burns to death.

The black coffin shook violently from within, but it did not break.

[What about the people?]

“If you mean the blood bags, I’ve captured every single one of them. Over there.”

Taejo pointed behind him.

[…An execution ground?]

“Of course not. I just tied them all to pillars.”

Black iron poles rising from the ground.

People were bound to each pole as if crucified.

While I was distracting Geomeunmeori and Hyun Se-rin was looking for an opening to shatter his groin, Taejo gathered the people from behind.

If the flames were to spread beneath those people, it would become a burning stake.

“Ah, really. How annoying.”

“Please, sister-in-law.”

“You think calling me sister-in-law solves everything? Hmph.”

However, the flames only protected the captured blood bags.

The wind guided the flames to create a wall, preventing the leeches from crawling across the ground to approach.

[It’s over.]

Black smoke rose from the top of the black coffin, and gradually the vibrations inside subsided.

[Did we get them?]

3, 2, 1.

[We got them.]

“Shall I release it?”

[No. There’s something firefighters say.]

After a fire, embers may remain, so even after the fire dies down, you need to find and extinguish the sparks.

[Let’s wait here until our guests arrive. …No, it would be better to create a stage.]

I pointed to the top of the black coffin where smoke was rising.

[Let’s welcome them from up there. You.]

* * *

Rumble rumble.

With the helicopter propellers spinning wildly, the helicopter finally reached its destination.

“Ugh….”

The smell of burning protein.

A pungent odor like burning corpses stung their noses, and the heroes waiting in the helicopter all stiffened their expressions as they looked outside.

“Chairman, that….”

“No way….”

Clank!

The helicopter door opened.

A hero inside immediately raised magical power to control the air, and the chairman gripped the handle tightly and shouted toward the entrance.

“Hey! Taejo, you!!”

“Well met—!”

Taejo shouted, pointing at the man in the black suit atop the black iron pillar.

“You ability thief!!”

“Me, an ability thief?”

Atop the black coffin, the black-haired Taejo with darker hair pointed his staff at the helicopter.

“I’m going to kill you, Armored Taejo.”

“!!”

The intense killing intent was so palpable that even the helicopter momentarily shook.

“I’ll kill you.”

Crack.

“And I will become Taejo.”