“No, I refuse.”

    “Why?”

    “Why should I waste time staring at that unpleasant man, not knowing when the creature might arrive silently?”

    Manseok seemed about to say something, but I cut him off, glancing around to avoid confrontation.

    “Let someone else handle it.”

    Manseok’s lips curled into a thin smile. He didn’t respond but brushed past me, deliberately bumping my shoulder—a subtle warning, perhaps, that he wasn’t pleased.

    Not that it mattered. He couldn’t do anything to me. If he wanted to face the grim reaper lurking nearby—whether tonight or tomorrow—he needed my help.

    While he locked himself in the container serving as his office, I inspected the gangsters’ firearms and equipment. Nothing remarkable.

    No flares, no night vision goggles. Just a few crude LED lights, most of which were focused on illuminating the naked man tied to the pole.

    Manseok’s plan—to wait for the owl mutation to snatch the judge and then fire the Blader to kill both the creature and the judge, reducing them to mincemeat—seemed sound on the surface.

    After all, humanity’s earliest traps for birds likely worked on similar principles: baiting the prey and ensnaring it the moment it took the bait.

    But we were dealing with a creature more similar to us than we’d like to admit.

    I’d warned Manseok of this fact more than once, but the gangster seemed incapable of grasping its implications.

    The moonless night arrived, cloaked in pitch-black darkness. Clouds veiled the sky, smothering even the faintest light.

    Our battlefield was no different. When Manseok gestured, the LED lights blinked on, flooding the scene with harsh brightness and spotlighting the naked man tied to the pole as if he were some grotesque prize.

    Manseok chuckled, gazing at the bound man.

    “Hey, Judge! Feeling good up there? You like high places, don’t you? Eh? From up there, does everyone look small to you?”

    Manseok crouched in a personal trench lined with spiked stakes, gripping the Blader.

    “I wanted to toy with you longer, but, well, life’s hard right now. You know how people abandon their pets when they can’t take care of them anymore? Same thing. Don’t take it too personally, yeah? Life’s tough for me too.”

    The judge said nothing. Perhaps he didn’t have the strength to. I hadn’t seen him eat all day.

    Manseok’s grudge burned unabated.

    “Hey, Judge. Let’s say we still had cops and prosecutors in this world, and I got caught and brought to trial. Now that you’re up there, what verdict would you hand down? Death penalty? Life imprisonment?”

    His taunts were ceaseless and venomous.

    As a hunter, I found Manseok’s ranting unwise.

    When I was a boy, my mentor, Jang Ki-young, once gave us an unusual assignment: identify the animals that would be most difficult to deal with as mutations, explain why, and write a report.

    Unsurprisingly, I aced the task.

    Jang Ki-young called my name with a grin that felt almost paternal. “Park Gyu, you’re like Fabre!”

    That offhand compliment shattered my illusion of him. Fabre? Not Seton? It was then I realized he was a little odd.

    My chosen animal, which earned me that praise, was the Eurasian eagle-owl—a predator born for the hunt.

    Its eyes may be its most prominent feature, but its asymmetrical ears are what make it truly deadly. The difference in ear height allows the owl to locate prey in pitch darkness by sound alone.

    Shouting, as Manseok was doing, seemed less like setting bait and more like inviting the predator to dinner.

    “Fool.”

    The unexpected voice cut through the night.

    It was the judge. Bound to the pole, he had spoken.

    “You pathetic, ignorant creature.”

    He squirmed and struggled, his entire body trembling as if reborn with purpose.

    “Do you think a judge in this country is some kind of feudal magistrate? Do you think I could just throw away laws and regulations and do whatever I wanted? Do you have any idea how much I agonized over that decision? The evidence wasn’t there! You didn’t know that man would kill your daughter. If you did, why didn’t you protect her yourself? Huh? Why?”

    It was astonishing.

    This man, who seemed utterly broken after enduring endless humiliation and abuse, still possessed the strength to defend his actions.

    Even stripped of dignity and mocked by gangsters, he had maintained his humanity.

    Faced with imminent death, he shed his mask of endurance and bared his soul to the merciless Manseok—from his high perch, no less.

    “You son of a—!”

    Manseok’s face twisted into a monstrous visage under the harsh LED glare.

    He climbed out of his trench, the Blader in hand, aiming it at the judge.

    “You bastard! You’ve been silent this whole time, and now that you’re about to die, you decide to run your mouth?”

    Thunk.

    The Blader clattered to the ground. A grim smile crept across Manseok’s face.

    “Forget it.”

    He waved his hand dismissively.

    “No hunting tonight. Fine. Forget the plan. I’ll just make sure you never open that mouth again. Hey! Bring me a gun. I’ll blow a hole in his skull myself.”

    It was a chilling threat.

    But the judge, perhaps knowing he had nothing left to lose, continued speaking without pause.

    “Laws and systems exist because of beasts like you! Animals that scream for execution and demand death for every offense—that’s why we have the presumption of innocence and a three-tiered court system!”

    “You bastard!”

    Manseok’s face turned crimson with rage.

    He climbed the ladder toward the judge, a pistol in one hand.

    Everyone watched, unease growing, as he ascended.

    A breeze stirred, east to west. My gaze flicked to the horizon.

    “?”

    There was something—a shape darker than the night.

    “Mutation!”

    The word burst from my mouth before I even thought it.

    “MUTATION!!!”

    Tat-tat-tat-tat!

    I fired at the shadow, but it veered sharply and disappeared into the darkness.

    “What the hell?!”

    Manseok, halfway up the ladder, looked back at me, his expression incredulous.

    “It’s a mutation!”

    “I don’t see shit!”

    He scanned the area, then sneered as if he’d figured it out.

    Thud!

    A sudden, earth-shaking crash sounded from beyond the containers.

    The ground trembled, and a bone-chilling cracking noise followed.

    "Argh!"

    "The—The owl!"

    "There''s another one!"

    Before anyone could react, a massive, pitch-black figure soared into the sky.

    In the faint light cast by the LEDs, the creature’s outstretched wings revealed its identity.

    "..."

    I had overlooked one crucial possibility.

    Owls pair for life.

    The creature descended, landing with another deafening crash.

    "Ahhhh!"

    "Yonggi’s dead! Yonggi’s down!"

    "Kyahhhh!"

    "Run! Run for your lives!"

    Manseok and I raised our guns, but the creature didn’t take flight again.

    Instead, it stalked forward on two legs, its talons and beak mercilessly tearing through the humans responsible for killing its mate.

    Beyond the container walls, a horrifying symphony unfolded.

    The furious flapping of wings, the sickening sounds of flesh ripping and bones snapping, the panicked screams of the living, and the final gasps of the dying melded into a nightmarish cacophony.

    Manseok met my gaze.

    He picked up the fallen Blader and handed it to me.

    I nodded, gesturing for him to take cover.

    And then, the shadow emerged from beyond the containers.

    A split-second aim.

    A pull of the trigger.

    One of the few lessons from school that had proven useful in the field.

    I had used countless weapons, but none was as unpredictable as this titanium-blade shotgun.

    Still, survival demanded I fire.

    The moment the beast lunged over the containers, eighteen titanium blades burst forth from the Blader.

    The blades tore through its feathers, wings, body, massive eyes, and beak, eviscerating the creature in one devastating strike.

    But not all the blades found their mark.

    One severed the pole the judge was tied to, sending it crashing down.

    Another ricocheted off a container wall, scattering shards everywhere.

    One of those shards struck Manseok squarely in the temple.

    "!!!"

    Without so much as a scream, Manseok collapsed, the pole falling on top of him.

    *

    "The store was pretty decent. I even had something I wanted to buy," Defender remarked, uncharacteristically expressing regret over the shop.

    He doesn’t know what became of it. I didn’t tell him.

    "By the way, that judge—what do you think happened to him? Is he still being dragged around like a dog by that gangster?"

    Who knows?

    I could say otherwise.

    But from my perspective, it’s safe to assume the judge ultimately succumbed to the gangster’s control.

    I think back to their final moments.

    Manseok, pinned beneath the pole, unable to move. The judge, miraculously spared as the pole landed on the opposite container edge, surviving by sheer luck. The shock even loosened his restraints.

    The tables had turned.

    The judge was free, and Manseok lay helpless under the pole—likely with both legs broken.

    Up to that point, it was a perfect victory for the judge.

    A testament to his superhuman endurance, earning the favor of the fickle gods.

    But the situation flipped once again.

    The judge picked up a pistol that had fallen to the ground and approached the immobilized Manseok.

    His face was chilling, eerily resembling Manseok''s.

    There was no mistaking it.

    It was the face Manseok had wanted to see—the one hiding behind the judge''s lofty mask.

    A face consumed by hatred and revenge.

    Manseok’s eyes widened slightly as he stared at the judge’s expression.

    Then, as if a thought had struck him, he turned his head to look at me.

    Silently, he mouthed the words:

    "Don’t. Interfere."

    His face wasn’t much different from the judge''s.

    Both were steeped in the same madness, drenched in the same hatred.

    “...”

    Manseok looked up at the judge and smiled gently.

    "Finally delivering your verdict?" he asked softly.

    The judge burst into laughter.

    "Death penalty!"

    Manseok laughed too, louder and more carefree than the judge.

    When the gunshot silenced the laughter, I couldn’t immediately tell who had judged whom.

    The faces of the killer and the killed were as indistinguishable as twins.