32 - Chapter 30: Specter of the Past
For the past few days, I'd been secretly digging into Jeong Yu-mi after school.
Here's what I found:
After graduating from middle school, Jeong Yu-mi moved out of town.
She didn't really go to high school there. Instead, she apparently fell in with the local gang that ran the area.
Maybe it was because she was so relentlessly persistent, but that bitch actually managed to claw her way into the gang.
And now that Ilina's gang was destroyed, she'd been sent back here to seize control of our neighborhood, which had become a power vacuum.
But even though our neighborhood was supposed to be up for grabs, the remnants of Ilina's crew hadn't completely rolled over.
They had rallied around the underground arena, which had escaped the worst of the fallout thanks to its loose ties to the main gang.
While looking into Jeong Yu-mi and getting a handle on the local situation, I learned something else.
In this tense standoff, the female orc I'd impulsively smuggled out could actually play a major role.
The cops might be lazy and unmotivated, but they aren't stupid. They already had their suspicions about the underground arena.
To avoid giving them any leverage, the arena operators had slaughtered and buried all the monsters they kept.
After all, smuggling monsters out of a dimensional gate was highly illegal.
It seemed the female orc I'd rescued had barely managed to escape during the purge.
Either way, the arena and the remnants of Ilina's gang wanted to find and kill her to destroy the evidence. She was their Achilles' heel.
On the flip side, Jeong Yu-mi's gang wanted to find her at all costs, hand her over to the cops, and use the scandal to completely wipe out their rivals.
They'd even gone so far as to offer a bounty for any tips.
'Well, this makes things easy.'
With all the necessary intel gathered, I wrapped up my investigation of Jeong Yu-mi and headed to the outskirts of the city to set the next phase of my plan in motion.
The outskirts were littered with abandoned factories. I picked one that wasn't occupied by homeless people or runaway punks and slipped inside.
I snapped a few photos of the factory's interior and headed back. Once home, I had the female orc strike a few poses and took some pictures of her.
Then I went to my room, booted up my computer, and photoshopped the female orc into the pictures of the abandoned factory.
My editing skills weren't amazing, but they weren't terrible either. Just to be safe, I lowered the resolution slightly to hide any rough edges and make it look more natural.
The final composite photos looked pretty convincing.
I double-checked the photos to make sure there were no obvious flaws. Then, using a burner number, I sent them to both the underground arena and Jeong Yu-mi's gang, along with a black-market bank account number I'd purchased.
Kang Su-yeon, the manager of the underground arena and the one who had rallied the remnants of the dissolved gang, felt her tip-line phone vibrate and pulled it out.
"Ha, more bullshit."
Checking the text, she spat out a curse. Lately, there had been a surge of scammers using blocked numbers to feed them fake info, trying to grab the reward money and run.
"Does this asshole have no shame? 'Deposit money to this account and I'll give you info'? If you want to be believable, you should at least unblock your fucking number first."
Stressed out of her mind by scammers over the last few days, Kang Su-yeon grumbled as she locked her phone.
A moment later,
the phone buzzed again.
"Ah, fucking hell...!"
Kang Su-yeon irritably unlocked her phone, only to freeze.
Attached to the second message was a photo of the female orc she'd been looking for.
The background had been blacked out on purpose to hide the location, but there was no mistaking it.
'Wait... is this real?'
This was a real tip. Unable to hide her excitement, Kang Su-yeon sprang up from her chair and paced around, her mind racing.
'Ah, fuck it. Whatever. Let's just send the money.'
She hesitated, but her mind was already made up. She didn't really have a choice.
Using her banking app, she wired the reward money to the obviously fake account. Moments later, she received an unredacted photo along with the exact address.
"Alright."
The moment she got the location, Kang Su-yeon flung open her office door and marched out.
Her subordinates, who had been lounging lazily around the empty arena, immediately stood up.
"What's the word?"
Her second-in-command spoke for the group, and Kang Su-yeon nodded.
"We finally got a solid lead on where that orc bitch is hiding. Everyone, move out. Now."
The mood in the room instantly shifted.
They grabbed whatever weapons they could find and piled into cars and onto motorcycles, tearing toward the abandoned industrial district on the edge of town.
They arrived at the factory from the text shortly after. The arena gang swarmed the building, fanning out to search the massive, labyrinthine structure.
As they ventured deeper and deeper inside,
another group emerged from the darkness and surrounded the building.
Jeong Yu-mi watched the factory, lost in thought as her gang surrounded the perimeter.
'Fuck, did waiting to verify the tip backfire? Those bastards beat us here.'
As she weighed her options, one of her guys spoke up.
"What's the play, Yu-mi? Do we go in there and tear them apart?"
"Hold on, let's be smart about this..."
She brushed off the question, but then a sudden thought struck her.
'Wait... those guys probably brought every single hand they have because they were worried we got the tip too. Instead of going through the trouble of finding the orc and snitching to the cops, why don't we just wipe them all out right here?'
It made perfect sense. They weren't some animal rights group—they were a gang trying to take over the city.
All roads led to Rome. As long as they wiped out the competition, the method didn't matter.
'We avoided a direct clash before because the casualties would've been too high, but the tables have turned. We have the upper hand now. Besides, if we back off and let them get the orc, we'll end up in an all-out war anyway.'
Her mind made up, Jeong Yu-mi turned to her crew.
"Hey. Looks like every last one of those bastards is inside. Forget the orc. Let's just burn the whole fucking place down with them in it."
"Now that's a plan."
"Fucking genius."
The crew readily agreed. There was no downside to minimizing their own risks.
The abandoned factory was an illegal structure, poorly built with cheap, highly flammable materials.
To make sure the job was done right, she had the grunts bring over cans of paint thinner. They splashed it all over the walls and lit it up with lighters and matches.
The flames erupted instantly, swallowing the factory. It became a massive bonfire, cutting through the dark night.
"Fuuuuuuuuck!"
"What the fuck...! What is this!"
"Aaaargh! My eyes, my eyeeees!"
Screams of agony and terror echoed from the burning building. To Jeong Yu-mi's gang, it was music to their ears.
The factory only had ventilation shafts and lacked any proper windows, so Jeong Yu-mi and her crew stood guard at the only exit.
They were waiting to finish off anyone lucky enough to make it through the fire.
But just as they settled in to wait like fishermen waiting for a bite,
a loud crash echoed nearby.
"Huh?"
They spun around to see a section of the flimsy factory wall completely smashed to pieces.
"Oh, fucking hell!"
Through the newly made exit, women covered in burns poured out, screaming curses.
"Fuck! I almost died in there!"
"Those motherfuckers...!"
It looked like the ones in the lead had used sledgehammers to break through.
Jeong Yu-mi spat on the ground and gripped the baseball bat in her hands.
"Alright, everyone. Mince those half-cooked bitches for me."
With that, the two groups clashed with pure, venomous rage.
"Aaaaaaargh!"
"Dieeeee!"
"Die! Die! Dieeeee!"
The brawl next to the burning factory looked like a twisted dance around a bonfire. As the flames flickered, shadows stretched and warped against the ground. It was a scene straight out of a horror movie.