MTLNOVEL Chapter 28 - John Wick
Chapter 28 – John Wick
There was a movie Jin really liked.
The protagonist, a former assasin, seeks revenge for his dog.
To exaggerate just a little, the entire 100-minute runtime is just him killing people.
Stabbing, shooting, beating them to death.
By the time the credits roll, the number of bodies left in his wake is 83.
Naturally, the last words uttered by his enemies became a common refrain—
“What’s the big deal about that damn dog?!”
But that was the foolishness of those who failed to grasp the true meaning behind the dog.
To the protagonist, that tiny pup was the last gift from his late wife.
In other words, something that may seem insignificant to others could be an irreplaceable treasure to its owner.
And right now—
Jin deeply understood Mr. Wick’s rage.
My money!
My gun!
To Jin, those were his dog and his lover.
The money he earned through sweat and blood.
The first weapon he ever bought with that money.
Something that couldn’t simply be valued in terms of cash.
Jin clenched his fist.
They dared to lay hands on my belongings?
Pretending to be kind, spouting nonsense about mercy, and then stabbing me in the back wasn’t enough for them?
“…You’re all dead.”
As Jin furrowed his brow and stomped forward—
“You’re just going to leave like that?”
A voice called out behind him.
“Oh, right.”
Jin quickly turned around and approached the middle-aged man watching him.
Then, gripping the chain, he yanked it with all his strength—
CRACK—BANG!
Unable to withstand the sheer force, the chain tore free from the ceiling, stake and all.
As the man finally set foot on the ground and rubbed his sore wrists while removing the loosened shackles, Jin spoke.
“I have a favor to ask.”
“What is it?”
“Take care of these people.”
Jin motioned toward the makeshift human butcher shop with a tilt of his chin.
“They’ll be scared out of their minds once they come to. So, you—no, senior—yeah, senior, act like one. Explain the situation properly, reassure them. Got it?”
“And what exactly am I supposed to say to reassure them?”
“They got kidnapped, yeah. But no need to worry. Why? Because the future King of Solos is on the case. That should do it, right?”
Even after saying it, Jin wasn’t entirely confident in the man’s reliability.
So he repeated himself two, three more times, making sure the message got through before finally turning back.
Ah, my momentum’s ruined.
I was supposed to ride that anger all the way through.
Refocus.
…My gun, the day I first bought you, all of downtown whispered your name.
Gravis.
Alright, that should do it.
Fully reloading his fury, Jin picked up the fallen chain, wrapped it around his forearms, and stepped through the open door.
“…”
The middle-aged man, watching him silently from behind, had a curious glint in his eyes.
Jin was never meant to be a psychopath.
Thrown into a world of lunatics, he had still never once crossed the line he considered his last boundary as a human being.
For instance—murder.
Even though it had become such a routine act that he could do it multiple times a day without feeling anything, Jin never saw it as a means for self-improvement.
He knew.
He knew that every death at his hands became a source of experience points.
But knowing it and exploiting it were two entirely different things.
Hmm, I’m a bit short on XP to light up a new star.
Maybe if I kill about ten gang members, that should do the trick.
Thinking like that was the fastest way to go insane.
Jin’s already fragile mental state wouldn’t be able to withstand that kind of mindset.
Of course, that wasn’t always the case.
There were exceptions.
When the enemy is an obvious villain.
Something that merely wears human skin—a beast, no, something even lower than that.
In such cases, treating them as experience points doesn’t leave any mental burden.
In fact, it’s a welcome opportunity.
Getting rid of garbage that serves no purpose in this world while gaining experience in the process—truly killing two birds with one stone.
Like eating a pheasant and getting its egg.
Like sweeping the yard and finding a coin.
And this was exactly one of those cases.
It hadn’t been long since Jin began exploring the factory when he discovered it—
A giant test tube bubbling with some grotesque liquid, flayed corpses strewn about, and monks chanting incantations beneath them.
At a glance, there were over ten of them.
And at least twice as many corpses.
If he were to borrow the words of a now-deceased priest,
they were undoubtedly in the process of creating some kind of mutation.
Even Jin, who had seen all sorts of horrors, instinctively furrowed his brows at the sheer atrocity.
It was a sight too gruesome to put into words.
What the hell is that?
Completely disgusting.
But the important thing here was that Jin didn’t particularly care why those bastards were doing this.
It simply gave him one more reason to kill them.
And without the slightest hesitation.
—Whoosh, whoosh—
With chains long enough to wrap around his forearms and still drag along the floor,
Jin began spinning them fiercely in both hands.
As threatening gusts of wind kicked up around him,
he scanned the area, pinpointing the positions of the monks who had yet to notice his presence.
Then, focusing on the optimal location—
Mana evaporated.
Vision blurred.
Blink.
And at the same moment, four heads burst like overripe tomatoes.
—Splatter!—
There were no screams.
They didn’t even realize what had hit them.
“What in the—?!”
A monk injecting something into a corpse flinched and turned his head in shock.
His widened eyes reflected the sight of his comrades collapsing, their blood spraying into the air.
Jin was already behind him.
—Clank!—
Like a cowboy lassoing a rampaging beast, Jin’s expert wrist control sent the chain coiling around the man’s neck.
He then kicked the back of the monk’s knee, forcing him to collapse.
Supporting the falling body with his foot, Jin yanked hard with both arms—
The monk’s spine bent like a drawn bow,
until his head finally met his own heels.
The wet crunch of spinal discs collectively bursting was a free bonus.
“Intruder!”
“Are they with the city government?!”
“Stop them! Stop them now!”
At last, the enemy took notice of Jin.
From beneath their hoods, their jaws dropped in a mix of shock and panic, and they scrambled to retaliate.
Some chanted spells, some slashed their arms open to draw blood,
and some reached for their guns…
Wait—Gravis?!
No, why are you there?!
Jin’s cherished weapon, now in someone else’s hands, made him narrow his eyes.
In that instant, he lunged.
“…O wicked beast of the underworld!”
One of the monks, who had been murmuring incantations all along, finally shouted the last words of his spell with thunderous intensity.
Jin’s gaze instinctively snapped to the source.
And then he saw it.
A quadrupedal beast stretching within a pool of bubbling blood.
Like a pit bull soaked in gore for three days straight.
Its entire body was a deep crimson, save for its gleaming white fangs,
and it twitched its savage maw.
There were three of them.
Matching exactly the number of monks who had slit their arms and bled onto the ground.
—Roar!—
The blood-bound beasts pounded the floor with terrifying force.
A normal person would’ve collapsed on the spot from sheer intimidation.
But Jin wasn’t fazed.
After all, he didn’t need to fight them.
The most efficient way to deal with summoned creatures was simple: eliminate the summoners.
A tactic proven time and time again in comics, movies, games, and novels.
The collective wisdom of countless works of fiction confirmed it.
And as a proud cultured individual and seasoned gamer, there was no way Jin wouldn’t know this.
He immediately swung his chains into a whirlwind,
Blink! Blink! Blink!
With near-instantaneous teleportation, the summoners were torn apart.
“H-how?!”
“That’s impossible!”
Shouts bordering on screams erupted from all around.
The reason for their shock was simple.
Spatial movement was considered one of the most difficult techniques to use in actual combat.
It involved marking coordinates within a three-dimensional cube defined by the X, Y, and Z axes, and then transferring both consciousness and body to those coordinates—an incredibly perilous act.
Without an innate ability to process 2D visual information into a 3D spatial understanding, one could not recklessly attempt such a feat.
In short, one needed exceptional perception and an intrinsic understanding of the concept of teleportation down to their very bones.
And Jin was precisely that rare individual who met all these demanding conditions.
A collaboration of his superhuman senses and the forcibly implanted knowledge in his mind made this movement possible.
Pwoooomph!!!
The last summoner fell, struck down by the chain Jin had swung with all his might.
At the same time, the beast that had been frantically chasing Jin’s flashing silhouette collapsed into a puddle of blood.
A sudden dizziness washed over him.
Jin staggered.
He had burned through too much mana, and his vision dimmed.
Reflexively, he reached out to steady himself—
only to find his hand resting on a cylindrical container housing a skinned human.
“Ah, shit!”
Startled, Jin lashed out with his fist.
The glass shattered, spilling its contents in a torrential cascade, forcing him to retreat swiftly to avoid the liquid gushing out.
“No! You madman! Stop it!”
“Do you even realize what you’re doing?!”
The few remaining enemies screamed in panic.
Their reactions made it clear—this was something they could not afford to lose.
Even through his exhaustion, Jin smirked, rolling his shoulders.
Then he started smashing every test tube within his reach.
It was reckless destruction without rhyme or reason, but to his enemies, it was an unspeakable nightmare.
“You bastard!!!”
A flurry of blood-stained spells surged toward Jin, cast by those willing to offer flesh and blood as sacrifices.
Projectiles arced through the air—but Jin had already blinked out of harm’s way.
He materialized behind one of them, fist swinging.
Crunch!
The sickening crack of a skull reverberated as his punch connected.
By the time the body hit the ground, Jin was already gone.
Instead, another monk, wildly whipping his head around in panic, had his neck violently snapped.
Only one enemy remained.
Jin nudged a corpse aside with his foot and spoke.
“Hey. Just put that down. You’re not going to fire it anyway, so why cling to it?”
The last surviving monk, standing on the blood-soaked floor with a Gravis in both hands, grit his teeth.
“…I know who you are.”
“Me?”
“I’ve heard rumors about the psychic known as the Spatial Sorcerer among the city government’s agents. But the intel was only half right. I was expecting a cold-eyed woman…”
Jin narrowed his eyes.
Why was the city government being mentioned now?
It seemed this guy had completely misunderstood something.
Well, people only saw what they wanted to see.
His logic was absurdly shallow.
Did he really believe the only ones capable of attacking their facility were government agents?
“Whatever.”
Jin had no interest in correcting that narrow-minded assumption.
He stepped forward.
“Just hand over my gun. Unless you want to die painfully.”
The monk’s response was to struggle, slowly raising the muzzle of his Gravis beneath his own chin.
“You ignorant heretic… Death is not the end. It is the beginning of all things.”
Then, without hesitation, he pulled the trigger.
BANG!
The violent recoil flung his body backward, and he collapsed onto his back.
“…”
Jin hadn’t expected him to take his own life.
He stared at the headless corpse with a blank expression.
Fssshhhhhh—
A foul stench filled the air as the bodies of the fallen monks began to melt.
Then, as if possessed by a will of their own, the liquefied remains slithered together.
It happened in an instant.
The grotesque form that emerged had two heads and four legs.
GROOOOOOOHH!!
A thunderous roar revealed five layers of jagged teeth.
Jin let out a long, weary sigh and picked up the fallen Gravis.
“This insane world… Just when I think I’ve seen everything.”
The moment he aimed the gun forward—
CRACKLE—Zzzzzzt!
A surge of violet lightning flashed over his shoulder, engulfing the monster.
Under the flickering lights, the beast twisted in agony—
And then, charred black, it collapsed with a heavy thud.
Jin instinctively turned his head.
A middle-aged man stood there.
His arm was still outstretched from the attack, his lips curled in an amused smile.
He spoke.
“Well… Was that senior-like enough for you?”