Mercenary Black Mamba

The loud roars and screams abruptly ended, and the inner recesses of the office, stretching as wide as an expansive athletics field was met with an eerie silence.

Mu Ssang took down one opponent with an ashtray then finished off five more retards with a designated ax in only two breaths' worth of time. Quite shockingly, the disadvantaged embodied physical form of inhabiting a human being didn't even adversely affect the moves of his original martial arts practice.

Not a single piece of the office furniture broke during the commotion. The wall-mounted fan still whirred away persistently on end, unbroken, while the TV continued to mechanically screen all the lewd scenes and the accompanying steamy sound effects.

The world... had not changed at all. If it hadn't been for the pool of blood spreading wide over the patterned floor tiles, Nupchi would've believed that he had been hallucinating under the hot summer sun. He suddenly felt a need to go and relieve his bladder in the toilet.

*

"Hu-Euuuh..." Kang Min-seok let out a whimper that bore odd inflections of tone.

His dazed eyes scanned the unconscious gangsters laid out on the floor. No wonder something felt off the moment this bastard stepped in the office. It was a complete disaster that Kang Min-seok's bad premonitions always proved to be very accurate and justified.

His dejected gaze lingered upon the man in his mid-forties, the one who dallies around with the tomahawks. Even though he resembled a deflated balloon at the moment, that man was called the Tempest of Twin Axes once upon a time in Murakami-Gumi.

At the middle of 70s when the turf war in Hiroshima was at its peak, it was none other than the twin axe wielder Jang Yeong-pal that turned the residence of Oka-gumi's field lieutenant into a sea of dripping red stains of blood.

But now, the team leader of the special business operations team got his axes stolen before getting killed off. If this was a dream, then it had to be an absolute terrifying nightmare. If it was a joke, then it was truly devoid of any humor in the faintest sense.

*

"Oii, Min-Seok? That's enough distraction, so it's time we get back to our business, no?"

"H-huh-urgh! You, you absolute beast!" Kang Min-seok finally returned to reality and began stumbling back in a comatose, foggy state of mind.

That calm voice, seemingly sounding like a big brother chiding his youngest sibling, terrified Kang Min-seok endlessly. He stared at Mu Ssang as if the latter were some sort of alien invading intruder.

"Now, now. Take a seat. Let's get back to where we left off." Mu Ssang grinned brightly while plopping down on the couch.

Kang Min-seok's eyes finally regained their focus. The special business operations team was the core of the Pungguk gang, responsible for 90% of the gang's revenue. In a group filled with talented, intense gangsters, Kang Min-seok still managed to climb to the position of the mid-boss based merely on his venomous drive alone. He was not a push-over, to sum things up concisely/

He cautiously posed a question. "Brother, which organization are you from, if you don't mind me asking?"

If this unknown intruder was affiliated with a major organization, then regardless of what, negotiating remained the sole solution. But no matter how Kang Min-Seok racked his brain, he couldn't recall any organizations that held in their legion a fighter of such superior caliber. However, different organizations joined hands after a bit of a turf war happened as a matter of course.

'Hoh, would you look at this punk?'

The way Kang Min-seok addressed Mu Ssang and his manner of speech had drastically altered. But that only allowed Mu Ssang to see through Kang Min-seok's thought processes. Not only was this rat-faced punk trying to save face, but he was also even aiming to get himself an achievement by turning this crisis into an opportunity to profit, gain an advantage.

"Why do you want to know that, when you're nothing but a leech sucking out blood from people at the end of their ropes? Start worrying about saving your own neck from trouble instead."

'...You motherf*cker!'

Kang Min-seok's expression disintegrated into a chaotic mess. He was trying to buy some time but that just didn't pan out.

Without a doubt, he'd be saddled with all of the blame for this incident eventually. The higher-ups would no doubt demand that he offer up at least two of his fingers as compensation while accusing him of failing miserably to competently manage the 'clients'.

No, wait; since the team leader got done in too, so maybe it'd be the whole hand, in its place! N-no, wait some more! Even before that could happen, Kang Min-seok might get killed by this intruder or end up as a cripple as an immediate consequence.

'Sh*t! I'm the motherf*cking viper, Kang Min-seok! And my sashimi blade can put a hole in any as*hole's gut!'

It was a case of acting now or facing certain impending doom. Kang Min-seok 'mistakenly' hit a ballpoint pen and dropped it on the floor, then while pretending to pick it up, he sneakily pulled out a sashimi blade from the sheath strapped from under beneath his shin.

Cold sweat trickled down his forehead. His opponent was an unimaginably skilled expert. He only had one shot at this.

Kang Min-seok's lowered posture sprang up within a blink of an eye.

Pow-!

His left hand smacked the thick document file to scatter the papers around. He then thrust the sashimi blade faster and stronger than he had ever done in his entire life.

What an unfortunate thing it was, though, that Kang Min-seok had completely overlooked the simple fact of Jang Yeong-pal losing his ax and getting completely finished off, obliterated just a minute ago.

"Heok?!"

Kang Min-Seok's eyes threatened to pop out of their sockets. He expected the scattering documents to blind the intruder for a moment there, yet not a single piece of paper flew up into the air. He also didn't get that distinctive sensation of a blade carving into the soft human flesh, either.

Worse still, the moment he realized that the bestial being before his eyes was beaming with smug condescension, he felt nothing but empty air pockets within his grasp. The tool of the trade that had been accompanying for the past ten years betrayed its master and entered the bastard's clutches, instead, how unfortunate!

Even before he had the chance to freak out, though, his right hand was grabbed by the forearms.

"I see, you're stained to the core with the mindset of a Yangahchi, eh?"

Those words rumbled like thunder in Kang Min-seok's ears.

Stab-!

The sashimi blade spun around in the air before stabbing straight into the table below. And the spot the blade dug in happened to be where Kang Min-seok's hand remained dangling.

"Kukuh!"

Kang Min-seok's eyes turned bloodshot within an instant. The feeling shooting up from the hand traveled along his nerves to slam into his brain. It only took a millisecond for his brain to determine that that feeling was in fact, stinging jabs of pain.

He dazedly stared at his old tool of the trade, its handle currently protruding out from the back of his hand.

A sense of déjà vu washed over him. These memories flooded in that he had forgotten about completely until this precise moment... Back in the days of elementary school, the pastime of insect collecting was the homework teachers loved to assign their kids during the Summer vacation camps. The insect collection box is made out of cardboard and vinyl cover, dragonflies, locusts, long-legged hoppers, regular grasshoppers, and a large garden spider, all pinned up on a board...

Why was Kang Min-seok recalling all those things at this present moment?

"Kkuaaaaahk!"

He belatedly shrieked out. It wasn't a dragonfly pinned to the insect collecting board, but his own right hand. The cold, uncaring blade severed the bone and tendons in his hand to bury itself in the table until the only part left protruding externally was the hilt.

His shock and the subsequent terror far exceeded the immense pain that he felt.

"I thought you were a venomous, highly driven scoundrel, but you ain't much, huh."

Smash-

The noise of splitting a piece of firewood with an ax exploded, blasted out loudly. Spits of blood and little white objects burst out flying from Kang Min-seok's mouth. He couldn't even scream as his figure floated up in the air before crash-landing back with a loud thud on the ground.

The blade's sharpness meant that his right hand was ripped apart into shreds. Kang Min-seok trembling with whites showing in his eyes eventually went slumped down limp on the ground.

"Huh-uh..." Nupchi looking on also shuddered violently as if he was trying to squeeze out the last drop of his urine with force.

He could clearly see all the 'corn kernels' that flew out of Kang Min-seok's mouth. A strike of that power invariably meant that never mind just some teeth, the poor sucker's gums and jawbone must've shattered into vast smithereens.

Only then did Nupchi realize that the complete terror, his big brother, had gone easy on him back in the Gasansanseong Fortress. He inwardly thanked the terror, then also thanked his boss for personally supervising the physical hunt for Missus Kim Mal-Soon.

"Hey, Nupchi. Stem this guy's badly wounded, bleeding heavily for me. We're not done yet, after all."

"Yessir!"

Nupchi ripped up the shirt of one of the Yangahchis and wrapped it up around Kang Min-seok's mangled right hand. The hand was almost sliced neatly apart into two shredded slabs by now.

There was not one single hint of hesitation or conscience in Mu Ssang's ruthless, sudden strike of attack. Nupchi had gone through all sorts of life-or-death situations before but even he was left shuddering at the decisiveness of his big brother. In fact, he had to question if this man was really the same guy as the one who got flustered by young girls nagging him or treated a shabby-looking old monk with so much respect and reverence.

*

Bang-!

The steel door flung wide open suddenly, almost threatening to detach from its hinges in the process. A large group wielding all sorts of weapons rushed and pounded, pouring inside. Some wore business suits, some wore gym clothes, T-shirts, all proud wife beaters or bashers, and one of them even showed up in his floral-patterned pajamas while wielding a steel pipe.

They seemed to come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but all of them emanated the exact same aura or vibes - and this vibe was 'bloodthirsty.'

These enraged men were, of course, the members of the Pungguk gang, tipped off by the sales manager. Bak Gi-chung called every member he could get in touch with, and they all ran over here as hastily as they could. The interior was over one hundred Pyeong in size, but it still filled up to the brim in an instant when thirty men flooded into the room's interiors.

"Nupchi, step back!"

Nupchi rapidly evacuated to the far side of the room. He already knew that barging in now would only get him into trouble, especially when dozens of angry men brandishing tools of violence have emerged on the scene.

The old adage went that no one person could stand up against a numbers game. Nupchi estimated that his limit was sending two punks to heaven, but that's about it. By the time he got rid of one bastard and started on the second one, he would've been stabbed in the gut and his head burst wide open. That was the terrifying consequence, the result of a gang bashing, pounding.

*

The gang members crowding around at the exit suddenly divided into halves resembling the Red Sea parting. A business suit-wearing man in his late 40s leisurely waltzed into the interior. He looked like your typical aging gangster with nothing but greed left, a remnant in his sodden head, judging from his sagging belly, a gait that had lost their tension and the flabby cheek flesh. He took his time scanning the interior briskly before fixing his gaze upon the figure of Jang Yeong-pal.

"Dammit! Go check up on his state."

"Yessir!" A Yangahchi quickly rushed over and pressed his ear to Jang Yeong-pal's chest. "He's just unconscious."

"Take him to the hospital."

"...Fut!" Mu Ssang ended up laughing at that.

That chubby bastard hadn't even looked after himself properly, so it was quite a sight to see him act like he owned the place after dragging in a handful of Yangahchis.

Whoosh-!

A steel pipe flew in.

Bang-!

The weapon buried itself deeply in the patterned floor right below the groin region of the punk trying to help Jang Yeong-pal out.

"Hiiiik?!" The Yangahchi freaked out. He discarded Jang Yeong-pal and urgently scrambled back.

"Don't move! Take one step, and I'll turn you into a shish kebab."

Rumble-

An intense and heavy baritone voice rocked the interior. The once-noisy space instantly fell in awkward, eerie silence.

Bak Gi-chung asked cautiously. "If you don't mind me asking, where are you from, brother?"

However, Mu Ssang ignored the question and shifted his gaze over to Nupchi. "Hey, Nupchi. Are the Yangahchi as*holes working part-time in the local civic service offices or something? Why is it that every single one I meet lately is conducting a census?"

"Maybe they are searching for their dads who abandoned them when they were still young? Kekeke!" Nupchi cackled, guffawing, bellowing away.

Bak Gi-Chung's complexion turned dark-crimson to resemble a pig liver. The thing was, his lifelong trauma just happened to be his father. That man ran away with another woman, abandoning his wife and Bak Gi-chung in the process - which meant Nupchi had inadvertently stepped on Bak Gi-Chung's reverse scales just at that point.

"Kill them! Show them no mercy!" Bak Gi-chung bawled out, shrieking like a wounded animal. He completely forgot about the steel pipe buried in the floor and the sight of comatose, motionless Mister Twin Axe.

"Kill 'em!"

"Woaaaaah!"

The Pungguk gang members charged directly into the interiors like raging, hormonally charged bulls. These punks were cut from the same cookie-cutter, of course. Mutts ganging up would invariably lose their fear. Obviously, a bunch of Yangahchis was only suited to stealing from the helpless working class would not know anything about forming ranks, encirclement, or even attacking in a tribe at a go. They just rushed in without even hatching any plan or order.

"Useless idiots, you must be elated about remaining as mere juvenile simpletons."

BANG-!

Mu Ssang kicked the couch with enough force to launch a jeep in the air. The heavy furniture, which was a wooden frame clothed in buffalo leather, flew across the air like a massive, pulverizing, cannon bombshell.

"Uwaaahk?! Get out of the...!"

Panic spread across the faces of Yangahchis rushing, dashing in with all their energy. There wasn't any room to escape hastily in time, in any case.

"Kuwaaahk!"

"Aaah!"

Three men rushing in got thrown around like ragdolls for foolishly trying to block the incoming hurtling sofa chair with their bodies.

Crunch-!

The sofa chair continued on to destroy two more hapless Yangahchis that couldn't dodge in time before it collided into the wall with a heavy smash.

Boom-!

The sofa chair met a commendable end after utterly demolishing, eliminating five Yangahchis.

"Huk?! K-kill him!" Bak Gi-chung cried out desperately.

His terror took the outward form of aggressiveness. It wasn't him being brave, though; it was his urgent realization that unless he killed the enemy first, he'd be the one who was struck with a mortal blow today. All sorts of weapons, including steel pipes, motorbike chains, deformed bars (steel bars with longitudinal and transverse ribbing), a longsword, etc., pummeled down like a hailstorm like raining blows.

Some said that loan sharks were a couple of stages higher in the merciless scale compared to your regular gangsters. It certainly seemed that way right now. This situation was more than enough to make most normal people cower, yet these bastards still rushed in, full of wrath and scorn. You didn't have to be a genius to imagine just what they were like during the ordinary, regular days.

"Looks like you retards need a good bashing up as a lesson," said Mu Ssang as he took a huge stride forward.

Nupchi's eyes enlarged in wide wonder. The nightmare's figure seemed to grow as slender and feathery as a piece of paper as that moment. On top of that, the 'thinned' body began shimmering like a plume of smoke wafting through the air. All those weapons missed their target, only swiping at empty air or hitting the empty spot. Combining Fearless Steps with the One with Nature technique caused the phenomenon of vision distortion.

Although the gang rushed in with great momentum, that's as far as their threat level reached. Mu Ssang's wavering figure suddenly transformed into a raging tornado wind blowing.

Slapslapslapslap-!

Powpowpowpow-!

His figure was blinking and flashing while persistently accompanied by a series of impact noises. After getting their faces slapped around and their butts kicked hard, Yangahchis bounced and rolled around like corn kernels popping to explode loudly inside a popcorn maker.

Those who got to take a swing with their steel pipes should consider themselves fortunate, at least; most of the Yangahchis didn't even get a chance to use the weapons in their hands before crumbling to the ground like a mud wall crashing down against a raging flood gushing forth.

It might have been 'only' a mere slap, but one should never underestimate it. An impact force strong enough to break one's jaw and cause fractures in neck bones would concuss one's brain. Concussion of that level will result in the loss of vision and balance. If you have a weak constitution, you'll black out at once, but if you happen to have a sturdy build, then you'll be thrown down falling backward onto the floor, whimpering in pain, and unable to restrain yourself.

Even before the second hand of the wall-mounted cuckoo clock had a chance to do a half-circle, 29 of the thirty Yangahchis flooding inside the office space were bowing down on the floor tiles. The space over a hundred Pyeong wide was quickly filled up with the stench of blood and pained moans belonging to the gang members. Their bones were broken into bits, and their muscles were shredded apart mercilessly.

Bak Gi-chung was the only one still standing on his two feet.

"That was beautiful!" Nupchi quietly muttered without even knowing she was speaking aloud.

A streak of drool slowly trickled down the corner of his slack jaw. That famous saying about "Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee" seemed barely adequate to apply to amateurs at this point.

What Nupchi witnessed was so cool, and he dearly wanted to express his feelings in clever-sounding words. But he could only draw a blank. For the first time ever in his life, Nupchi got to learn how painful it was not to be able to verbally express his feelings. He was gradually awaking to the full possibilities of mastering philosophy.

*

"Your name?"

"I-it's B-B-Bak Gi-chung."

Bak Gi-Chung's breathing quickened, his legs trembling pitifully. 36 of his subordinates got utterly crushed in one breath. And all those subordinates were second to none when it came to their level of viciousness, too!

This man, whoever he was, definitely was not someone to be trifled with. Only then did Bak Gi-chung realize that he had yanked on King Yama's nose hair just now.

"Sit down!" Mu Ssang pointed at the couch.

Despite dozens of people now laying on the floor fully comatose, wounded, the interior of the office space remained remarkably intact, unscathed. Other than the kicked couch, not a single piece of furniture was disturbed. Even the calculator and the ashtray on the coffee table remained in the same spot, too. Such a display of skill was only possible for the Angel of Death Black Mamba, the god of war that exercised complete mastery over the battle's flow.

"Y-yes, sir!" Bak Gi-chung replied like a well-behaved elementary school kid and cautiously placed his rear-end on the far end of the couch.

A man who thinks the strength of a group is his own would instantly turn into a coward the moment said group scatters, gets diffused into the winds.

"Tell me, what's the highest interest rate as delineated by the Interest Limitation Act?"

"...?"

Bak Gi-chung couldn't immediately answer. But he didn't mean to do that. He was still too dumbfounded, stunned, for his brain synapses to connect properly.

Smack-!

A sound of a gourd shattering rang out piercing the awkward silence. A finger flick's power obviously depended on who was doing the flicking. A finger flicking at 100kph was already on the level of a lethal weapon.

Thud-

Bak Gi-chung flipped backward while the whites of his eyes were revealed.

"Huh? A weak punk like this dares to mess around like a gangster until now!"

Slap, slap-!

Bak Gi-chung regained his wits after his cheeks were ruthlessly slapped about twice.

"Hey, as*hole. I'm asking again, what's the highest interest rate as restricted by the law?"

"Y-yes, it's 25%." Bak Gi-Chung's brain desperately sought out the answer after his survival instinct kicked in.

"Oh, so you knew. Bak Gi-chung, call a tour bus here."

"W-why a tour bus...?"

"This punk is a glutton for punishment, isn't he? Hey, dumba*s, you think you're in a position to question me?"

Smack-!

Yet another finger flick rammed into Bak Gi-Chung's forehead.

"Kuuuuhk!"

Nupchi grabbed Bak Gi-Chung's hair just as the latter fell back, then whispered in his ear. "Blackout again, and it'll be a snip-snip for your junior. Got that?"