Harbinger of Turmoil

The place where Jeong-Hoon had once meant to punish Odyssey.

The heart of the Seal that had quarantined everything history had chosen to cast out of the human record — monsters included.

A golden sphere wrapped in countless geometric forms and unreadable characters. A place where the raging torrent that sphere poured out never ceased.

Enduring that torrent, a hooded figure stood and twisted his mouth into a bitter smile.

"Tch. All this trouble because of those Odyssey bastards."

Having confirmed that this was, at last, the core of the Seal he had struggled so hard to find again, he smiled gently and reached out his hand.

Crack!

"Kh! So it really won't work unless you're of the family head's bloodline?"

Golden current leapt and rejected the hand he had extended. He yanked it back in a hurry.

"Well, that doesn't mean I can't interfere at all…"

Muttering, he raised his hand once more. A magic circle bloomed from his palm and slammed into the Seal.

Screeeeech!!!

Seal and spell ground against each other with the sound of steel being filed away, yet the man only smiled wider.

"I knew I could still interfere! …Though it's a shame it's single-use."

Magic could touch the Seal — but that single interference would repair the fissure and erase it completely.

He grimaced as he realized it, then nodded to himself.

"Still, it worked. Let's see… the current family head is at Diana, isn't he?"

Having interfered with the Seal while muttering to himself, he squeezed his eyes shut the moment the Seal began to drink his magic in.

A colossal torrent seized him; his body felt as if it were floating free.

When he opened his eyes again, he was looking at the cave where the Seal's crack had been.

"Where the hell am I supposed to look next?"

Confirming that the fissure was gone, he left in a hurry, grumbling all the way.

His steps were light, as if the catastrophe he had just set in motion was of no concern to him at all.

Jeong-Hoon was sunk deep in serious thought.

Believing he had to answer Han Su-Ho's sincerity with sincerity of his own, he had summoned every vassal he could mobilize.

Butler Joo had even played along and assigned his own granddaughter — still a trainee — as an escort.

"I think I may have been under a rather spectacular misapprehension."

When Jeong-Hoon muttered that while taking a short break in the food court, Min-Ha tilted her head.

"I've been educated since middle school that Oppa is an absolute being who never makes mistakes? You can't just say things like that."

"What kind of brainwashing is that?"

Chewing a french fry from his custom hamburger set, Jeong-Hoon stared across the table at Min-Ha with a look of pure disbelief.

"No — never mind. I'm a little frazzled right now, so just be quiet."

He cut Min-Ha off as she revved up to launch into the details of her education, and shook his head hard.

He already had three stamps collected that morning.

Three, not counting the one Han Su-Ho had pre-stamped for him. In other words, less than three hours after the assignment had truly begun, he had already gathered more than half of them.

A vassal who rode only one ride over and over.

A vassal handing out flyers that had absolutely no business existing at Diana.

Compared to them, the first "family" had almost felt normal.

Having read Jeong-Hoon's thoughts, Han Su-Ho radioed in. Jeong-Hoon glanced around.

From the moment the assignment began, Han Su-Ho had been hiding, observing him, and transmitting nonstop.

Reading Jeong-Hoon's reaction, Si-Hwan radioed next — and Jeong-Hoon spotted Han Su-Ho, casually eating a donut and waving at him.

As the one in charge of the assignment, observing Jeong-Hoon was perfectly fine.

But stacked on top of the stamp-holding vassals' behavior, it was starting to look an awful lot like they were just using the assignment as an excuse to play around.

"Owner here. Understood, but keep radio discipline. Check."

With so many people around, no one was paying them particular attention — and he wasn't wrong.

The earpiece in Jeong-Hoon's ear looked like a Bluetooth earbud rather than a radio set, so pretending to be on a call would indeed be better cover.

"Owner here. If this weren't a radio transmission, you'd be right. Check."

But that was only correct when it wasn't a radio transmission.

There was a reason people on radio stated their call signs and ended with "check."

On a multi-speaker channel, identifying people by voice alone led to errors.

Call signs prevented that.

And "check" meant you had finished speaking and someone else could take the channel.

It wasn't for show.

"Owner here. Understood. Hand your current duties over to Lumen Two. Check."

Butler Joo's sudden announcement that he was leaving puzzled Jeong-Hoon, but he didn't dwell on it.

Watching how the assignment was progressing, he doubted Butler Joo's absence would cause any real problems.

When night fell and Diana closed for business, Han Su-Ho returned to his office.

Seeing the heavy wooden desk in the center of the room, he blew a clumsy whistle — whee~.

"Can't sit still for five minutes and the paperwork piles up."

He approached the desk, shrugged, and lifted the stack of documents.

Beneath them, a nameplate emerged.

Leaving the desk prepared for Jeong-Hoon behind him, Han Su-Ho flopped onto a small plastic desk instead.

Then he flipped through the documents one by one.

There were no papers concerning Diana's day-to-day operations. Operational reports were settled once ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a month; they didn't come in daily.

But every single day, the documents that arrived as Diana's true face — the family's intelligence unit — numbered anywhere from several hundred to several thousand pages.

Reading every last one of them was no ordinary task.

The fact that he could do it was precisely why Han Su-Ho was the one of the 12 Vassals in charge of the intelligence forces.

"Whee~ Nothing particularly wrong."

Having grown tired of turning pages one at a time and ended up riffling through them like a book, Han Su-Ho frowned slightly.

Not because any of the information was wrong.

This process was only a check that the reports first delivered verbally matched what had later come up on paper.

It was simply that a piece of information he had barely registered when he first heard it was now catching on something in his mind.

"Magical signature detected at Diana, huh…"

When he first heard it, he had shrugged it off. If someone recognized Jeong-Hoon as Lumen's chairman, it could get noisy.

In fact, tips from people who had noticed Jeong-Hoon's visit the day before had left Han Su-Ho fending off a swarm of reporters afterward.

So today he had spent the entire day trailing Jeong-Hoon with magic active, making sure no one else recognized him.

All so that Jeong-Hoon could complete the assignment without interference.

That was why he hadn't paid much attention when Photon reported a magical signature at Diana.

But thinking about it now, it bothered him. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fact that Photon had made such a report at all was, on reflection, far from ordinary.

Photon was a military contractor that researched, developed, and manufactured anti-monster weapons.

And behind the scenes, it developed equipment for the family's vassals.

At present the family still monopolized magic and martial arts, but it was gradually releasing both to raise humanity's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠overall combat power.

Once that release was complete, the day would come when the family's enemies would wield magic and martial arts as well.

Photon was developing anti-magic and anti-martial-arts equipment with exactly that future in mind.

A magical signature important enough for Photon to contact Butler Joo — the chief steward — directly could not possibly be ordinary.

"I'd really prefer the Gaju finishes the assignment before anything happens."

Han Su-Ho shook his head, recalling the kind of disaster in which monsters poured out without ever passing through a dungeon.

The odds were low — but his instincts were sounding an alarm.

As someone who handled information, instincts were hard to ignore.

And those instincts were pointing toward an incident breaking out while Jeong-Hoon was still in the middle of the assignment.

"One stamp left. I'd love to say 'surely not,' but 'surely not' is exactly what gets people killed."

In a single day, Jeong-Hoon had collected five stamps.

A truly astonishing pace. But Han Su-Ho wasn't impressed with Jeong-Hoon for it.

Honestly, the vassals had simply gone and delivered the stamps to him themselves.

"Still… when did our vassals get this good?"

That was what had actually surprised him, in a different way.

The skill of the vassals under his Diana command had grown to a startling degree.

Han Su-Ho had spent the whole day following Jeong-Hoon while casting magic — perception-disrupting magic.

And yet Diana's vassals had punched straight through it in an instant and presented their stamps to Jeong-Hoon.

They had drawn other vassals' eyes by acting strangely, yes — but standing out among fifty thousand people with only five of them was no easy feat.

They had done it with ease.

Meaning they had been certain other vassals would be watching them when they performed those specific actions.

"It'd be a problem if the Gaju thinks tomorrow will go the same way."

It wasn't that the vassals had broken the rules and freely handed over stamps.

From the start, this had been the assignment's true rule. Diana dealt in information.

From the beginning they had hidden the real rules from Jeong-Hoon and handed him the forged rules the previous family head had prepared.

Han Su-Ho had exercised a certain amount of discretion in the process — that much was true.

Collecting seven stamps to pass was also true.

The only thing concealed was that finding the final, seventh stamp was the real assignment.

Lull them into complacency with six stamps, then force them to find the last one.

Through complacency and deception, learning to isolate and judge the one piece of true information — that was how one cultivated the instincts required for intelligence work.

That was Diana's true assignment.

Back at Lumen, after a bath and dinner, Jeong-Hoon was not his usual self.

On a normal night he would have been stretched out on the sofa with a can of beer, watching the news.

Instead he was sitting blankly with his feet soaking in the foot bath installed in the suite.

The royal suite at Lumen where Jeong-Hoon was staying came equipped with every amenity its rank demanded.

Including, apparently, a foot bath for reducing swelling.

"Would you care for a massage?"

"…I'm not that tired. I'm just preparing for tomorrow."

When Lee Yeong spoke up to the vacant-eyed Jeong-Hoon, he shook his head.

"Are you truly all right? You look quite exhausted. The head maid is particularly skilled at massage — I would recommend accepting."

This time Butler Joo addressed the still-blank Jeong-Hoon, who shook his head again.

"I just have this feeling that the assignment wasn't about me finding the vassals — it was about the vassals finding me. That's all."

Having, somewhat unexpectedly, put his finger on the essence of what Diana's vassals had done today, Jeong-Hoon stared up at the ceiling and considered the existence of the final stamp.

"The others came looking for me on their own… but if the last one won't, that means everything so far has been a smokescreen for the real one…"

Having now grasped even the core of the assignment, Jeong-Hoon shook his head.

"Ah, Butler Joo. Why did Photon call you earlier?"

"A new combat suit for the Gaju has been completed, so I went to collect it. Photon also reported that a magical signature is currently being detected at Diana."

Jeong-Hoon's ears pricked up ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at the words new suit.

It was the thing that had been invaluable — no, that had saved his life — during Nova's terror attack.

He had been told it was disposable and had been discarded. The word "new" immediately caught his interest.

"They recovered the suit you used then, analyzed it, adjusted it to suit the Gaju, added new functions, and increased the battery capacity."

Butler Joo produced an attaché case from somewhere and showed him a compressed, flat disc of a device, then held out a manual.

"There's a manual this time?"

"They said there were enough added functions that they included one."

What had once boosted physical ability only to F-class had skipped E-class entirely and now rose all the way to D-class.

Operating time had more than doubled. He could wear it all day without issue.

"Limiter release…?"

"They say it's the core function added this time. Releasing the limiter allows performance equivalent to an A-class Awakened."

In exchange, using it limited operating time to three minutes.

And once used, the suit would be completely destroyed.

"A decisive-battle function, huh… Impressive."

The idea that technology alone could grant power rivaling an A-class was genuinely astonishing. Jeong-Hoon nodded and set the finished manual aside.

Many things had been added, but the heart of this version was the limiter release.

Three minutes of A-class-equivalent power — and a full-release strike that poured everything into a single blow.

"But there was a magical signature at Diana?"

Having fully absorbed the new suit's functions, Jeong-Hoon asked the other question with a note of concern. Butler Joo explained in detail.

Magic and martial arts were monopolized by the family alone. That left only one possible source for a magical signature right now.

"In short, we suspect there may be a problem with the Seal."

"And what kind of situation could that problem lead to?"

"An Incursion."

At the word Incursion, Jeong-Hoon's expression hardened to stone.

Of all the disasters monsters had brought since the world changed, Incursions were the most horrific.

"You're saying an Incursion could happen?"

"Only that one has occurred before."

When a dungeon was left unattended and the monsters inside broke out, that was called a Surge.

An Incursion was when monsters appeared with no dungeon warning signs at all.

A Surge could be managed if enough effort was applied. An Incursion, once it began, led straight to catastrophe.

"Something this important and you didn't tell me until I asked?"

"I was just about to bring it up."

Butler Joo glanced at the attaché case as he spoke. Jeong-Hoon shook his head.

So he had simply beaten him to the punch — but even so, the silence until now was hard to understand.

"Even so, you've been quiet about it this whole time?"

"Around Diana, the family's long-standing organizations and facilities still remain."

"Doesn't that make it more important? We should respond even faster."

"Those organizations include the family's strongest force — the Council of Elders."

Meaning that if it came to it, the Council could step in and stop it. Jeong-Hoon nodded.

The problem was that there was no guarantee the Council would respond the moment something broke out.

The family's purpose was to protect the family head and protect the world — not to answer every single disaster.

In other words, the Council only moved when a situation demanded intervention even at the cost of breaking the family's secrecy.

"Butler Joo. Tell the vassals I mobilized earlier to arm themselves. And contact Diana and have them cooperate as far as possible."

"It will be done."

With even the possibility of an Incursion-scale catastrophe on the table, the magical signature could not be ignored.

They needed to prepare so that casualties could be minimized before the Council of Elders ever took the field.

Watching Jeong-Hoon issue the order, Butler Joo bowed his head with quiet grace.