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Chapter 97: The War in Shane (Part 2)

“Fuuuuuuck!”

The child flailed and groaned, but could not free himself from Zin’s foot on his head, ready to crush him.

As soon as Cho-yul came out, he turned pale at the sight of two corpses flailing: one without its head, and the other with holes in its face and neck.

Ramphil, having rolled on the floor, brushed the dirt off his clothes as he came out.

“You sons of a bitches! You’re all fiiiiniiiished!” the boy yelled with all his might, either to escape the pain or from rage. Leona crept up slowly, biting her lips, and looked at Zin.

He understood and removed his foot. The boy locked eyes with Leona, who was looking down on him.

“Fuck you, crazy biiitch! You’re gonna die now!”

The boy, feeling his end coming, yelled. That was the only thing he could do.

“The only people dead here are your friends.”

Without hesitation Leona pulled the knife out of her arm and inserted it into the neck of the little boy having a fit.

“Huh! Uhh! Huh-uh!”

“There. It’s a little quieter now, finally.”

‘Bleh!’

With his left hand grabbing his neck, the boy spat blood and twitched for a long time before he stopped breathing. Leona wiped the blood off her face, brushed the knife against her clothes to get the blood off, and put it back in its sheath.

Ramphil and Zin were fine, but Cho-yul was shocked to see Leona kill someone without any hesitation. Leona looked at Cho-yul with a big grin on her face.

“Didn’t you know? This is the real me,” she said like there was nothing to be surprised about.

Of course, that statement shocked Cho-yul even more.

Thanks to Ramphil’s quick reflexes, they were saved from the explosion, and Zin’s quick-witted judgment and Leona’s smarts had quickly incapacitated the three attackers.

They never even talked about it, but the three people carried out each of their duties like clockwork.

Cho-yul was beginning to understand why the three travelled together. After Leona got her gun, she became an important member of the team. It was much better for two people to shoot than just one.

However, it was a strange coincidence that Leona understood Zin’s intentions and that the two guns were never aiming at the same thing. It might be Leona’s growing empathy that allowed her to read Zin’s intentions during a battle, when there was extreme psychological distress.

If that was true, then Zin and Leona would have all the necessary ingredients to be the perfect duo when working together as a team.

While they retrieved the bullets from the dead bodies, they heard gunshots everywhere. Leona mumbled, “What’s going on?”

This was a battle between experience and firepower, and it was hard to guess who would win.

‘Bang, bang!’

“The kids seem to have the advantage,” after hearing the gunshots, Zin stated and Ramphil nodded.

Leona was puzzled, so Ramphil explained, “If the Reavers had the upper-hand, we would hear the continuous shots of the ARs, but what we heard was a single shot, which means that the Reavers haven’t even figured out where to shoot.”

That meant that the enemy was continually switching its location as they attacked the Reavers. In other words, the Reavers were in a bad spot. The guests at the inn were trembling in fear and didn’t dare go out the door.

“What are you going to do?” Leona looked at Zin and asked.

“Let’s go. Our location has been compromised.”

After packing quickly, the group went down to the first floor. The innkeeper was shaking in his boots. Perhaps the boys had pointed their guns at the innkeeper to ask where the hunter and his team were staying, and he probably told them the answer out of fear.

Afraid that he might get in trouble for that, he was shaking with his head down under the counter. Everyone in Zin’s team went outside without even looking at the innkeeper.

However, as if he had remembered something, Zin went back to the counter. The frightened innkeeper looked like he was going to pee when the hunter returned with a serious look on his face.

“Hey.”

“Oh, my! Please don’t kill me. They threatened me with their guns, and I…”

But what Zin said to the innkeeper, who was begging for his life, was something very unexpected, “We didn’t end up staying tonight, so I think you should give me the money back.”

It wasn’t exactly wrong, and the innkeeper didn’t dare to challenge the hunter holding an automatic shotgun.

“Oh, yes! Here it is.”

“OK, keep up the good work.”

Zin, with four chips in his pocket, returned to his confused teammates.

“Did you really have to do that in this situation?”

Even though Leona tried to give him a hard time, Zin replied in a serious manner, “If you want to be a hunter, keep this in mind: calculate your expenses accurately.”

“Uh… OK.”

With a sour face, Leona nodded.

————

Meanwhile, the Reavers were taking their positions in the city government building and continuing their hide and take cover operation.

“Help! Help me! Somebody’s shooting at me!”

‘Ba–bang! Bang!’

A child emerged from a site with a lot of gunfire, and one of the Reavers shouted, “Hey, you little boy! Get over here! Quickly!”

The platoon leader was the one who shouted at the frightened boy, and the boy quickly ran to where the Reavers were gathered. The children were shooting at civilians as well as at Reavers with abandon.

It was surreal to see a Reaver fighting and hiding to protect civilians.

“Help meeee!”

As soon as the boy arrived at the Reaver’s hideout, he put his hand into the vest and pulled a cord.

‘Zip!’

Inside the vest were four chipbusters just starting to ignite. The boy wearing the bomb vest yelled with hatred, “Die, you bastards!”

Not a moment too soon after the boy’s face changed, the Reavers’ faces twisted.

“What the F–…”

‘Ba–Ba–Ba–Bam!’

Both the boy and the whole squadron of Reavers were incinerated in a blue flash.

——

The children were angry to the point that they had suicide bombers. This was not just a war to regain honor, it was an angry cry against the Group, who had taken everything from them. They were thinking it was better to be burned alive with the enemy honorably, than to live under persecution from the kids who had been nothing before.

Children who believed in something strongly were sometimes scarier than adults.

Although the Reavers had better weapons, they were helpless against the guerrilla tactic of the children, who knew the streets very well. The damage quickly spread, and the Reavers gathered at the central government office to get into hydro formation. However nearly half of the Reaver’s power had already been damaged when the raid began.

Originally, the purpose of the operation had been to oust the Group, but as the war turned favorable, the guerrilla’s actions changed dramatically.

“Do–Don’t kill me!”

“Ha, when there are no Reavers around, you’re like this! Yet, you walked around like you were some bigshot.”

“That’s what you think, you bastard.”

“Kill them.”

‘Bang!’

Once the children tasted blood, they suddenly started to retaliate against the civilian population. They would open the doors with grenades, go inside, and kill the kids who had belittled them and beat them up as well as their families.

Because the Reavers had already gone back to the central office in order to regroup, Shane had turned into a lawless place. All the dead Reavers’ weapons were taken by the children, and the unarmed citizens were exposed to the guerilla’s indiscriminate retaliatory activities.

“Crazy bastards…”

The body of a child who had been stabbed hundreds of times and was nearly unrecognizable shocked Leona. The child who had been stabbed with a bayonet until he died after being forcibly taken from his home looked more like a lump of blood.

The bodies of his family members were also strewn about, full of holes.

The dead child had been the leader of the children, and the one who had gathered the civilian children to take personal revenge against the gangs’ children.

The bloodshed had led to bloodshed and that bloodshed had led to more bloodshed. The Reaver’s temporary retreat created the illusion that the children had won, and the children took control of the whole city, except for the central office, for a short time.

Following the Group’s orders, all citizens had been unarmed and were now helpless.

The gunfire was now the sound of attacks against civilians instead of Reavers.

“It… it’ll never be forgiven.”

Cho-yul was shaking with clenched fists.

The three, not including Zin, had their hearts filled with anger, as they watched the war turn into a civilian massacre.

Cho-yul held the bloody hands of the dead child and muttered in an eerie tone, “Tonight, anyone who kills the innocent will be punished according to the Will of Heaven.”

It was a quiet chant, but everyone who heard it would know that it was a powerful curse from a high-level sorcerer. Then, suddenly, a gust of wind swept through the area around Cho-yul.

It was only for a brief moment, but even the air around him turned cool. Leona, once again, felt a gust of wind around Cho-yul, and it started spreading around her.

‘Tonight, anyone who kills the innocent will be punished according to the Will of Heaven.’

“Uh, what is this?”

Ramphil and Zin could also hear what Leona was hearing. The wind that brushed over Leona whispered in her ear like an echo. Having never experienced anything like that before, Leona was confused.

“A curse only works when it is announced.”

Even after Zin explained, Leona and Ramphil still couldn’t understand what that meant. Cho-yul stood up slowly with his face frighteningly stiff.

Zin started to walk, and everyone followed him.

“I don’t know what it is, but… I think we’re screwed, right?”

When Cho-yul, the quietest, became angry, even the air changed. Feeling goosebumps, Leona looked at Zin, and he smiled bitterly.

The wind that Cho-yul had invoked was spreading across Shane.

————

There were many kinds of curses. As for Zin, he had had to use sacrificial offerings to start the plague. However, things were different for Cho-yul. In some cases, sacrificial offerings could be used, while in others, curses could be made through rituals.

Cho-yul’s curse was a little different.

The kind he had activated worked by setting the taboo and punishing anyone who broke it. The more difficult it was to break a taboo and the more unholy it was, the stronger the punishment. As a high-level sorcerer, he had put a strong spell on the land.

It was more of a powerful taboo than a curse, and taboos had four sections.

‘Tonight. In Shane. Anyone who kills the innocent. Will be punished.’

The ritual was easier when a specific time and place were set, and in a way, Cho-yul was using the victims’ blood, the many innocent deaths surrounding him and the vengeful minds of the children as a form of sacrificial offering.

And taboos had to be announced. Most sorcerers called everyone together to set taboos, but Cho-yul released his into the wind and blew it all over Shane.

The wind would touch everywhere where there was air, and the whisper of the high-level sorcerer could be heard throughout the city.

‘Tonight, anyone who kills the innocent will be punished according to the Will of Heaven.’

Everyone heard the announcement as if they had been hallucinating.

“What is this?”

Not only the children who were killing the civilians, but also those who were hiding and the Reavers, they all heard the whisper. The children looked around, but they couldn’t determine where the sound had come from. They only felt the wind that had passed them by.

The taboo had been announced, and anyone who violated it would be punished.

However, even after hearing the whisper, the children who had already tasted blood did not stop. They knew that some spell had been activated, but if they could be scared off by something like that, they would not have thought to start a war with the Group.

Although it was questionable whether the dying were truly innocent or not, killing those who were not involved in the fight was enough to satisfy the conditions of the taboo.

‘Tick!’

“What is it?”

“It’s stuck!”

The child who had just finished an execution was trying to reload his gun, but his gun was stuck. He pushed and pulled his gun’s breechblock, but the trigger was stiff and wouldn’t budge at all. Three children checked their guns while standing in front of the dead bodies.

The fear of blood long-gone, the children were lost to the pleasure of revenge, and their eyes burned with the desire for blood.

“Let me see.”

Losing his patience, one boy snatched the M1 and put his hand into the bullet clip.

‘Click!’

As soon as the boy put his fingers in, the breechblock retreated and jammed them.

“Aah! Aahh!

“Shit! What is it?”

The boy, with his index and middle fingers caught by the breechblock, screamed, but the hard metal had already blown off his two fingers.

“Hey! Are you OK?”

“My fingers! My fingers! Fingers!” the boy, whose two fingers had been blown away, was shaking his right hand and shouting.

Those who kill the innocent will be punished.

And this was just the beginning.