Each One's Role (4)
Each One's Role (4)
A 3rd Stage Rift.
A place that barely qualified as a playground for high-ranking Awakened.
Yet dozens of Awakened had it surrounded.
'Fuck....'
Jo Ju-hyeok cursed silently, staring at the middle-aged man's back as he stood before the blue light.
He had definitely reported to his guild superior. So why had the Awakened from Changgung arrived before his own guild, the Milky Way?
And not just anyone—Namgung Min himself, supposedly busier than anyone right now!
'Please, let nothing have happened... Please....'
Flanked by Changgung's Awakened on both sides, Jo Ju-hyeok prayed to every god he could name, desperate that Nam Seo-hee would be unharmed.
**
En route to raid the 10th Stage Rift that had appeared in Yeouido.
-Miss Nam Seo-hee is trapped at these coordinates.
A single incoming message.
Depending on who sent it, the contents could have been infuriating. But Namgung Min leaped from the moving vehicle without a moment's hesitation.
Because the sender was the High Priest of the God of Amusement.
That alone gave the message sufficient weight.
"Guild Master. He's from the Milky Way."
"Let that bastard go. He can explain himself on his own."
Face pale, Namgung Min pointed at Jo Ju-hyeok, hemmed in among the guild members.
"Understood."
Jo Ju-hyeok vanished, escorted away by Changgung's guild members.
'How will this play out?'
Considering he had abandoned his car without a second thought and broken more than a few laws getting here, Namgung Min was remarkably composed.
On the outside, he looked every bit the hopelessly doting father. Inside was a different story.
'That Eun-jae bastard doesn't have the brains to pull something like this off.'
Namgung Min was, at his core, a man who pursued pragmatism above all else.
Even now, he performed the role of a father sick with worry before the rift his daughter had entered, all while methodically working through who had orchestrated this and for what purpose.
Namgung Min, feigning anxiety, had fiddled with the hilt of his sword a few times.
-Wooong!!
The blue light wavered, and that alien, unearthly energy—encountered countless times yet still impossible to grow accustomed to—washed over his body.
A weightless sensation as both legs lifted.
Then the landscape inverted.
"Hm?"
Inside the rift, Namgung Min blinked at the sight of several Awakened sprawled across the floor.
Pajijijik―!!
At the same moment, he scattered Thunder Energy in all directions.
"Phantom Dream Herb? Expensive taste."
A sweet, alluring scent.
Inhale it without caution, and even top-rankers are helplessly plunged into nightmares. A terrifying poison.
Namgung Min burned away the Phantom Dream Herb residue lingering in the air and searched for the source.
"Heh, someone's wallet must be deep."
He let out a dry laugh as he destroyed the herbs, which had been placed at regular intervals and were smoking like incense.
Possessing Phantom Dream Herb was illegal to begin with, on account of its utterly malicious effect. And illegal goods, as a rule, came with steep price tags. Just what he had burned away now would easily surpass ten billion won.
"My daughter's in for a rough time."
Once you inhaled the scent of Phantom Dream Herb and fell into nightmares, you would not wake unless the nightmare ended or you shattered it from within. That trait made it a favorite for assassinations, and that was exactly why it was so obscenely expensive. Once the scent set in and sleep claimed you, anyone could be killed.
The one silver lining was that even the longest nightmares ended after two or three days.
Wooong─!!
Spread outward from Namgung Min, his Innate Mana raced along the ground in every direction.
'I can't get a read on this at all.'
Phantom Dream Herb might be the ideal poison for ambushing someone, but that only applied when the target was stronger than you.
Using it against children was, quite literally, the equivalent of pouring gasoline over a stack of cash and flicking a lit cigarette into it.
And judging by the sheer quantity, even if their original target—the Yeouido Rift he had been heading toward—were successfully raided, the numbers wouldn't add up. Well, if all they wanted was notoriety, it was certainly the kind of stunt someone might pull.
'There's no way a maniac like that actually exists.'
No matter how much the public fawned over a group, running it ultimately required money. Without money, maintaining a guild was impossible. Public favor, on the other hand, was nice to have but entirely disposable.
"There."
Sensing his daughter's presence deeper in the cave, Namgung Min changed direction.
"......."
And at the carnage before him, he furrowed his brow.
Dark red blood drenched the floor and the children. Someone's shredded flesh, spilled organs, and brain matter lay scattered around them.
'Torn apart.'
A sword or cold weapon would have left clean cuts. But the chunks of flesh littering the ground had ragged edges, with many pieces torn away entirely.
"Terrifying."
Ripping a person in half.
Namgung Min drew his sword and wrapped it in Thunder Energy.
Jijijijik─!!
He burned away the clinging entrails and other spilled matter, then used his blade to flip over the separated chunks of meat and roughly align them into one form.
"Nngh...?"
The Thunder Energy had burned even the eyeballs, leaving the sockets horrifically empty, but it was still easy to make out the contours of a face.
"Tch, a face I think I've seen before."
Namgung Min prodded the eyelids closed with the tip of his blade.
A middle-aged man with slightly wrinkled skin, the kind who probably carried himself with pointless affected gravity.
Namgung Min captured the face on his smartphone.
Beep―!!
"......."
He fell silent at the information that appeared.
『Name: Gil Vane
Age: Unknown
Gender: Male
Age: 50↑
Abilities: Unspecified (Confirmed to use multiple supernatural abilities)
A bishop-level figure in an organization serving Amos, one of the Four Great Evil Gods
November 19, 2020, Day of Judgment. Killed the Apostles of Luck, Benevolence, and Abundance, then single-handedly broke through an encirclement composed of Senior Holy Knights and escaped.
Status: Special-Class Wanted Criminal.』
He had thought the face looked familiar. It was from a wanted poster—a very old one.
'Feels like I've stepped into something much bigger.'
Exactly ten years ago.
A heretic who had killed three apostles far stronger than himself at the time, then shattered a cordon of Senior Holy Knights—each his equal—and vanished without a trace.
Comparing his skin's aging to the wanted poster in the app, there was practically no difference. Meaning the man hadn't aged a day in the past decade.
Which meant he had either maintained the exact same level of skill as ten years ago—or grown even stronger.
'Either way, it's the same: an opponent I can't handle alone.'
But the important part was that an opponent like that had met a horrifying death—torn in half without ever managing to put up a proper fight.
'They said at least two intruders.'
One would be the dead old man in front of him.
The other....
Namgung Min's gaze drifted naturally to the girl cradled in his daughter's arms.
'Someone connected to that young lady, perhaps.'
A Black Screen with some unknown objective targeting the children. And another monster who had tailed that very Black Screen without even being noticed.
It could be lurking somewhere, watching him right now. Or it might already be mixed in among the Awakened he had passed by at the entrance.
One thing was certain: digging any deeper would bring no good.
'From the look of things, Lee Ye-sol didn't seem to know this would happen either.'
Namgung Min watched the girl, pure white and untouched by the blood as if by miracle, then rose to his feet.
"Tch. The Association Chairman's going to chew me out."
Not only had he abandoned his car in the middle of the road, he had scattered mana everywhere in a place full of ordinary citizens.
-Guild Master. The Holy Knights from the God of Amusement's side have arrived.
Namgung Min pressed his in-ear lightly.
"Tell them they're all safe and we're bringing them out now."
-Understood.
Namgung Min sheathed his sword, then scooped up his daughter and the girl she had been holding in her arms.
"Sorry. Uncle here only has two hands."
**
Late evening.
Baek Ha-na lay in bed, breathing evenly.
While the staff meeting was underway, the Holy Knights—summoned back from leave under Lee Ye-sol's orders—had brought the children back to the mansion. Every last one of them.
-Peep....
Beside Baek Ha-na's pillow, the Fairy sat watching her with worried eyes.
'...Phantom Dream Herb, huh.'
A poison barely mentioned even a few times in those memories—and now it had been used here. Of all places.
I took in the sight of the kid lying on my bed, dead asleep, and rose from my seat.
...Grip.
"......."
When had she grabbed it? Her hand was clutching my sleeve tightly.
I carefully detached it and left the room.
"Professor."
Claire approached from where she had been waiting in the hallway.
With a resolute face, she looked directly at me and said,
"Please stay by Ha-na's side."
This was the first time she—who had never once asked me for anything—had come to me with such firm resolve. A request not for herself, but for Baek Ha-na.
"I'll make every effort to return before she wakes."
"...Professor."
Meeting her gaze, which bordered on desperate, I accepted the blood-soaked bag she handed me.
Until now, I had been the pillar supporting the child's growth. Going forward, the new pillar for Baek Ha-na as she continued to grow would be her.
That was why I could act without worry.
So that the path she walked would be even a little smoother.
'I'll clean it all up.'