Chapter 9. The Black Blood Unit (2)
“Don’t even go near that bastard. He’s completely insane.”
“There are limits even to lying. He actually said he aimed a bow at the Cult Leader? Get involved with him and your head might disappear.”
“The Deputy Leader already marked him as someone to watch. Don’t even acknowledge him.”
Not a single person in the Black Blood Unit believed I had actually aimed my bow at the Cult Leader.
Apparently, however, even saying something like that as a lie was considered far too dangerous.
“What if that bastard is secretly one of the Black-and-White Demon Venerable's remaining followers?”
“Hey, even if the Black Blood Unit is a complete disaster, there’s no way they would let a traitor join us.”
“Then what kind of blasphemous bastard would shoot an arrow at the Cult Leader?”
“That’s why I’m saying he’s a liar, you stupid bald bastard!”
“What did you say, you bastard? Come here. You’re only worth twenty-five points!”
The bald man and the one-armed man immediately began brawling.
No one paid attention.
Apparently, this was ordinary life in the Black Blood Unit.
“Hey, lunatic.”
The person calling me was the Deputy Leader, Bone Severer, Flesh Cutter Yeonhwa.
No matter how much I thought about it, that title really was bizarre.
“My name is Bi Anso.”
“I don’t care, you crazy bastard. Follow me. You should at least learn the basics.”
The Deputy Leader showed me around the Black Blood Unit's barracks.
Surprisingly, every member had their own private room.
I received one as well.
“The treatment is better than I expected. I thought you would cram twenty people into one large room.”
“If we did that, everyone would be dead within three days.”
Fair enough.
These Black Blood Unit lunatics fought one another whenever they found an excuse.
If they were all forced into the same room, it would not be surprising if they wiped themselves out through internal conflict.
“The Black Blood Unit constantly receives new recruits. Any cult member who knows martial arts and commits a crime eventually gets sent here.”
“And yet everyone gets a private room?”
“The mission survival rate is below twenty percent, so there’s plenty of space. More people leave as corpses than arrive alive.”
The next place she showed me was the shared training room.
Apparently, ordinary members did not receive private training rooms.
That was unfortunate.
I preferred not to show my martial arts to other people unless necessary.
“People who complete enough missions receive private training rooms. Right now, only the Unit Leader and I have one.”
“There are private training rooms?”
“Want one?”
“That too, but I’m more surprised a unit made entirely of criminals has facilities like this.”
“Come to think of it, you said you came from the Unorthodox Path. I suppose you wouldn’t understand. Our Cult gives respect and courtesy to anyone strong enough to deserve it, even criminals.”
Interesting.
I had never particularly hated the Demonic Cult.
But I had never thought especially highly of it either.
Honestly, I once considered the culture of Respecting the Strong somewhat barbaric.
But the Demonic Cult's Respecting the Strong was far removed from the barbarism I had imagined.
Instead, it was an extremely fair form of meritocracy where one's origins did not matter as long as one had ability.
“Now I’ll explain the most important part. Follow me.”
The Deputy Leader led me into a large room packed with Black Blood Unit members.
A large wooden board stood there.
Countless documents, including wanted portraits, were attached to it.
“What is that?”
“The missions assigned to the Black Blood Unit. You choose whichever mission you want from that board.”
“What? We choose our own missions? Higher-ups don’t assign them?”
“I’m about to explain, so shut your mouth. You’re hurting my ears.”
When we moved closer, I could properly read the documents.
Most of the missions involved assassination, escort work, or gathering information.
One unusual detail was that every document had a different number written at the bottom.
“Every mission receives points based on difficulty. Most are worth between one and five points. Occasionally something above ten appears, but that’s very rare.”
“So completing missions earns points? What do the points do?”
“Once you earn one hundred points, your crimes are pardoned and you can leave the Black Blood Unit. You can also spend the points on other things.”
So that was what the bald man meant when he called the one-armed man a twenty-five-point guy.
“How many points have you earned, Deputy Leader?”
“Why? Planning a rebellion if my score is low?”
“You possess an impressive talent for misunderstanding simple words. I’m merely curious.”
“Forty-two points.”
Forty-two?
Lower than I expected.
“You just thought that was lower than expected, didn’t you?”
“...Was it obvious?”
“You may have talent for lying, but you have no talent for hiding your expression. I spent some of my points recently.”
“You can spend them?”
The Deputy Leader took an orange pill from inside her clothes.
“This is a Demon Transformation Pill. It costs thirty points. For reference, a private training room costs forty.”
She had said she owned a private training room.
That meant she had already spent at least seventy points.
Adding her current forty-two points meant she had earned far more than one hundred in total.
“You deliberately stayed in the Black Blood Unit? Why?”
“I would rather live here than listen to annoying orders from idiots above me. As long as I gather points, I can easily get rewards like this. Almost no one stays after collecting one hundred points like I did, but plenty of people spend some of their points along the way.”
She was deliberately staying in a unit with a survival rate below twenty percent.
Anyone who managed to build points here must be fairly capable.
Of course, I would need to see the actual mission difficulty before judging properly.
“Normally, one person takes one mission. But if the difficulty is high, several members can cooperate. When that happens, the people involved divide the points however they agree.”
“It is more organized than I expected. I’m genuinely surprised.”
“Hard to believe, but the Black Blood Unit was created for rehabilitation. You can tell the bureaucrats upstairs actually thought about the system.”
The Deputy Leader pushed me toward the board.
“For reference, anyone who earns no points for one month is thrown into prison. So hurry up, choose some mission, and die as soon as possible.”
I see.
It prevented people from deliberately avoiding missions and relaxing here forever.
As she said, the bureaucrats had clearly put some thought into it.
