The Hunting Dog of the Prestigious Family Has Returned Chapter 47

“Damn it……!”

The scene had turned into chaos in an instant.

Koo Junghyuk, watching it unfold, felt as though his entire mind were being wrenched apart.

Three weeks of preparation. The ambush plan he had spent all that time building.

All the artificial bodies and weapons he had invested in throughout, gone in a single moment.

The Killing Pact?

Where in the world had these lunatics come from!

“No, I can’t afford to break now!”

Clenching his teeth until they ground together, Koo Junghyuk glared at the Sword Pact members still locked in combat.

He thought to himself that it had been a mistake from the very beginning, reaching out to these street rabble.

‘For now, I must hide. Then…! I must wait for the next opening……!’

Pulling his thoughts together with great effort, Koo Junghyuk turned to retreat, and in that very moment.

Clang!

A metallic ring, and a blunt impact struck his shoulder.

“……!”

Koo Junghyuk’s gaze snapped toward the source.

“Where do you think you’re sneaking off to alone?”

It was Min Jeonghwan, baring his teeth with his iris sword thrust out.

At the sight of him, Koo Junghyuk’s already tormented mood twisted a degree further.

“You lowly Sword Pact filth, how dare you raise a blade at me.”

Boom!

Nothing had been going right for him, not a single thing.

The trackers sent by his family were tightening around his throat with every passing hour, and Kim Changwoon, the very target he’d been hunting, had not shown his face even once.

He had scraped and gathered these Sword Pact scum together hoping to use their hands, and now, of all things, these lunatics who went around slaughtering nobles had come crashing in to ruin everything.

All the while, Kim Changwoon, the one who actually mattered, had left not a single trace behind, forcing him to wander Hanseong week after week.

And then, finally, he had tracked down where the boy was hiding.

The last chance to return to his family and prove his innocence was right before him……!

“Why do filth like you keep standing in my way!”

Kiiiiiing!

The power units fitted at every joint flared red, as though they might shatter at any moment.

He had removed the output limiter on a frame that was already low on stability.

“Good god, this man has lost his mind……!”

For the first time, genuine alarm crossed Min Jeonghwan’s face, which had been composed throughout.

He tried to dodge, but was one beat too late.

A devastating strike that would shatter a man’s entire body just from the swing alone had already closed to within arm’s reach.

“I’ll kill you……!”

Koo Junghyuk, mad with fury, lunged to blast Min Jeonghwan’s face away, and in that instant.

Claaang!

An iron arrow came flying out of nowhere and beat aside Koo Junghyuk’s arm, which had closed to point-blank range.

Speed and force that rivaled a tank shell.

Koo Junghyuk’s eyes went wide. His gaze turned toward where the arrow had come from, and there.

“Gwanjung.”

A boy stood there.

Alone among the countless Sword Pact members, watching this way with perfect composure.

When Koo Junghyuk caught sight of the bow in his hand, he felt rage surging up from his gut.

“Kim Changwoon……!”

The very one who had reduced him to this state.

Amid the tumult of battle, those eyes were fixed on him without the slightest tremor.

“Didn’t we say we’d never see each other’s faces again? We finished our business with each other, you and I. Isn’t that right?”

“Don’t speak so carelessly. I know that you manipulated our family and brought things to this state.”

“Me? That’s laughable.”

The boy scoffed.

“Was it because of me that Jo Seonghwan made sport of people as his hobby? Was it my fault that the Pungyang Jo clan was secretly researching monsters in order to defeat the Andong Kim clan? Was it me who set up a monster research facility in the middle of Hanseong and fed living people to live monsters?”

He spoke without mercy, but Koo Junghyuk had no answer to give.

“That was all something you people did. The result of twisting yourselves trying to boost phase power that wouldn’t emerge naturally, all to defeat the Andong Kim clan. Am I wrong?”

Koo Junghyuk’s face contorted as though he could not stand to hear another word.

But the boy, Kim Changwoon, seemed to find that sight pleasing, and kept right on speaking.

“I merely pulled out what you people were doing and exposed it to the world. The Pungyang Jo clan’s ruin is something you brought upon yourselves.”

“No. This is a conspiracy by your people, the Andong Kim clan.”

Koo Junghyuk said it flat and decisive.

“Seizing sole control of the Administration’s main systems, wielding the royal guard as you please, crushing other families beneath your feet, that arrogance! Our Pungyang Jo clan has been moving to check your reckless domination!”

As though intoxicated by his own words, Koo Junghyuk’s voice climbed higher and higher.

“Joseon is not the Andong Kim clan’s nation, it is a nation of nobles. Our nation, who stood against monsters to protect the country and rescued it from the hands of the traitor Yi Chieon! And therefore……!”

But his words did not last long.

The moment Koo Junghyuk saw Changwoon’s expression, his voice began to trail off.

“……What’s so funny?”

“Why? Keep going. Let me hear more.”

Changwoon was laughing as he said it.

As though he could not bear how ridiculous it was to be hearing this, he seemed to be struggling to hold back laughter that was about to burst free.

“What’s so amusing?”

“It’s funny. A servant born without a drop of noble blood, carrying on as though he’s a proper member of the family.”

Saying that, Changwoon quirked one corner of his mouth with contempt, and then.

“You spent your whole life as a servant, and now you’ve forgotten you were ever a baseborn commoner with no roots?”

At the single sentence that followed, the last scrap of reason Koo Junghyuk had been holding onto snapped clean.

Pshhk!

As though sensing its owner’s fury, the drug injector mounted on his back plunged stimulants into his body.

The reason he had been working to maintain vanished without a trace, and every artificial body part embedded throughout him activated at maximum output.

Terrible pain assaulted his body from head to toe, but right now that meant nothing at all to him.

Kim Changwoon.

If he could just crush that loathsome face, he could do far worse than this without flinching.

“Haaaaaaah!”

With a battle cry, Koo Junghyuk kicked off the ground and launched himself at Changwoon.

Speed like a cannon shot.

For an ordinary person without artificial bodies, even reacting in time would have been impossible.

“I’ll kill you!”

Closing the distance in an instant, Koo Junghyuk reached for Changwoon.

Almost there.

His grotesquely twisted hands blazed red, and in the very moment they were about to tear Changwoon’s body to pieces.

Thud!

With a heavy impact, Koo Junghyuk’s body stopped dead just short of Changwoon.

The one who had blocked his charge with both hands was Changwoon’s guard, Seo Taewoong.

The power engines mounted at both shoulders spun furiously, channeling tremendous force throughout his entire body.

“A mere servant, how dare you put your face in front of me.”

“You, Seo Taewoong……!”

His hands could not reach.

But he had anticipated that guard.

The moment he closed his fist, with a heavy mechanical sound, a grenade launcher jutted from the back of Koo Junghyuk’s hand.

A contained armament, useless for causing the guard any real damage.

But to kill Kim Changwoon, who had not a single artificial body part, this alone would be more than enough.

‘I’ve won.’

Thinking that, Koo Junghyuk wasted no time and fired the grenade at Changwoon, and then.

Shhhk!

With a sharp metallic sound, the right arm fitted with the grenade launcher was sliced vertically clean off.

“……Huh?”

What appeared in the next moment was Mooyoung, materializing from thin air amid black smoke.

Looking at him, Koo Junghyuk could not comprehend what had just happened before his eyes.

‘What is that guard? Where did he come from?’

No, that wasn’t even the problem.

He had severed an artificial body of Grade 1 strength or higher in a single strike?

For that to be possible, there was only… one thing.

“A phase power… user……?”

Koo Junghyuk felt his mind going blank.

A phase power user.

The existence of such a guard had not been registered anywhere, not in the Administration’s records, not in the Andong Kim clan’s database he had intercepted.

He was keeping a guard like this at his side without the family knowing, and on top of that, building a force of this scale while evading the family’s surveillance?

“What exactly are you scheming……!”

“Don’t worry about that. Say hello.”

Over Koo Junghyuk’s outburst, Changwoon murmured with a smile and opened his mouth.

“This is the friend who sent your young master off on his final journey.”

“You, you……!”

Shhhk!

He now knew the full truth of events, but none of it was any use.

When Mooyoung’s sword took off both his legs, Koo Junghyuk’s body, thick with artificial parts, crumpled to the ground without strength.

“A noble family’s dog prancing around playing nobleman, the more I look at it the funnier it gets, really.”

Changwoon stretched out his hand, and one of the Killing Pact members handed him a pistol.

A cheap thing, the kind easily bought off any street.

Most of the common people dying in back alleys lose their lives to guns like this.

“Kim, Changwoon……!”

“Well. I’m not really in a position to say that.”

After loading it with a click, he leveled it at Koo Junghyuk’s face.

Koo Junghyuk’s face, drained to a deathly pale.

Looking at it, Changwoon twisted his lips with an expression that seemed to say it was too pitiful for words, and then.

“Because in my previous life, I must have been hundreds of times more laughable than you.”

Bang!

With a brief gunshot, Koo Junghyuk’s life was cut short.

Their employer, dead without so much as a struggle.

With Koo Junghyuk, who had been driving them relentlessly, now dead, the remaining Azure Fellowship members immediately dropped their weapons and surrendered.

“It’d be a problem if Mooyoung got caught on camera. Filming equipment?”

“The Killing Pact handled it. They deliberately destroyed the cameras during the opening exchange of fire…. Their work is clean.”

“Good. My eye for talent is pretty useful, isn’t it?”

The Killing Pact members sheathed their swords and lowered their heads.

Changwoon passed them by and surveyed the Azure Fellowship members kneeling before him.

“What do you intend to do with them?”

“Hmm. What should I do.”

To Min Jeonghwan’s question at his side, Changwoon answered in an easy tone.

“Honestly, I had no intention of walking all the way out here myself.”

“……!”

“I thought if the new Killing Pact members cleaned up the rabble and dealt with Koo Junghyuk more or less…. the remaining Sword Pact members would be pretty usable.”

Subdue them well enough and recruit them. That was about as far as his thinking had gone.

Muttering that, he took one step forward, and then.

“But.”

Changwoon’s voice shifted in an instant.

A tone that carried not the faintest trace of emotion.

It wasn’t the face of a demon like Koo Junghyuk, but seeing Changwoon’s expression, the Azure Fellowship members could not help but cast their eyes down.

A biting cold.

The young master watching them was angrier than their employer, now dead, had ever been.

“What was it you people said, just now, about our orphanage?”

“……!”

The faces of the Azure Fellowship members went dead and dark.

“Even worthless scum without a shred of decency shouldn’t have touched the children.”

Saying that in a flat, even voice, Changwoon turned his back without delay and spoke.

“Kill them. Leave not one.”

At those words, the Killing Pact members, one by one, drew back out the iris swords they had just put away.

The sound of swords being drawn, and nothing else, a crushing silence.

Soon, cries of spare me, I’m sorry, every manner of wailing shook the air from all sides, but there was no one to hear them.

The Sword Pact members gathered inside the deserted factory trembled with fear and collapsed to the floor, and then.

Thud!

With the sound of a heavy iron door closing shut, not another sound came from the warehouse.