Chapter 73

Chapter 73
## Chapter 73

### New Order (3)

Crash—! Boom, crash—!

“Son of a bitch! What is Hahoe Mask doing in a place like this?! The news said he was preoccupied hunting down violent offenders across Seoul!”

“Shut your mouth and lower that weapon! Do you honestly believe a bullet is going to slow him down?”

Because their criminal operations were limited to low-level muggings, they had convinced themselves that they were far too insignificant to ever draw the attention of Hahoe Mask.

They felt an intense sense of injustice regarding their current predicament, but the reality had already set in, and fleeing was completely off the table because the entire perimeter had been sealed off by a barrier.

Still, they refused to simply lie down and accept their demise.

“Aaargh—!”

Thud—!

A member of the crew sprinted toward Hahoe Mask with explosive velocity, planting his heel into the floor and channeling every ounce of his strength into a single punch.

Simultaneously, his partners launched their own coordinated assaults, striking out with everything they possessed.

Kaboom—!

The dark barrier rippled under the impact of the massive energy released by their strikes, but the barrier held firm.

Instead, tendrils of obsidian shadow erupted from the ground beneath them, coiling around their limbs and freezing them rigidly in place.

“Ugh…”

“Son of a bitch!”

It wasn’t just limited to their positions; the entire environment had become engulfed in a thick, viscous gloom.

The setting looked as though a pocket of the netherworld itself had been superimposed onto the room.

Standing directly before them was the masked assailant, dark energy radiating from his form…

Observing them silently, completely unmoving from his initial stance.

“Hehe… Christ, even the cult leader didn’t radiate this kind of terror…”

The crushing weight of his presence alone was enough to make their chests tighten in sheer panic.

Watching the darkness crawl over their vision, a singular realization united them all.

…The ‘Demon King’ had truly manifested in the mortal realm.

—

“So I looked him right in the eye and said, ‘Senior! That is absolutely unacceptable!’ And you should have seen the look he gave me…”

The drinking session with Tae-san stretched well past the early hours of the morning.

My original strategy was to carry him to his room once he drank himself into a stupor, but he showed no signs of slowing down, seemingly eager to vent months of built-up tension from his long period of sobriety.

‘His tolerance is absolutely ridiculous…!’

While debating whether I should fake being drunk to end the night, a sudden inspiration hit me.

A particular dilemma had been weighing on my mind lately, and this seemed like the perfect casual setting to bring it up.

‘I ought to gather perspectives from different minds.’

Watching for a lull in his rant, I slipped the question in smoothly the moment Tae-san took a breath.

“Hey, Tae-san. I’ve actually been brainstorming a novel to write in my spare time.”

The pivot came completely out of nowhere, but given how much alcohol we had consumed, the lack of transition didn’t matter.

“Oh? A book? Where did that come from? Come on, tell me, what’s the premise?”

“I’m leaning toward a classic narrative centered on a Demon King and a Hero…”

“You can’t go wrong with a traditional setup. You know, I dabbled in creative writing myself back in the day!”

During his middle school years, when his adolescent angst was at an all-time high, he used to spend hours scribbling away in a private journal, claiming he was crafting a masterpiece.

God only knows what happened to that cringe-worthy relic of his youth, but his old creative spark might actually serve a purpose here.

I quickly provided him with a basic outline.

The foundational story revolved around a protagonist embarking on a grand quest to vanquish a sinister Demon King who had reawakened on the mainland, resolving the various crises triggered by this villain while rising to legendary status.

“The issue is, even if it’s purely fictional, I don’t really like the idea of writing about innocent bystanders getting harmed.”

“Hmm… yeah, I can understand why you’d want to avoid that.”

Tae-san nodded in total agreement, having experienced his own share of victimization.

“Because of that, I want to create a scenario where the Demon King earns a terrifying reputation for cruelty while exclusively targeting wicked individuals, but I’m drawing a complete blank on how to pull it off.”

“That is a tough one. It defies logic for a ruthless overlord to be highly selective about his body count.”

“I’ve been tossing around a few concepts. What approach do you think makes sense?”

“Hmm… nothing springs to mind immediately. Let me mull it over. Besides, you’re just in the brainstorming phase, right? Have you even finalized the character roster?”

“Uh? Oh… not entirely?”

Revealing the identities crossed my mind, but I felt uncomfortable diving into the specifics, so I kept my response intentionally vague.

“Listen to me, you need to give the hero and the villain truly memorable, imposing names. Common names like Michael, John, or Hans are strictly forbidden!”

I winced slightly.

“H-hmm. Would it really be that bizarre if the central villain was named Hans?”

“Are you serious?! Naming the ultimate threat Hans?! That is genuinely atrocious!”

“Uh… I don’t know, it feels subverted. It provides an unexpected contrast.”

“Contrast? Don’t give me that, it’s just plain corny! This is your ultimate antagonist, not some nameless background character; the name carries absolutely zero weight!”

Tae-san argued his point with fiery conviction, his cheeks flushed crimson from the booze.

It was as if the alcohol had unlocked a deeply dormant creative director inside him.

“Just picture it. The big bad arrives on the scene! The terrified crowd screams, ‘Watch out, Demon King Hans is here! Flee for your lives!’ And then he roars, ‘Bwahaha! Bow before the mighty Demon King Hans!’ Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? He’d be laughed out of the kingdom!”

“I-is it really that bad?”

I hadn’t given the matter any serious artistic thought, but his intense rhetoric was genuinely starting to sway my opinion.

‘Actually, when he puts it that way, he has a point.’

Hans, the scourge of Auterica, the Undying Sovereign.

The name ‘Hans’ was so utterly ordinary that virtually every settlement probably had a dozen residents answering to it.

It undeniably lacked the gravitas required for a figure meant to represent the pinnacle of malice across the lands.

‘The complication is that the clergy is already fully aware of that moniker…’

Though his logic was ringing true, altering the name at this stage of the game wasn’t an option.

“If you’re absolutely dead-set on keeping it, relegate it to an alias. Like a shortened version or a private handle. Work up a grand, official title for his true identity.”

“Oh? What kind of title are we talking about?”

“Let’s look at the root name, Hans… Hmm… Got it! What about ‘Hannibal Strauss’? Now that sounds menacing, doesn’t it?”

He puffed his chest out proudly, completely locked into the zone as if his middle school ambitions had been completely reawakened.

The real problem was that I found myself genuinely liking the suggestion.

Blame it on the slight intoxication blurring my judgment, but Tae-san’s unbridled enthusiasm was becoming contagious, tapping into my own buried adolescent fantasies.

…Then again, it wasn’t all that surprising.

The dramatic theatricality displayed by Hans—the very actions that usually made me cringe—stemmed from a facet of my own subconscious mind.

“And when it comes to the generals commanding his legions, you definitely need a proper council like the Four Heavenly Kings…”

“In that case, how about we try this direction…”

With that, our drinking bout transformed into a marathon world-building session that lasted until dawn.

—

‘Curse it all! Damn it to hell—!’

A solitary silhouette sprinted frantically through the suffocating darkness.

Hurling silent curses into the void, he glanced over his shoulder while regulating his breathing to drop his presence down to absolute zero.

‘How can a monster of that caliber exist?! There is no way he is just a Level 7! Is he actually operating at Level 8? Were those absurd rumors actually accurate?’

Every single one of his subordinates who had accompanied him tonight had been effortlessly slaughtered by that lone entity.

Had it not been for his specialized survival trait, which was tailor-made for evasion and flight, he would have shared their fate and been completely wiped out alongside them.

‘Dammit…! I genuinely believed the coast was clear once Alpha was taken off the board! Instead, an even more terrifying predator claims the throne!’

He had thoroughly enjoyed the privileges that came with being a Gamma among the radical faction, but he valued his personal autonomy above all else.

Enduring the hierarchy of an active syndicate and constantly watching his back around rivals had been an unbearable source of anxiety.

‘That’s precisely why I made my move the moment the radicals imploded.’

The individuals who had gathered at the estate on ‘that specific afternoon’ had all been executed.

Recognizing his immense stroke of luck in avoiding that gathering, he seized the chaos as an opening to break away entirely, taking a loyal splinter group with him to establish his own operation.

‘Heterosis? Merging with the peaceful moderates? That just means subjecting myself to even stricter protocols! I’d rather take my chances with death!’

The mere thought of bending the knee to a new master and losing the freedom to harvest blood at his own leisure filled him with revulsion.

‘I possess more than enough personal power to live by my own rules, so why should I submit?’

With Seoul currently completely locked down by the oppressive vigilance of Hahoe Mask, he had migrated his operations to the outer provinces to slowly build his influence back up…

Yet, despite his precautions, they had somehow managed to pinpoint his exact coordinates.

Earlier tonight, the ruler of Heterosis had tracked him down personally.

The ambush struck right in the middle of a private banquet he was hosting, where they were feasting on a selection of abducted mortals chosen to suit their specific palates.

The aftermath of that feast was his current desperate flight.

The loyal followers who had rallied behind him had been reduced to literal ash, leaving him as the sole survivor running for his life.

‘Surely he can’t maintain a tracking link over a distance this vast?’

His survival trait was rapidly burning through its remaining fuel.

The technique, which rendered his physical existence entirely imperceptible to outside observers, possessed a severely limited operational window due to how fundamentally broken its effects were.

When pushed to its absolute threshold, even individuals with god-tier perception wouldn’t notice him standing an inch away from them, and it allowed him to slip right through solid barriers, making it the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card that had preserved his life until now.

“Haa… Haa… Fucking hell, what an absolute disaster.”

Because he had spent the last several miles running with his internal energy completely suppressed to keep the cloaking active, he collapsed onto the dirt, desperately gasping for oxygen.

He had managed to put distance between them, but his long-term prospects were looking incredibly grim.

Letting out a heavy, defeated groan, he began to push himself off the ground to continue his retreat when…

“So this is where you hid.”

An icy tone caused his thoughts to grind to a screeching halt.

“Wh… what? How did you…!”

“It truly is a remarkable trait. Complete, instantaneous erasure from perception. I will admit to a brief moment of anxiety, believing I had genuinely lost your trail until your presence flickered back into reality right here.”

Heinz the Second, who had materialized beside him without making a sound, took a measured, calm step forward.

“You actually tracked my signature…? I covered a minimum of ten kilometers.”

While his cloaking trait remained active, he left absolutely zero physical markers, not even a footprint.

This implied that his pursuer had deduced his exact destination across vast terrain without a single clue to follow…

“Is that supposed to be difficult?”

Heinz, however, sounded entirely unfazed by the feat.

With his heightened perception, which had undergone multiple stages of evolution and was further amplified by his “Insight” capability, losing track of a target he had already engaged from that distance was mathematically impossible.

“Ha… haha.”

Completely ignorant of the mechanics behind his defeat, the rogue vampire could only offer a hollow, defeated laugh.

“Even if I throw myself at your mercy… I assume it changes nothing?”

“Correct. You crossed the line of negotiation a long time ago.”

Attempting to forcefully press someone of his volatile nature into service would only invite internal sabotage and unwanted complications down the road.

While the cloaking asset itself was undeniably valuable, Heinz required absolute stability for Heterosis to function, and a liabilities-heavy subordinate did not fit the blueprint.

“But I refuse to just stand here and let you—ugh!”

Splat—

Before the vampire could even begin to marshal his internal power to mount a final defense, Heinz’s hand had already cut through the air, piercing through his chest cavity and impaling his heart.

“Ugh… why… why push it to this extreme…”

“This represents the parameters of the new regime. Total conformity, or absolute purging.”

Heinz delivered the cold ultimatum as his opponent’s body disintegrated into gray ash, the remaining life force dissolving into his own veins.

The rogue’s final, indignant expression crumbled away into nothingness, leaving the midnight air thick with sudden, absolute silence.

‘That concludes the cleaning operation on this front. Time to head back.’

It had been an incredibly exhausting sequence of events.

Leaping into the sky, Heinz shifted his trajectory back toward the capital, navigating the fading shadows of the approaching morning.

—

“Welcome back, master. Your execution of the mission was flawless.”

“Mm. Have there been any developments in my absence?”

“Everything remains stable on our end. The tranquility we enjoy is entirely due to your direct interventions, Lord. As of this morning, Heterosis has successfully solidified its dominance across the entire network of the Blood Alliance.”

“Good to hear…”

The morning sun was just beginning to crest the horizon.

Heinz walked into Jin So-ran’s private office, letting his body sink heavily into the executive chair.

A little over three full weeks had elapsed since the formal inauguration of Heterosis.

By pushing himself around the clock without rest, leveraging his immense physical endurance, they had successfully achieved a level of operational independence where the syndicate could manage everyday crises without supervision.

With the primary threats systematically neutralized, his direct involvement would now be strictly reserved for anomalous crises that exceeded the capabilities of his command structure.

‘Which means my operational objectives on this planet are effectively complete.’

Securing the structural foundation of Heterosis, which had been his primary objective, was finally realized.

Furthermore, their aggressive expansion into the criminal underworld utilizing the Blood Alliance infrastructure was executing perfectly, far exceeding his conservative initial projections.

As things stood, the metropolis of Seoul was… operating under a revised social contract dictating absolute compliance, engineered entirely by Hans and Heinz.

It was only a matter of time before this structure enveloped the rest of the nation.

‘From this point forward, Heinz can dedicate his full attention to the affairs of Auterica.’

The narrative demanded that he begin assembling a covert, independent faction within the alternate realm to push the overarching scenario forward.

Given his nature, he was uniquely suited for orchestrating espionage from the shadows.

Having successfully unified a massive syndicate from scratch on Earth, he entertained zero doubts about his capacity to replicate that success on a much grander scale.

“I’ll be taking my leave now. I intend to remain out of pocket for the foreseeable future, so do not disturb me unless an absolute emergency arises.”

“Pardon? Are you stepping away indefinitely?”

“I have private obligations that require my undivided attention. I will check in when the situation demands it. The daily operations are entirely in your hands.”

After all, that exact administrative oversight was the sole reason she held her position.

With a significantly lighter spirit, Heinz the Second exited the building.

Thoroughly relishing the unique satisfaction that came with being a chief executive backed by a hyper-competent workforce…