The day after hearing Alice's resolution, Yu-Han suddenly told her to follow him. Alice was on high alert, wondering where on earth he was taking her this time.
"Ha! I don't know where you're taking me, but don't expect things to go your way like last time! I've already made up my mind!"
"...It's not a fight, so don't waste your energy."
"Then why are you taking me there!?"
"Since you plan on sticking around as a sanctioner, I'm going to show you the ropes. You just need to watch, so don't sweat it."
Alice followed Yu-Han, taking his words with a grain of salt. However, their destination turned out to be an ordinary hospice. The medical staff on duty shot Yu-Han uncomfortable glares.
"I assume you were told I'd be coming."
"...Room 502."
Hearing the nurse's cold reply, Yu-Han headed to the room she mentioned. Inside, of course, was a patient. A critical patient on death's door.
"This old lady... she's got terminal lung cancer. Looks like she barely managed to submit a euthanasia request online."
It was a small mercy she could still operate a hologram screen with her eye-tracking. Watching her lie there, quietly gazing at Yu-Han, left a bitter taste in the mouth.
"But Yu-Han, how are you going to do this? Do you even know how to administer an IV?"
"Of course I do. But wasting good drugs on people who are going to die anyway isn't cost-effective."
Yu-Han immediately summoned his carbon-coated sword.
"Yu-Han, don't tell me you're actually going to swing a sword in here...!"
"Shut up and watch closely."
Yu-Han's blade flashed in an instant. However, the patient wasn't hacked to pieces; it was hard to even tell she'd been cut at all. With her eyes peacefully closed, she just looked like she had fallen asleep.
"I didn't sense an ounce of magic. How did you do that?"
"I'm a 'Euthanasia Sanctioner' by trade. This is basic."
To kill someone so cleanly with pure swordsmanship alone... Alice was surprised by that, but she was even more stunned to witness Yu-Han performing a literal act of 'euthanasia'—an easy death.
"Hey, stop right now!! What are you doing!"
At that moment, a man rushed back into the room, out of breath. Yu-Han began to pack up with a bored expression.
"She requested euthanasia, so I provided it. All perfectly legal."
"Doing whatever you want with someone else's mother...! You murderer!!"
"Your mother requested it herself."
"What the hell do you know about us!!"
"How could I not? I've seen a truckload of scum just like you. Weren't you just keeping her on life support to milk her pension for as long as possible?"
"You bastard...!"
The man, enraged, tried to grab Yu-Han by the collar. But in the blink of an eye, the edge of Yu-Han's blade was pressed firmly against the man's wrist.
"If you love your mommy so much, want me to send you right after her? I've already dispatched a whole truckload of devoted sons just like you."
Overpowered by Yu-Han's terrifying presence, the man resigned himself and lowered his head. Alice thought Yu-Han might have been a bit too harsh, but her mind changed after hearing the next line.
"Hey, then... are you gonna cover the funeral costs...?"
"My job ends at the killing. The rest is on you. If you're that worried about the cost, just incinerate her and toss her in a trash bag."
Leaving behind the man who remained silent even at Yu-Han's insulting words, the two departed. Alice couldn't help but wonder if that man really would use a trash bag...
***
Before they knew it, darkness had fallen, and Yu-Han headed toward a back alley in Old Seoul. It was a place Alice was already familiar with.
"Alice. Don't tell me you're getting scared now."
Alice shook her head. In truth, there was no way any street thugs in the back alleys of District B-4 could rival her current strength.
"This place is a complete lawless zone... Times like this make me miss the police," Alice complained.
In the current Korea, both the military and the police had long since vanished. The vacuum in public security was filled by private organizations like sanctioners and private security forces.
"Well, to put it nicely, it's the privatization of public security. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like a very adequate replacement. Look over there."
Where Yu-Han pointed, a woman was surrounded by several men. To put it bluntly, she was seconds away from being raped.
"I'll take care of this, so watch closely."
Yu-Han trudged toward the men.
"Hi, I'm a sanctioner."
The men were momentarily flustered by Yu-Han's words, but they soon regained their composure.
"So? We aren't euthanasia targets, so what do you want? Or are you asking to tag in?"
"Not a chance."
Yu-Han swung his carbon-coated sword again, slaughtering every single man on the spot. Alice ran toward Yu-Han in shock.
"Y-Yu-Han! You can't just go around killing people like that!?"
"I'll just register them as targets myself. Luckily, the corpses were produced right before the application."
"You can't just do that..."
"Alice. I'll tell you something even more interesting. It seems these guys were also sanctioners."
Yu-Han sneered as he rifled through their pockets to check their IDs. Alice lamented, wondering if these sanctioners had intended to toy with an innocent person before killing her in the exact same manner.
"You're the famous people from the Cheong-Am Center. Thank you... thank you so much!"
The woman repeatedly thanked them and tried to leave. However, Yu-Han stopped her by placing his blade against her throat.
"Where do you think you're going? With ten counts of fraud and a murder under your belt, you die too."
"...You son of a bitch!!"
The woman's expression shifted drastically in an instant, gathering mana in her hands for a final act of resistance. Of course, Yu-Han effortlessly slit her throat.
"Looks like these sanctioners figured since she was marked for euthanasia anyway, they'd have their fun before killing her. Well, how do you like that correct answer?"
"I don't. Not one bit."
Having watched the entire scene unfold, Alice's face was completely harden.
***
Yu-Han took Alice back to the Cheong-Am Center. This time, he brought her to the supply warehouse. Various items were stacked in bulk all over the place. Naturally, there were weapons among them.
"See the magic circle here? This entire warehouse is rigged with them, meaning you can summon these items from anywhere. Don't just stubbornly stick to your beam sword or bare fists; use them."
Alice picked up one of the carbon-coated swords stacked in bulk in a large bin in the corner. The mystery of where Yu-Han kept summoning his swords from was solved. However, one question still remained.
"With so many better weapons out there, why stockpile and use these of all things?"
"Top-tier cost-effectiveness, decent durability, intuitive handling, and even scalability through magic engravings. They just tick all the boxes I care about."
"For all those perks, I don't see many other people using them. Why was this even adopted as the standard weapon in the first place?"
Yu-Han gave a creepy smile as if Alice had asked a good question.
"...Because the guy who proposed it was the creator of the sanctioner system, and the original founder of the Seo-An-Dang Center."
"Talk about a legendary figure dropping out of nowhere..."
"He was a guy who went around giving sermons about how, as sanctioners, we must kill with minimal pain and fight against evil.
The real punchline is that he was betrayed by his own subordinates and vanished without a trace. Completely useless."
Yu-Han snatched the sword from Alice's hand and tossed it back into the bin. Alice's competitive streak flared up as she glared at him.
"No, it's definitely not useless!"
"Huh. Alice, did you learn absolutely nothing after I dragged you around all day? You can still say that after seeing all that shit?"
"Seeing all that shit is exactly why everyone needs that kind of mindset even more!"
"Fantasize and preach all you want. Reality is going to prove you wrong anyway. You'll eventually reach the same conclusion I did: at the end of the day, this is just another job to make a buck."
"I'm sorry, but I will never reach the same conclusion as you!"
"That's what they all say. Anyway, I'm out of here. Have fun with that."
Yu-Han left the center, leaving Alice fuming in the warehouse. A conversation he'd had with a certain man suddenly flashed through his mind.
In the end, every word he'd said back then turned out to be completely right. Yu-Han never did reach the same conclusion as that man, and that man was indeed a massive idiot. Yu-Han decided to dismiss that pointless conversation from his mind.