Take On a Disciple
"Good work, everyone."
"Yes, well done."
Jang Il-seok rose from his seat with a heavy body after the meeting ended, exchanging parting words with the department heads who had attended before stepping out of the conference room.
It hadn't even been long since the raid on Freedom's base, and now the gates were causing trouble.
The agenda had been sprawling. Why an A-Rank gate had opened somewhere that wasn't even a restricted zone. Why a Gate Break had occurred for the first time in years. Why the bizarre gate energy observed at the scene had suddenly vanished. And the most critical item of all: that at the site where the strange gate and its energy had collided, a force with the same wavelength as the one from the Freedom base had been detected.
"Haa..."
Back at his desk, Jang Il-seok sank into his chair. Letting his weight settle against the backrest, he felt some of the stiffness from sitting rigidly through the meeting begin to ease.
It's not that I don't have a lead.
The problem was that the lead was far too clear. No one had deliberately steered the discussion that way, but among those who hadn't managed to evacuate the school grounds, a few people had caught Jang Il-seok's eye.
Park Yeon-chan. Lee Yeon-ah. Lee Yeon-hui.
The same names common to both the Freedom base and the school incident. Of course the Association people weren't fools — the names had come up. But there was no way to hold onto something that couldn't be explained by anything other than coincidence, so it had been brushed aside.
One of the reasons it had slipped past so cleanly was that Jang Il-seok himself had quietly altered the reports, removing Park Yeon-chan and the Lee sisters from the list of rescuers found inside the school.
Why had he done that? Even he couldn't put a clean definition to his own actions this time.
"This is hard. Really hard."
He was still muttering complaints about himself when—
Brrring—
His phone rang, cutting through his thoughts.
"Yes, Jang Il-seok speaking."
"Team Leader. It's Park Yeon-chan."
At the voice and the introduction, Jang Il-seok glanced around. Speak of the devil. So much for being a gentleman about it.
He let out a quiet, dry laugh and shifted his tone.
"Ohhh. It's been a while. So, what can I do for you?"
In their previous exchange, Park Yeon-chan had wrung him dry down to his very soul. This time he started with his guard raised a little higher—
"The clash with the Awakened at the Freedom base. The mysterious collision during this Gate Break."
"..."
"That was all me."
Park Yeon-chan had barreled straight from the point into the conclusion so fast that Jang Il-seok couldn't manage a single reply.
"Ah, the reason I'm telling you all of a sudden is that I've decided to go somewhere far away. Even if you try to track me, it's useless. You probably won't find me."
Jang Il-seok hadn't said a word, yet the boy rattled off answers as if he already knew what he was wondering.
"That doesn't make any sense. The wavelength we observed was clearly an Awakened's signature. Even the world's youngest Awakened is around high-school age. A kid who's still only elementary school—"
"In a 'natural case,' sure."
"Don't tell me..."
Jang Il-seok's eyes went wide at Park Yeon-chan's words.
"Let's set that aside for now. That's not why I called."
"Then?"
"From what you investigated at the Freedom base last time, you should already have the general picture."
Jang Il-seok thought of the human experiments Freedom was conducting — gathering immature children who hadn't yet Awakened, selected by some unknown criteria.
"Experiments to artificially create Awakened. I'll tip you off about the organization running them."
"Why the sudden generosity?"
"It's not sudden. I was always going to tip you off once I found their location for certain. And I found it for certain, so I'm tipping you off."
"I see. I'll look into it and handle the cleanup myself."
A sudden wave of information was giving him a headache, but Jang Il-seok forced himself to answer calmly. He had no objective evidence — only a gut feeling — but he didn't get the sense that Park Yeon-chan was lying.
"Crushing the head is the most effective approach, but unfortunately I couldn't catch them that far myself."
That drew a short snort of laughter. If a single kid found in one go what the Hunter Association, the police, and the Hero Association had failed to find for nearly a decade — that would be the truly unbelievable part.
"I just sent the base facility info to your phone. As you already know, you'll need to hit them all at once."
"Haha... You're even giving me the operational guidelines. How thoughtful."
Just how far does this brat look down on me?
That was what Jang Il-seok thought — but the moment he'd already lost the pace of the conversation to Park Yeon-chan, the thought felt pointless.
"I'll hang up now."
Click.
Nothing but the disconnected tone remained, yet Jang Il-seok kept the phone pressed to his ear and sat still.
Handing him information and then leaving for somewhere far away. Going so far as to reveal his own identity? Speaking this boldly into Jang Il-seok's personal line meant he didn't care if it got out — no, it meant he wanted it known.
So why did he want to be known? What did he stand to gain if word got out?
"Haha... Some brat whose blood hasn't even dried yet thinks he can puppet an adult however he likes."
Jang Il-seok arrived at a conclusion with no real basis behind it. Quietly, he erased that answer and stood up from his seat to play the part of the puppet.
"Atakuba." (We've arrived.)
As we crossed the calm river and reached our destination, the boatman flashed me a thumbs-up.
"Uh, so... Akiupa." (Thank you.)
When I expressed my gratitude in the language of their minority tribe, the man who had ferried me winked back with a grin.
"You sure about this? This place is so dangerous even we don't go in much."
"I think the person I'm looking for is here."
I answered with a bright smile, and the man offered a few pieces of advice, adding that he passed by once a day — if I changed my mind, I should wait right here.
After saying goodbye to the boatman who had brought me this far—
"Whoa... Yeah, this is no joke."
I let out a breath of awe at the dense forest I was about to enter.
This was the heart of a country a long way from Korea. In this world's setting, it was home to one of the largest forests alongside the Amazon. And of all its regions, this was the one even the locals avoided.
"Agopas." The Forest of Death.
That was what they called it. A place crawling with every kind of danger — poisonous animals, toxic plants, the works. And the thing you had to watch out for most wasn't the plants or animals you could at least try to avoid. It was the insects.
So I doused myself in industrial-strength bug spray and stepped into the forest. The person I needed to find was living in seclusion here, which meant going in was the only option.
"If I try to search the whole place, I'll die of old age before I find him."
The person I was looking for was an Awakened. Not just any Awakened — someone currently ranked among the strongest in the world. Searching the forest by normal means would take a lifetime. On top of that, he avoided human contact, so even if I went looking, he'd just keep dodging me.
"I'd never find him. Not by 'normal means.'"
I pulled a large water jug from my backpack and splashed its contents all around me. Then—
Ting—
I took out a lighter and tossed it onto the liquid I'd spread.
Fwoooooosh—!
The liquid — oil — caught fire at once, and given how dense the forest was, the flames spread in the blink of an eye. Just as the fire was about to grow large enough to burn me alive too—
"I thought some outsider had wandered in for the first time in ages. Turns out it was a lunatic."
A voice came from somewhere, and then—
Whoosh—!
With the soft rush of a small wind, the flames snuffed out in an instant.
"Haha..."
I'd run into a lot of Awakened lately, but this sensation was on a completely different level. I'd seen Lee Yeon-hui's incomplete Awakening and Lee Yeon-ah's unidentifiable power, and still—
It's this different?
I had no idea what had just happened, but the sensation that brushed past me was so comfortable it was almost wondrous.
"So, kid. Why are you here?"
A man trudged into view. At a glance he looked mid-thirties to early forties, though the unkempt hair and a beard that hadn't seen a trim in ages made him seem older.
"I came looking for someone."
"I'm the only person who lives out here."
"Yes. I came looking for you."
At my answer, the middle-aged man toyed with his long, drooping beard.
"You know who I am?"
"One of the heroes who brought stability to Korea as it is today. Kim Jae-gyo, am I right?"
"...Hmm. And how did you know I was here?"
"I dug around hard on the internet."
That wasn't a lie. I'd really dug hard, and it had turned up.
"Fine, whatever. Don't tell me you set the forest on fire just to find me."
"...?"
"What's with that look like you have no idea what I'm talking about?"
"Is there any other reason someone would set a forest on fire?"
"So you're not just an ordinary lunatic."
I'd wondered why he was asking a question with such an obvious answer. Apparently it had been genuinely unexpected for him.
"So. Why did you come looking for me?"
"Take on a disciple."
At my words, Kim Jae-gyo's face crumpled with irritation.
"Not 'please take me on' — 'take one on'? Kid's got one hell of a mouth on him."
"So you're saying no?"
"That's right, I'm not taking anyone. You can set fires, you can flood the place — I'll settle it with one punch either way. Go ahead and try for a hundred days, a thousand days."
He turned to walk off somewhere. Then his back went rigid at a single word from me.
"Cha Min-hui."
"..."
"Not exactly widely known information."
"Kid."
"One of Korea's Seven Heroes, fairly famous at the time. The public believes she's living in seclusion like you, but—"
"Kid."
"In reality, she's the true—"
Whoosh—!
A light breeze skimmed past my cheek. It brushed by so gently it almost felt warm. But the space it passed through was empty — carved clean out of existence, as if nothing had ever been there.
I swallowed hard. Cold sweat rolled down.
Lee Yeon-hui had produced a similar sight once, but this wasn't the same rough, overwhelming force. This was something that swept through in absolute silence.
Coming to find this man had been the right call after all.
"Kid. That is not a name you get to throw around."
The firmness of his speech was the same as before, but the temperature in his voice had gone ice-cold. The unspoken pressure said that if I kept running my mouth, I would pay for it.
"Cut the crap."
I couldn't back down here.
"Because of that crazy woman's hysterics, my friend almost died."
Kim Jae-gyo half-turned his head, and I saw his eyebrow twitch.
"What I said stands. I'm not asking you to take me as a disciple. I'm telling you to take me."
"...Where did you hear that?"
Still not giving me the answer I wanted — just grilling me. He was probably trying to figure out where I'd picked up a story that no one outside the people involved should know.
"I found it out myself."
"Speak properly. Otherwise I'll have to use somewhat rougher methods."
"Friends really do act the same, don't they?"
"Kid."
For this particular piece of information, there was no source I could invent outside the novel itself. I could have named any random person who might know the story, but given Kim Jae-gyo's personality, he'd go verify it immediately. So on this point, I couldn't yield an inch.
"I'm not saying I don't acknowledge what you all went through. It's because of that effort that Korea is peaceful now."
"I already told you. That is not something for you to speak of."
"War isn't a wound that belongs only to the people who fought it."
"..."
"It's a wound shared by everyone who lived through it."
If the Park Yeon-chan I'd possessed was a carbon copy of my childhood self, then Kim Jae-gyo had a lot in common with my younger adult years. Maybe that was why. They say similar people recognize each other — the moment I saw him, I could tell.
This man was already rotten through and through.
The brightest heroes are born in the darkest times. And when that darkness is finally lit — there's nothing left for them.
So what exactly did you manage to protect?
I clenched my fists, then forced the tension out of them, shaking my hands loose.
"So enough already. Take me as your disciple."
"And what do you plan to do once you're my disciple?"
"Is there anything you know how to do besides brawling?"
"...You need your mouth fixed before your fists."
Kim Jae-gyo let out a long breath, turned, and started trudging away. I scurried after him. He didn't react at all.
"How old are you?"
"Thirteen."
"How am I supposed to teach a kid who hasn't even Awakened?"
"I already know everything. Stop dodging."
"...You really are a lunatic."
Even among Awakened, Kim Jae-gyo was special — eccentric enough to do things no one else would ever attempt. And one of those exceptional tricks involved doing bizarre things with the mana in his own body.
"Seems I've got a lot of questions for you."
With those final words, the two of us walked deeper into the forest, where no human eyes could reach.
"Park Yeon-chan?"
"Yes. That little brat Awakened and wrecked our Jin-ho."
From within the deep darkness, someone asked a question, and the white-haired man — Lee Jae-hun — answered with a bright laugh.
"You're certain."
"I saw it with my own eyes. If I'm not certain, I must've been hit with some kind of hallucination ability, right?"
"..."
At his glib reply, the figure in the dark let out a small sigh.
"Nogoe."
"...Yes."
They called out into the empty air, and a middle-aged man with a sword appeared from somewhere.
So he really did show up.
Watching him, Lee Jae-hun looked at the man called Nogoe with the face of a child who'd just found something fun.
"In your view, what was this Park Yeon-chan like?"
"I didn't witness the Awakening itself, so it's hard to say for certain — but he was no ordinary brat. The moment he saw me, he swung a blade at me."
Khheheh... That crazy kid. He even went after Nogoe?
Lee Jae-hun barely managed to keep the corner of his mouth from twitching as he forced himself to stay composed.
"Is that so? Then we'll just have to bring him in."
"...!"
From behind Lee Jae-hun, a thin voice spoke, and a hand settled on his shoulder.
"Haha... Have you come to encourage a subordinate you haven't seen in a while?"
"You looked like you were having far too much fun on your own. That's all. Don't tense up."
The easy composure that had filled Lee Jae-hun's face a moment ago vanished, replaced by pure tension. Cold sweat was about to break out.
The figure who had been giving orders from the dark also hurried to rise — but—
"It's fine. You stay there and do your part."
At a single word from her, the body that had started to shift went still. She swept a look around once, then began clicking along in a slow circle.
"The 'key' we've been looking for seems to be that child. So."
She spoke in a soft, gentle tone, like a kindly kindergarten teacher. Her slender voice was almost intoxicating — until—
Cut.
The words broke off. Her footsteps stopped.
"No matter what it takes. Find him and bring him here."
A voice as cold as a sheet of ice rang out.
Little brat... Don't tell me even this was part of your plan?
Listening to that freezing voice, what came to mind was the kid who, even while dying, had made a wish of him.
— File one false report for me. If your boss asks about this incident, tell her that what that girl did was my doing. Say, "A brat named Park Yeon-chan caused this mess."
What are you going to show me the next time we meet?
Lee Jae-hun looked forward to his next encounter with Park Yeon-chan with great expectations — and from that moment on, the collision between him and the Freedom forces hunting the boy was already set in motion.