Free Web NovelWhen I opened the door, Joo Seowon was standing right in front of it.
“Jesus—”
“You....”
Honestly, I wasn’t that surprised, because I’d expected Joo Seowon to be planted right in front of the door. Joo Seowon opened his mouth like he had a lot to say, then pressed his lips shut again.
“Can you come out for a second?”
“Hey!”
“Pretty aggressive greeting.” freewēbnoveℓ.com
I shoved Joo Seowon aside, patted Do Yehyun’s shoulder, and stepped into the house.
“Talk to me.”
Joo Seowon followed behind, clenching his teeth as he spoke. I glanced at him and nodded.
“Yeah, I was gonna be the one to talk first. Give me a sec. Yehyun, don’t go to work today. No—just wait. I’ll go in first and tell you when to come.”
“Yes.”
“In the middle of all this you’re going to work? What the hell are you talking about? Start with an explanation—”
“Like I said, I’ve got a lot to explain. So follow me upstairs.”
Only then did Joo Seowon obediently follow me up the stairs.
I shoved him into Joo Seowon’s room, and the moment I closed the door, words spilled out.
“What the fuck was that bullshit you said on the phone yesterday—no, explain the situation properly!”
“Why are you so worked up. You sounded calm when I called yesterday.”
“I held it in so we could talk in person. What the hell has to happen for you to just drop contact like that? You’ve got a comm device—no, I couldn’t even understand any of your ‘situation explanation.’ Does that make sense?”
Instead of answering, I just looked at him.
“Come here.”
“What?”
When I crooked my fingers, Joo Seowon frowned like he had no idea what I meant.
“Hurry.”
When I urged him again, he finally shuffled closer. I grabbed Joo Seowon by the clothes, yanked him in, and gave him a light hug. I felt his body stiffen in my arms.
“You said you missed me.”
“.......”
“You lost weight?”
It didn’t show at a glance, but hugging him like this, it felt like he’d gotten a little smaller. I slid my hand to his waist, held it lightly, then let go.
“You fucking psycho....”
“.......”
“Don’t do that. Like that.”
“Why? I missed you too.”
Joo Seowon bit down as he pressed a hand over the spot around his waist where I’d grabbed him.
“Answer the questions.”
“What, what happened?”
“.......”
Explaining wasn’t hard, but from the start they were variables I’d expected. I looked at Joo Seowon and opened my mouth without resisting.
“It’s not hard. I met Ryu Taejun and went into Jinsando. And I met Jin Haedo....”
“You said both the blessing and the prophecy were lies.”
“No, the ‘blessing’ part might be about half real. Ah. The prophecy too.”
“What?”
I answered as I perched on the edge of Joo Seowon’s bed. Looking up at him standing in front of me, I pulled one corner of my mouth up and continued.
“I’ll explain the blessing first. More precisely, the blessing is just controlling people and forcing them to use their abilities to the limit.”
“To the limit?”
“Normally people only pull skills out as far as they can handle without overloading themselves. If you push them to the limit, of course it’ll look like their ability improved. And in the process, some people probably go into shock and die. Ryu Taejun almost died too.”
“.......”
Joo Seowon’s face, which had been subtly pissed a second ago, grew more and more serious.
“That’s it? People actually believed that kind of shit?”
“No, it’s more complicated. I think the ‘blessing’ is basically sleight of hand, and the real thing is the Dungeon. There was a Dungeon boss inside that raised people’s stats. They worshiped it as a ‘god.’”
“A Dungeon boss? A boss? A monster?”
“It’s definitely different from a normal Dungeon. And it really does raise people’s stats. A god... yeah. It really is a god, too.”
“...What?”
Seeing Joo Seowon immediately twist his face up, I let out a short laugh. Fuck. Yeah. Even to me, it sounded like cult-brain bullshit.
I swept my hair back and kept going.
“Anyway, whether it’s a Dungeon or whatever, you can expect the involvement of some supernatural existence that made this kind of shit, right? Just think of it as that kind of thing.”
“I... can’t really wrap my head around it.”
“Accept it. Don’t try to understand it.”
“.......”
Unless you’d experienced it yourself, it was hard to explain. I waved a hand vaguely and moved straight on.
“The prophecy might be right to some extent too. Because....”
“.......”
I recalled what was «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» written in Jin Haedo’s Status Window and nodded once.
“I think Jin Haedo stole someone else’s Skill.”
“Stole?”
“Ah, you don’t know?”
The ability to steal other people’s skills wasn’t something widely known. Just as I was about to explain, Joo Seowon shook his head side to side.
“...I’ve heard of it. That’s a type of Skill too.”
“If you wanna get technical, yeah.”
“So Jin Haedo is... a thief. A usurper.”
“That’s my guess. A high-probability guess.”
“.......”
I nodded and narrowed my eyes.
“Anyway.... What matters is I cleared the Dungeon and came out. Jin Haedo probably feels like he got screwed. He sent us there to obsess over the Dungeon, and we broke it instead.”
“Wouldn’t it have been better to... just watch and wait?”
“A bunch of things overlapped. Half of it I intended, half I didn’t. And it ended up flowing that way too.”
“Then what now. Is Cheonmyeonggyo on pause for a bit?”
“No.”
It got pushed down the priority list, but that didn’t mean I was stopping. I looked Joo Seowon in the eye and asked,
“Did you do what I asked before we went into the Dungeon?”
I rewound my memory for a moment.
‘Out of the people who said they met Jin Haedo, try contacting only the ones who have real, actual experience. What happened to the guys who said they got the blessing right after, and... what the basis is for the claim they “saw the future.”’
Back then I’d asked just because I was curious about Jin Haedo’s situation, but now, to figure out what came after the Dungeon, I needed it either way.
“...Yeah. There aren’t a lot of cases. I got replies from seventeen. Out of those, I had something you could call an actual conversation with five. And there are only four usable cases. I’ll send them all to you.”
“Hmm....”
Maybe because it’d been a while since I’d seen him be this competent, I almost wanted to applaud. I reached out and tugged Joo Seowon by the hem of his top.
“...Why?”
“Because you do what you’re assigned really faithfully.”
“If you’d just contacted me on time...!”
“Don’t suddenly get mad. I was pretty fucking miserable in there too.”
The moment I said that, Joo Seowon’s expression stiffened.
‘Better to strike first.’
After making up my mind, I stood, took off my windbreaker and dropped it on the floor, then quickly pulled off my shirt.
“What...!”
“Seowon.”
“.......”
“Can you find the best answer again this time?”
“...What the hell is this.”
Joo Seowon’s gaze stabbed down at my upper body.
This morning, when I looked in the mirror, the marks had faded—but maybe because the environment had changed, or my mindset had changed, the fiend was rampaging again in the meantime.
I could feel mana thrashing clearly under my skin. It wasn’t like I’d fire ice the instant something got touched wrong, but if I used a Skill, I had a feeling it would be hard to control.
And while a few hours ago I could still tell my original mana apart from the fiend’s mana, now the boundary between the two had gotten blurry, like they’d fused to some extent.
‘At least... I can’t feel anything like the fiend’s ego. Is that the only good thing?’
And as if proving the mana was going wild under my skin, the traces on my exposed upper body had deepened again. Like I’d been struck by lightning, a snowflake pattern spread clearly across my body.
“Seo Jehyun.”
“I lied a little to you.”
“.......”
“No—more precisely, I just didn’t tell you the truth.”
The gaze that had been sweeping my upper body lifted up. Looking at Joo Seowon, I smiled like I was squinting.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I became a fiend-merged Hunter.”
“...A fiend-merged Hunter.”
Repeating the words like an echo, Joo Seowon’s lips moved a few times.
“...Since when?”
“Who knows.”
It was old enough now that it was harder to explain.
“Why are you... only telling me now?”
“I wasn’t planning to tell you in the first place.”
“Then who were you going to tell? Why, you—why won’t you...!”
“I’m telling you now.”
When I answered like it was nothing, Joo Seowon’s eyes went wide as he stared at me.
“What?”
Joo Seowon asked back like it was absurd, then shut his mouth for a moment. He stared up at the ceiling, then looked back at me.
“Since when? Was it before that business trip to Shanghai?”
“.......”
“Why?”
“It’s not something you can just casually spit out.”
“You—would you really find that hard, or hesitate? You wouldn’t. So why didn’t you tell me? No—why are you telling me now. Are you telling me now because you’re fucked because of this?”
Yeah. That’s the right answer.
When I didn’t answer, Joo Seowon glared at me like his insides were about to burst. But then his expression crumbled immediately after.
“Im Haekyung found out.”
“...That you’re a fiend-merged Hunter? How?”
“They use Mental Domination. While controlling my mind, they realized there were two.”
“.......”
“I don’t think they’ll go running their mouth to the media. But... you never know when information will leak. And besides, fiend-merged Hunters... people don’t exactly see them in a good light.”
I picked up my shirt from the floor, pulled it back on, and turned toward Joo Seowon.
“Right?”
At my words, Joo Seowon turned his head away with a complicated expression.
“I....” ƒгeewёbnovel.com
I already knew the part he’d dislike again. He’d wanted me to tell him. I wasn’t sorry, exactly, but if this hadn’t happened, I had never planned to tell Joo Seowon about the fiend in the first place.
I stared at Joo Seowon, then stepped closer by one pace.
“You’re a coward.”
“...Me?”
“You can’t even properly go into a Dungeon. You can’t even say what you want to say to me straight, and instead you just... get mad like this.”
“.......”
“I’ll correct myself. It’s not anger. More like irritation?”
It wasn’t even that, honestly. It was closer to nagging after checking where he could stretch out his legs.
When I stepped closer one more time, Joo Seowon retreated about half a step.
“And you’ve got a dependent streak too.”
“Quit talking bullshit.”
“If I tell you I’m a fiend-merged Hunter in that kind of situation, wouldn’t that add something to your anxiety symptoms? You’re already traumatized and pathetic just from going into a Dungeon.”
“Pathetic— I’m not that bad, fuck.”
What a load of crap. Snorting, I caught Joo Seowon’s chin and lifted it.
“Are you upset?”
As I asked, I thought at the same time. Would asking if he was scared be the more straightforward question?
