The Hunting Dog of the Prestigious Family Has Returned Chapter 48

“That takes care of the Pungyang Jo clan’s pursuit for good. All that misery over a single servant.”

On the way back after cutting Koo Junghyuk’s head off.

I stretched with a light feeling, and it really did seem like I could float away.

Between the Pyeongwoon Tavern household and now the Killing Pact swordsmen on top of them.

People kept piling up, and if I was going to manage them properly, there were mountains of places to spend money.

Could casino revenue carry us through?

Or was there another way?

The more I thought about it, the more complicated my head became.

‘Need to hire people first. Then figure out where to invest. But….’

The things I’d have to do going forward weren’t the kind that could be knocked out overnight like this.

At minimum five to ten years, moving carefully and slowly.

Just as I thought that.

“Young master.”

Walking toward the car on the way back, Taewoong stepped in front of me.

Mooyoung stepped forward and drew his sword.

Only after confirming that did I see something odd as well.

“…….”

A person.

Someone who had appeared without a sound, from no discernible direction.

A red ceremonial coat in five cardinal colors, and a red pointed cap.

A mask worn over the face, and bells decorated here and there, catching the light and gleaming.

To be walking around dressed like that….

“A shaman?”

The moment I recognized the intruder’s clothes and said as much.

Whoosh!

The intruder puffed up like an enraged owl and lunged straight at me without warning.

“An attack?!”

“I’ll hold them! Senior, take the young master……!”

Gauging the speed, Mooyoung immediately dropped into a stance and moved to intercept the charging intruder.

Mooyoung’s speed with phase power drawn up was incomparable to the attacker’s.

Then, as the sword in his artificial right arm flashed toward the intruder’s throat in an instant.

Fzzzt!

“?!”

With a bizarre signal tone, Mooyoung’s mechanical arm twisted at an unnatural angle.

Clang!

Mooyoung immediately redirected his sword path and shifted to a defensive stance, but his attack had already gone wide and his footing was disrupted.

The intruder kicked Mooyoung from the side and launched him into the air.

“It’s dangerous. Young master! Get behind me!”

The moment Mooyoung’s attack missed, Taewoong moved without hesitation to block my path and activated his artificial bodies at maximum output.

“No, wait.”

But I couldn’t follow Taewoong’s instruction to run.

The instant Mooyoung’s attack went wide, I had already understood what method the intruder had used.

Electronic circuit interference.

The intruder had hacked Mooyoung’s right arm and shut down its operation.

“Cut your artificial bodies! That thing right now……!”

“Urghhh?!”

The moment a similar electromagnetic wave enveloped both of Taewoong’s arms, his arms stopped moving.

The weight of powered-down artificial bodies pressed down on Taewoong with crushing force.

The greatest weakness of a warrior with artificial bodies.

This shaman of unknown origin had struck precisely at that point.

‘This isn’t ordinary hacking or electronic warfare equipment.’

First-grade artificial bodies are precision machines, with security modules loaded into every component, every neural connection point.

That was hacked? In this short a time?

Even the Bune mask I’d met through Hahoe couldn’t do something that insane.

An existence capable of hacking artificial bodies and shutting them down completely.

That would have to be……!

Thud!

The intruder, who had punched through two guards in a single moment, came to a stop right before my eyes.

Tilting their mask-covered face this way and that.

As though trying to figure out who I was.

A bizarre movement, as if searching for something from me.

“Who are you.”

I gritted my teeth and spoke toward the attacker.

There was no ulterior motive. I genuinely didn’t know.

‘Kim Hyunwoo is consumed with internal conflict, and the people hostile to me were all just killed on the way here. No one left who’d be in a position to attack me in this situation.’

While I stood there with a furrowed brow, my mind growing tangled with one thought after another, the intruder’s hand slowly rose toward my face, and.

Softly.

That hand gently stroked my cheek, a careful touch as though confirming my face.

“…?”

“…….”

Not the slightest trace of hostility in the gesture.

After studying my face intently for a moment, the intruder tilted their head again in that characteristic bizarre way, and then.

Whoosh!

In the next instant, as though their task was finished, they threw their body and vanished.

A departure as abrupt as their arrival.

I hurriedly ran through my visual interface to record their face and features, but it was useless.

From the first moment Mooyoung’s right arm had gone dead, not a single piece of electronic equipment on me was working.

Thump!

“Young master, are you all right?!”

Perhaps because of nearly dying, the strength went out of my legs.

As I collapsed where I stood, Taewoong and Mooyoung, having restored their artificial bodies, came running with ashen faces.

“I’m fine. No problem.”

“But young master, your face……!”

“Huh? My face?”

At Mooyoung’s cry, I checked my face belatedly.

A small drop of blood on one side of my face.

Looking more closely, there was a wound on my face, so tiny it was barely visible.

‘What on earth was that?’

A sudden attack.

An ability outside all common sense, hacking first-grade artificial bodies.

And after all that, what they did was leave this scratch and flee?

Click. Static.

Just as I was thinking that, a mechanical sound came from the communicator in my ear.

“Young master? Young master! Say something!”

The proprietress, calling for me in an urgent voice.

Setting aside my churning thoughts, I answered her.

“I’m here. What’s happening?”

“It’s an emergency. Right now……!”

At the single sentence that followed, I felt the mind I had just managed to pull together go completely blank.

“Right now at the casino, Kim Jungheon! The head of the Andong Kim clan is here!”

---

“Young master! Over here!”

Arriving at the casino by helicopter, the proprietress, wound tight with tension, was pointing in one direction.

The elevator leading to the innermost VIP room of the casino.

I took a deep breath and stepped inside. There was Kim Jungheon, seated in the rest area, tilting a teacup.

“I, I had no idea you would visit a place like this, my lord. To what do we owe……”

With the head of the Andong Kim clan arriving in person, the aristocrats gathered in the VIP room were fawning over him like dogs meeting their owner.

Perhaps he had noticed me arriving in the middle of all that.

Kim Jungheon gave me a sidelong glance, then swept his cold gaze over the aristocrats and opened his mouth.

“I have something to discuss with that boy. Would you please clear the room.”

“Yes, yes!”

“Ah, we were just about to leave in any case…….”

Before the words were even finished, the aristocrats in the VIP room streamed out like a receding tide.

Those were money connections it had taken considerable effort to pull together.

Watching them go, my already complicated head began to throb.

But Kim Jungheon paid them no attention whatsoever. He was watching me.

“I greet the clan head.”

“Mm.”

As an illegitimate son, the title of father was not something permitted to me.

Seeing me observe proper courtesy without deviation, Kim Jungheon seemed to thaw the smallest degree, and nodded to receive my greeting.

“I observed the servants you employ. Their manner with guests is quite competent. Common class, low citizens, yet their etiquette is rather well trained.”

“I am grateful.”

Naturally.

Proper etiquette was essential cultivation for dealing with aristocrats.

It was also the aspect the proprietress, who managed the casino’s operations, had taken the most care in drilling into them.

“In contrast, the sight of those people was…. truly and utterly wretched.”

Tilting his teacup, Kim Jungheon watched the aristocrats scrambling out and spoke.

“Scholars who ought to be setting an example for the common people, buried in a back-alley gambling den, mad for cards.”

“…….”

“Are these vulgar swine truly the scholars who bear Joseon’s fate on their shoulders.”

That was Kim Jungheon’s verdict on the casino’s landscape.

I understood it.

Kim Jungheon was a monster drunk on power, and at the same time an incorruptible official who seemed to be etiquette made flesh.

For someone like that to witness with his own eyes so-called aristocrats in a frenzy over gambling, it was only natural he’d feel revulsion.

“And, Kim Changwoon.”

“Yes.”

At the short reply, Kim Jungheon spoke with an expressionless face.

“You, who are meant to be a member of a noble family, are you here consorting with those swine and gorging on filthy money?”

A voice that seemed to rebuke, and also to hold contempt.

But the moment I heard that voice, a suffocating tightness gripped my chest.

A gaze closer to indifference than to contempt.

Even having died and come back to life, that gaze still constricted my breathing.

A member of the family? Laughable.

His saying that was simply the formality of aristocratic etiquette.

The only feeling that man held for me was a thorough, complete indifference.

But.

“Even if it comes from a filthy pig’s body, money is money.”

I suppressed the emotions rising in me, pulled a smile like a mask over my face, and opened my mouth.

“If I can extract it to my heart’s content and support the family’s affairs, there’s no particular reason to refuse, is there?”

“……Hmm.”

Kim Jungheon neither affirmed nor denied my words.

He simply watched me in silence with a gaze that seemed to find me interesting.

But that only lasted a moment.

“I will ask to confirm.”

Kim Jungheon, who had been silently observing me, immediately came to the point.

“Was it you who killed Jo Seonghwan?”

---

Whooooo.

The underground of Hanseong, thick with exhaust and black smoke.

The intruder who had been watching that landscape from between dilapidated high-rise buildings slowly peeled the mask from their face.

Beep.

[Persona upload terminated]

[Possession code, ‘Chok Junggyeong’. Offline]

[Restoring primary persona……. Complete]

With a hiss, the mask came away.

Beneath it, the face of an elderly woman appeared, wrinkled all over.

“Blood composition?”

Before the old woman’s question was even finished, an information window began appearing in the hologram floating before her eyes.

[Blood composition query result: Genetic information match rate 99%]

“Then it’s certain.”

Muttering that, the old woman settled down where she stood with a deep sigh.

When she had first seen the face, she’d thought it impossible to believe, but with evidence this clear, there was no way to deny it.

And on top of that, the distinctive amethyst sheen flowing from those dark eyes.

“Yangban Mask. I wondered what had this half-dead old woman so excited…. there was reason enough.”

Of course, the reason that gentleman is pleased would be something else.

Click. Static.

As the old woman slowly rose to her feet, the power in the high-rise buildings she stood on went out, one by one.

A space blanketed in darkness without a single point of light.

But that lasted only a moment. One by one, numerous silhouettes began gathering around the old woman.

“It’s certain. The blood, the eyes, and that presence.”

Clothes in brilliant colors like the ones wrapped around her.

The occasional turning sound of bells.

Countless faceless shamans were waiting on her words.

“That child is a child born from our Changhwa’s womb.”