The Imperial Hunter

A tennis court and swimming pool, a tidy and elegant European-style garden. The villa nestled in the mountains with two annex buildings was truly the epitome of bourgeois aesthetics. How could this be called the personal property of an individual communist party official? If Marx had seen this place, he would have cried out that class struggle was necessary here.

It was late at night, just before dawn. The enemies’ response was completely chaotic, except for the guards on duty who had gone to sleep. Although some had woken up to the noise of armor-piercing shells penetrating the walls, there were not enough to mount an organized response.

At the point when the enemies’ escape route was completely blocked off, I descended the slope and entered the villa’s spacious grounds. The dogs that had been barking noisily had become lumps of meat cooling down after being hit by bullets. As I crossed the garden as if taking a stroll, I steadily relayed information to my subordinates.

“1-1 to 2-1. There are 2 enemies in ambush around the next corner. Both are using 95-style (QBZ-95) with 50-round drum magazines. They don’t have any spare magazines or sidearms, and only one is wearing body armor, looks like Level 3.”

“1-1 to 4-1. There are no threats between your current position and checkpoint B-3. Advance at full speed and secure the position, then provide flank cover for 3-3 until they move out to B-2.”

“1-1 to 3-2. The enemy you are currently engaging has less than half a magazine left. One has broken off to grab more ammo, should take about 1 minute for the round trip…”

In this fashion, the enemies have no chance of winning.

“2-1 to 1-1. Situation room secured.”

Upon receiving this report, I had just stepped into the main building. The marble floor was sticky with blood, making an unpleasant scraping noise with every step from my feet. On top of that were the shouts and noises mixed with electronic tones. The source was the walkie-talkies of the dead mercenaries, still switched on with their eyes open.

“Damn it! Anyone there?!” “There’s too many of them! We’re being overwhelmed by firepower!” “Help me, it hurts so much…” “Everyone shut up for a second, you fcking bastards! The comms are a mess! Someone try to get a handle on the situation-” “Situation room! Situation room! Hey! Are you jerking off in there, you stupid bastard?!” “Mom, mom!” “Waaah…” “When are the SWAT teams coming! They said they’d respond if we hit the panic button!” “Phone! Anyone got a working phone?!” “Fuckkkkkk!”

The cries grew more frantic and desperate by the second. As I flowed past like a stream, listening to the whimpering radios, I asked Kyung-tae, aka 2-1, who had reported securing the situation room.

“Is there a PA system in there by any chance?”

“2-1 here. No, there isn’t… What do you need it for?”

“I was thinking of broadcasting a surrender offer, but nevermind if there isn’t one.”

I didn’t see any broadcast speakers in view, but there were intercom handsets in each room. I wondered if it might be possible to conference call them simultaneously, so I asked just in case. But having to negotiate surrender one by one would be tedious, might as well just kill them all. As I was thinking this, 2-1 asked back.

“If they surrender, were you planning to let them live?”

“Of course not. I was thinking of capturing them alive and filming their beheadings.”

The brutality of the Black Children’s Party bike squads was vividly etched in my mind. The one who leashed severed heads and dragged them around, the one who held enemy necks under flowing blood from decapitations, the ones who executed rows of enemies who had surrendered by kneeling them down for mass beheadings.

Therefore, in order to turn the blame against the Black Children’s Party, we must also emulate their brutality. To avenge the grudges of those who have lived their whole lives under the shadow of the class system. It would be surprising if even a shred of mercy remained for those who sang of fury, having reached the era of myth.

In the revolution they dream of, the death of communist aristocrats and their lackeys was an absolutely essential component that could never be omitted.

‘Just capturing some combat footage should be enough for our purposes here.’

Editing together footage of the fighting carried out by my subordinates and uploading it online would provide decent decoys, as well as material to use for propaganda by the fake Black Children’s Party.

“Kill them all.”

I reiterated.

“Whether they’re Combatant or not doesn’t matter. Armed or unarmed also doesn’t matter. Everyone in this villa is an ‘enemy of the people.’ So spare absolutely no one, kill them all. Rip open their bellies and stomp their torsos until their guts spill out. A people’s revolution is a tree that grows by drinking blood.”

“Understood. We will carry that out ruthlessly.”

With the original directive firmly reestablished, the process of transforming the bourgeois villa into a bloody spectacle progressed even more intensely.

‘They certainly hired a lot.’

The total scale of the enemy mercenaries still facing annihilation was comparable to two companies. Judging by just their price tags, it would have been no small sum. While only temporary hires until the situation settled down, the party secretary had made a big expenditure to protect his assets.

The mercenaries’ deployment gave the strong impression that they didn’t even know what they were supposed to guard as most important. Just guarding the villa at a basic level. After all, even the mercenaries were outsiders, so telling them the locations of secret vaults would have been foolish. Although they likely guessed there might be something like that, under the surveillance of closed-circuit cameras they could not freely search around and find the vaults.

After passing through hallway scenes resembling a horror movie, going down blood-pooled staircases, I finally arrived at the entrance to the first trove. The vault door was hidden behind a bookshelf full of books, and even after moving the shelf aside, it looked no different from an ordinary wall. Apart from its somewhat larger scale, it was a disguised safe commonly found in the mansions of wealthy individuals in Korea who wished to avoid tax inspections.

“Are we recording?”

I asked, and the team leader-level subordinate confirmed that we were. The footage recorded here would serve as the basis for the distribution promised to Gao Shusen and the propaganda material as a fake Black Children’s Party.

Wearing a balaclava like Kyung-tae, I approached the wall where the bookshelf had been cleared. The vault’s opening and closing mechanism was forged to look like an electrical outlet. It was not just an imitation of the appearance; I had manipulated the circuit using magical power to ensure that electricity would actually be supplied when the code was entered.

Crack!

When I forcefully pulled on the “outlet,” a keypad for entering the code slid out. While pretending to type in the code, I manipulated the circuits using magical power/mana.

Clunk! Whirrrr…!

The locks disengaged, gears turned, and the vault door swung open. Stale air that had been trapped inside the sturdy alloy rushed out, carrying a dry, papery smell. Unlike me who already knew the contents, my subordinates uttered sounds of awe. A tremendous quantity of banknotes, bonds, and gold ingots in various shapes. And ancient artifacts and Eastern/Western paintings. This was just a portion of the total, so my subordinates’ admiration could only deepen.

Well, what are you waiting for? Start emptying it out.

My subordinates immediately reacted to my telepathic signal. The priorities here in the vault were of course the bearer bonds and stock certificates, as well as gold bars. US dollars came next, followed by antiques, artworks, and yuan bills that were troublesome to use extensively due to the amount of counterfeits. It was fine to take care of those last. The reason bearer bonds were the top priority was that laundering the source was easy, plus they fetched a premium on the black market.

The vault was stocked full of bags and padding meant to quickly load up and remove items in an emergency. Secret vaults that people wanted to keep hidden from the authorities were all similar.

Leaving this scene, I went around opening up the other vaults. While smaller than the first, the smallest vault hidden under a coffin-shaped cabinet contained jade carvings and appraisal certificates worth hundreds of millions of won. In Korea, the proliferation of fake jade sold through multi-level marketing schemes has created the misperception that jade is cheap, but the stuff that went into those was garbage not even worthy of being called jade.

The real jade favored by the Chinese, A-grade natural jade, could fetch up to $27 million for a single necklace strand. It was traded higher than diamonds exclusively within the Chinese market.

After looking over the appraisal certificates, I saw that this one small vault alone contained jade worth 800 million yuan, equivalent to 150 billion won.

‘It’ll be difficult to liquidate.’

The appraisals meant there were records of these items. Therefore, to safely fence such a massive quantity of top-grade jade carvings on the black market required considerable time and effort. The fact that the markets were mostly limited to China exacerbated the difficulty of disposal. At least a few years of observation and planning were necessary.

Therefore, using it as evidence rather than secretly diverting or disposing of it separately was the best option. The moment these green gems came in heaps from one of the Guangdong Triad’s facilities, the triads would immediately be stamped as a cooperating force with the Black Children’s Party.

Well, keeping one or two of them as bribes for the guards wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

After uncovering hidden treasures one by one, I stood in front of the last hiding place in the mansion. This time, it wasn’t a vault disguised as a wall, but the wall itself was a hiding place. I raised the output of the circuit, and I tore off the entire wall painted in white chalk.

Rumble!

Thin limestone cracked, and behind it, sturdy bricks spilled out.

After the situation was concluded, Kyung-tae, who had joined after breaking the closed circuit, asked, 

“Let’s see, in this location… Gold, is it? Could it be that these are all gold bars?”

Blocking my nose with my sleeve, he compared the drawings I provided with the current location before posing the question. I nodded as I stared at the gold bars adorned with red bricks.

“Yeah. It’s an age-old technique that’s been used for a long time.”

In history, Chinese and Jewish people frequently utilized this technique. The Chinese because the country was often in turmoil, and the Jews because their nationality itself was a target of discrimination and persecution. Just smear some dirt on the outside and bake it, and that was all there was to it. It was easy to make. Even now, in ancient Chinese houses, gold bars hidden by the old residents were sometimes discovered during redevelopment.

I instructed, 

“Explode here to erase any traces. Gao Shusen shouldn’t find out about these bricks.”

“Yep.”

Even with just the gold bars here, it would easily amount to tens of millions of dollars. It would be better to send it to Macau over time rather than using a cruise ship.

After collecting the treasures found here in the mansion’s garage, the amount piled up exceeded the rough estimate I made at first, filling nearly five 2.5-ton trucks. Excluding bulky art pieces and artifacts like ceramics and paintings, it seemed impossible to fill all five trucks.

Using the telekinesis technique, I quickly finished loading onto the truck, the same type Kyung-tae was in and left the mansion grounds. There was now the task of returning, but with my eyes and a disguised identity, there shouldn’t be significant difficulties. Internally patting myself on the back for a satisfactory hunt, Kyung-tae, who took the steering wheel, muttered something strange.

“I didn’t intend it, but it looks like we’ve ended up helping China quite a bit.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Even if we only use a portion of the harvested treasures as evidence, at least tens of millions of dollars will be recovered to the national treasury. It’s much better than ordinary patriots.”

“Recovered to the national treasury?”

Realizing Kyung-tae’s misconception, I couldn’t help but feel a bit bewildered. His misconception, stemming from his overly innocent view, was a stark contrast to someone who had been working in this field for a long time. Sensing something unusual from my reaction, Kyung-tae cautiously asked while looking ahead.

“Uh, did something go wrong?”

“…Wrong is an understatement. Honestly, it’s beyond wrong. It’s even embarrassing. Did you seriously think that seized assets would quietly go into the national treasury? In this country that has rotted to the core to the point, there’s no more rotting left?”

“Ah, ugh.”

Kyung-tae groaned with a strange sound.

“I underestimated it, Hyungnim. I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize.”

There were often aspects in various matters that one tended to overlook without much consideration.

In this country, in every oppression that took place, the losers’ gold became the loot of the winners. Illegitimate profits obtained through the war against crime also became the loot of those in power.

Therefore, the vein of the ungodly flowing through this continent had never been cut off for a single moment. Beasts of cronyism devour each other, creating a continuity of gold from the past to the present. Although some of it might flow to other continents or across the seas.

Today, we’d plundered one small tributary of that dirty history. Being an illegitimate person myself, I had no shortage of continuing this history.

Disclaimer:

This novel is a work of fiction! While it may incorporate elements inspired by our "real" historical world, including historical events, settings, and cultures, it is important to note that the story and characters are entirely products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or deceased, or actual events is purely coincidental. This work should be enjoyed and interpreted as a work of fiction and not as a representation of historical facts or reality.

Also, if you find some error in translation please do let me know by tagging me (@_dawn24) in our Discord server. Since this series is kinda hard to translate. But I'll try my best to make it at least readable :)

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