Free Web NovelCha Sahyeon took his eyes off me and swept his gaze around.
After confirming the tension and killing intent coming from the S-rank Hunters aimed at him, Cha Sahyeon gathered the energy that had been spilling out—without any change in expression.
Only then did I let out a small breath of relief, my chest finally unclenching.
Once things settled down a bit, Eun Woojeong dismissed the chains he’d summoned and asked,
“Thankfully, your little brother isn’t losing his mind and charging. I’m about to cry at this brotherly love.”
“Save the pointless talk.”
I pulled the ring back out—the one I’d stuffed into my clothes earlier.
Now that I looked at it calmly, the gemstone that had been shining such an unnaturally deep green was split down the center, completely wrecked.
And the important part was this: the color inside the cracked gem had turned dark and muddy.
Like all its power had been drained out.
“This. You said the guy who used to be Spiderweb’s head handed it to you.”
The broken ring didn’t react anymore. No presence, no sensation.
Just a busted accessory.
I flicked my fingers and tossed it at Eun Woojeong.
Ting—it rang clear as it flew through the air, and Eun Woojeong caught it lightly.
“Explain everything you know. Now.”
“Even if you tell me to explain everything.”
Eun Woojeong turned the ring around a couple times, then shoved it back into his inventory with a shrug.
“It was an item the previous head used to hide his identity, and he passed it down to me. That’s all. A long time ago, I got curious and tried looking up the item’s info once, but there was no data.”
I hadn’t expected much, but of course.
‘There’s no way the head of an organization that controls information would leave clean records of an item this shady—and then hand it to Eun Woojeong.’
Especially if he knew what kind of person Eun Woojeong was.
He would’ve expected Eun Woojeong to look into it at least once.
Eun Woojeong looked at me and spoke.
“Then I’ll ask this time. What was that just now? My ring and your little brother look connected {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} somehow. My ring broke, so I think I’m at least in a position to hear an explanation.”
His voice was light as ever, but the stare he pinned on me with was relentless.
And it wasn’t just Eun Woojeong.
Kwon Taehyuk and Yoon Jeha had the same look—waiting.
Kwon Seoyul, thankfully—or maybe not—looked like he couldn’t care less.
‘...Yeah. I can’t just dodge it here.’
I looked around at everyone in turn and sighed.
With no choice, I told them what I was guessing about the ring—and about Cha Sahyeon’s condition.
This place wasn’t stable, so I kept it as short and blunt as possible.
“The cult bastards and Spiderweb?”
The one who reacted hardest was, of course, Yoon Jeha.
“So what you’re saying is—Spiderweb’s previous head got that ring from the cult freaks.”
“It’s still a theory, but the odds are high. The power inside the ring was something the cult bastards made.”
Arms crossed, Yoon Jeha let out a disbelieving snort.
“Ha. So shady organizations really do share this kind of crap, huh.”
Beside her, Kwon Taehyuk looked between me and Cha Sahyeon with a careful expression before he spoke.
“The power stored in that gemstone resembled your brother’s energy. Is that why what just happened happened?”
“Yeah. The energy inside the ring went back to Cha Sahyeon. Like it was returning to its owner. That’s why my brother’s energy increased.”
Even while I explained, one question still wouldn’t leave me alone.
My Divine Power skill.
‘I used it because I couldn’t just leave him suffering, but... did it actually matter? What did it even do?’
I needed to know the exact mechanics.
If something like this happened again, I had to be able to respond.
Right then—
Something cold touched my hand.
“Cha Sahyeon?”
At the sensation of fingers wrapping around mine, I turned my head—and saw Cha Sahyeon.
My eye level was higher than it used to be.
Yeah. I still wasn’t used to this.
“It helped.”
“...What?”
“What you did. It helped.”
Cha Sahyeon spoke a little more clearly to my blank stare.
“Because you healed me, I was able to accept the energy safely.”
I swallowed without meaning to.
The power stored in that ring had been strong enough to hide Eun Woojeong’s S-rank presence perfectly.
If power like that poured in without warning, even Cha Sahyeon would’ve had no choice but to be thrown off balance.
“When energy rushes in like that... it’s not easy for me to handle either.”
Cha Sahyeon continued, voice steady.
“My body and the amount of energy I have are in perfect balance. My body can grow and it’s fine—but energy isn’t like that. If I fail to handle it, there’s a risk I temporarily go berserk.”
Berserk.
Even an A-rank going berserk could turn an area into a disaster zone.
It was rare, sure—but it happened.
And if Cha Sahyeon—L-rank—went berserk...
‘I don’t even want to imagine it.’
Everyone in this room would be in danger.
The entire district would be in danger.
He could become something not that different from the Great Catastrophe itself.
Seeing me freeze, Cha Sahyeon kept going.
“Even if it didn’t go all the way to berserk, it would’ve taken a long time to rein it in. In this room. If you hadn’t used your healing skill to keep calming my heart and easing the pain, I couldn’t have done it this fast.”
“......Right.”
That soft voice carried the one piece of information I needed most.
It helped.
More than that, the data mattered: when Cha Sahyeon became unstable from overflowing energy, my Divine Power could calm him down.
‘...Could that help me stop Cha Sahyeon’s Great Catastrophe awakening someday?’
Everything had felt hopeless.
Now—just barely—something like hope flickered.
‘Did the system take even this into account when it gave me Divine Power?’
There were plenty of protagonists I wouldn’t have been able to save without it.
And now, on top of that, it could stabilize Cha Sahyeon.
It was too heavy a burden for a “supporting character” to carry.
Still tangled up inside, I stared down at the hand Cha Sahyeon was holding—
“Wait.”
Kwon Seoyul, who’d been standing there with his arms crossed and a bored expression until now, tilted his head.
Even among S-ranks, Kwon Seoyul had unusually sharp hearing. He narrowed his eyes toward the door.
“Hyung. Looks like those bastards swarmed again. I hear a shit ton of footsteps.”
“Tch.”
Yoon Jeha clicked her tongue in irritation and gripped her sword hilt again.
“We still haven’t decided what we’re doing. I’ll say it now—if you’re gonna keep running around without gaining anything, I’m refusing. I’m not wasting time burning energy for nothing.”
I swallowed.
I felt bad for Yoon Jeha, but as time passed, my decision had only gotten firmer.
No matter how much they threatened us, I couldn’t massacre over a hundred Hunters living here.
If they were moving purely because of “orders,” that made it even worse.
And now that I knew they were connected to those cult bastards—the kind of people who treated human lives like chess pieces—I didn’t want to move the way they wanted, either.
“If it’ll take them a little time to break the door down, then in that window we can just get out. If we use Cha Sahyeon’s shadow skill—”
“Wait.”
Tap-tap-tap—keyboard sounds.
When I turned, Eun Woojeong was at a computer off to the side.
He had his upper body leaned in as his fingers flew across the keys.
“If your brother’s shadow skill makes moving outside easy, how about we check just one more place before we go?”
“Check where?”
“As you guessed—if there’s another ring like this, and the head is wearing it, then even if he’s inside, we wouldn’t be able to locate him.”
Tap!
Eun Woojeong hit Enter crisply, then turned the monitor toward us.
A blueprint of the building was displayed.
On the lowest level, at the very bottom—maybe Eun Woojeong had marked it just now—one room was filled in red.
“This is a space that’s been marked off-limits since even before I can remember. And for the record, it’s not even used as storage—it’s empty. I’ve been ignoring it because I never had a reason to care. I got close to it once before, but I didn’t feel any energy at all, so I assumed it was just vacant.”
“......!”
What Eun Woojeong meant was easy to grasp.
‘What if it wasn’t empty—and the real head was in there, wearing a ring?’
Eun Woojeong had lived here as the current head for years, and he was pointing to the one place that felt suspicious.
That made the odds pretty high.
“Normally, going deeper underground while you’re being chased is basically suicide, so it’s hard to do, right? But if your brother has that movement skill, it seems doable. What do you think?”
“Fine.”
This was worth checking.
I nodded, then looked at Kwon Taehyuk. Like me, he seemed to prefer this over massacre or endless running—he nodded back.
Yoon Jeha let out a long sigh, but she didn’t oppose it outright.
Probably because we could still run whenever we wanted.
Kwon Seoyul had followed me all the way here because of me anyway, so he didn’t matter.
Bam!
The moment the decision was made, a heavy pounding hit the thick steel door—right on cue.
