Chapter 76
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 76
Chapter Title: If You're Sorry, You Should Die (1)
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Choi Soo-hyun and Park Si-woo looked at me at the same time.
‘Did I speak too soon…? But it's the truth.’
Park Si-woo looked at me as if he needed an explanation.
There was one thing I had to confirm before explaining.
“It's true that you both met or knew unaffiliated Hunters besides Jeong Hyun-sung, right?”
“My memory isn't bad.”
“Hey, it's me, Choi Soo-hyun. No matter how much of a tax thief I am, there's no way I'd forget something like that.”
So he admits he's a tax thief.
Whatever.
I pointed a finger at the two of them.
“You say that, but you can't remember, can you? Jeong Hyun-sung? Who are the other unaffiliated Hunters besides him? Name one.”
“Well…”
“I mean…”
The two of them stared blankly at each other, dumbfounded.
‘Something was definitely strange.’
In a world where you Awaken and have to serve a god, why do unaffiliated Awakened Ones, chosen by no gods, even appear?
On top of that, there was a subtle contempt and disregard for unaffiliated Awakened Ones among Hunters.
Was it simply because they were weak? That wasn't the issue.
It felt as if someone had orchestrated it to be that way.
“I'm not doubting your memories. If there's a problem, wouldn't it be with those unaffiliated Awakened Ones?”
“What kind of problem?”
“How am I supposed to know if you're asking me?”
Even though I'd said it, I was just as bewildered.
For now, there was one simple fact to start with.
“For some reason, the memories of unaffiliated Awakened Ones have been erased.”
Park Si-woo was right.
Unless the two of them were conspiring to lie, that was the most likely explanation.
And the problem wasn't just that they had disappeared from memory.
“Erased from records, existence wiped. Well… there's no official term, so call it what you want. You remember that unaffiliated Hunters existed, but you can't recall who they were or what they were like. That's why.”
“Someone wiped the existence of unaffiliated Hunters? Why would they do that?”
“How would I know?”
What am I, a god? Supposed to know everything?
Ah, I am a god.
But just because you're a god doesn't mean you know everything.
Not all gods are the same.
Choi Soo-hyun took his hand off the mouse, leaned back in his chair, and crossed his arms.
He looked incredibly natural doing it.
That's Park Si-woo's seat, by the way. Anyone would think you're the guild master.
That guy would survive even if you dropped him in the middle of a desert.
“What about Song Eun-young?”
I was wondering when he'd bring that up.
The unaffiliated Awakened Ones had vanished or been wiped from people's memories.
By that logic, what did that make Song Eun-young, who had remained an unaffiliated Awakened One for six years?
The answer was.
“I don't know?”
“If you don't know, who does? Song Eun-young is a follower of Soter now!”
“She's a follower *now*, but she wasn't in the past. Anyway, they must have taken her because they needed that Jeong Hyun-sung kid, right?”
“Why that weakling?”
“You remember him, don't you?”
Let's set Eun-young noona as an exception and exclude the unaffiliated Hunters who can't be remembered.
It was impossible even to try and recall them since we didn't know who existed in the first place.
“Then that kid is effectively the only unaffiliated Hunter right now.”
“There are unaffiliated Hunters overseas too, you punk.”
“But the boss-less Dungeons are only in Korea.”
“What does that have to do with this?”
“Why wouldn't it be related?”
Choi Soo-hyun sighed in frustration.
When I heard about the situation at the amusement park, I had a hunch about something.
“You know about shrines, right?”
Park Si-woo blinked, as if asking how I knew about that.
In contrast, Choi Soo-hyun seemed to be listening as if it were nothing unusual.
The information on the internet was true, but it was all just surface-level stuff.
Not all gods are the same.
Gods who possess a dimension and those who don't are treated very differently.
There's also a difference between having your own complete dimension and sharing one, but that wasn't something to worry about right now.
The next most important thing after a dimension is the ‘shrine’.
An extremely personal space.
To use an analogy, if a dimension is a house, the shrine is like your personal room within that house.
It's the same even for humans, not just gods.
Even with close friends, it takes time before you let them into your room.
Just because you're a follower of a certain god doesn't mean you've ever visited their shrine.
“Do you know the easiest way to enter a shrine? You become family. Not friends or followers, but family. Part of the household. An unlikable family member is still closer than a likable friend, right?”
As family, you might not get into their room, but you can at least come and go from the house.
“If I were a kidnapper, I'd just quietly throw a sack over his head on a dark street and drag him away. Without anyone knowing. But that bastard didn't kidnap Jeong Hyun-sung; he attacked him. Why do you think that is?”
Kidnapping a Hunter who Awakened less than six months ago without a trace isn't that hard.
The condition for a boss monster to become a thought-form is to insert a fragment of something, which then acts as a catalyst to corrupt the monster.
It was highly likely that Jeong Hyun-sung's injury was also intentional.
It was a kind of ritual.
Once you become part of the family, returning home isn't so difficult, is it?
I folded my fingers as I spoke.
“First, Jeong Hyun-sung is valuable as an unaffiliated Hunter. Second, it's highly likely that Eun-young noona and that… ugh, that damn bastard are in a shrine right now. That's about it. We'll have to figure out the rest as we go.”
I scratched the back of my neck.
I'd just finished one thing, and now this mess happens right after I get out. It was a headache in more ways than one.
“You don't seem worried.”
“I am worried… but there's nothing we can do right now.”
I returned to the sofa and stared blankly at the ceiling.
Damn, this office ceiling is high.
“I have to trust him. What other choice is there?”
At least the Yoo Ji-han in the Tower wasn't that bad of a guy.
If the Transcendent Yoo Ji-han is the same Yoo Ji-han I know, he wouldn't do something without a reason.
…Or would he?
I feel a little anxious, but maybe not.
Damn it.
I need to trust someone trustworthy.
Park Si-woo came and sat down in front of me.
He poured the remaining black tea into a cup.
“I'll handle the matters regarding this Dungeon expedition, so don't worry. And I'll continue to investigate this incident.”
And with that, the early morning meeting was over.
***
‘I know resting won't be easy for you, but take a break for a while.’
I'd been unexpectedly given a vacation after finishing the Dungeon.
Just as I was wondering if I should go home and enter the Tower, Choi Soo-hyun, who had left the office with me, grabbed me by the scruff of my neck.
“What is it?”
“Hey, you're going to do a job with me.”
“What are you saying to someone who just spent a day—no, a whole week—working in a Dungeon? Please, let me rest.”
“You slept your fill in the car! And how can you talk about resting when this happened to Song Eun-young?”
“What! You're not even an official follower of Soter. You know, sometimes it seems like you care more about noona than I do. Guess you don't remember her beating you up.”
“Stop talking nonsense and follow me, you punk!”
Choi Soo-hyun led me into the emergency exit.
Choi Soo-hyun leaned against one side of the staircase and popped a candy into his mouth.
He's a sugar addict.
“But why the emergency exit?”
If he had something to say, couldn't he have done it in Park Si-woo's office or the hallway?
Choi Soo-hyun crunched on the candy and stubbornly said what he had to say.
“I've got a stalker.”
“They say too much self-praise is a sickness. Who in their right mind would stalk you? Is their hobby a one-way trip to heaven?”
“My point exactly.”
“…For real? Not a delusion?”
“Wanna die?”
Choi Soo-hyun swept his bangs back.
He didn't seem to be lying.
The problem was who, why, and for what purpose someone was stalking Choi Soo-hyun at this particular time.
“Let's catch them and beat them up.”
“Watch your language. What's 'beat them up'? We should tear them limb from limb.”
“You're even worse! So what about the stalker? You're not telling me you can't handle one on your own, right?”
“Sharp bastard.”
Choi Soo-hyun popped a second candy into his mouth.
Where the hell is he getting so many candies from his pocket?
Is it a 4D pocket? You got an item window too?
“When Kim Yoo… no, when Yoo Ji-han attacked you. You know there was someone who helped him, right?”
“Yeah, vaguely. Never met them, though.”
He was talking about the person who deleted CCTV footage along Ji-han's routes and infiltrated the Aria Guild's server to turn Kim Yoo-han into a ghost.
I knew there was an accomplice, but I'd never really thought about them.
“Normally, I would have let it slide.”
Choi Soo-hyun clenched his fist.
I was starting to get confused whether that crunching sound was coming from his mouth or his hand.
Doesn't seem like he'd let it slide quietly.
Choi Soo-hyun wouldn't bring something like that up without a reason.
“Don't tell me the person stalking you is that guy?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you meet them?”
“No.”
“Then how did you know?”
“Well… I was looking into a few things.”
Choi Soo-hyun folded and snapped the finished candy stick and scratched his head.
“Uh, so you haven't seen their face. Then how on earth did you know that they're stalking you and that they're Yoo Ji-han's accomplice?”
“Stalking isn't just about physically following someone around, you know?”
“…Ah.”
I understood.
That accomplice of Yoo Ji-han's certainly seemed more comfortable online than offline.
“So it's not physical stalking, but online stalking?”
“Yeah.”
“…”
“I tracked the IP, traced it back, and took apart the program. It was the same person who manipulated the CCTVs back then. Hey. Do you have any idea how much trouble I went through to find that bastard? How dare they snoop around on my computer?”
Hmm, I had nothing to say to that.
Choi Soo-hyun seemed seriously pissed off.
I don't know who Yoo Ji-han's accomplice is.
But there are people in this world you should mess with and people you shouldn't.
Why on earth did you do it.
Why.
***
From the outside, it was an ordinary villa.
There wasn't even a common door lock at the entrance.
It definitely didn't look like the kind of place where someone capable of hacking the Aria Guild's server and cyberstalking Choi Soo-hyun would live.
‘This has to be the right place, right?’
I never dreamed Choi Soo-hyun would have the skills to trace a hacker's IP address.
His narcissism was so severe that I'd often wondered if he'd eaten something weird as a child, but seeing this side of him, I had to give him credit.
— You still have that burner phone you got from Park Si-woo, right?
— Hey, an Association employee shouldn't be talking about burner phones. You're a public servant, you know?
— Call this number when you catch the guy.
He was as self-paced as he was arrogant, so my words didn't get through to him at all.
‘A guy like that is a public servant. The country is in great hands.’
My precious tax money!
Choi Soo-hyun had dragged me along, saying we could kill two birds with one stone by catching this guy and finding out about the one who kidnapped Eun-young noona.
This was just my gut feeling, but it was highly likely we wouldn't get anything out of beating up Yoo Ji-han's so-called accomplice.
In a way, Yoo Ji-han was a victim too. What could his accomplice possibly know?
‘Then again, he tried to kill noona, so maybe he's a perpetrator?’
But I just couldn't understand why this kid had such a deep grudge against the god Soter.
Holding a box of takeout chicken I'd bought nearby, I rang the bell for apartment 302.
“Delivery.”
I rang the bell and knocked several times, but there was no response.
I whipped my head around toward the alley where Choi Soo-hyun's car was.
He said the guy orders delivery often!
‘What should I do?’
I had the door lock password Choi Soo-hyun gave me on my phone, but I felt a pang of guilt at the thought of just punching it in and entering.
What if this isn't the right place?
Are you going to take responsibility?
“Ah, screw it.”
I used Mana Detection through the door.
And then I immediately called Choi Soo-hyun.
— Hey, what happened? Did you catch the bastard?
— I think he bolted.
— Fuck.