Chapter 55

Baek Jinwoo left everything to Drill Sarge.

His trusty Omni Drill Sarge.

Life was so damn easy.

He thought this every time, but for someone who’d been E-rank in the past, the guy was absurdly competent.

• Everyone out.

Drill Sarge threw open every solitary cell door.

Normally, he didn’t speak in front of people, but Jinwoo allowed it this time.

From Baek Jinwoo’s perspective, these things weren’t people.

They were clear-cut ‘enemies’ who had threatened his family’s lives. Targets for elimination.

“Mmrrgh!”

“NNGHH!”

Among the players screaming through their gags were Oh Jimyeong and Park Hoseop.

Those two again……

Baek Jinwoo shook his head.

Some bad blood just refused to stay buried.

• Ramba.

• Mm!

• Remove their blindfolds and gags.

• Huh?! Why do I have to do it?

• ……?

Drill Sarge narrowed his eyes and stared.

• Okay, fine! I got it! I’ll do it! But you gotta give me a one-hour break from training tomorrow, deal?

Riiip, riiiiip!

Crushed under that Charisma, Ramba zipped around tearing off blindfolds.

“Gakh!”

“……You sons of bitches. Just kill me already!”

Some of the freed gangsters spat defiance.

“P-please, spare me!”

“I’ll tell you everything you want!”

Others slammed their foreheads against the floor, begging.

And then.

“Flame Bird!”

One of them immediately summoned his summon.

That meant absolutely nothing.

Shlk!

The B-rank Flame Bird was shredded by Drill Sarge’s blade the instant it materialized.

Simultaneously.

• I was going to explain first, but you’ve made that unnecessary. Watch closely. From this point on, anyone who summons a creature, opens their mouth without permission, or attempts suicide will end up like this.

Thwp!

A casual flick of his fingers struck the player’s pressure points.

And then.

“GH— AAAAAAAARGH!”

The gangster writhed on the ground like a worm, hands still bound.

The pain was so severe his eyes bulged from their sockets like a snail’s, and fluid streamed from his eyes, nose, and mouth.

He even pissed himself, a dark stain spreading across the floor.

“……!”

Every gangster who’d been secretly preparing to summon froze solid.

It didn’t just look painful. The man was twisting and contorting like he was genuinely dying.

“AAARGH! GAKH! STOP! PLEASE, STOP!”

• The sinew-splitting, bone-scraping method. It wrenches your muscles and bones in opposite directions. Quite painful, I’m told. If you’re curious, I recommend experiencing it firsthand.

Drill Sarge’s voice, by contrast, was perfectly serene.

• I’ll apply it for exactly one minute per offense. Be warned — anything over five minutes and you’ll either lose your mind or become a vegetable. Permanently.

Truly terrifying words.

What kind of agony could make a person react like that?

One minute crawled by amid screams that shook the prison walls.

Drill Sarge released the pressure points.

“Hakh, haaakh, hghk—hrrrgh……!”

The player lay with his cheek mashed against the floor, drool pooling beneath him as he gasped for breath.

Needless to say, the gang members went dead silent.

• Good.

Drill Sarge nodded, looking satisfied.

The players felt like they were staring death in the face.

A summon was talking. Actually speaking. And yet the terror was so overwhelming that not a single shred of curiosity surfaced.

They might die here. What did anything else matter?

• I’m going to give each of you a chance, one at a time. The information you’ll provide is simple: the locations of your boss, Jo Jihak, and the gang officers. Plus intel on the rank-and-file members. If you have no relevant information or nothing to say?

Drill Sarge struck the pressure points of two players.

Oh Jimyeong and Park Hoseop.

“GH— AAAAAAAARGH!”

“FUCK! WHY THE HELL ARE WE—AAAAAGH!”

The two rankers thrashed and squirmed like insects burning alive.

• That’s what happens.

Drill Sarge had no particular reason for torturing those two.

They’d never been part of the gang, so there was no information to extract.

It was a matter of principle.

He hadn’t liked the way they’d been looking at his lord since last time.

“AAAAAAAARGH!”

As the screaming men writhed, the eyes of every gang member gradually flooded with raw terror.

Those who hadn’t experienced it were terrified. Those who had were terrified even more.

• Now then, you first. Begin.

Drill Sarge’s information extraction commenced.

Drill Sarge’s interrogation methods were exceptional.

An hour? Hardly.

In a mere thirty minutes, they’d vomited up every last scrap of information and lay there panting.

What loyalty could criminals possibly share among themselves?

One round of the sinew-splitting, bone-scraping method and they were tripping over each other to confess Jo Jihak’s perverted hobbies and all.

If anything, they were desperately ransacking their own memories for more to offer.

• Disappointing.

Disappointed by the fragility of their resolve, Drill Sarge ran one round of the technique on every last one of them.

Two minutes each.

The space filled with screams in an instant.

• My lord.

“Yeah.”

Baek Jinwoo didn’t look away.

He watched every moment of their suffering.

It was a process of acclimation.

The world had changed. Things like this would keep happening.

I need to face reality.

If he shied away out of fear?

In this world, that just meant becoming the victim.

• Based on this information, we should be able to proceed.

Stormy had been diligently recording everything Drill Sarge obtained.

“Okay.”

Baek Jinwoo nodded.

The agreement with Park Changseok was one hour.

Time to return everyone to their cells and head out.

• Why again!

• What do you think? We need to tie them back up.

• Hmph!

Ramba grumbled, but what could she do?

Every other summon had their own role.

She had to at least handle the grunt work.

Park Dupal was a gang member.

Not an officer — just a regular member, and a bottom-rung one at that.

Since the gang operated on a cell structure, the information he possessed was severely limited.

Fuck.

He was currently gnawing at his thumbnail, trembling with anxiety.

Because Baek Jinwoo had declared war on crime and given them one day to turn themselves in.

Honestly, I’m so low on the totem pole I can barely call myself a gang member.

What had he actually done?

Intimidated two regular players and squeezed some money out of them. That was it.

He’ve never killed anyone, and he didn’t have the spine for it.

Ah, screw it.

So he made his decision.

He wouldn’t turn himself in.

Like they’d really come after every bottom-feeder. They’ll nab Jo Jihak, call it a day, and everything’ll blow over.

The next day.

Park Dupal came to bitterly regret that decision.

He opened his front door and stepped outside.

“Mr. Park Dupal?”

Someone dropped from the sky with a light thud and spoke.

“You didn’t turn yourself in, I see?”

“Wh-what the hell!”

Park Dupal looked up at the stranger in a panic, and his shock only deepened.

B-Baek Jinwoo?

How had Baek Jinwoo flown all the way here and recognized him?

Jaw hanging open, Park Dupal’s entire body locked up.

“I don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll make this quick. Turn yourself in by tomorrow. Tomorrow it’ll be two minutes. And just so you know, it goes up by one minute every day.”

“……What?”

What the hell does that mean?

Tomorrow is two minutes?

Then today is—?

He stood there baffled, but Baek Jinwoo was already riding a wyvern toward his next destination.

But hey.

No worries.

He’d find out what it meant soon enough.

From high above, Drill Sarge’s flicked finger struck true. Thwp! Right into Park Dupal’s pressure points.

Having already used the sinew-splitting, bone-scraping method hundreds of times, Drill Sarge’s proficiency had grown considerably.

He could now calibrate it so the pressure points released naturally after exactly one minute.

“Wh-what are you— GH, GAAAAAAAARGH!”

Park Dupal experienced pain unlike anything in his entire life and flipped over backwards.

Dignity, composure — gone.

He screamed and thrashed across the ground.

A simple fracture alone was enough to bring tears. Having your bones twisted in every direction while your muscles spasmed out of control? The agony was beyond imagination.

The pain lasted exactly one minute.

Only then did Park Dupal understand the true meaning of Baek Jinwoo’s words.

He’s telling me to turn myself in.

If he didn’t do it today?

Tomorrow would be two minutes. The day after, three.

Insane.

Park Dupal shook his head.

No way. Absolutely not.

One minute alone had made him want to die. Endure that for two minutes?

I’ll turn myself in.

The charges?

I’ll confess EVERYTHING.

This person knew even his identity as a bottom-rung gang member.

Against intelligence that thorough, any lie he told would lead to consequences he couldn’t begin to imagine.

He rushed back inside, washed up, and headed straight for the police station.

South Korea was undergoing a staggering transformation in record time.

[Nationwide Phenomenon!]

[Criminals Racing to Turn Themselves In — Is Baek Jinwoo Really That Terrifying?]

[Criminal identified as Mr. Kim: “Please, let me turn myself in. If I don’t, I’ll die!” Caught on camera trembling and weeping.]

Baek Jinwoo was furious, and he’d thrown every other plan out the window.

That’s how pissed off he was — he didn’t even run his Day Dungeon grind.

He extracted criminal intel through interrogation, then obtained addresses through cooperation with headquarters.

After that?

He went and fucked them up personally.

Anyone with even a trace of gang membership got hunted down and punished.

The officers?

He extracted fresh lists of names and updated his intelligence in real time.

└ Holy shit, Baek Jinwoo. Dude’s actually terrifying?

└ I saw him in my neighborhood. He did something to some random guy and just left, and the guy was writhing in agony. Thought it was weird, turns out the dude was a gang member. Went and turned himself in right after. Chills……

└ At this rate, is he seriously going to wipe out ALL crime?

└ The man’s built different when it comes to action

└ Fr, God Jinwoo; even if I was in a gang I’d be suffocating rn;

└ Lesson learned. You can mess with him, but NEVER touch his family.

The rumors spread like wildfire through the community.

Some gang members had already been hit. The ones who hadn’t started sweating bullets, one by one.

And just like that, one by one.

The roots of crime were being ripped out.

And at that very moment.

“……What do we do?”

An abandoned building. The agreed-upon meeting point.

A shadowy figure spoke in a voice thick with worry.

“The gang we built is crumbling before our eyes.”

“……Yeah.”

Jo Jihak scowled.

He’d considered gathering his officers, but most of them had already turned themselves in.

What the hell is he doing?

How was he acquiring information and tracking them down this fast?

Jo Jihak couldn’t wrap his head around it.

He’d never felt this powerless against the government, against headquarters, or even against the major guilds. So what the fuck was Baek Jinwoo?

“The officers?”

“Everyone who’s coming is here and waiting. We need to make a decision.”

“I suppose we do.”

Fight, or run.

Jo Jihak wasn’t stupid.

He knew better than anyone that their current forces couldn’t match Baek Jinwoo.

……Did I poke the hornet’s nest too soon?

No.

The outcome would’ve been the same either way.

The more firmly Baek Jinwoo established himself, the more aggressively headquarters would’ve moved.

But if there was one thing he regretted.

Not going myself.

He should’ve gone personally and kidnapped one of Baek Jinwoo’s inner circle.

When things went south like this, he could’ve at least bought time through a hostage……

“Jihak!”

That’s when it happened.

Commotion erupted from below the abandoned building.

“S-something’s wrong! You need to come down and see this!”

What?

Jo Jihak rushed to lean over the edge, and his blood ran cold.

Because down below, stepping off a wyvern, was Baek Jinwoo.

Thud!

Baek Jinwoo landed and glanced around.

“So you were all gathered here, huh?”

Then he grinned.

“You’ve got ten seconds. Fall in. Anyone who doesn’t gets the five-minute sentence.”

FWOOOOOSH!

Infernal fire, blazing crimson, erupted and encircled the abandoned building.

The flames of the legendary Storm Dragon Sorcerer.

Watching the scene unfold, Jo Jihak had a single thought.

Fuck, am I screwed?