Chapter 98: It's That Woman

The thugs charged in with overwhelming momentum.

They probably thought they could somehow manage it by pushing through with numbers and spirit.

But in reality, they couldn't even get close to Muno.

Thwack.

“Uk!?”

Thwang.

Woddeuk.

“The, the chains……”

Kwadeudeuk.

The four strands of chains, freely swimming through the air, struck or coiled around the thugs, breaking their bones and instantly rendering them incapable of fighting.

In a fight against a strong opponent, the chains were used for mobility support or as a surprising, sudden move.

But against these lowlifes, each one was a deadly weapon.

As a result.

“It’s a magician!”

It had even come to the point where such words were being uttered.

“What nonsense are you……!”

Chwareureureuk.

Kwadeudeuk.

“Kkeuaaaaa!”

The guy who had uttered such terrible nonsense had the bones in his entire body specially crushed into smaller pieces.

It only took a few minutes for the 30-odd thugs to be incapacitated in front of their base.

“Kkeueueu…….”

“My back, my back……”

“Kkeureureuk.”

A situation where all the thugs were rolling around with their spines shattered or one or two of their limbs crushed.

Only a very small number were still conscious enough to speak.

The gaze of Muno, who had created this carnage, was just cold.

On the contrary.

Jeobeokjeobeok.

“At least lower body paralysis, with a bonus of one or two arms completely shattered.

It’ll cost a lot of money to fix a body that's this broken. Right?”

He walked towards their base, raising his voice as if for them to hear.

“A priest with the ability to heal these kinds of injuries would naturally turn away guys like you.

Well, I don’t know if you guys can even go to the Temple.”

A few thugs flinched at his words.

As he looked back at the numerous paupers glaring at the thugs.

‘If they lived properly, they would have someone to look after them, and they might be able to get help and go to the Temple. If not…….’

……They would receive the proper karma they had built up.

Already seeing a few paupers slowly approaching the thugs, Muno raised his voice again as if for the guys still inside the building to hear.

And.

“Should I collapse the whole building, or should I go in and clean up the trash one by one……”

He followed the traces of metals moving busily inside the building.

‘Oh, trying to run away?’

After confirming a particularly annoying movement among them.

“Ready or not, here I come~ If you're caught~”

Pabak.

“You die!!”

He jumped into the building.

Thwang.

As soon as he broke down the door and entered, daggers flew in from the left and right.

Of course, since it was metal, it was a meaningless ambush for Muno, but he didn't even bother to block it.

Just.

‘Fools…….’

Tadang!

Babak.

He just laughed at the daggers that bounced off his armor without leaving a single mark and sent his chains flying towards the necks of the guys who had thrown them.

Woddeuk.

“Keoheuk”

“Keok!”

“I’m not killing you. Don’t be scared.”

“Kkeureureuk.”

“Even though I look like this, I don't kill humans who aren't magicians carelessly.”

Of course, they wouldn’t be able to move below the neck from now on.

“So don't run away!”

Hoping that the guys inside the building would hear his words, he moved on.

This strange building, which seemed to be made of dozens of connected low houses, had a complicated internal structure, so he couldn't find his way at all.

- Tadadak.

But the moment he detected a noisy presence moving hastily behind a wall, a presence that could be felt even without his metal detection ability.

Muno kicked the wall.

Kwaaaaaang!

The shabby-looking wall didn't break from his kick but was pushed back entirely.

A scream was heard from the other side.

“Keok!?”

“Aak!”

“It’s, it's a monster!”

Monster, my ass.

Thwang.

He punched a hole in the pushed-back wall and entered beyond it, where he saw the guys who were half-crushed along with the wall.

A follow-up confirmation kill.

Woddeuk.

No, confirmation of serious injury.

“Keoheuk.”

He made sure to break the spines of the fallen guys.

Chaeng.

He saw one guy, who had managed to avoid the disaster of the wall flying in, draw his sword.

“Why, why is a high-ranking knight doing this to us……!”

“Oh, you've got guts. But……”

Thwack.

Without having to use his own hands, Muno’s chain struck the guy’s abdomen.

“Kkeueu…….”

“Just guts.”

Woddeuk.

He lightly broke his neck bone.

Of course, just enough so that he wouldn't stop breathing.

He just lightly touched the temptingly protruding C1 and C2 vertebrae.

“Hey, hey, I told you I’m not killing you!?

Don’t run away, come at me!”

But still, the movements of the guys running around inside the building didn't change.

After that.

Thwang!

Woddeuk.

“Kkeureureuk.”

Kwaang!

Ppeok.

“Keoheuk.”

Kwadeuk.

A similar situation just repeated itself.

‘They’re all running away in all directions, these guys.’

Just as he was about to get annoyed at having to search the entire building to find one of them.

‘Basement?’

He felt a group of metals moving quickly towards a giant metal lump in the basement that had been bothering him from before.

‘Oh?’

But it wasn't easy to find the way to the basement among the complicatedly intertwined passages.

“Ah, screw it!”

……I’ll just tear it all down.

Muno drew his ‘Blade’ and swung it without hesitation.

The massive two-handed sword struck the floor of the shabby building.

Kwaaaaaaaang!

Urureureung.

Through the collapsed floor, Muno jumped down to the lower level.

And.

Kwaaaaaaaang!

Ururureureung.

He then began to smash through the floor repeatedly, creating a straight path towards the direction where the giant metal was detected.

* * *

“What the hell kind of bastard……”

The bald ‘Ted’ nervously scratched his tattooed head and ran towards the vault in the basement.

“Move it!”

“Yes, sir!”

In fact, he had slightly underestimated him.

Seeing the intruder's face, which looked too young for his deadly armor, he had even been pleased, thinking he might be able to obtain that extraordinary-looking armor.

Because of the guy’s appearance, who looked to be in his early twenties, he had guessed that he would be at best a 1-Star knight, no matter how strong he was.

However.

The moment he saw the young punk swinging a chain he had never seen before and turning his 30-odd subordinates into invalids, Ted had no choice but to give up resisting.

Never mind the unusual weapon that looked like an artifact, just looking at the way he controlled it.

‘At least 2-Star or higher.’

He was a strong person of a different class from himself, who had barely awakened at the end of his mercenary life and had drifted into the back alleys.

And only then did he remember the nicknames he had heard recently, such as the Street Destroyer and the Black Knight.

The kingdom's prodigy.

A young monster that he had heard ‘that person’ was also paying great attention to.

Why was a monster that should be playing in the big leagues coming to a shabby place like this and causing a ruckus?

“Which bastard provoked a high-ranking knight!? Huh!?”

“I, I wouldn’t…….”

“Shut up!”

- Urureureung.

“Damn it, move faster!”

Vowing to personally mess up the bastard who caused this mess if he wasn't killed by that monster, Ted kept moving.

Even if he had to run away, he had to take the treasures from the vault to avoid trouble later.

“Boss! Maybe we should just get ourselves out……!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!

The payment day is coming up! If we can’t pay, we’ll die anyway even if we survive that monster!”

“Then……”

“We grab only the valuables and run to the ‘training center’!

The secret passage in the basement connects to that area anyway!”

“Ah, yes!”

The reason he had been making a backer and paying them was for a time like this.

Of course, he was in a position to supply secretly trained personnel to that backer.

But it was also a clear benefit to him that he could use the novices who failed to awaken at the ‘training center’ but didn't die as members of his organization.

‘If we can just get there, there’s another monster who will take care of that monster.’

The backer of his backer. In other words, people who had come on the orders of a high-ranking person he couldn't even dare to look up at for some kind of operation.

One of them was from this slum.

An unusual appearance that was impossible to forget.

‘That mixed-blood bitch.’

A brown-skinned mongrel with a sharp face, without a hint of feminine flesh.

He still felt a twist in his gut when he thought about how that bitch, who couldn't even be used as a prostitute, had looked at him with contempt.

‘Damn bitch, who was it that sent her up, she doesn’t even know gratitude.’

Unfortunately, that very bitch was the leader of their group, so there was nothing he could do.

Yes, until yesterday.

Anyway, they would be able to handle that monster.

With that one hope, Ted began to run from the basement to the basement.

- Urururureung.

He tried his best to ignore the deadly vibrations that were getting closer.

But at the end of that desperate sprint.

“We’re, we’re here!”

The moment he arrived in front of a large vault.

Urururureung.

Thwang!

“Yeah. I’m here too.”

From above his head, the monster dropped down.

“H-how!”

Bingo.

Muno smiled coldly right in front of the tattooed bald man who was staring at him with wide eyes.

This was the Ted the southern thugs had talked about.

The boss of this child-begging organization, a waste of space that was even too good for the word trash.

The guys around him were probably executive-level trash too.

“Well.”

The moment he was about to kick him with an indifferent reply, he saw the guy flinch in reaction.

A movement unlike that of an ordinary person. Of course, even so.

Thwack.

“Keoeuk…….”

It was all the same.

“Boss……!”

Chwareureuk.

Bababababak.

He sent his chains flying to silence the other trash that was charging at him.

Woddeuk.

Tuk.

Tududuk.

He didn't forget to bless their future by surely touching the C1 and C2 vertebrae that were unusually visible today.

“K-keueu, why…… why, why are you doing this?”

But there was a separate reason for leaving the pale-faced bald man alone.

“That vault, is it yours?”

“Yes? Ah, yes. Y-you have to keep me alive to open the vault……”

“Hmph.”

Kwaaaaaang!

Ignoring the guy’s words, the greatsword he swung like lightning cut off one side of the vault.

“Oof, it’s pretty sturdy, huh?”

Muno shook his tingling hand and smirked.

‘It would have been a little embarrassing if I had tried to cut it in one go.’

Still, it was a a satisfactory result.

Muno smiled with satisfaction as he looked at his mana blade, which covered the sword’s body and shimmered like a gray flame.

The combination of the artifact-grade two-handed sword forged with 2-Class metal Spirit Arts and the mana blade resulted in a destructive power that could cut off a part of a heavy metal vault in an instant without using any special techniques.

Of course, he had also used his metal control ability to weaken the vault a little.

Woddeudeudeuk.

Geugeugeugeung.

When he forced open the door of the half-destroyed vault.

“Oh……!”

He saw the gold coins and jewels that filled it.

And also several documents placed on top of them.

“Heeik…….”

Ted, whose pale face was turning white again, collapsed on the spot and began to back away on his butt.

But Muno just glanced at the guy and was busy examining the vault again.

And as soon as he got a rough estimate, he frowned fiercely.

“Fuck, how much is this.

You gathered this much by exploiting kids?”

At a rough glance, it was an amount that far exceeded the annual budget of the Drasen territory.

No matter how much this was Ironheart, it was unbelievable that a back-alley thug had this much money in a vault.

But then.

“I, I was just. Doing as the higher-ups told me to do. P-please spare me. Sir.”

Ted, who saw his astonished expression, prostrated himself on the spot.

“Yeah. I didn’t break your neck because I wanted to hear about those higher-ups.”

Muno smiled murderously and approached the guy.

“……Yes?”

“Your organization’s guys, they attack like soldiers or assassins?

They’re not just thugs. Who is it, your backer?”

As he was messing these guys up, he couldn’t help but recall the rumor that the Ted Family was connected to a noble family.

However.

“Ah, ah that is, all…….”

The moment Ted was about to open his mouth.

Pushuk.

Suddenly, with a small noise, a small arrowhead shot out from the guy’s forehead.

“Huh!?”

An arrow that flew in as soon as it was recognized by his senses and pierced the target.

Teolseok.

Ted, whose eyes had lost their light, collapsed forward.

Muno’s gaze was fixed on the arrow that had pierced through the tattooed bald man Ted’s head.

An arrow that he had seen somewhere before, an arrow that he had never thought he would see again in this narrow underground passage.

And only then.

Geugeugeuk.

He noticed a gaping black hole, which he didn’t know if it had been open all along, closing behind the spot where Ted had collapsed.

A path that hadn't been visible just a moment ago.

‘A secret passage?’

As soon as that thought came to mind, he instinctively threw himself towards the closing black hole.