The Genius Assassin Who Takes it All

Chapter 383: Deadly Strike (2)

“Urgh.”

As mana began to gather explosively and that mana was focused entirely onto a single point of the mana-shot rifle,

the level of pain he felt also rose.

There was a barrier to prevent the gun from overheating due to the mana being condensed for Deadly Strike, but nothing to reduce the pain.

Still, the more pain he felt, the more he could see just how enormous the amount of mana gathering into the gun was.

Mana that would normally have been enough to fire several shots was now continuously concentrating into a single point.

Since this isn’t a modified gun, I should stay within the limits the skill allows.

He decided not to push the experiment too far.

If he compressed five thousand mana—beyond the range the skill allowed—and the gun happened to explode...the problem wouldn’t be the experiment; the one holding the gun—himself—would be in danger. He had no intention of doing something that reckless.“Hoo.”

He took a deep breath.

Separate from his breathing slowly calming, the pain that felt like his entire body was about to burst continued, but Kang-hoo endured it in silence.

Pain from mana overuse, overconcentration, and overabsorption was practically the fate of someone with congenital mana hyper-sensitivity.

In the past, he had felt it was a pity to have a body with such penalties, but now he thought of it as a kind of medal.

If he hadn’t had the trait of congenital mana hyper-sensitivity, he would never have risen to where he was now.

He would have lived on as an assassin tormented by chronic mana shortages, extending a mayfly-like life day by day.

A deal with a devil.

That was how Kang-hoo saw it.

A deal where you received extraordinary pain in exchange for an even more extraordinary talent. If you were satisfied, it was a pretty decent bargain.

And then—

Bang!

He pulled the trigger.

A pale violet flame flared from the muzzle, and in the blink of an eye, the magic bullet slammed into the dummy.

In the next moment—

Chaaang...!

“Wow.”

The exclamation slipped out on its own.

The dummy that had taken the lethal magic bullet forged by the Deadly Strike skill head-on shattered into pieces.

Which meant— if a level-400-class hunter had taken that shot in an unguarded state, they would have died just like that. Blown apart.

For firepower at a level where the barrier protecting the gun’s durability still holds... this much, huh...

If he had pushed further, and if the gun had been able to withstand even greater strain than now, the level of the destroyed dummy would have been much higher, and so would the equivalent level of the hunter it represented.

It didn’t exactly fit the assassin profession, but he was very satisfied to have gained a new sure-kill move for striking targets at long range.

Because really— if you had a ranged skill you could use like this, it became a valuable asset whether you were fighting hunters or monsters.

Ayane would find this interesting if I showed it to her.

Thinking of Ayane drooling just from seeing the demonstration, Kang-hoo let a faint smile tug at his lips.

With her mana-shot rifle, he might be able to verify this skill’s firepower even more precisely.

In any case, he had definitely secured a tool for using this deadly skill in emergencies.

It fit his hands well, and no matter how he aimed at a target, there was no discomfort. In other words, their compatibility was excellent.

Tomorrow night, he would meet Ayane at Incheon Airport and then head to Germany together.

Their second trip to Germany, leaving in a far more upgraded state than before.

This time, it was a journey to a place he recognized as the “Golden Triangle,” somewhere with hefty rewards.

He was already looking forward to it.

The process wouldn’t be easy, but once he saw it through to the end, the fruit would be sweet.That night, he stayed in Busan.

Since the flight was tomorrow night, there was no need to rush back up to Seoul, and it was also thanks to Kang Bok-hwa’s consideration.

Staying for a night at the hotel she ran, Kang-hoo also had dinner with Jung Yuri.

For a little while, he was able to step away from complicated thoughts and catch his breath, talking about everyday things.

Through Master K, she knew well that Kang-hoo was receiving instruction from Celestial Assassin.

So what Jung Yuri was most curious about was how much he was learning from his master.

On the other hand, she also said it was a shame she didn’t have someone like that who could be a mentor to her.

In truth, if she wanted to find someone who could be her master, it wasn’t impossible. There were decent candidates.

The problem was that they weren’t hunters of Korean nationality, so she would have to go overseas just to meet them.

And since Kang-hoo was the only one who knew about them, it was tricky to create a point of contact in the first place.

If he could just solve that problem properly, there would be a way to find Jung Yuri a good master. The synergy would be great too.

Of course, it wasn’t something he could set in motion right now. Someday... a good opportunity would definitely come along at least once.

Night.

After finishing his shower, Kang-hoo lay his relaxed body down on the bed and turned on the TV.

The hunter news channel he habitually flipped to happened to be reporting on the Shintu Guild.

Since it was covering information that was already somewhat known to the public, there was nothing particularly special.

There was, however, something to chew on.

The three-way race started earlier than I thought. Things happened so suddenly that they must have been slow to respond.

Contrary to his initial expectation that the succession battle for the Shintu Guild would devolve into what you’d call a dogfight, the rearrangement of traffic had been surprisingly quick. There were currently three candidates for Shintu Guild’s successor.

The first was Sim Jun-gyeong, the guild’s “elder” and the leader of the moderate faction.

Here, “elder” referred to the founding members of the Shintu Guild.

In other words, people who had been with the now-deceased former guild master Go Cheon-yeong since he founded Shintu Guild.

Just looking at the picture, he seemed like a hunter anyone would see as the clear number one heir, but his problem was a lack of support base.

When it came to their stance on neighboring countries and their guilds,

Sim Jun-gyeong was a moderate who believed in living by cooperating and harmonizing with others without sharp edges.

On matters like narcotic painkillers and human trafficking, he was closer to the side that thought they had to clean house instead.

He was completely opposed to the hardliners who believed they should earn money by any means necessary, in any country.

Since Shintu Guild had roughly a 7:3 ratio of hardline hunters to moderates,

Sim Jun-gyeong, despite being the de facto first-in-line successor, had a laughably small backing to draw on.

The second was Chu Ye-seong, known as the leader of the hardliners. He always stood on the opposite side from Sim Jun-gyeong in every matter.

His succession strategy also began—and still continued—with relentlessly hammering Sim Jun-gyeong.

The one who had joined in here was Yu Cheonghwa.

Within the Shintu Guild, she was thoroughly part of the non-mainstream, but she still had something to rely on.

The network she had built up in the Shinsu Guild, a satellite guild of the Shintu Guild, was far larger than anyone had expected.

Though the Shinsu Guild had its own master, it was no exaggeration to say that the real influence in practice lay with her.

With Shinsu Guild’s full-throated support behind her, she had turned this succession battle from a two-way into a three-way fight. It had become a melee.

“Looks like the internal talks (naedam) are over. Now it’s time for the external war (oejeon).”

The Shintu Guild’s succession rules were simple.

First came naedam, where the candidates for successor tried to find points of compromise among themselves—essentially negotiation and deliberation.

According to the news, naedam had broken down as of yesterday. When that happened, they moved on to the next stage.

That was oejeon.

The content was simple: a process of eliminating your rivals by any means necessary.

It was a survival-of-the-fittest rule Go Cheon-yeong had created in case of emergency, a method agreed upon long ago.

“There’s not no room for me to intervene.”

Kang-hoo stroked his chin.

During the oejeon process, there was no problem with whatever methods a successor candidate used.

In other words, it was possible for an outsider like Kang-hoo to participate as a mercenary and kill rival candidates on behalf of a successor.

Of course, that was easier said than done; in reality, it was extremely hard for such assassinations to take place—but not impossible.

If Yu Cheonghwa becomes the Shintu Guild’s master, the entire guild infrastructure becomes hers.

If that happened— there would be no reason for Yu Cheonghwa to join The Thirteen Stars. Its allure would evaporate.

No matter how many dungeons Jang Si-hwan owned, they couldn’t compare to Shintu Guild, the number one guild in China.

Given the current power struggle over succession, the line between her and Jang Si-hwan would already have been drawn.

Yu Cheonghwa was absolutely not connected to Jang Si-hwan by any sense of duty, friendship, or affection.

Even in the original story, she had used The Thirteen Stars strictly as a means to secure her own financial power...

So if he could tilt her even a little more toward Shintu Guild, cracks would inevitably form in their relationship.

‘If I can establish a good point of contact with Yu Cheonghwa here, I’ll have a much easier time operating in China.’

China, with its uniquely vast territory, was home to a huge variety of dungeon concepts. The rewards were just as diverse.

If guild “consideration” could be used to override the restrictive dungeon-entry rules for foreigners, that would be ideal.

‘If this goes the way I want and I get the result I’m aiming for, it’ll twist the timeline quite a bit.’

Timeline.

It was a term he had used often back when he lived the life of the original author, writing novels.

In stories where the protagonist went back to the past or possessed a body at a particular point in time while knowing the future, when they changed the future from the way it originally went, he would often describe it as “twisting the timeline.”

If Yu Cheonghwa withdrew from The Thirteen Stars or distanced herself from Jang Si-hwan, Emilia and Takashi would naturally drift away too.

Three out of the thirteen core villains of the original work would drop out as a bundle. That was no small thing.

He immediately picked up his smartphone.

This time, instead of agonizing over it, he planned to make a move before his thoughts got tangled again.

The recipient: Emilia.

He intended to ask her, Yu Cheonghwa’s closest aide, to create a connection point for him.“Is this... for real? This is insane.”

It was past midnight.

Inside the underground gym building he had purchased in its entirety not long ago, Park Dong-jae’s fingertips were trembling.

Because it was a gym that had gone unused and left neglected for so long, there were more than just one or two things that needed fixing.

The storage area, in particular, had become practically a trash dump, so he had been on the verge of calling in a professional cleaning crew.

So when he opened the locked storage room door, intending only to give its condition a once-over for consultation, he was stunned to see that a dungeon entrance had appeared where, as recently as the day before yesterday, there had been nothing.

Something that hadn’t existed was now there.

Naturally, this newly formed dungeon did not exist in the Public Safety Bureau’s database. It hadn’t been registered.

There were never cases where a dungeon that already existed disappeared for no reason, but new dungeons appearing where there had been none happened from time to time.

Normally, when something like this happened, the “principle” was to report it to the Public Safety Bureau and receive a reward.

But unless you were an idiot, you didn’t do that—you kept it secret and treated it as a personal asset.

“What do I even do with this...? I’m way too scared to go in alone.”

Since it was a newly formed dungeon, the rewards would undoubtedly be generous. The perks for the first raid were always big.

But the thought of going in alone made Park Dong-jae, a non-combat support-class buffer, worry first and foremost.

In times like this, there was only one person whose very thought gave him a sense of reassurance.

Beep.

Park Dong-jae pressed speed dial number 1.

The person saved under a number even higher than his parents.

【Shin Kang-hoo-hyung】

It was Kang-hoo, his savior whose life-saving grace he could never forget, and his role model as a hunter.

If it was Kang-hoo— he felt sure that, even in a dungeon he was entering for the first time, he wouldn’t wander like Park Dong-jae but would find a way forward.

No, he was certain of it.