It wasn’t a fatal blow.

Because I had questions to ask.

“Keoheok!”

The moment the dagger pierced him, the man seemed to snap out of his hallucination, his eyes clearing. He let out a scream, fumbled for the knife in his shoulder, and narrowed his brows. The moment he finally realized someone had grabbed him and tried to turn around, I gripped his throat with one hand. The man, who had just confirmed his assailant’s face, wore an expression of agony as his windpipe was seized.

“Argh!”

I squeezed his throat with the intent to kill and lifted him up. His shoe-clad feet kicked helplessly at the empty air.

“What? Are they really Scorpion?”

“It’s the end of the world.”

Ho-cheol and Mijeong, who had arrived late, quickly finished off the lone specter with Lee Han before joining me. They looked at the scorpion tattoo engraved on the face of the man I held and expressed their surprise. I, on the other hand, was studying my opponent with a suspicious gaze.

Something is strange.

He was far too weak to be a member of Scorpion. Even the grunts I had fought when I first clashed with them five years ago were quicker and more difficult than this. I tilted my head.

I couldn’t tell if I had gotten that much stronger, if they had become hopelessly weaker, or if these were just fanatics merely imitating Scorpion.

Well, that’s not what’s important right now.

I can interrogate him about his identity later. Just as I was thinking that, the struggling man moved his mouth, and my eyes flashed menacingly.

“Keok!”

My other hand shot out and violently gripped the man’s cheek. I applied a brutal, powerful pressure, as if to shatter his molars, forcing his mouth open. Inside his red mouth was a small, suspicious-looking poison pill. A corner of my mouth quirked up.

“Who do you think you’re trying to pull a trick on?”

With my cold words, an aura of frost spread out, freezing a part of the surrounding area. D-d-d-deuk! With a light vibration, an ice wall formed behind the man. I slammed him against it. BAM! BAM! Still gripping his throat, I slammed the man against the wall twice, making him spit out the poison pill in his mouth.

Tududuk.

It wasn’t just the poison pill that fell. Four or five white things tumbled out with it and rolled on the ground. The man, his teeth now knocked out, groaned, “Uh, uh,” crying out in pain.

“Where is Han Geon-joo.”

“I, keoheok! D-don’t kno…”

“You don’t know?”

Anticipating his answer before he could even finish, I tilted my head.

“You’d better know.”

Talking to him directly, I could tell. Judging by his skills and his reactions, he was clearly not a seasoned veteran. He was trembling like a rookie who had never been caught before, hardly befitting a member of a criminal guild.

The Scorpion members I knew would have been laughing like madmen and spitting in my face even with their throats in my grasp.

Perhaps he really was just a scrub pretending to be Scorpion, or maybe he was a new recruit, with Scorpion quietly growing its forces where Night Rat’s eyes couldn’t reach. Keeping both possibilities in mind, I took out my dagger and twirled it with a flick of my wrist.

“Krrk, keok! S-sa, save…”

The man struggled to get away, only to feel the pressure on his throat intensify, making him cry out in pain.

“Where is Han Geon-joo.”

“I t-told you, I don’t know!”

“I told you. You’d better know.”

It’s the only way you’re going to live.

I muttered lowly and brought my face close to the man’s, our eyes meeting.

“Kkeuk… Hngh…”

“There are ways to get information from your corpse, so spill it while I’m being nice.”

I shifted my thumb and pressed down hard on the man’s Adam’s apple. At that moment.

KWAA-A-A-ANG!

“Kkyaaaak!”

A loud explosion roared from somewhere, and I saw someone go flying with a scream. I reacted almost simultaneously with the explosion, my mind processing the situation.

First, I checked the person who went flying. It wasn’t Han Geon-joo. I was concluding it was probably another suspicious Scorpion member like the one I was holding, when the man who had been thrown hit the ground with a loud BAM! and started cursing. As the bastard picked himself up, someone else moved so fast they left an afterimage, arriving in front of the fallen man.

[Son of a bitch!]

Cursing in English, the man charged viciously, his eyes rolled back as if he had lost all reason. The person he was charging at lightly snatched his wrist, used his momentum to pull him in closer and accelerate his speed, and then kicked him in the abdomen. Keoheok! The charging man coughed. Two more kicks to the abdomen sent the man flying far away. The victor wiped the mud from his face with an annoyed expression.

“It got all over me.”

That voice, even from a distance, was familiar. For a second, I loosened my grip on the Scorpion I had captured and turned to look at the person who was shaking his hands, radiating an irritable aura. The other person, sensing my presence late, also turned his head towards me.

“…”

Our eyes met.

“…Isn’t that your pretty boy?”

Mijeong’s voice cut through the silence.

“…Han Geon-joo?”

I was the first one to speak. Tossing the man I had by the throat, who was presumed to be Scorpion, to Ho-cheol, I started walking towards where Geon-joo was. With each step, the uncertainty in my eyes gave way to conviction.

It was Han Geon-joo. The moment I realized it, I ran and grabbed him by the collar.

“Now what…?!”

His collar grabbed, Geon-joo squeezed his eyes shut out of habit and shouted with an aggrieved tone. I meticulously checked his face, then his arms, legs, and stomach, looking for injuries. He was in better shape than I expected. I had my doubts, but it seemed the ones who attempted the kidnapping weren’t the real Scorpion after all. Even if they were, they didn’t seem to be from their elite ranks.

The thought made me even angrier.

So some non-elite nobodies dared to touch what’s mine?

The names of Night Rat and myself were being dragged through the mud. I had been lying low for a while, focusing on the Swallow Guild, and it seemed a lot of empty-headed fools thought my power had waned.

That’s why these wannabes are crawling out of the woodwork.

I ground my teeth and pulled Geon-joo closer.

“Out of all the people to get kidnapped by, you let these scrubs get you?”

“Is that the first thing you say to me? And they weren’t scrubs.”

“They’re getting their asses kicked by you. How are they not scrubs?”

“What kind of logic is that? Are you saying I’m a scrub?”

I didn’t answer. Geon-joo gave me a dumbfounded look, then broke free from my grasp and dusted off his mud-stained clothes. The man looked down at the frost zone spreading out beneath his muddy shoes, sighed, and opened his mouth.

“There were more people like them, but they got eaten while we were fighting. And they weren’t all scrubs; there was a really strong one among them. I’d say he felt about as strong as those two back there.”

“Us?”

Mijeong pointed to herself and Ho-cheol with her fingertip. Han Geon-joo nodded.

“‘Eaten,’ you say?”

I asked, catching the questionable part of his otherwise nonchalant explanation. Eaten by what? And Scorpion members, no less.

If what he said about there being a guy on the level of Mijeong and Ho-cheol was true, then the identity of the men with scorpion tattoos was narrowed down to one possibility. It meant Scorpion was reappearing and increasing its forces by picking up whoever they could.

To one day become active again.

It seemed they had intended to use this kidnapping as the stepping stone for their resurgence. As I asked what had swallowed the bastards who were about to take flight, Geon-joo’s gaze shifted to the side.

To be precise, it wasn’t to the side, but as if he were staring far off to where the frost zone ended.

“…A monster?”

His tone was uncertain. I urged him with my eyes to be more specific, and he narrowed his brows as if trying to recall the memory.

“It was a monster about the size of a one-story apartment. Its whole body was covered in swamp, and when it opened its mouth, I could hear what sounded like a cluster of human screams. They all got eaten by that thing.”

“And you managed to not get eaten.”

“Well, I hid.”

And in the process, an annoying guy latched onto me, so I was just getting rid of him.

The man muttered, looking down at the scorpion-tattooed man sprawled on the ground. I took a breath.

To sum it up, it seemed the guys who kidnapped him were indeed the real Scorpion, and most of them had been eaten by a monster living in this Specter Swamp.

Did the Scorpion bastards get even dumber while I wasn’t looking?

I couldn’t understand why they would come to an Unexplored Gate, of all places, only to get themselves annihilated.

“The monster.”

“After it ate them all, it moved deeper into the swamp. Since it’s not coming out despite all this commotion, it might be sleeping, or it might be too full to bother moving.”

It was probably the former. For a place that housed a creature that could devour high-level Awakened in an instant, the ambient energy was far too calm. Having reached this conclusion internally, I did one last check of Geon-joo’s condition. My sharp blue eyes scanned his entire body, and he stepped back, insisting he was fine.

“Looks like they didn’t do much to you. You’re fine.”

For someone who had been kidnapped, he was in pristine condition, aside from a small scratch on his face. This made it all the more necessary to find out the Scorpion bastards’ objective. I kicked the head of the man who had fainted on the ground. A sickening crack was heard. Geon-joo’s eyes widened, and Lee Han clicked his tongue.

“Time to wake up.”

I bent down and lifted the fainted man by his collar. His face was unscathed.

One person has a scratch, while the other is perfectly fine.

This was a deeply infuriating situation. My stomach churned, and the rage that had half-subsided upon finding Geon-joo once again consumed my mind. The song of the Siren echoing in my head further incited my impulsive and furious emotions.

A ferocious aura surged over my shoulders. Sensing the change, Geon-joo grabbed my shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

“Am I okay? After you got yourself pathetically kidnapped, and I’m reduced to this child’s play for retaliation, do I look okay to you?”

As if waiting for the prompt, I let out a tirade and grotesquely broke the unconscious man’s fingers. I bit down on his fingernails, half-snapping them off. The man, jolted awake by the pain, screamed and cried out. I didn’t even bother with an interrogation and just slammed my fist into the awakened man’s face. The man’s nose broke, and blood splattered onto my face with a splat.

“There he goes again.”

Mijeong turned her back, Lee Han let out a sigh, and Ho-cheol clicked his tongue. The three Awakened, standing there as if this were a familiar sight, seemed to have no intention whatsoever of stopping me.

It was only natural. They had all tried to stop me in the past, only to be beaten up or nearly killed by me when I had trouble controlling my anger. If they valued their lives, they had to watch quietly. As everyone averted their gaze, it was Geon-joo who finally stopped my relentless assault by grabbing my arm.

“You’re going to kill him at this rate. Aren’t you going to interrogate him?”

“I’m beating him to death, so he should die. There’s another one to interrogate over there.”

I gestured with my eyes to the Scorpion remnant I had left with Ho-cheol and punched the man in the face again. The Siren’s song continued to echo in my head. Like a dying lightbulb, my focus flickered in and out. Geon-joo, realizing my anger was more abnormal than usual, narrowed his brows.

“Guild Leader.”

KWANG! KWOOM!

Every sound that left his mouth was devoured by my madness. Seeing my attitude that suggested I wouldn’t listen to anything he said, Geon-joo sighed and snatched my wrist out of the air.

“Hyung.”

My hand froze in mid-air.

“Stop. I think there’s something wrong with you right now.”

At his low voice, I turned my head and looked at Geon-joo. As our eyes met, the three Noah Awakened, who had been about to reach out to stop me, shouting that he would be killed, now wore blank expressions.

“…Why isn’t he getting hit?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

A look of injustice bloomed in the eyes of the people who had been beaten up for trying to stop me in the past.