Tang!

The instant he registered the short noise and something flashing inside his night-vision goggles,

Junho reflexively folded the left arm holding the barrel in a C-clamp grip toward his face.

Thwack!

The incoming bolt struck the reinforced plastic guard on his arm and bounced off.

Junho immediately twisted his body toward the direction the arrow had come from, pressed the barrel against his forearm, and pulled the KP9’s trigger.

Tak! Tatak!

“Ahh!”

As soon as he heard the short scream, Junho gripped the barrel properly again. Then, the moment his laser fixed on the head of the man who had fallen on his ass, he fired one more shot.

Thwack!

A hole opened in the man’s forehead. His head snapped far backward, and his upper body slowly tilted before collapsing.

Junho kept his shooting stance as he quickly scanned front, back, left, and right, then moved toward the man’s corpse.

'Thermal imaging equipment?'

Looking at the industrial thermal camera wrapped in duct tape and fixed to a cart, Junho narrowed his eyes.

It was a model he had considered as well when he was purchasing large quantities of supplies for their shelter in the past. It was a product mainly used in the construction industry to inspect electrical wiring, pipes, and similar systems.

Instead of carrying it around, they had fixed it in place facing the emergency exit, using it to identify intruders and attack them.

Considering this was an enormous mart that sold every kind of product imaginable, it was not strange that there would be a store dealing in specialized electronics like this.

'He’s no ordinary bastard.'

The image of the man in black work clothes naturally rose in Junho’s mind.

Because this was definitely his handiwork.

At the same time, Junho became even more certain of his assumption that the man was former special forces.

He considered warning Yoon Seolhee, but soon shook his head inwardly.

Even without his warning, she and the KJM Brothers would handle themselves just fine.

'Anyway, if they have things like this, that means there should be plenty of other useful stuff too. Good.'

With that thought, Junho resumed moving.

The inside of the mart appeared in green shading, and the display shelves rose like black silhouettes.

Tangled carts, goods, and boxes narrowed the paths throughout the aisles, and shards of glass that had clearly been broken on purpose lay scattered everywhere.

Then, from behind a pallet stacked with detergent in one aisle, he caught a subtle movement, and in the flat green of the night-vision goggles, that tremor stood out even more.

Junho immediately lowered his body.

In his vision, he saw thermal cameras installed between the shelves, and behind them, dark shapes were faintly seeping through the shadows.

Three shadows holding long weapons that might have been steel pipes or spears, along with short knives, and one shadow holding what seemed to be a crossbow.

If he walked while avoiding the area covered in glass shards, he would be caught on the thermal camera, and then the bastards surrounding him from front and back would attack at the same time.

It was a trap an ordinary survivor would have no choice but to fall into.

Unfortunately for them, this side was not an ordinary survivor.

Junho stopped in place and aimed his KP9 between the shelves.

The products arranged on the shelves blocked his targets’ bodies, but that did not matter.

There was no way bullets capable of punching through a car door would fail to pierce that kind of junk.

Tak! Tatak! Tak!

“Agh!”

“Kuhk!”

The moment screams burst out from the left side at the end of the aisle,

Junho quickly crab-walked into the next aisle and pulled the trigger five times toward the pile of detergent.

Pupupupupuck!

“Kuhuk!”

He heard only one person scream, but that did not matter.

He had seen the other bastard collapse without even getting to scream because a bullet had lodged in his head.

Papapapak! Tak! Tatak!

Junho dashed forward like lightning, putting confirmation shots into the men fallen on the floor, then stepped on the arm of the last one, who was still writhing without dying after being shot in the stomach.

“Aaaagh!”

The bastard had been trying to grab the knife that had fallen to the ground, but he screamed at the pain that felt as though the bone in his forearm had been crushed.

Click.

Junho pressed the suppressor against the bastard’s head and said,

“You can scream more. Loud enough for the other bastards to hear. Loud enough to make them tremble like frightened dogs.”

“Auh....”

As the man froze in terror, Junho spoke low.

“You’re a smart one. Then I’ll explain it so even you can understand. Right now, there’s a nine-millimeter subsonic round stuck in your stomach. It didn’t pass through. Instead, it scraped up your intestines and blood vessels.”

“H-huuuh...!?”

“From now on, blood is going to slowly pool inside your belly. Your breathing will get shallow, you’ll start sweating, and your body temperature will drop. Your fingers are tingling right now, aren’t they? That’s the start. Soon, it’ll feel like your stomach is being torn open. Probably starting now.”

“Uuugh....”

As though that pain really had begun, the looter let out a groan.

Without a single change in his eyes, Junho continued.

“At this rate, you’ll go into shock within five minutes and won’t be able to breathe properly. In less than ten, your consciousness will start fading. If no one does anything, you won’t last an hour before you die. Blood will fill your belly, and you’ll fade out like you’re suffocating yourself. And it’ll hurt the whole time. It’ll hurt like hell.”

He tilted his head slightly and whispered coldly.

“So answer what I ask you right now. Whether you die in pain like this, or get even a small chance to live, depends on you.”

Junho showed him a personal trauma kit, then took out combat hemostatic gauze and a pressure bandage from inside it and shook them.

“Tell me where your friends are hiding, and where that black-clothed boss bastard is. Then you can live.”

***

“Hic, h-hic....”

“Mom, Mooom....”

At the sound of low crying, Lee Minjae ground his teeth.

“Fuck, shut the hell up, you bitches.”

“Hup.”

At Lee Minjae’s curse, the crying immediately stopped, and soon someone spoke in a terrified voice.

“B-babe. Minjae, what do we do...?”

“If we hide here, they won’t know. Fuck... who is it? What kind of bastards are they?”

Thinking of the former nightclub waiter subordinate who had died in the office he used as his room, Lee Minjae shuddered.

The building closest to this mart, the one that could provide a shooting angle into the office, was the mixed-use officetel across the road.

But “closest” was only relative. There was an eight-lane road between them, so it was about eighty meters away.

In daylight, maybe. But at night, landing both shots from that distance was not easy.

At minimum, they would need firearms and accessories similar to what had been used in the Special Duty Team, the military police special mission unit he had belonged to.

“Fuck... fine, maybe a scope, but using a suppressed gun in Korea?”

Suppressors could not be attached to just any firearm in the first place.

Even with the same caliber, the ammunition used could differ, so a gun equipped with a suppressor had to be considered an entirely different thing.

Bastards who used something that special?

Lee Minjae bit his lip.

No matter how he had a combined seventh dan in martial arts, he was powerless in front of a gun.

But.

“Hey, Eunju. Get over here, you fucking bitch.”

“Wh-why...? I don’t want to.”

Oh Eunju, an online shopping mall model who had once had around a hundred thousand followers, trembled as she refused.

“You fucking bitch?”

“Augh!”

But because she had starved for three days and had no strength left, she practically tumbled into Lee Minjae’s arms under his rough grip.

“Hey. You all come here too.”

“Wh-why are you doing this, babe...?”

“I said come when I tell you to come. Fuck, you want to die?”

The dagger in Lee Minjae’s hand gleamed under the faint red LED light, and the women hiding in the storage room with him had no choice but to obey meekly, terrified.

“H-hic....”

Soon, five women were crammed into carts and positioned in front of Lee Minjae as if surrounding him.

Riiip! Rip!

Lee Minjae tore open the tops of all five women.

“Agh!”

“U-huhuh!”

The women, who had been wearing only thin clothes to suit his tastes, were half-naked in an instant.

“Heh-heh. Fuck, come on in if you want. Let’s see if you’re any different.”

With a crossbow resting on one woman’s shoulder, Lee Minjae muttered with a vicious expression.

The world had changed like this, but men, as creatures, could not help instinctively freezing when they saw a woman—especially a young, pretty woman—naked.

And if a cart carrying a naked woman came rushing toward them?

“Heh. Even Jesus and Buddha would have their eyes go wild.”

He had already used it several times and experienced its effectiveness himself, so Lee Minjae did not doubt that it would work again this time.

Besides, that was not all he had prepared.

Tak. Tak.

“Ugh.”

As Lee Minjae quickly turned the lights on and off, the women squeezed their eyes shut, then opened them narrowly.

Only one red LED cast a dim glow, and the storage room overall was extremely dark.

If someone entered a storage room like this and it suddenly became bright, anyone’s vision would be limited for an instant.

“Come on. Come on. I just need to catch one. Just one....”

The enemies who had raided the mart all had guns, so the bastard who came in here would surely be the same.

In the military police SDT, he had been treated as an ace, and he had handled most firearms from the K1 fitted with a dot sight and laser target designator on its rail to the K7 suppressed submachine gun.

As long as he got one gun, he feared no one, and Lee Minjae believed he could somehow get through this crisis.

After finishing every preparation, Lee Minjae steadied his breathing and glared at the storage room entrance.

Click.

He heard someone outside trying to open the locked door.

“M-Mom....”

“You fucking—be quiet.”

“Hic!”

The woman he had been having a filthy good time with only a few dozen minutes earlier hurriedly shut her mouth.

At that moment—

Bang!

The sound of something striking the storage room doorknob rang out.

Lee Minjae grew even more tense and placed his finger on the crossbow trigger.

Creeeak....

At last, the door slowly began to open, and even in his tension, Lee Minjae felt adrenaline explode through him as he prepared to push the cart holding Oh Eunju.

But then—

Ting! Clatter....

With a strange metallic sound, something was tossed through the gap in the door, which had opened just wide enough for a person’s arm to pass through.

“Shit...!?”

Because he was a former SDT member, a counterterrorism unit, Lee Minjae knew better than anyone what it was.

In an instant, he pushed the cart and, at the same time, let go of the crossbow, covered his eyes and ears, and snapped his head back.

Booom...!!!

“Aaaagh!”

“Kyaaaah!”

As the flashbang detonated inside the storage room, spewing a roar and shock wave close to 170 decibels and light of several million candela, the women screamed.

“Augh! Auuugh!”

Bang!

In only one second, the sealed storage room became a whirlpool of chaos, and immediately after, someone kicked the door and entered.

And at that instant, Lee Minjae, even though his eyes were temporarily not seeing properly, lifted the crossbow toward the door and pulled the trigger.

Taaang! Thwack!

“Kuh!”

At the groan that immediately came out, Lee Minjae cheered inwardly, drew his knife, and charged toward the door.

Pak, pak, pak!

He saw someone in dark clothing similar to his own stagger with a bolt lodged in the stomach.

“Die!”

Only then did Lee Minjae release the breath he had been holding as a shout and stabbed the dagger down toward the opponent’s throat.

But at that moment—

Swish!

Something seemed to flash from behind the target, who had slightly bent at the waist.

Thwack!

“Ghk!”

Lee Minjae, wearing the stab-proof vest he had looted from a police officer he had killed, felt a heavy impact in his chest and staggered.

What had stuck into the stab-proof vest was a drawing knife, and if it had struck just a little higher, it would have lodged below his neck.

“Kuh....”

The force behind it was so strong it felt as though his breath had been cut off.

But Lee Minjae quickly pushed the cart holding the woman beside him and tried to grab the bastard hit by the crossbow bolt first.

His eyes would be drawn to the naked woman, so if Lee Minjae used that opening to take the bastard’s gun and hold him hostage, he would definitely have a chance—

Swish!

Something shot upward from below the figure who had been bent over.

“......!?”

Lee Minjae had thought subduing someone shot in the stomach with an arrow would be nothing, and his eyes flew wide.

Thwack!!!

The opponent’s uppercut, thrown after being thrown off balance for the briefest instant by the bolt stuck in the ballistic vest, landed squarely in Lee Minjae’s jaw.

“Guhk!”

Because there was a difference in weight class, Lee Minjae took the impact but did not fall.

However, whether his opponent was shooting, punching, or using a knife, follow-up attacks were passive.

Swish! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

“Augh! Kuhk!”

After being stabbed by a combat knife in the gap at the side of his stab-proof vest and in both thighs, Lee Minjae finally staggered backward and collapsed.

“Whew, whew... I’m a woman like them, you bastard.”

The person who brought him down was a female Special Forces NCO who did not give a damn about the bodies of naked women.