The seemingly spacious office suddenly felt cramped as it filled with the group of men. At Kim Geun-cheol’s signal, they instantly assumed combat stances, brandishing weapons—iron pipes, daggers, and even a longsword.
“You’ve got some guts coming here alone! Your life ends today!” Kim Geun-cheol snarled, confident of victory. “No, not just you—Gu Yoo-joon will taste hell for the rest of his life too!”
The iron pipe bent under the man’s enhanced grip, and a faint blue mana shimmered around the dagger’s blade. The longsword gleamed with a vicious intent to cleave Sang-woong in two.
To an ordinary person, these were deadly threats.
Sang-woong remained seated, motionless, his gaze fixed on them. His expression seemed impassive, but the depth in his eyes overwhelmed anyone who met them.
The first to move was a burly hunter, spurred by Kim Geun-cheol’s words. “Die!” he roared, swinging a heavy iron pipe with full force toward Sang-woong.
The attack was fast, tracing a wide arc that was hard to dodge in the confined office. But Sang-woong simply twisted his body at the last moment, letting the pipe graze past. In the same instant, his leg shot out like lightning, striking the man’s solar plexus with pinpoint accuracy.
“Urgh!” The man gasped, the impact sending him airborne before he crashed to the floor, convulsing.
A second hunter lunged, aiming a razor-sharp dagger at Sang-woong’s side. Instead of confronting it head-on, Sang-woong sidestepped swiftly, narrowly dodging the strike. Seizing the opening, he grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted it with bone-crushing force.
Crack! With a horrific sound of snapping bones, the man screamed and collapsed, the dagger clattering uselessly to the floor.
“What the hell!” Kim Geun-cheol’s face grew frantic. The situation was spiraling out of control.
“What are you doing, you idiots? All at once!” he shouted.
The remaining hunters charged simultaneously, attacking in practiced coordination despite the tight space. One aimed low with a dagger at Sang-woong’s legs, while the other three swung iron pipes and the longsword at his upper body.
Sang-woong moved with superhuman speed, defying human limits. Like a gust of wind, he slipped between their attacks, vanishing and reappearing. He predicted their trajectories with precision, dodging by a hair’s breadth while delivering devastating counterattacks.
A quick kick shattered the wrist of the dagger-wielding hunter aiming for his legs. Almost simultaneously, he ducked to avoid an iron pipe swinging at his head. Rising, he snatched a fallen dagger from the floor and, faster than the blade itself, drove it into the thighs of the three remaining men with surgical accuracy.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
In mere seconds, the six robust hunters who moments ago stood tall were now writhing on the floor, groaning in agony. Their faces, once arrogant, were now filled with disbelief and excruciating pain, unable to process the broken bones and stabbed thighs.
Kim Geun-cheol stood frozen, mouth agape, staring at the unbelievable scene. His face was pale, his body trembling slightly. Seo Soo-hyuk, who had been preparing coffee, was equally petrified.
“Who… who the hell are you?!” Kim Geun-cheol stammered.
Sang-woong approached slowly. “Didn’t I say? I’m here to settle Gu Yoo-joon’s debt.”
Kim Geun-cheol’s mind raced. That had to be a lie. There was no way Gu Yoo-joon knew someone this powerful. If he did, he wouldn’t have been suffering so long. A fixer, maybe? But that didn’t add up either—Gu Yoo-joon couldn’t afford one, and hiring someone of this caliber would cost far more than the debt itself.
Then why was this guy here? Kim Geun-cheol’s scammer instincts told him Sang-woong wanted something else, but there was no time to figure it out.
Desperate to defuse the situation, he grabbed Gu Yoo-joon’s loan documents with trembling hands. “Fine, fine! We’ll erase Yoo-joon’s debt. That’s it, right?”
Sang-woong’s lip curled into a cold smirk, his eyes dripping with contempt, as if he’d heard the most absurd thing. “You bastard…”
Realizing there was no way out, Kim Geun-cheol made a final desperate move, pulling a hidden dagger from his waistband. He lunged at Sang-woong with a scream, but to Sang-woong, it was laughably pathetic.
Having fought an orc army not long ago, these low-level hunters were mere insects to him.
Crack!
A fist faster than the dagger smashed into Kim Geun-cheol’s jaw. With a sickening sound, his head spun, and he collapsed, blood and saliva dribbling from his dislocated jaw.
He flailed on the floor, waving his hands as if begging Sang-woong to stay back. “Urgh… urgh…” he mumbled incoherently through his broken jaw.
Sang-woong looked down impassively, then mercilessly drove his foot into Kim’s abdomen. “Gah!” Kim’s mana circuits shattered, his face contorted in agony and horror as he realized his hunter foundation was destroyed.
Ignoring his screams, Sang-woong crushed Kim’s ankle with a stomp, the sound of breaking bones echoing through the office. “This pain is just a fraction of the price for your crimes,” he said coldly, his eyes devoid of pity.
“Feel free to report this,” he added. Hunter fights, unlike regular ones, had broad leeway for self-defense, especially when multiple hunters ganged up on one, as they had. With the evidence of their crimes scattered around, they had no legal ground to stand on.
Sang-woong delivered the same punishment to the other hunters—shattering their mana circuits and crushing one ankle each. The office filled with screams of pain and despair.
Seo Soo-hyuk cowered against the wall, trembling. “Tch,” Sang-woong scoffed. “You were like a beast threatening Eun-woo, but now you’re less than a rat.”
He stepped closer. Soo-hyuk pressed himself against the wall, but there was no escape. “P-please, I’m sorry… spare me…” he begged, but it was futile.
Thud! Sang-woong’s fist buried into Soo-hyuk’s abdomen, shattering his mana circuits. He collapsed, clutching his stomach and screaming like the others.
Ignoring their wails, Sang-woong began methodically searching the office. He pulled out a large bag and packed Gu Yoo-joon’s documents, their ledgers, cash, and every piece of evidence of their crimes.
“Wait… please… this… is enough, right?” Kim Geun-cheol pleaded, blood and saliva dripping, knowing those documents reaching the Hunter Association’s Villain Task Force would be their end.
“How selfish,” Sang-woong sneered. “Think this pays for everything? Live the rest of your life in regret and atonement. And by the way, I’d prefer my name stays out of this.”
His voice turned chilling. “I hate trouble. If my name comes up… you can imagine what’ll happen.”
Without lingering, Sang-woong left the office. Under the flickering hallway lights, his shadow stretched long. The office echoed with pained groans and whimpers.
“Feels good,” Sang-woong muttered, walking down the corridor.
Gu Yoo-joon’s issue was cleanly resolved. Now, it was time for the real game.
He searched his memories for the office of the scammers who’d deceived him in his past life as a naive rookie hunter. The memory remained vivid despite decades passing.
It was time to clean up the filth of his past.
The true main game was beginning.
“Phew, good thing they’re still here,” Sang-woong murmured with relief, arriving at a building that hadn’t moved. Long tails get stepped on, as the saying goes, but these scammers hadn’t bothered relocating, confident in their power and foundation.
That confidence meant countless rookie hunters had shed tears of blood.
“Time to settle some scores,” Sang-woong said, pulling a black mask over his face. His eyes gleamed with excitement and menace through the mask’s holes.
For Gu Yoo-joon’s case, he’d risked revealing his identity, but here, there was no need. He was a specter of the past, a judge.
The scammers’ office was on the second floor. Entering the building and ascending, he found the hallway blocked by a heavy iron gate, likely to guard against attacks. A menacing man stood guard behind it.
Seeing the masked Sang-woong, the man shouted, “Who the hell are you?! Who sent you?!”
Familiar with such intrusions, the guard’s voice was laced with suspicion and aggression.
Sang-woong stared coldly through the bars.