Chapter 23

School Bully Han Tae-seong (5)

Inside the billiard hall.

The murky heat radiating from the dozen or so gangsters crowding the narrow entrance heated the space. An ordinary adult man might have had his knees go weak and collapsed from their sinister presence alone.

“Fuck, has this son of a bitch lost his mind!!”

The man standing at the very front began charging forward, gripping a steel pipe.

A straightforward movement. But slow and obvious.

I took three large steps forward and reached out, grabbing his face before he could even swing the steel pipe.

[Prolonged physical contact with an evildoer has been detected.]

[Unique Skill ‘Resonance of Sin’ has been activated.]

The world shattered.

Illegal gambling dens, fraud, rape, assault.

Fragments of a shallow and disgusting life flashed before my eyes.

A man whose evil deeds exceeded 500 despite never having killed anyone.

He was trash whose entire life itself could fairly be called garbage.

—CRUNCH.

I tightened the hand gripping his face.

His jaw joint slipped out of place with a grotesque sound. At the same time, I swiftly struck down on both of his knees. His knees bent in directions they were never meant to bend, and he collapsed.

[Incomplete Judgment has been completed. Karma will be partially calculated.]

[Weight of the sins punished (Assault, fraud, rape): Base value 750 Karma]

[Physical Restraint (Permanent walking disability) Ratio (20%) applied: 150 Karma]

[Resonance of Sin Bonus (x1.1) applied ➔ 165 Karma]

[Final Calculation: 165 Karma acquired]

Text appeared in one corner of my vision.

But this wasn't the time to pay attention to it. Starting with the scream of the collapsing man, the gangsters rushed forward in a swarm, roaring like beasts as they swung their respective weapons all at once.

“You fucking bastard!! Kill him!!”

The billiard hall was spacious, but at the same time, narrow.

That was because the billiard tables packed closely together restricted their routes of attack. Of course, there were some who jumped onto the billiard tables and swung their weapons.

But even accounting for that, only two or three attacks could come at me simultaneously. First, I grabbed the ankle of the man trying to swing a steel pipe from atop a billiard table.

[Physical contact with an evildoer······]

More similarly shallow lives flashed past.

—CRUNCH.

A piercing scream.

I lightly shattered the shoulder blade of the man who collapsed while I held his ankle.

[······]

[Final Calculation: 132 Karma acquired]

—THWACK.

A baseball bat struck my shoulder.

I felt a slight pain, but it wasn't particularly severe. Instead, the gangster who had struck me stared at his own stinging palm and then looked at me with an expression that seemed to ask, Is this for real?

I brought my fist down on his shoulder.

—CRUNCH.

Once again, his life flashed briefly before my eyes.

[Final Calculation: 139 Karma acquired]

The number of men screaming and rolling across the floor gradually increased.

And the more of them ended up rolling around, the less the fight resembled a fight and the more it resembled simple garbage sorting.

I tore flesh and broke bones.

Every time my hands touched them, Resonance of Sin popped up like malicious advertisements on a website.

[110 Karma acquired]

[121 Karma acquired]

[110 Karma acquired]

Ignoring the flood of Karma calculation messages, I continued sorting the garbage.

“AAAAAGH!! My leg!! My leg!!”

“M-monster!! Fuck!! Nobody said anything about this!!”

Barely two or three minutes.

In that short time, the green billiard tables and the floor had become soaked in blood and vomit, and I had glimpsed no fewer than eleven garbage-like lives.

—CRUNCH.

[Final Calculation: 209 Karma acquired]

With the last one, all fourteen gangsters had fallen to the floor.

I looked indifferently down at the bastards rolling across the floor, tangled in blood and vomit, groaning like animals.

The accumulated Karma was 1,674.

Quite a large amount considering I hadn't killed a single person.

Unlike the bastards in Gimcheon, there were no heinous criminals among them who had personally torn apart human lives.

They were simply bastards who, during the dozen or so extra years they'd been given compared to juvenile offenders, had painstakingly scraped together petty and disgusting evil deeds until they'd accumulated this much Karma.

In the end, it meant they were nothing more than old garbage that couldn't even be recycled.

I turned my gaze.

At some point, the high school boys had huddled together in a corner, trembling. They were Han Tae-seong's lackeys.

Having witnessed real gangsters armed with weapons get smashed apart in only a few minutes, their faces had gone deathly pale. Traces of vomit stained some of their clothes, while someone's pant legs were visibly wet.

“E-eek!!”

Unable to endure my gaze, someone sprinted toward the entrance.

I'd already checked all of them once before anyway. I didn't bother stopping him.

That became the trigger.

Seeing that I let him flee, the others began shoving and trampling one another as they frantically rushed toward the entrance.

I slowly began walking.

Then I grabbed Han Tae-seong by the back of the neck just as he tried to slip away unnoticed among the group.

“No, not you.”

“Ugh······. P-please, spare······.”

I lightly raised my foot and stepped on his left ankle.

—CRUNCH.

“AAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!”

A scream burst out.

I grabbed his chin.

“Shh, quiet. If you've done something wrong, you should accept your punishment. If you scream your head off like that, it makes me look like the villain.”

“P-please, sp-spare······ Ghhhhh······.”

I lightly grasped the index finger of his uninjured left hand with my fingertips.

—CRUNCH.

“AAAAAGH!!!”

“Don't worry. Of course I'll let you live. If I'd intended to kill you from the beginning, there'd be no need to go through all this trouble breaking your fingers one by one. Don't you think?”

“Wh-what the hell do you want?”

Tears, snot, and saliva.

Han Tae-seong asked me as liquid poured from every opening in his face.

“Why, naturally······.”

—BANG!!!

My answer was buried beneath the dull explosive sound.

The entrance door was wrenched open so violently that it looked ready to tear free.

“Tae-seong!!! Which fucking bastard······.”

A middle-aged man with a solid build, wearing a suit.

It was Han Gi-taek, Han Tae-seong's father.

He entered, breathing heavily, and his gaze swept over the floor covered in blood and vomit and the subordinates sprawled everywhere. After being momentarily struck speechless, his gaze finally landed on Han Tae-seong, who was sobbing pitifully before me.

“Dad······! Daaaaad!!”

Han Tae-seong, his ankle broken, reached out and wailed desperately.

Perhaps a son was still a son, after all. When Han Gi-taek saw his son's miserable condition, his eyes turned bloodshot with rage.

“You fucking bastard!!!”

Han Gi-taek pulled a razor-sharp sashimi knife from inside his jacket.

A fairly quick charge. Then came a clean thrust that carried traces of considerable experience from his active days.

—Tap.

But it was useless.

My right hand caught his wrist.

“F-fuck······.”

Han Gi-taek's pupils shook violently.

His face flushed red as he threw his entire body weight into it, but it was useless.

[Prolonged physical contact with an evildoer has been detected.]

[Unique Skill ‘Resonance of Sin’ has been activated.]

Perhaps a boss really was a boss.

A past on an entirely different level from the earlier trash unfolded before my eyes.

The screams of a person being buried alive on a dark wooded hillside.

Severed body parts.

A woman staggering under the influence of drugs.

A father humiliated in front of his child.

It was a tower of evil deeds built from human lives and dignity.

“So this is what they mean when they say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.”

—CRACK.

I twisted and broke Han Gi-taek's wrist in my grip.

“AAAAAGH!!!”

Perhaps the knife in his hand had cut him, because blood sprayed through the air as the sashimi knife tumbled onto the floor.

I grabbed the screaming Han Gi-taek by the collar and slammed him straight into the floor.

—BANG!!!

The floor shook violently as Han Gi-taek coughed up dark red blood.

“D-Dad!!!”

“Tae, Tae-seong, cough!! Tae-seong!!”

Perhaps even villains felt tenderness toward their own flesh and blood.

The two called desperately to one another.

Of course, that had absolutely no effect on me.

‘I will become the hammer of judgment that punishes the evildoers forgiven by the Republic of Korea.’

The oath I had made that day remained completely unshaken even now.

I raised my right foot.

Then brought it straight down toward his neck.

—CRUNCH.

A grotesque cracking sound as his cervical vertebrae and windpipe were crushed at the same time.

Han Gi-taek's mouth froze half-open while uttering his son's name, and his body went limp like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

[Judgment has been completed.]

[Weight of the sins punished (Murder, illegal burial of bodies, drug trafficking, aggravated assault, etc.): +2,500 Karma]

[Resonance of Sin Bonus (x1.1) applied ➔ 2,750 Karma]

[Final Calculation: 2,750 Karma acquired]

The largest number among all the villains I had punished so far filled my vision.

“D-Dad······. Dad!! Daaaaad!!!!”

His father. The powerful backer behind every evil deed he'd committed had been meaninglessly crushed before his eyes. Han Tae-seong screamed over the steadily growing pool of blood.

“Tae-seong, then we should get back to what we were doing, shouldn't we?”

“Why, why did you kill my dad!! Why the hell!! What did my dad ever do wrong!!!”

“He's the man who gave birth to you. So he has to take responsibility. Don't you think?”

Even after I returned his own logic to him exactly as he'd used it, Han Tae-seong still failed to understand what those words meant.

“Why are you doing this to me, to me? Why the hell······.”

“Just because.”

—CRUNCH.

“AAAAAGH!!!!”

I shattered his lower back.

[Incomplete Judgment has been completed. Karma will be partially calculated.]

[Weight of the sins punished (Murder, assault, destruction): Base value 1,250 Karma]

[Physical Restraint (Permanent lower-body paralysis) Ratio (20%) applied: 250 Karma]

[Resonance of Sin Bonus (x1.1) applied ➔ 275 Karma]

[Final Calculation: 275 Karma acquired]

At last, the Karma calculation window appeared.

Looking down at the bastard screaming over the pool of blood while clutching his broken leg, I continued speaking.

“Now then, that's all for today. Let's see each other again sometime, shall we?”

_____________

2 a.m.

The first-floor public service desk of a police substation somewhere in Ansan.

Police Officer Kim Ha-yul, who was on night duty, could no longer resist the overwhelming drowsiness and kept nodding off.

—Jingle.

The bell attached to the entrance door rang through the quiet police substation.

Kim Ha-yul abruptly raised his head, opened his eyes wide as though he hadn't been dozing at all, and stared toward the entrance. But beyond the open door lay nothing but pitch-black darkness. There was no sign of the person who should have been there.

‘What?’

An eerie sensation.

A ghost? Kim Ha-yul sprang to his feet and leaned his head out over the reception counter at that very moment.

“Eek!?”

Kim Ha-yul instinctively recoiled in horror and stumbled several steps backward.

Someone was crawling along the floor from his blind spot, dragging himself forward with both arms while leaving a long trail of bright red blood behind him.

It was Han Tae-seong.

“Wh-wh-wh-what the hell!!”

“I did it. I beat him. I beat Kim Hyeon-jin to a pulp!!”

“Senior!! Senior!! We have an injured person here!! An injured person!! 119!! Call 119 immediately!!!”

Only belatedly realizing that he was a human being rather than a ghost, Kim Ha-yul hurried forward to help him up.

“I did it!! I beat him up. Lee Ji-hun pushed him because I threatened him and told him to beat him up, so that's why he pushed him!! Prison!! Put me in prison.”

“Wh-what did you say? Hold on. Calm down first. The hospital. Let's get you to a hospital first.”

“No!! Fuck, I'm telling you I did everything!!! Not the hospital, prison!! Put me in prison right now!!!”

Eyes filled with terror.

‘Let's see each other again sometime, shall we?’

That devilish whisper echoed endlessly in his ears.

A hospital? If that monster wanted to, he could appear again as early as tonight. The safest place was behind those iron bars, guarded by government officers armed with guns.

“I don't want to die. So not the hospital, prison!! Please!! Please save me!!”

A bizarre confession from a man whose lower body was paralyzed, repeatedly banging his head against the floor as he begged to be sent to prison instead of a hospital. In a world where every kind of sensational gossip spread and was consumed in real time, it took only a few hours for this extraordinary incident to spread everywhere.

© Myoyeop#12ipk

Author's Note

Thank you!!