Chapter 5 Lethal Restraint

The serrated blade did not whistle. It moved with the quiet, desperate speed of a cornered animal. 

At this range, with my left arm throbbing a dull, useless rhythm and my body starved of muscle, a perfect evasion was impossible. I didn't try to dodge. Dodging would only leave me off-balance, opening my throat to his next strike.

I twisted my hips sharply to the right, stepping into the attack. 

The rusted steel caught the edge of my damp hanbok. It tore through the coarse fabric and bit deeply into the flesh of my left oblique. The serrated teeth of the dagger didn't slice cleanly; they chewed through skin and muscle, dragging forcefully against my ribs. 

A searing, white-hot line of agony flared up my side. The smell of my own blood instantly mixed with the acrid smoke of the burning thatched roofs. 

My breath hitched, but my eyes remained dead. Pain was just information. It told me the blade hadn't hit a major artery or punctured an organ. I was still functional. 

The mountain of a boss grinned, his rotten teeth bared in triumph as he felt the blade sink into me. "Got you, you little—"

He didn't finish the sentence. 

By stepping into his thrust, I had trapped his arm between our bodies. I clamped my injured left forearm down over his thick wrist, pinning the dagger inside my own flesh so he couldn't pull it out for a second strike. 

With my right hand, I formed a half-fist, protruding the knuckle of my middle finger. I drove it with every ounce of my meager body weight directly into the soft, unprotected hollow of his throat. 

It wasn't a lethal blow. I had pulled my strength at the last microscopic fraction of a second, fighting my own instincts harder than I fought him. 

The boss gagged, his eyes bulging from their sockets. His grip on the dagger vanished as his hands flew to his crushed windpipe. He stumbled backward, gasping for air that wouldn't come, his massive frame collapsing into the wet mud like a felled oak. He writhed, choking on his own spit, thoroughly incapacitated. 

The plaza fell utterly silent, save for the crackle of the burning shacks. 

I stood over him, my chest heaving. Slowly, I reached down to my side. I gripped the hilt of the serrated dagger lodged in my waist. I exhaled a slow, ragged breath, and yanked it out. 

Hot blood spilled over my fingers, splattering onto the muddy cobblestones. I tossed the bloody dagger onto the chest of the gasping boss. 

I turned my pitch-black eyes toward the remaining thugs. They were frozen, staring at me as if I had crawled straight out of the underworld. I hadn't used flashy sword arts. I hadn't roared with righteous fury. I had simply taken a blade to the gut without blinking and dismantled their leader in a single, brutal motion. 

"Take him," I rasped, my voice barely a whisper, yet it carried clearly over the crackling flames. "Leave the district. If I see any of you wearing the Black Dog colors again, I won't hold back my sword."

They didn't need to be told twice. Two of the men scrambled forward, grabbed their choking boss by his heavy leather collar, and dragged him away through the mud. The rest scattered like roaches fleeing a lantern's light, disappearing into the dark, rain-soaked alleys. 

As the last of their footsteps faded, the adrenaline evaporated. 

My knees buckled. I caught myself against a rotting wooden post, clutching my bleeding side. The wound was deep. If I didn't stop the bleeding soon, I wouldn't need Jang Mu-Rak to finish me off; I would bleed out in the filth of the Beggar District before dawn.

A bright, chiming sound echoed in my skull. 

[Major Virtue Achieved]

[Karma +45] — Saved a settlement from destruction. Spared defeated enemies.

[Current Balance: 50]

Fifty points. It was a fortune compared to the scraps I had earned earlier. 

Convert forty Karma, I commanded the system, grinding my teeth against the pain. Send the Qi to the wound.

[Converting 40 Karma to Spiritual Energy.]

A rush of pure, scalding heat bloomed in my chest. It was significantly larger than the drop I had received before. The golden energy flooded my depleted meridians, rushing forcefully toward the laceration on my side. 

It wasn't a gentle, miraculous healing light. It felt like someone had poured boiling water into my open wound. The raw Qi forcibly knitted the torn muscle fibers together, cauterizing the bleeding blood vessels from the inside out. I bit down hard on the collar of my hanbok to muffle a scream, my entire body trembling violently. 

When the heat finally subsided, I pulled my hand away. The bleeding had stopped. The deep gash was now a jagged, dark red scar, tender to the touch but no longer lethal. 

I spat a mouthful of blood and saliva into the mud and pushed myself off the post. 

I looked toward the center of the plaza. The villagers were still huddled together near the burning wreckage of their homes. I had expected them to flee, but they were frozen, staring at me. 

I took a step toward them, intending to tell them to put out the fires before they spread to the rest of the district. 

As I moved, an old man at the front of the group flinched violently. He threw his arms out, shielding the small frame of Kang So-Mi behind him. His eyes were wide with unadulterated terror. 

"P-Please," the old man stammered, his voice cracking. "We have nothing left. We have no silver. Just take our lives quickly."

I stopped. 

The rain began to fall again, cold and indifferent, washing the grime from my face. I looked at their expressions. There was no gratitude. There was only the primal, suffocating fear of prey looking at a predator. 

They hadn't seen a hero saving them. They had seen a monster violently dismantling other monsters. My eyes, my posture, the cold indifference with which I shed blood—it all belonged to a killer. Decades of being an assassin of the Shadow Hall couldn't be washed away by a few forced good deeds. The system could force my hand, but it couldn't change my aura. 

A hollow, bitter ache settled in my chest, colder than the rain. 

I was Jin Mu-Kang. I lived in the dark. I died in the dark. Expecting anything else was foolish. 

Without a word, I turned my back on them and walked away into the shadows of the alley. 

[Warning: Psychological distress detected.]

[Host emotional state unstable.]

Shut up, I thought, dismissing the blue window.