Home, I Have Returned!! (2)

After that, a little simple scheduling settled the plan. We would reveal the existence of the High-Tier Variant Hiarid to the Ability Users Association, watch how they reacted, and then demand a rearing permit—and at the same time hold Grand Blue's founding ceremony and trumpet my abilities far and wide.

We would keep a wary eye on the movements of Cheonggung and Muhwaryeong, and on the major domestic conglomerates standing behind them. For the moment, though, the work was intelligence gathering, and preparing the founding ceremony.

And so five days passed.

I was letting the time slip by with the feeling of riding a safe luxury cruise while a rapid current swept me along, when Aunt Hyeryeong came to the office saying she had something to tell me.

She had walked in on me fooling around with Franc. Her expression darkened a little. She hesitated, let out a long sigh, and finally spoke.

"This concerns the matter of Ha Cheolsu..."

"Oh, right. What happened to that bastard? Did the verdict come in?"

"...When you, Master, and the Director of Integrated Management were forcibly summoned to the Phase World, Ha Cheolsu was in the prosecutors' detention center, waiting to be transferred to prison."

A detention center? One of those jail-like holding cells? And yet, for news that amounted to he's locked up, the stiffness in Aunt Hyeryeong's face was anything but ordinary.

"Ha Cheolsu's character is a problem, and we were afraid he might flee, so we filed the complaint and the accusation first. The plan was for him to spend one night in a police holding cell, then move to the prosecutors' detention center. From there he would be transferred to prison and wait for trial..."

She trailed off, and a nasty premonition crawled up my spine.

Seeing my face twist, she pressed at the spot between her brows, sighed heavily, and went on.

"We have only just now received word that Ha Cheolsu, too, was swept up in a forced summoning twenty days ago."

"...Hard to believe. You're saying you got that news today?"

"I apologize. I was so wound up over Grand Blue's founding ceremony that I neglected the matter of Ha Cheolsu."

As Aunt Hyeryeong bowed her head, anxiety surged, and a thick flame kindled in my chest. Not a flame aimed at her, of course. I knew how frantically she, the director-level executives, and Hwayeon had been running themselves ragged these past five days. This flame was pointed at me—the idiot who had wasted five days buried in carnal appetite.

"Setting aside the fact that word only reached us five days after his return, it would have been better if he had simply died in the Phase World. They say Ha Cheolsu succeeded in returning alive just before you did, Master. And he was immediately taken in hand by an Association administrator and transferred to the Association detention center."

Oh, for—! How lucky is that son of a bitch?!

The world is full of people locked up for crimes, and the ages run absurdly wide, from punks shut in juvenile halls to convicts rotting in prison. A hell of a lot of them. And whether the bars belong to a juvenile hall or a prison, the more a violent offender is thirty-five or under and staring down a stretch of time, the more desperately he prays to the Phase World.

Please. Send me to the Phase World.

That is why a laughable sect called the Church of Phase Principle even exists. But that is not the point.

A man commits a crime, gets locked up, and is sucked into the Phase World. If he dies there and never returns, he is simply processed as dead, and that is the end of it. The problem is when he comes back alive.

Returnees, as everyone knows, are taken to the Ability Users Association first. Which means they walk out of prison. A special Certifier belonging to the Association is forcibly implanted in the body, and they pass under the Association's supervision. Every last movement is watched through that special Certifier, and the criminal record remains—but from the instant of their return, the execution of their sentence is suspended.

In other words, they get to live free on the outside. Commit another crime out there, and the old offenses stack with a new charge, the charge of committing a crime as an ability user. They take an aggravated sentence and go straight into Alcatraz. People's impression of Alcatraz is vicious enough. So if that bastard just pretends to have come to his senses, he can live in ridiculous comfort without ever paying for what he did.

I don't like it.

I really don't like it.

This goddamn awful premonition was turning my stomach, and the worse part was that Aunt Hyeryeong was not finished.

"The moment Ha Cheolsu returned, an order suspending his sentence came down. He underwent identification and measurement at a special management facility inside the Association, and even a physical examination. According to the information, his aptitude is A-grade, and his type is..."

My heart started to hammer. No. I don't want to hear it. But I have to. If I hear it, I'll explode. I don't want to hear it. I have to. I don't want to—

"Special type. They say it is the Mental Manipulation lineage."

A crackling current shot through my skull, and a foul, horrific sensation seized my whole body. And with it came a powerful premonition: that bastard would be the target of my first murder.

At the sight of my face gone terrifyingly rigid, Franc and Aunt Hyeryeong could not even bring themselves to speak. They only kept watching my mood. But my head was so full of the thought that I had to kill that bastard Ha Cheolsu that I had no room left to spare for them.

The premonition had spoken. That bastard would be my first kill. So I meant to handle it as fast as possible, and in such a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠way that no one would ever learn it had been me.

The moment I heard Mental Manipulation lineage, the only thought left was that I simply had to kill him. Why? Among Special types, the most common branch is Detection. Next comes psychic ability—what people usually mean by telekinesis, attribute manipulation, clairvoyance, telepathy, that sort of thing. Third are the precognition and premonition users, and last, extremely rare, is the Mental branch. Mental Manipulation falls under that branch.

The effect of an ability called Mental Manipulation is brutally intuitive. It does exactly what the name says. It manipulates the target's mind. It can plant affection. It can sow hatred. It can launch mental attacks that shatter a psyche. Hypnosis, and every emotion tied to the mind—it can manipulate all of it.

His aptitude is A. Feed him Phase Power and he can grow all the way to B-Class. And every Mental Manipulation user alive has already grown to the limit of their aptitude. It is the number-one ability raid teams want to recruit, and the number-one ability they want nothing to do with.

Why? Because they can manipulate the minds of aberrants. Inject extreme obedience into an aberrant, drag it around, and hunt other aberrants with it. Of course it is not limited to aberrants. They can manipulate human minds as well. That is why the Association ranks Mental Manipulation as a special-grade hazard and never takes its eyes off it.

And that bastard got an ability like that? A man with no hesitation about wounding and harming others, so long as it serves his desire and his pleasure?

I did not even need to look. Burning with revenge, that bastard would close in on my women and knead their minds like dough. And once he had them under his thumb, he would—

Crrrack.

"Seoha?!"

The armrest shattered in my grip. My heart was pounding wildly, but my reason froze cold, as if someone had dumped ice water over it. Strength flooded both eyes, my teeth ground together, and something chill seemed to pour off my entire body.

Aunt Hyeryeong startled so hard her legs gave out and she sank to the floor in a heap. Franc rushed over at once, wrapped her arms around my neck, and stroked my head.

"Your killing intent erupted just now. Is it on account of that man, Ha Cheolsu?"

"Yeah."

"Seoha..."

So that was what it felt like to radiate killing intent. With an expression as if she might cry, Franc drew my head against her chest.

Mental Manipulation. It was like handing a madman not a knife, but the launch button for a nuclear missile.

I went to Aunt Hyeryeong, pale-faced and hiccuping, and laid a Healing Touch on her. Only then did her color return, and she let out a deep breath. I took her hand, helped her up, and as I returned to my seat I bit down on my molars.

"Seoha..."

"My premonition is telling me. Kill him."

More precisely, the premonition that I would end up killing him.

Franc went rigid with me still in her arms, and Aunt Hyeryeong's eyes sank deep. I myself had only learned about Mental Manipulation recently, and of all people, that bastard...

Mental Manipulation users achieve class growth far more easily than other ability users. They knead an aberrant's mind like dough, drag it around, and hunt aberrants with it. Of course they grow fast. The problem was the story in which that bastard snapped, entered the Phase World on his own, nursed his grudge against me all the way up to B-Class, and came back leading a great host of aberrants.

The absolute worst.

People do not call a madman a madman for nothing. You call him that because you never know when, or how, he will do something insane.

Just then Aunt Hyeryeong's phone rang, and the moment she answered, her face went hard.

...No way.

She looked at me with that frozen expression and quietly opened her mouth.

"They say Ha Cheolsu has just entered the Phase World on his own."

...Fuck. The ugly things you imagine always have a way of coming true.

The moment Aunt Hyeryeong told me the thing I did not want to believe, I buried my face in Franc's chest. I felt the hand stroking my head and the back of my skull, and I turned my thoughts over. A black flame burned in my chest as I forced my mind to accelerate.

That bastard Ha Cheolsu is not smart. Not even close. But I know his vicious nature better than anyone. He must have gone into the Phase World thinking that with Mental Manipulation alone, nothing in the world could scare him, and he could live however he pleased. He would have guessed that staying in reality meant a life under watch, between the danger of that ability and his own record. And I was certain the biggest reason he had made that choice was me.

Fine. You're not smart, but I'll grant you've got a nose for things. You just provoked me in the worst way there is. So you survive too, by whatever means it takes. Get strong, and come out. Because when you do, I'll kill you by whatever means it takes.

I let Franc go, rose from my seat, and called to Aunt Hyeryeong.

"...Director Lee Hyeryeong."

"Y-yes!"

"I'm going to the place where Ha Cheolsu entered the Phase World. Right now. Make the preparations."

"Yes!"

With Franc and Hwayeon, and with Hiarid collared and led on a leash by Aunt Hyeryeong, I climbed into the Grand Blue limousine and headed for the Ability Users Association.

In the car I began reading the Ha Cheolsu report Aunt Hyeryeong had handed me. Five days ago, at 5:29 p.m., Ha Cheolsu ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had returned a thoroughly bedraggled sight, but without a single injury. Two upper-mid D-Class Physical Reinforcement ability users waiting on site had seized him and moved him to the Association. In the identification room of the Association building his ability was appraised and judged to be of the Mental Manipulation lineage. Immediately afterward ordinary people were evacuated, and ability users of D-Class and above who possessed the common resistance technique known as T Resist gathered to measure his Phase Power. The result was G Class. His aptitude was A-grade.

The Branch Director himself had stepped in and implanted a criminal-use special Certifier in Ha Cheolsu's body. Under strict supervision, an ability user who had once been a doctor finished the physical examination, and a recovery-type was brought in to treat his illnesses and wounds.

When we arrived at the Association building, Branch Director Kang Hyunwoo was waiting for me at the entrance. Proof enough that the Association was taking this seriously.

I traded a brief greeting with him and spoke as we moved toward the special facility.

"His class was low enough that even T Resist could resist the Mental Manipulation, I take it?"

"Yeah. If he'd so much as reached F-Class, we couldn't have handled it."

Good news. If T Resist could push back Mental Manipulation, the odds that Mana Sieve could resist it went up as well.

"How did he behave?"

"According to the administrators, right after he came back he acted like he'd been crowned king of the world. He didn't resist when I put the special Certifier in him, but his face twisted so hard I could tell the character underneath was the worst."

The Branch Director sighed as he led the way. Meeting him again, Kang Hyunwoo had been addressing me with scrupulous honorifics, so I deliberately waved him off and told him to speak easy. It was not that I wanted to be looked down on. I wanted Branch Director Kang Hyunwoo on my side.

Mana Vision would have made it simple... but I had decided not to use Mana Vision or Mana Voice on people in the real world. And sure enough, when I told him to drop the formality, he gave a faint smile and loosened his tongue, and I got the distinct sense his favorability had climbed.

"The worst, yeah. Stack up just the crimes on record and in the States he'd easily be looking at a five-hundred-year sentence."

"Yeah... I should have had a proper security detail posted back then. That was a mistake."

I asked him as he sighed again.

"Back then?"

"The moment that bastard got back, he went around spouting arrogant nonsense at the administrators. Said he was going to become the strongest in the world, so they ought to submit in advance."

"And you just left that alone?"

"Of course we didn't. The administrators who heard him warned him how severe Association law is, and how tight the surveillance runs. They also told him that if he carelessly used an aberrant ability on civilians or ability users, the suspension of his sentence would be lifted and he'd be locked in Alcatraz. You can enter the Phase World in a matter of seconds, but you're the only one in the world who can. An ordinary person has to concentrate anywhere from thirty seconds to nearly five minutes to get in. And that is more than enough time to kill the target."

Seeing his expression darken, I muttered.

"So the warning backfired."

"Yeah. Right after that warning he got noticeably docile. The arrogance and the abuse disappeared, so we figured the warning had landed. He received the basic instruction from the administrators, was moved to the Association building, finished the identification and measurement of his Phase Power, took a simple physical in the special ward, and then received healing and disease treatment from a recovery user. After that he went into the room assigned to him in the Ability User Management Building."

Franc, Hwayeon, and Aunt Hyeryeong followed quietly behind me without a word, only listening. I would not have minded a little back-and-forth, but they were far too quiet—probably thinking a conversation between the Master of Grand Blue and the Korean Branch Director of the Ability Users Association was no place for them to cut in.

And so, following the Branch Director and a few aides, we moved to the place called the Ability User Management Building.

The Ability User Management Building, a special facility, was a fifteen-story building attached right beside the Korean General Branch of the Ability Users Association. Inside, the layout was no different from a block of studio apartments. It was simply built tough—packed with every kind of surveillance device and special material, solid enough to come through a magnitude-nine earthquake unscathed.

"For the five days after that, he lived like he was dead. Meek enough, at a glance, to look servile. Looking back, though, he was deliberately lowering himself and hiding his thirst for revenge. To lure us into letting our guard down. And today, the fifth day, once the workday ended, he spent several hours in his room browsing the ability-user community on his Certifier, then lay down on the bed."

When I opened the door of the room assigned to Ha Cheolsu, the interior of a studio of about five hundred square feet revealed itself. Not a bad place to live.

"And just like that, he went into the Phase World."

...For a start, Ha Cheolsu had made three great mistakes.

One: while his sentence was suspended, he had shown the gutter of his character and flaunted a threatening ability.

"Because that bastard himself made his own danger plain, the hazard of Mental Manipulation and the unauthorized entry into the Phase World came together, and an order came down: kill on sight. A decision out of an emergency meeting between Association headquarters and the IWO permanent member states."

No one knows why he did it. Maybe, just as I had thought when I first heard it from Aunt Hyeryeong, he had looked into me, caught on that I would come to kill him, and run. Or maybe there was some other reason. I did not know.

And here he committed another great mistake. By breaking the law himself and entering the Phase World, he had shown he had no intention of obeying it. That had greatly provoked the Association and the IWO executives. Enough that a kill-on-sight order—something that almost never comes down—had been issued.

Japanese adult erotic manga comes in every kind of genre. From the cruel stuff no human being ought to be doing, all the way to stealing someone else's woman, or having your own woman stolen. The one I hate most is NTR. Netorare, the way they say it over there. The genre in which a beloved woman you are deeply bound to is sexually ravaged by some total stranger.

Even back in my younger days, when my sex drive was running wild, I tried that category exactly once, shuddered, and never looked again. Still, that single look left a trauma-grade scratch on my soft little heart.

And now a bastard capable of doing exactly that had planted himself square in front of me. Trash who carried hatred and rage toward me, who had not merely drooled over my women's looks but gone into open heat at the sight of them!

Lose my lovers. Lose the people precious to me. Franc, Hwayeon, Mom, my sister, sexually ravaged by that bastard—the one I could not stand, the one I had come to hate...?

If that happened, I would lose my mind. It would not end with one or two people dead. I would kill, and kill, and kill again, and I would not stop until either I was dead or the world was. One or the other. I would see it all the way to the end.

So before it came to that, I would kill that bastard.

Honestly, I never thought I would resolve to kill someone this easily. But before any victim existed, I was going to kill him. No matter what.

"......"

I must have let killing intent slip without realizing it. The Branch Director and his four aides flinched and turned to look at me.

"Ah, sorry. You've heard about the trouble between me and that bastard too, haven't you, hyung?"

"...If you mean the trouble between you and Ha Cheolsu, I heard."

"Right to the end, that bastard glared at me with eyes glittering like a viper's."

"Hm..."

"When he comes back to reality, he'll come for me first. No—knowing that womanizing son of a bitch, he'll definitely go after my lovers, or my family. I know this sounds like bragging, but my lovers, and my sister and my mom too, are objectively beauties you could count on one hand."

At the words out of my mouth, Franc and Hwayeon frowned. The look of a visceral disgust.

"Ah. If an ordinary person's luck is about a ten, I did think yours alone must be up in the millions. So?"

"It's not a 'so.' Franc and Hwayeon are strong, and they're always with me, so they're fine. But Mom, my sister, Dad—they're different. If the people precious to me were hurt by that bastard..."

Grind.

"......"

"I might go completely insane. Can you imagine what would happen then? Whole nations would be wiped out. And even if that bastard died in the middle of it, the chance that I would stop is zero. One hundred percent, I wouldn't."

Gulp.

As I ground my teeth and growled in a sinister voice, the Branch Director swallowed dry.

"A kill order came down, you said? I want to help kill him."

"Not capturing him. Killing him."

"Yes. Killing him."

"...If the Master of Grand Blue lends a hand, we can rest easy on this side too."

The Branch Director thought for a moment, then answered while rubbing beneath his eyes with a worn face.

Hearing that affirmative answer, I began mapping the space inside the studio where Ha Cheolsu had vanished.

Ha Cheolsu's last and greatest mistake was entering the Phase World from a place whose entry point could be identified. From here, under the watch of surveillance cameras. With a special Certifier implanted in his body.

In this world there are two laws everyone must keep, and that absolutely cannot be broken. The first: once you enter and come back out, entry cooldown keeps you from re-entering the Phase World for five days. The other: when you return from the Phase World, you appear at the place you entered.

That is why ability-user criminals who flee into the Phase World do not become a major social problem. Sooner or later they must reappear at the place they entered, so the response is simple. That bastard Ha Cheolsu had probably done it trusting in Mental Manipulation alone.

I looked over his room, grasped its structure with Spatial Perception, and calculated the size of the Wall of Space I would need to raise. Height 2.6 meters, length 7 meters, width 6 meters. Spend 1,050 TP and I could lay a Wall of Space over this entire space. Just in case, I would lay it in two layers. Three. So that the moment he returned to reality, he would be crushed to death inside the Wall of Space, or disintegrated to pieces and die.

The Branch Director swallowed dry again as he looked at the amber space filling an entire studio. He was probably more shocked by the furniture that had disintegrated and vanished in an instant.

"This your secret art?"

"It's not a secret art. It's just an ability."

"Hah."

I told the Branch Director to test the Wall of Space—to fire his strongest attribute round into it. He obeyed without protest and condensed the fire attribute in his hand. At his fingertip, roughly 500,000 TP spun furiously and compressed down to the span of a single knuckle.

...Honestly, I was surprised. Controlling 500,000 TP that easily? Whether it was a magic bullet or a Mana Bullet, the most I could condense was in the tens of thousands.

Anyway, he fired the compressed firebolt into the Wall of Space. Well—this was a Wall of Space that had swallowed my sister's Fusion Darklight and chewed up Hiarid's lightning of light besides. 500,000 TP was a little surprising, but thank you kindly for refilling the TP I had spent. I had laid it ten layers thick, so the cost had been fairly heavy, but the Branch Director's attribute round restored every bit of it in a single shot.

At the sight of the firebolt spreading and vanishing as if absorbed, not only the Branch Director but his three aides, and Franc, Hwayeon, and Aunt Hyeryeong standing behind me, were struck dumb. Watching that, I stepped up to the Wall of Space, tapped the translucent amber barrier, and spoke.

"It doesn't affect me at all, but this wall kills even High-Tier Variants. Anyone else, ability user or ordinary person, disintegrates the moment they touch it, and if a head or a body goes in, they die on the spot. So be careful."

"Ah, got it."

"...Yeah, I don't think that sank in. Hiarid. Go stick a hand in."

You have to show it right in front of their eyes if you want them to take it seriously.

At my command, Hiarid approached the amber wall filling the studio. The Branch Director only flinched, but the aides went on extreme alert and took two steps back. Standing at the room's entrance before the amber wall, Hiarid pushed both hands in up to the elbows. In that instant, with a wet sizzle, her pale arms began to crumple—and then, with a dull puck, the parts she had put inside the Wall of Space vanished, and radiant blood began to pour.

Radiant blood poured from the severed planes as Hiarid groaned. I loosed a stage-four Healing Wave and closed the wounds.

"Ghk—?!"

"Good heavens!"

"G-good God."

As Hiarid's arms rapidly regenerated in the vivid blue wave pouring from my body, the Branch Director and the three aides stared wide-eyed and let out rough breaths. Ignoring them, I spread a Wall of Space and wiped away every drop of her radiant blood spattered on the floor. Then I told the Branch Director to fire that same compressed firebolt at Hiarid.

He fired without hesitation, of course, and let out a low groan when he saw the firebolt scatter against Hiarid's energy field.

"You saw that? It ignores even a High-Tier Variant's energy field and disintegrates it. So don't let people approach carelessly. I left a gap of about fifty centimeters from the walls when I set it, so the surveillance cameras should all still be working. If you capture him coming back and being disintegrated, or if the Wall of Space disappears, contact me. Without fail."

"Ah, got it. But this... woman called Hiarid."

"She's not ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a person. She's a female High-Tier Variant."

"R-right, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠right. You... do you even know how serious a crime it is to smuggle a living aberrant into reality?"

I looked at the Branch Director—whose face said he had finally gotten out what he wanted to say—in sheer disbelief, and answered.

"Isn't the problem smuggling one in secretly? I requested a High-Tier Variant rearing permit. Didn't you get the word? I'm reporting it up front like this, and I'm even trying to provide a research sample... A living High-Tier Variant, no less? How much research value do you think a High-Tier Variant has?"

"...Haaaah."

The Branch Director seemed to think on my words for a moment. Then he let out a great sigh and hung his head.