Chapter 13: Chapter 12
TL/ED: Hamsterminator
Fragmentation grenade.
If you were a man of the Republic of Korea, you would have thrown one during your third or fourth week of basic training.
About the size of a tangerine and lightweight, but its firepower is widely known through countless media. A weapon boasting outstanding performance relative to its size, with a lethal radius of 15 meters and a danger radius of 50 meters.
This thing is so dangerous that even the instructors, who normally act like they could kill you with a single glare, turn into absolute angels on the day of grenade training.
The intention is to keep recruits as relaxed as possible to prevent any mistakes.
(There is also a purpose to prevent suicide attempts.)
Of course, despite this, recruits still get nervous.
Watching the instructors’ demonstration with bated breath, gripping the grenade in your own hand, throwing it, ducking, and hearing the deafening explosion right next to your ears,
Those moments, carried out in a state of tension and extreme focus, remain vividly imprinted somewhere in your mind, even as time passes.
Jin’s reaction was purely instinctive.
“A grenade in the store!!!”
He had no idea how he moved.
When he came to his senses, he found himself crouched on the opposite side of the display case.
Not only that, but his right hand was firmly pressing down on the store owner’s neck.
Bang!
The next moment, an explosion rang in his ears.
As shattered fragments of the grenade’s shell swept through the store, the sound of breaking glass erupted from all directions.
“Uwaaaah!!”
The old man, Brof, whose head had been forcibly pushed down by Jin, let out a scream.
There was no time to question what the hell was going on,
No chance to raise his head and assess the situation.
Because now, bullets started pouring in.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!!
As the store was ravaged once again, Jin and Brof flattened themselves against the ground. Their eyes met naturally.
“Cover! Where’s cover?!”
Jin shouted, and the old man, despite his confusion, managed to understand.
“Th-this way!”
And so, crawling on their stomachs, they moved across the floor while shattered glass and broken chunks of cement rained down on them.
Crash!
The relentless gunfire even shattered the lights.
Now, they couldn’t see a damn thing.
All Jin could do was blindly follow the old man’s ass.
“Here! Over here!”
At the end of the display cases, Brof gestured frantically toward what looked like an employee room. Thankfully, the door was open.
“Close it!”
Jin, who rushed in right after, shouted and immediately took action himself.
With a loud slam, the door shut, and the gunfire outside became slightly more distant.
Stepping away from the door, Jin spoke.
“Sir, are you some kind of monster? Why the hell are they shooting up the place just to get you?”
“Y-you! Who the hell are you?”
“A customer!”
“You’re really a customer? Not with the Halifa Gang?”
I knew it.
Another mess involving some lowlife gangsters.
“I don’t know if it’s ‘Halifa’ or ‘Jalapeno’, and I don’t care. Do you have anything I can use as a weapon? This is a gun shop, isn’t it?”
“You’re not seriously thinking of fighting back, are you? We don’t even know how many of them are out there!”
“What, you want to just sit here and watch porn together? We don’t have time, just give me something! Hurry!”
At Jin’s urgency, Brof scrambled to his feet.
He began flinging open nearby metal cases, checking their contents.
“What do you need?”
“Anything!”
“...Damn it. Giving my weapons to a damn rookie.”
A chunk of metal suddenly flew through the air.
Jin caught it and realized it was a rifle with a rugged design.
The barrel was thick, and there was a foregrip attached below it.
It resembled an M4 but had a slightly futuristic touch.
Beyond that, Jin couldn’t tell much.
Honestly, he wasn’t even sure if he was processing things correctly at this point.
Just then, Brof held out two stacked magazines.
“You know how to shoot?”
“What do you take me for?”
Jin replied as he clicked the magazine into place.
Just then, the relentless gunfire outside suddenly died down.
Instead, the sound of footsteps echoed beyond the door.
And it wasn’t just one or two people. At least ten.
All armed with automatic weapons.
Could he win?
Jin was no stranger to getting shot at in combat, but he had never been in a situation where he was the sole target of over ten gun barrels. He had no confidence in this fight.
For the first time, he found himself missing the Steel Hands, who at least preferred hand-to-hand combat.
“Brof! You fucking rude old bastard! Are you dead? If you’re dead, say something! So I can kill you again!”
A savage voice echoed through the store.
"You thought we were a joke, huh? That’s why you supplied those Butter Trip bastards with weapons. Why? Thought your life would get a little easier if you sold us out? Huh?"
Jin listened closely to the voice while also observing Brof’s face.
The old man’s expression twisted like he had just swallowed shit at the blatant accusation directed at him.
Then, it happened.
"You’d have been better off dying just now... So, what, you chose to keep living like this, all pathetic and filthy?"
Jin realized the voice was directed at them.
Immediately, he shoved Brof’s chest roughly. The next moment, rat-tat-tat-tat!, bullets ripped through the door and flew toward them.
As yellow streaks cut through the air, Jin launched himself behind a three-tiered shelf.
He flipped the fire selector to single-shot mode and waited briefly for the barrage to die down. The moment it did, he responded with precise fire.
This wasn’t a warning shot. In that brief window, Jin’s eyes never lost track of the silhouettes beyond the bullet-riddled door.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
With a series of sharp gunshots, someone collapsed.
"Fuck!"
A startled scream.
Jin didn’t hesitate.
Instead of ducking back behind the shelf,
He activated his Mana Circuit and charged toward the door.
Power surged through his entire body.
It felt as if there was a hidden accelerator inside him, and he had just slammed his foot down on it.
His steps felt light.
Meanwhile, the ground beneath his feet cracked from the force.
Before he knew it, his body, now engulfed in a blue glow, slammed into the door.
Bang!
The door, already weakened to its limit, was blown off its hinges.
In the darkness beyond, Jin switched the fire selector to full-auto.
Then, without a shred of hesitation, he pulled the trigger in the direction of the enemy’s presence.
The muzzle spat fire.
In the strobing light of the gunfire, Jin caught glimpses of their faces, startled, contorted, panicked.
Right up until the moment they collapsed, bleeding out, they never even understood what had happened.
Leaving the fallen bodies behind, Jin discarded the empty magazine and charged forward.
He had already taken note of the remaining enemies’ positions in his flashing vision.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he spotted a gang member aiming a gun at him.
"D-don’t come any closer, you fucking bastard!"
The gangster, in a panic, pulled the trigger at the blue blur rushing toward him.
But Jin was much faster.
Lowering his stance, he let the bullet fly past overhead, then slammed the rifle’s stock diagonally into the man's knee.
"Arrrghhh!!"
His leg snapped like a twig, and he let out a bloodcurdling scream.
His body tensed in pain and collapsed stiffly, causing his gun to jerk upwards from the recoil.
Wild bullets sprayed in all directions.
Someone got hit and went down.
"Ahh!"
"Watch your fucking fire, dumbass!"
"Turn on the lights! Get the fucking lights on!"
"Shut the fuck up and shoot that blue freak first!"
Chaotic shouts overlapped.
But their confusion didn’t last long.
Because Jin had already reloaded and pulled the trigger again.
Brrrrrt!
The rapid gunfire rang in his ears for just a moment,
And in that moment, another three or four of them dropped before they could even react.
Now, only one enemy remained.
The one stationed outside, providing cover fire for his allies.
The one farthest from Jin’s position.
Click! Click!
At the worst possible moment, his magazine ran dry.
"Tch."
Jin cursed under his breath and threw himself to the side.
Bullets rained down on the spot he had just occupied, and one of them grazed his thigh.
He clenched his teeth. His right leg felt like it was on fire.
Compared to pistol rounds, rifle bullets packed far more gunpowder and gained immense acceleration from their longer barrels. The sheer kinetic energy was enough to take down a rhinoceros in one shot.
Even for someone like Jin, getting hit in a vital spot would be fatal.
Jin knew that instinctively.
But he didn’t retreat.
Instead, Jin forcefully channeled mana throughout his entire body, pushing off the ground with everything he had.
“......?!”
The gang member peering through his gun’s sights wavered.
His target was closing the distance like a cannonball.
And not in a straight line. The way Jin zigzagged, making impossible changes in direction, was beyond belief.
Superhuman strength, enhanced by mana, allowed him to perform movements that should have been impossible.
“Die-!”
The gang member fired in a panic, but his bullets hit nothing but empty air and the ground.
Jin wasn’t literally faster than bullets.
The problem was that the thug’s eyes couldn’t keep up with Jin’s movements.
In the span of a single breath,
The brief moment when inhaling and exhaling crossed,
Jin had already changed direction five times.
Then, he stomped down hard.
The ground caved beneath his foot as he shot upward, defying gravity.
For an instant, he seemed to soar through the air.
His leg stretched high toward the sky before slicing downward, carving through the wind.
Crack!
His heel smashed into the thug’s crown.
With his skull caving in, blood sprayed like a mist from his eyes, nose, and mouth as he collapsed, never to rise again.
“Hoo.”
Jin exhaled a heated breath and looked around.
The deafening gunfight had drawn plenty of attention.
At the entrance of a nearby alley, several onlookers had been peeking at the scene. But the moment their eyes met Jin’s, they scrambled away in terror.
They were clearly afraid of getting caught up in the mess.
Jin, however, wasn’t thinking about them at all.
He was just annoyed that his brand-new clothes were now completely soaked in blood.
“What a fucking mess…”
Muttering to himself, Jin trudged back toward the gun shop.
Inside, he found a man writhing in pain, clutching his broken leg,
And Brof, standing over him, growling furiously.
“You miserable bastard!”
The old man was huffing as he kicked the thug repeatedly in the ribs.
“Agh! Ugh! Aghhh!”
The man screamed each time, though it seemed less from the kicks themselves and more from the sheer agony of his shattered leg.
“You sold weapons to a rival gang? You thought you could take us out?”
Brof’s kicks grew more vicious.
Clumsy as his strikes were, his fury only intensified.
“I cut ties with you bastards because you’re scum who profit off kids! You modify kids younger than twenty! Wipe their memories! And keep doing it until they’re left as mindless husks!”
Jin furrowed his brows.
I killed them too easily.
Regret welled up inside him.
“This rotten city still has a line. And the Halifa Gang crossed it.”
With those words, Brof grabbed a gun off the floor.
Without waiting for any excuses, without the slightest hesitation, he pulled the trigger.
Bang!
The thug’s head jerked violently, and a brass casing clattered to the ground.
“Hoo… Hoo…”
Brof took deep, heavy breaths before tossing the gun aside.
He stared at the corpse with its exploded skull for a long moment before sighing and shifting his gaze.
“…What the hell are you? You’re not just some ordinary fighter, are you?”
It was clearly directed at Jin, but he didn’t respond.
At that moment, his brain was flooded with dopamine.
(Completed!) Good Neighbor
The euphoric rush from a massive experience gain was like a drug.
And that only pissed him off more.
It felt like grinning while accepting pocket money from his parents’ murderer, utterly disgusting.
Still, he had to take what he could get.
After all this bullshit, he deserved at least that much.
Jin refocused and examined his status.
Unfortunately, he was just a bit short of leveling up.
But considering he had only learned about mana circuits less than a day ago, this much progress was more than enough.
As Jin opened his eyes again,
Brof suddenly shouted right in his face.
“Are you fucking deaf?!”
“Shit! What the hell, why are you yelling?”
“Because you weren’t answering, dumbass! I asked five times already, who the hell are you?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake! I told you, I’m a customer! I came here on Khalifa’s recommendation!”
What the hell was wrong with this old man?
Fed up with the old man’s stubborn and incomprehensible attitude, Jin mentally downgraded Brof’s title from “sir” to “old geezer.”
And that old geezer muttered,
“…Khalifa, you say?”
Brof furrowed his wrinkled brow and gave Jin a fresh once-over, scanning him from head to toe.
“If she recommended you… then you must be a solo. A rising talent? I don’t recognize your face.”
“Come on. Is my personal history really important right now? I didn’t fight for gratitude or anything, but there’s a proper order to things…”
“Uh, well, ahem.”
At Jin’s grumbling remark, Brof coughed awkwardly.
His shifty gaze suggested he wasn’t entirely without guilt.
“S-sorry about that. The Halifa bastards have put me on edge lately… I’m not usually like this.”
After some more rambling, Brof finally extended his wrinkled hand.
“The name’s Brof. Thanks. You saved my life.”
Jin clasped the offered hand.
“Call me Jin. Remember this face, because I’m going to be the Solo King.”
With their introductions finally out of the way, the two took a moment to scan their surroundings.
“So… what are you gonna do with the store in this state?” Jin asked.
“Not much I can do. It’s my own fault for underestimating how insane the Halifa Gang had become.”
“What about retaliation?”
“The guy with the broken leg over there was their boss. This is the end of the Halifa Gang. Since this is a business, there are ways to deal with any remaining stragglers. You don’t need to worry about it.”
Brof’s eyes carried an unusual sharpness as he spoke.
Well, it made sense. A guy running a gun shop in Downtown wouldn’t be just some regular old man.
…Though didn’t he just scream like crazy earlier?
Jin reconsidered his assessment of Brof.
A porn-loving, cowardly yet strangely competent old gun dealer.
Just then, Brof spoke up again.
“I haven’t properly treated you as a customer. Though late, would you like to take a look around?”
“Here? Now?”
Jin muttered, glancing at the wrecked firearms strewn about.
“No offense, but it’s like shopping for a flooded car…”
At that, Brof chuckled.
“Who said you’d be shopping here? What you see on the surface isn’t everything. Follow me. I’ll show you something special, custom gear.”