Episode 21. So Heartless
Soaking in a hot tub while listening to the sound of rain… there wasn’t a better paradise.
With my eyes closed, I listened as the heavy downpour gradually softened.
After a while, the hallway grew quieter than before, and soon the noise from downstairs faded as well.
“……”
My senses and my experience both caught the same thing in that unnatural silence—
Something’s off.
An ambush?
If it really was an ambush, it meant I’d be greeting visitors stark naked, unarmed, in a bath.
A brothel this quiet was abnormal from the start.
Even so, I didn’t bother shouting for anyone or ordering someone to bring my weapons. I just sat in the tub and waited.
After all, who would come after me now, with the Jo brothers and the Twin Ghosts of the Ring Sabers all dead?
Probably not the Black Cat Gang. Their collectors had been scared shitless; the odds of a real expert from Black Cat showing up right now were low.
That left Ilyang itself.
The second-strongest men under the now-headless Ehwa House and Siwha House came to mind.
Not because I was some prophet.
Just because I knew the future, and I roughly knew who existed in Ilyang and what they were capable of. So this was the most reasonable conclusion.
Still, that was only a prediction; I was half-doubting it myself—right up until footsteps sounded in the hall, and without so much as a knock, the door to the bathhouse swung open.
I looked at the two men who walked in and said,
“You two?”
Locals, so of course I knew them.
Song U-geum from Ehwa House, and Yu Jun-gu from Siwha House.
Add Cha Seong-tae to those two, and you got the trio the underlings lumped together as “Tae-Geum-Gu” — the big shots and managers of Ilyang’s brothels.
The moment they saw me naked in the bath, Song U-geum and Yu Jun-gu rushed in with blades drawn without a word.
And in that brief moment, one thought flashed through my head.
In a world where people live to kill and die, this is only natural.
I was naked and unarmed, true…
But I had the tub.
As soon as I drew up the energy of Flame Fowl into my hands, I ripped free two planks from the bath and grabbed them like a pair of wooden swords.
At the same time, I exploded my energy outward, blasting water and shattered wood from the tub straight into Song U-geum and Yu Jun-gu.
Water and broken boards flew at them from every direction.
And I charged—completely naked—swinging my makeshift wooden blades.
Both of them could fight on Cha Seong-tae’s level.
Which meant they weren’t any threat to me.
They did, however, have the advantage in weapons.
When my wooden blade was sliced in half by Song U-geum’s sword, I drove my left foot into his gut.
Thud!
I tilted my head to dodge Yu Jun-gu’s sword and cracked his hand with the plank.
Song U-geum, face flushing red from the kick to his stomach, lunged at me again, while Yu Jun-gu, now unarmed, charged bare-handed, clearly trying to turn it into a brawl.
I kept my distance.
To maintain it, I stepped back, feeding more Flame Fowl energy into the plank and slashing wildly through the air.
Each heavy whump of impact marked another arc of the board cutting across their faces.
The “wooden sword” was really just a broken plank, so I didn’t aim for fancy precision—I just carved the two of them up, hacking them from all angles.
In moments, I’d struck them seven, eight times. Cuts opened across their faces, chests, and arms.
Each time the plank connected, blood burst out in sprays, splattering across the bathhouse.
I hoped their corpses would serve as a warning to the others.
I kept swinging until they were drenched in blood, broken planks chewing into them until they stopped moving. Then I tossed aside what was left of the board.
They collapsed at the exact moment I let go.
Blood ran across the bath floor and flowed down the sloped stone into the drain.
Song U-geum and Yu Jun-gu lay there in their own blood, dead in the bath they’d tried to kill me in.
I picked up a fallen sword and walked out of the bathhouse naked, heading down the corridor.
“Seong-tae…”
Did those two coordinate with Cha Seong-tae?
I didn’t think so.
If he didn’t answer, it meant he was either dead or fighting for his life somewhere while his men turned on him.
A maid in the hallway screamed when she saw me walking around naked with a sword, then clapped both hands over her mouth.
I spoke calmly to her.
“Bring me some clothes. Anything.”
“Y-yes.”
Passing several rooms, I glanced around and called out,
“Where’s Madam Son? Madam Son…”
Behind me, the maid came running, clutching a pair of pants she’d found somewhere.
“I only found trousers. Please put these on first…”
I pulled on the pants and asked,
“You haven’t seen Madam Son?”
“No, sir.”
“Guess she’s sharp enough to hide.”
It wasn’t like Madam Son could have done anything even if she’d stayed. But there hadn’t been any need for her to run either.
Still, if anyone had tattled that I was peacefully taking a bath, it would’ve been her. So she was the first person I went looking for.
Looking at the maid trembling from head to toe, I smiled.
“Madam Son is really cold, huh?”
“Ah, yes. She is.”
With only the pants on and sword in hand, I quickly went down the stairs.
If Cha Seong-tae was dead, I’d hunt down everyone who killed him and put them in the ground. If he was still alive, I’d help.
Song U-geum and Yu Jun-gu had clearly gone for a surprise attack.
They’d sent their subordinates after Cha Seong-tae, who was cooperating with me, and come themselves thinking they were the “bosses” and it’d be enough just the two of them.
Outside, stepping into the rain-damp street, I realized I wasn’t wearing shoes either.
My pants were threatening to slip off too. I stabbed the sword into the ground for a moment and hiked them up tight.
“Cha Seong-tae.”
I called his name with a bit of inner force and listened.
From the direction of Jahak Inn, I could faintly hear someone yelling—more like cursing, really.
With a sword in hand, I used light footwork and raced toward Jahak Inn.
Pressed against a wall in a back alley, Cha Seong-tae was bleeding down his face, breathing hard. Even so, he had a dagger in his left hand pressed to one man’s throat, and his right gripped his saber, leveled at the men surrounding him.
He ground the words out like he was chewing them.
“Jun-gu put you up to this, huh? You useless shits…”
There were still more than ten men encircling him.
On his way, being herded like cattle toward the deserted area near Jahak Inn, he had killed seven already—Seong-tae had been fighting seventeen to one.
If his direct subordinates had been there, it wouldn’t have gone this far.
But he’d been ambushed while moving with Ehwa’s lackeys to dispose of the Twin Ghosts’ corpses. The Ehwa underlings had flipped on a dime and joined in attacking him.
This town really was that kind of mess.
He should’ve been more careful. It was his mistake.
Seong-tae always believed he was stronger than Song U-geum and Yu Jun-gu.
And his men, as well as his own skills, actually were better.
But he had almost no experience fighting this many enemies completely alone.
Seeing that his attackers had no intention of backing down, Seong-tae suddenly rammed the dagger into the hostage’s neck and charged forward, saber slashing.
Bleeding as badly as he was, his only chance was to kill the remaining ten as fast as humanly possible.
He attacked anything and everything—arms, legs, faces. Even when his own arm was cut, he drove his blade into someone’s face. Even as a kick sent him sprawling, he rolled through the mud, stabbing at every ankle he saw.
Screams rang out again.
Dripping with rain, blood, and mud, he staggered back to his feet and roared for no good reason,
“Come on then, you bastards!”
With third-rate fighters like these, momentum is everything.
They weren’t bosses like Song U-geum and Yu Jun-gu; they were small fry, the kind of trash that folded fast in a fight of morale.
One of them, completely lacking in camaraderie, shoved an injured comrade toward Seong-tae while barking an order.
“All at once!”
The poor bastard who was shoved forward took Seong-tae’s saber straight through the chest.
And the rest of them charged with cleavers and sabers raised.
“Oh, shit.”
Seong-tae wasn’t an idiot.
He instinctively knew he had to break off and reset the mental tide, so he stumbled backward with retreating steps.
That’s when there was a muffled thunk.
It was dark, so he couldn’t see clearly—but there was another wet thud, and a man went down.
Then something made a splorch sound, and a head sailed up into the air.
Over the chaos, the voice of that damned tavern boy stabbed into Seong-tae’s ears.
“You still alive, Gate Lord of Rehabilitation? Gotta say, I’m impressed.”
Seong-tae screamed back,
“Save me!”
He was honestly glad to see me, but he was so worked up that his stomach churned with irritation too.
Under his breath, he muttered,
“…you little shit.”
I had no particular feelings about Song U-geum and Yu Jun-gu’s lackeys.
But anyone trying to kill the Gate Lord of Rehabilitation wasn’t getting a pass.
So I pruned them.
Most of them I killed with a single cut—chopping off a limb here, stabbing through a torso there.
Once only three or four were left, Cha Seong-tae, screaming like a lunatic, joined back in.
I lowered my sword and let him have his revenge, as he hacked the remaining men to pieces like a mad dog.
Stab. Stab. Stab.
The sounds of blades sinking into flesh blended perfectly with Seong-tae’s stream of curses.
…
…
…
The corpses were piling up around Jahak Inn.
Having slaughtered the last of the small fry, Seong-tae dropped his saber and sank to the ground, gasping for air.
“Huff… huff… huff… haa… haaa…”
Then he lifted his head and looked me up and down.
I was holding my pants up with one hand so they wouldn’t fall. Barefoot. Bare-chested.
Anyone could tell I’d sprinted over straight out of the bath.
After staring at me for a good long while, Seong-tae finally asked,
“You came here in the middle of a bath, didn’t you?”
I nodded and glanced up at the sky. The heavy rain had stopped, but a light drizzle still floated down.
“Feels like I’m bathing over and over today.”
At that, the tension drained out of him and he let out a hollow laugh.
“Ha…”
I held my sword out and rested the tip under Seong-tae’s chin.
“Seong-tae.”
“Yeah.”
Looking down at him, I asked,
“Do you still think I’m a joke? Just a tavern boy?”
He hadn’t actually done anything wrong, so his eyes went wide in shock. But if I didn’t hammer this into him properly today, the same kind of mess would happen again.