The Untouchable
I'm screwed.
Mu Yeonghui had a firm grasp of her current situation.
In a momentary surge of irritation, she had spoken without thinking, but the repercussions were far from trivial.
'What the hell is this about "If you don't praise me, you have no value for existence"?'
She had only meant to ask them to cheer her on. How had it come out sounding like that?
'Even the worst demonic cultivators I met in Murim never made threats like this.'
She recalled the villains of Murim she had personally sent to their graves. Among them was the Blood Demon, a psychopath whose mental state was so broken that he slaughtered his own subordinates.
Even he had never made such deranged threats toward ordinary civilians trembling in fear before him.
'Heh, avert those filthy eyes before I gouge them out! …Well, he did say things like that, but he showed some restraint toward normal people, didn't he?'
Yet here she was—the very Mu Yeonghui once called a hero of Murim—doing something even the Blood Demon would have refrained from.
'Now what?'
Unsure how to clean up the mess, she scanned the crowd with gloomy eyes.
“W-Wowaaah!”
The people were still cheering.
With faces that laughed through tears, their forced enthusiasm was too painful to watch.
'You really don't have to do that pointless stuff anymore!'
She tried to stop them, but the words came out differently once again.
The scolding tone made the crowd flinch.
'Wasn't what I said earlier too harsh? I had no intention of threatening you, so I apologize. To begin with, forcing people to cheer me on was completely out of line. I must have lost my mind for a moment.'
She had tried to speak as humbly as possible so the filter would at least soften the delivery, but—
The real Mu Yeonghui stared at them with an expressionless face, her voice cold and severe.
The words came out as if she were mocking their insincere cheers.
“N-No!”
“That’s not it!”
“We’ll cheer with all our hearts!”
The moment the people, sensing sarcasm, tried to cheer again—
'Stop, I said stop!'
At Mu Yeonghui’s seemingly furious words, they froze in place.
'…Forget it.'
Mu Yeonghui realized that nothing she said would get through anymore.
'I'll just leave them be and get out of here. Then everyone can go their own way.'
She turned to leave without so much as a backward glance.
The citizens who saw this were utterly bewildered.
The person who had threatened them into cheering was simply walking away.
Among them, one person unconsciously shouted.
“Who are you?!”
It was a perfectly natural question that slipped out despite their terror.
'The Invincible.'
Mu Yeonghui reflexively tried to leave her title as she had in Murim, but—
What came out was English.
'…Goddamn it!'
Feeling her face burn with embarrassment, she fled as fast as she could.
“Untouchable…?”
Ryeonhwa, who had been monitoring the entire situation through Connect, was more flustered than she had been at any point today.
'Strange. Was there a hunter in Korea with a nickname like that?'
She had heard of such names overseas, but certainly not in Korea.
'People here usually avoid anything that grandiose because it feels too cringy.'
But when she thought about it, the name suited that woman in black perfectly.
She truly possessed a level of power that no one could touch.
“...Ah, this is no time to be thinking about that!”
Ryeonhwa, who had let her mind wander, quickly pulled herself together.
She needed to report the appearance of a new anomalous being and the hunter who had defeated it.
“Captain! Captain!”
“He’s not here right now!”
She urgently searched for Sobeom, but another employee blocked her.
“He took the paramedics and went to rescue Senior Bori and the combatants. Please wait a little while.”
“O-Okay.”
It was an urgent report, but since he was handling an important task, there was nothing she could do.
Ryeonhwa waited impatiently, unable to make a call, feet tapping restlessly.
Thirty minutes later, more than ten ambulances arrived in front of the Anomalous Being Countermeasures Division headquarters.
“Hey, Bori!”
The unconscious team members were being carried in on stretchers. Sobeom was clinging to one of them.
“Wake up. Just for a second, wake up and talk to me! What do you mean by disaster-level? If you brought it up, at least give us a description!”
“Captain, you can’t disturb the patient like that!”
The paramedics pulled Sobeom away as he tried to shake the unconscious Bori awake.
“Captain!”
Seizing the moment, Ryeonhwa quickly approached him.
“What happened?”
“...We’ve safely recovered Bori and all the combatants. Physically they’re fine—except for being unconscious.”
Sobeom continued, his voice restless.
“That’s the problem. Since they’re unconscious, we can’t ask what exactly attacked them.”
“I see.”
“What about your side? Did you find anything useful?”
“Well…”
When it came time to answer, Ryeonhwa faltered, unsure how to explain.
“I didn’t find the thing you mentioned, but I found something else instead!”
“What?”
“You know how a wendigo appeared in the streets earlier?”
“A wendigo? Why would a creature from the polar regions be in Korea?”
“I don’t understand it either, but a wendigo really did appear. And a hunter from another city who happened to be there defeated it…”
“A hunter from another city? I never received any report like that.”
Sobeom was wondering what she was talking about when his phone suddenly rang.
"Hey, Captain Sobeom! What is this video? Is this woman one of yours?"
“A woman? Who exactly are you referring to?”
"Haven’t you checked your phone? Search for ‘Untouchable’ on the internet right now!"
Sensing the urgency in the mayor’s voice, Sobeom searched on his phone.
And there it was.
The number one real-time search term was Untouchable.
— Vermin with no conscience. I did not expect any help, but at the very least…
— Those who cannot even manage that have no value for existence.
— This one can cut down even the moon upon the water.
The video had been uploaded to various communities by a brave soul who had recorded Mu Yeonghui while trembling in fear. It spread like wildfire.
Sobeom, looking at the community flooded with people questioning the video’s authenticity, burst out.
“...What the hell is this narcissistic woman?!”
He was dumbfounded.
A being of overwhelming beauty, arrogance, and power had suddenly appeared in the city.
“On top of that disaster-level anomalous being or whatever Bori mentioned, now there’s this strange woman too!”
He had concluded that the disaster-level anomalous being Bori spoke of and the woman in the video were completely separate entities.
It was a perfectly reasonable judgment.
They had no idea what the disaster-level anomalous being Bori had described looked like. There was no evidence linking the entity that had incapacitated the team with this arrogant yet ultimately life-saving figure.
...At least for now.
It was a misunderstanding that would persist only until Bori and the combatants woke up in a few days.
“Did another hunter with a messed-up personality show up from somewhere?”
“What should we do?”
“Hmm.”
Sobeom let out a groan.
The most critical matter was the anomalous being Bori had mentioned, but without any description of its appearance, there was little they could do.
“No helping it. For now, you go find this hunter and try to make contact.”
“What about the disaster-level anomalous being?”
“It looks like we’ll have to wake Bori and the others to get information. We can only pray it doesn’t start rampaging immediately.”
Ryeonhwa, who had asked for instructions, nodded after hearing the calm explanation.
'Even after scouring every surveillance camera, I couldn’t find anything that looked like a plausible anomalous being.'
The only thing that had appeared was a wendigo. There was no way Bori would call something like that a disaster-level threat.
“Understood. I’ll attempt contact with her.”
Ryeonhwa walked over to a power outlet and activated Connect once more.
'Found her!'
She quickly located Mu Yeonghui through the camera feed.
'When did she get all the way over there?'
Mu Yeonghui was standing quite a distance from her original location.
Even after thirty minutes, it was too far to have reached on foot.
'She can attack with unknown means and move at high speeds too?'
Just what kind of unique ability allowed her to do all this?
Curious, Ryeonhwa continued to observe her when—
“...”
Suddenly, Mu Yeonghui turned her head.
Directly toward the camera Ryeonhwa was connected to.
“Huh?”
The way she seemed to be staring straight at her left Ryeonhwa stunned.
'I-It must be a coincidence, right?'
She wasn’t watching directly; she was monitoring through a machine from afar. There was no way Mu Yeonghui could have noticed.
Yet Mu Yeonghui was slowly walking toward the camera.
Mu Yeonghui stared directly into the camera and continued.
“What…”
“Kyaaak!”
The Connect connection was suddenly severed.
Ryeonhwa, forcibly ejected from the camera, wore a look of utter disbelief.
“Th-This has never happened before! I need to connect to another camera!”
For the first time, someone had neutralized her ability. Terrified of losing Mu Yeonghui, Ryeonhwa desperately chased after her.