Chapter 119: The Ledger

Chapter 119: Chapter 119: The Ledger

Park Jae-won didn’t step into the oath room. He stayed in the doorway with his hands folded in front of him, and the six men in black coats came in past him and spread out along the curved white wall, three on each side.

"I don’t fight, Investor," he said pleasantly. "I haven’t needed to in fifteen years. I collect."

Donald set Seo-yeon down against the wall behind the lock column and stood up in front of her. Sylvia came out of the maintenance shaft and took her place at his left shoulder, and Kang stayed in the gap of the panel, holding his wrapped hand against his chest.

Donald opened [Valuation Eye] on the six men.

[Target: Ring-Bearers of the Crowned King (x6)]

[Rank: A-Rank. Levels: 64 to 71.]

[Shared Effect: Linked Ledger. Damage dealt to any bearer is divided equally among all six.]

"Don’t bother hitting just one of them," Kang said quietly from behind him. "I’ve watched them train. Whatever you do to one, the other five carry most of it. You’d have to hit all six at the same moment, as hard as you’d hit one."

"Or cut the links," Donald said.

"Nobody can see the links."

"I can," Seo-yeon said.

She was still on her knees against the wall, pale and shaking, but her eyes were open and fixed on the six men. "They’re thin lines, gold, running from each ring to the Chairman’s. I’ve looked at them every day for fifteen years." She tried to stand and couldn’t. "But I’ve just lost a fifteen-year oath, and my core is empty. I can’t seal anything like this."

Donald looked at her, and then at the number still showing in the corner of his eye, and made a decision.

[Primary Investment Target: Han Seo-yeon (Asset, TIG Member).]

[Current Balance: 76,460,000 System Credits.]

[Lock Purchase Reserved: 64,000,000.]

[Available for Investment: 12,460,000.]

"Invest five million," he said under his breath. "Core restoration."

[Investment Confirmed: 5,000,000 Credits.]

[Asset Core: Restored. Fifteen years of oath strain cleared.]

[Level: 73 → 78.]

[New Skill Acquired: Severing Seal (S-Rank). Cuts any binding line the Sealkeeper can see. Cost: 80 Mana per line.]

[Current Balance: 71,460,000 System Credits.]

Seo-yeon gasped as the mana came back into her all at once, and she got to her feet in one smooth motion, steadier than she had been since Donald met her. She looked down at her own hands in disbelief and then over at Donald.

"What did you just do to me?" she whispered.

"Later," Donald said. "Can you cut six lines?"

"I can cut sixty."

Park sighed in the doorway. "Take the woman," he said to the six. "Alive, if possible."

The ring-bearers came off the wall together.

---

[Anchor waking in: 54:12.]

The first of them reached Donald in two strides, a tall man with a long steel staff, and Donald caught the staff on the gauntlet and fired the Pile Bunker into his chest. It should have broken the man’s ribs and thrown him across the room. Instead he staggered back one step, coughed, and came on again, while each of the other five flinched at the same moment, as if each of them had been hit by a sixth of the blow.

Behind Donald, Seo-yeon raised her right hand and closed her fingers.

"[Severing Seal]."

A thin line of blue light flashed across the room from her fingertips and cut through something in the air above the tall man’s head. Donald couldn’t see what she had cut, but he saw the result. The man’s ring flickered, and his face went slack with surprise.

[Ring-Bearer #1: Linked Ledger severed.]

Donald hit him again, and this time the blow landed in full. The man flew backward into the wall, cracked the white plaster from floor to ceiling, and slid down it without getting up.

"One," Seo-yeon said.

The others understood at once what she was doing, and two of them broke off and came for her. Sylvia dropped into her own shadow and came up out of the shadow under the first one’s feet, slashing his knees out from under him, while Donald stepped between Seo-yeon and the second. The man swung a chain at Donald’s head, and Donald caught it on his gauntlet and pulled him off balance.

"[Severing Seal]," Seo-yeon said again, and again, her hands moving quickly and precisely.

[Ring-Bearer #2: Linked Ledger severed.]

[Ring-Bearer #3: Linked Ledger severed.]

Sylvia’s man went down under her daggers. Donald fired the Pile Bunker into the chain-fighter’s stomach, and the piston hit with all its force, and the man folded over it and dropped.

The last three were more careful. They pulled back toward the doorway, toward Park, where the gold links were shortest, and one of them raised his hands and threw up a wall of hard black light between them and the room.

[Target: Ledger Wall. Effect: Blocks all lines of sight to the bearers.]

"I can’t cut what I can’t see," Seo-yeon said.

That was when Donald summoned Nyx.

The black cat came out of the air over the black wall, with her wings already spread, and dropped straight down on the other side of it. Donald heard a man scream. The wall flickered and went out, and the bearer who had raised it was on his knees with Nyx’s claws in his back.

[Phantasmal Siphon: Ring-Bearer #4. Speed drained: 30. Transferred to Investor.]

[Investor Speed: 116 → 146 (Temporary).]

"Now," Donald said.

Seo-yeon cut three lines in three seconds. Sylvia took the left-hand bearer and Donald took the right, and the one Nyx was holding never got off his knees.

[Ring-Bearers defeated: 6 of 6.]

[EXP Gained: 31,200.]

[Level Up! Level 27 → 28.]

[Free Points: +3.]

---

[Anchor waking in: 46:30.]

Seven thousand kilometers west, the Bailiffs had stopped coming out of the crack in threes. They were coming out in tens.

Evelyn stood on the black glass at the foot of the Wall with Starfall in both hands and gold masks piled around her boots. The Wall’s targeting screen above her had stopped counting the ones she’d killed and had begun counting the ones still standing.

[Wall Defense Grid: Defender — Evelyn Vance. S-Rank Valkyrie. Level 68.]

[Bailiffs on field: 204.]

[Bailiffs past the Wall: 1.]

[Sector 2: Placed under lien.]

One had gotten through while she was busy with forty others. She hadn’t even seen it go.

"Damian," she said into her earpiece. "Sector 2."

"I see it," Damian said. "I’m going. Helena’s with Garrick under the Wall. She says the lien on Sector 2 will hold until the one on the anchor breaks." He paused. "She says to tell Donald to hurry."

"Tell him yourself," Evelyn said, and swung Starfall in a wide arc that took the masks off six Bailiffs at once. "I’m busy."

---

In the doorway of the oath room, Park Jae-won looked at his six ring-bearers lying unconscious on the white floor, and for a while he didn’t say anything at all.

Then he stepped into the room for the first time.

"Fifteen years," he said softly. "Fifteen years I’ve owned this city, and nobody has ever made me walk across a floor." He began unbuttoning the cuffs of his black jacket, one and then the other, and rolled them back from his thin wrists. The ring on his finger glowed darker, and the gray, loose skin of his face drew tight across the bones. "Very well, Investor. You’ve been very clever with your money. Let me show you what I do with mine."

Donald didn’t wait for him to finish. He stepped into his own shadow and came out of Park’s, directly behind him, and drove the Pile Bunker into the middle of the old man’s back with everything he had.

It was the hardest he had ever hit anyone.

Park didn’t move at all.

The force of the blow didn’t go into him. It came back, straight back up Donald’s arm, into his shoulder and his chest, exactly as hard as he had sent it. It picked him up off his feet and threw him across the oath room into the far wall, and he felt two of his ribs break when he hit.

[Bill Received: 100% of damage dealt returned to sender.]

[HP: 61%.]

Donald slid down the wall and landed on his knees, with blood in his mouth.

Park turned around slowly and smiled at him, warm and patient, and rolled his cuffs back one more turn.

"The ring doesn’t protect me," he said. "It sends the bill."

[Anchor waking in: 44:58.]