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Chapter 33 – Messiah(3)
7.
Lee Jin Sung, he was a cruel man.
On top of that, he had a strong ability and a powerful relic that amplified his means for cruelty.
"What’s going on with master."
"We’ll die if we’re late."
Lee Jin Sung had awoken to strong abilities without knowing he would, so for those other awakened who only awakened to E rank abilities, they didn’t dare go against him.
But at the same time, he was a symbol of hope.
"f.u.c.k, if anything ever happens to master······."
"Without master, we’re done for."
It was because Lee Jin Sun was their strongest force against monsters.
He was their best chance at killing the yellow-eyed snake demon that they had been forced to offer sacrifices to.
In this world, sacrifices were a necessary evil, especially with the appearance of the yellow-eyed demon.
That was why Lee Jin Sung named his group Messiah. It would attract stragglers who didn’t know the truth. Furthermore, since he had dominated the sacrifices with fear coupled together with this weather, none of the sacrifices would dare to escape and run out in the blizzard, and would instead choose to stay in the market.
"We’ve arrived!"
"Turn on the flashlights! Flashlights!"
Soon, the eleven people who had arrived at the large supermarket were s.h.i.+ning their flashlights in front of them.
The first thing they saw when they turned on their flashlights were the bodies.
"Euk!"
"d.a.m.n it, what the h.e.l.l······."
They were the corpses of the ordinary members who were in the grenade’s blast radius.
As opposed to monster corpses, these bodies exuded a different kind of terror than the kinds that the awakened of Messiah had seen in the past.
"G, guns, were they shot by guns?"
"Were they hit with a bomb? But where would there be a bomb?"
The awakened stiffened.
Still stunned, a few courageous members stepped into the flashlights’ beams, making their way towards the mangled bodies.
"Huk!"
A head that would destroy a man’s courage.
It was Lee Jin Sung’s head, his body nowhere in sight.
The light from the flashlights reflected off the hairless head.
"Im, impossible."
They couldn’t even scream, they were speechless.
"Drop your flashlights and get on your knees with your hands up."
A voice suddenly came out from the darkness.
"Wh, who is it?"
"Where did that voice come from?"
Even after what the voice said, n.o.body kneeled. Instead, everyone was turning their heads, trying to find out where the voice had come from.
Tang!
A gunshot quickly caught their attention.
"Euuahk!"
A man yelled out before falling, the light from his flashlight s.h.i.+ning all over the place.
"M, my leg, my leg······."
"Don’t make me repeat myself."
The voice spoke again amidst the screaming and cursing of the man who was shot in the leg.
"Crazy······."
"The flashlights are giving away our positions!"
The quick witted ones put their flashlights on the floor and raised their hands up, immediately getting on their knees.
Then, like dominoes, the eleven awakened who had entered the market got on the floor.
Kim Tae Hoon appeared before them.
He had completely hidden his body in the dark. Even his clothes consisted of a black jumper.
Because of that and the fact that the flashlights were on the floor, it was impossible for them to see him clearly.
It was more terrifying this way.
They could only use their imaginations to fill in what they couldn’t see.
In this situation, they couldn’t be imagining anything pleasant.
To the eleven awakened, Kim Tae Hoon was no different from a devil, a devil that began to speak once more.
"You have two choices. You can turn around and leave, or you can join me and become a hunting dog under my command."
Hearing his proposal, all of them trembled.
"A hunting dog?"
It had become clear to them that their opponent wasn’t a kindhearted hero of justice.
"I am aware of what kind group Messiah is. So it would be better to disregard any notion of being treated like a human."
The awakened trembled again.
He knew what kind of group Messiah was. He knew that they had been sacrificing a mountain of people to a monster.
They all knew what it meant to offer living sacrifices.
Even if the circ.u.mstances made it impossible to avoid, the moment you stopped treating your fellow man as human, then you needed to be prepared to be treated the same.
This entire time, their strength had overshadowed this fact, but now that they were the weaker party, they knew. [TN: We had eyes, but could not see Mt. Tai]
"d.a.m.n it."
Faced with that reality, they could only swallow any sighs or regret.
"This is the end of the road."
Some of them began to use their heads.
"C, can we really just leave, just like this?"
A man asked.
"If you don’t want to serve under me."
Kim Tae Hoon answered immediately.
"I, I······ I will leave. I’ll live my live quietly."
Having given his answer, the man rose from his spot.
The man who got up was named Chang Yeon Seok.
"I at least need to get out of this place. If I stay under that man, he’ll just use me against the monsters like a consumable.’
He was in charge of the group in department store across the supermarket that kept watch over the people from the who were to be sacrificed.
Simply put, an executive.
As a result, he knew Messiah better than any of the others here.
"I’ll just go back to the city hall and join the group there before thinking of what to do next. That should be my priority for now. If I stay here there’ll be neither porridge nor rice." [TN: There’s no point in staying here]
Messiah had been in the process of spreading its influence around the Bucheon City Hall.
They secured food by occupying large markets, captured or swallowed up survivors that approached city hall, and had scouted out the territory of exceptionally strong monsters they could not kill at the moment, offering them sacrifices to keep them placated.
"Anyways, there are twenty awakened who are making preparations there."
It was only natural that the number of awakened that Messiah had been able to recruit was not small.
There were about eighty of them!
Many of them were on standby in the city hall. The city hall contained the most amount of sacrifices.
Additionally, there were many who were not awakened, but were still willing to fight for Messiah.
If they didn’t want to become the next sacrifice, they had to be on the same side.
So it was only natural for him to think that it was safer to join them than it was to be a hunting dog under an unknown figure.
"R, really? Is it ok to leave?"
Chang Yeon Seok asked again while hiding his schemes.
"If you don’t want to serve me."
Kim Tae Hoon once again gave a clear answer.
"Th, thank you."
With that, Chang Yeon Seok turned his back. He didn’t move right away, trying to sense something.
"Is he really willing to just let me go?"
Although he asked himself that, he didn’t feel like there was anything afoot.
Chang Yeon Seok walked towards the way he came.
Tang!
A bullet lodged itself in his back.
"Keuhuk!"
Letting out a short cry, Chang Yeon Seok collapsed onto the floor and began to convulse. Warm blood began to soak his clothes before pooling onto the floor.
The others could not see what had happened.
"I, is team leader Chang dead?"
"He’s mad, he was never intending to let us go?"
They could only sense that a colleague had died or was dying behind them.
"Was it Messiah’s method to kill enemies or traitors then cut off their heads?"
Kim Tae Hoon asked another question.
There was no answer.
There were no questions.
"Then the nine of you remaining will be my hunting dogs."
The situation had been resolved.
8.
[Sword of the Commander]
– Relic Grade : Grade 2
– Relic Rarity : Special
– Relic Effect : A sword that can grow by consuming the blood of monsters. It was unknown who this sword had belonged to.
[Flame Wine Gourd]
– Relic Grade : Grade 5
– Relic Rarity : Rare
– Relic Effect : Converts magic into Flame Wine. If you drink the Flame Wine you can spew out fire. The more powerful the drinker’s Magic Power is, the more powerful the flames.
Kim Tae Hoon, who was inspecting the relics through his smart phone, closely observed the sword in his hand.
Sword of the Commander.
There was no way to tell who it had belonged to.
But regardless, it was good for Kim Tae Hoon. He didn’t have knowledge about historical figures, and he didn’t care.
"It looks like the sword from my dreams."
Since the sword’s appearance matched the one in his dream, what was important was the fact that the colors were different.
"The color of the sheath is different, but other than that, it looks just like the one from my dream."
The dream he was referring to was the one induced by Napoleon’s Golden Goblet of course.
In that dream, Kim Tae Hoon had utilized various weapons to fight against the dragon.
And now, a weapon similar to one of those was in his hand.
The sword sheath that he had now was red, but the sword sheath from his dream was blue. Aside from that, both swords gave off the same feeling.
If it actually was the sword from his dream, then it would be an amazing achievement.
It was a weapon that he could use against a dragon.
But Kim Tae Hoon wasn’t pleased.
There was no way to know if it was something destined or not.
Afterall, all he had to go off of was a snippet of the future.
In the end, he may still be heading towards the same result but by a different route.
Furthermore, Lee Jin Sung had revealed some fairly interesting bits of information before his death. Although it was for the sake of stalling for more time, the information that he had revealed was tremendously valuable and frightening.
"He said that Bucheon was very lucky."
Lee Jin Sung had said that Bucheon City was a lucky area.
"The surrounding areas were filled with powerful monsters."
The districts surrounding Bucheon like Incheon, Gimpo, and Siheung already belonged to the monsters.
Powerful monsters had claimed their own territories in the surrounding areas, and Bucheon just happened to be where all of their territories overlapped, resulting in a relative peace.
"It’s not impossible."
The authenticity of it was unknown, but the possibility was high.
The monsters wouldn’t be wantonly destroying everything. They would move according to their sense of survival.
In order to survive they need to eat the humans, but to get to the humans, they needed to destroy what got in their way.
"The worst case scenario."
If what Lee Jin Sung said wasn’t a lie, then the situation was beyond what Kim Tae Hoon had imagined.
"The death toll would be one million."
The death toll may exceed one million in the Republic of Korea, and perhaps even ten million.
"No, since it happened without notice during the winter, it should be closer to ten million."
It was currently winter, a harsh season that humanity would find difficult to survive through.
"It’s probably much worse in China. The casualties there would be in the billions."
The damage caused in Korea and the number of casualties in Korea could not be compared to those of China or India where their population exceeds 1 billion.
Kim Tae Hoon began to feel a little skeptical.
He was skeptical of the fact that humans who survived this terrible ordeal would die for their fellow man. There were many who would rather die for their own sake.
"H, h.e.l.lo······ I gathered all of them like you ordered. The sacrifices······ I mean, I brought all the survivors."
One of the awakened from Messiah approached Kim Tae Hoon and told him in a frightened voice.
Hearing that, Kim Tae Hoon rose from his spot.
Kim Tae Hoon had a skeptical and cold expression on his face.
It was good to be cautious of the future.
No, he had to be wary. It would be important to always be wary of what was to come.
Messiah had yet to fall into Kim Tae Hoon’s hands. Furthermore, the remnants would not be welcoming towards Kim Tae Hoon.
It was the same for the survivors. Not all of the survivors had been a.s.signed to be sacrifices. Those who were designated to be offerings would be different than those who were considered as members, and even they would be different from those who were a.s.signed to be wardens or overseers.
Of course, if they were left alone, they would merely act according to themselves.
That’s why he needed to instill fear. Don’t let them think of anything else. In this situation, compa.s.sion would be meaningless, and it was certainly not something Kim Tae Hoon would give. He didn’t even want to know.
However, he still needed to give them a way out. They needed to be given a lifeline they could stake their lives on. Something that these survivors in Bucheon cherish as much as their own lives.
Messiah’s former leader, Lee Jin Sung, was also aware of these things.
His actions were far from human, but at the same time, this world no longer belonged to the humans.
"Thanks to Messiah, things should be smoother."
In fact, Kim Tae Hoon was more familiar with these concepts than Lee Jin Sung.
Although they were not monsters, Kim Tae Hoon had fought and lived in the underbelly of society where humans were no better than these monsters.
But in the end, he survived.
9.
"Try wringing out the eel like thing in your stomach like it was mayonnaise. Try it like that."
Hearing what Bang Hyun Wook said, Kim Su Ji and three others began to concentrate and try to squeeze the Energy in their belly.
"Once you’ve squeezed it, try and direct it to your fingertips and toes. All the way! How is it? It’s easy right?"
While the other awakened were training their usage of Energy, Ahn Sun Mi was holding the Goblet of Healing while employing Chang Sung Hoon’s help.
As the Goblet of Healing began to fill up, Chang Sung Hoon opened his mouth.
“Okay. It’s done. Noonim, it’s completely filled."
Ahn Sun Mi opened her eyes and poured the contents of the Goblet of Healing into a thermos for future use.
"You’ve suffered a lot."
"Right, I’m the only one who is suffering."
"It’s not like I don’t want to help, but you’re the only one who can use magic, right? Noonim, if you want, I could sing you a song?"
Instead of replying to Chang Sung Hoon, Ahn Sun Mi closed her eyes and began focusing on injecting her magic into the Goblet of Healing.
It was ready.
The awakened who could utilize Energy were training to be more skillful, while Ahn Sun Mi was trying to stock up on healing goods as much as possible when there was room and time to spare.
Because lives were on the line, n.o.body gave up.
It was time.
"Second Lieutenant-nim!"
Somebody had appeared. It was a soldier. The soldiers standing outside were were completely covered in snow.
Training ceased for awhile.
"The major has sent a messenger." [TN: I’ve decided that whenever someone refers to Kim Tae Hoon’s rank as an ident.i.ty, it’ll be ‘The major’ because Ghost in the Sh.e.l.l is awesome, and Kim Tae Hoon is a certified bada.s.s.]
All who had heard had a nervous expression on their faces.
"This is the letter sent by the major."
The envelope was immediately handed to Kim Su Ji.
Kim Su Ji deftly fished out the letter from inside the envelope, and began to scan the paper before she spoke again.
"Is there anyone in the clan who has experience working at a sus.h.i.+ joint or cutting fish?"
"What?"
A strange question that made no sense.
"Did the major catch a tuna? Why do you suddenly need someone with experience regarding sas.h.i.+mi?"
Chang Sung Hoon asked, representing what everyone else wanted to ask. Without a single expression on her face, Kim Su Ji simply replied.
"Attention! From now on, the Mek Clan will prepare for battle. The Yellow-eyed Demon is our prey."