Chapter 18 : Hunting, and More Hunting

Chapter 18: Hunting, and More Hunting

The season had opened.

Hunting season.

Dong Bong-su began hunting down those who were searching for him instead.

As always, he carried out everything very cautiously, but the process was not particularly smooth.

Dong Bong-su was well aware that he himself was still very weak. A frontal confrontation was dangerous, so he finished everything through ambush whenever possible.

By applying the Inventory technique he had often used during the Suicide Plague, he shook off the pursuing Black Division operatives and then secretly struck from behind to kill them, and at times he lured them into secluded places and set them on fire. No matter the method, Dong Bong-su always stayed several moves ahead of the Black Division operatives.

If the body was weak, then one should compete with the brain and patience.

In that manner, the members of the White Tiger Division, one of Bongyang’s three major Black Divisions, began dying off one by one.

By the time White Tiger (白虎), the leader of the White Tiger Division, belatedly became alarmed, more than half of the division’s members had already been killed.

During this process, Dong Bong-su managed to raise his level from 2 to 4. Moreover, he obtained an unintended side benefit. He acquired a rather useful new mask called the Unnamed Righteous Hero.

Thanks to that, dealing with the Black Divisions became even easier. Officials and townspeople alike disguised his acts of murder as heroic deeds. Thus, when he acted as the Unnamed Righteous Hero, he no longer needed to worry about the eyes of others.

Even so, he continued his killings with the utmost caution. He knew better than anyone that a single moment of mistake could lead to failure. At any moment, in any situation, letting one’s guard down was absolutely forbidden.

A wolf pack never strikes from the front when hunting large prey. It circles around, and when it spots an opening, it bites little by little to exhaust the prey.

Sometimes a bite at the leg, sometimes a bite at the haunch, and sometimes a bite at the testicles.

Eventually, the exhausted animal collapses.

Dong Bong-su continued attacking the White Tiger Division in that way, relying on luring, guiding, ambushes, arson, and disguises. Even more carefully. After all, he was alone, not a pack.

Thus, the White Tiger Division slowly began to fall apart.

Even so, the most important figure, White Tiger himself, remained very much intact. As Dong Bong-su continued fighting them, he realized that White Tiger was the White Tiger Division itself. Unless he eliminated him, the White Tiger Division could not be said to be truly finished.

From the moment he recognized that fact, Dong Bong-su began torturing the White Tiger Division’s Black Division operatives instead of killing them outright. It was to gather as much information about White Tiger as possible before killing them. As a result, he was able to obtain a great deal of information about White Tiger.

However.

All of that information led to a single conclusion: White Tiger was a man without any openings whatsoever. Moreover, based on the Black Division operatives’ testimonies and an indirect assessment, White Tiger’s martial strength was far beyond what Dong Bong-su—who was only level 4 now—could handle, even with an ambush.

To make matters worse, after the repeated deaths of his subordinates, White Tiger became extremely reluctant to go out. Capturing White Tiger grew even more difficult, and the lair of the White Tiger Division that Dong Bong-su had barely managed to identify was gradually turning into a kind of fortress.

Even if he launched an assault, it was questionable whether he could win at all, and with White Tiger holed up like that, there was absolutely no way to kill him. Yet entering the lair itself was also impossible.

Even in such circumstances.

Dong Bong-su discovered one extremely small opening in White Tiger.

Rarely, but there were times when White Tiger came out of the lair.

He carefully observed the timing of White Tiger’s outings.

White Tiger went out for exactly two reasons only.

Collection of dues and keeping concubines. Just those two things.

Even then, White Tiger never went out alone, always accompanied by dozens of Black Division operatives.

Judging purely by martial prowess, the gap in strength was so vast that Dong Bong-su could do nothing against White Tiger and the White Tiger Division, even if he died and came back to life.

Yet from White Tiger’s very first outing, Dong Bong-su had been smiling inwardly with satisfaction. He had finally found a way to catch White Tiger.

No matter how meticulous a person was, there were certain situations in which they inevitably let their guard down. Dong Bong-su aimed for that primal moment of carelessness—among them, the very best moment.

He secretly slipped into the house where the concubine lived, timing it precisely for the day White Tiger came to visit her. For Dong Bong-su, who could remove pillars using the Inventory, that was as easy as eating cold porridge.

Thus, he infiltrated the latrine. There, without the slightest hesitation, he put a breathing tube made from bamboo leaves in his mouth and hid himself inside the human excrement.

The first few times failed because White Tiger did not come to the latrine. The next several times, only White Tiger’s concubine came, splashing down liquid mixed with semen, vaginal fluids, and urine. But Dong Bong-su was a patient man. Not a single day did he miss infiltrating the concubine’s house in accordance with White Tiger’s outings.

In the end.

After finishing his heated intercourse with the concubine, White Tiger came to the latrine in a warm, satisfied state to release the ultimate purification and his bowels—and Dong Bong-su succeeded in driving his sword straight into White Tiger’s asshole. Because of the blade that pierced up from below and burst out through his throat, the bastard could not even let out a proper scream before departing for the road to the netherworld.

He would have had no regrets. After all, he must have departed having fully felt his final orgasm.

Dong Bong-su thus became level 5 and acquired two new skills.

Lightness Skill and the Three Talents Sword Art, First Form: Sweeping a Thousand Armies.

[Lightness Skill Lv.1 Proficiency : 0%]

- A martial art that lightens the body. By learning Lightness Skill, one can jump higher and run faster.

- Current Applied Level: Lv.0 (The player can adjust the applied level of this skill.)

- Jump Power Bonus : 0%

- Movement Speed Bonus : 0%

- Vital Energy Consumption per Second : 0 JP

[Three Talents Sword Art First Form: Sweeping a Thousand Armies Lv.1 Proficiency : 0%]

- A sword art extremely common in the Murim. Even ordinary people without internal energy could learn it.

- Sweeping a Thousand Armies was an enhanced version of a horizontal slash.

- All action bonuses of this skill were related to the proficiency of relevant skills and whether sword energy or sword force was being manifested.

- Current Applied Level: Lv.1 (The player can adjust the applied level of this skill.)

- Horizontal Slash Range Bonus: 1%

- Horizontal Slash Attack Power Bonus: 1%

- Horizontal Slash Casting Speed Bonus: 0%

- Vital Energy Consumption per Use : 30 JP

Those were the two.

● ● ●

Lightness Skill and Sweeping a Thousand Armies—these two skills were the first Active Skills granted to Dong Bong-su. By obtaining them, he was finally able to engage the Black Division operatives in frontal combat.

Dong Bong-su planned to easily wrap up the White Tiger Division, now that White Tiger was gone, and then begun hunting his next target.

The remaining Red Wolf Gate and the Black Snake Society. Which Black Division should he strike first?

His deliberation was not long.

While the Black Snake Society lay low after the annihilation of the White Tiger Division, the Red Wolf Gate stepped forward openly, actively attempting to absorb the White Tiger Division’s territory. They tried to expand their power by taking advantage of the fact that the Unnamed Righteous Hero had wiped out the White Tiger Division.

The next target was decided.

Red Wolf Gate.

They had underestimated the Unnamed Righteous Hero—no, Dong Bong-su—far too much. Either that, or their greed had simply gone too far.

By making use of his newly acquired skills and the divine art of the Inventory, Dong Bong-su dealt with the Red Wolf Gate’s Black Division operatives with relative ease. Unlike when facing the White Tiger Division, he not only relied on ambushes but also boldly attempted frontal breakthroughs.

The Red Wolf Gate’s leader, Bi Gyuseo, was flustered. The Unnamed Righteous Hero was far stronger and more aggressive than he had expected. He had thought that as long as he was careful of ambushes, there would be no major problem, but it turned out to be a complete miscalculation.

That was only natural, because Dong Bong-su was evolving with each passing day. Not only was he leveling up, but his mastery of Inventory usage was becoming increasingly refined, and his understanding and proficiency with his skills were rising exponentially.

The power of the Red Wolf Gate shrank far faster than it had with the White Tiger Division, and the more that happened, the more frenzied the citizens of Bongyang became. The faster and the more he killed, the higher the Unnamed Righteous Hero’s heroic reputation rose.

“Unnamed Righteous Hero! Unnamed Righteous Hero! The mysterious great hero! I’ll try shouting it too!”

By the time hero-play and songs imitating the Unnamed Righteous Hero began spreading among the children,

At last, even Bi Gyuseo punched his ticket to the netherworld through Dong Bong-su’s ambush.

The Red Wolf Gate was erased from the world, and for that achievement, Dong Bong-su gained enough experience to surpass level 6 and come close to level 7.

Around this time, he was aware that he had grown much stronger.

And he also realized that the time to move on to the next stage was gradually approaching.

The experience he could obtain from Black Division operatives had now become extremely limited—about the same amount he used to gain from killing ordinary people back when he was level 1.

For now, it was still usable to some extent, but by the time he finished wiping out the Black Snake Society, he expected the experience gained from killing them to become negligible.

In fact, even though he had completely swept Paradise Village, the stronghold of the Black Snake Society, today, his experience did not increase by much. Before coming here, he had already been in a situation where level 7 was not far off, yet he had only barely reached level 7.

Even so, Dong Bong-su was satisfied with today’s results.

The ‘Inventory Divine Art,’ which he had grown very accustomed to by now, once again showed tremendous effectiveness. It was used to eliminate enemies approaching from behind, and also to divert the attention of hidden enemies through deception tactics using corpses, after which he stored the beams of abandoned houses into his Inventory.

His ability to apply the newly acquired skill, Sweeping a Thousand Armies, had also improved greatly. By using corpse shields to lure enemies into one place, he wiped them out en masse with Sweeping a Thousand Armies. If it had been a simple slash, he would not have achieved such an effect.

Lightness Skill had now reached level 3, raising his jumping power and movement speed to the point where they increased by a full 100%. Because the JP (Vital Energy Points) consumption was heavy, he usually kept it turned off, activating it only when necessary and adjusting it to the desired level.

How strong am I now?

Dong Bong-su suddenly posed that question to himself. It was not something he could answer objectively, but he could define it with a short and decisive word.

“Quite.”

He was now quite strong.

Compared to when he had existed in Seoul, the difference was like that between a firefly and moonlight.

Then...

Was it now time to start killing Murim martial artists?