Urban Vagabond: Reload

The inside of the abandoned building that served as Ghostshade House’s base was surprisingly spacious.

While the roughly twenty people inside yanked out weapons and glared at me for barging in, I did a quick sweep of the interior.

Eight from Ghostshade House. The rest are...

From experience, the ones with faces as pale as corpses and skinny, dried-up bodies were Ghostshade House’s own people. The rest were thugs who’d done a bit of physical training—goons you wheel out when you need muscle.

“Where the hell did this bastard come from?!”

“Looks like he’s alone, boss!”

“Then bust him up and put him on his knees!”

The thugs stepped forward and raised their weapons, trying to look menacing.

Watching those ugly mugs rush me all at once, I clicked my tongue.

“People never listen when you try to talk nice.”

I slipped the talisman scrap back into my pocket, then snatched the closest guy’s crowbar out of his hands with a sharp stripping motion.

“Huup...!”

He’d just watched his weapon vanish right in front of his eyes, and he flailed after it in a panic—

But I was already swinging the crowbar into his side.

Wham!

The first guy who’d charged me didn’t even have time to scream before he dropped. From behind him, a thug who looked like the boss shouted:

“Take him alive! Break his arms and legs if you have to!”

More than ten thugs came at me at once, swinging every kind of scrap metal under the sun.

I drove the blunt end of the crowbar straight into one guy’s solar plexus. As he started to collapse, I grabbed his collar and used him as a shield while I pushed forward.

No point dragging this out.

Faces went wide with panic as I barreled in behind their unconscious buddy.

The moment I tossed the guy into them, I ducked low, rolled under him, and took out two more by smashing their kneecaps.

Crack! Crack!

Leaving the tangle of bodies behind me, I straightened up—

And a gleaming butcher knife came for my throat. I tilted my head aside and caught a flash of a face twisted in frustration.

This asshole, huh?

I wasn’t some serial killer planning to murder every thug who came at me, but the guy who’d just tried to carve my neck open? That one I wasn’t letting slide.

Thuck.

“Gh—!”

I drove the sharp end of the crowbar into his gut, punching a hole clean through. As he staggered and collapsed, I stooped and picked his butcher knife up off the floor.

“H-he’s a master!”

With five of them down, the remaining thugs froze up and just watched me, too scared to move.

I walked toward the thug boss, who was sweating bullets, and stopped a short distance in front of him.

“So what’s it going to be? Keep going, or go fetch your house master?”

“...”

In my first life, twenty years of eating steel for a living in the underworld, I’d never even heard of Ghostshade House.

In other words, they either went under not long from now or barely scraped by at the very bottom.

I’d stepped out like this because I’d already decided I could handle them with the strength I had now.

That said, there was no need to rack up more favor-and-grudge entanglements than necessary.

“W-we’re just on contract here...”

The instant the thug boss lowered his blade in a sign of surrender, I twisted my body sharply to the side.

Bang! Bang—!

With two gunshots, the thug boss’s body flopped backward.

The look on his face was pure fear, a neat bullet hole in his forehead.

I gave the corpse a glance, then turned my head toward where the shots had come from.

“Me, sure, whatever. But wasn’t he one of your own?”

“One of my own? He was a guard dog. Guard dogs that tuck their tails die.”

A middle-aged man with wild, unkempt hair stood there, aiming a pistol at me with one hand. I hadn’t seen his face when I first came in.

So that’s the Ghostshade House Master.

In his left hand—the one without the pistol—he held a staff. From the bell hanging off the end, an ominous sound rang out.

Jingle, jingle, jingle...

“Useless cheap freelance trash! Can’t even do the job right?”

With every jingle of that bell and every shrill lash of the Ghostshade House Master’s voice, the five thugs I’d put down, and the others who’d been standing there in limbo, started to roll their eyes back.

Jingle, jingle, jingle...

Staggering, they raised their weapons at me again. Their eyes were already gone. Sclera only, lips peeled back, growling like rabid dogs.

“Uuurrgh...”

“Grrrkk...”

Lost-soul thralls.

Feed them drugs in small doses or brainwash them bit by bit with spells, and people with weak wills lose their sense of self and become puppets controlled by sorcery.

One of the nastier tricks in the underworld’s bag.

I watched them surround me and let out a short, humorless laugh.

“Honestly, calling these guys vagabonds is an insult to real vagabonds...”

By my standards, they were just thugs and punks who’d barely trained their bodies, but the way freelance vagabonds were treated wasn’t all that different.

In the underworld, vagabonds were usually lumped in with low-level scum.

“You arrogant little intruder. Go on, keep running your mouth.”

The Ghostshade House Master’s smug attitude dragged a few unpleasant old memories up from the past.

But that was separate from the rising edge of caution inside me.

Ghostshade House Master. Stronger than I thought.

The moment he appeared, the Ghostshade House disciples I’d written off as a ragtag bunch started muttering °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° incantations and readying talismans to throw in unison.

Kyaaaaa—

Screeeeech—

Black evil spirits appeared above their heads and circled, filling the air. Nearly twenty of them. The chill they brought made the whole abandoned building feel like midwinter.

This might be rough.

Ten lost-soul thralls.

Twenty evil spirits.

A Ghostshade House Master with a gun, and eight disciples commanding ghosts with their sorcery.

If this turned into a full-on fight, getting out of here in one piece didn’t look easy.

Even so, I kept talking like it didn’t bother me.

“You’re the one who shut the conversation down. I was planning to handle this peacefully from the start, you know.”

At my relaxed tone, the Ghostshade House Master kept his pistol trained on me and snickered.

“You call busting down our door ‘conversation’? You really think you can take all of Ghostshade House on alone?”

“What makes you think I came alone?”

“...”

The further down the underworld food chain you go, the more a single bad judgment call will get you killed.

That’s why you develop survival instincts to the extreme. You learn to read truth from lies in what the other side says and does.

In my last life, I’d gotten pretty good at lying and bluffing.

Look at his eyes twitch.

He was straining to figure out whether I was telling the truth, but you don’t outplay a guy who survived the bottom of the barrel that easily.

All he could manage was a snort and another question, pretending to be relaxed.

“Who are you with?”

“Blue Wolves.”

I’d thrown it out there just to tangle his thoughts up a bit, but his expression changed immediately.

“...I’ve heard that name. You the ones who supposedly declared war on Blood Tiger Gang?”

First at The Dark Den and now here. Just how far had the rumors blown up?

The underworld is always awash with fake stories and exaggeration, but even so, this was a bit much.

Did Kim Bokja spread some crazy rumor while I was busy preparing for the competition?

I shoved those questions aside and chuckled.

“Sounds like the rumor got inflated. One of the Five Tigers suggested a merger, so I told him if he tried that crap again, I’d kill him. That’s all.”

“...”

The subtext was simple: we’re way out of your league.

So you’d better sit down and negotiate nicely.

The Ghostshade House Master stared at me in silence for a moment, then, finally, slowly lowered his pistol.

“What did you come here for?”

I took the talisman scrap from inside my jacket, rolled it into a little pellet, and flicked it at him.

“First, drag out the one who made that.”

“...”

No one said a word while the Ghostshade House Master examined the talisman.

But I saw all the disciples’ eyes flick his way.

“So the master made it himself.”

“...And what of it?”

“A friend of mine got fucked over thanks to that talisman.”

“...”

He tensed up so hard I could feel it from here. His hand tightened on the staff, and the barrel of the pistol started rising toward me again.

I reached a hand out, placating.

“Hey, relax. We don’t like messy work either. You guys were just subcontractors, right?”

Whether I’d hit the mark or not, I felt him flinch—and relax a fraction at the same time.

Just as I thought.

Kim Hyunseung was one of the late-bloom prospects the Korean martial world had pinned high hopes on.

Ghostshade House might be scum, but even they wouldn’t be stupid enough to hit him directly. There had to be an organization or third party intervening in the middle.

My guess was that side might be tied to the Heavenly Demon Cult.

“Tell me who hired you. I won’t hold you responsible if you do.”

I let a thin edge of killing intent seep into my voice as I warned him. His pride clearly stung, the Ghostshade House Master’s eyebrow twitched.

“You arrogant little...”

And just then, one of the evil spirits, reacting to its master’s anger, drifted closer and tried to menace me.

Kyaaaa!

I drew my sword like lightning and cleaved the spirit in two.

It screamed and blew apart like smoke, and the Ghostshade House Master and his disciples all bugged their eyes out.

“How did you...!”

In my previous life, I’d only been able to exorcise ghosts with the help of a spell-caster or a shaman.

With my sensitive qi sense I could avoid or harass them, but seeing them clearly and cutting them the way I just had? Impossible.

You needed a spell-caster or shaman to make them visible, to give them substance, and you needed spellwork laid on your blade.

But it’s different now.

I’d confirmed it last night, when I’d tested a few things on the evil spirit Bokja had bound.

I can cut anomalies all on my own now.

That didn’t mean I planned on going head-to-head with Ghostshade House.

I had zero interest in taking on risk for a fight with no real payoff.

Which is exactly why I needed to show a little muscle like this.

I pointed my sword at the Ghostshade House Master and goaded him.

“If you really want to take this to the bitter end, we can.”

“Why would a master like you...”

He stared at me, visibly rattled.

His disciples were buzzing, saying I had to be at least peak-expert level, maybe higher.

They’ve got the wrong idea, but...

I had no reason to fix their misunderstanding.

If anything, it was going to make this go more smoothly.

I just stared him down in silence until he finally dropped his gaze and spoke, cowed.

“...The client is Great Heaven Gate..”

“Great Heaven Gate.? Wait. You mean that Great Heaven Gate., the one under the Martial Alliance?”

This time I was the one who jolted.

I hadn’t expected him to say “Heavenly Demon Cult” outright, but I had been expecting some black-path group likely under their umbrella.

I hadn’t expected the name of a respectable mid-tier righteous-path sect.

Have you thought at all about your path?

Gu Jaseung—the elder of Great Heaven Gate. who’d praised me after I saved Kim Hyunseung at the competition and asked about my future—flashed through my mind.

My voice came out thick with killing intent.

“You know what happens if you’re lying.”

“...It’s the truth. They tried to hide who they were, but we dug into them on the side and found out. I’m certain.”

I’d have to confirm it, but looking at his face—like he’d aged several years on the spot—it didn’t feel like a lie.

Great Heaven Gate., huh... It’s going to take a while to dig into that.

It was a shocking answer, but I’d gotten what I came for, so I slid my sword back into its sheath.

Hooo...

The moment the blade disappeared, relieved sighs came from all around the room.

I’d hit my primary objective. I was planning to listen a little longer, then head out.

“You’ve got proof it was Great Heaven Gate., right?”

“The proof is...”

If it hadn’t been for the voice that drifted through just then, different from any ghost’s wail, I might’ve let him finish.

Help me...

It was a faint sob, so weak I wouldn’t have heard it if I hadn’t already sharpened my qi sense and my five senses to the limit.

Help me... Please, help me...

The voice came from below us—the basement.

When I focused more on my hearing, I realized it wasn’t just one voice.

At least three. And every single one of them sounded young.

“...You sons of bitches.”

Even at the bottom of the barrel, there’s a line you don’t cross.

In my past life, I might not have been a chivalrous hero, but I’d tried to live without crossing that line.

Anyone who did was someone I killed, profit or loss be damned.

That wasn’t going to change in this life.

They’re a nasty bunch. Mostly deal in haunted talismans, and I hear they sometimes deliberately stick evil spirits on kids, then say they’ll introduce a miracle shaman and scam the parents.

Remembering what Hwang Suksu had said about Ghostshade House, it wasn’t hard to piece things together.

I pulled off the goggles that were getting in the way of my vision and stripped the stifling mask from my face.

“Why are you suddenly showing your face...”

“Come on, we’re both pros here. You know what that means.”

I grinned at the Ghostshade House Master as his face turned chalk white.

Me showing my face meant one thing:

Not a single person in this room was walking out alive.