Chapter 131: Recognition (4)

Translator: Dreamscribe

Commander Kang Jae-ha's decision to withdraw from the scene as though they had never been there drew immediate nods from his subordinates. Among them, Ryu Hyuk, whose features were sharp and heavily drawn, scratched his cropped hair and turned to Jae-ha.

"Understood. Then- how would you like this scene handled?"

Kang Jae-ha glanced around before answering plainly.

"Tipping it to the police, quietly enough that nothing traces back to us, would be the safest way."

"I'll see to it."

"Don't you ever be the one out front."

"Yes, sir."

Having heard the answer, Kang Jae-ha looked down again at Jin Jong-hoon, sprawled at his feet, his brain dead only moments ago. The impish grin was gone without a trace; from his face down through the whole of his body, the soul had drained out of him.

"......"

For an instant, memories of Jin Jong-hoon from the Mercenary Corps days flickered through Kang Jae-ha.

There had been a fair number of good ones.

The delight on his face after treating a wounded comrade, or dissecting a Demonic Beast to uncover its weak point, and so on and so on. Every time, Jin Jong-hoon had made a point of selling his usefulness to Jae-ha, his Commander.

He always seemed to have a screw loose, but Kang Jae-ha hadn't disliked the Jin Jong-hoon of the Mercenary Corps.

"Tsk."

He had done things in this world that deserved death, so an end like this was only natural, and yet, between Kim Ho-yeon and Yang Na-hee, who'd already kicked the bucket, and now Jin Jong-hoon here as well. The wretched ends his subordinates kept meeting left Kang Jae-ha in a foul mood all the same.

'A difference of environment. If this bastard had met me first, would things have turned out differently?'

There was no way to be certain; declaring anything for sure was a dangerous business. But at the very least, if Jin Jong-hoon had met Kang Jae-ha before he met the Vice-Commander, there would have been far fewer victims like the man lying on that operating table.

Kang Jae-ha slowly looked around at Lee Chan-hoo, Go Chun-seok, Ryu Hyuk, and Jang Tae-san.

'If they had met the Vice-Commander before me, their futures would look nothing like this either,'

Realistically, Kang Jae-ha could not save every Mercenary. Jae-ha had only one body, and 'Deja Vu' would not show him all of his subordinates. Some of them might be struggling somewhere even now, and the same went for the ones abroad, in Japan and elsewhere.

If the Vice-Commander who had surfaced thought the way Kang Jae-ha did, things would obviously have been far easier.

'Judging by the state of Jin Jong-hoon, that's clearly not the case.'

The Vice-Commander was evidently painting a completely different picture from Jae-ha's.

Of course, Kang Jae-ha understood it too. The 'Abilities' he and his subordinates possessed had been useful in the Other World, but in this world they were absurdly, ridiculously useful.

That usefulness held just as true for crime.

There were bound to be 'Abilities' that shone even brighter on the criminal side.

'This bastard's 'Ability' included.'

As Kang Jae-ha looked down at Jin Jong-hoon without expression, Jang Tae-san, his face as rigid as a Terminator's, asked him a question. He was pointing at Jin Jong-hoon's belongings scattered around the makeshift operating room. The cell phone, and the rest.

"What should be done with these?"

As though he had already considered it, Kang Jae-ha jabbed his index finger at Jin Jong-hoon on the floor and answered.

"He hid a landmine in this bastard's brain. One that triggers under set conditions, no less. There's no telling what he's done to those things."

"Hm."

"We leave all of it behind."

Lee Chan-hoo chimed in.

"Right. We've got to slip out without handing them a scrap of information, and it'd be a headache if a trace came back at us. The Vice-Commander. No, that bastard's thorough enough to hide his own name, so he's bound to have pulled something."

Kang Jae-ha nodded.

"Or he could have left some kind of 'Ability' smeared on his things."

Ryu Hyuk, scanning the items, cut in.

"On top of that, it's not even certain this is really Jin Jong-hoon's phone. Criminal bastards like him usually use Burner Phones. Whoever contacts this phone will be doing the same. The Vice-Commander included."

Naturally it would have been more convenient to take everything and examine it, but with the possibility of hidden landmines, leaving it behind was the right call. Kang Jae-ha, having given the order, murmured on.

"The Vice-Commander's side won't go around hurting ordinary people at random without a reason. Especially not police. Hand the items over to the police too."

He called Ryu Hyuk over and pointed at Jin Jong-hoon on the floor.

"Check this guy Jin Jong-hoon's weakness."

Ryu Hyuk nodded, shut his eyes at once, then shook his head.

"It doesn't look like the 'Ability' is activating."

Kang Jae-ha exhaled quietly, as if he had expected it.

"So it doesn't work once the brain's been wrecked, huh."

It must have registered him as dead. Soon Ryu Hyuk, Lee Chan-hoo, and the others gave the abandoned building a light sweep. There was nothing anywhere apart from this room with the makeshift operating setup. An abandoned building in the truest sense.

No CCTV, naturally.

His subordinates left the makeshift operating room first, with Kang Jae-ha bringing up the rear. At some point, midnight had passed and it was now the early hours of the morning. As Jae-ha slowly descended the stairs, he went back over the key things Jin Jong-hoon had told him.

"The Vice-Commander, and the 'Chairman'."

Afterward.

Ryu Hyuk ran up to Kang Jae-ha as he stepped out of the abandoned building.

"There's no dashcam in the car Jin Jong-hoon drove in."

Kang Jae-ha shrugged as though he had known already.

"Figures. That car's probably an Untraceable Car too."

Like Jin Jong-hoon's belongings, the car he had arrived in wasn't going to turn up anything important no matter how it was examined. A bleak, indifferent wind blew across Kang Jae-ha's face. Cold and sharp, as a winter wind should be.

"......"

Gazing at the pitch-dark mountain beyond, Kang Jae-ha spread out his 'Ability' detection one last time, and after confirming once more that there were no other subordinates nearby, he murmured.

"Let's go."

The subordinates all climbed into the van, and Kang Jae-ha took the passenger seat. He gave his instruction to Lee Chan-hoo behind the wheel.

"To 'MEG'."

"Yes, sir."

Lee Chan-hoo answered curtly and eased onto the accelerator. The van pulled away from the scene. As they drove, Kang Jae-ha's mind was turning fast.

First, the memories of the Vice-Commander, whose tail had finally been caught.

From the Mercenary Corps, of course.

Kang Jae-ha's overall assessment of the Vice-Commander had been 'middling'. Combat power, stamina, physique, intelligence, all of it. Meaning his overall capability as a Mercenary was middling. His combat power didn't stand out sharply next to the other subordinates, and his intelligence wasn't particularly striking either.

Average, or a little above it.

None of his stats leaned strongly in one direction. They were all around the same level. It was like having everything in the seventies without a single score above ninety.

'Well, of course he was still exceptional.'

Middling only within a Mercenary Corps packed with monsters. Outside the corps Kang Jae-ha commanded, the Vice-Commander would obviously have been a standout talent.

In any case, middling as he was, Kang Jae-ha had seated him as Vice-Commander for one reason.

'Nobody greased the wheels like he did.'

The Vice-Commander was better as a lubricant than as a leader. If Kang Jae-ha was the heavy stick, the Vice-Commander was the sweet carrot, so to speak.

On top of that, the Vice-Commander had complete command over his own emotions.

The members of the Mercenary Corps were, by and large, volcanoes on the verge of erupting. In the middle of that, Commander Kang Jae-ha was cool-headed and cold as a rule, while the Vice-Commander was soft. He kept his ambition well in hand, too. A calm charisma that never tipped one way or the other.

By Jae-ha's judgment, he was perfectly cut out for the post of Vice-Commander. And in practice he had filled the role well.

'He wasn't Commander material, though.'

How to put it, the Vice-Commander was ideal as the Commander's support. Still, had Kang Jae-ha died first, the Vice-Commander would naturally have risen to Commander. Well, that never came to pass.

Either way, that Vice-Commander had turned out to be from this side too.

He had built an organization much as Kang Jae-ha had. One that was the exact opposite of the organization Jae-ha envisioned and pursued.

By now the car speeding down the road held plenty of subordinates, yet it was quiet. The first to speak was Lee Chan-hoo, who had been driving a long while. His voice was cautious.

"Commander. Why do you think the Vice-Commander, that bastard, built his organization on the criminal side?"

Kang Jae-ha, watching the darkness outside the window, answered at once.

"Because it's easy."

"Sorry?"

"Easy to make money, I mean. If you use an 'Ability'."

"Hmm."

Jae-ha met Lee Chan-hoo's eyes and went on.

"And it cuts the time down exponentially. Use an 'Ability' well and you can have a city in your pocket, and scale it up until you're steering a whole country."

He was right. It was only a matter of time; gather enough 'Abilities' and shaking a country to its foundations was entirely within reach. Lee Chan-hoo nodded, conceding the point.

"True, look overseas and there are organizations eating whole countries alive with drugs and the like. Throw an 'Ability' into it and it'd be far easier."

Kang Jae-ha called the Vice-Commander to mind.

"Seems he was brimming with that kind of ambition from the start."

The solemn Go Chun-seok asked quietly.

"So in the Other World he couldn't do anything because you were there, Commander?"

It was Ryu Hyuk, not Kang Jae-ha, who answered.

"You know the Vice-Commander. People like him usually know their own limits very well. Ever heard of a sociopath? It's similar to that. They're quick at judging both themselves and the situation around them. He probably hid his fangs and waited."

Ryu Hyuk was a detective who had dealt with sociopathic criminals many times, and he viewed the Vice-Commander as the same type.

"Not that they're all like that. It's possible the Vice-Commander changed after coming back from the Other World. Or he could've been that kind of bastard from the very beginning."

oon, Lee Chan-hoo glanced toward Kang Jae-ha in the passenger seat and asked quietly.

"But Commander, you know all this stuff, so why didn't you take the easy path like the Vice-Commander did? Honestly, judging by your image... you're the one I'd expect to take everything over, and you're way smarter than the Vice-Commander too."

It was a perfectly natural question. To put it plainly, to the subordinates gathered here, the Commander was a monster incarnate. If anyone had been expected to go on a bloody rampage, it would have been the Commander, not the Vice-Commander. That was how things had been in the Mercenary Corps too.

Kang Jae-ha snorted.

"Who knows."

He thought for a moment, then opened his mouth.

"One way or another, this place is our home, isn't it."

He looked at the subordinates in the back through the rearview mirror.

"Where our families are. The people we care about."

"......"

The car fell silent again. At Commander Kang Jae-ha's words, each of them sank into his own thoughts. It was true. Whoever they were, here there was someone they held dear.

'We'll have to protect them and live with our heads held high.'

Nothing beyond that needed saying. That was all of it. That was true recovery, and the direction Kang Jae-ha was pursuing. What came next was still anyone's guess, but Jae-ha and his subordinates had to live here regardless.

Then Lee Chan-hoo looked at Kang Jae-ha and smiled faintly.

'He really is a strange man.'

Because the more he watched, the less he could get a read on the man called Kang Jae-ha, his Commander.

'This is the Commander who viciously slit his enemies' throats, whose every stat was freakishly high. If anything, he was the biggest monster of us all, completely cold-blooded.'

Enough to make all the mercenaries, Lee Chan-hoo included, tremble in fear.

'And yet this guy feels far more human than that Vice-Commander bastard. That's the scariest part.'

Ryu Hyuk, Go Chun-seok, and Jang Tae-san thought exactly the same.

'Well, that's why we follow him. Me and the others both.'

Not long after, Kang Jae-ha returned to the conference room at 'MEG'. Ha Yeon-ji, Cha Chung-hyeon, and Choi Ri-na were still there waiting for the Commander despite how late into the night it was. This was an extremely serious matter, after all. Jae-ha silently took the head seat of the ㄷ-shaped table, and Lee Chan-hoo, who sat down afterward, explained to the colleagues in the conference room what had happened at the abandoned building.

Jin Jong-hoon's death, the Vice-Commander, and everything else.

When the explanation ended, silence descended over the conference room. Kang Jae-ha, sitting with his legs crossed, broke it.

"You remember the 'New Light Truth Church', right?"

Lee Chan-hoo blinked at the Commander's sudden mention of the 'New Light Truth Church'.

"Sorry? Why the 'New Light Truth Church' all of a sudden?"

"The Vice-Commander."

Jae-ha stopped turning things over in his head and stated his conclusion.

"The way I see it, the Vice-Commander is tied to that 'New Light Truth Church'. No. The Vice-Commander is the head of the 'New Light Truth Church'."

"...The head of the 'New Light Truth Church' is the Vice-Commander?"

It was the conclusion he had reached after piecing together several clues.

"Meaning the Vice-Commander is the Chairman of that Cult, the 'New Light Truth Church'."

*****

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