Intrusion (3)
Intrusion (3)
- What did I do?
Silence settled over the dim pit after those words. Night air trickled in through a small opening.
"...Well..."
Senior Daera's lips moved soundlessly. The words wouldn't come easily. She hadn't expected that kind of answer.
"Isn't it obvious?"
"Obvious how, exactly."
Lee Ha-sol let out a scoff.
The hand stroking Lee Ha-yul's back against her chest didn't stop. That touch dripped with tenderness, and Senior Daera's expression grew more dumbfounded.
"I mean... no matter how much of a kid you consider a junior disciple, he's still an unrelated man, isn't he? Just yanking him into your arms like that is a bit..."
"I wondered what you'd say. You're worrying over nothing."
Lee Ha-sol let out a soft laugh.
"I'm the one who looked after Ha-yul since we were young. I fell asleep holding him practically every night. It's a little late to fuss about it now."
"But back then you were both children."
"What's different about now?"
Well, fucking obviously it's different. Senior Daera swallowed the words before they left her throat.
"If I'm exaggerating a little, I played the role of not just Ha-yul's sister but also his mother."
- Flinch!
Honestly, it wasn't really an exaggeration.
At the orphanage where nothing came easily, Lee Ha-sol was the one who cared for Lee Ha-yul, body and heart alike, with utmost devotion.
Holding him? What about it was special? Every time she put him to bed, every time she wanted to feed him, every time she simply wanted to hold him.
Even when they were young, holding Lee Ha-yul, who fit perfectly in her arms, was ordinary.
'Of course, we've gotten older now...'
The comeliness that had shown promise since childhood had blossomed splendidly. His body had matured into a sensual shape. His mind had grown through many experiences, too.
'So what.'
It didn't matter. Lee Ha-sol patted Lee Ha-yul's back as he flinched at the word "mother" and grinned.
"In the first place, Ha-yul himself is quietly nestled in my arms. Why are you trying to take him by force?"
That was true. Senior Daera stared across at the sight with a complicated expression. Lee Ha-yul was wrapped up in Lee Ha-sol's outer garment like a bundle, his face buried against a voluptuous chest.
'He's settled in like he's at home. Has he already fallen asleep?'
The sight looked incredibly cozy. His face completely sunk into that softness... wasn't he suffocating?
Senior Daera stole another glance at Lee Ha-sol's chest. A size obviously large and full. Far, far beyond average...
Half-seriously, she realized this was a trait Lee Ha-yul liked.
"Ahem, no matter how family-like you are, that's still too much. It's awkward for him, being held like that. And if anyone found out, it'd be troublesome... so how about I..."
"Is that really all?"
"What?"
"I'm asking if that's your whole reason. No personal feelings mixed in?"
Senior Daera narrowed her eyes at the sudden question. Across from her, she met Lee Ha-sol's half-lidded gaze even in the darkness.
'Is that all? Personal feelings?'
No way.
People say Senior Daera acts faster than she thinks, like a beast, but she does think before she acts in her own way.
Worrying about Lee Ha-sol holding an unrelated man—that was genuine.
Of course, more than that, she was bothered by Lee Ha-yul being held by an unrelated woman.
After all, wasn't it like that with Lee Ha-yul and Atra's relationship? Truly close and important... a man-woman relationship.
Senior Daera found it difficult to just sit and watch while her master's man buried his face in some other woman's chest.
'Personal feelings?'
And beyond that.
Senior Daera blinked at the thoughts that followed.
How to put it... she just didn't like it. She was right here, so why did it have to be Lee Ha-sol's arms? She could hold him just fine herself. Though she supposed her chest was smaller...
A memory surfaced abruptly.
The terrible memory of clenching her teeth and enduring that hell of a Reverse Side.
Lee Ha-yul, who had pulled her out of that hell.
Receiving a gift she could never put a value on.
Smiling brightly and saying it wasn't a gift meant for repayment, grinning foolishly... when she was happy, he was even happier...
"......"
"Wh-what. Why are your eyes like that."
The silence stretched a little too long. Lee Ha-sol's eyes narrowed. Senior Daera, mouth slightly agape, flinched and her shoulders trembled.
* * *
My eyes opened suddenly. I couldn't see ahead, but my consciousness surfaced.
It was hard to breathe.
Something soft enveloped my face. Not just that—a gentle sensation and warmth clung tightly to my whole body.
I quietly activated Observation. My heart power was low, so my brain throbbed slightly.
A makeshift bed thickly layered with leaves on the ground. Senior Daera was asleep beside me, and Lee Ha-sol was asleep with me held in her arms.
"...Ha-yul, you awake?"
'Hrk.'
Just as I was carefully trying to slip out of her embrace, a voice from above made me flinch. Lee Ha-sol had opened her eyes without me noticing and was looking down at me.
"Can't sleep?"
Her spring-green eyes carried drowsiness. I shook my head.
"Then why'd you wake up... what to do... you need to sleep well..."
- Swoosh... swoosh...
'Mmn...'
The hand gently stroking my head started pulling my consciousness back under.
"Upsy."
As I resisted the drowsiness her touch brought, Lee Ha-sol suddenly sat up.
I stayed still, wondering what she was doing. Holding me in her arms, she approached a small wind-hole.
The wind-hole expanded without a sound. Moonlight and night breeze flowed in through the opening, now grown to the size of a window.
"Mm... not cold, right?"
Perched at the edge of the hole, Lee Ha-sol adjusted her hold on me and asked. I manipulated vitality energy and gave a small nod.
Gale filtered the cold wind, so it wasn't cold. She'd blocked presences the same way.
"We used to do this sometimes back then."
Seated at the opening, gazing outside, Lee Ha-sol smiled softly.
"There were times Ha-yul wouldn't sleep at night. Or he'd groan like he was having a nightmare... whenever that happened, I'd grab a blanket, and we'd sit together on the wooden floor in the yard and get some air."
Now her cadet uniform outer coat had replaced the blanket. Lee Ha-sol adjusted the coat wrapped around me and smiled brightly.
"I used to hate the night sky. All it did was make me feel gloomy for no reason, but being with Ha-yul made it okay."
- Mm...
Lee Ha-sol stroked my head.
Feeling the warmth and drowsiness pressing in, I made a strange expression.
Her gentle, affectionate touch was incredibly practiced. As if she knew exactly where I liked being touched.
Even more, this body accepted that touch with familiarity. It naturally settled into the arms that held it...
'Back then.'
A past I don't know. I stole a glance at Lee Ha-sol through Observation.
In her spring-green eyes looking down at me under the moonlight, an affection both unfamiliar and familiar lingered.
Questions kept surfacing. What on earth happened in the past for her to feel such affection toward me?
'I could restore the memories.'
The Authority of Knowledge. If I used it well, I could read this body's memories at least.
But even after meeting Lee Ha-sol, I didn't try.
Connecting more deeply to this body right now wasn't good for me.
If things went according to plan, at some point the body and soul would need to separate, and the deeper the connection, the greater the backlash.
'......'
I didn't know the cause, but I could tell her affection was real.
So I couldn't reject the touch. I didn't want to slip out of this warm embrace. The heartbeat thumping against my ear brought a feeling of security.
"It'd be nice if Ha-yul could remember, too."
Muttering quietly, Lee Ha-sol nuzzled her cheek against my hair. I pressed my face firmly into the full chest rubbing against it.
"Ah, getting sleepy now?"
- Nod...
I bobbed my face buried in her chest.
The work was finished.
.
.
.
The night after the sun set was dark.
Under the night sky, I walked through the forest, checking my body's condition.
'The quality really dropped since I deployed it hastily...'
A doppelganger body created with the Incarnation Technique. He rubbed at the hastily assembled form with an odd expression.
'Still, maybe because I manifested Taesan under it. It came out better than I expected.'
His Life Force Manipulation was still in the process of rising after manifesting Taesan. Since the Incarnation Technique he had refined used vitality to construct the vessel, the baseline performance had increased considerably.
The doppelganger ambled along beneath the night sky.
It occasionally crossed paths with monsters, but the creatures passed by without even registering its existence thanks to its presence being completely concealed.
Roughly there now.
Snapped branches, uprooted trunks, limbs cleaved clean through. A clearing carved out by battle.
- Woom!
No need to wait. As soon as he halted, someone materialized from the rippling space.
"What in the world did you do?"
The Vice Headmaster asked as she landed, her robes fluttering.
He had sensed blatant Spatial Resonance during sleep and immediately dispatched a doppelganger.
'Hm...'
Violet hair and eyes. The woman he had encountered just before falling into this place surfaced in his mind, but the impression was different now.
A blunt expression... a face that Observation revealed to carry a faint air of fatigue. He hunched his shoulders as he sent a Sound Transmission.
- Well... I was testing out a technique and messed up the control...
"What on earth did you detonate that the floors ended up so..."
The Vice Headmaster couldn't finish her sentence. Shock and sheer bafflement seeped from her tightly shut lips. He felt the same way.
'Who was supposed to know it'd explode like that...'
He had guessed the output was on par with Three Ends or above, but how was he supposed to predict it would blow the internal space of the Tower to pieces...
"The holes Cadet Lee Ha-yul blasted open caused monsters from other floors to flow backward through them.
'Hk...'
"They are all powerful entities that should not be on the current floor... It took some time to plug the most urgent holes and get here."
The Vice Headmaster's words choked the breath right out of him.
He had grasped that he'd broken through space and fallen because of the Three Ends' aftermath, but he hadn't realized there'd been more than one hole...
'Ri... right now the first-years are in the middle of their Tower Entry schedule...'
On top of that, the entry period wasn't even over yet, and he'd unleashed monsters far above the expected level. There was no bigger mess imaginable.
The Vice Headmaster explained with an unmistakably weary face. The staff she carried looked more like a grimy work tool to him...
- I'm... I'm very sorry...
He drew his shoulders in tight and hung his head. Even the Sound Transmission he sent trembled. The Vice Headmaster swallowed a sigh and shook her head.
"There is no need to worry so much. Handling the situation itself is not a problem."
The Vice Headmaster gave her work tool... no, her staff a slight tilt.
"Unannounced emergency assignments are carried out on rare occasions. I can simply inform them that this monster appearance is the same."
- Would that be alright?
"Of course it would. A real crisis comes without warning. This is a valid enough reason to cover it. After all, it's the truth. That is exactly how it was in the era before the Observation Corps existed."
The Demon Realm Frontline he'd been through just the day before had been like that.
Before the Observation Corps was established, dungeons and monsters were catastrophes that arrived without any warning.
Having possessed the Authority of Observation itself, he'd been unmoved by it, but others had been different.
The image of cadets jolting awake from sleep at an unforeseen raid was still vivid in his mind.
"So there is no need for you to worry about the cleanup. Of course, as this is not yet shared with the professors, I will have to notify them separately and handle the Harmonization."
An emergency assignment the professors hadn't even been briefed on beforehand.
Explaining it, Harmonizing any friction, making the announcements, then revising the evaluation criteria again...
All tasks the Vice Headmaster would have to carry out on behalf of the Headmaster.
- I'm sorry...
"You have no reason to apologize, Lee Ha-yul."
The Vice Headmaster shook her head firmly.
"My duty at this Siyoram is to protect and assist you. What grounds would there be for you to apologize for that?"
And yet, her face was always blunt, with a faintly visible layer of fatigue...
- Still... I caused unnecessary trouble for you...
"...Well then. Since you've already produced a doppelganger, why don't you help me a little with the cleanup?"
He bowed his head repeatedly, offering more apologies.
The Vice Headmaster, who had been looking down at him, extended her hands as if she had no other choice.
'?'
In her hands was a helm.
A black helm. It was identical in appearance to the one the 5th Iteration had worn during last year's Birth Festival Tower Entry. An analysis confirmed the function was the same too.
When he lifted his head with a blank look, the Vice Headmaster shrugged her shoulders.
"While you're at it, how about teaching the junior cadets a lesson?"
* * *
"To lose a comrade like this... If only I'd been a little stronger... Kgh!"
"No, you asshole, you were our support type."
"Who's gonna handle Detection for us now?"
The jokes floated back and forth, deceptively light. Yet the ones slumped on the ground were covered in wounds and gasping heavily for breath.
"Shit... a night raid is just too much."
They'd spent all that time carefully maintaining it, but in the end the cadet who had tossed aside his broken sword was still seething.
"Well, things like this do happen in reality, so I can't complain... In actual combat, one of us really would be dead right now."
At that inarguable point, the cadet who threw his sword shut his mouth.
The Tower existed precisely so they could safely experience real combat. The ones griping were the ones in the wrong.
"...Hoo, fine. If anything, it happened just as we were about to finish... and I should be grateful it was only one of us who got taken out..."
"No kidding. One wrong move and we could've all been wiped out together."
"Krk... Mateo. I won't forget your sacrifice."
"Save the peaceful-afterlife wishes for later. The night's still deep... shouldn't we at least set up a small camp?"
"We'll have to move spots first before the noise draws a horde."
The cadets who had caught their breath began getting to their feet one by one, hastily snatching up their weapons and reforming their formation.
Where those weapons were aimed. A stark white robe that drew the eye intensely through the dark forest.
"...That."
The cadet at the front narrowed his eyes.
A human frame. But small. Both arms and legs were thin. Loose-fitting, pure white robes. On the head...
"Hey, that helm... doesn't it look familiar?"
At that half-doubting mutter, the cadet stringing a bow at the back of the formation furrowed his brow.
A pitch-black, crude helm. It had no particular distinguishing features, yet it flickered strangely before his eyes.
"...That's that event entity from the Birth Festival..."
"Oh shit."
Half-doubt snapped into certainty.
During last year's Birth Festival. That mage-class boss that was summoned as an 'event' and indiscriminately spammed magic above intermediate grade.
The cadet holding the broken sword spat a curse.
"Isn't this a bit too much? How are we supposed to fight that..."
The others didn't say it aloud, but they felt the same way.
The might of an event boss who, with a single gesture, had buried dozens of siege-grade advanced magic spells into the field remained vividly in many memories.
"...The build's different."
The cadet wrapping Aura around his arrow murmured. They had glossed over it before in the sheer urgency, but the figure's build was noticeably smaller than the event boss's.
"Maybe it's a different entity?"
"Ah."
At those words, the cadets' rotting complexions brightened just a little. Right. There was no way they'd drop a monster that absurd on first-year cadets now.
It had to be an entity tailored to the current first-year level.
- Thump.
"...Huh?"
The body of the cadet who made that judgment crumpled. His knees hit the dirt. Blinking blankly, he looked down at himself.
Nothing was wrong.
No—something was different.
Examining more closely, extremely slender needles were embedded all over his body. The needles had precisely bored into his Circuits and forcibly dropped his physical capabilities in an instant.
"What the..."
The cadet, unable to finish his sentence, collapsed limply to the ground.
- Just lie down for a bit. About one minute? The paralysis should fade on its own by then.
Lee Ha-yul, who had refrained from delivering a killing blow out of conscience, sent a Sound Transmission.
The doppelganger's level was extremely poor, all the more so because it wasn't a special variant. A decorative clone was practically incapable of real combat.
Practically incapable.
So he simply used a different method.
Lee Ha-yul's new form dissolved into thin air.
The dark is a favorable environment for an assassin to operate.