Chapter 9
Kzzzt—
After sunset.
I sat Ha-eun, who’d come at my call, down at the table and busied myself grilling meat.
Hmm… but just grilling it like this feels like something’s missing.
Should I sear the outside a little more?
[Withdrawal 50,000 won - Details: [Breath] skill usage fee]
“Huuuu~”
Fwoosh!—
“…U-Unnie?”
“Yeah?”
“I think I just saw flames… Maybe I imagined it?”
“I’m pretty good at cooking. Adding a flame-grilled flavor is basic.”
At that, Ha-eun stared at me with a dazed expression.
“So… what was it you wanted to talk about?”
“Oh, I was going to bring it up in a bit. Did you find the guy who spread those weird videos of me?”
“…Ah. That?”
I took the frying pan off the heat and looked at Ha-eun as I spoke.
“It’s all done, so go get some plates.”
“Y-Yes!….”
Five servings of meat in total.
I gave one serving to Ha-eun and put two servings each on Terra’s and my plates.
You might call it favoritism, but what can I do when we eat so much?
This was still way too little, actually.
Clack—
“I did some investigating like you asked, Unnie.”
“So, did you find them?”
“Well… I did, but it doesn’t seem to be an individual. It looks like an organization.”
“Huh?”
An organization?
Come to think of it… I think I’d heard about those during the resocialization training.
Organizations formed by Awakened who banded together, legally or illegally.
I knew that if they were legitimate, they used the respectable name of guilds, but….
“Don’t tell me it’s a guild?”
“O-Of course not!… It seems to be a group formed by Hunters who lost their licenses. They apparently operate in an organized way to ruin other Hunters’ reputations.”
“…What the hell is that.”
So it was a group of petty, jealous losers.
And I was unlucky enough to end up in their sights and get targeted?
Seriously, what is this?
Is this middle school?
“That’s not all. I asked the Association’s Intelligence Department to help confirm it, and they found that the group is involved in kidnapping, murder, and rape, too.”
“…So they only tried to frame me from behind because I look pretty tough?”
“Yes. Aside from manipulating public opinion, the lower-ranking members’ actions seem to be impulsive, but most of their victims are F-rank Hunters or civilians.”
These guys were complete psychos, weren’t they?
“Still, we identified their location, too.”
“Hm…? What? How’d you manage that?”
“Well… actually, the email told us.”
What, that email again?
“About that email… what exactly is it? How come it tells us all this stuff?”
“Well… it’s very rare for it to pinpoint things this precisely. Maybe the higher-ups didn’t want to upset you, Unnie….”
Ha-eun scratched the back of her head and continued.
“To be honest, we don’t really know either….”
“Hm?”
“We only know it’s some kind of directive from above. No one knows who’s sending the emails or how they arrive….”
“Hmm, I’ve heard of something similar, Lady Goldie.”
At that moment, Terra, who’d been quietly eating meat, spoke up.
The way she looked was a little… like a child puffing up with pride after hearing grown-ups discuss something she knew.
“Something similar?”
“Yes. In the world I lived in, there was a concept called prophecy. It came down to the mortal world in various forms.”
In dreams. Or through writing.
And for some people, as a supernatural phenomenon.
As Terra spoke, she grew rather serious.
“It seems similar to that. I don’t know who’s sending them, but they’ve always told us the right answer.”
“If it’s really prophecy like you say, does that mean there’s a god on Earth?”
“I can’t say for certain, but… perhaps.”
A god….
The Flame King Dragon suddenly came to mind.
He was the one who’d challenged a god, had his horns and wings torn off, and fallen to the level of a mere lizard.
There was something he’d always told the other dragons.
That gods were not to be trusted.
‘…This feels kind of strange.’
Back then, I hadn’t been interested at all, so I’d let it go in one ear and out the other….
No.
Maybe I was thinking too deeply about it.
It could just be an ordinary email, after all.
An email from people with some decent skills.
“Anyway, what’s important right now is that we’ve identified their location, right?”
“Yes.”
“But then, doesn’t that mean I don’t need to do anything else?”
If we only had a few vague clues, using my treasures to track them down would’ve been far faster….
But now that their location had already been exposed, it didn’t seem efficient for me to go out of my way to deal with them personally.
The revenge I wanted was to catch them and lock them up, not beat them to a pulp myself.
Wouldn’t it be better to leave it to the Association and go mine treasures in a Gate instead?
I still had a mountain of treasures left to collect.
…Just as I was thinking that,
“Um… judging by your expression, I think I know what you’re thinking. Look at this. It’s a photo attached to the email.”
“Hm?”
Ha-eun abruptly brought up the screen on her Hunter Watch.
What appeared before my eyes was a beautiful green jewel shaped like a leaf.
This… where had I seen it before?
Oh, wait.
“What is this… Isn’t it the World Tree?”
“That’s right. It’s a crystallized fragment of a fallen World Tree leaf.”
If it was a byproduct of the World Tree… then that must be a treasure, too.
The World Tree itself radiated tremendous vitality and was a being that brought forth life,
and it was a tree guarded by those prideful elves.
“It’s something the elves put on the market in very small quantities in the past. Naturally, it’s worth an enormous amount.”
“The elves sold the World Tree? What does that even mean…?”
Those elves called it their mother and wouldn’t even let anyone near the World Tree, yet they’d plucked off leaves and sold them?
What on earth happened to the elves on Earth…?
“Anyway, the head of this organization is a former A-rank Hunter. He probably got it when he was active as a Hunter.”
“So, I go there to take them down, and pick up the World Tree’s Leaf while I’m at it?”
“Exactly. All the spoils are yours, Unnie. Plus, we can rescue the people who seem to have been kidnapped. Two birds with one stone, right? You like this sort of thing!”
Originally, I hadn’t planned to go since there wasn’t any particular reason to.
But if the objective was treasure—and something related to the World Tree, at that—that changed things.
Even in the other world, World Tree-related treasures had been very hard to acquire because of those pointy-eared bastards.
“You talk like you know me really well, Ha-eun.”
“Eh… D-Do you not like it…? They’re wanted, too, so there’s definitely a reward—”
“No, you seem to know me even better than I thought. Let’s go first thing tomorrow. We’ll leave in the morning, so sleep here.”
“Y-Yes…?!”
That thing definitely had some special effect attached, right?
Like the Forest Jewel Fragment I’d gotten recently.
“Heh heh….”
My heart started pounding again.
What kind of treasure could it be?
***
A five-story building in Gimpo.
A hidden facility in its basement.
“Haa….”
Lee Ho-jin exhaled a cloud of smoke in a lavishly decorated space that looked like an executive’s office, then lowered his gaze to the floor below.
A gang member was on his knees, trembling.
At the sight, he stood up, leaving even the morning coffee in front of him untouched.
“Ha, you adorable little bastard.”
Click—
Click—
The sound of dress shoes echoed through the room.
Perhaps it was because every side of the enclosed space was a wall.
The sound rang especially loudly, as if staged for dramatic effect.
Then he stopped right in front of the gang member, clicked his tongue, and spoke.
“Hey, have I ever laid a hand on you guys?”
“…No, sir.”
“Right? You go around swaggering with my name on you, don’t you? Hm? You even brought a pretty decent-looking woman in yesterday.”
Szzzt—
“Ugh….”
Lee Ho-jin crouched down and stubbed out the cigarette he’d just been holding in his mouth against the gang member’s shoulder.
A shrill groan escaped the man’s lips.
Whack!—
“Ugh—”
A blow landed on the crown of the gang member’s head.
It wasn’t a particularly hard hit, so it didn’t hurt, but it left the man’s forehead pressed flat against the floor.
“But you can’t just keep taking everything and doing nothing, can you? Hm? You can’t even do the job I gave you? Was it really that hard?”
“I-I’m sorry.”
“I’m not asking if you’re sorry. I’m asking if I gave you anything difficult. If you can’t even do something that simple, what the hell am I supposed to use you for?”
Manipulating public opinion.
The gang member, who’d been ordered to tarnish the reputations of promising new Hunters, felt it was unfair.
He’d picked a newbie who clearly didn’t seem to have much experience streaming….
Who could’ve known she’d retaliate so fiercely?
No, why were they even doing this pathetic shit in the first place?
While he himself did nothing.
“Th-Then assign me to an assassination mission instead! I can work as a combatant—”
Crack!—
“Ghk….”
“Where do you get off raising your voice at me, you bastard? Feel it’s unfair? Then go have it out with a yaksha.”
The veins bulged along the arm with which he clenched his fist.
Even though the situation was rather unfair, the gang member couldn’t say anything back.
A former A-rank Hunter.
His strength was on a completely different level from his own, as a D-rank.
He couldn’t even speak or act carelessly in front of him.
His ferocious nature and high self-regard meant even the slightest thing could make him throw a punch.
Szzzt—
“Hah… Fuck. Are all of them brainless idiots?”
He put a new cigarette between his lips and lightly tapped the back of the gang member’s head.
As if he were bored and just nudging a pebble.
Just as he inhaled deeply once more,
Clunk—
The door suddenly opened, and another gang member came in.
“I-It’s an emergency!”
“What kind of bastard comes in without knocking!”
“I’m sorry! But there’s an intruder!….”
“An intruder? What the hell are you talking about? We went to all that trouble to stay undercover.”
“They’re even streaming right in front of the building—”
A stream?
At that, Lee Ho-jin’s expression turned frighteningly grim.
KWA-BOOOOM!—
A shockwave strong enough to shake the entire facility hit.