The Veil's Watchful Eyes
The crowd roared as a fireball exploded with a deafening whoosh—whoooosh!
"Ughhh…! M-my hands…!"
I had severed both ankles and wrists of the two men and burned the stumps with fireballs. Then I poured healing potions over the clean cuts. The smooth wounds immediately shriveled and wrinkled like dried jerky being yanked from an arm.
"Nooooo!!! Krrraaaaghh— Grrk…"
The man now condemned to live without arms or legs for the rest of his life wept tears mixed with blood. Why does crying look so damn ugly?
I grabbed the sobbing man by his collar, hoisted him up, and hurled him in front of the other guy. The two of them stared at each other’s blunt, severed limbs and immediately started screaming loud enough to shake the surroundings again.
Those two seem pretty relaxed.
One was a bandit-like man with a build even larger than Lizard No. 1. The other was a boyish figure perched on the big man’s shoulder. The pair sat back lazily, giggling as they watched the so-called “trash-tier” hunters brawl.
The other two… must be those guys.
They were easy to spot thanks to their matching outfits—two men wearing modified yellow and red hanbok-style robes. They had just finished off their opponents and were now maintaining their weapons. One used a steel chain, the other a scythe.
A scythe was certainly an unusual weapon… The large, crescent-shaped blade didn’t look particularly efficient at first glance. But seeing how the man in red was drenched head to toe in blood, turning his clothes a deep crimson, he clearly knew how to wield it.
Impressive bunch.
They were probably a full tier above the guys whose limbs I had just chopped off. Since I had easily overpowered the Ilseom scrubs, one might assume these guys wouldn’t be much either—but that wasn’t the case. Those earlier opponents had simply been too weak to use their full strength. If they had gone all out, three of them could have given me quite a hard time. Only because they let their guard down did it end so quickly. That’s why you can never get cocky just because you’ve gotten a little stronger.
Even in the same dungeon rank, there were always one or two teams as strong as these robed men. The four of them noticed me staring and immediately shut their mocking mouths, preparing for any surprise attack.
They were definitely different from the scrubs. The moment they sensed even the slightest threat, they immediately focused on creating conservative personal space and reorganizing their stance.
I really don’t want to fight these guys if I can help it.
But things never went the way I wanted, so maybe it was better to just assume we’d end up fighting…
"Haa— that feels so refreshing!!"
Arin dusted off her hands with a bright, beaming smile. In stark contrast to her pure, innocent grin, the state of Heo Min-sol behind her was utterly miserable. Her face was twice as swollen as when I first saw her—clearly Arin had kept hitting the exact same spot over and over.
"She used to point at the ears on top of my head and call me a crazy bitch all the time. And she only did it when no one else was looking. So I gave her head a ton of knuckle sandwiches! Hohoho!"
She really went for some serious revenge…
I shook my head and approached the woman named Heo Min-sol.
"…Huh? I-Ilwol, I already punished her!"
Swoosh—
"Kyaaaaaah!! Hiiihk…!"
That’s what you think.
I made Heo Min-sol look just like her arrogant seniors. I didn’t forget to burn her hands and feet with fireballs either. Glug glug glug— The moment I poured the potion, her severed stumps began healing rapidly. She stared up at me with eyes that clearly couldn’t believe what was happening.
Why is he doing this to me?
Her trembling pupils seemed to ask exactly that. There were plenty of reasons if I wanted to list them, but honestly, even if there wasn’t a special one, it wouldn’t matter. In this world, simply saying “her fingernails looked unlucky” would be reason enough.
"……"
Baek A-rin looked back and forth between the severed hand and my back, then seemed to remember something. She pulled a flare gun from her inventory.
Shooo— Boom!
What a good kid. She’s getting along surprisingly well with Bae Jua.
If Bae Jua’s personality sat somewhere between neutral and evil, Baek A-rin was the complete opposite. Usually birds of a feather flocked together, yet somehow these two had become close.
The green flare meant to call for staff shot high into the sky and burst. Thanks to the Mimic’s isolation magic, they could only provide emergency treatment for now, but at least it would prevent her from becoming monster food.
Victory over Baek A-rin’s party of 4 versus Lee Seung-jun’s party of 4
The victory message rang out a little late, and the spatial barrier that had separated us from the other party finally dissolved. Of course, only I could sense it, so I was the only one who reacted immediately.
The spatial separation had been lifted between us and the four men in the modified hanbok-style robes. If this really is a tournament format, I might have to fight them… This is getting annoying.
It was the difference between an opponent I could definitely beat and one where defeat was at least possible. And now that I thought about it, these guys were members of the assassin organization called Veil. A group formed by people with assassin traits. I recalled that, perhaps to stay true to their concept, they had never officially registered with any guild.
"G-good work, Ilwol…"
Yeonhee had somehow made her way to my side. She was fidgeting with her foot on the ground, clearly at a loss for what to do. I thought it was strange that she was acting like this after already witnessing people being killed, but maybe leaving them alive like this felt even more horrifying.
This might only be the beginning…
I needed to gradually increase the intensity of the stimulation so that when a real crisis came, her body wouldn’t freeze up. Still, I had at least tried to shield her from the most decisive scenes… Hmm.
"F-for now, let’s move over there and talk."
We left the battlefield where fighting was still raging and headed toward the outer edge. We couldn’t interfere with the others’ battles, but the separated spaces were pushing our bodies outward on their own. It felt like a giant balloon swelling up and saying, You are not allowed to be here.
Step—
The moment we started moving, the four-man group also distanced themselves and moved toward the outskirts.
"Those people… they don’t seem ordinary?"
"Do we really have to fight them? Their aura is no joke…"
"Ughhh… the mirror…"
Still, a hunter was a hunter. Arin had already returned to her usual self. Jua was gently stroking Arin’s back, while Yeonhee watched with worried eyes, silently asking if she was really okay.
"I-I’m fine!"
Arin’s cheeks flushed red, as if she found this awkward yet not entirely unpleasant atmosphere rather nice.
"A-anyway! Let’s forget what’s past and think about what’s ahead!"
Even though the past must have been an enormous burden for her, the fact that she was trying so hard to act calm made her seem admirable.
Twitch—
For a split second I almost reached out to pat her head, but a chilling sensation made me quickly avert my gaze from Arin’s head.
Goooooo—
"……Ilwol… Did you just… No, never mind?"
"Clack!! Clack clack!!"
It had only been the tiniest, unconscious movement, yet Yeonhee seemed to have noticed what I was about to do. How could she tell when she wasn’t even looking at me the whole time? A woman’s intuition really was something else.
"……Yeah."
…Scary.
The sensation I had felt from Yeonhee just now was even more terrifying than the one I felt when I died. I made a firm resolution to be extra careful around her from now on.
"Huh??"
Jua and Arin looked at us with momentary confusion, but we soon reached the outer boundary of the isolated space and continued the conversation we had started earlier.
"I don’t know what kind of bullshit is going on right now, but let’s just focus on the current situation."
Arin still needed a moment to collect herself, so Jua took the lead in the discussion.
"Thanks to Ilwol’s hard work we won easily, but you all know, right? Ilseom is not the kind of group that stays quiet if you mess with them."
That was true. Every guild was like that to some extent, but Ilseom was especially notorious for it. Maybe it was because they spent so much time living together in the mountains after joining—perhaps it fostered an unusually strong sense of camaraderie.
"Um… from what I overheard earlier, people were saying they’d be too embarrassed to retaliate… Do you think that’s true?"
The suspicion in Yeonhee’s eyes when she looked at me had completely vanished. Now her face was full of worry as she asked Jua.
"That’s the silver lining, at least. Ilwol probably didn’t think that far ahead, but if all of us had gotten involved and it turned into a team battle, it would have been incredibly exhausting."
"You don’t have to worry about me hitting Heo Min-sol. I used to be part of Ilseom anyway, so they wouldn’t actually kill me, right~?"
Arin raised both arms in a gesture that said everything was fine.
Actually, the fact that a former fellow disciple got involved might make it an even bigger issue. The real problem isn’t those two sons, it’s Hyun Jung-gil’s brother…
"Anyway, quite a few people were watching, so I don’t think they’ll make a huge deal out of it. Didn’t the instructors all try to stop you when you were leaving, Arin?"
"Y-yeah! They even said they’d go through the formal disciplinary process for the kids who bullied me!"
"That’s why you should have stayed until they actually punished those bastards, you idiot."
"Hiiing… How was I supposed to know they’d act like that even after I left…"
"…Fine. And everyone already knows that Yeonhee is planning to join the White Knight Guild. Or rather, they already see her as part of it. So it won’t be easy for them to interfere. Still, Ilseom isn’t the kind of guild that schemes behind people’s backs."
That’s true. It’s just that a few of the instructors are complete lunatics.
As I listened, an old memory surfaced. I hadn’t experienced it myself, but I had heard that quite a few of Ilseom’s instructors were perverts. I didn’t know if it was some kind of temperament that came from pursuing the path of the sword, but if rumors like that spread, they clearly weren’t normal people.
Uncle Hyun is perfectly fine, so how did the ones beneath him turn out like that… He really should get more involved in guild management.
Hyun Jung-gil had entrusted guild operations to his younger brother and two sons so he could focus solely on his martial arts. That was probably why those worms on the floor were wriggling around so freely.
"Hmm— From what I can tell, the ones we need to worry about are those four over there… and that bear beastman’s party? Aren’t they the same people who entered the Wolf Cave with us?"