The Mysterious Child
While Taejin staggered back to the dormitory half-unconscious, thoroughly drained of every last drop of semen—
Somewhere near the former border between North and South Korea.
"Ugh, I really don't want to go..."
Having accepted a commission from the Magic Tower, Lee Jihye was making her way into North Korea in secret. She skipped Panmunjom entirely and crossed the border straight through the DMZ.
Why bother with the DMZ instead of the perfectly functional checkpoint at Panmunjom? Two reasons.
First, North Korea was still a hellscape even Hunters couldn't freely enter. Second, there was always the risk that a Hunter who went north would suddenly lose their mind, bolt into China, and start a rampage.
Which was why entry permits were only issued after rigorous screening. But—
BOOM!!!
"Aargh, these damn bombs are so freaking loud."
Crackle-crackle...
That whole process only applied to low- and mid-rank Hunters.
For an S-class, sneaking across the border was barely more than a mild inconvenience.
She walked through the DMZ in her usual outfit for a while, until the blasted remains of an old North Korean watchpost came into view. With a light leap, she landed on top of it.
Standing amid the wreckage, she let out a long sigh and muttered to herself.
"Haa... What the hell do they want me to fetch that I have to trek all the way out here..."
For the record, she kept saying "North Korea" as a blanket term, but the Magic Tower's actual request was far more specific: go to Pyeonggang County and recover a certain "child" waiting out on the plains.
A precious test subject, they'd said—with a weight to the words that made her skin crawl.
Honestly, Lee Jihye didn't get it. Years had already passed since this region of North Korea turned into a demonic wasteland. Harvesting materials from a place like this?
Or maybe... it was precisely because it was a place like this that they could harvest them at all.
"Ah, whatever. Let's just get this over with."
Muttering that, she channeled the power of lightning and leapt—no, almost teleported—arriving in the Pyeonggang region in an instant.
And then, without missing a beat:
"Alright, whoever you are, get out here already!"
CRACKLE-CRACKLE-CRACKLE!!!
She flooded the air with a powerful current, using it to sense every human presence in the vicinity.
Hmm. A hundred... no, a settlement of survivors numbering in the thousands?
She registered that people had somehow managed to survive in this hellish wasteland of former North Korea. But—
"Ugh, where the hell are you?!"
—that had nothing to do with her. She immediately dismissed them and focused solely on finding the existence the Magic Tower wanted recovered.
How long did she search for the child? After scattering her human-sensing current through the air again and again, she finally felt something strange.
"What the...?"
It didn't seem human.
No—it also did seem human.
The current had reacted, after all.
But—
No. Something's different...
She hadn't earned her S-class rank by playing card games. She could tell at a glance that whatever this was, it was absolutely not just a "human."
At the same time—
Don't tell me... is that the child?
No matter how she looked at it, the thing the Magic Tower wanted recovered had to be this. Anything else would have been stranger.
So Lee Jihye flew straight toward that existence—whatever it was, human or not.
It was waiting at the desolate peak of a mountain.
Lee Jihye observed it from a great distance.
Yes. That was what she was doing. And yet—
Why... why does it feel like I'm looking at it from right in front of me...?
As if space itself meant nothing, the existence was far away and yet somehow observing her in return.
An unnameable dread crept up her spine. Every instinct screamed at her to call down a bolt of lightning and obliterate it on the spot.
But she didn't.
This was the lifeform the Magic Tower had ordered her to recover. Killing it on her own authority would only make things extremely annoying.
So instead of attacking, she descended at lightning speed and appeared before it—while still keeping her guard up, of course.
Crackle-crackle!!
Even as Lee Jihye closed the distance, the existence—no.
A girl?
The girl, who looked like a young child, simply stared at Lee Jihye with an expressionless face.
Lee Jihye found herself looking into the girl's eyes. The moment their gazes met—
"You've arrived."
The girl spoke in a voice that did not match her age at all.
"You were waiting for me?"
"Yes. Father told me you would come."
Father?
Is there anyone in the Magic Tower who looks like this kid?
No. There couldn't be. Setting aside the striking appearance, no human in the guild radiated an atmosphere this horrifying.
Thinking that, Lee Jihye quietly nodded and took the girl's hand—or rather, she tried to pick her up.
"Father said I must not be held by anyone except 'Him.'"
And who the hell is "Him"?
Oh, for crying out loud. How many secrets does this kid have...
The more they talked, the less Lee Jihye could convince herself this girl was an ordinary human. If anything, she felt like something from another dimension entirely.
It was enough to give her a headache. But then—
"Just start moving. I'll follow on my own."
"What? That's the most ridiculous—"
She was about to snap at the absurd claim that this child could keep up with an S-class's travel speed. Then she stopped.
"Fine. Keep up if you can."
She gave up explaining and decided to just do it the girl's way. With this type, it was faster to let them experience it once than to waste words.
And so they moved together. And yet, astonishingly—
"You're quite fast."
The girl kept pace as if it were nothing.
The truly terrifying part was this:
Is she using some kind of shrinking-the-earth technique or what?!
The girl wasn't using abilities the way Lee Jihye did. She was folding space itself, closing the distance as if simply stepping through it, trailing right behind her.
Watching that, Lee Jihye felt a cold shiver of fear. She might have been a human piece of garbage who tormented civilians, but she was also a professional Hunter.
If she came up behind me, I wouldn't even notice.
She understood perfectly well how dangerous the girl's ability was. Simple movement from behind would still leave a presence she could sense—but folding space to approach left absolutely nothing to detect.
So she felt fear, and at the same time she headed for the prearranged location as instructed.
Damn it. I should just quit that guild already. I'm so done with this filth...!
—all while cursing the guild under her breath.
And the girl trailing behind her—
"....."
—watched her in silence, wearing a hollow, unreadable smile.
Several days had passed since Sohee wrung him dry.
Having tested the absolute limits of how much stamina he could produce in a single day, Taejin was enjoying a leisurely routine.
More accurately, it felt like the calm before the storm.
Garam had resumed streaming, laughing and chattering the way she always did—except she clearly wasn't the same.
"I'm at that age where a girl grows up, okay?!"
Her whole atmosphere was unmistakably different. Topics she would have purged without mercy in the past, she now pushed hard—and after a firm crackdown, the chat cleaned itself up. Looking at that purified chat window, she said:
"Heheh~ Do you like me that much~?"
A reaction she never would have given before.
...Was the feeling that something had truly gone to hell just his imagination?
Absolutely not.
Taejin was certain it wasn't. Sure, Garam had been a pure virgin when they first met—but think about the people around her. She was surrounded by famous influencers. Among them, there had to be someone well-versed in this kind of... subject matter.
She'd probably gotten a crash course from someone like that, and that was why she was radiating this much pheromone energy now.
And thanks to that—or because of that—
—the gallery was exploding in every sense of the word.
Watching it all, Taejin sincerely started worrying about getting stabbed again. The way the old wound throbbed suggested it might not be mere worry...
And just as Taejin was fretting over what the future held—speak of the devil.
Bzzzt.
He checked the text that had just arrived on his phone.
"...Oh no."
Apparently, she had prepared thoroughly this time.
How could he tell?
Well...
No matter how he looked at it, she was wearing an outfit that seemed deliberately aimed at the cat costume he'd mentioned before—a high-quality dog costume, posing for a phone selfie and sending it over. Pretending not to notice would have been stranger than noticing.
And so, with the dread of a knife-filled future and the image of Garam in that costume swirling through his head, Taejin decided that if he was already screwed, he might as well enjoy himself to the fullest.
If he was going down either way, better to have a little more fun first.
Then maybe he wouldn't feel quite so cheated when the end came.
That was what Taejin thought.