Chapter 212: Episode 212

Episode 212

Hong Yul’s merciless beating continued.

Frost’s nose was broken and dangled loosely, his face a bloody mess, his features unrecognizable.

Just as the light was about to fade from his eyes, Hong Yul pulled a potion from her coat and forced it into his mouth.

Frost gulped and writhed in agony, but she did not loosen her grip on the bottle.

“You don’t get to pass out yet.”

After forcing him to drink, she poured the rest of the potion over his ruined face, then tossed the empty bottle behind her. Frost lay on the floor, clutching his throat and hacking.

“They say you can’t fix people, but you’re beyond that. You’re trash that needs to be taken out.”

Her eyes were as cold as ice.

“Even after a beating like that, you still don’t get it? The moment you think you’ve found a weakness, you start running your mouth?”

“I—I sincerely apologize! I think something went wrong with my head for a moment! Please, just think of it as the nonsense of an idiot who lost his mind! I beg you—!”

Frost started punching his own face over and over. He groveled with every ounce of pathetic energy he could muster, begging until his voice was raw.

Who could possibly imagine that this man was one of the heirs to the Unix Group and the President of the Korean Hunter Association?

“Alright, on to the next round.”

But Hong Yul felt nothing. She simply grabbed him by the collar again and hauled him upright.

“W-Wait a second—!”

Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack!

Brutal, wet impacts echoed through the room. Frost’s freshly healed body was beaten to a pulp again and again. Both his body and his mind were being shredded to rags.

“Fuck! Just kill meeeeee!”

Smack! Smack!

“Just kill me already! Please! For fuck’s saaaake!”

Wham!

The pain was so unbearable that Frost, who valued his own life above all else, was now begging her to end it.

But she deliberately smashed his face in again, silencing him, and threw him to the floor.

“Our Yusin stocked up on a whole bunch of potions so I could blow off some steam.”

She squatted in front of Frost, who lay sprawled on the ground without even the strength to twitch a finger.

Then, right before his eyes, she began pulling potions out of her subspace pouch.

“One bottle. Two bottles…”

The potions began to stack neatly on the floor. With each one, Frost’s eyes grew wider. All the pain he had endured so far had only cost him two bottles.

“Eleven, twelve, thirteen…”

The pile of potions grew higher and higher until finally—

“Fifty-seven. That’s the last one.”

She grabbed him by the collar again, dragged him up, and forced another potion down his throat.

“Let’s have some fun all night long, little brother. You’re good with that, right?”

She tossed the empty bottle behind her and laughed.

Frost’s silent scream went on and on.

* * *

And so, the tangled affair finally came to an end.

Since she was stepping down as Association President anyway, Hong Yul wanted to disappear to some quiet place and lie low for a few months. However, with the entire nation desperate to know what had happened, I persuaded her to at least hold a press conference.

She said she hated press conferences because they were too noisy, so in the end, she only agreed to a single interview with a single media outlet. In that interview, she revealed several facts.

First, everything had been Frost’s scheme to seize power.

She had been betrayed by Frost and trapped in a Dungeon, and the slaughter of the Blackguard and NIX guild members had all been his doing.

Second, Frost’s new policies had been designed to turn hunters into the Unix Group’s private army.

Sending Im Namjin and Hong Yeon overseas, putting Alchemia under arrest and investigation—every bit of it had been Frost’s work to eliminate anyone who stood in his way.

And there were many other details besides.

When people asked if she was the one who had left Frost beaten half to death on the beach, Hong Yul brushed it off by telling them to just ask Frost himself.

And Frost, now imprisoned, confessed to every crime he had committed against her. From what I heard, his mind had been so thoroughly broken that just hearing her name made him convulse and piss himself on reflex.

To be honest, the Association President and I had disagreed on how to deal with Frost.

I was in favor of just killing him cleanly.

“Are you nuts? What did he do to deserve an easy death?”

Hong Yul had practically jumped out of her seat in protest.

“That bastard needs to suffer a lot more. Just like I was trapped in that Dungeon, I’m going to throw him in a cell and let him rot there until he dies. He’s the one who kept preaching about the system, right? What better revenge than making him suffer forever, bound by that very system?”

“That’s true, but if Frost gives testimony that’s unfavorable to you, Madam President…”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.”

What on earth had happened in that one night to break someone as self-obsessed as Frost so completely?

I had thought Frost was the kind of man who wouldn’t bend to violence, but apparently, the Association President’s talent for beating people was far beyond anything I could have imagined.

In any case, Frost’s true nature was exposed to the entire world, and the Republic of Korea was thrown into shock.

Comments were flooding.

—Alright, everyone who was sucking up to Frost, line up.

—It’s a pattern at this point. The second the mob realizes they were duped, they delete their posts and vanish.

—Isn’t it creepy? All those people bawling their eyes out, saying they couldn’t believe Hong Yul was dead—it was all an act, a big performance.

—Rule number one: never trust a politician’s tears.

—This is insane. He stabbed Hong Yul in the back and pulled a nationwide con just so he could be Association President?

—He even killed the NIX and Blackguard kids. Calling him trash is too kind.

The situation had completely flipped.

The prosecutors, who had been tiptoeing around the administration, rushed to announce Frost’s arrest and investigation.

The charges against Frost alone were staggering.

High treason, the murder of fifty-eight hunters, bribery scandals, media manipulation, collusion with corporations, aggravated intimidation, and nepotistic hiring, to name a few.

Each one was a heavy crime.

And the judiciary, which had known all this and stayed silent throughout Frost’s administration… there was really nothing to say in their defense.

Apparently, the prosecutors realized their own survival was on the line, because the investigation moved at breakneck speed.

The Unix Guild, the Hunter Association, the Top 10 guilds that had cooperated with Frost, and even the Unix Group headquarters—once considered an untouchable sanctuary—were all raided and searched from top to bottom.

With that, all suspicion surrounding Alchemia was completely cleared, and the investigation was officially closed. It’s terrifying how quickly things change when the administration flips.

“Ugh, I’m finally back.”

After my showdown with Frost, I had collapsed in the golden lobby on the first floor to rest.

Everyone else was being dragged all over the place, so the Tower was quiet.

I was lying on the sofa, blankly staring up at the ceiling, when the front gate flashed and someone came in. I turned my head.

“Oh! Bora—huh?”

“Hehe, reporting for duty!”

Jin Bora, dressed in a military uniform of all things, snapped a salute to her eyebrow and gave me a cute wink.

But that only lasted a moment. Her lips started to tremble, and tears welled up in her eyes.

“Bora. Why are you dressed like that…?”

“Aaaaah! Sunbaeeeee!”

She burst into tears and sprinted toward me, slamming into me like a tackling dummy.

“It was so hard!”

Sobbing her heart out, she started tattling about everything that had happened.

From the sound of it, Jin Bora had been sent to what was basically a disciplinary boot camp disguised as “training” and had gone through all kinds of hell.

’…So the rumors were true. Frost really did run hunters through a boot camp.’

Right. That boot camp. As part of Frost’s policy to turn arrogant hunters into soldiers, Rank 5 hunters were trained by Rank 4s, and Rank 4s by Rank 3s, who served as drill instructors and worked them to the bone.

Jin Bora had been sent to the unit run by female hunter soldiers.

Whether it was on Frost’s orders or just because they had it in for her, even after she finished the three-day program, they refused to let her leave and kept her in training.

The army—there couldn’t have been a worse environment for her.

“They were total pieces of shit.”

Her shoulders shook with anger.

“They kept telling me! If I just told them who the potion-user was, they’d let me out! Sniff! The instructors threatened me with all kinds of crap! They bullied me!”

“They threatened you, too?”

…That really pissed me off.

“I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to go through all that.”

“No! No! Sunbae, you don’t have to apologize. I’m just grateful you came back safe.”

I let out a sigh. It made me angry to know the staff had suffered even more while I was gone.

I was definitely going to make an example out of someone later. Why do they keep messing with the people around me? It really makes my blood boil.

I spent a long while soothing Jin Bora as she clung to me and whined. Considering what I owed her, I probably wouldn’t be able to complain about anything for a few days.

“Oh, but the last day was really satisfying.”

“Why?”

She let out a sly little chuckle.

“Out of nowhere, the instructors who’d been tormenting me the whole time called me over. When I got there, they were all apologizing, bowing, buying me food, swearing they only did it because they were ordered to, practically crying their eyes out… I had no idea what was going on, but then I saw the news that you and the Association President had come back from the Dungeon!”

I gave a wry smile.

So the instructors had sensed the shift in the wind and rushed to beg Jin Bora for forgiveness. They must have been terrified of retaliation.

Moments like this really drive home how scary power is.

“So, did you forgive them all?”

“Hehehehe. Me?”

She flashed a meaningful smile.

“If I got swayed by that kind of sweet talk, I wouldn’t be me.”

“What did you do?”

“I had all the instructors assemble, then I put them through exactly what I went through.”

“Pffthahaha!”

I clutched my stomach and burst out laughing.

She’s not exactly ordinary herself. She’d made her Rank 4 seniors do punishment drills?

“I copied every line they said, every thing they did, every bit of training they made me do, right back at them. It was the only way I felt like I could let go of all that pent-up resentment.”

She cleared her throat and mimicked an instructor’s voice.

“This instructor doesn’t expect much from you! Just enthusiasm and volume!”

I doubled over laughing.

Yeah, she wasn’t normal either.

After laughing myself out for a few minutes, I asked Jin Bora, “So, did you get it all out of your system? Or do you want me to go give them another lesson?”

“Nah, it’s fine. I feel better now. They say even bad times can build a kind of bond, right? They were just following orders from above.”

She said that, then wrapped herself around my arm.

“Instead, go to the department store with me this weekend! Shopping date, okay?”

“Deal. I’ll buy you whatever you want.”

“You promised, okay?”

Jin Bora leaned her cheek against my arm and closed her eyes in contentment.

I gazed at her in silence.

As I looked at her face, a figure I had forgotten for a while suddenly surfaced from the back of my mind.

A strange, unsettled feeling washed over me.

“Sunbae?”

Jin Bora opened her eyes and asked,

“Is there something on my face?”

I didn’t answer immediately.

Bellica’s face overlapped with Jin Bora’s.

“Bora.”

“Yes, Sunbae.”

“Can you hold out your hand for a second?”

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