White Ghost
Everything unfolded exactly as it had been planned.
Simultaneous terrorist strikes on key facilities throughout Area 3, combined with a wide-area assault over the Academy's airspace, pinned down both the freshmen and the faculty.
Those who charged in through the front gate were the bloodthirsty — the vengeance-obsessed, the fanatics, the swarms of monstrous insects.
Meanwhile, the treasure-hunting team led by Cheon Geomhwa had concealed themselves thoroughly and successfully reached the Academy's treasure vault.
The information Berze had provided was genuine.
The guards assigned to protect the vault had been drawn out to intercept the villains.
They included the security team and a faculty of former Hunters and Heroes.
"What's the Iron Witch doing here…?"
But among those who had raided the vault was Cheon Geomhwa herself.
With a shriek like bending metal, the countless steel flower petals floating around Cheon Geomhwa danced in the wind like cherry blossoms.
When the dance ended, the only one still standing was Cheon Geomhwa.
Whistling.
"Now that's something impressive."
Picking, the villain notorious as a safecracker, whistled in admiration.
Cheon Geomhwa glared at him, but he only shrugged, saying what good was it to have the treasure if you couldn't crack the vault.
"Don't rush it."
"Yeah, yeah, is there any other way?"
While Baba Yaga and everyone else had their eyes fixed on the suicidal attackers pouring through the front gate, they needed to strip the vault quickly.
Screeeech!
Picking began dismantling the vault door with the equipment each of them had brought.
"Tsk tsk, so frustrating."
"I'll help too. This part needs to be taken apart like this."
Others who had come to grab their share — those with abilities related to thievery — clustered alongside to lend a hand.
Cheon Geomhwa waited with mounting anxiety.
"Don't glare at me. A vault with the Management Bureau's influence on it — it's not like it'll pop open just because you're impatient."
"Were you just standing around watching from the back?"
"Don't forget our deal. The other treasures are ours to split, and you only take that Ember or whatever flame it is."
"I've already set a Geas, so rest easy."
"Everyone heard that, right? Let's just get to work and stop worrying!"
Cheon Geomhwa turned toward the entrance of the treasure vault.
Whoosh.
The blood staining her combat suit looked especially red today.
"It's over."
Cheon Geomhwa felt in her entire body that she had fallen completely to the bottom.
Among the former Hunters and Heroes collapsed on the ground were people she had known.
People she had once fought alongside as comrades, as seniors and juniors on the same battlefield — she had killed them with her own hands.
All for the sake of coveting treasure.
"I had already… accepted this."
Cheon Geomhwa clenched her trembling fists.
The sins and blood she had stained her hands with to save Roseria would follow her for the rest of her life.
And now that she had attacked the Academy, the Management Bureau's Watchers would move.
That was all the more reason she had to take the Ember — the relic the Saintess had left behind at the Academy.
Cheon Geomhwa released the armaments she had been carrying.
Each piece of equipment transformed into a steel flower, taking root and blooming at various points throughout the vault.
Their number reached several hundred.
Each of those flowers was no different from an instant bomb — the moment anyone touched one, it would explode and drive steel blades into their body.
"But why is it so quiet in here?"
"Quiet is good, right? Looks like they're too busy out there to even notice us."
Even though a fierce battle should be raging outside right now, not a single sound from the exterior reached them.
Only the sounds of the villains working on the vault and their conversations echoed dully.
Then — silence.
It was a bizarre sight.
As if their existence had never existed in the first place, heads detached from bodies and floated slowly through the air.
Even watching it with her own eyes, Cheon Geomhwa couldn't register it as strange.
One of the safecrackers, face as calm as if classical music were playing, his head fell off without even realizing he was dead.
None of the other vault-robbers, eyes glazed over with greed, noticed that the person beside them had died.
"Take cover!"
"Take cover? What…?"
Cheon Geomhwa understood what this meant.
She was the only one present who had recently seen that fundamental technique firsthand.
"Hrk…!"
"Wh-what is this?"
It was a bizarre entity.
Someone clad entirely in white, from head to toe, stood boldly among the villains.
"I-I can see it, right?"
There was definitely something in front of them. Picking and the other safecrackers all reacted the same way.
"What on earth is that…?"
The problem was that none of them could even perceive whether that white thing was a girl or a boy, or even whether it was human at all.
All they could tell was that there was something white there.
It was the kind of sickly sensation you'd only get in a nightmare while still awake.
"What the hell is that, fuck!"
"I-is it even a person?"
"Was this part of the Academy's security system?"
Feeling as though they were looking at a living ghost, the vault-robbers hastily put distance between themselves and the white figure.
"What are you doing? Just kill it!"
"Kill it!"
But those who approached the white thing without backing away collapsed to the ground like puppets with cut strings, motionless.
"What the fuck?"
"I-it's dead? I didn't even see it move?"
It was visible yet unseen, present yet absent.
Cheon Geomhwa trembled as she spoke the name of that white entity.
"…White Ghost."
"What…?"
"That's White Ghost, standing right there."
"Shit! Why is a retired legend here! Of all places, inside the Academy's treasure vault!!!"
"I don't… know."
At Picking's indignant shout, White Ghost began to move.
She didn't run quickly.
She simply walked forward, one step at a time, as if taking a leisurely stroll.
And then she vanished in an instant.
Like a lightbulb flickering on, her very presence evaporated and was erased.
By the time the white figure reappeared, her hand had already swung.
Each time, another villain's head dropped to the floor.
With White Ghost's gestures, what appeared to be pure white clothing fluttered and swayed like a dance.
Each time a dance step ended, a neck was severed.
Even watching with their own eyes, the people couldn't register that someone was dying.
It was nothing short of a bizarre occurrence.
"Fuck! What the hell!"
"A-ah, I can't hear anything!"
Heads fell from bodies, blood fountains sprayed, and bodies collapsed — yet not a single sound could be heard.
"…!"
"…?!"
In the end, even the sounds coming from their own mouths ceased to be heard.
They screamed with all their might, but nothing came out of their mouths.
Cheon Geomhwa detonated all several hundred steel flowers she had planted on the ground simultaneously, without sparing a single one.
Still, no sound could be heard — but at her will, the steel flowers burst into full bloom.
The storm of petals spreading out like a dense curtain was violence itself, woven into a surface.
It sheared through half the vault door and caused an impact and dust storm strong enough to collapse the building — but…
"…?"
Still, not a single sound could be heard.
She had seen it once from her disciple.
She had seen it a second time when White Ghost cut down the safecracker villains.
And now, a third time — directed at herself.
Trusting in the experience and intuition she had accumulated over long years, Cheon Geomhwa threw her body into the attack.
She became the first among those present to avoid having her neck severed by White Ghost's strike.
"But at the cost of one arm."
She had clearly dodged the blow meant to cut White Ghost's neck, yet the fact that she had still lost an arm sent chills through Cheon Geomhwa's entire body.
She had touched the wall and thought she could soon cross over — she had believed the realm of legend was not far off. But that was arrogance.
The gap between White Ghost and herself was nothing short of an overwhelming chasm.
"When I saw your disciple, I wondered… but I never imagined you yourself would come."
Crack!
The steel flowers wrapped around the wound of Cheon Geomhwa's severed arm, staunching the bleeding.
"I have already accepted my fate. But… to save my sister, I must have that Ember within you."
Whoosh!
She was willing to do anything for that, so Cheon Geomhwa pushed her abilities beyond their limits alongside a drug injection.
Just as she was about to pull out even the rebar forming the building's entire structure…
White Ghost spoke for the first time.
"Disciple?"
Contrary to expectations, a young girl's voice flowed out.
After receiving Baba Yaga's message, White Ghost ended her seclusion and headed for the Academy.
White Ghost didn't even read the message properly.
Yet she headed for the Academy simply to honor her old comrade's trust.
If Baba Yaga had reached out to her, it must be something serious.
That was all she had guessed.
She cast only a brief glance at the Abaddon's Spawn causing havoc at the front gate.
Monsters putting on a show without the scent of blood were no concern of White Ghost's.
She left the riffraff pouring through the front gate to Baba Yaga and the others there to handle on their own.
White Ghost followed the most dangerous footsteps.
Those footsteps led to the treasure vault — and their owner turned out to be Cheon Geomhwa.
Anyone she encountered along the way had their neck severed.
The criminals trying to rob the vault were merely swept up in the disaster that was Cheon Geomhwa.
"You said 'disciple'?"
White Ghost spoke for the first time, addressing Cheon Geomhwa, who had dodged her strike.
For White Ghost, cutting someone's throat was a natural thing.
Those she intended to kill were no different from corpses.
And one did not converse with corpses.
That was White Ghost's way.
But when Cheon Geomhwa — who had not become a corpse — uttered the intriguing word "disciple," White Ghost attempted conversation for the first time.
White Ghost stood upright; Cheon Geomhwa knelt with her head bowed.
The exchange between them was anything but ordinary.
Yet neither of them paid any mind to that fact.
"Yes. A girl named Tiss said with her own mouth that she was your disciple, White Ghost."
"Did you see her yourself?"
"Yes, I saw her. It was unmistakably your Silent Killing Method. The reason I could dodge your strike just now is because I had seen it once recently."
White Ghost looked at Cheon Geomhwa.
She was not lying.
"…You look remarkably like my disciple."
"…"
Cheon Geomhwa did not respond to idle remarks.
White Ghost pondered the possibility that a disciple she didn't know truly existed, rummaging through her memories.
Long ago, after finishing an adventure with the Hero, they had decided to deposit their respective treasures in a vault — and White Ghost had left behind her secret manual.
But one day a theft occurred, and afterward, even White Ghost herself did not know the manual's whereabouts.
"Someone somewhere must have picked it up."
That was what she had thought, and she had cut off her interest in it.
Whether someone used it to cut down monsters or people, White Ghost had not cared.
But now was different. Both Cheon Geomhwa and Baba Yaga were claiming connections to her.
The word "disciple" that appeared in that situation naturally drew her interest.
White Ghost slowly raised her hand, and Cheon Geomhwa closed her eyes, knowing it was all over.
But as time passed, nothing happened.
Opening her eyes at the warm warmth she felt near her face, Cheon Geomhwa saw White Ghost holding something that burned with a bright, warm glow.
"That's… could it be?"
It was the Ember she had been searching for.
Why would she give this to me?
As Cheon Geomhwa reached out with her single remaining hand, White Ghost spoke.
"I will tell you what you must do from now on."
And with that, Cheon Geomhwa's voice and form vanished.
"Pretend to attack the witch, and pierce the one who calls herself your disciple."
If she ran, she would die.
Face death and fight the one called "disciple" with all her strength.
And if she survived, she would be given the Ember.
Cheon Geomhwa, with one arm severed, had no choice.
It was a harsh trial White Ghost had laid upon Tiss.
If someone bore her name, they had to prove they were worthy of bearing the weight that name carried.
If they had true qualification, they would endure and prove it. If not, they would merely reveal themselves as a hollow pretender wearing the name.
A fake would crumble naturally, like rotten straw.
But — what if that person showed qualification worthy of her name?
White Ghost thought of Baba Yaga's face, always singing that she longed for a disciple.
"Perhaps… I'll raise one."
For the first time, White Ghost began to consider the choice of passing on her legacy.