Chapter 123: Go On Ahead and Wait

“Mmph.”

As Junho swabbed the spot where the bullet had lodged with gauze soaked in disinfectant, Yoon Seolhee let out a muffled groan.

But Junho paid it no mind. He layered sterile pads over the wound, then wrapped her shoulder several times with a compression bandage and secured it tightly.

“That should do it. We’ll remove the bullet later. Here. One pill should be enough.”

“Thank you.”

Yoon Seolhee put the painkiller Junho handed her into her mouth and washed it down with bottled water.

Maybe because of the injury and exhaustion, the lukewarm water tasted sweeter than anything she had drunk in a long time.

“But how on earth did you get here...? No, that’s not what matters right now.”

“No. It isn’t.”

Junho nodded at Yoon Seolhee, who, true to her background as a former Special Forces NCO, coolly judged the situation and immediately set priorities.

“The people holding the mountain path down below—they’re resort staff, right?”

“Yes. They’re KW Cops personnel.”

“The ones who were climbing up that way are retreating. I took a few of them down.”

“I see. Then now...?”

“There’s still another group left. The ones who were heading up toward where you were earlier.”

Junho showed her the drone controller’s screen.

“They’ve crossed over toward that mountain ahead.”

“Ah, you’ve got them under follow?”

“Yes. I set it the moment I finished dealing with the ones here.”

At that, Yoon Seolhee realized how Junho had managed to kill the gangsters hiding in the brush and behind trees with such unnerving precision.

He had been looking down on them clearly from above with the drone, so hiding had been pointless.

But simple as that sounded, Yoon Seolhee knew it was anything but easy.

The enemy had military training and were armed with firearms.

No matter how well someone was protected with body armor and helmets, a stray round could still kill them or leave them gravely wounded at any moment.

Even so, to move that fast and that boldly while calmly killing armed opponents—Yoon Seolhee herself could not have done that easily.

“For now, just carry that and follow me. I subdued the one who looks like their leader down in the valley over there.”

“Understood.”

Yoon Seolhee slung over one shoulder the backpack filled with guns and ammunition recovered from the dead gangsters and followed him.

Junho headed down the mountain, repeatedly checking the screen on the controller as he went.

Even so, he never stopped scanning the area around them.

“...”

Following behind him, Yoon Seolhee once again felt a fresh wave of confusion and amazement.

She had already known Junho was not an ordinary man.

But she had never imagined he would be this proficient in actual combat—good enough to put active-duty Special Forces men to shame.

Because being good at fighting and actually fighting with guns were two completely different things.

'What the hell is this man?'

The question rose in her despite knowing this was not the time for it.

And yet, looking at Junho’s back—broader and more solid than the last time she had seen him—Yoon Seolhee felt a strange sense of reassurance.

After all, thanks to this mysterious man her age, she was alive.

***

Splash!

“Mmgh!”

Lee Ujung jerked awake as freezing stream water was dumped over him.

But his hands and feet were already bound, and a wad of cloth had been stuffed into his mouth, so all he could do was grunt helplessly.

“Assistant Manager, stay here and keep watch on this piece of shit. Oh, and you can still communicate with your people, right?”

“Yes. But will you really be okay going alone, Mr. Lee Junho? I think it might be better if I came with you.”

At Yoon Seolhee’s worried words, Junho shook his head.

“No, it’s fine. I’ve dealt with these guys a few times already. And I came with an ally.”

“Ah, Junhyeok, then?”

“No. Junhyeok’s somewhere else. Anyway, tell your people the situation’s almost over and have them come this way. And take this.”

Junho held out a tablet to her.

“This is...?”

Yoon Seolhee’s eyes widened as she looked at the tablet screen, which was split between the feed from the drone hovering over the rooftop where Park Deokcheol was positioned and the feed from the drone Junho himself was using.

“The one on the left is watching the area where my ally is. The one on the right is mine. Once your people get here, move toward my ally’s position. As you can see...”

“We can hit their rear. They won’t expect us to come down the mountain and attack.”

“Exactly.”

Just as Yoon Seolhee found him reassuring, Junho also felt the same steadiness from her and nodded.

“Understood. Then, Mr. Junho, I’ll see you later.”

“Yes. Don’t push yourself too hard.”

“...Right.”

When Junho gestured toward her shoulder, Yoon Seolhee somehow felt embarrassed and answered while quietly avoiding his gaze.

“Then.”

A moment later, Junho quickly left the area.

And seeing him move in a way entirely different from when he had been with her—fast and lithe, like a wild animal—Yoon Seolhee realized that he had deliberately slowed himself down out of consideration for her.

Her heart began to beat a little faster, and she felt heat rising in her face.

“Mmph! Mmph! Mmngh!”

“...”

At the beastlike groaning that so thoroughly shattered the mood, Yoon Seolhee’s face whipped around.

The expression she wore then was completely different from the one she had shown while looking at Junho—cold and blank.

“So you’re Lee Ujung? The one who said if you caught me, you’d fuck me?”

“Mmph...!?”

“But did you know this? I’m a little too spicy. So just anybody can’t swallow me. Try it wrong and you’ll die of food poisoning. No, you’ll die a little differently.”

During her Special Forces days, she had been nicknamed “Yoon Seol-nyeo,” and now her gaze dropped between Lee Ujung’s legs.

“Mmph! Mm! Hngh!”

The meaning in her eyes was not hard to understand, and terror spread across the face of the Daeseong syndicate action leader.

***

“Hoo... hoo...”

Park Deokcheol steadied his breathing and peered through the scope, tense.

It was a typical Korean rural village: a narrow concrete-paved road running through it, with empty lots, warehouse plots, and one- and two-story country houses standing here and there on either side.

Why did he know it was “a typical Korean rural village”? Because the village in Namyangju where his younger sister Sunny’s girl group Psyche Flare had done its last event looked almost exactly like this place.

The only difference was that this village sat right below the mountain, and a fairly wide river flowed only a few dozen meters away.

If the world hadn’t turned out like this, he might have stood there admiring the scenery, going on and on about how beautiful and unbelievable it was.

But—

Taaang...! Tatang...! Taaang...!

The gunfire that still rang out from the mountain in the distance, though less frequent than before, killed that thought immediately.

Even while looking through the scope, Park Deokcheol kept checking the tablet screen.

On it, the drone circling above the rooftop of the building he was on was showing everything within a 200-meter radius centered on the building.

Thanks to a program created by Yoon Youngsu, the shelter’s tech nerd, it would immediately sound a beep and warn him if a human-shaped figure—zombie or person—was detected or approached this way.

Even so, seeing things with his own eyes still felt more reassuring.

Tatatang...! Taaang...!

“Deokcheol, some of them will be coming down your way in about twenty minutes. Change the drone battery now, and once they’re well inside your effective range, take them down.”

Junho’s instructions came through the earpiece amid the gunfire, and Park Deokcheol answered at once.

“Yes sir.”

Park Deokcheol knew how to pilot drones to some extent.

But with the shelter’s drones, he did not have to manually control them even without AI handling the operation.

The moment he tapped the tablet’s Return icon, the drone descended quickly. Park Deokcheol swapped in the spare battery he had prepared in advance, powered it back on, and pressed Deploy.

Vreeeeeng!

The drone shot back up to its original altitude and resumed its surveillance mission.

“Damn... this tech’s wild.”

Clicking his tongue to himself, Park Deokcheol checked the modified air rifle and compressed-air tanks once again.

For this expedition, instead of the old small compressed-air cylinder mounted directly to the air rifle and doubling as a stock, he had prepared large-capacity compressed-air tanks that could be attached to a backpack or tactical belt.

With the old cylinder, a single tank ran dry after firing around thirty tungsten rounds.

That was only practical in a defensive situation where he could stockpile a lot of spare cylinders. For an expedition mission like this, it was hopelessly inefficient.

So he had prepared three air tanks with roughly twice the capacity and kept two of them on him at all times.

Whenever one ran out, he had changed his operating method so that he could immediately swap the nozzle of the air hose connected to the rifle over to another tank he was carrying.

Of course, it was a little heavier, and running around while carrying them was inconvenient. But the ability to fire more than a hundred rounds no matter the situation was such a huge advantage that it was more than worth it.

About ten minutes passed.

“I see them...”

Spotting around ten men hurrying down the road between the scattered buildings and houses, Park Deokcheol adjusted his shooting posture.

All of them were armed, but while he was tense, he was not afraid.

The modified air rifle that fired tungsten rounds had proven power, and in an environment like this, it would be impossible to detect the sound of an air rifle shot from more than forty or fifty meters away.

Which meant those gangsters would never be able to tell where exactly the shots were coming from.

“...”

Park Deokcheol did not track the gangsters with the crosshairs. Instead, he kept the reticle fixed on a position he had already chosen.

Because—

Beep.

If someone appeared or moved on the drone feed that was monitoring everything within a 200-meter radius, an automatic warning tone sounded.

And that meant if someone entered the point he had already fixed in his scope, he could begin firing.

Pow!

With a short burst of sound, the gangster leading the group down the road took a round square in the chest and collapsed.

But just as Junho had said, he was wearing body armor, so he did not die. He only clutched at his chest and writhed in pain.

Even so, a serious injury—at the very least a fracture—was certain, so Park Deokcheol continued firing at the other targets as they scattered in panic in every direction.

***

Thunk!

“Gah!”

The gangster hit in the shoulder by another incoming round dropped to the ground on the spot.

“This fucking—”

Park Seongho, a subordinate gang boss under the Daeseong syndicate and one of its field enforcers, ground his teeth as he hid behind a wall.

He knew the direction the bullets were coming from, but he still could not tell exactly where the shooter was.

Chk.

“God fucking damn it!”

Out of habit, Park Seongho had clicked on his radio, then raised the device in his hand as if he were about to smash it against the ground. But he stopped himself and shoved it back into his ballistic vest.

He did not know exactly what had happened, but it was obvious the drone surveillance team led by Lee Ujung had been hit.

“Lee Ujung, you useless piece of shit. Always acting all high and mighty because you’re direct line, but you can’t do a damn thing right. Fucking worthless punk.”

Cursing Lee Ujung—the younger bastard who swaggered around every day as if being direct line to the Daeseong syndicate made him special—Park Seongho turned his head.

“Hey, this isn’t working. We go around another way.”

“What? Boss, that means we’ve gotta loop all the way around by that mountain path. We don’t even know the roads in this area that well...”

“You dumb fuck. So what, you want to keep sitting here when we don’t even know where they’re shooting from? We get out of here first, then if we follow the river up—”

Taaang! Thwack!

“......!?”

Park Seongho’s mouth fell open when the face of his subordinate, who had just been staring around blankly, suddenly burst apart with the shot.

And then—

Tatang! Tang! Tatatang! Tang!

Bullets poured in not from the front, but from behind, and Park Seongho and the few men he had left all dropped to the ground.

“Hhhk... ngh, ugh...”

Someone approached Park Seongho as he crawled across the ground, blood gushing from the bullet lodged in his side.

Then that person crouched down in front of him.

“So Deokso’s your home turf, huh?”

“Hhgh...!?”

The woman staring straight at him wore a brown cap. She looked haggard, but her face was still so sharp and striking she could have been called a cold beauty.

Expressionless, she continued.

“Go on ahead and wait. I’ll be sending the rest of them soon enough.”

The muzzle of a jet-black pistol pressed against the center of Park Seongho’s forehead.

“......!”

BOOM!!!

A thunderous gunshot rang out before he could say a word.