Chapter 293

“Yeeeaaahhh!”

“Kill them all!”

The voices of hundreds of thousands of people echoed throughout the ruins of Tallinn. The Chaos Humans retreated, panicked by the sudden ambush.

“Dammit! Damn it all!”

“Shit! What the fuck is going on?!”

“Lee Bong-Seong betrayed us! Why would the Child of a Bachtasha do such a thing?!”

“Gurghhh! LEE BONG-SEONG—!” shouted Zhao Benshan on Taowu’s back, clenching his bleeding shoulder after getting shot by Bong-Seong’s magic bullet.

Bong-Seong’s Ghost Killers had used the ambush to their advantage, incapacitating over a hundred Chaos Humans. Because of that, the panicked Chaos Humans had run away in groups, and Bong-Seong was facing the group led by Benshan, Havela, Emil Mielke, Gao Weiguang, and others.

“I’ll have my revenge for this! I will tear you apart and feed you to Taowu!” Benshan cursed.

“To think Lee Bong-Seong betrayed us... The chance of that happening was less than one percent. He was meant to return and lead us one day,” Emil mumbled.

He couldn’t understand this ambush. There was no way that he wouldn’t have noticed if Bong-Seong had mobilized so many of the Union’s forces.

“Could his Parent have commanded him to eliminate us?” Havela asked as he ran, holding his Dybbuk Box.

“Don’t be ridiculous! Lee Bong-Seong is doing this of his own accord! He has always been afraid of losing his humanity. He just wants to erase us before he becomes a full-fledged Chaos Human!” Benshan shouted.

“It appears... that is the truth.”

“The fucking coward!”

The Chaos Humans continued to flee westward, denouncing Bong-Seong’s betrayal. The further west they headed, the more and more wreckages there were, which they crushed underneath their feet.

“This place is...”

“What Biphatogenes destroyed with his attack...”

“The Walls of Tallinn!”

The Walls of Tallinn used to be known as the Capital’s shield of the west, but it was now just a wreck. The fact that they were here meant that they were in the westermost region of the Capital. They felt a powerful headwind, showing them how fast the Capital was flying. The Chaos Humans ground their teeth, realizing there was nowhere else to run.

“We’re at... a dead end.”

“They lured us here!”

“Dammit! This must have been why he chose Tallinn as the meeting place!”

“What about a warp gate?”

“They obviously put up some sort of force field!”

“Arghhh! I would have brought the other members of the Four Perils if I knew this would happen!”

“What do we do now?” Havela asked Emil.

“We... scatter. Not even Lee Bong-Seong could have formed an army that could have mobilized without me knowing. He likely doesn’t have the entire Tallinn surrounded,” Emil remarked.

Weiguang nodded and remarked, “So, every man for themselves, is it?”

“Dammit! You heard him! Scatter!” Benshan shouted.

The Chaos Humans scattered as an attempt to slip through the encircling net’s openings. Just then, forty-five light blue swords with the power of air, forty-five golden pentacles with the power of earth, forty-five red wands with the power of fire, and forty-five blue cups with the power of water surrounded them all.

“What the—”

“Who’s there?!”

“It can’t be!”

The Chaos Humans looked around in confusion, but Emil immediately recognized the weapons that had surrounded them. They belonged to the individual he had been especially gathering information on since he was the biggest threat to their organization.

“Cheon... Seong-Hwi,” Emil mumbled as his hands trembled.

Just then, a voice sounded from a half-destroyed watchtower on the Walls of Tallinn. “I can embody thirty-six Element Cards at once now. Not bad at all.”

The Chaos Humans turned toward the source of the voice and saw a man with black hair and eyes, sixteen bright wings resembling stained glass, and a shining gold crown over his head.

“SS!”

“Cheon Seong-Hwi!”

“World Ranker!”

They instantly recognized Seong-Hwi just by the Wings of Evolution since it was such a famous signature characteristic.

“Did you guys not read what I had written on the signboard? Are you blind?” Seong-Hwi asked as he leisurely shuffled his Tarot Deck of Destiny.

He recited what he had written on the signboard behind the heads of the Dark Humans he had killed in the Cecil Hotel.

“This is a message for those who hinder humanity’s development. The cancerous cells will be excised without hesitation from now on. Sins of blood shall be washed away with blood... and so on.”

Desire rose toward the night sky and looked down at the Chaos Humans, illuminating them with a silver light. They couldn’t see Desire, but the chilling uneasiness prevented them from moving. All they could do was shout.

“Urgh...”

“W-we outnumber him!”

“This is our chance! As long as we kill him, nothing will be left to stop us!”

“I had warned you to conduct yourselves wisely. You brought this on yourselves,” Seong-Hwi said as he shuffled the tarot deck even faster, and his eyes slowly turned red.

[Activating Trait: Ten Thousand-Man Killer.]

[Activating Trait: Scorn for the Weak.]

The screeches of ten thousand vengeful souls and an aura that restrained the souls of those with a lower caliber than him blasted out. Seong-Hwi smiled widely as he scattered the golden cards in midair.

“Don’t resent me for this.”

The corners of his mouth trembled, his eyes shone with anticipation, and his blood vessels wriggled like worms. His face was already like that of the Devil even without the Myriad Cheoyong Mask.

***

“After them!”

“They went over there!”

“In that building!”

Battles broke out throughout Tallinn. The ones fleeing and on the defensive were the Chaos Humans of the League of Trailblazers. The ones chasing them and on the offensive were the Union’s spec force, the Cecil Hotel’s Executionary Corps, and black clans like Loaners, Pure Ladies and Gentlemen, Killers’ Age, Black Market, and more.

“I’m... amazed,” Bong-Seong mumbled.

He couldn’t mobilize many of the Union’s forces for this operation to succeed. The most he could do was the spec force. The bigger the movements from the Union, the higher the chances were for the Chaos Humans to notice. Hence, they needed a task force unaffiliated with the Union.

Once he relayed his opinions to Seong-Hwi, he smiled as he told him not to worry. As a result, he had somehow mobilized the Cecil Hotel and several black clans.

“It has been a while, Lee Bong-Seong,” someone said with a deep voice.

Bong-Seong turned around to see a topless elderly gentleman wearing a fedora, his torso covered in black tattoos, wriggling intimidatingly.

“I am surprised you answered the summons, Don Carlos Giuseppe,” Bong-Seong said.

“I did not answer your summons. Fuuu, haaa,” Don Carlos remarked as he took a puff of his cigar and exhaled as if sighing. “We answered Cheon Seong-Hwi’s summons.”

“In exchange for what?”

“The lives of my family and myself.” Don Carlos caressed his neck and smiled. “Heh, you wouldn’t know how insane he is. You didn’t see his carnage inside the Cecil Hotel.”

He remembered every second of it. Seong-Hwi had judged every single person in the Cecil Hotel like a judge from Hell, with a balance scale in his left hand and a sword in his right. He was smiling at times, crying at other times, or completely expressionless.

“I’ve killed many people myself, but something is different about him. He’s crazier than that crazy motherfucker, Lee Kang-San. He said that once we do this for him, he would change Clan Loaners’ sentence from withhold to innocent.”

It also meant that their sentence would be changed to guilty if they did not help him.

“Were the rest of you under the same conditions?” Bong-Seong asked.

“Yes, most of us. Black Market may be a little different, though,” Don Carlos said as he threw the half-burnt cigar on the ground. “That aside, killing Chaos Humans, huh? That takes a load off my chest. Since they’re not human, you can’t call this murder.”

Bong-Seong smiled bitterly in silence and mumbled inwardly, I sincerely wish... your experiment succeeds.

***

“Oi, I told you the spec force has this covered,” said a middle-aged white man chewing gum, to the robed individual running beside him.

“Douglas Montgomery. We of the Cecil Hotel have been officially invited to take part in this operation,” the robed individual remarked.

“I mean, I get that, but I’d rather not work together with people that I don’t even know what they look like, you know? Can you take off that robe?”

“I respectfully decline. You can just address me as Tiger of the Executionary Corps.”

“Tch, acting rather haughty, aren’t you?”

Douglas Montgomery, the spec force captain, and Jangsanbeom[1], the leader of the Executionary Corps Team 3, went after the Chaos Humans’ traces as if they were competing against each other.

“Pursuit Team 5 Leader! How are we doing?” Douglas shouted.

“Miho?” asked Seo-Yeon, who was running at the vanguard, to the white fox in her embrace.

Yip! Yip! Miho barked as it sniffed around.

“We’re here!” Seo-Yeon shouted.

Just then, one of the robed individuals of the Executionary Corps quickly ran to the front. It was Chaya Singh Rai.

“Hide!” Jangsanbeom called.

Seong-Hwi hyung-nim! Chaya shouted inwardly as he sped up.

He strode forward like an agile wild beast, his black eyes sparkling with anticipation, and sprinted past Seo-Yeon and Charles at the vanguard.

It’s been so long since we’ve met! I want to be helpful to you this time for sure!

“Hey! Why are you running ahead of the volante?!” Seo-Yeon shouted.

“Hey, you! Listen to Nine Tails—I mean, Seo-Yeon noona!” Charles shouted.

Chaya was the first to arrive at the Walls of Tallinn.

“Hyung-nim! I will assist—” Chaya shouted gallantly, but froze after witnessing the scene unfolding before him.

Dark-blue lightning rumbled as it fell from the sky, destroying everything in its path.

***

“AHAHAHA!” Seong-Hwi laughed crazily as he swung the Harvesting Scythe.

The heads of a dozen Chaos Humans flew away like grains of wheat being harvested.

“K-kill him!”

“Ahhhhh!”

“Overpower him with sheer numbers!”

The Chaos Humans charged at him simultaneously, each with pure black eyes and exuding Chaos Mana that seemed as if it could tear anything apart. They fired all kinds of skills at Seong-Hwi, but he simply smiled with no intention of dodging. Once all their attacks struck Seong-Hwi directly, the Chaos Humans shouted in triumph.

“He’s dead!”

“Ahaha! Damn small fry!”

“Even Cheon Seong-Hwi is powerless before Chaos Mana!”

However, the dust cleared, and Seong-Hwi was completely unscathed.

“None of you can even leave a scratch on my body. It has been deemed so,” Seong–Hwi remarked.

After initiating the overclocking through the Absolute Crown, his Health stat was now S(49). The average physical attack couldn’t wound him. Not only that, but he was wearing the Archane Hoodie with high magical resistance and had even unleashed the power of his unique caliber. The Wings of Evolution flashed, and he disappeared.

“W-where are you?!”

“Above us!”

The Chaos Humans looked up and saw Seong-Hwi pulling back the drawstring of a recurve bow made with the horns of a black water buffalo. He released the string repeatedly so fast that they couldn’t even see his hands, and a hail of black arrows fell like rainfall, piercing only vital areas like the heart, head, and neck.

“Kurgh!”

“Arghhh!”

“BASTARD!” Benshan shouted at Seong-Hwi, who was slaughtering them all too easily.

He pulled on Taowu’s mane, forcing it to look up, and activated a skill.

[Activating Unique Skill: Tree of Barren Land.]

Taowu’s mouth opened abnormally wide, and a withered tree sprouted toward the sky.

“I’ll dry you to death!” Benshan shouted.

The origin of the malevolent being Taowu was the word malicious wood. It appeared in the Shenyi Jing, or the Book of Gods and Strange Things, causing droughts wherever it appeared, reducing fertile land to wastelands.[2]

Tree of Barren Land was a skill that integrated its characteristics. One cut from this tree caused one’s body water content to be drained, resulting in an agonizing death. Branches continued to form over one another on the Tree of Barren Land, spreading out more and more to fill the surroundings and resembling lightning striking from the ground toward the sky.

Seong-Hwi moved at supersonic speed, repeatedly dodging the branches by a hair’s breadth.

“Gahahaha! This is the symbol of disaster! The sky is completely sealed now, you damn fly!” Benshan shouted as he laughed wickedly.

“You call this a symbol of disaster?” Seong-Hwi smirked, pulling out a card from the Tarot Deck of Destiny.

The card shone with a golden light, showing a tower atop a mountain, burning after being struck by dark blue lightning.

‘This is what you call a symbol of disaster!” he shouted.

[Activating Unique Skill: Symbol Embodiment.]

[Catastrophic Thunder, one of the symbols of No.16 The Tower]

A dark-blue lightning mark appeared over his right temple like a teardrop. He grunted as he pulled back his right fist, pouring all of the mana from his S(66) Magic stat into the skill. Streaks of lightning gathered around his fist like static electricity. The faces of the Chaos Humans turned deathly pale, sensing a mana pulse that far transcended their imagination.

“W-what the fuck?!”

“NOOOOO!”

“Run—!”

The Chaos Humans scattered, but wherever they fled to, they were within Seong-Hwi’s vast attack zone.

“HAAAAAHHH!” Seong-Hwi shouted as he swung his right fist down toward the ground.

An ear-splitting thunder echoed, dyeing the world dark blue as if it had plunged into the abyss.

1. The —beom portion in his codename means tiger. ☜

2. This doesn’t seem correct from the research I’ve done, but maybe someone more knowledgeable about the Four Perils can say otherwise. ☜