Chapter 60
I’m translating the full chapter now, keeping the system messages in styled HTML blocks and preserving the novel’s tone. Next I’ll render the narration cleanly into readable paragraphs and then do a quick consistency pass on names/terms.CHAPTER_TITLE: Chapter 60
■ Ownership of Silver Crystal Fragment 4 has been transferred.
■ Bound holder: Tae Yongjin > Lee Jinwoo.
■ Korka’s apparition manifests.
■ The true trait of Silver Crystal Fragment 4 appears.
■ Four transfer movements have been completed. Special effect activated.
■ Silver Crystal Fragment seeks out another fragment.
■ The Four Seasons God, Etem, takes interest in the one who holds the fragment.
■ Ownership transfer of the fragment has been completed four times. Further transfer is impossible.
“Uh...?”
I froze as a flurry of system windows appeared. Reading the words inside them, I blinked in confusion.
What does that mean?
Something about the manifestation of the true trait. Something about seeking out another fragment.
But the biggest problem was this.
Ownership transfer impossible...?
I stared at the line saying no further transfer of ownership was possible and went still.
“This can’t be good...”
“...Why?”
Irene looked at me, puzzled. Seeing that expression, I hesitated before speaking. I figured I had to say it.
“...The relic’s bound ownership has transferred, but a message popped up saying no further transfer of ownership is possible.”
“Excuse me?”
Tae Yongjin’s eyes widened at my words.
“...What do you mean? It can’t be transferred anymore?”
“That’s what the system says.”
“...Hmm.”
Irene stared at me without a word.
I felt that familiar pressure brush past me. She was probably trying to figure out whether I was lying again.
“...Impossible to transfer ownership...”
“Yes...”
“That means... it’s a bound item...”
Irene’s gaze drifted to Silver Crystal Fragment.
“A bound item?”
Jin Yeonhui reacted this time, catching onto Irene’s words. Bound item. That part mattered.
“Bound items start at minimum A-class, don’t they? So you’re saying that relic is at that level?”
“...Probably.”
“...You really thought of handing something like that over to the government?”
Jin Yeonhui asked in astonishment, and Tae Yongjin gave an awkward laugh.
“...I thought it was something too great to keep in my hands. I had no idea it would turn out like this.”
“...Forced binding...”
And apparently that relic had even changed so that ownership couldn’t be transferred anymore.
“What are we supposed to do now?”
When I asked Irene, she answered with a flat expression.
“...No idea.”
“Excuse me?”
“...We’ll know once we get there.”
...We had to go back to the Association first. She said we’d only know the situation after seeing it with our own eyes.
“...We still need to report it, too. For now... let’s go.”
“...”
Silver Crystal Fragment. An SS-class relic. I’d have to go to the Association with it bound to me.
Just as I was swallowing dryly at the thought—
“Ah... right...”
Irene’s face changed, as if she’d suddenly remembered something important.
What was it? Had she figured something out?
“Irene?”
“...Cake.”
“Pardon?”
“...What happened to the cake?”
“...Ah.”
At that, I made the same face Irene did.
“...I forgot.”
“...”
Krk.
Somewhere, I heard a harsh sound. It came from Irene’s hand.
“Irene...?”
“...You forgot the cake?”
“No, it’s just that... circumstances...”
Couldn’t I just buy it again? Not anymore—the shop was already closed. It was a hopeless situation. Cold sweat ran down my back as I tried to think of how to fix this.
“If you mean cake, are you talking about the one from next door?” Tae Yongjin asked suddenly.
“Huh? Ah, yes, that’s right.”
“Ah! In that case...”
He walked over to the refrigerator, opened it, and took something out.
“Oh. That’s...”
It was cake. A cake neatly wrapped in a box.
“Ah, the owner of the place next door is a friend of mine, so he sometimes gives me one at closing time.”
“...Ah... ooh...”
Irene’s eyes sparkled. It was the liveliest look I’d seen from her in a long time.
“Luckily, I had something I could give you.”
“...Are you sure it’s okay to give this to us?”
“Hahaha. Of course. It’s not like I’m not used to eating them. I’m just glad I can give it to the knights.”
“...Thank you.”
“Not at all. I should be the one thanking you for helping me...”
Thanks to Tae Yongjin’s consideration, we even got cake. Irene held it to her chest as if it were treasure.
“...Thank you.”
It was the first time I’d ever seen Irene bow to someone.
Receiving thanks from the strongest person on Earth, Tae Yongjin looked thoroughly dazed.
“...Let’s go now.”
With Jin Yeonhui sounding thoroughly exhausted, we got into the car.
Irene came with us, too.
And just like that, our trip to Gwangju—both long and not long at all—came to an end.
* * *
Drrrr. Drrrr.
I heard a constant rattling sound, something like gears turning, or pieces being fitted together.
Within that shifting noise—
“Ah... ahhh...”
a blindfolded woman staggered and collapsed.
“Ah... ahhh... a star... a star has fallen...”
Inside a massive crystal orb, one of the black stars embedded within it crumbled and vanished.
“Why... why...”
Tears seeped from beneath the pure white blindfold. As she sobbed miserably, the woman’s small shoulders trembled.
Click.
At that moment, the door opened and someone entered.
“A star has fallen, hmm?”
It was a figure in a cloak. A cold, barren voice filled the room.
“...I see.”
There was sorrow in his voice, too.
“So Yoon Yeon is gone.”
It was easy enough to tell whose star had faded.
Yoon Yeon.
Her star had fallen.
“...It stings.”
It hurt. It burned from the inside out.
The cloaked figure stood beside the woman and stared at the orb.
“Muhee.”
“...Yes.”
“Do you know how Yoon Yeon met her end?”
“...”
At those words, the woman called Muhee clasped both hands together.
Wooooosh-!!!
A faint light poured from her body. When the shimmering aura filled the room in an instant—
“...I’m sorry...”
Muhee spoke in a tired voice.
“I can’t... see anything.”
“...”
The cloak stirred at that answer.
“...You can’t see? Even with your eyes?”
“...Yes. There is only darkness... deep, deep darkness...”
Muhee’s body trembled. Unlike the trembling from before, this one was unmistakably fear.
“Something is blocking everything ahead of me. I can’t see a thing... This... this is...”
Her frail shoulders shook violently beneath the hands clenched over them.
Seeing how close she looked to losing her mind, the cloaked figure placed a hand on her shoulder.
Only then did her trembling subside.
“...Don’t overdo it.”
If she couldn’t see, there was no need to force herself. Yoon Yeon’s death was regrettable, but he could not afford to lose Muhee as well.
Even Muhee can’t see ahead?
What on earth happened to Yoon Yeon?
As he thought that, searching for answers—
“Cough.”
the cloaked figure suddenly coughed. Then he swayed for a moment. The turmoil inside him still hadn’t settled.
“...Korka...”
He called to his god.
-Wuuuuung-!!!
His body shook with the vibrations rising from within.
-...Find it...-
At some point, the god’s once-clear voice had become horribly broken.
-...Find him... now... Musin... you must find him...-
Wuuung-!!!
The words barely reached him before fading again.
“...Huuuu...”
The god’s voice cut off. The cloaked figure slowly straightened.
His strength still hadn’t returned properly. It had been that way since that day.
...Since the day Lord Korka turned his gaze toward us.
The day their god stirred because he’d obtained something—
that was the day something went wrong with his body.
From then on, the plan they’d been preparing began to unravel and twist out of shape. It was probably around then, too, that everything started going wrong.
“...Rest.”
Leaving Muhee behind, the man stepped outside. A figure was kneeling there.
“...Yoon Yeon is dead.”
“...”
Another masked figure.
“Investigate how it happened... and also,” the cloaked figure said, looking out the window, “tell Bluebird... that we may need to move a little faster.”
“Understood.”
With that, the masked man vanished.
The cloaked figure could only stare out at the green sky beyond the window.
* * *
A few hours after what happened in Gwangju, I returned to where we’d originally been with Irene and Jin Yeonhui.
“...I’ll handle the report... tomorrow, so... rest for now.”
I’d thought we’d need to rush straight into reporting the situation, but Irene told me to get some rest first. I’d already been to the medical unit before coming back, and fortunately, there was nothing wrong with my body.
“But... make sure... you write the report properly...”
“...Understood.”
After being ordered to write up reports on Jin Yeonhui’s matter and my own, I returned to my room.
“...Ugh...”
Only then, with the tension finally gone, did I slump to the floor.
“Haah... ha...”
My hands were shaking. My fingertips wouldn’t stop trembling.
I...
Was it only now sinking in?
I killed someone.
The delayed sensation seeped through my whole body.
...With these hands, I...
The feeling of killing Yoon Yeon, the terrorist, was still vivid. It was different from what I’d done inside the Gate.
The thought that I had truly taken a life.
That was what kept disrupting my breathing.
“...”
What still felt strange was this.
Why?
Why did it stop right here? Why wasn’t I throwing up, or drowning in some insane wave of guilt?
That was the sensation.
As if I’d accomplished something I needed to do.
The fact that it had been my first time was terrifyingly unfamiliar, but the tension stopped at that level.
“Ugh...”
I should have caught her.
I should have subdued Yoon Yeon and wrung information out of her. I hadn’t expected her to die like that.
“...And here I am thinking about this kind of thing.”
What I regretted more was the fact that I hadn’t been able to extract any information from her.
Everything about this still felt strange.
...Am I broken somewhere?
People sometimes said that, didn’t they? Those who had memories of a previous life and became unnervingly accustomed to killing or violence.
Was I one of those people too?
...I don’t know.
The synchronization rate was far too low. I didn’t even have much in the way of past-life memories, so how could this be happening?
“Water...”
I needed to drink something. I took out a bottle of water from the refrigerator and gulped it down.
It finally felt like my mind was clearing. Just as I was letting out a breath in relief—
Quest reward.
— something I’d forgotten about surfaced again.
“...Right.”
Besides getting Silver Crystal Fragment, I remembered what I’d originally gained through the quest.
Reward acquired.
When I checked the system, a box dropped in front of me with a soft thud. It seemed this was the reward.
And then—
The incubation condition for the egg (???) has been released.
The egg’s incubation condition.
It was information about the strange egg I’d obtained last time.
So that mysterious egg had an incubation condition after all.
But they were giving that to me as a reward? Just how amazing was it supposed to be?
The incubation condition for egg (???) is consumption of a relic.
Consumption of a relic...?
The explanation was bizarre.
Feed the egg a specific relic of S-class or higher.
Thus, please hatch the god sealed within the egg.
Ping-!
The held relics, Silver Crystal Fragment 4 and Dragon Bracelet, are reacting.
Would you like to feed them to egg (???)?
The relic fed to it will not return.
“...What?”
Feed an S-class-or-higher relic to it. In other words, this meant that a relic capable of being sold to fund an entire city could be reduced to nothing more than food.