Chapter 26 – The Shadow of Death

“Big——?!”

Instead of pulling the trigger, the man dodged the spear by jumping to the side.

If the man hadn’t dodged and shot, I would have been shot. However, the man would have been equally hit by the bamboo spear, and neither would have been able to avoid fatal wounds.

The man prioritized not killing himself before killing me.
Thanks to you, I was able to earn a lot.

– Knock!
The bamboo spear I threw stuck in the tree behind me.
The man who had dodged the bamboo spear pointed his gun at me again.

“This bastard!”

But at that time, I was already approaching a man.

Blood flow throughout the body is accelerated.
A cold sweat broke out as the hair on the back of his neck stood on end.

Someone is seriously trying to kill me.
An unrealistic reality is forced to shut up.

It was different from dealing with a beast.
Human malice.
It was much dirtier and soggy than the pure instinct of a beast.

-Taang——!

Once again, gunshots hit my eardrums.
But this bullet cut through the air. Because I lifted the man’s hand up towards the sky.

“Nice… !”

The familiar smell of gunpowder. Smell of sweat. And stench.
His bodily senses, which had become several times more sensitive than usual, were giving him all sorts of information.

I knew intuitively.
How did this man get the pistol?

“Kuk, kuh!”

– Took.

Twisting his wrist, the man let out a scream and dropped his pistol.
I bent the arms of the screaming man behind his back, and at the same time hooked his legs and knocked him to the floor.

-Thud.
As she fell, she crushed the man’s arm and back with her elbow.
The added weight of two people should not be a small shock.

“Kaaak!”

The man vomits out a breath mixed with a scream.
Even at that moment, my head was cluttered with all kinds of thoughts.

──Should I kill him?
How?
With a fist? Or hit him with a stone?
Can I kill Wouldn’t it be considered self-defence to kill after taking a weapon?

The ‘common sense’ that I’ve lived as a normal person for 20 years made me hesitate for a moment.

… No. Now is not the time to question that.
There are no laws or police here now. Even if he were to be caught alive, he would not be able to be imprisoned. Likewise, even if I commit a crime, there is nothing to be punished for.

And this man shot Seungpil and tried to shoot me too. He was not allowed to live.

Having reached that conclusion in my heart, I reach out to grab the stone.

– Zapak.

Suddenly I heard footsteps next to me.

It wasn’t just me and this guy here.
There was also a man’s daughter.

– Zapak.

She took one more step this way,
I picked up her handgun that had fallen to the floor.

It’s cool.

Her wrists are tied with a rope.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t shoot.

“Yeah, yes! It’s a play! Shoot it! Shoot this bastard!”

The man shouts in a hoarse voice.

The voice was full of hope.
I was careless for a while and lost the advantage, but as if I had a chance to turn around.

The muzzle is pointed this way.
Her expression is expressionless like a doll.
In her head, she couldn’t even imagine what she was thinking.

“Ah.”

Pulling on the rope connected to the man’s wrist would have prevented her daughter from shooting herself.

But I didn’t.
Because it wasn’t me that the gun was pointed at.

-Taang——!

Puck. The shock of something exploding passed through the man’s body to me as well.
For an instant, the man’s body, which had been resisting so strongly, felt power draining away.

Her daughter shot her own father, not me.
A black hole was punched in the man’s forehead.

My head didn’t explode like in the movie.
However, the man’s eyes were wide open as if they were going to pop out.

The daughter who killed her father turned her gun.

It’s not me this time either.
With a blank expression, this time he put the gun to his temple.

“Come on, go to sleep—”

Yet again.
Pulling her strings might have saved her.

But I didn’t.

She’s both keeping this woman alive and letting her die.
Because I was thinking about which one would be beneficial to me.

-Taang——!

The woman’s body flies lightly and then falls.
Then, like a discarded mannequin, she collapsed on the floor.

“Ugh… !”

Just like the father I killed, with my eyes wide open.
Those dead eyes felt as if they were resentful of me.

I wasn’t crazy either.

So quickly, so much happened.
Two people died right in front of my eyes. I was about to die too.
It was cold. It felt like the blood that had been circulating rapidly had stopped in an instant.

The first thing I need to do now is–

“… Seungpil!”

Okay. Seungpil.
I staggered as if I was about to fall, got up and ran to Seungpil.
Seungpil was lying on his face, just as he was when he first started.

“Seungpil! Seungpil-ah, wake up!”

I hesitated to get Seungpil up.
Red blood was seeping through his back.
As I first thought, I was shot in the back.

“Uh…”

Calm down. Take a deep breath.
What to do when you get shot?

Stop bleeding by pressing the affected area? Take out the bullet? Artificial respiration?
Judging from the location of the blood, the area hit seemed to be in the heart or lungs.
What if a bullet is lodged in an organ?

“Seungpil! Can you hear me? Hey! Seungpil Han! Won’t you answer me?”

I urgently but cautiously hugged Seungpil by the armpit and raised him up.
And I’m going to go to the chest side and touch it.

It was not wet.
That meant that the bullets did not penetrate and were lodged in the body.

What should I do when a bullet is lodged in my body?
There are no hospitals here.
Then I had no choice but to take it out myself.

How did you do it in the movie? Did you pick it up with tweezers or something and force it out?

… Can I do that
No. I had to. If you don’t, Seungpil will die.

It felt like blood was draining from my body.

“——Oh, brother!”

Seung-pil’s younger brother opens the door to the hideout and runs out.
I saw my brother fall.

Being extremely sensitive, I yelled at Seunghee.

“Hey, Han Seung-hee! You told me not to come out!”

Seunghee was startled and stopped walking.

It doesn’t mean that there are sharp numbers. It was just a simple joke.

Calm down. Stay calm. This is not the time to blame others.
While calming myself, I put my finger in the hole in Seungpil’s combat uniform and forcibly tore it apart.
Bu-wook. I don’t know where that power came from, but the tough combat uniform was torn like a piece of paper.

The area where the bullet had been hit could be seen at a glance.
Even now, black blood was gushing out of it.

“Kuh…”

To my eyes, it seemed that Seungpil’s life itself was being sucked out.

Once I pressed the bullet hole with my hand. To stop any bleeding.
It was hot. The temperature of life was so hot.
Seung-pil is dying. This death is unstoppable. I felt that kind of foreboding on my skin.

“… River…”
“Seungpil!”

A voice whispered in my ear, which was filled with despair.
It was definitely Seungpil’s voice.

Just one letter. But that was proof that Seungpil was still alive.

Okay. Seung-pil is still alive. I had to get my head right. Only then can it be saved.

“Hey, Seungpil-ah, be patient. ‘Cause I’ll save you uh? Can you hear me?”

I pressed the bullet hole in my back with one hand, and with the other I took my phone out of my pocket and operated it.

Shop. Expendables. Advanced recovery potion.

The location was memorizing.
I went through the process I was familiar with and bought a high-end restorative medicine.
My hands that operate the phone were shaking.

“You fucking Seungpil, this is fucking expensive. Know? But, I bought it to save you. Uh?”

I unscrewed the cork from the recovery pills with my teeth and opened it.
He then picked up Seungpil’s upper body and brought the mouth of the medicine bottle to Seungpil’s lips.

“After you eat this, you know how to fucking treat me. Got it? I’m going to cut down all the trees here. Do you understand, the fuck?”

It wasn’t the time to be arguing about what would happen to the bullets in the body if the wound healed.
If you don’t eat this right away, you will die. I had such a strong feeling of foreboding.
And the more sinister this hunch is, the better it fits. Once they were fed, they had to prolong their lifelines at least a little bit. After that, I had no choice but to hope that the mysterious game system would even get rid of the bullets stuck in my body.

“Hey. Seungpil Han. Open your mouth straight Eat without spilling.”

I tipped the medicine bottle at the corner of that pale mouth.
However, the red liquid that had been pooling in her mouth for a while flowed down to the floor.

“Swallow. Swallow! Fuck!”

Seungpil could not drink the medicine.
No… Seungpil was already dead.

“Seungpil. Seungpil!”

Eyes do not open not breathing heart doesn’t even beat
All the information given pointed to Seungpil’s death.

“Oh… Brother?”

Seung-hee, who came to the side at some point, covered his mouth and was looking down at us.

I turned Seungpil’s body over again. And he poured recovery medicine on the spot where he was shot.

The blood washes away in the potion.
But the hole was never filled.

『Player Han Seung-pil, dead. Terminal ownership is transferred to the partner.』

A familiar system message came from Seungpil’s pocket.

“Ah.”

And the phone suddenly appeared in Seunghee’s hand.

Han Seung-pil, deceased.
The system put a wedge in Seungpil’s death.

“Oh, brother? Isn’t it? Are you kidding me again?”

As if answering Seunghee’s question.
Seungpil’s body broke and began to disappear.

Just like other animals that died at my hands. Just like a dead character disappears from a game.
Seungpil disappeared just like that.

“Oh, brother? Brother!”

Embarrassed, Seung-hee runs over and sits down next to Seung-pil.
Then, he stretched out his hand to Seung-pil, but the hand passed through Seung-pil’s body as if he were touching a ghost.

Seungpil’s true identity did not exist here.

“Ah… Brother, oh… !”

A very unreal sight. Unrealistic death.

But that was the reality.

Seungpil is dead.