Chapter 10. Stairs
The Family?
"Family? Are you talking about our Danri Family?"
"Yes."
Gi Dae-hyo briefly scratched his chin and sank into thought. It was a habit of his whenever he was troubled.
A moment later.
"Where is the place where the two of them killed themselves?"
He made a decision.
"It's Bongyang Inn."
"Let's go."
"Huh?"
Gi Man-ji was surprised because Gi Dae-hyo said he would go in person. Usually, the leader of the Black Five Group didn't step to the front for things like this. The customary practice was to stay behind and only give orders.
"For Father to go personally is a bit...."
"No. I need to see it myself."
Gi Dae-hyo cut off Gi Man-ji and left Black Five Hall without delay.
Ssssss-.
Gi Dae-hyo unfolded his movement technique as if vanishing straight toward the east.
That was the direction where the main gate of the Danri Family was.
***
At the time Gi Dae-hyo was heading to Bongyang Inn, Dong Bong-su was spending his day as usual, as the horse stable hireling Sosam.
He had already finished waking early, cleaning up horse dung, and feeding the horses their fodder.
From now on, the work he had to do was the most important duty in his routine.
Taking the Blood-Sweating Horse for a walk.
In the Danri Family, there was only a single Blood-Sweating Horse.
Its name was Yeoro. The beloved horse of Danri Cheon-u, the head of the Danri Family.
With its white coat and mane flying magnificently, Yeoro was by far the most expensive horse in the Danri Family.
Because of that, it was a special-grade management target for all the horse stable hirelings in the Family. If even a small wound appeared on Yeoro, the horse stable hirelings might be forced into a funeral procession of their own. In fact, once before, when a small boil appeared on Yeoro's skin, the horse stable hirelings had been beaten as a group.
However,
After Dong Bong-su—rather than Sosam—took charge of Yeoro, such a thing never happened at all.
Animals instinctively recognize the "beasts" they shouldn't mess with. All the horses in the East stable became very docile from the moment Sosam changed into Dong Bong-su.
In the past, there had been accidents once in a while, but now such things never happened. Even newly brought-in wild horses only rampaged at first; the moment their eyes met Dong Bong-su's, they became gentle lambs.
People who saw it whispered among themselves.
[After Sosam got hurt, instead of losing horses, he gained horse spirit!]
Sometimes they even called him a horse demon. That was how freely Sosam could control horses. Because of this, the looks full of contempt that had been aimed at him decreased a great deal.
As a very natural result, Yeoro's care became Sosam's responsibility. In the Danri Family there were several horse stable hirelings, but aside from Danri Cheon-u, the only person who could perfectly control Yeoro was Sosam.
From Dong Bong-su's perspective as well, there was no reason to refuse taking Yeoro on. There were many benefits he could gain by being responsible for Yeoro.
After he took on the work of caring for Yeoro, he had a lot more free time. The ones who picked fights for no reason decreased, and the people who shoved work off onto him were almost gone. Even Machil, who had tormented Dong Bong-su the most, had already sunk into the pit of hellfire.
Naturally, he had more time left over.
And...
In Bongyang, the number of people dying after catching the suicide plague also increased along with it.
***
Dong Bong-su led Yeoro out of the family estate and headed for the market streets of Bongyang City. As usual, during these walks he looked for prey. If possible, he dealt with them on the spot. But there were also cases where it was difficult to deal with them right away. In those cases, he observed the target, memorized them in his head, and killed them later.
Yeoro was like wings to him not only inside the family estate, but outside it as well. If he walked around with Yeoro, people moved out of the way on their own. Everyone in Bongyang knew whose horse Yeoro was, and what kind of existence it represented.
Flaunt borrowed authority.
It was a phrase people coined because Mabyeonsam borrowed the horse's authority to put on airs. In truth, it wasn't so much "putting on airs" as simply passing along the road, but to people, maybe it looked that way.
Either way, Dong Bong-su was benefiting greatly from Yeoro. Thanks to the beast, he could stroll through the market streets without trouble and search for suitable prey.
However.
'It's useless now.'
Dong Bong-su realized it was time to stop hunting like this. Recently he had killed 196 people, but the experience bar only filled about one third. At this rate, there was no telling when he would level up and become stronger.
From an efficiency standpoint, it was clear he had nearly reached diminishing marginal returns.
'There's an obvious limit to building experience like this.'
While he was mulling over this,
Dong Bong-su finally confirmed clearly that even among humans, the amount of experience could differ.
The day before yesterday, he killed a man around here, and at that time the experience bar had filled quite a lot. Only then did Dong Bong-su realize that the difference in experience between people could be significant. Compared to the 195 he'd killed before, the one man he killed last had more experience than all of them.
His goal changed.
From simply killing people to eliminating stronger people.
Then who is stronger?
There was no way to verify it, but he already knew instinctively, relatively speaking, who the stronger ones were and where they were.
Murim people.
Isn't that so?
Even in games, a high-level elite mob gives dozens of times—maybe hundreds, maybe thousands—more experience than a rabbit in front of the village.
That's only natural.
If it's a world where a "level up" system applies.
'That's how it should be."'
It was almost certain.
If he killed murim people, he could easily build experience.
But he still hadn't directly sparred with murim people or crossed hands with them.
He had only occasionally watched them training within the Danri Family.
Based on the judgment he'd made from that experience...
'Even the weakest warrior in the Danri Family is still too much for me right now.'
He needed time to get stronger.
Or else.
'There needs to be an intermediate step.'
No matter how much an ordinary person trains high jumping, they can't leap straight up to the second floor in one go.
They need stairs, a foothold, or a ladder.
A middle prey that could bridge the gap between ordinary people and murim people.
What would it be?
Someone like that man he killed the day before yesterday. Someone like that was just right.
'What kind of man was he? Where do I have to go to meet more guys like that?'
Dong Bong-su, thinking those thoughts, naturally wandered along his walking route—the market streets of Bongyang.
As he passed by the side of an alley.
A rough voice came from inside the alley.
"Hey, Mabyeonsam. Why are you just walking past? If you've seen your big brother after a long time, you should put your face up to my face and have a little talk, you son of a bitch."
Dong Bong-su turned his head toward the alley.
There, five or six men were squatting down in sloppy postures. The man in front, staring at him, had thick sideburns covering his jaw, making him look vicious beyond measure.
'Do Pal-du.'
Do Pal-du.
He was the boss of the street toughs in this market. Moving around about twenty thugs, he was one of those lowlifes who preyed on the peddlers in the market. Lately, because the authorities' constables were spread all over the alleys, he hadn't been seen for a while, but for some reason, he was loitering in a conspicuous alley.
Their prey wasn't only the merchants of the market. Sometimes even servants or hired hands from big households, like Sosam or Machil, became targets. The reason Do Pal-du didn't mess with them too much was because he was afraid the big household might find out. And if that big household was a murim Family, he couldn't help but be even more wary.
But that was only when their bellies weren't empty.
The thugs' eyes were gleaming.
Dong Bong-su could tell at a glance how hungry they were. And considering the recent atmosphere in Bongyang, that was only natural. Even if money came in, it wouldn't last them more than a day. The moment it appeared, they spent it on liquor and women. For people like that, in these days when the suicide plague was rampant, it must have been a complete recession.
Today, it would be fair to say they came down the mountain taking on risk, to raid the village.
Even wolves come down to where people live in a severe drought, and even lions, when driven into a corner, hunt huge game like elephants.
However,
They chose the wrong opponent.
The opponent they picked as prey today was.
Not Sosam, but Dong Bong-su. They simply didn't know that.
Dong Bong-su opened his mouth wide and gave a stupid grin. Keeping that expression, he walked toward Do Pal-du.
Do Pal-du and the thugs led him and Yeoro deep into the alley, to a place with no people. Do Pal-du seemed to have judged that as long as Yeoro wasn't hurt, it was fine to do whatever they wanted to someone like Sosam.
Before following the thugs into the alley, Dong Bong-su looked around. Maybe because it was still early morning, there weren't many people. Far away, he could see a few merchants, but this place was a bit removed from the market's main road, so no one paid attention to this alley.
The reason he checked the surroundings was simple.
If he wiped out all of "these things" here, how would he clean up afterward? Would he have to stage it as suicide again this time?
In principle, that would be the proper thing to do. But given the nature of the place, it wasn't suitable. Staging the suicides of over ten men inside an alley wasn't easy.
What if he fabricated it as them knifing each other, or put the corpses into his inventory and dumped them somewhere else? It wasn't bad. But it was only "not bad," and there wasn't much real benefit.
Even if he killed them all, the experience wouldn't amount to much, and the disadvantage he'd suffer by not killing them would probably be no more than taking a few hits and losing a few coins.
Between benefit and disadvantage, and the risk he'd be taking, the scale's weight swung back and forth.