Enough. Time to Let Go.
Enough. It was time to let go.
I would admit I'd made a mistake. I had let my emotions run away with me. But a mistake could always be corrected.
Yoon Sia, who had stayed behind alone in the guild master's office, unable to shake the thought that she could not afford to disappoint her brother, lifted her gaze to Yoon Sihyeon as he finally returned.
"Something about him is off. I can't put my finger on it, but he's suspicious."
At the cold, dispassionate look in his sister's eyes—every trace of personal feeling stripped away—Yoon Sihyeon's expression hardened. He tilted his head slightly, a silent gesture that he was willing to hear her out.
"He demanded cash before getting in the car. Looked at on its own, it paints nothing but a picture of someone preparing to flee. Nothing seemed wrong on the surface, but there was an undercurrent of anxiety in the way he spoke, too."
"...Isn't that reaching a little?"
His face made it plain: why would anyone need to doubt the Rank 1 S-Class Hunter of all people? More than anything, Yoon Sihyeon simply could not fathom why someone with such overwhelming power would have any reason to run.
"Think about it. Behind that sudden declaration of retirement, there's obviously some kind of rift inside Geobhwa. It's even possible... this Mumyeong did something that affected the outcome of the raid."
"Hmm."
Had he heard the man's side of the story directly, there would have been no need for suspicion. But judging purely from the situation at hand, it was hard to dismiss Yoon Sia's conjecture as simply wrong.
"If that Mumyeong person is the reason Geobhwa's raid hit a snag—or worse, ended in a bad result—then we, Baekya, who brought him inside our walls, can hardly escape suspicion ourselves."
"I didn't sense anything like that from him..."
Resting his chin on his hand, Yoon Sihyeon called the man's face to mind once more. The mask and the hair hanging over his eyes obscured most of it, but between the gentle set of his features and those sharp, fleeting glances, he had never struck him as the kind of man who would do something dishonorable.
"Guild Master, this could all be something that woman Seo Yeram orchestrated. As Vice Guild Master, I'm telling you: the circumstances are suspicious enough that we cannot simply give Mumyeong whatever he asks for. Not even the smallest thing. One wrong move, and this whole affair hands Geobhwa all the pretext they could want."
"Hoo..."
He listened, and concluded that this was not a situation he could afford to gloss over. If Mumyeong really was entangled in the outcome of this raid, it went without saying that the fallout would land on Baekya as well.
So how should he respond?
"I have an idea."
"Let's hear it."
"The Rank 1 S-Class Hunter declared her retirement out of nowhere—in the middle of this crucial final raid, no less. From the Association's standpoint, launching a full-scale investigation wouldn't be strange at all. Investigators will surely be dispatched."
"You want to bring the Association into this?"
Yoon Sia, who knew her brother's character better than anyone, stepped closer to him as he frowned, and spoke with unflinching resolve.
"At the very least, we need to let it slip—or state outright—that Mumyeong is here. That way, whatever problems arise, we'll have an exit left to squeeze through."
"But..."
Yoon Sihyeon could not bring himself to agree so easily. This was a man they had decided, in good faith, to extend their goodwill to—and now she was asking him to deceive him.
More than that, there was no telling how much greater the aftershocks might be if a careless word provoked the monster.
"If he's done nothing wrong, then he'll cooperate with the Association's investigation. And if he refuses... then he isn't someone who belongs in Baekya to begin with."
"Hmm."
There was nothing wrong with what she said. It carried risks, but if even the faintest trace of such a circumstance existed, then Baekya would have no choice but to keep its distance from the man.
I suppose I have no other choice...
After long deliberation, Yoon Sihyeon made his decision. He would follow his sister's counsel.
It was taking longer than expected. Instinct told me that something had already gone wrong.
...Was I too hasty?
I stopped thinking and opened my eyes, which had fallen shut at some point.
The decision had come from knowing the original story, or so I'd believed. Baekya stood opposed to Geobhwa—surely they would agree to the deal without much trouble.
But Baekya had fallen short of my expectations, and Yoon Sia, separated from her original-story self by more than a decade, wore a personality and manner that looked little like the woman on the page.
...Honestly, I can't even blame them for suspecting me.
It seemed I had made the wrong choice. I rose from my seat.
If that was the case, lingering here would do nothing but burn time. I had to get out before the situation spiraled to its worst.
Yoon Sia and her Baekya—people who should have been my allies—have become my enemies.
I should never have come here. The regret came late. My half-baked knowledge of the original story had turned to poison in my mouth.
Damn it...
Read enough of these novels and you learn the pattern: every other protagonist who gets pulled into a story turns crisis into opportunity, step by careful step, drawing blood as sparingly as possible.
But my clumsy judgment had clearly only made things worse. Sighing, I walked to the wall of glass that offered an unobstructed view of the world outside.
It would be some reinforced special-grade glass, of course—guild tower and all—but breaking it wouldn't be difficult. With the protagonist's body, even a fall from this height would leave me unscathed.
My gaze dropped downward.
"...The Association, huh."
A cluster of vehicles was massed around the entrance. Slipping out quietly was no longer an option.
"Guess there's no way around it."
From their perspective, they were only carrying out legitimate public duty.
But the moment I let the current carry me where it would, I would end up facing the boss just like in the original story—my present self, thrown against it.
Even going by the prologue alone, the final-floor boss was a monster it had taken the protagonist at full power everything he had just barely to kill. Facing it as I was now, the outcome would be no different.
I had no intention of being betrayed and sealed away in a rift for ten years like the protagonist of the original story. To begin with, my values and theirs were fundamentally different things. Conflict was the only possible conclusion between us.
Even if I told them the Tower is harmless, they'd never believe me.
Seo Yeram would deny it most stubbornly of all. She was a woman who had clawed her way through life toward one goal alone: reaching the summit. If the truth bought her nothing, she was exactly the type to bury it alive.
She'll find some way to drag me before the Tower's boss.
The government and the Association would stand in exactly the same place. In the end, ours was a relationship that admitted no compromise whatsoever.
Enough. Time to let go.
Pressing down hard on the hesitation inside me—carrying the thought that Baekya's guild tower, unlike in the original story, would vanish by my hand today—
that I, once merely a reader, now wore the protagonist's body—by the standards of the people of this world, it could only be called a calamity—
I clenched my fist and drove it straight into the wall of glass.
The raid had failed. Thoroughly, completely failed.
To be trampled so one-sidedly was a first even for Geobhwa's elite hunters.
Cha Yujin, farthest in the rear, was frozen in terror—and at the sight of the boss letting her retreat without pursuit, Seo Yeram kept her eyes locked on the creature ahead and shouted.
"We're falling back...! Help the wounded! Move—now!"
She had lost her greatsword, and even gravely wounded, she now stood her ground against the boss with a sword she'd snatched up from one of her fallen guildmates, lying discarded nearby.
And the figure wrapped in little more than rags swung its fist at her without mercy.
"Ugh—!"
She turned the blow aside at the last possible instant, barely avoiding the hit. She couldn't match its speed, but its movements were surprisingly simple.
Even so, a considerable shock rolled through her entire body. Blood welled up from her chest and pried its way past her tightly sealed lips, spilling out.
She had never been overwhelmed like this before. For the second time in her life, Seo Yeram was tasting defeat and humiliation.
The first had been a boy—her childhood friend.
A boy who seemed to have received every blessing the heavens had to offer. A being in whom every kind of unfairness had been concentrated. A strength so absolute it bordered on envy itself.
The power to change the world, to seize anything he desired—it had been given not to her, but to the boy.
And yet, for all that power, the boy had been insufferably kind. If only he'd had ambition—just a little, even a sliver of it—then Seo Yeram would have served at his side without hesitation, and the two of them alone could have divided the entire world between them.
But you never understood me.
And that was why she had resolved to take his place at the summit. She wrapped the arrangement in honeyed words and kept him forever at her side. He must never slip beyond her sight and become a variable.
Perhaps this, too, was a chance the heavens had granted her—a blessing only she could claim, as his one and only childhood friend. The prerogative to use him as she pleased, and to cast him aside the moment he outlived his usefulness.
And yet you... you've suddenly changed.
If. If you had truly changed.
Then she had to see it for herself.
There was no defeating the boss before her with Geobhwa's current strength. That much was certain. A miscalculation—but then, she had never faced anything like it before.
All this way, she had never needed your help. You were nothing more than an insurance policy, carried along on the off chance it might matter.
Which was why, within Geobhwa, more and more people had come to question your standing and your power, to sneer at them. She had deliberately made sure you were never allowed your moment to shine.
Which was why she had let the unfair, undeserving treatment heaped upon you pass without a word. You never wanted fame anyway. You never wanted to be seen.
To someone else, it might have looked like cruelty. But you and she had talked it through and agreed—so you accepted it in silence, and stayed by her side.
Now was the time to spend that insurance.
If it was you, it could be done. Felling that boss—the one thing no one else could do.
You have to come back to me.
You would. You had no other choice.
Because you had been mine from the very beginning.
The one who would bring me glory. The one to be used up and discarded once his purpose was served.
And that was why he never needed a name to leave behind.
Because he was her None—the nameless one, made for her sake.