Chapter 103

Even as he watched the Asian group prepare for a confrontation, the massive leader maintained his cool.

If anything, his gaze gleamed like a master chef looking over premium ingredients set on his countertop.

What is the best way to cook these up?

How should I dress them so the story of my incredible feast spreads far and wide?

These brittle little twigs would snap in half under the slightest pressure, yet they actually have the audacity to look tough?

Honestly, this plays right into my hands.

When you want to dominate a crowd, terror is your absolute best tool.

Showing them right out of the gate that refusing to submit means a brutal, bloody death is the quickest way to compliance.

Those idiots had strolled forward on their own two feet just to make my demonstration that much more impactful.

Swish.

The colossal man, who had been glaring intently at Baek Jinwoo, actually took a step back.

Why would someone like me waste effort dealing with such insignificant pests?

He ran his eyes across the group assembled before him.

“Is this really all of you?”

Roughly twenty individuals had stepped out from the crowd.

A pitiful twenty out of a total two hundred and twelve people.

This small band consisted of the Five Emperors, those specific Asians, and a handful of regular wealthy elites who had joined in out of a sudden burst of reckless pride.

“Twenty morons who can’t read a room. Honestly, that’s a pretty impressive statistic by itself.” The leader tilted his head to the side. “Boys.”

“Snap one of their arms or legs to start things off. If they keep trying to fight back after that, just execute them. Let them see exactly what we are capable of.”

“Understood, boss!”

“Heh heh heh.”

Roughly five out of the fifty heavily built terrorists moved to the front.

In their minds, a small group like that was more than enough to clean up twenty ordinary people.

To be fair, the physical disparity was staggering.

Even with the odds at five against twenty, those five hulking figures made it look like they completely dominated the space.

Right at that moment.

Baek Jinwoo squeezed his fists tight, focusing every ounce of his attention.

I managed to grasp the fundamental concepts from Drill Sarge.

He hadn’t acquired this through grueling physical training, but Drill Sarge had at least pinpointed the general locations of the vital pressure points for him.

From the pathways of the twelve primary meridians to the specific nodes of the twelve regular channels, the eight extraordinary vessels, the conception vessel, the governing vessel, and beyond……

The instructor hadn’t bogged him down with all the overly complex terminology, but he had run energy directly through each pathway to mark their exact coordinates.

Fatal spots like the Baekhoe, Gimun, Dangmun, and Jemun points were dangerous enough to end a life the moment they were struck and sealed.

Immobilization points like the Geogol, Cheonju, Biyu, and Gokji points would instantly induce dead numbness and total paralysis if targeted.

Speech-locking points like the Geonjeong, Amun, Bongan, and Ipdong would leave a target entirely helpless or unable to utter a sound.

Aside from those, there were eighty-one primary pressure points across the body, including nodes that induced deep sleep or instant fainting, but trying to master every single one in such a brief window of time was completely unrealistic.

So, Baek Jinwoo had made a calculated choice.

The Baekhoe point.

A quintessential point for freezing a target.

Most people knew it simply as the very top of the skull.

The exact pressure point centered on the crown of the head.

I am going to focus entirely on that single target.

If a window of opportunity opened up during the brawl, he would strike that exact node and completely shut his opponent down.

“Everyone else, step back.”

Baek Jinwoo directed his words to his fellow guild members and the others who had stepped up to fight.

Then, he took another stride out in front.

“Whoa.”

“Check out the nerve on this little guy.”

“Kekeke, stepping out first took some serious guts, but you can’t possibly be planning to take all of us on by yourself, right? Huh?”

One of the five advancing terrorists thrust his massive face directly into Baek Jinwoo’s space.

THUNK!

Their foreheads collided directly.

“What.”

He leaned in with a vicious, mocking sneer.

“What exactly do you think you can pull off alone? Do you want me to give you a free shot? Come on, hit me with everything you’ve got. It’ll probably just tickle! Kahaha!”

“……”

Baek Jinwoo remained completely motionless.

It felt incredibly bizarre.

Why was this giant posturing so aggressively while leaving his defenses completely wide open?

Was he trying to set a trap for a counterattack by acting incredibly sloppy?

Or was he genuinely so arrogant that he wanted to take a clean punch to the face?

“What’s the matter, frozen solid? Are you terrified now? Huh?”

The brute was actively leaning forward, presenting the exact crown of his skull that Baek Jinwoo had spent time memorizing.

Well, look at that.

Don’t mind if I take advantage.

There was absolutely no reason to overanalyze the situation.

In a split second, Baek Jinwoo’s right arm whipped upward. He stiffened his hand into a rigid blade and brought it straight down onto the terrorist’s crown.

He hadn’t consciously calculated the timing, but purely by sensation, the entire motion took perhaps a fraction of a second.

And then.

CRRGGHK!

An unexpected, sickening noise echoed through the room.

It wasn’t the crisp sound of a solid impact……

It sounded much more like a ripe watermelon splitting wide open.

Huh?

The massive thug who had just been mockingly crowding him couldn’t even squeeze out a gasp before his legs gave out, and he crumpled directly onto the floor.

Baek Jinwoo winced slightly and took a step back.

The remaining four terrorists, along with their main leader, stood completely paralyzed with shock.

That massive mountain of a man went down from a single strike?

Furthermore.

“Hey.”

“Oi, get up, are you alright?”

The nearby thugs nudged the motionless body of their fallen comrade with their boots, but he didn’t move an inch.

One of them, realizing things had gone horribly wrong, quickly reached down to press his fingers against the side of the man’s neck.

“……Boss.”

His voice hitched slightly as he spoke in a low whisper.

“This guy is dead.”

“……?”

Baek Jinwoo was just as completely bewildered by the outcome.

He had intentionally chosen to memorize the paralysis nodes instead of the lethal ones precisely because he wanted to avoid taking a life……

Yet the guy literally passed away from a single blow?

Is the human skull honestly that incredibly weak?

— My lord……

Right at that moment, Drill Sarge glided over to his side and murmured softly into his ear.

— I believe you are going to have to severely throttle your output. When I told you this approach seemed viable, I was using trained martial artists as my baseline metric…… These thugs are exponentially more fragile than their appearances suggest.

“Hah.”

Baek Jinwoo let out a heavy breath.

His very first kill, and it was entirely accidental……

Strangely enough, he didn’t experience any real wave of emotion or guilt.

He had already watched Park Changseok carry out an abrupt execution back at the coffee shop, and he had personally dismantled a violent street gang himself.

They are nothing but absolute garbage anyway.

Putting everything else aside.

The exact moment they decided to value other people’s lives based on a financial scale and chose to commit acts of terrorism, they became nothing more than a dangerous stain on society in Baek Jinwoo’s eyes.

“Y-YOU UTTER PIECE OF TRASH!”

Perhaps driven by pure fury at seeing a close comrade wiped out in the blink of an eye, one of the neighboring brutes wound up an enormous, wild swing.

SHWAAAAK!

The fist traveled fast enough to cause a sharp tear in the air, but for some inexplicable reason.

Are these guys always moving in slow motion?

To Baek Jinwoo’s perception, the incoming strike was traveling at a speed he could comfortably evade while letting out a casual yawn.

Lethal nodes, immobilization nodes.

None of those technicalities really mattered anymore, did they?

Against this tier of opponent? He could easily dismantle them while completely fooling around.

Tilt!

Baek Jinwoo avoided the massive fist with a minuscule tilt of his upper body.

She told me to keep my strength in check, right?

Releasing the built-up tension in his arm, he delivered a short, compact punch right into the man’s midsection.

Targeting the liver exactly.

Of course, he made sure to pivot his hips to generate the necessary rotational force.

Even while holding back significantly like that.

THWWWACK!

A deep, hollow thud rang out, and the brute’s entire frame actually lifted off the deck.

“GUH— GHHKK!”

A disgusting spray erupted from his mouth as his body folded completely in half, his hands clutching his stomach as he gagged violently, completely stripped of his ability to draw breath.

The sheer agonizing pain was so overwhelming that tears began pouring down his face instantly.

Are you serious right now?

This was honestly a massive letdown……

With a level of combat ability this pathetic, they had been strutting around with all that unearned confidence?

A heavy, suffocating silence blanketed the entire room.

The smug, playful demeanor on the leader’s face vanished instantly, his features turning completely rigid.

“Well, look at that.”

Baek Jinwoo shook out his hand loosely and mumbled to himself.

“It turns out you guys are a bit too fragile to be trying to terrorize us. Don’t you think?”

This approach wasn’t going to cut it.

He was going to have to restrain his power even further.

Whoosh, whoosh!

Baek Jinwoo rotated his wrists to loosen them up.

Gulp.

The leader swallowed hard, a lump forming in his throat.

How could something like that even be possible?

This guy isn’t a summon, he’s just an ordinary human being, yet he killed a massive man with a single open-hand strike and sent a heavyweight brute flying into the air with a casual, short punch?

This isn’t some low-budget action movie.

The leader instantly understood that the time for playing around had come to an end.

Never mind the rest of the crowd. That specific man had to be taken off the board immediately.

He just happens to possess an unnaturally high amount of punching power, that’s all there is to it.

In his worldview, those mythical one-versus-thirteen street fight stories didn’t actually happen in the real world.

If they all just stormed him at the exact same moment and swarmed him, it would be over. Even if a legendary fighter like Fedor or Ngannou walked through that door, they wouldn’t be able to survive a mob like that.

“BOYS!”

The leader barked, pointing a finger directly at Baek Jinwoo.

“SWARM HIM AND KILL HIM NOW!”

“”UNDERSTOOD!””

Receiving a direct, serious order from their commander, the terrorists recognized the severe danger of the moment and surged forward as a collective unit.

“Not on our watch!”

“Yeah, let’s back him up!”

By this point, the situation had evolved into a massive, chaotic brawl.

From the perspective of the captives, they had just witnessed firsthand proof that Baek Jinwoo was their absolute sole path to survival.

As terrifying as the situation was, their natural survival instinct urged them to leap into the fray right now and assist him in taking out as many of these terrorists as possible.

But before any of the captives could even plant their feet to join in, Baek Jinwoo surged forward first.

Whoosh! THWACK!

SHWAK! CRACK!

Baek Jinwoo glided through the space like fluid.

He slipped past the massive thugs’ incoming punches with minimal, efficient adjustments, then capitalized on his positioning to drive highly accurate strikes into their vulnerable points using his hands and feet.

THUD-D-D-DUD!

With every single effortless strike, the massive brutes went airborne like lightweight mannequins, crashing and scattering in every possible direction.

It never even had the chance to become a competitive brawl.

Baek Jinwoo cut through their ranks like an apex predator dropped straight into a nest of defenseless prey.

“Wh-what in the world—”

“Is that actually a real person?”

“He’s not utilizing a summon? That’s just a normal guy?”

The captives who had been fully prepared to throw down slowly dropped their hands one by one and pulled out their mobile devices instead.

How could they possibly pass up the chance to document this unbelievable display?

Even his own guild members, including Hong Ari, who had been right on the verge of jumping into the fight, simply stood frozen in place with their mouths hanging wide open.

A total monster.

He really is an absolute freak of nature. Then again, those terrorists probably just lift weights at a standard gym for a bit…… Our guild master carries that exact same heavy iron around for hours every single day, constantly sprinting and jumping.

There was zero scientific basis to explain how such a compact physique could produce that kind of terrifying kinetic force, but the guild members were long past questioning it.

That was simply the reality of who he was.

That was South Korea’s premier powerhouse, Baek Jinwoo.

“D-DIIIIIE!”

A completely terrified giant threw a punch backed by every single ounce of weight he possessed.

Whoosh!

Baek Jinwoo dipped low at the waist and snapped a kick straight upward, the front of his foot connecting cleanly right beneath the man’s jawline.

CRACK!

The massive thug’s head snapped violently backward from the single point of impact. He didn’t even have the capacity to let out a proper shriek before tumbling across the floorboards.

Baek Jinwoo existed on an entirely different level.

He was functioning as something far beyond the limits of a regular human.

“Ah, damn it. I messed up the power control on that one.”

The collapsed giant began spasming on the ground, his limbs shaking uncontrollably.

That final kick had undeniably inflicted severe trauma on his neck vertebrae.

While he wasn’t dead, there was a very high probability he would spend the remainder of his days dealing with a ruined disc or complete immobility.

“You really should have evaluated the situation before choosing to start a fight.”

By this point, even the remaining giants couldn’t muster the courage to advance on him.

It had been an incredibly brief engagement, yet more than half of their entire force was already laid out across the floor, weeping in agony or vomiting from the impact.

Several were dealing with shattered ribcages. Others were completely blacked out.

Th-this is absolutely unhinged.

How can a human being pull something like that off?

A single individual can seriously dismantle an entire squad like this?

He isn’t even breathing heavily. How are we supposed to wage a war against a literal freak like that?!

The massive disparity in actual combat capability was deeply, primally terrifying.

Was this the exact type of despair one felt when running into an unbeatable, legendary boss deep inside the Tower of Trials?

The remaining terrorists stood completely rooted to the spot, entirely paralyzed by indecision.

A few were already quietly shuffling backward.

“YOU BRAINLESS FOOLS! That is exactly what happens when you idiots charge in one by one using nothing but your bare hands! Aggressively swarm him! GO SEIZE A HOSTAGE IF THAT’S WHAT IT TAKES!”

Seeing the confrontation unravel so completely, the leader lost his temper entirely, boiling over with pure rage and panic.

“Hostages, my ass. You all need to think very logically right now.”

Step. Step.

Baek Jinwoo advanced at a steady pace, speaking in a low, calm murmur, but the terrorists caught every single word perfectly.

Every single sensory nerve in their bodies was completely locked onto his movements. There was no way they could miss it.

“Are you honestly going to follow your commander’s orders and spend the rest of your lives permanently disabled? Or are you going to surrender to the authorities right now and just serve your prison sentences?”

The sheer terror born from an absolute, overwhelming display of power.

Even with their ruthless leader screaming direct commands at them, the remaining thugs simply could not force their legs to move forward against Baek Jinwoo.

In fact, as he marched directly toward the main leader……

One of the nearby giants actively scrambled out of the way on all fours, utterly desperate to ensure he didn’t even accidentally brush against the advancing man.

Baek Jinwoo let out a sharp smirk.

Aren’t these the exact same individuals who were grinning and making wisecracks while pointing weapons at us just a minute ago?

“WH-WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU ALL DOING?!”

The leader fell into absolute, unadulterated panic.

“HE IS WALKING STRAIGHT TOWARD ME! STOP HIM! BRING HIM DOWN NOW!”

Bring me down? With what exactly?

I am going to take YOU off the board first.

Having successfully closed the gap between them, Baek Jinwoo.

Drove his foot hard into the floor and exploded forward into a blinding sprint.