The Nymphs and the Hero of the Demon King's Castle! #3
"Why are you looking at this Illinoi like that, I ask…? Kore Yerim must stop giving Illinoi such looks immediately, I declare…! That is a nymph-phobic gaze, it is…!"
"……."
Seo Yerim had been staring at Illinoi all this time, and it was entirely because of what had happened just yesterday.
Yesterday, there had been a wedding party for Rani, the daughter of the chairman of the Indian conglomerate Gadha Group. It was the kind of gathering where every big name in politics and business turned out, and Seo Yerim of Telos Group had attended alongside her father.
"Rani! You look absolutely gorgeous! I can't believe you're actually getting married!"
"Married at twenty-five? Isn't that a little early?"
Rani, an acquaintance of Yerim's, made for a stunningly beautiful bride. She was busy showing off the jewels her husband-to-be had given her to the daughters of chaebol chairmen and politicians alike.
"Isn't it gorgeous? It's called a Rune Diamond. There are mystical letters inscribed right into the diamond, and it's not just pretty—it's powerful! Kenaz!"
Fwoosh—!
A tongue of flame bloomed in front of the new bride's face, flickered, and vanished. The women watching gasped and recoiled, staggering back a step or two; one or two even collapsed outright in shock.
But the commotion lasted only a moment before everyone's faces bloomed into open admiration.
"Kyahaha! What on earth was that?!"
"Amazing! Was that magic?!"
"Rani! You're a non-awakened! How did you do that?"
"The letters on this Rune Diamond spell Kenaz. They say it means love and luck while also symbolizing flame! That's why it lets me use fire magic even though I'm not an awakener!"
As she said this, Rani glanced sideways at Seo Yerim.
The truth was that Rani, a non-awakened, had always harbored a quiet, smoldering jealousy toward flame-wielders like Yerim—because she herself had been born the heiress of a massive conglomerate ranked in the world's top five, and yet possessed no awakening at all.
If I had awakened and made a spectacular name for myself, I would have lived every single day like the heroine of the whole world!
But thanks to this diamond ring, that bitter gap between them seemed to have been filled in, just a little.
Granted, the difference in raw firepower between the two women was roughly that of a cigarette lighter and a napalm bomb—but to Rani, such details hardly mattered. What mattered was that people who were not awakened could now be granted the power of the extraordinary.
That was a startling development, and it heralded yet another change coming to the world. Yerim understood this well, and inwardly she was deeply shaken by it.
"Where did you get it?"
Yerim asked, dead serious this time.
The new bride Rani, carefully concealing her delight, answered with practiced nonchalance.
"You know my husband, the Lion King—Singh, is one of India's S-rank awakeners, right, Yerim? Of course you do—you outrank him as the 19th-ranked S-ranker in the world! Well, my darling husband, in the recent Temporal Storm—"
She meant the Argonaut expedition from a little while back.
The multinational alliance of S-rankers had entered an unprecedented, colossal T-rank rift and, working their way through a tower-shaped structure within it, had steadily expanded their footholds, floor by floor.
The S-rank expedition had safely cleared the tower's first floor, then pushed into the second and third—and there, they said, they were astonished all over again.
"He risked his life inside that rift to get something for me! Isn't my Singh incredible? The finest of all India's awakeners!"
Even in the twenty-first century, India remained a stratified, caste-bound society. The 5th Industry had shaken that ancient class system to its very foundations—through the birth of the awakener class.
Rani was immensely proud of herself for marrying such a magnificent husband. And today was her wedding day—she truly felt like the star of the show. She outshone women like Seo Yerim or Tsubaki!
"Hey, Tsubaki. You went on the Argonaut expedition, didn't you?"
Yerim asked her as the wedding wound down.
Tsubaki, Japan's unofficial S-ranker, had participated in the expedition wearing cyborg gear in place of S. Ninja.
"That's classified, so keep it to yourself."
"What happened in there? And that ring Rani got—what was that about?"
"Oh, that. Well, it's still considered confidential—they told us not to discuss it with outside parties. And Seo Yerim, you're an outsider. You didn't take part in the operation. Honestly, with your pyrokinesis there were more than a few sections that would have gone a lot smoother."
"That's because that idiot Haildo went off to China for no reason—"
Yerim flared up for an instant, then let out a long sigh. She knew perfectly well that complaining about it now would accomplish nothing.
Tsubaki turned to her then and spoke.
"An even exchange of information. I tell you about the rift; you tell me what Ildo likes. Deal? The kind of women he's into, that sort of thing."
"Fine. That much is easy to share. Whether you can actually act on it is your problem."
Sweep—.
Tsubaki and Seo Yerim clasped hands. A strangely one-sided negotiation had just been concluded.
"Alright. The second and third floors of that tower—inside, it felt less like a rift and more like a 'laboratory' crammed full of futuristic machinery. You know Macheon City in Korea? Or Neo Tokyo in Japan? It was a bit like that."
The tower's second and third floors had unfolded into a cybernetic, cyberpunk urban sprawl. Machine soldiers and mechanical beasts roamed the streets, pressing the S-rank alliance hard. They were dangerous machines—so dangerous that even the S-rankers struggled badly at first.
"You saw Dr. Newgate's newly published paper, right? That rifts contain a mixture of every kind of dimension, and sometimes transcend even time and space. Most of the rifts we've seen so far have been remnants of the past—the so-called Age of Gods. But that place… I suspect it was a future of time that no one could have imagined."
A threat from the future.
Facing it, the Argonaut members quickly divided into their positions, executed their plan, achieved a successful breakthrough, and continued their advance.
"And then we found something. A vending machine."
"A vending machine?"
"Yes. A vending machine. The things inside were items none of us had ever seen before—mystical objects, like Rani's wedding ring. And the only coin that had ever been inserted into that machine was this."
Sweep—.
Tsubaki drew out a single coin. It was an ordinary-looking 500-yen Japanese coin, about the same size as a Korean 500-won piece.
"The Greek enthusiasts call them Whispering Coins. They say if you hold one to your ear you can hear something—honestly, I can't tell. But they fetch a pretty high price among collectors."
A mysterious coin that only a select few had been quietly collecting. They were said to be found mostly in Greece—and now that the existence of the 'mystical vending machine' had been discovered, the value of the Whispering Coins was only expected to soar higher.
"Where does all this nostalgic reminiscing keep coming from, I demand…! This Illinoi can no longer hold back her sleepiness, and that is a fact…!"
Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo—!
"Aaack~!"
It was thanks to Illinoi wailing on her with both fists that Seo Yerim finally snapped out of her reminiscence.
She looked at Illinoi again.
"Illinoi. Didn't you mention before that you pick up coins here and there?"
"Mhehehe… Has Kore Yerim begun to take an interest in the Whispering Coins…? Of course…! This Illinoi declares that collecting Whispering Coins is entirely possible, it is…!"
"Hmm, really now?"
"A trace of the nymphs can be felt from the Whispering Coins, that is the truth…! And this Illinoi can track the nymphs' traces and take out coins at the same time, it is…!"
"Oh!"
Seo Yerim's mood lifted considerably. Every won Illinoi had ever spent had come straight out of Yerim's personal funds, and Illinoi had been burning through a sizable share of it. At long last, the moment had come for Illinoi to earn her keep.
"Illinoi, this is finally your time to shine! Those coins! You've got a stash, don't you? Where are they?"
"No matter how many coins this Illinoi found for you, Kore Yerim never seemed very interested, so this Illinoi gave them all away to the Oinoi sisters, it did…!"
Illinoi had dug coins out from under the bed, between the sofa cushions, beneath the refrigerator, and handed them over to Yerim. But to wealthy Yerim, ordinary-looking 100- and 500-won coins held little value, and she had always just said, "Illinoi, do whatever you want with them."
So Illinoi had passed the money on to her nymph sister, Oinoi—who loved nothing more than fattening up her piggy bank with every coin she could gather.
"Aaack~!"
They said the Cheonhapa was a terrifying organization. Nobody knew much about it, but everyone was afraid of it all the same.
The island they controlled was called Paradise Island. Beneath its beautiful resort-reserve surface lay a horror that had earned it another name—Hell Island.
And honestly, the sight of mobsters in black suits prowling the grounds was unsettling enough.
Ever since the 5th Industry, it was supposed to be the awakeners causing all the trouble and mayhem now—thugs and gangsters were supposed to have vanished into a bygone era.
"That blonde girl. Doesn't she look familiar somehow?"
"Hey, if you're thinking of hitting on her, forget it. Awakeners bend steel rebar with their bare hands! It's ordinary folks like us who'd end up with our spines folded in half!"
"No, I'm telling you, I've seen her somewhere. Where was it…"
We were waiting for someone in the VIP room we'd been shown to, and the organization members were whispering outside. After we'd lounged around on uselessly plush sofas for a good while, someone finally made an appearance.
He was a sharp-featured man in a leopard-print suit. His eyes were slit horizontally like a snake's or a fox's, and the glimpses of skin at his neck and wrists were crowded with intimidating tattoos.
"Haildo. Haildo of the Dog-Squirrel. What an honor to meet someone so famous in a place like this. A pleasure. I'm Ma Wangjun—an A-rank, same as you, Mr. Ildo."
Sweep—.
The man who introduced himself as Ma Wangjun extended his hand to me. Chunky rings, set with gemstones, crowded every single finger.
How very curious.
The vice-leader of a criminal syndicate—a man said to effectively hold the boss's seat—was supposedly some monstrously coercive, overbearing figure. But he was carrying himself like quite the gentleman.
At least on the surface.
"You're Jina, aren't you? How's your sister Seona doing? Keeping well?"
Ma Wangjun turned his gaze on Jina. So it was true—he really had been in a relationship with her older sister, Lee Seona.
"She got married."
"Married?"
Ma Wangjun's narrow gaze wavered greatly. They were small eyes, slitted like threads, but the light shimmering within them was unmistakably trembling with something strange.
"Lee Seona, married. My, the world truly is full of surprises. Well then—I hear that you, Jina, along with a woman called Ari and Mr. Ildo here, are in fact in a polygamous relationship?"
Sss—.
Ma Wangjun's thin eyes narrowed again.
"But it doesn't look that way to me, does it? You're hardly even dating, let alone married. So I've been thinking—perhaps it's all a lie. That's my read on it, anyway."
Sharp one, isn't he.
Whatever savvy had carried him to A-rank, it clearly wasn't for show.
"Frankly, I suspect you three are government plants sent to provoke me. Stir up a fuss on purpose, get the mass media cameras rolling, then move in to attack me. Isn't that right?"
Is this guy for real?
He was reading the situation so precisely that I wondered whether our information had leaked. I feigned composure and asked,
"Why on earth would we do such a thing?"
"Who's to say? You're a 1st-generation awakener, aren't you, Mr. Ildo? The 1st generation doing strange things—that's hardly a once-in-a-while occurrence. Take Ban Dongju. Do you know him?"
Ban Dongju.
I knew him well.
That guy had definitely been off his rocker. I'd also heard that he'd grown stranger and stranger until he finally set off a catastrophe of his own making.
It wasn't as though every member of the 1st generation had been some paragon of virtue and diligence to begin with. We'd all been dragged in willy-nilly, so every breed of weirdo had ended up in the batch. Think of an army boot camp for men—there's always an assortment of characters you can't quite believe exist. It was exactly like that.
Smack—.
At that moment, Ari slammed her palm down on the table.
"You think we're government plants? Ha! Having our love doubted like this—this is the absolute worst. We came to this free, open Paradise Island just to have our love recognized, and now even here our love is being persecuted?"
Sweep—.
Ari grabbed my face.
"Then we'll just have to prove our love, won't we!"
Prove it—?
Just as I was wondering what exactly she intended to do and how, Ari planted a long, lingering kiss-print smack on my cheek.
"……!"