The Hunting Dog of the Prestigious Family Has Returned Chapter 50

Vrrrrrm!

Dozens of motorcycles tore down the road, accompanied by the shriek of electric motors.

Every safety limiter stripped away without exception, the machines pushed to their absolute limits with no thought for anything but speed.

Riding them were Sword Pact members who had operated in the shadows of the lowest commercial district.

“Push harder! Faster! At this rate they’ll catch up!”

“How did they find out! I swear I didn’t tell anyone…! Wh—?!”

The Sword Pact members riding at the front had been driving as though pursued by something, but only for a moment. Their faces went pale.

Whoosh!

An armored helicopter that had burst out suddenly from the other side of the road.

On the side of the fuselage, a figure in protective gear had a heavy machine gun aimed directly at them.

Just as the panicked members hurried to push their speed higher.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

The heavy machine gun mounted to the helicopter’s flank opened fire, turning the fleeing Sword Pact members into shredded meat where they rode.

“Aaaaaagh?!”

“Damn it, everyone take cover! Take cover!”

“These sons of—……!”

When the leading column collapsed, the members riding behind them began to fall in turn like dominoes.

Those without artificial bodies had no hope from this point. What remained were the upper-tier members who had completed some degree of physical modification.

When they drew the submachine guns at their hips and returned fire, someone leapt from the helicopter as it pulled back.

Thud!

Rising to their feet with a heavy landing.

Recognizing who it was, the armed Sword Pact members all gritted their teeth in unison.

“Min Jeonghwan……!”

The lunatic who killed aristocrats. The leader of Killing Pact.

But his appearance was considerably cleaner than before.

A black durumagi coat worn over a bulletproof-woven western suit.

A black horsehair hat, and artificial bodies manufactured from military-grade components.

Incomparably superior to what he had worn when killing nobles in the upper levels.

“Min Jeonghwan, you bastard! You’re Killing Pact, and you’re that happy taking money from some power clan brat…! Ghhk?!”

With a clean sound, the man delivering his heated speech was split in two.

The sword in Min Jeonghwan’s hand had cut through an artificial-body-enhanced frame in a single stroke.

“Yeah. Damn good money.”

Ratttttle!

In the meantime, the others who had dropped from the helicopter surrounded them with rifles leveled.

Unified clothing and equipment, and movements in perfect lockstep.

Watching them, it was hard to remember these had originally been Sword Pact members just like themselves.

“W, wait, think again!”

When dozens of red dots covered their bodies, one of the Sword Pact members shouted toward Jeonghwan.

“The artificial bodies you got! Those weapons! Use them on Kim Changwoon…. that little bastard! You saw it yourself! That brat is a pampered do-nothing with nothing to his name! Do it right, and all the money he’s got could be……!”

“Is that everything you have to say?”

Jeonghwan, with cold eyes, as though there was nothing more worth hearing.

The members who had stopped at that fell silent, and then looked at Min Jeonghwan with hollow laughs.

“Go to hell, you rotten traitor……!”

“Fire.”

Brrrrrrt!

At a single word from him, the remaining Sword Pact members became riddled with holes and scattered across the asphalt.

“That finishes it.”

Three months had passed since Changwoon recruited the Sword Pact members.

The ones rolling across the ground screaming were the Sword Pact members who had managed this district.

And the one hunting them down one by one and bringing the underground districts under his control was Min Jeonghwan, the leader of Killing Pact.

“How many left?”

“The ones who held the eastern district, but most have already been broken up. Just as young master predicted.”

“Right. Barely done.”

With that, Min Jeonghwan took a cigarette from his jacket and put it between his lips.

For nearly three months, Jeonghwan had used every means available to seize control of the underground levels.

Sword Pact, street thugs, criminals, gangs.

Every armed faction causing trouble with weapons had been swept away without exception.

“How are the ones we deployed to the lowest levels doing?”

“No problems so far.”

When Jeonghwan took a breath and asked, the members dressed similarly to him bowed their heads.

“None of them are needlessly getting in merchants’ way, and our relationship with the merchant association has become much smoother.”

“There are shops that say they want to pay protection fees voluntarily…. turning them away is actually turning into more work, apparently.”

“Ha….”

The new members he had personally recruited, who answered that way.

Looking over their faces, Jeonghwan thought of his superior who had ordered all of this and clicked his tongue.

‘Unbelievable. Growing the organization this far in so short a time….’

Killing Pact, as an organization, had originally been people who gave no thought to the future.

Killing aristocrats as they pleased, and if they died doing it, that was fine. That was the life.

That was why he had thought neither a fine sword nor artificial bodies was necessary for himself, but now that Changwoon had taken over the organization, the situation had changed completely.

‘So back then, what he said was….’

‘You’re going to buy artificial bodies? For all these people?’

Changwoon had started distributing money through the lowest commercial district to procure artificial bodies for them to use.

And that was only the start.

The Sword Pact members under Min Jeonghwan’s command had begun appearing throughout the lowest levels to track down and eliminate criminals, and patrolling commercial districts here and there, effectively acting as police.

The fifty-odd members they’d started with now numbered in the thousands.

Beyond a single Sword Pact organization, they had built up the power and equipment to call themselves an army.

“Eight Outcasts Society, they called it. Thanks to those folks, the neighborhood atmosphere around here has been quite good lately.”

That was what a white-haired old man had said to Jeonghwan one day, pressing a bundle into his hands.

“The constabulary don’t care whether we lowest-level folk live or die. Rather than paying them taxes, it’s far better to pay you people protection fees.”

The warmth radiating from the heavy wrapped cloth.

When he snuck a look inside, it was full of steaming sirutteok rice cakes.

When he and his members had refused to take money, this was what they’d brought as protection fees.

“You people live hand to mouth, don’t you? Why would you waste something this valuable……!”

“It’s because of you that we can even make things like this, so stop talking nonsense and take it. And pass along our regards to Young Master Changwoon.”

The largest customers in the lowest commercial district, and at the same time, mediating residents’ disputes and maintaining public order.

Recently, requests had even come in for Eight Outcasts Society to stand as guarantor in a debt dispute between two shops.

Min Jeonghwan had reached the point where he wasn’t sure anymore whether he was Sword Pact or police.

‘But….’

Min Jeonghwan and his members walking the commercial district streets after finishing their work.

People who used to scatter the moment they saw a crazy Sword Pact member were now waving hello and sending them off warmly.

Unfamiliar.

It was a clearly unfamiliar feeling, but….

“It’s good.”

At the words of one of the members, he found himself nodding without thinking.

Right. Just like that.

Unfamiliar as it was, the feeling wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

---

“I thought you said it would take another month, but it’s already all sorted out? That’s much faster than I expected.”

The office of ‘Pyeongwoon Casino,’ located in the middle of the special administration district.

Saying that to Min Jeonghwan, who had come to give his performance report, he set steaming sirutteok rice cakes on my desk.

“It’s thanks to the helicopter you provided, young master. On top of that, the nearby residents started bringing us information…. the work became several times easier.”

That was why I had gone out of my way to overpay doing business with the lowest-level merchants.

Their side was blind, while our side had informants spread in every direction.

Flipping through the member roster and operational reports, things seemed to have been put in good order, and I felt deeply satisfied.

“I was quite surprised at first, you know. Suddenly buying weapons in bulk from the black market, and then I hear you’ve gone and hired the Killing Pact people…. I thought a war had broken out.”

“Half of it was a war. Do you think beating down criminals in the underground levels is easy work?”

I answered the proprietress’s voice coming through the communicator while chewing the sirutteok on the table.

“But with this, every armed faction that had been rotting out the underground levels has been completely uprooted.”

Looking at the cleaned-up underground district map, it felt like a long-standing obstruction had finally cleared.

“With this, Hanseong’s underground district is secured. The next plan can move forward.”

“The next plan? What are you going to do now?”

“Ah, did I not mention?”

I looked out at the view of the Hanseong underground below and spoke.

“I’m going to build an organization.”

“An organization?”

“Right.”

A vast organization to prepare for the revolution that would come in the future.

I added that, but the proprietress was not giving any response, as though waiting for explanation.

How to explain this.

After thinking for a moment, I opened my mouth toward the communicator.

“The underground district directly below our casino is home to several hundred thousand people. You know that well enough, I’m sure.”

“Of course. Most of them are lowborns who aren’t even treated as human beings in Joseon.”

Just like us here.

At the proprietress’s added words, I nodded and spoke.

“Thanks to the factional war that broke out in Hanseong’s upper levels, the aristocrat class has lost interest in the city’s underground district.”

Every resource in Hanseong was being mobilized to capture the Pungyang Jo clan and their collaborators.

With surveillance gone, what little public order had been maintained in the underground district had descended into chaos, and the lives of the people there had fallen into even deeper misery.

And I had been intending to make the most of this situation.

“I’m going to grow the scale of the Sword Pact organization with Killing Pact at the center. Turn them into police to plug the security gap, and gradually make the Hanseong underground district my sphere of influence.”

Lay roads, build schools and hospitals, provide housing.

By accumulating good deeds and reputation that way and looking after the people of the underground district, I would become a “benevolent aristocrat.”

“And then use the reputation I’ve built up to make the people living here come knocking on my door.”

Most of the people living here were those who had been thrown into the underground levels, unable to cross the wall of class.

People who couldn’t unfurl their talents because of a rank decided at birth, forced to spend their entire lives in piles of refuse.

“If I provide money, equipment, and education to people like that, what sort of person wouldn’t come over to my side?”

Hundreds of thousands of human resources.

And the countless organizations and interest groups buried in that refuse, invisible to the eye.

Gathering all of them, scattered separately, and making them into one.

People who would listen only to me, without being subject to Hahoe’s or any other organization’s influence.

An organization made up solely of such people.

“Building an organization of lowborns in the Hanseong underground…. anyone who saw it would call it treason.”

“So what do you say. Will you join me, proprietress?”

“I have to. But….”

After a brief pause, the proprietress asked me.

“What are you going to name it, this organization?”

A name.

As it happens, I’ve had one in mind.

The lowest of the low, the most scorned in this country, Joseon.

Gathered together into one, an organization in this world like no other, mine and mine alone.

“Eight Outcasts Society.”

I would gather Joseon’s eight lowborn castes together.

And turn this country upside down.