Immortals vs. Grim Reapers - chapter 16
Chapter 16: Load, Aim, Fire (Part 5)
“James Lopez.”
Lopez’s eyes flew open. He tried to let out a piercing scream.
But only a wheezing sound escaped his mouth. Lopez struggled and gasped for a long while before finally managing to turn his eyes.
Night had fallen some time ago.
As Lopez turned his head, he discovered his battered body. His neck was barely attached, making it difficult to even hold his head up properly.
“I’ve attached it temporarily, so don’t move carelessly. I’m not confident in my sewing skills.”
Sewing?
Now that he looked, the woman who had spoken was stitching his neck.
Lopez was dumbfounded, but he recognized her as the woman he had definitely shot through the head. Lopez increasingly couldn’t fathom who these people were.
Only after his neck was somewhat reattached could Lopez barely manage to speak.
“Who… are… you…”
“We ask the questions.”
Lopez looked towards the voice. There stood Gangrim, wearing a black overcoat.
The moment Lopez met Gangrim’s eyes, he began to chatter his teeth. The terror from earlier suddenly came rushing back.
‘Why, why am I like this?’
Yet Lopez couldn’t understand his own reaction.
He had experienced far worse fates than this many times before.
After countless experiences, Lopez was confident in his immortality.
But these people were different.
The moment their eyes met, Lopez felt an unknown terror that overwhelmed his instincts.
“I… won’t… die…”
“We know. You’re an Immortal, right? Tell us who gave you the immortality ability.”
Lopez’s eyes trembled.
They already knew about the immortality ability. They even knew it was “given” by someone.
Lopez realized these people were something beyond mere hunters. Soon, his mind reached a conclusion.
“Are you… Immortals too…?”
At those words, Gangrim and Yu Wolryeong looked at each other. Gangrim smiled crookedly before speaking.
“That’s right. Just as you think.”
“The Elder… won’t leave this be…”
“Who’s this Elder?”
Lopez clamped his mouth shut and glared at them. It was unclear whether it was due to his immortal bravado or faith in this “Elder” figure.
“If you’re going to torture me… go ahead…”
To Lopez, whose sensation below the neck was already numb, it would be laughable no matter where they touched him.
What would they do to him with only his head left?
Slap his cheeks? Pull out his teeth?
But to Lopez, who had already become an immortal being, mere physical pain was just a fleeting moment.
No pain holds much meaning for an Immortal.
“What should we do?”
“Call him once more.”
At Gangrim’s words, Yu Wolryeong responded expressionlessly.
Lopez was wondering what they were trying to do when he suddenly recalled the intense pain he felt upon regaining consciousness.
Just as he was asking himself where that pain had come from, Gangrim spoke.
“James Lopez.”
It was a peculiar voice.
Unlike simply calling a name, it carried a resonance that made one’s soul tremble.
Simultaneously, Lopez felt pain tearing through his entire body.
It wasn’t just stabbing or cutting. A delicate and sharp pain permeated his body, as if each cell was being chopped up and forcibly torn away.
He wasn’t even allowed to faint.
“Do you know what you’re experiencing right now?”
After what felt like an eternity, Gangrim plopped down in front of Lopez and spoke.
“It’s called Sajochohon, the Summoning of the Dead Soul. Your soul is being forcibly ripped from your body. For ordinary people, just the soul would be pulled out, but I hear Immortals have their spirit and flesh forcibly bonded together.”
“Huk, heo-eok, wh-what…”
“Imagine two dolls glued together with the strongest adhesive you can imagine. What do you think would happen if you forcibly tore them apart?”
Gangrim demonstrated by clasping his hands together and forcibly pulling them apart.
“Both shatter to pieces. Spirit and flesh, both.”
Lopez looked down at his body, panting. Far from regenerating or stopping the bleeding, he could see parts of his body continuously falling off.
His face probably wasn’t in much better shape either.
“We’ve been researching how to kill Immortals for a very long time.”
Yu Wolryeong spoke from beside him.
“Each time we call, 1/3 of your spirit is torn away. If you can do the math, you’ll know how many times are left.”
Once when he woke up, and just now.
If what they said was true, only one time remained.
Lopez understood what the fear he felt when looking at Gangrim was.
The fear of death, long forgotten, was right before his eyes.
Lopez eventually succumbed.
From the start, the reason he had pledged his loyalty was because of the promise of immortality. If that became useless, there was no reason to keep his mouth shut.
“First, where are your subordinates hiding?”
Gangrim started by asking questions that were easy for Lopez to answer.
It was to begin the process of making Lopez “betray.”
If he starts talking, thinking it’s insignificant because it’s a minor detail, at some point he’ll mention things he shouldn’t.
When persistently pursued at that moment, the traitor realizes it’s already irreversible.
Whether he truly betrayed or not doesn’t matter.
It’s enough if whoever is behind Lopez thinks he betrayed them.
If Lopez had received training to resist interrogation, it might have been less effective, but his mental state crumbled surprisingly quickly.
“There… there are none. It’s just me alone.”
“None?”
Gangrim doubted his words. But judging by how Lopez had handled the ‘fake Lopez’ on the road, it was clear he didn’t care much for subordinates.
It seemed unlikely he would lie in a life-or-death situation.
“I, I work alone. It’s inconvenient with too many people…”
“It didn’t seem like you were working alone? Wasn’t the guy shooting on the road your subordinate?”
“Ah, that, that one is a Ghoul.”
“A Ghoul.”
Gangrim muttered briefly.
It was another term for zombies with intelligence.
It wasn’t a commonly used term to begin with, but as the zombie plague progressed and zombies became stronger and more cunning, the distinction became meaningless.
“It’s a zombie I control through necromancy. My necromancy ability is weak, so instead of controlling large numbers, I focused on precise control.”
Gangrim’s mind jolted at Lopez’s words.
‘Controlling zombies?’
If zombies could be controlled through something called necromancy, it would explain zombies with intelligence.
Zombies obeying human commands would appear to have intelligence.
Just as the fake Lopez had been mistaken for an intelligent zombie.
Gangrim was already familiar with the ability to control zombies. It was an awakened ability known as necromancy.
But if zombie control was spread as knowledge rather than an awakened ability, it could completely change how zombies were dealt with.
“Who taught you necromancy?”
Gangrim didn’t know what necromancy was, but he didn’t ask what it was. There was no benefit in revealing his ignorance to an interrogation subject.
Lopez hesitated before speaking.
“The Elder…”
Asking who the Elder was now would only make Lopez reluctant to answer. To extract more information from him, Gangrim needed to draw him in deeper.
For now, discovering the existence of necromancy was enough.
“What were you doing here?”
“…I was hunting zombie hunters.”
A lie.
Gangrim already knew from Han Min-sung that Lopez was transporting something.
Lopez probably thought it wasn’t a lie since he had been hunting Han Min-sung.
Gangrim pondered for a moment before speaking.
“Where did you hide the nuclear backpack?”
Lopez’s eyes widened. Even Yu Wolryeong looked at Gangrim with surprise.
“There were already widespread rumors that after the gate opened, the U.S. military secretly brought nuclear weapons into the Korean Peninsula due to the complicated situation in North Korea. But when the Bukhansan gate suddenly opened, management became lax. The military urgently sent Han Min-sung to move the nuclear weapons back to the rear.”
Lopez shook his head vigorously, his eyes trembling. But Gangrim continued speaking.
“But someone beat them to it. The Elder, you say? I wonder what they’re planning to do with the stolen nuclear backpack. Someone sees an opportunity in people losing their homes, jobs, and even lives? The military would be thrilled to hear this.”
The Bukhansan gate probably wasn’t related to this Elder person.
However, there were already many trying to profit from this chaos, so it was plausible that some might be moving on a larger scale.
“No, no. I, I was just trying to steal abandoned weapons from the U.S. military base!”
One might wonder if it’s possible for weapons to be left so unguarded, but in peacetime, not during war or heightened alert, it’s not difficult with insider involvement.
“Ah, is that so? Then there was no nuclear backpack?”
“Uh, there wasn’t!”
Whether this testimony was believable needed consideration, but the nuclear backpack wasn’t Gangrim’s concern anyway.
However, the fact that there was an organization targeting weapons in an empty U.S. military base, and that Immortals were involved, was worth noting.
Gangrim pressed on with his questions. Lopez had now stepped into a point of no return.
“So to summarize, you were stealing military supplies from the U.S. base for the Elder, and in the process, you clashed with Han Min-sung. Well, where else would all those bombs you set off have come from. Where were you transporting them to?”
Lopez’s expression became even more unsettled.
Gangrim considered the possible routes Lopez could take.
The entire north of Seoul is currently in chaos. Only evacuation routes and paths for transporting hunters remain open.
That is, the route from the current location in Noksapyeong to Bukhansan.
“Namsan? Jongno? Gyeongbokgung? Surely not the Blue House…”
“Gik, giik…”
Suddenly, Lopez started making strange groaning noises.
Gangrim quickly grasped his hand axe, but before he could do anything, Lopez’s body collapsed with a thud.
In an instant, the flesh that had been Lopez’s form turned black and rotted, emitting a foul odor.
“What on earth is this…”
Gangrim retreated with a deeply furrowed brow, but Yu Wolryeong examined the corpse’s condition without a change in expression.
She pulled out some finely crushed lumps from the rotted corpse.
The lumps looked like solidified black matter.
“He’s dead.”
“Uh, that’s obvious, but… can this happen even to an Immortal?”
“I’m not sure. But the Immortal group has been secretly passing down knowledge for a long time to avoid death, so they probably have ways to punish traitors. There might be their own version of Sajochohon that activates when certain secrets are revealed.”
The conditions for Sajochohon that Yu Wolryeong had explained were quite strict.
It could instantly kill anyone, but it was essentially a finishing blow.
First, it must be the true name (眞名) that the target sincerely believes to be their name.
Immortals, living for long periods, have many names, and what they consider their real name can change.
Second, the bond between flesh and soul must be loosened. Even for ordinary people, if they’re healthy with a long lifespan remaining, Sajochohon will have no effect.
For Immortals, they had to be brought to a near-death state to use Sajochohon.
Third, if Sajochohon fails, at least a full day must pass before it can be used again. During this time, the target won’t respond to Sajochohon either.
In other words, it would make an Immortal absolutely unkillable, so it had to be used carefully.
They had already used Sajochohon on Lopez twice, but methods to instantly kill Immortals couldn’t be common.
But anyway, Lopez was already dead, his soul torn to shreds, and this was irreversible even for a grim reaper. Now, Lopez didn’t even have an afterlife to go to.
Yu Wolryeong stood up and spoke, looking at Gangrim.
“Well done, Reaper Ju Gangrim. You’ve finally completed your first mission properly.”
Ding. Bimang’s notification rang out simultaneously.
“Mission: Load, Aim, Fire Success!”
“Objective: Capture or Eliminate James Lopez”
“Reward: Guaranteed minimum Rare grade ‘Today’s Fortune'”