Former Ranker's Newbie Life

As Do-Jin walked toward the tunnel, he asked, “Anemone, how many do you sense?”

She twitched her nose. “There are a little over ten, maybe. The smell is nasty and mixed up, so it’s hard to be precise. This smells like potions. Rotten potions.”

Anemone frowned deeply, then snapped her eyes open with a sharp glare. “I think they noticed us. The inside of the tunnel just got noisy.”

Although she called it noisy, that change was subtle enough that only someone like her could have picked it up.

True to form for a criminal hideout, this tunnel that the smuggling ring had dug out was crawling with thieves, and every last one of them was suppressing their presence with stealth skills.

One of the guards spotted a man and a strange beast wandering near their hideout. The guard drew out his poison-coated daggers and was on high alert.

“Who the hell is that guy? And what is that thing next to him? Check them with the spyglass.”

“It’s too dark to see them clearly,” another guard replied. “Judging by its size, it almost looks like a cow...”

“They’re coming this way. They’re not targeting us, are they?”

“If they were, they wouldn’t have come by themselves. They probably just got lost.”

“Should we head out and deal with them?”

“No. Don’t stir shit up for no reason. If they come a little closer, we can kill them easily anyway.”

They exchanged soundproofed whispers and flashed hand signals back and forth. Suddenly, their surroundings lit up, and before any of them could even process what was happening, a deafening blast ripped through the area.

“Ghk!”

As soon as Do-Jin was close enough to the tunnel entrance, he fired Flame Cannon without hesitation.

The thieves avoided instant death from the spell itself, but the blast from the compressed fire magic alone hit them like a truck. The shockwave tore through their bodies, and the forced dispersal of mana ripped their stealth apart.

Their concealment shattered, and the thieves panicked as they reeled from the completely random attack.

“Shit, he’s a mage!”

“Don’t panic! Magic like this always has plenty of holes. If they were seriously aiming for this place, they wouldn’t have sent just one mage. The real problem is whoever’s still out there, so keep your eyes on that!”

“I will take care of the mage—”

They were elites, both as thieves and as career criminals. Their reactions were fast, and their judgment was sharp, at least on the surface. Unfortunately, every decision they made based on all that experience and common sense was completely useless. Before they could even recover from the first blast, a second explosion slammed into them.

As they tumbled across the ground in the shockwave’s wake, the thought flashed through their minds that there really were multiple mages. That mistaken conclusion had barely formed before the flames split apart and something emerged from within.

“Hhk—!”

A wolf-shaped spirit stepped forward and brought her front paw down on the man closest to the tunnel entrance, crushing his chest like it was papier-mâché.

“Eeek!”

One man still clutching a crossbow tried to fire, but a bolt of lightning tore straight through him before he could pull the trigger.

“You little—” The last one, clutching his twisted arm as he tried to shout, died when Do-Jin’s stomp sent jagged stone erupting from the ground and impaling him.

“Are you done?”

“The entrance side is clear,” Anemone replied.

She kept her gaze fixed deeper inside the tunnel as she growled low in her throat. Do-Jin didn’t bother asking anything else. Instead, he activated Psychokinesis.

More oil pouches flew out of his inventory and shot straight into the tunnel. At the thieves’ level, ordinary fire would not do any meaningful damage. Oil and flames alone were not enough to kill them.

However, Do-Jin knew that any ordinary person would panic when their home caught fire. That alone was enough. To them, this place was everything at once: a secret hideout, a smuggling route, and a warehouse packed with valuable goods. If a large fire broke out here, their minds would go completely blank.

“Fuck, fuck, there’s fire! Put the fire out first! If it spreads inside and hits the goods, we are completely fucked!”

After creating chaos with nothing more than crude arson, Do-Jin charged straight into the flames. The massive fire raging through the narrow, dark tunnel reduced visibility so much that even total darkness would have been easier to deal with. There was a reason burning structures were considered a kind of living hell. Still, that limitation meant far less to someone who possessed Silent Night.

“Aaagh!”

Do-Jin slaughtered the enemies inside the roaring flames. They put up as much resistance as they could, but it was meaningless. He killed them as quickly as possible because a place like this almost certainly had a hidden passage. Once they committed to running, stopping them would become a hassle. It made more sense to get a read on the situation and seize someone who clearly knew more before they could make their escape.

“Here! This way—”

A thief lunged from the side with a shout, slashing with his blade, but Do-Jin shut him down instantly. He caught the weapon with his gauntlet and severed the man’s arm with the heat and pressure coiling around his hand.

Do-Jin inflicted just enough pain to drive him to the brink of unconsciousness. Then, as the man screamed in agony, he asked, “Can you lead me to where your boss—”

“Go fuck yourself...”

“Never mind, then.”

This time, Do-Jin dealt more than enough damage to kill. The disposable thug rolled his eyes back and died in a flash of blue light, and Do-Jin kicked the corpse aside.

“You said there were ten.”

“When they use stealth, their scent fades,” Anemone replied matter-of-factly.

There were plenty of people left to interrogate. Do-Jin killed a few more thieves who rushed him, then subdued one who had charged in too eagerly, making himself easy to grab. Fortunately, the new captive had a weak tolerance for pain. The place he led them to contained a naked man frantically scooping up valuables and several women sprawled on the ground, drugged out of their minds.

“You think you are walking out of this alive? Insane piece of shit!”

Ironically, the naked man, who clearly had his escape route planned down to the second, was stronger than anyone else Do-Jin had fought inside the tunnel.

Is this some kind of new boss gimmick? Do-Jin thought.

The man darted around with slick footwork, swinging a knife honed to a vicious edge. Seeing a grown adult do that completely naked added a whole new layer of visual trauma. Even so, his limits were obvious. Do-Jin severed both of his ankles so he couldn’t even think about running, then swept through the rest of the tunnel and wiped out every remaining straggler.

“Can’t get all of them...” he muttered.

The ones who had managed to escape might bring back reinforcements, so staying any longer was a bad idea. Do-Jin decided to clean up fast and get out as soon as possible.

***

Deneve held her breath and kept her eyes locked forward. The chaos had started with an explosion wrapped in blistering heat, followed by pillars of fire, rolling smoke, and nonstop detonations echoing from deep inside the tunnel.

She couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or stressed at the realization that the mage she had dragged into this was an absolute monster. In the middle of her turmoil, everything quickly went quiet.

Is it over...? she thought. Or did something go wrong?

She started to push herself up, anxiety tightening her chest. For a split second, a worse possibility crept in.

Did he actually die in there?

That was when a voice spoke right next to her. “Do-Jin says you should come in.”

“Gah!”

Deneve nearly jumped out of her skin at the sudden sound. She froze, staring wide-eyed at the source of the voice, completely unable to speak.

Anemone shot her an exasperated look. “What are you doing? He told you to come in.”

“Is... is it over?” Deneve asked shakily.

“He killed all the bad people inside.”

Already? How long had he even been in there? And how the hell can this wolf talk?

Reality stopped making sense, so she simply gave up and followed in a daze. The silver wolf seemed to be tracking Do-Jin’s scent, guiding Deneve deep into the tunnel without hesitation.

As they walked further in, a groan soaked in pain echoed through the darkness, followed by the desperate plea of a man.

“I don’t know. I really don’t know! They just told me to stay on standby up here, that’s all. I swear. I swear that’s all I got!”

The voice belonged to the person in charge of this site, still alive and screaming as he was tortured. Deneve frowned when she saw him. The naked man was kneeling on the ground with both ankles severed.

“I really don’t know anything. I’m just the warehouse manager here... They pulled most of the manpower out. You saw it yourself! That’s why this place got wiped out so fast. There were barely any people left...” The man cast a sideways glance at Deneve. The look in his eyes made one thing clear: he had never once imagined that she was connected to his organization.

Just in case, Deneve asked whether he had heard anything about a mole. He knew nothing about that either. Information had been cut off at the middle management level.

So that’s it, Deneve thought. If this got reported upward, a few heads would roll, so someone tried to handle it quietly at their own level and pretend it never happened.

It was typical of extreme punishment systems. Fear of consequences drove people to bury crimes and problems rather than expose them.

That actually worked out in my favor. Maybe there is another idiot stuck in the middle of the reporting chain who wants to bury this too.

She couldn’t expect this advantage to last long after causing this kind of incident here. Still, there was always a chance. No matter how things played out, they simply had to move before their enemies did. Do-Jin continued the interrogation, squeezing out as much information as possible. High pride and stubborn courage weren’t virtues for criminals.

The warehouse manager chose spilling everything he knew over enduring the pain, and the interrogation ended much faster than Do-Jin had expected.

So he really didn’t know shit, he thought in the end.

Even so, the interrogation wasn’t pointless. The man revealed that goods arriving from the sea passed through several locations, not just this one. He also gave up the positions of a few of those sites, though none matched the ones Deneve had uncovered. The organization operated in isolated cells, and its information was fragmented as well.

“Hmm.”

Once he had finished thinking it through, Do-Jin silently fired a spell into the naked man’s head. It struck without warning and killed the warehouse manager instantly. To Do-Jin, it was a courtesy. The man had answered everything honestly, so he sent him off without pain. To Deneve, however, it was a chilling sight that made her skin crawl.

“We should deal with the women and move fast,” he said, glancing at the victims who had passed out from the drugs.

“Y-you mean kill them?” Deneve asked.

“What the hell are you talking about? Of course we save them.”

Do-Jin walked over to the women. Their condition already looked better, probably because he had earlier force-fed them antidotes and recovery potions. As he scanned the area, his gaze sharpened when he spotted powder scattered across a cluttered table.

“Was this what they used?” Deneve asked as her gaze fell upon the finely ground powder tinted a deep green.

“Those insane motherfuckers. They actually used this.”

Do-Jin recognized the drug immediately. It was highly addictive, and prolonged use caused the flesh itself to rot. It was a vile substance passed off as a narcotic, better known as Ghoul, the zombie drug.

The Church of Ruin hadn’t created it, but they had spread it aggressively to poison the Empire from within. It was no different from how the British Empire flooded the Qing Dynasty with opium, or how fentanyl had been pushed into the United States.

“Have you seen this before?” Do-Jin asked, pointing at the green powder.

“A drug?” Deneve replied. “If you work this side of things, you see them all the time. There are tons of different kinds. Still... this color is new to me. Then again, I didn’t inspect every crate. It could have been inside those boxes.”

Do-Jin let out a slow breath. He hoped the women hadn’t been exposed to the drug for long. They looked like kidnapping victims, and if their flesh started rotting from the drug’s aftereffects, that would be cruel beyond words.

After stripping the tunnel warehouse of anything remotely valuable and dumping it into his inventory, Do-Jin set the place on fire. He gave the three rescued women money and sent them to a temple. The sooner they received proper treatment, the better their chances of minimizing the long-term damage.

With that taken care of, he moved on to the smugglers’ remaining bases at full speed. Even once word of the attacks began to spread, the organization could not simply abandon those sites. There was too much to clean up and too many loose ends to tie off. After repeating the process several times, Do-Jin finally managed to capture individuals directly connected to the so-called “important business.”

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