Chapter 66. Clearly Revealed Outline
Ryu Sea-ah was stunned by the news she had heard. The existence of a hallucination-type skill that could even deceive machines was shocking enough, but the real shock came after that.
It was one of the documents the two had brought.
The gate status board for all of Seoul on the night of the kidnapping.
That revealed a new fact.
"...Is this real? The place where our guild members were taken... was a gate?"
"Yes, if our inference is correct."
Gates, once generated, always stayed in place. There were only two ways a gate could close.
First, when someone entered it.
Second, when the gate itself collapsed due to an overflow phenomenon.
And coincidentally, between the night and dawn on the day the three disappeared, a gate near Seoul had closed.
"But isn't that not conclusive enough? Gates closing at night could just be coincidence..."
"Yes, that's true as well."
As Ryu Sea-ah clung to a sliver of hope and asked, Han Yuseol nodded impassively.
As she said, hunters didn't only operate during the day. Gates inside didn't share time with the outside world.
The outside could be day while inside it was night, or vice versa.
That's why newly awakened hunters, short on cash, often worked their day jobs in the morning and formed separate parties at night.
And there wasn't just one gate that closed during that time slot for each incident. When Kim Chaerin disappeared, three gates closed. When Jeong Hyewon vanished, four. When Lee Seung-ah was taken, two.
But there was something suspicious about them.
"However, if you check the info on the gates that closed at those times, you'll notice something odd. Did you catch it?"
"...Two of them were erosion-grade gates, right?"
"Exactly."
Among the gates that closed back then, exactly three were unusually high-level erosion-grade gates.
Typically, precursor gates needed F- to E-grade hunters, rifts E- to D-, pollution D- to C- for clearance.
But from erosion-grade onward, things changed. Generally, you needed B-grade or higher for a smooth clear.
In other words, the difficulty spiked dramatically from there.
And B-grade hunters just happening to enter during those wee hours? That smelled fishy.
Lower-grade hunters often raided gates at night to make ends meet, sure.
But B-grades were full-time pros earning more than big-corp salaries. Unless driven by intense duty, they wouldn't raid gates at that hour out of desperation.
Plus.
"Two of the three kidnapped were B-grade hunters. Pollution-grade? A single B-grade could probably clear it solo. But..."
"...Erosion-grade is a different story. So, they deliberately threw those two into erosion-grade gates to ensure they died?"
"If our guess is right, yes."
Ryu Sea-ah ground her teeth, clenching her fist hard.
She'd been half-doubting at first.
But as the pieces fit together one by one, it felt like the truth was emerging.
And that truth was the last thing she wanted to know.
The most hopeless, miserable ending.
"For now, if we check the CCTV around those three suspected gates, we should get a clearer picture."
"I'll request that from the police. Thank you for your help."
She expressed gratitude verbally.
But her face was twisted into something indescribably grotesque.
And for good reason. Assuming all this was true, there was nothing left she could do.
The only way to bring someone out of a gate?
They cleared it themselves and walked out on their own two feet.
That was it.
They probably tossed them in naked, without items or anything. No matter how strong those girls were, surviving that...
The more she imagined it, the more her body and mind plunged into an abyss.
So despairing that not even tears came.
She needed to contact the police for the CCTV right away.
But if the girl in front of her saw it and confirmed the truth, she might not hold out.
So Ryu Sea-ah just kept tilting her already empty teacup endlessly.
That was when.
"Um..."
A little bunny girl timidly raised her hand.
Her fidgeting was so adorable it slightly cleansed Ryu Sea-ah's shattered heart.
"Yes, Hayang? Do you have something to say?"
"If you confirm they entered the gates, could you contact me right away? I have a way to rescue them."
"......Pardon?"
But those follow-up words smacked the back of her head hard.
A way to rescue them?
A method to pull someone out of a gate?
Sure, there was the dimensional warper device.
But that only worked if they took items in and walked out themselves.
Not even she, an S-grade hunter, had heard of entering a already-closed gate.
"R-Really? There's a method like that...?"
But right now, facts didn't matter to her.
There was a rescue method.
That alone reignited the dying embers of hope.
"Y-Yeah, there is. I can't guarantee it'll definitely work... but the possibility..."
"Please, I beg you! Money, compensation—name your price...!"
"N-No, it's not about that."
Han Yuseol glanced at the flustered Hayang waving her hands and chimed in.
"Instead of this, let's contact the police now and check the CCTV first. They might've tampered with that too, so we'll go along. We can talk details after."
"R-Right. I lost my head. Eun-hye! Eun-hye!"
She bellowed for her secretary at the top of her lungs.
She immediately called the police and arranged to review all CCTV near the gates where they vanished that day.
Thankfully, they cooperated quickly.
Soon, they retrieved the footage and brought it straight to the guild HQ.
"Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency Investigation Division, Detective Sergeant Jeong Jae-il."
"Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency Investigation Division, Inspector Kim Min-su. Here's the footage you requested."
"Thank you."
Hayang and Han Yuseol took it, said they had something to check, and asked for a moment before leaving Black Rose Guild HQ.
The two returned just under 30 minutes later.
As the three waiting tilted their heads in confusion at their blank expressions, Hayang and Han Yuseol exchanged glances and sat back down.
"From what we saw, nothing seemed off."
While the two had gone to the gates, Inspector Kim Min-su, who checked the backup footage, spoke up.
Ryu Sea-ah, who had reviewed it too, nodded with a shadowed face.
They'd hoped to catch the culprit's face.
But that hope fell flat.
"No. We confirmed it. The culprit's face was on the CCTV."
"...Pardon?"
But the moment Han Yuseol spoke firmly, all three were dumbfounded.
Han Yuseol finally began explaining in detail.
"The CCTV would've mismatched the status board if the gate just stayed there, so they faked it as a normal party entering. At least that's how it looked to me, but to my little sister..."
"...I see. You saw the culprit shoving our guild member into the gate. The discrepancy between you two means it was manipulated footage."
Ryu Sea-ah finally realized it was the same trick as the prior CCTV tampering.
She clicked her tongue and clenched her fist.
"C-Could you explain what you're talking about?"
Detective Sergeant Jeong Jae-il asked blankly, so Han Yuseol explained the situation in Hayang's stead.
"Hard to explain specifically, but my little sister can see through hallucination-type skills. We checked all the footage together, and exactly three clips had differing reactions between us."
"Differing reactions mean..."
"They were manipulated by a hallucination skill."
"Hard to believe. A hallucination skill that fools machines too..."
"A world where we can't even trust machines anymore..."
If true, someone else awakening a similar skill could commit more crimes unchecked.
And the problem was, only Hayang could pierce the illusion.
Not solid evidence.
So Jeong Jae-il asked Hayang gently, coaxing her.
"Little miss. Sorry, but could you draw what the criminal's face looked like?"
At least it was fortunate. The area near the gate was well-lit by streetlights, and with CCTV close by, a sketch was feasible if she'd seen the face.
"Sure! I'll try."
Hayang took a sheet of paper and started sketching.
Everyone watched breathlessly.
"Done!"
"...Hmm."
Everyone was momentarily speechless.
"H-How is it, sis? Did I draw it well?"
"Yes, very well. Your handwriting's gotten so pretty too."
"Hehe..."
Hayang scratched her head shyly at Han Yuseol's praise.
Meanwhile, the three from the police sharpened their eyes the moment they saw it.
"Inspector Kim, this scar... It's that guy, right?"
"Yes. Thought he'd fled overseas, but he was hiding domestically after all."
They whispered among themselves.
"Someone suspicious?"
As Ryu Sea-ah overheard and asked, the two exchanged looks.
"Yes. You hunters have probably heard. Vendetta Guild—they shook up the country back then. Their real leader, Bae Deokjun."
They uttered a name that was both familiar and not.
In that instant, every puzzle piece clicked in Ryu Sea-ah's mind.