3.

Lee Yeon-ah was sitting in a chair. She wasn't sitting normally. Her body was tied to a chair. Her body was tight to the back of a chair, her arms were on the armrests, and her legs were on the legs of a chair.

"Eup eup!" Finally, there was a gag in her mouth.

"I'm telling you a few things."

Kim Tae-hoon was sitting in a chair in front of her. His expression while sitting on the chair without a backrest was very dull.

"The only thing I want to know is the information you wanted to hide until you chose to kill yourself. I don't care about your name or your unit."

On the other hand, Lee was staring at Kim. Of course, at this moment she had no intention of cooperating with him.

And Kim did not want to be in a cooperative relationship with her, either.

"And I don't have much time, and I don't want to waste time torturing a person to get information that I don't know, even if I have plenty of time."

In the first place, her appearance was a surprise event for Kim, and no more than that. Her appearance was unexpected, so it was not a meaningful relationship.

"That's the same for you, so you have an hour."

Above all, Kim's purpose in Daegu was not to find something.

Cleaning.

Kim was here to clean up the threats to the Mac Guild, including Daegu City. And the cleaning work did not need to be helped by someone else.

At least, there was be no one in Korea who could give advice to him in such cleaning work. Nevertheless, the reason he had saved her life was that she had tried to kill herself for information security.

'There's a reason to risk her life.' Trying to kill herself for information security was not easy for non-religious fanatics. One more reason was that she was chased by soldiers of the Second Operations Command.

Those two reasons were all Kim needed to keep Lee alive and interrogate her.

Of course, he did not intend to invest a lot of time in her.

"If you look at me like that in an hour, I'll make you the dead body you want to be."

If her attitude would not change in an hour, the interrogation would be over. In addition, Kim did not intend to regret in the future, leaving room for her.

"If you want to talk, tell me."

As soon as Kim finished the notice, he closed his eyes. There was no coercive interrogation or torture.

'This man…' Lee stared at Kim turned into a look of absurdity.

'What the hell?' Everything was questionable for her now: Kim's existence itself, his intention, and his ability.

'Doesn't he know me?' Even Lee had doubts about the fact that Kim did not know her.

'Is my face that bad?' Lee didn't have any doubts because of her pride.

Her image and fame were more important than she had thought in a land of unbelievable monsters. To be honest, ordinary people preferred to listen to the words of celebrities who they had often seen on TV, rather than what soldiers said.

Reliability was also much higher for celebrities with their own good image than mere soldiers. In addition, Lee was a woman who became the manager for the Résistance from the manager of the Second Operations Command.

If Lee had been just a normal person, it would have been meaningless. But she was not a normal person, and that was why the Second Operations Command was trying to catch her. Not knowing her was definitely a matter for her to go over. However, there was no way to solve her suspicions.

"Eup eup! Ugh!" She wasn't even allowed to ask questions. And as time went by, there was no room for doubt for her.

'What do I do?'

It was sometimes more painful to be forced to suffer than to be tortured.

'Am I really going to die like this?'

When she was ready to kill herself, she was desperate and urgent. That was why she could be decisive. But it was different now.

She had to agonize over her death at this moment. To live, she had to sell her out co-workers, but if she didn't, she might die, has been forced into her mind.

Even the office, which Kim had taken for a conversation with Lee, was used as a warehouse. There were no windows, no sunlight, and it was a place where she could not tell how much time had gone by.

Then Kim opened his eyes. 'Ninja's here.' His eyes were black.

When Lee saw the sight, she let out a gasp.

'Good to have a trap set up.'

Meanwhile, Kim got up from his seat and moved near the door. His mouth was puffed up like a frog. Soon after, he expelled out his mouthful of energy into the door.

Foo-hoo-hoo-hoo! A huge fire broke out. The flames began to fill the door and the hallway behind it.

"Aaaaaaargh!"

"Argh! Aaaaaargh!"

Then there was a scream from a place where there was no sign. No, five screams.

Swish! The arrow from the leather holder in Kim's waist moved toward the five screams.

Thunk, thunk! The arrow pierced the screams at once. It was all done in a flash.

After finishing his work, Kim sat down again. There was no conversation. He started meditating with his eyes closed again.

Lee could not glare at Kim anymore. 'What the hell…'

At that moment, Kim opened his eyes and said, "You seem to be a very important person, and you've got a lot of people looking for you."

"Ugh!" Lee was delighted with the voice. But her joy did not last long.

"Team leader, head, nigger." The funny words mentioned by Kim made her shake.

'Ah…' The words were nicknames for her colleagues, who she knew well.

"I'll change the condition." Kim acknowledged her shaking eyes.

"I don't think I'll get information after killing colleagues against a person who decides to kill herself to save her colleagues. If you give me information here, I will save you and your colleagues together. If not, I will kill you and your colleagues." It was the last notice.

'Oh, no!' "Eup!" Her eyes changed sadly at the notice.

Kim released the gag that was hanging in her mouth.

4.

Between the building Kim was in and the next, three people gathered together under a deep shadow.

They were two men and a woman; a man in his mid-thirties, a man in his late twenties with an unusually large head, and a woman with dark skin in her mid-twenties. They were gathered together in a cluster under a deep shadow. What they were looking at was an eight-story building that had become a ruin.

"She is right there, isn't she?"

"There's definitely a trail here."

"But why isn't there any signal? Let's send a signal again."

Their identity was none other than the members of the Résistance who Lee was supposed to meet up with.

"Team leader, let's just go in."

However, Lee did not come to the meeting place. It wasn't unusual. Daegu City was the area of the Second Operations Command, and there was nothing strange about the accident. Therefore, they had a second and third place to prepare for such a situation. One of the places was the eight-story building that the three were looking at.

"Clearly, there were traces. I'm sure she is inside. However, there is no answer to the signal…"

"Team leader, let's just go in!"

So, when they found traces of Lee on the way, they thought there would be no big problem. But when there was no answer even after sending several signals to the building, the story changed.

There was a trail, but there was no answer… In this case, she might not answer because of a serious injury.

"Head, Nigger, be quiet."

At this moment, however, a man in his mid-thirties, who was called the team leader, did not move quickly. At that moment, shadows began to shuffle between the dark shadows behind their backs.

"Team leader, what are you waiting for? There's nobody around, isn't there?"

"There are footprints there. There are a lot of traces of military boots."

"So she's in danger, isn't she? We have to get in there quickly."

"If there had been a battle, there would be traces of fighting, but there was no sign of it. Maybe it's a trap."

"But…"

The three were unaware that the black masked ninja appeared behind them. It wasn't just because of their incompetence. Ninjas were not even breathing. Soon after, five ninjas who appeared without a sound simultaneously threw out the throwing daggers in their hands.

Whizz! Only then were the sounds that the knives cracked the wind, and team leader Ko Suk-woo turned his head to notice them.

'Oh, my God!' It was a late response. When Ko turned his head, the throwing daggers were already too close to them.

The throwing daggers were all like butterflies, their arcs completely arbitrary. Some were flying straight, some were drawing a parabola from top to bottom, and some were flying like ducks and drakes on the ground. They were unpredictable.

Of course, it was impossible to avoid them.

'Ah.' In front of the scene, Ko just let out a sigh.

Then the throwing-daggers stopped in midair.

"What is it?"

"What?"

The remaining two turned their heads along with Ko, and they could see what was going on as well.

"Ugh!"

"Huck!"

The two were frightened in front of the throwing-daggers, which had come so close to them, but had stopped, just like that.

"What, what?" And it wasn't just them who were freaked out.

"な, なに?"

The words of the ninjas that threw the throwing-daggers also sounded the same as those of the first two.

Thunk! The arrow which suddenly appeared penetrated the ninjas' heads, and the ninjas became dead and fell to the ground.

Tanaka, who was wearing a white mask and watching the scene from the roof of the building, was also frightened. 'What is this?'

Originally the purpose of Tanaka was to help Major General Lee Ki-soo when he came down to Daegu City while waiting with the Second Operations Command in Daegu. Of course, the real mission was to remove him if he made it alive to Daegu City, due to Hayato's mistakes and incompetence.

However, at the moment of the death of Lee Ki-soo, the mainland of Japan gave Tanaka a new mission. In order to invade the Korean Peninsula, they needed to build a base area in Busan where the Busan Port was located. From then on, he began actively helping the Second Operations Command. Of course, he started to clean up the Résistance, the biggest headache of the Second Operations Command.

There was no trouble. All he had to do was tag something, and he could see where they were, in real time. To him, taking care of Lee Yeon-ah, who had already been tagged for tracking, was virtually a game. Tanaka, who had done what he came to do, came here to play with his toy. He came here for that reason…

'Who the hell is it? Who…' There was something in front of him that he dared not even imagine.

'I must run away!' Fortunately, at this moment Tanaka knew what he had to do. 'I must run away first!'

It the most important lesson Tanaka had learned in return for surviving in the hell that was Tokyo: never face the unknown fear! But he did not carry out the lesson...

'Oh, my God!' As Tanaka turned around to escape, a man appeared in front of his eyes in the sky. The man really fell from the sky.

'Let me attack first!' The moment Tanaka saw the man, he was not astonished. He took out a kunai.

'The first attack gets victory.' He tried to take advantage of the first attack. However, it was up to the other side.

Swish! As Tanaka pulled out the kunai, a Sword appeared like a lightning bolt from the sky and cut the wrist holding it.

Thud! Tanaka's eyes opened wide enough when he saw his hand holding the Kunai fall to the ground. But he was not allowed to be surprised or scream.

"Ugh, ugh-ugh!"

Tanaka's body began to rise, like he was being pulled up by a noose. He touched his neck with his hands… no, he was touching his neck with a good hand and a severed stump.

In the meantime, the man in front of Tanaka came toward him slowly and said in fluent Japanese. "Kazami Hayato."

"Ugh?" For Tanaka, it was not good news that the man in front of him was good with Japanese.

"He confessed all of the descriptions of Musashi's people in ten minutes. I thought it would be difficult because he was a ninja, but he had no resistance to torture, and he asked for a deal when I pulled out three of his fingernails."

"Ugh, ugh…"

"I wonder how long you'll last."

5.

The office with the soft smell of coffee…

"That is our story." After finishing the story in front of the coffee smell, Lee looked at the man who was drinking it. The man, who was savoring it, did not reply easily.

But Lee was no longer surprised. She knew now that it was impossible to open the mouth of Kim Tae-hoon when he had coffee.

Kim started to think with his coffee.

'Cho Sung-yeon.' The most important information that Kim learned was that the leader of the Résistance was Cho Sung-yeon.

'I can't believe I am seeing him here.' It was one of the three things that must be done in the bucket list that he delivered to himself through his death in a dream; Kim was supposed to make Cho Sung-yeon president.

'I'm sick of it.' The problem was that he had heard the name of Cho Sung-yeon from others, as well as Lee Yeon-ah.

Kim swallowed. Four people, including Lee around him, swallowed, too. They were nervous ahead of his answer.

"Your leader has been captured by the Second Operations Command." Kim dealt them a hard blow.

"What, what—"

"They caught him two days ago."

Tanaka was the name of another person from whom Kim had heard the name Cho Sung-yeon. In front of Kim's torture, he gave up everything he knew: he had been able to catch Cho Sung-yeon, the leader of the Résistance that he had wanted so much, with his ability to track his opponent, two days ago.

"Nonsense! Then they would have no reason to come after me!" Lee denied Kim's words. Her denial was appropriate enough. "It's their purpose to catch a leader… and if they've got a leader, why would they come after me? Where did you hear that crap?"

The reason why the Second Operations Command was trying to catch the Résistance executives was to learn the location of Cho Sung-yeon.

Was there any reason why those who had already caught Cho Sung-yeon would hide the fact and chase the executives?

However, Kim did not raise any doubts about this situation. Rather, from his point of view, the actions of the Second Operations Command were reasonable.

"The rebel group in the point formation makes two choices when a leader is caught: one is to do everything in its power to rescue the leader, or to select a new leader. Whatever they choose, there is something in common."

"What is it?"

"Changing the hideouts and networks that they used to use."

"Ah…"

"It's the basic of the basics."

'The capture of the leader is proof that the secrets of the organization have been exposed to some degree. Of course, as soon as the leader is caught, the organization must change the basic system totally.'

'So, when they root out groups such as rebels and terrorists, they do not inform anyone if they catch a leader. Rather, they act as if they did not catch the leader, and they use the information they get from the leader to find the remaining parties, including the executives.'

The Second Operations Command was now doing the same thing, for they would want to root out the Résistance as far as possible.

Although they had caught Cho Sung-yeon, it would be only known after his execution ceremony and after some achievements were noted.

'I can't guarantee his life, or maybe he's already dead.'

As Kim knew, there was no expert in the Second Operations Command who could torture a person until he was on the brink of death. Above all, Cho Sung-yeon, who Kim heard about from Lee, was a man with a strong will and determination.

If there was a moment, if there was a chance, the man would be willing to kill himself. He was a man who would not tolerate his life harming his organization.

'… the bucket list and the wish list never reverse.'

Kim did not hesitate any more. No, there was no reason to hesitate. Even if it was not because of Cho Sung-yeon, there was a good reason to attack the Second Operations Command. The time was just a little faster.

"We are going to rescue Cho Sung-yeon immediately."

At that remark, Lee asked reflexively. "When, when are you going to do it?"

It was a reflexive question, literally. She was so eager to save Cho Sung-yeon that she blurted it out.

Answering her question in return, Kim started to calculate the time for the plan by looking at his wristwatch.

"Now, it's 7:22 PM, it takes about 5 minutes to get to Daegu City Hall, where the headquarter of the Second Operations Command is located. If I add time to understand the situation and the operation plan…"

Kim finished his calculation and said, "We attack Daegu City Hall at 7:30 PM, eight minutes from now."