NOVEL NEXT Chapter 83: Around Louisville (3)
Seoul, a city famed for having the world's densest population.
Even in this cramped city, there were three areas where housing prices remained low.
The first, a district of Seoul that doesn’t exist.
It doesn’t show up on any maps or documents, but supposedly, if you go there, it’s very real. This place has stores you’ve never seen anywhere else, and people who don’t appear even in social media searches. But it wasn’t simply because of these oddities that housing was cheap.
The district’s information just… erases itself? That supposedly meant it was a perfect place for secretive business. And so, ruthless groups filled the area.
It became hell, but not one created by ghosts. This was hell forged by people. I avoid any high-paying delivery gigs in that area unless the pay is too good to resist.
The second is Tiger’s Den.
Sometimes, a tiger appears there.
The third is the cursed ville district.
That’s my neighborhood.These were the three cheapest areas to live in Seoul.
But even these places had people living in them.
Quite a lot of people, actually.
I climbed up to the rooftop of Louisville to survey the situation.
“This is insane.”
All the shelters around Louisville were under attack. I went in and found about a hundred people taking refuge in each shelter.
Now, those bastards had hit ten shelters, meaning roughly four thousand people had been dragged out.
Four thousand. The death toll was already spiraling out of control.
Most of the dead had taken their own lives.
If not, they’d run somewhere and jumped off.
People rarely seemed to die from those jerks' guns.
“Damn it.”
These powers… every last one of them is garbage.
An all-too-familiar rage coursed through my veins. The deep hatred I felt in Pyeon Station, in the DMZ, in the lab, in the casino—it started to stir again.
O Heavens that bring true justice,
Erase all the awakened from existence.
Leave not a single one alive.
“…?”
For a moment, I had a spine-chilling thought.
Shaking my head, I pressed the elevator button immediately.
It was time to ask for help from the neighbors of this town.
“Would those folks still be running their shop even on Attack Day?”
I mumbled to myself on the electric scooter.
They probably would.
They’d stayed open even during Ghost Typhoon, a disaster worse than Attack Day, and even during the North Korean (possibly) Seoul air raid. I doubted they’d close for this.
So I rode my scooter down the empty street. Soon, I found the only lit sign on the road.
[OmegaTech Service Station]
[Repairs for Amplifiers and Electronics; Buying Used Electronics]
I opened the door to OmegaTech.
“Hey, man!”
And there he was, a guy napping at the counter.
It was Jongri Hyung, with as much belly as knowledge.
“Ugh, the unrefined, polluted reality has finally caught up to me. Oh, right, Hajin, what’s up?”
Apparently, he’d been dreaming, muttering something strange as he woke up.
“Dude, we’re in serious trouble!”
“What now? Don’t tell me you’ve lost that masterpiece of yours, the electric scooter, again?”
That was the story of the Mountain incident.
Back then, I’d parked my electric scooter near that Mountain, unaware it would get completely obliterated. When the mountain was destroyed, I assumed my scooter had turned to dust along with it.
When I told Jongri Hyung about it, he’d collapsed on the spot.
However, thanks to his investigation, it turned out the electric scooter had barely avoided the destruction, so I was able to ride it again.
“Of course not. I parked it right outside.”
Jongri Hyung hugged the scooter, muttering, “My masterpiece! It’s not even comparable to the military’s ID tracker or network detector from the main office…” This wasn’t the time for this.
“Hyung, the situation outside is a total disaster.”
“A disaster?”
I quickly explained everything that was happening. Jongri Hyung nodded and said:
“Interesting. So the Totemism Government and those primitive shaman clans decided to turn their backs on this area today.”
Jongri Hyung continued.
“And from what you’re saying, the guns they’re using are likely double-action semi-automatic pistols. It irritates me that those uncultured bastards are handling such beautiful machines.”
Great, let’s smash those jerks together.
But Jongri Hyung stopped talking after that.
Wait? Is that all?
“Hyung, people are getting kidnapped out there.”
“Yes, it’s tragic that civilians are being abducted. I dread to think what barbaric ritual they’ll use them for.”
He added,
“But it’s not my duty to save them.”
“You don’t have to save them yourself,” I said.
“Just lend me some equipment like armor or weapons.”
“Why do I have to be the one…?”
I stared at him intently.
With a reluctant sigh, he murmured,
“Fine, there’s an umbrella and a stun gun over there. Take them.”
Ah, the good old stun gun.
My trusty Chidori.
“You know about that stun gun, right? It’s no ordinary model; it’s a high-powered weapon. It’s more of an assault tool than a defensive one. According to superstition, electricity possesses the power to dispel evil. In terms of specs, it should work against high-level evil spirits, maybe even a demon king.”
Jongri Hyung continued.
“And that umbrella is a bulletproof model. It’ll block handgun bullets and even withstand up to three shots from an anti-materiel sniper rifle if needed. Just make sure to hold it tightly so it doesn’t fly away from the impact.”
“Thanks.”
I gathered the stun gun and umbrella.
Jongri Hyung looked at me slowly and asked,
“I really don’t understand you. Why do you keep getting into these irrational fights?”
As soon as I heard that question, I thought of the nonexistent district.
A place left off all administrative records, abandoned by both the police and Cheonji, and now a paradise for those wretched rogue factions.
That district had many markets.
Markets selling curses, markets trading slaves, markets dealing in human flesh…
It was an instinctive feeling. If these rogue scumbags succeeded in sacrificing thousands here, other rogues would surely start crawling in.
Then this neighborhood would turn into a place like the "nonexistent district."
In other words, a living hell.
I couldn’t let that happen.
This town is where my friends live.
Jamsuni, Nayu, the shopkeeper, Jongri Hyung, the side dish lady, and my sister—all of them live here.
And this is my home too.
I didn’t want to deal with these disgusting rogues robbing me on my way to work and back.
Jongri Hyung had asked me why I’d fight such an irrational battle.
Then I could only answer in one way.
“Why fight, you ask? Because those assholes are right over there.”
With that, I left OmegaTech.
Now then, they said strange phenomena go wild on Attack Day, didn’t they?
I should make use of that.
I opened the Anomaly Response Headquarters’ site for unusual phenomena.
****
The Blackstone Faction’s leader looked around.
He saw way too many strange things for comfort.
It really was a day when countless bizarre occurrences erupted.
People floating in the sky, a bus standing still at a bus stop with no passengers around, and a mysterious man fishing on the side of the road, umbrella raised.
‘They all look like strange phenomena. To get out of this villa district, I’ll have to pass through at least one of them.’
The floating people went without saying.
The bus standing at the stop also went without saying. The fact that the driver, who should be exhausted, was smiling brightly—it made no sense.
And then there was the man fishing on the roadside with his umbrella up. Was he a strange phenomenon too? There was something odd, almost out of place, about him. There was a simple way to check in moments like this.
Strange phenomena don’t get scared. But when a bizarre presence suddenly appears before someone, they instinctively flinch.
The Blackstone Faction leader secretly burned a talisman.
It was a charm containing the soul of a brutally murdered victim.
The twisted appearance of the soul, contorted by its horrific death, even made his trained self shudder. If it suddenly appeared, surely there’d be a reaction.
The talisman burned completely, and the victim’s spirit suddenly manifested in front of the fisherman. Yet the fisherman showed no sign of noticing anything at all.
‘No change in expression whatsoever.’
No reaction—it had to be a strange phenomenon. The leader signaled his men with a hand gesture to avoid engaging the mysterious man.
Attacking a strange phenomenon was pointless.
Of course, overwhelming force could work, but in a battle between phenomena of equal level and spiritual powers, you had to use the rules to exterminate or dispel it.
At that moment, the fisherman phenomenon glanced over at them and spoke.
The tone was slightly off, almost awkward.
“This pond is nice. Much better than that two-story building. Do you think I can catch a big one here?”
As soon as he heard that, the leader shouted,
“Everyone, get into that two-story building!”
The Blackstone faction members quickly entered the two-story building in perfect order. That was a hunting-type phenomenon. It would be satisfied and disappear once it had caught enough prey.
To deal with this phenomenon, sacrifices would be necessary. Naturally, those sacrifices shouldn’t come from the Blackstone faction. So, the faction members locked the door to ensure only they were inside the building. Just then, one of them mumbled as he felt water dripping down.
“Why is there so much water dripping here? Feels like I’m in a shower or something.”
Whoosh—
Before he finished speaking, the fisherman’s fishing line flew over and tapped a certain button. It was the button for the electric shock device—known as an "electric assault weapon"—that had been set up on the second floor.
“Arrrggh!”
“Grrrrkk!”
This electric assault weapon had once delivered High-level damage to a demon king. For the faction members, whose powers didn’t even come close to spiritual lines, let alone demonic gates, this electric shock felt almost like divine punishment.
“Now that’s a big catch.”
Yoo Hajin, the aspiring human phenomenon, smiled.
– – – The End of The Chapter – – –
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