Urban Vagabond: Reload

Ruuuumble......!

“Bring every sacred rope and talisman we have!”

“From this moment on, only first-rate experts and above are permitted to approach the forbidden ground!”

“The sect leader must be suppressing the Giant Tree Ghost’s energy. We must go help her at once.......”

“We must not act rashly! Other than the sect leader, who could endure that thing’s energy with a bare body?”

The elders and spellcasters of the Transcendent Extremity Gate first reinforced security around the forbidden ground.

They newly wrapped sacred ropes around the entire building, and plastered talismans thickly over each crock.

It was a stopgap measure, but it had an effect.

As the tremors lessened, the rampaging anomalies also grew quiet, and as time passed, the commotion gradually settled down.

Ruuuumble......!

And at that time, underground, two people slowly took their hands off the stake.

The Giant Tree Ghost’s heart fragment lay motionless as if dead, completely pierced through by the iron stake.

“Whoooo.......”

“Is it over?”

Sunwoo Jeha and Kim Muhyuk, both covered in dust, let out long sighs. Blood was pouring from both their hands, scraped raw from pressing down the stake.

“For now. But I don’t know when it might go wild again.”

Sunwoo Jeha glared at the Giant Tree Ghost’s heart fragment, then shifted her gaze and looked at Kim Muhyuk with complicated eyes.

“......You’ve learned one of the main sect’s most important secrets. You have two choices. Be silenced, or enter the Transcendent Extremity Gate.......”

When Kim Muhyuk backed away as if he might bolt at any moment, Sunwoo Jeha laughed.

“Kidding.”

Kim Muhyuk, whose heart had genuinely dropped for a second, twisted his brows and grumbled,

“How about you announce your jokes in advance from now on?”

“That’d be no fun.”

“With all due respect, sect leader, I don’t think you have any talent for making other people have fun.”

“I’m the one having fun, not you.”

“.......”

Kim Muhyuk, left speechless, shook his head.

A joke, in the middle of all this.

Thinking that compared to the Strongest Madman in Korea, he was still sane, he even felt a little relieved.

“Oh, a branch fell off here. May I take one as a souvenir?”

“......Not funny.”

“......?”

A short while later, the two of them left the basement together.

The elders of the Transcendent Extremity Gate, who had been about to enter the underground space with spellcraft tools hanging all over their bodies, were startled when they saw the two of them.

“Sect leader! Are you all right?”

“The underground seal is.......”

“Who is that fellow beside you?”

At the flood of questions, Sunwoo Jeha waved her hand as if they were annoying.

“Later. The young rising stars who escaped?”

“We sent them back to the lodgings a short while ago. None of them were injured. They are all safe.”

After confirming the safety of the three young rising stars, Sunwoo Jeha sent Kim Muhyuk back to the lodgings as well.

Then, as the sect leader of the Transcendent Extremity Gate, she declared an emergency within the sect.

“Check the spell barrier holding the Giant Tree Ghost immediately, and call back every pinnacle expert and above. Have them stand by. And contact the Martial Alliance.”

“Yes!”

The shaking of a Great Anomaly’s seal was an incident of that magnitude.

If the Giant Tree Ghost suddenly broke free, it could cause casualties beyond a natural disaster.

The Transcendent Extremity Gate immediately requested cooperation from the Martial Alliance, and because it was an urgent matter, the Martial Alliance Leader personally rushed to the Transcendent Extremity Gate and inspected the scene.

After entering the basement of the forbidden ground, Yeo Pilgeuk examined the Giant Tree Ghost’s heart fragment on the altar and the traces of resistance where it had tried to push out the stake.

“......Is the spell barrier safe?”

“I checked. There were some tremors nearby when the heart fragment went wild, but it’s settled now, and there haven’t been any particular changes so far.”

After that, the seal holding the Great Anomaly became a target of strict management.

A Great Anomaly trapped inside a spell barrier would fall into a state of suspended animation, and the chance of it recovering its strength was one in ten thousand.

But.

“......It wasn’t a proper seal from the start.”

The seal that had imprisoned the Giant Tree Ghost ten-odd years ago had been cast urgently through the sacrifice of the previous Transcendent Extremity Gate sect leader, so it was not perfect.

“It was always going to wake up someday.”

Sunwoo Jeha’s desire to hunt the sealed Giant Tree Ghost was personal revenge, but it was also her duty as the sect leader of one of the Eight Great Sects.

“......That sounds to me like a time bomb whose timer we cannot see.”

Recognizing the severity of the situation, Yeo Pilgeuk let out a hollow laugh.

“That.”

Sunwoo Jeha pointed at the iron stake embedded in the Giant Tree Ghost’s heart fragment. It was corroded and cracked in several places.

“That stake is the timer. If it can’t hold out anymore and breaks, the Giant Tree Ghost will come out. Before that happens, we have to enter the spell barrier and kill it.”

Reading the meaning in her eyes, Yeo Pilgeuk nodded with a stiff expression.

“Your Black Restraint Bands will be officially removed in ten days.”

Sunwoo Jeha stared at the black bracelets clasped around her wrists.

The objects that had restrained her for a very long time so that she could not unleash her martial arts at full power.

Even she could not accurately predict how far she could go once freed from the restrictions of the Black Restraint Bands.

“Then I’ll set the operation date for ten days from now. This time, I’m going to end that thing for good.......”

Yeo Pilgeuk watched Sunwoo Jeha mutter with worried eyes and sighed quietly.

“But I don’t understand. A Great Anomaly reacted with no particular omen or trigger?”

At that moment, Sunwoo Jeha thought of Kim Muhyuk.

—I thought this might have happened because of me.

Had that boy really stimulated the Great Anomaly and made the Giant Tree Ghost’s heart fragment react?

If that was true, it meant Kim Muhyuk possessed a special talent even the Strongest in the World did not have.

An ability that might turn the world upside down.......

But Sunwoo Jeha decided not to think too deeply about that.

“Alliance Leader. I have one request.”

Because what mattered now was that Kim Muhyuk’s ability might prove quite useful for her master’s revenge, and for fulfilling the duty of the Eight Great Sects.

“Do not speak so seriously. Do you have any idea how uneasy I get whenever you talk like that?”

Yeo Pilgeuk shuddered and quickly stepped to the side.

When she was a young rising star, Sunwoo Jeha’s expression had always looked like that right before she came up with some strange idea or caused an incident.

“What did I ever.......”

But Sunwoo Jeha also seemed to find it difficult to say more. She hesitated.

Even to her own mind, it felt like an unreasonable request.

However, because this involved the revenge she had waited ten years for, she opened her mouth after some hesitation.

“......For the Giant Tree Ghost hunt, may I bring Kim Muhyuk?”

Yeo Pilgeuk’s expression hardened at once, and he asked back,

“Muhyuk?”

Thinking that the Martial Alliance Leader, who cared deeply for young rising stars, might shout that it was absolutely impossible, Sunwoo Jeha spoke quickly.

“I know it’s dangerous. But that kid Kim Muhyuk has absurdly high resistance to anomalies. The sword he carries is fairly useful too, and there’s a high chance he’ll become a decent madman.......”

Unlike Sunwoo Jeha, her explanation grew lengthy.

Because she had gone her whole life rarely ever asking others for anything.

“I’ll promise the maximum safety measures, and I’ll make sure he’s paid well. So if you just permit it, Alliance Leader.......”

“Hah! Why did I not think of that?”

Yeo Pilgeuk, who had been listening quietly to Sunwoo Jeha, suddenly clapped his hands.

“......Hm?”

Contrary to Sunwoo Jeha’s expectations, Yeo Pilgeuk’s expression became as comfortable as if he had just swallowed a digestive aid.

“Now that I think of it, he’s a more optimized talent than anyone. Yes, if it is Muhyuk, he can be trusted with it. Jeha, you truly do have an eye for people!”

At the Martial Alliance Leader’s words, as he nodded with a satisfied smile as if relieved, the one who became flustered was actually Sunwoo Jeha.

“......Are you serious? He’s a pinnacle expert, but he’s still a young rising star, you know? If you’re the Martial Alliance Leader, shouldn’t you naturally oppose this?”

The permission had come too easily, and informal speech slipped out of Sunwoo Jeha’s mouth in her confusion.

But Yeo Pilgeuk paid it no mind and continued.

“Ah, take Kangheon as well. That boy also has the nerve not to be cowed before a Great Anomaly. Since the Giant Tree Ghost’s attribute is wood, his ability to handle flame will be a great help too.”

“That’s...... true, but.......”

The more the conversation continued, the more Sunwoo Jeha felt something was strange, but Yeo Pilgeuk went on excitedly.

“Would you rather I introduce an entirely specialized team to you? They are called Blue Wolves. They are a Martial Alliance partner organization.......”

“What is that supposed to be now?”

Sunwoo Jeha, who did not know what Kim Muhyuk, Shin Kangheon, and the Blue Wolves crew had been doing until now, only grew more bewildered the more she listened.

*****

“What the hell is even going on?”

Shin Kangheon looked out the window and grumbled in frustration.

After the emergency broke out in the Transcendent Extremity Gate.

They had only been told to return to the lodgings and wait, and that was what they were doing.

Shin Kangheon turned to Bu Yeonha and asked,

“You know something, don’t you, senior? Giant Tree Ghost or whatever. What is that?”

“......I can guess, but I can’t tell you in detail. It may be a disgrace of the Transcendent Extremity Gate.”

Bu Yeonha sighed with a worried expression.

As the successor of the AZURE SKY SWORD GATE, she knew about the duties of the Eight Great Sects and the existence of Great Anomalies.

But because she could not speak carelessly about such things, she changed the subject.

“Where is senior Hyuntae?”

“He said he was tired and went to sleep first.”

“......Should we rest a little too?”

“You go ahead. I’m going to wait a little longer until Kim Muhyuk comes back.”

Listening to the two of them conversing in the living room, Kang Hyuntae was packing his belongings in his room.

Kill them!

The anomaly that had entered his body whispered endlessly in his ear.

You can kill them and take it. Their talent. You want it, don’t you?

“.......”

Kang Hyuntae knew it was something he must not do, but he had accepted the anomaly that had escaped from the forbidden ground into his body.

It was the moment when the pride he had lived with his whole life, being praised as a brilliant talent, had collapsed. The temptation was too intense and too alluring to refuse.

I’ll steal it for you. All you have to do is kill......

“Be quiet.”

Kang Hyuntae raised his head and glared at the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot red.

In his pupils, desire for strength and killing intent were writhing.

“You barely escaped. Do you want to be caught again so soon?”

The anomaly had been the first to tempt him, but he was the one who had accepted it of his own will.

Before he knew it, a thin smile formed on Kang Hyuntae’s lips.

“There are plenty of people outside I can kill. And it’ll be easy to deal with them and clean up afterward. Let’s eat them one at a time so we don’t get indigestion.”

The anomaly that had seeped into Kang Hyuntae’s body giggled.

At dawn, when everyone should have been fast asleep, Kang Hyuntae packed his belongings and came outside. Inside his room, he left a short note saying he had acutely realized his lack of talent and was leaving the camp.

A major incident had erupted inside the Transcendent Extremity Gate already. No one would pay attention just because he left the camp.

Once I get outside, the world is mine. I’ll start with easy targets, kill them one by one, and absorb their vital blood. I’ll become a supreme master in no time. I can switch over to the unorthodox faction, or leave the country. No one can stop me.......

Kang Hyuntae came out into the living room, dreaming of the future in which he would become a peerless master, and headed for the front door.

“Senior.”

“......!”

When Kang Hyuntae turned around, Kim Muhyuk was sitting on the sofa and looking at him.

“Even if you’re leaving, you should detach that thing before you go.”

Kim Muhyuk stared at the pitch-black evil ghost clinging to Kang Hyuntae’s back and spoke.

“......Can’t you keep it secret?”

It was the same kind of joke as usual, but sticky killing intent seeped from Kang Hyuntae’s twisted smile.