Chapter 122: New Year (6)

Translator: Dreamscribe

Jang Tae-san was on duty as a hotel guard. Today, as always, the Terminator-like physique and aura showed straight through the suit he wore.

Taking a short break, Jang Tae-san sat in the locker room.

“......”

He was thinking, saying nothing. No, to be precise, he was recalling Commander Kang Jae-ha, whom he had seen about a week ago. The barbecue place he'd gone to with his sister, himself in that barbecue place with the bloodlust he'd been holding down blowing wide open, the Commander appearing out of nowhere, the Mercenary Corps comrades arrayed around him.

Retracing that scene, Jang Tae-san dragged one hand from his skull down over his face.

“Haa-”

A sigh thick with regret. Of course it was. However much those thug meatheads had raved and carried on, Jang Tae-san had come within a hair of butchering them. His eyes had rolled back. And in front of his little sister, no less.

‘If Commander-nim hadn't stopped me......’

He'd have ripped them to shreds and killed them.

Thanks to Kang Jae-ha showing up, he had been able to stop the slaughter. He had barely avoided the worst, but Jang Tae-san struck his own head over and over. Self-reproach and regret. And beyond the rage aimed at those thug meatheads, there was also the anguish of that faint flicker of anticipation, at the prospect of slaughter, that had spread through his whole body.

In that brief moment as he closed on them, Jang Tae-san had unmistakably been.

‘Exactly how I felt on the battlefield.’

The very image of himself craving the taste of blood in war. A time bomb. That was how Jang Tae-san judged himself. A time bomb that could go off with a bang at any moment.

Then Jang Tae-san thought of Commander Kang Jae-ha.

That gaze of his, deep and skin-crawling at once, the cold voice weighted with pressure, the bearing and posture at once supple and ramrod straight, the aura whose limits couldn't even be guessed at.

“...He's not much different there or here.”

And on top of that, the woman's voice that had come with the words ‘Absolute Obedience’ when he saw the Commander.

“Being anything but ordinary, too.”

Back in the Other World, what Jang Tae-san had felt every time he looked at Kang Jae-ha was that the man was a truly formidable being. The sheer force that pressed the entire body of mercenaries down without effort, the intellect that produced strategies with ease, and on top of that the command presence that held those rough mercenaries together.

By any measure, a monster.

“And that monster......turns out he came from this world.”

The same went for the others too, Go Chun-seok, Lee Chan-hoo and the rest. Just knowing Commander Kang Jae-ha was in the same world made Jang Tae-san feel the weight on his heart grow lighter. Was having someone to lean on this much of a strength?

The Commander, that monster, would be able to control a time bomb like him.

Still, he had his misgivings.

He'd spent nearly a year somehow adapting to this world, and now the unease that getting tangled up with the Commander and his comrades again would drag him right back to the start. More than anything, Jang Tae-san was worried about his sister. Because if he went mad and ran wild, there was no one left in this world to protect her.

But still.

“I ought to at least talk with him.”

Jang Tae-san had to meet Kang Jae-ha. Setting all the thoughts and misgivings aside, Jang Tae-san picked up his phone. He dialed the number on the business card the Commander had given him.

Before long Kang Jae-ha's voice came through the phone, and Jang Tae-san spoke calmly.

“Commander. Jang Tae-san here. I'd like to talk.”

The Commander's answer came a few seconds later.

“How's your sister?”

Slightly taken aback that his first concern was for her, Jang Tae-san answered.

“...She was shaken up a bit, but she's fine now.”

“Those meatheads are the morons here. Your sister has nothing to blame herself for.”

“Thank you for your concern.”

“Maybe she takes after you, but she's got real spirit, that sister of yours. She'll make something of herself someday. You'll have to watch every bit of it. With clear eyes, not eyes rolled back in your skull.”

“......”

When Jang Tae-san went silent, Jae-ha's voice came again from the other end of the line.

“There's no need to force yourself to see me. If you're satisfied with the life you have now, you can go on living it. You can ignore that ‘Absolute Obedience’ the woman's voice mentioned, too. This isn't the Other World.”

“I'm not forcing anything. If it's all right with you, Commander-nim, I'd like to see you. The others too.”

“Do that, then.”

Kang Jae-ha said it lightly.

“Come tonight, to where I tell you. I'll send the time and place by message.”

A few hours later, night.

Jang Tae-san arrived in front of a building. The building Kang Jae-ha had directed him to. In other words, where ‘MEG’ was. Jang Tae-san looked up at it for a moment.

“...I'm more nervous than I expected.”

Recalling the day he'd first joined the Mercenary Corps back in the Other World, he started walking. Then he stopped short. Because he'd spotted someone at the building entrance.

“Ah.”

What he saw was Go Chun-seok, a beast even taller than himself, and a pretty woman with big eyes. Ha Yeon-ji.

‘So she was from this side too.’

As Jang Tae-san murmured it inwardly, Go Chun-seok and Ha Yeon-ji noticed him and came over. Ha Yeon-ji put out her hand first.

“Hey, still solid as ever, huh?? Good to see you. My name on this side is Ha Yeon-ji.”

Jang Tae-san studied her outstretched hand for a moment, as though a handshake were a novelty to him, then shook it.

“I'm Jang Tae-san. You seem the same as ever too. That smile nobody can read hasn't changed either.”

“Oh yeah?? That's a compliment about how pretty I am, right? Why, thank you.”

Then Go Chun-seok stepped forward.

“Go Chun-seok.”

Go Chun-seok, who had gone out with him side by side in the Vanguard Unit on the battlefield. Jang Tae-san held out his hand to the man who was even bigger than himself.

“It's been a while.”

“Mm.”

Both of them being men of few words, there wasn't much conversation, and Ha Yeon-ji clapped the two beasts lightly on the shoulders.

“Come on, come on, we've got a Commander to see, don't we?”

“...Right.”

Ha Yeon-ji led the way, Jang Tae-san next, Go Chun-seok last. In the elevator, anticipation and tension rose in Jang Tae-san together. Soon Ha Yeon-ji stopped in front of a glass door.

“This is it. You go in first.”

Jang Tae-san nodded and opened the glass door with a stolid face. Right away he saw a ㄷ-shaped table with a number of people seated around it.

His Mercenary Corps comrades.

The first to throw out a greeting was narrow-eyed Lee Chan-hoo.

“You made it.”

Next was Choi Ri-na, all high energy.

“Whoa!! It's really him, really!!”

Jang Tae-san didn't react much to Choi Ri-na's energy as it came rushing at him.

“Good to see you.”

He had raised a younger sister for a long time, after all. Choi Ri-na's energy was much like hers. Then came Ryu Hyuk and Cha Chung-hyeon, and Kamijo Yuu and Sato Shota, who had been in and out of Korea often lately.

Slightly thrown by the greeting in Japanese, Jang Tae-san's gaze.

-Swish.

Landed on the man seated at the head of the table with his legs crossed, quietly watching his subordinates' greetings. Kang Jae-ha.

“Commander-nim.”

Jae-ha answered with a faint smile.

“Good. Sit.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jang Tae-san nodded and reached for the nearest chair. At the same time a strange feeling came over him. No, nostalgia, maybe? It was the sight of so many mercenaries gathered, himself included. For a moment his days in the Mercenary Corps flashed through his mind.

The moments just before marching out to war, or the times after a big war when they'd drunk hard, still drenched in blood.

Of course, the comrades here were few compared to back then.

‘It's really......been a long time since I felt this.’

Jang Tae-san realized that he had been missing this atmosphere. Comrades he could trust with his shoulders and his back, and a Commander who seemed able to handle any crisis that broke.

At any rate, once Jang Tae-san sat, his comrades took their places around him, and Kang Jae-ha, chin propped on one hand, spoke to him.

“Let's hear your story first. How have you been living?”

Kang Jae-ha had already heard the gist of the investigation from his subordinates, but he wanted to hear it from Jang Tae-san's own mouth. Taking a few seconds to gather his thoughts, Jang Tae-san spoke in a stiff, heavy voice.

“Well, there wasn't much to my life. One accident took my parents and my sister's legs, and after that, my purpose......my sister was everything.”

His sister was everything. A line that summed up the whole of Jang Tae-san's life. There must have been no end of hardship and pain in it, but Jae-ha didn't ask him about any of that.

“And it's the same now.”

“Yes.”

“And it will be from here on.”

“Yes. Only, a great deal has changed since I came back from the Other World.”

Of course it had. Over a decade in the Mercenary Corps. Jang Tae-san had spent a stretch of years so long his sister could never have guessed at it.

‘No way he'd be the same as he was before crossing into the Other World.’

Soon Jang Tae-san looked around at the comrades near him.

“So the comrades I couldn't find anywhere for a year were all here.”

Lee Chan-hoo cut in.

“That's right, we've been gathering up nice and steady under the Commander. Of course, counting you, I figure there are still more of us out there.”

Jang Tae-san nodded and glanced at Kamijo Yuu and Sato Shota.

‘Japanese, too. Then again, in the Mercenary Corps we were all one, but here everyone has a life of their own.’

Which meant his fellow mercenaries were scattered across any number of countries. It was as that thought passed briefly through Jang Tae-san's mind that Kang Jae-ha's voice reached him again.

“Is there anything you need right now?”

“Sorry?”

“I asked if there's anything you need.”

Jae-ha smiled at the wide-eyed Jang Tae-san.

“Money, or whatever it is, if you need something, say so. I intend to do whatever I can to help.”

“......”

“And if you want to walk out of here and live your own life, that's fine too. I'd still help you.”

Jang Tae-san looked at the Commander's face and let out a small breath.

“The others all seem a little different somehow, but you haven't changed at all, Commander-nim.”

Probably. No, 100%. If Jang Tae-san had shown Jae-ha any hostility, Kang Jae-ha would have worn a completely different face and gotten rid of him. At least that was how Jang Tae-san saw it.

‘That's the difference between him and me.’

The driving force that let Kang Jae-ha hold on to a Commander's aura was partly his uncommon temperament, but above all it was ‘responsibility’.

That ‘responsibility’ was what made him look after his subordinates, and it was also why he never flinched from turning brutal to protect them.

But for now Kang Jae-ha showed no great reaction, and switching which leg was crossed over the other, he spoke.

“Honestly, I want you. You and Go Chun-seok were the two best on the battlefield. But this is a different world, and this is a place where wanting something doesn't mean you get to have it.”

“......”

“So decide. The reason you're struggling badly enough for your eyes to roll back even in front of your own sister is the gap between the Other World and this one.”

Kang Jae-ha met Jang Tae-san's eyes.

“Do you want help from outside of me, or do you want help as one of mine?”

Whether some latch had come undone or what, Jang Tae-san's hard expression softened a little. Because Kang Jae-ha was the only superior Jang Tae-san would ever reach out to for a hand, in the Other World or here.

“Commander-nim, I......need money.”

“All right.”

Then Jang Tae-san dragged out the part of himself that had wanted the taste of blood even in front of his sister, and bowed his head low.

“And I need to be controlled, as well. The lowest seat is fine. I'd like you to take me in.”

Lee Chan-hoo, Ha Yeon-ji and the other mercenaries smiled where it wouldn't show, and Kang Jae-ha, who had been watching Jang Tae-san impassively for a moment, spoke.

“Head up. You'll get both the money and the control.”

Then he abruptly changed the subject.

“First, what's your ‘Ability’, Jang Tae-san.”

Jang Tae-san gave a short nod, turned his head, and looked at one of his comrades. Go Chun-seok, who had been standing there silent as a great tree this whole time.

“Even here, your strength has to be the greatest.”

Go Chun-seok didn't deny it, and Jang Tae-san stepped in front of him. At the sight of the two beasts facing off, Choi Ri-na's eyes went round.

‘Two legendary beasts guarding the gate in some myth?? It's totally like that!’

Of course, Jang Tae-san was a little shorter, but in Choi Ri-na's eyes there wasn't much difference. Soon Jang Tae-san made his request of Go Chun-seok.

“Hit me with everything you've got. It's fine to use your ‘Ability’.”

“With my ‘Ability’ behind it, it'll be harder than you think.”

“That's fine, I'll be using mine too.”

Go Chun-seok glanced at Kang Jae-ha, and Jae-ha, watching with interest, gave a small nod. Drawing out his ‘Ability’, Go Chun-seok packed a monstrous force into his fist, enough to crush a boulder.

-Whoosh!!

And drove it into Jang Tae-san's gut. Jang Tae-san, shoved back hard. And in that instant, what Go Chun-seok had struck was not a man's stomach but.

‘A slab of iron?’

He got the feeling he'd hit a solid slab of iron. Right, as if he'd just decked an actual Terminator.

The interesting part was that Jang Tae-san was perfectly fine.

Jang Tae-san looked at Commander Jae-ha.

“This is my ‘Ability’, I can harden myself to the absolute limit.”

He tapped his own abdomen lightly.

“And I can absorb an attack I take and use it as my own strength.”

*****

For more extra chapters, you can check out my Patreon here --> patreon.com/dreamscribe

If you enjoy this novel, please review and rate it at Novelupdates. Thanks! 😊

To receive the latest update notifications or report mistakes, join our Discord server linked below.