The Fairy? and the Woodcutter (1)
The Fairy? and the Woodcutter (1)
Lee Ji-yeon had been skeptical about this search operation.
Not out of any malice—she didn't wish the missing child dead.
She simply thought, realistically speaking, the odds of survival weren't high.
[Team 2, signal confirmed. We found them.]
"Huh?"
[Survival also confirmed. Coordinates shared.]
Contrary to her expectations, a location had been pinpointed.
Incredibly quickly, at that.
Lee Ji-yeon blinked at the unexpected report coming through her smartwatch.
.
.
.
"An Association branch?"
The coordinates led to a small Association branch office with modest facilities.
The Association had branches all over the world, including in Gray Zones.
Of course, since Gray Zones were areas where their influence barely reached, they didn't build them large or numerous like in the White Zones.
And this one was only noticeable because it sat among the aging facilities around it.
"Over here, miss."
It was a spot a short distance from the Association building.
Team 2's leader spotted Lee Ji-yeon and waved her over.
Beside him was a small child wrapped in a voluminous robe, sipping soup.
The missing child. The child matched the description circulated beforehand. A bit gaunt, but no immediately visible injuries.
Relieved, she approached.
"The child's condition?"
"Fortunately, no significant injuries. There are signs of malnutrition, but nothing severe."
"Have you run the curse and black magic screenings?"
"Yes. The scans detected no curses of note."
"That's a relief."
Only then did Lee Ji-yeon let out a long sigh of relief. The tension she'd been forcibly holding together crumbled away.
She felt even more reassured seeing the child gulping down soup without a care for the surrounding commotion.
You could say luck had been on their side in more ways than one.
"There was, however, a protective magic applied."
"...Protective magic?"
"Yes. I ran a preliminary analysis, but since it seemed harmless, I left it in place for now."
Lee Ji-yeon, who had been about to let the tension drain away, reined it back in and tilted her head.
'Not a curse or black magic, but protection?'
Lee Ji-yeon narrowed her eyes briefly and studied the child.
She took another look at the robe the child was wearing.
She'd assumed it was something Team 2's leader had provided, but now that she looked, it seemed to be a completely different robe.
What really caught her eye, though, was the simple magic formula inscribed on the robe.
The level was high. Even Lee Ji-yeon, who had little talent for magic, could tell that at a glance.
She had no gift for manifesting magic, but she was very well-versed in dismantling and breaking it.
To her eyes, that magic would be difficult to break.
Even in its pre-activation state, the formula was intricately entangled, making it difficult to neutralize. Breaking the manifested defensive magic would also be difficult.
It was high-level magic. And the structure of the formula didn't match Team 2's leader's style, which she knew.
'...Hm?'
As she scrutinized the formula, Lee Ji-yeon suddenly felt a sense of dissonance.
Or, more precisely, déjà vu.
'I've seen this somewhere before.'
It was a foundational formula built strictly by the book. As if someone had drawn it with a ruler, calculated it out on a machine, and derived the result.
Lee Ji-yeon's eyes narrowed further.
She had so little talent for manifesting formulas that she couldn't pinpoint it exactly.
Magic was such a finicky discipline that most mages constructed their formulas with this kind of precision, which only added to the confusion.
"This is?"
"Ah, allow me to explain."
At Lee Ji-yeon's request for an explanation after studying the formula for a moment, Team 2's leader nodded and began.
The explanation didn't take long.
Team 2's leader was as concise with his words as his blunt impression suggested.
'Faceless, huh...'
After hearing the explanation, Lee Ji-yeon's expression grew complicated.
Faceless.
The name wasn't unfamiliar.
It was a designation that had been appearing frequently in the latest intelligence reports.
A figure who had begun operating almost exactly when Lee Ji-yeon started tearing through China.
In a single night, he would crush dozens of anti-human-trafficking rings and was reportedly engaged in the indiscriminate subjugation of monsters left unchecked near civilian areas.
Eyewitness accounts were still coming in, and his distinctive appearance had earned him the alias Faceless.
A pitch-black mask with no eyeholes or even breathing holes, and a billowing robe that exposed not a single patch of skin.
And on top of that, he was apparently under a perception-obstruction spell that made it utterly impossible to determine his identity.
According to Team 2's leader, this child had already been rescued by Faceless before their team could arrive and had been left in the Association branch's care.
Faceless had pulled the child from the clutches of some cultists and entrusted the child to the Association branch.
Lee Ji-yeon glanced at the Association branch building.
In this dreary, lifeless area with poor terrain, the Association building alone was bustling with people.
The one thing they all had in common was how terrible most of them looked. Some were so emaciated they were skin and bones.
Civilians rescued by Faceless.
"...If he turns out to be Association-affiliated, we'll have to prepare a proper thank-you when we get back."
Lee Ji-yeon shook her head and walked over to where Team Leaders 1 and 2 stood.
"No need to waste any more time. We'll head back immediately. What do you think?"
"I agree."
"Yes, agreed. I can finally soak in some hot water."
"Then let's depart without delay."
With the three team leaders in unanimous agreement, the return was decided.
.
.
.
Unfortunately, the Association branch where they'd picked up the child had no Gate Terminal.
Partly because of its small scale, and partly because Gates were generally not installed in Gray Zones.
So the plan was to head to the nearest Gate Terminal—the same one Lee Ji-yeon had used when she first entered China.
It was a route that had taken them well over ten days to traverse.
The distance wasn't insignificant.
On the upside, without any searching this time, it would simply be a matter of cutting across, so the time would be drastically reduced.
"Guess the rumors about him being an Association agent were true."
The sun had set and night had fallen.
As Lee Ji-yeon kept up a steady pace, a chin landed on her shoulder.
It was Lee Da-hee, a member of Lee Ji-yeon's Team 1.
"Nothing's confirmed yet."
"Come on, the answer's already obvious. Just look at how they took in the civilians he rescued. The Association's been keeping hush about Gray Zone civilian relief lately because they're stretched so thin."
The Association was passive about Gray Zone relief efforts.
They had been fairly proactive in the past, but recently, the volatile situation in the African Demon Realm had forced them to divert resources there.
And yet, the civilians Faceless rescued and delivered were being looked after quite well by the Association.
"Considering how meticulously he hides his identity, think he's from the Execution Department?"
"They've been busy with the Demon Realm lately. Would they really have a reason to send someone in here?"
"Probably pissed off some higher-up in the Association. Our kid pissed someone off too, remember? Bet he messed with the wrong person and got an enforcement dropped on his head. Probably getting pummeled as we speak."
A member of Team 3, who had been listening quietly, replied nonchalantly.
The returning team members were all chattering about Faceless.
They'd found the search target without any major issues, and since they were on the way back, a general sense of relaxed tension had set in.
Not a great attitude, considering the mission wasn't officially over yet.
Lee Ji-yeon debated whether to call them out, but after confirming through her undead—spread far and wide to monitor the perimeter—that everything was clear, she decided to let it slide.
She had her undead deployed in every direction as well.
They were miscellaneous undead extracted from low-rank monsters, perfect for scattering around as sentries.
'Hm?'
That's when it happened.
One of Lee Ji-yeon's deployed undead spotted something unusual.
When she synced her vision with the undead, she saw an enormous canyon, so deep its bottom was unfathomable.
But that wasn't the unusual part.
'Mist?'
One side of the canyon was shrouded in mist.
Yet the mist wasn't rising from the bottom. It was forming abruptly out of thin air.
The mist itself was profoundly mysterious.
Even to Lee Ji-yeon, who had grown up wandering the Taesan family territory and seeing all manner of natural wonders, it was an eerily dreamlike mist.
'What is that? A dungeon?'
In this world, if the environment looks strange, nine times out of ten the answer is a dungeon.
Following that iron rule, the mist was likely a phenomenon caused by a dungeon.
Curious, Lee Ji-yeon was about to send an undead down to investigate.
—She stopped.
She didn't send it.
An undead closer to her position had been annihilated in an instant.
Lee Ji-yeon's face hardened as she turned her gaze.
The team members moving with her had also detected the presence and turned their heads in the same direction.
—Ooooo...
A chilling howl tore through the sparse tree trunks and sank into their bones.
A presence was approaching.
Not simply a physical presence.
It was the presence of undead, soaked in resentment and malice, closing in.
As a Manifestor of Taesan, Lee Ji-yeon could feel it in far greater detail.
Lee Ji-yeon drew up her mana and spoke.
"...To whoever's messing around. If you come out now, I'll let you off with just one axe swing."
"We do draw the line between work and personal matters too, you know."
A team member who had been scanning the area, face similarly hardened, replied.
At that perfectly obvious yet utterly unwelcome response, Lee Ji-yeon let out a deep sigh.
The presence grew denser by the second.
It wasn't coming from just one direction. The presence could be felt from all sides.
"Ah, shit."
Along with Lee Ji-yeon's muttered curse, the undead revealed themselves.
—Thud.
A hand, deathly pale and bloodless, latched onto a tree trunk. A hand belonging to a corpse, riddled with signs of damage and decay, gripped the trunk and crushed it.
'Corpse dolls.'
Necromancy that crammed extracted spirits into corpses to manipulate them.
Their numbers were considerable.
Lee Ji-yeon swept her gaze left and right, gauging the enemy's strength.
The volume was immense.
Lee Ji-yeon could unleash a great many undead herself, but the number currently surrounding them was far greater.
And their quality looked high. Plenty of them were undead raised from shoddy monsters and humans, but many also appeared to be of a significantly higher grade.
Still, it wasn't an unmanageable force.
"Prioritize protecting the child. We'll locate the encirclement and break through it slowly."
She wasn't sure the distress signal would get through, given how chaotic the mana wave disturbances were, but she'd sent it anyway.
With that order issued, Lee Ji-yeon raised her leg and stamped down.
—Boom!
The earth beneath their feet writhed.
Like ripples spreading across a lake, the undulation of the earth surged outward in all directions.
And then—
—Crrrrack!
—Graaaaah!
From beneath the feet of the undead caught in the ripples, dense spikes of rock shot upward.
The undead that had been warily closing in to surround the party were impaled on the spikes and torn apart in an instant.
There were a few higher-rank individuals among the monsters, but against the spikes—reinforced by earth dominance and mana—they died without putting up any meaningful resistance.
At the same time, the ground underfoot wriggled, and clods of earth rose up in a rustling heap, crawling up her legs.
In a flash, the earth wrapped around her entire body, condensing solidly into a shape like thick plate armor.
The earth's movement did not stop.
Ripple after ripple continued to emanate, spikes surging, the ground itself heaving like a wave and crushing the enemy.
From the split, cracked earth, all manner of undead came crawling up.
Taesan.
A unique ability that governed the life-infused earth and the spirits of the dead wandering the world.
Thanks to that, the undead, drenched in the earth's full hostility, were smashed to pieces one after another without real resistance.
The undead that had formed the encirclement collapsed in an instant.
And the vacated positions were filled by undead summoned by Lee Ji-yeon and her party, who began to push the enemy back in return.
Lee Ji-yeon reached out her hand, and the earth once again churned, weaving a massive double-headed axe into existence.
She gripped the freshly formed axe handle tight and raised it over her head.
Crrrack! A spine-chilling friction screeched between the handle and her palm. The veins on the back of her hand, beneath the armor, bulged visibly.
Then, she brought the axe crashing straight down before her.
One blade of the axe tore through the air and slammed into a corpse doll's head.
Bang! The corpse doll's head popped like a balloon.
It didn't stop there. The axe cleaved the corpse doll from its upper body all the way down through its crotch—splitting it clean in two vertically—and finally smashed into the ground.
BOOM! The vibration juddered up through her legs where she stood.
The ground split wide open. Following the trajectory of the axe swing, a shockwave exploded outward.
Several corpse dolls burst apart with a bang, and some others, who had been about to follow, had their limbs shattered and went tumbling across the ground.
'Hm...'
A strange feeling made Lee Ji-yeon furrow her brow.
The enemy had initiated the ambush.
They had targeted her group... so they must have known who they were attacking. Yet they were being pushed back without any real fight.
Were they testing them? A scouting probe to gauge their strength? Were they holding back for fear of exposing the main body's location?
But for a probing attack, the forces seemed too carefully prepared, and they weren't even being commanded properly.
This was simply throwing troops away.
—Rrrrrumble!
Then it happened.
A terrifying vibration, piercing through her armor and hammering against her skin, stopped her movement dead in its tracks.
A sense of crisis. A warning screamed by instinct.
Lee Ji-yeon's face twisted as she snapped her gaze toward the source of the vibration.
—Rrrrrumble...
The surface of the ground cracked apart.
Through the splitting crevice, something enormous heaved up clods of earth as it rose.
The moonlight that had been illuminating the party vanished instantly, blotted out by the monster heaving its colossal body up from beneath the ground.
"Oh... shit."
A crude curse sounded from behind her, but Lee Ji-yeon didn't have a single shred of composure left to call it out.
A giant snake.
It wasn't in its proper form.
The pitch-black scales, tinged with rust, were not densely packed but instead broken or missing in numerous places.
The vicious weapon dangling from the end of its tail, reminiscent of a greatsword, was cracked all over and its edge was chipped into a mangled mess.
And.
Two necks splitting off from around the torso.
Only one head remained at the end of them. Even that was not whole, the flesh so torn in places that stark white bone was visible underneath.
None of that offered her any comfort whatsoever.
—Hisssssss...
The snake's jaws opened, and the tongue inside moved.
Saliva dripped copiously from the tongue, which was riddled with holes where flesh was missing.
The saliva ran down its jaws and dripped onto the ground. Drip. Drip.
—Hissssss...!
The ground melted. The venom-laced saliva dissolved the earth, emitting a horrifying hiss.
The faces of the party went utterly pale at the unimaginably potent venom they could sense from that saliva.
They knew instinctively.
The moment that touched you, you died.
Would it be instant death?
Or a slow, agonizing death, writhing in pain?
Would you melt and die, or would your whole body stiffen like stone until you died with your eyes bulging wide open?
They didn't know the process.
But the result—death—was a certainty they felt in their instincts.
'Ah, shit.'
Lee Ji-yeon spat a vulgar curse inwardly.
'Shouldn't have come.'
What in the world was this, during her vacation?
—Shaaaaaaa!
Along with her belated regret, the snake's jaws gaped wide and lunged at her.
* * *
The sound of the waterfall curling around my ears had grown quite familiar.
'Peaceful.'
I kicked my feet through the water, sending ripples surging outward.
The calm, steady ripples were swallowed up by rougher, irregular ones.
Some time had passed since I started dipping into the lake and getting out again, over and over.
I couldn't shake the feeling that this was really pretty peaceful.
Unlike last time, it seemed like this trip would end fairly smoothly.
I'd just soak here a bit longer, recharge moderately, and then head out.
Satisfied with my mana circuits and core, still gradually expanding, I smiled and swept my wet hair back.
'...?'
At the same moment, I felt something off.
I hadn't paid it any mind because I wasn't really interested, but the instant I became aware of it, the sense of wrongness intensified.
I opened and closed my mouth a few times, then discreetly pulled at a strand of my hair.
Hair.
It was attached just fine.
'Huh.'
But the color was different.
Not black—white.
'Huh...'
A question mark floated up over my head.
* * *
[Player Correction System: Measurement]
...
▶Mental State
「?Affection」 : ?
...
[Mental State 「?Affection」 is changing.]