Chapter 109 - Two Years in a Foreign Land
There was something Jin had never wanted to get used to, yet it had become as natural as eating.
Murder.
The person who had once suffered days of nightmares from his first horrific experience no longer existed.
Jin had killed to survive in this world.
A kind of self-destruction for the sake of staying alive.
Well, saying he had killed still felt off—let's just say he buried it in a sunny corner of his mind.
The problem was, sometimes it clawed its way back up like a zombie, reaching out to gnaw at him just like it had back then.
Unless he felt a rare, faint twinge in his heart, Jin had long shed any guilt over taking lives.
But he swore to the heavens, not once had that ever applied to civilians.
"Hey, gentlemen!"
Jin let out an exasperated shout as he tilted his head back to avoid a blade aimed at his face.
His voice carried frustration, but his response was mechanical—his fist shot forward, sinking into the stomach of the half-naked man lunging at him.
Thud!
Jin had held back, but his muscles had already far surpassed human limitations—comparable to a silverback gorilla.
And he was still growing stronger.
Naturally, the man's body folded like an old flip phone.
On any other day, Jin would have followed up with a knee strike to the man's falling head, but this time, he merely struck the side of his neck with a knife-hand chop.
His target: the carotid sinus.
For humans and most mammals, this area is a major pressure receptor, highly sensitive to changes in blood pressure.
A sudden restriction of blood flow made the brain go, Ah! and shut down instantly.
Thud.
The man collapsed.
It seemed scientific, but without Jin's level of combat intuition and precise control, replicating it in one strike was nearly impossible.
So don't try this at home.
Just then—
Whoosh!
A gust of wind split the air near his ear.
Without looking back, Jin ducked.
A deep crack resounded behind him as a wall split apart.
With a quick glance, he spotted a massive cybernetic arm embedded in the wall.
Thick cables had replaced blood vessels, and four hydraulic cylinders in the main joint pumped up and down in sequence.
A young woman turned her head to face Jin.
Her eyes, too, were unfocused.
Jin let out a dry chuckle.
"At this point, can we still call them civilians?"
The woman yanked her cyber-arm free from the wall and lunged at him, scattering dust and debris into the air like sand.
Jin, unfazed, caught her steel fist in his palm.
The hydraulic cylinders flexed, but the cyber-arm was frozen in place—then bent like a child's wrist under Jin's grip.
A difference in power levels.
It wasn't that the cyber-arm lacked kinetic energy.
The problem was that its opponent was Jin.
His entire body was packed with hyper-compressed muscle, a superhuman physique where every movement linked seamlessly from head to toe.
Crrrk!Crrrkk!
Sparks flew as the mechanical arm twisted.
The woman was forced to her knees, her neck exposed.
Without hesitation, Jin delivered a slicing strike to her throat.
Once her head slumped forward, Jin released his grip and dusted off his hands, raising his gaze.
The corridor was filled with unconscious people.
They had burst out of their rooms in the dead of night, attacking Jin without warning.
What mattered wasn't that some were stark naked—expected from the lawless residents of Lost City—nor that each carried a weapon.
The real issue was the lack of consistency.
Just like their empty gazes.
At first, Jin suspected a berserk virus, but something was off.
None of them showed the infected's signature tenacity—the kind that kept them attacking relentlessly unless their heads were crushed.
And some of the fallen had perfectly smooth temples.
Jin was now certain his initial assumption was wrong.
Could they be mind-controlled?
Shifting focus to this new possibility, he immediately summoned his status window.
He read the short text once more.
Assassin confirmed.
Not assassins, plural.
Now fully convinced these people were innocent, Jin scanned his surroundings.
Silence.
A strange stillness, unnatural given the gunfire just moments ago.
As if the entire building was holding its breath, watching him.
Then—
Ding—
The clear chime of an arriving elevator echoed.
From within, a tall woman with striking eyelashes stepped out.
Expressionless, she flicked something forward.
It tumbled between the fallen bodies, rolling across the floor.
Jin's eyes widened as he recognized it.
A grenade.
Inside a building.
By the time the alarm bells rang in his head, his body had already blinked forward, covering the grenade with his back.
Then—
Boom!
A deafening explosion.
His broad back trembled as smoke billowed.
Coughing up dryly, Jin pressed a hand to his knee and rose to his feet.
"You son of a—!"
His brow furrowed, veins bulging.
Blood trickled from his nose and mouth.
In that instant, he had wrapped his abdomen in mana like body armor, but he couldn't fully mitigate the blast.
Worse, it wasn't even a fragmentation grenade—it was a high-explosive one.
A brutal concussive force, capable of denting steel, had been compressed within a 5cm radius.
As a result, Jin's insides had been thoroughly shaken.
Even with blood pooling in his throat, he clenched his teeth and struck the woman's nape.
Whoever this assassin was, they treated human lives like ants underfoot.
And the moment they realized Jin was merely knocking people out instead of killing them, they had the audacity to send a grenade his way.
It was clear—if given more time, they'd only escalate further.
Which meant—
You're dead.
Jin filled the void left by his lost faith in humanity with sheer rage.
His bloodshot eyes spun with violet lightning.
Bzzzt!
Sparks crackled as energy scattered in all directions.
Unlike its usual erratic zigzagging, this time, the energy spread in a vast grid-like pattern.
It resembled a net.
Violet Electric Mesh.
A technique Jin instinctively pulled from the depths of his sharpened mind.
A lattice of violet threads expanded throughout the entire nine-story motel, detecting every biological signal within Jin's mana range.
Even Kendrick wouldn't be able to manage this scale.
An absurd strategy, made possible only because Jin's mana reserves were beyond monstrous.
Jin finally detected something.
On the rooftop of a building, a presence exuded an unusually strong life signal.
There was no need to search any further—it was undoubtedly an assassin.
Tak!
Jin swiftly pushed open the hallway window and blinked into the night sky.
As the chilly air brushed against his skin, his sharp eyes locked onto the target above.
Another blink followed.
Thup!
With a firm grip on the rooftop ledge, Jin pulled himself up like a spring.
"...?!"
A man turned to face him, startled.
He had an utterly unremarkable appearance, the kind of face one could see anywhere.
Yet, as if instinctively realizing what had happened, he immediately fired his pistol at the landing Jin.
His accuracy was mediocre at best.
Out of five shots, three missed entirely, while two struck Jin's shoulder and abdomen—neither of which slowed him down.
He simply shrugged them off and charged forward.
The assassin, however, remained unfazed.
The gun had merely been a distraction.
As if to confirm this, he reached into his pocket with his free hand and popped a pill into his mouth.
Jin had no way of knowing, but it was a stimulant—an enhancer used by psychers that temporarily boosted brainwave activity at the cost of lifespan.
The next moment—
A sharp pain pierced Jin's mind.
Stop.
Stop.
Stop.
Stop.
A voice whispered insidiously, repeating itself over and over.
It wasn't just a simple command—it was an attempt to make another slave.
The assassin's ability had robbed dozens of people of their will, seizing control over them.
Now, it stabbed into Jin's mind like a needle.
And then—
It vanished like a lie.
Polar Radiance, Sacred Flame, Light of the Old Era.
Jin's three inner forces, already sensitive to external interference, had been waiting for such an intrusion.
They joined forces and mercilessly crushed the foreign influence.
Among them, Sacred Flame was particularly aggressive.
The heat that had long shielded its master's unstable mind now flared up in a blazing counterattack.
"...!"
The assassin did his best even in this desperate moment.
He fired another 'Stop' command at Jin while narrowly dodging the incoming punch.
But that was the end of it.
Even if he had avoided one strike, the moment he allowed Jin into close range, he had already lost.
The next moment—
Thud!!
A thunderous impact sent the assassin's head snapping to the side.
His nose caved in, his cheekbones shattered, and his ribs cracked, piercing his organs.
And that wasn't all.
Jin stomped down at an angle, snapping the assassin's knee with a sickening crunch.
His ruined body could no longer support itself.
As the assassin crumpled to the ground like a broken puppet, a large hand seized his face.
"Hey."
A long exhale turned to mist in the night air.
Jin's voice rumbled like a growl.
"Who sent you?"
The assassin didn't answer.
Whether due to professional discipline or simply because his jaw was being held in an iron grip, he had no voice left to give.
He could only writhe under the crushing force clamping down on his face.
Even now, he was still trying to implant a suicide command into Jin's mind.
Jin's nose wrinkled in distaste.
"You think that'll work?"
With those words, his grip tightened into a fist.
Crunch.
A sickening squelch echoed as the assassin's body slumped backward.
He did not rise again.
"Ptooey."
Jin spat out a mix of saliva and blood.
As the adrenaline wore off, the pain surged in full force.
But thanks to the system message confirming completion of the quest, the experience points he received worked like a narcotic, dulling the agony.
Still, apart from the promised quest rewards, the experience gained from the assassin himself was no joke.
Huh.
That's a lot.
He couldn't quantify it precisely, but the feeling was similar to when he had taken down a second-tier enemy.
"For someone like him…"
Jin scratched his cheek, glancing down at the assassin's corpse.
But dead men told no tales.
The shattered face was already growing cold.
Jin didn't dwell on his suspicions.
He won, so the spoils were his.
And besides, that whole mind-control thing was downright creepy.
Shaking off his thoughts, he slowly crouched down.
"Ugh."
A groan escaped him.
His internal and external oblique muscles had been torn apart.
He could feel the shredded muscle fibers knitting themselves back together—a sensation as unsettling as it was painful.
Worse yet, he couldn't put any strength into his abdomen.
His whole body felt like curling in on itself.
How the hell did I manage to throw a punch like this?
Even he didn't understand it.
Shaking his head, Jin began searching the assassin's body.
After thoroughly stripping him down—even checking inside his underwear—he only found a single item.
An old terminal tucked inside an inner pocket.
If the assassin wasn't just another analog-loving nostalgia freak like Jin (whose "hometown" standards considered this tech cutting-edge), then this was undoubtedly a disposable communication device.
"Hand, please."
Using the corpse's fingerprint, Jin unlocked the screen and started combing through its contents.
Unsurprisingly, there was nothing.
No search history.
No contacts.
No call logs.
No messages.
It was a blank device.
"Tsk, tsk."
Maybe I shouldn't have killed him right away.
Just as he clicked his tongue in mild regret—
Bzzzt—
The terminal vibrated.
An incoming call.
Caller ID: Unknown.
Pfft.
Dramatic, aren't we?
Jin smirked and answered without hesitation.
"Hello, assassination target speaking."
[...]
"Hello? Are you a friend of the device's owner? He's lying on the ground unconscious. Lost a lot of blood too. You should hurry over and check on him. Need the address?"
[Jin Evernight.]
The deep voice made Jin raise an eyebrow.
With a smirk, he plopped down onto the ground, wincing at the pain.
"Why?"
[You seem to be more skilled than I expected.]
"Of course. I'm stronger today than I was yesterday, and I'll be even stronger tomorrow."
It was true.
But his opponent must have thought he was just being cocky.
[Interesting.]
At the sound of a low chuckle, Jin looked up at the sky, devoid of stars, and spoke.
"Why are you trying to kill me? I won't ask who you are—just tell me the reason."
[Because you ruined my business.]
"...Business? What business?"
[Elina Vicent. You handed her over to the city government, didn't you? Thanks to you, a pop star who was raking in money like a rake turned into a city government psychic overnight. All because of you.]
Jin tilted his head.
Elina, out of nowhere.
It was a name he hadn't even considered.
"What, are you her agency's CEO or something?"
[Does it seem that way?]
It was a meaningless exchange.
Feeling bored already, Jin said flatly,
"Just get to the point."
[You'll pay the price soon enough.]
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever."
Click.
Jin hung up the phone.
Then, tossing the device behind him, he groaned as he pushed himself up.
「(Linked) Underworld Tycoon」━━━━━━━━
Investigate the mastermind behind Elina's downfall...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"Screw off."
Without even checking the details, Jin dismissed the status window.
Rubbing his aching stomach, he muttered,
"The one who should take down the mastermind behind Elina's downfall is Elina herself, damn it. Do I have to take care of all her enemies too? Pulling her out of the water should've been enough. Am I supposed to wrap her in a warm blanket too? Some people just don't get it. No sense at all."
There was no reason to accept a status window quest he had no interest in.
A rogue who lived by his own rules stuffed his hands into his pockets and declared,
"I'm heading to Downtown, you bastard."