Those Who Abandoned Their Humanity (1)
The house was finally complete, but there was a problem.
"We're broke."
"Huh?"
Han Seohyun's eyes went wide as saucers.
"We hit that auction not too long ago, remember?"
That's right—we were the culprits behind the auction heist that had the whole world buzzing. We'd made off with not one, but two artifacts worth a fortune. No wonder he couldn't believe we were flat broke.
"It's only been two weeks!"
"We didn't sell those items. Plus, building the house and furnishing it ate up every last bit of cash I had left. It all went poof when we bought that sofa you're lounging on."
Han Seohyun's jaw dropped at my words.
"You... you spent everything?"
"Yeah."
I hadn't exactly been rolling in dough to begin with. Sure, I'd invested some with Baek Dosan, but who knew when those returns would come in. Bottom line: we were broke as hell right now.
I'd even seriously considered selling the Vampire King's Ring.
"So what do we do? Don't we need to, like, get jobs or something? Take on requests from the dark web or whatever?"
I shook my head.
It had been two weeks since I'd started spreading the name Beltsmets on the dark web. The name was starting to feel real, substantial. After all, snatching two artifacts right out from under all those hunters was no small feat.
And in the two weeks since, no one had figured out who Beltsmets really was. That mystery was building our enigmatic image perfectly.
But if we took some crappy request under our name now?
All that hard work over two weeks would go straight down the drain. No way in hell was I letting that happen.
"So what are we supposed to do?"
"Rob the bad guys. Bonus points if we make some cash along the way."
"Like that illegal gate last time?"
Raiding illegal gates was definitely lucrative. But there was a catch.
"It might look like the work of 'Kang Ishin,' not 'Beltsmets.'"
"Well, Beltsmets is you, Boss."
"To be precise, Beltsmets is the name of our organization, not me personally. And I want to keep the fact that I'm part of it under wraps as long as possible."
"As long as no one finds out, isn't that fine?"
"Mm, sure, but... I don't want to leave even a shred of risk."
Do Chae-hee—the tenacious demon dubbed the "obsessive ghost"—was on both cases. Anyone else might miss the connections, but she could piece it all together into a perfect picture.
Later on? Maybe. But right now, Kang Ishin equaling Beltsmets was a connection we couldn't afford to expose.
"So where are we hitting, then?"
"Conveniently, there's one place that's been nagging at me."
The payout might be slim—or hell, we might even lose money—but for the future, we couldn't just let it slide.
I turned to Han Seohyun.
"I told you about Jaeho's situation before, right?"
"Uh, yeah."
I'd already clued Han Seohyun in that Kim Jaeho wasn't your average guy. Kidnapped as a child, subjected to all sorts of human experiments and modifications by scumbags, then sold as a slave.
So cut him some slack if his behavior was awkward or clumsy.
"I'm thinking we pay a visit to the place that turned Jaeho into... that."
A place we had to hit if we wanted to save this world.
"Whoa."
Han Seohyun's mouth fell open at my words.
"You know where it is?"
"More or less."
I raised my voice, making sure the guy pretending not to listen caught every word.
"So, you wanna come along?"
Kim Jaeho's eyes locked onto me. They looked pitch black, sunken deep.
"I'm planning to smash the hell out of that place. Clean it out so thoroughly they can never pull that horrific shit again."
Han Seohyun swallowed hard. He'd figured out who I was doing all the loud talking for.
"And if there are poor kids there—kids forced into shit they never asked for—we rescue them."
"Rescue them?"
"Help them live their own lives."
"How?"
That last question didn't come from Han Seohyun. Kim Jaeho, who'd been lurking silently in the corner, was suddenly right in front of me.
"How exactly are you gonna help?"
"How would you want to be helped?"
Kim Jaeho scowled at my counter.
"I don't know much about that place. Just what I saw and heard. Never been through it myself. So I got no clue how to deal with those humans—the beasts who gave up being human."
I wasn't sure if Kim Jaeho even grasped the concept of revenge.
But one thing was crystal clear: he hated them.
Otherwise, he wouldn't be glaring at me like that.
"If you come along, you can show me. Tell me what works best."
Kim Jaeho mulled my words over, mumbling them to himself.
"What works best..."
"Yeah."
Kim Jaeho didn't know how to live in this world. He'd only ever followed orders, so he had no idea what he wanted. Whispering about justice or the greater good wouldn't move him.
But this? This was his fight.
Maybe heading there would help him figure it out.
What he wanted to do with his life going forward.
"I think... I wanna kill 'em."
Kim Jaeho spoke, and I nodded.
"Got it."
In his past life, Kim Jaeho had killed countless people.
But never because he wanted to.
Maybe starting here wasn't such a bad idea.
Han Seohyun, who'd been watching the exchange, piped up.
"I-is this okay?"
"It's fine."
"Talking about killing people so casually... I mean, they are total bastards, but still."
I'm no saint. Sure, I planned to save the world from destruction, but I didn't believe in some win-win path where everyone lives.
There were just too many villains in this world.
"If you don't wanna go, you don't have to."
Han Seohyun jumped up at my words.
"I'm going too! No way I'm sitting this out..."
"No, I'm serious. You can stay back."
This wasn't a test. I genuinely wanted to know his intentions. Truth be told, part of me hoped he wouldn't come.
"That place was doing gruesome human experiments. You'll see some fucked-up shit."
Han Seohyun gave an awkward grin.
"I'm a necromancer."
"Mm."
True, he was used to death. But the problem there wasn't death—it was the living horrors. Modified bodies meant monsters that weren't human anymore.
"Plus, I've always been a bit off. Even as a kid, gruesome or gross stuff never fazed me."
Just add a creepy "keh keh" cackle and he'd be peak edgelord. But Han Seohyun's face was dead serious—no late-blooming chuunibyou phase here. It was just fact.
Made sense for a necromancer talent; freaking out over corpses would've been a problem. A numb disposition fit perfectly. Still, that place was crawling with inhuman scum.
I'd puked my guts out more than once looking at the photos later.
He was still a minor.
Even if he'd chosen the villain path following me, there were things I wanted to shield him from.
"You don't set foot inside the labs. You're on rear support."
"Ugh! Again?"
"Yeah, again."
I fixed Han Seohyun with a stern warning.
"Don't enter anywhere I tell you not to. No rats either."
"Fiiine."
The auction needed skeletons in sightlines to snag the mana stones, but this time? No need.
Just initial infiltration help, then full rear guard.
Han Seohyun was still too green. I'd been drilling him lately, but training had barely started.
No way was I dragging him into unknown underground hell.
To the visibly sulky Han Seohyun, I said:
"You know how weak you are, right?"
His pride stung, but he nodded. He'd never blocked more than five of my attacks.
"But there's plenty you can do from the back. Hell, we couldn't even plan this without you."
Time to pump him up after the shutdown.
His self-esteem was in the gutter. Hated his talent his whole life, lost his only pillar—his brother. He put on a bright front, but inside? Rotting away.
Kim Jaeho and I sucked at morale boosts, so he was suffering alone. Felt bad.
Time to deploy some silver-tongued skills I'd picked up shadowing Seol Rokjin.
"You've got an amazing talent. We couldn't have pulled off that auction without you. From your seat, you can see thousands of miles ahead."
His eyes sparkled like his funk had never happened. I clapped his shoulder and added:
"Remember this: your talent isn't for close combat. All this training? It's just to keep you safe. Once you fully awaken it, you could beat me—or even Jaeho over there—without lifting a finger."
"Of course!"
After stroking his ego long enough, I finally laid out the plan that had formed in my head.
Han Seohyun's face drained pale, then flushed red as he heard it out.
"N-no way! I'm not doing that!"
But his protests fell on deaf ears.
* * *
Bomnal Orphanage.
The name made me click my tongue. True to "Bomnal"—Spring Day—the pink signboard glowed bright and cheerful.
Cute murals on the walls, a playground in the visible yard with colorful tiles for kids to romp around.
Even with gates under control, they were disasters. Tons lost families. Just like Hosan and I ended up in one, this place must've taken in droves.
It looked like a perfectly normal orphanage on the surface.
With overseas adoptions blocked, domestic ones were always overflowing.
Whether ditching kids for tough times or unable to raise them, some families cut loose their young like lizards shedding tails to survive.
And today, I was playing one of those lizards. With a 40-something face mask on, I met the head caregiver directly.
She couldn't hide her shock when I said I wanted to drop off a kid.
Makes sense—the "kid" was seventeen-year-old Han Seohyun.
"He's just tall for his age—still only twelve. Can't you take him?"
I was stubbornly insisting the 170cm-plus guy was twelve.
━How utterly shameless.
Even Ray's jab didn't faze me. I kept my chin high.